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“There would be no point in developing a new property if we couldn’t bring something to the table no one else has already offered.”
Her azure gaze slid to his lips and stayed there for several seconds, and then she blinked at him with unfocused eyes before seeming to remember what he’d said and smiling wryly. “Always the overachiever.”
“And you are not?”
“Hey, there’s more than one reason you and I are such good friends.”
“More than this, you mean.” He rubbed himself against her subtly.
She gasped and stepped back. “You are dangerous.” Letting her gaze drop to what he hoped his suit jacket hid from others’ gazes, she winked. “I think getting to the hotel is a definite necessity.”
“Are you tired?” he asked, tongue in cheek. “Need a lie down?”
“Get my case, Zephyr.” She gave him a look that said she knew exactly what kind of lie down he had in mind and she wasn’t necessarily averse.
“Gladly, agapimenos.”
“Don’t start in with the Greek endearments unless you want spontaneous combustion right here,” she warned.
“But I like living on the edge.”
She gave a significant look to the baggage rolling by on the carousel.
He turned smartly and started looking for the zebra-print luggage he had bought her after she complained about how her black suitcase looked like everyone else’s in the airport. She’d laughed at the loud black-and-white print on the cases, but she used it.
She’d only brought one midsize case and her carry-on, so they were out of the airport and in the car he’d rented for the week a few minutes later.
“Mmm…nice. Definitely a step up from the Mercedes,” she said, rubbing the leather upholstery in the fire-engine-red Ferrari convertible.
“Don’t knock my car. It has heated seats and those come in handy in Seattle’s colder winters. And a convertible would hardly be practical in such a wet city.” But he was glad she liked the Ferrari. He’d wanted to spoil her a little, since she was always so determined not to spoil herself.
“There is that.” She brushed her hand along the ceiling. “Are you going to lower the soft-top?”
“Of course.” He pressed a button and the roof slowly disappeared.
Once the process had completed, he put the powerful car into gear and backed out of his VIP parking spot. With wellpracticed movements in cutthroat driving, he maneuvered them through Athens toward their hotel. He swerved around a taxi that had stopped in a no-parking zone and then accelerated through a light turning red.
She put her head back and laughed out loud. “Oh, I like this. We really have two days for you and me to play, and nothing else?”
“We do.”
“Thank you, Zephyr.” She brushed a hand down his thigh.
Pleasure at both the touch and the gratitude he heard in her voice filled him. With an independent woman like Piper, it had been a risk to schedule vacation time for her without her knowledge. Even if he called it locale research. He was glad the risk had paid off. “What are friends for?”
“Is that all we are? Just friends?” she asked, not sounding particularly concerned.
So, he didn’t go into masculine panic mode. “In my world there isn’t anything just about being a true friend.”
“I understand that. All of my so-called friends dumped me when I walked out on Art. I didn’t realize they were only interested in spending time with me if I came as part of a power couple.”
“Even though he cheated on you?” Zephyr asked in disgust.
“Art wasn’t the only one who believed that hoary old refrain he was so good at spouting.”
“Which one is that?”
“All men cheat,” she clarified.
“We don’t.”
“The jury is still out on that one, but I was not about to stay married to a man who believed infidelity was as inevitable as the tide.”
“You know I think you made the right choice divorcing that louse.” At least her family had finally come around to that conclusion as well, even if her former friends had not.
“Me, too. But unfortunately, that louse runs one of the most successful design houses in New York.”
“Hence your move to Seattle.”
“Exactly. There just wasn’t room enough in The Big Apple for both his ego and my career.” She smiled sadly.
The bastard she’d been married to had done his best to blackball her in the design community. Zephyr had returned the favor over the past two years and Très Bon no longer held its prestigious top position status. Arthur Bellingham’s word might send ripples out in the city, but Zephyr Nikos sent out waves big enough to drown in the international community.
The bastard who had done his best to ruin Piper’s life was on the slippery slope of business decline already. Art would only find himself in deep, murky waters when he got to the bottom, too.
Zephyr had never told Piper, of course. She hadn’t been exposed to his ruthless streak and he saw no reason to change that.
“Well, I am glad you came to Seattle,” he said.
“Again, me, too.” She tugged off her jacket, revealing the silky singlet she wore beneath it, and the fact she wasn’t wearing a bra. “I certainly made a better circle of friends.”
“Oh, I am round now?” he asked, practically choking on his lust as her hardened nipples created shoals in the slinky fabric of her top.
He forcibly snapped his attention back to Athens’s typically snarled traffic, lest he cause an accident or do a poor job avoiding one. He could hardly do what he was fantasizing to her body from a hospital bed.
Having her in peril of the same didn’t even bear thinking of.
“Don’t be smart.” She tapped his leg, having the opposite effect to the one he was sure she meant it to. “I have other friends.”
“Name one.”
“Brandi.”
“She is your assistant.”
“I have friends,” Piper insisted stubbornly. “There’s a reason I’m not available every night to keep you entertained.”
Which wasn’t something he actually liked, so he let the subject drop.
Usually, Piper noticed every tiny detail of her surroundings, always looking for ways to improve her own sense of design and aesthetics. However, she barely noticed the earth tones and ultramodern, simplistic design features of the luxury spa Zephyr had chosen for their stay as he led her through the oversized lobby to the bank of elevators on the far side.
She was too busy soaking in his every feature, her senses starved for the sight, taste and feel of him.
The past month and a half had been harder than any separation they’d had to date. For her anyway. Maybe for Zephyr, too, if the number of calls and texts she’d gotten from him was anything to go on. They’d had prolonged times apart before, but not since they started having sex regularly six months ago. Still, it wasn’t as if they were a couple. They were friends, who were also casual sex partners. At least that’s what she’d been telling herself since the first time they’d passed that intimate boundary nine months ago.
That first time, she’d thought it would be a one-off, something to get the sexual tension that had been growing between them out of the way of their friendship. She’d been wrong.
They hadn’t gotten physical again until three months later, but connected sexually several times a week since then. When he made it clear, again, that he did not see the sex as anything more than physical compatibility for stress release, she’d told herself she wasn’t ready for a committed relationship, either, so that was just fine with her. Art had done a real number on her ability to trust and she had a business to build. She didn’t have a place in her life for a full-time relationship.
The only problem was: she wasn’t sure she believed her own rhetoric any longer. Her natural optimism was doing its best to overcome her painfully learnt lesson on the ways of men. The fact she was having such a complicated internal monologue on the matter was telling in itself, she thought with an internal sigh.
She’d been careful not to ask for promises Zephyr might break, or make commitments she wasn’t ready for.
But she’d come to realize over the past six weeks—while subsisting on phone calls, texts, instant messaging and e-mail—that emotions didn’t abide by agreements, verbal or otherwise. That refusing to make a vow didn’t stop her heart from craving the security that promise implied. Nor did it stop her from living like she’d made her own promises.
She’d missed Zephyr more than she’d thought possible and wanted nothing more right now than to wrap herself up in him and soak in his essence.
He seemed to want the same thing. He hadn’t stopped touching her since they left the airport. He’d laid his hand over hers between gear changes in the car and he’d kept his arm around her waist all the way to the room.
He opened the door with a flourish. “Here we are.”
The suite reflected the minimalist décor from downstairs, but its spaciousness spoke of the ultimate in luxury. “This place is bigger than my apartment.”
“My closet is bigger than your flat,” he said, sounding unimpressed.
She grimaced at the truth of his words, but the curve of her lips morphed into a smile from the heat burning in his brown eyes.
From the feel of his arousal when he’d first hugged and kissed her hello, and the sexual need intensifying his features then and now, she expected to be taken against the door with a minimum of foreplay.
But that didn’t happen. He set her cases aside and then lifted her right into his arms, high against his chest, in a move that made her feel cherished rather than just wanted.
She quickly banished that thought even as her gasp of surprise escaped her. “Going he-man on me?”
“Spoiling you more like.”
“Oh, really? I could get used to this,” she teased.
He didn’t bother with a reply, but didn’t look too fazed at the prospect. So not good for the odd blips of emotion that had been pestering her lately. But that was one thing she could say about Zephyr Nikos, whether it be in his role as friend, boss or bed partner, the man did not stint on his generosity.
Despite his obvious desire, rather than showing mass amounts of impatience, he laid her gently on the big bed and seemed determined to reacquaint himself with every facet of her body. He drove her crazy with reticence while pumping her for information on her time away from him.
After he asked yet another question about her experience in the Midwest decorating the interior for a new office building, she laughed. “We spoke every day, Zephyr. I can’t think of anything I didn’t already tell you.”
The gorgeous tycoon actually looked like he might be blushing, his dark eyes reflecting chagrin. “I was just curious.”
“You know what I do on a job. I’ve done it for Stamos and Nikos Enterprises often enough.”
“Did you like the Midwest better than Seattle?” he asked with what she thought was entirely mistimed curiosity.
“Are you kidding?”
His expression said clearly he wasn’t.
“I love Seattle. The energy in the city is amazing.” And he was there.
“That’s good to know.”
Suddenly, all his questions started to make sense. “You heard.”
Chapter Two
ZEPHYR tried to look innocent.
“How? Who told you?”
“Does it matter? Information is more lucrative than platinum in my business.”
“Did you seriously think Pearson Property Developments could offer me a better situation than your company already has done?”
“Money isn’t your only consideration, it isn’t even your main one, or you would have accepted my job offer by now.”
It was true. She would make a lot more money working for him as an employee whose overheads were absorbed by the company rather than as a fledgling design business that sucked up the vast majority of the not-insubstantial fees charged to her clients.
“So, you thought I might like the Midwest enough to take Pearson’s job offer?” She couldn’t imagine it and disbelief colored her voice.
“They didn’t just offer you a job.”
“No, they also offered a contract for several projects they have in the pipeline over the next two years.” While still leaving her an independent operator, the offer would provide the kind of security most up-and-coming designers dreamed about.
If living in a landlocked state without a single authentic Vietnamese or Thai restaurant was what she wanted. It wasn’t. She was too fond of the diversified and active culture of Seattle.
“I’ve gotten too spoiled to big-city living. The only Thai restaurant I found was run by a man named Arnie who thinks a good curry comes with corn-on-the-cob.”
Zephyr shuddered. “So, you are not taking the contract.”
“Doing so would have made it impossible to do this property. I wasn’t willing to give up a chance at decorating a specialty resort in paradise for re-creating my first design in a series of cookie-cutter office buildings.”
One of the things she and Art had disagreed on, besides the whole issue of marital fidelity, was her need to create, not merely re-create. For Art, the bottom line was always money. While Piper craved security, she needed the chance to stretch her artistic muscles just as much.
“I’m glad.”
She smiled. “Good.”
“I’m equally pleased you are here with me now.” For a man like Zephyr, that was quite an admission.
It deserved rewarding, at the very least reciprocating honesty. Emotion she was doing her best to suppress colored her single-word answer. “Ditto.”
He made a sexy sound, very much like a growl, before pulling her to him for a scorching kiss. Finally.
