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Again he did that slow up and down thing with his head, another positive, if mute, response.
“I’m Greek, too.” She eyed him with curiosity, concluding it wouldn’t be strange for Mr. Varos to have other Greeks in his employ. There were probably lots of Greeks in California. As a matter of fact, it would make perfect sense. On two levels.
If Mr. Varos would go to the extreme of marrying a woman he didn’t know just because she was Greek, he would surely hire Greeks. And that solved the other burning question. How anybody as bad-tempered as Pal, here, could even get a job—certainly only by playing the Greek card.
“And I thought ‘little hero’ was just a good guess.” He glanced her way. “I’m disappointed.”
Her annoyance flared at his taunt. “You’re disappointed?” she said. “You’re disappointed! Well, Pal, let me tell you about disappointment!”
They came to a stop before a towering wrought-iron gate. Beautiful and ornate, it depicted scrolls, gilded flowers and acanthus leaves. The iron barrier was set in massive stone posts, topped with elaborate wrought-iron lanterns.
Kalli noticed Pal turn and glance up to his left. She followed his gaze, but didn’t see anything at first. After a minute of puzzled scrutinizing, she spotted a small camera mounted unobtrusively in a niche on the pillar, nearly hidden by branches of a towering cedar.
After a short pause, the gate began to open to the accompaniment of a low mechanical hum.
Kalli was surprised Pal didn’t have to say anything. “Do they have eyeball prints of every employee, or something?”
He drove through the open gate without responding to her wisecrack.
She shifted to look back, and watched as the magnificent iron blockade made its ponderous return trek to block access to the Varos property.
“You were telling me something about disappointment, Miss Angelis?”
“Oh!” She jumped in surprise, something Pal seemed everlastingly good at making her do. She couldn’t recall reacting so powerful to any other man who merely initiated a conversation. What was it about Pal that could coax her to the brink of a conniption fit.
“Disappointment?” She shook her head, trying to refocus. The sight of the majestic gate had reminded her why she was here, and she experienced a surge of excitement about the project for the first time since—well, since the proposition of refurbishing the property had been made via Mr. Varos’s lawyers, when the marriage deal was being hammered out.
She swallowed, her throat dry. It was hard to believe she’d even considered such a daft idea as an arranged marriage. “Oh—right. Disappointment.”
She strained to see over the treetops, and thought she spied a spire here and a chimney there. She would see the house very soon. Her heartbeat sped up and she gave Pal a disgruntled peek. She would be rid of her disagreeable escort, too.
That knowledge made her bold.
“I’ll tell you about disappointment!” she said, allowing her resentment free access to her mouth. “Disappointment is being picked up at the airport by a big, grouchy bear. Disappointment is having to spend these past two, unending hours with a snarling sorehead. And real disappointment is discovering that same big, grouchy bear of a sorehead is Greek, a cruel, ugly blot on an otherwise wonderful people!”
Belligerent and full of vinegar, she leaned toward him, hopeful her aggressive slant would rattle him just a little. “That’s real disappointment, buster!” She flicked him hard on the arm. “That’s bottom-line disappointment—Pal!”
They headed around a bend and up an incline. Out of the corner of her eye, Kalli saw a flash of color that wasn’t part of the verdant landscape. She turned instinctively as the Varos mansion rose before her amid a paradise of blooming shrubs, flowers and the heavy perfume of wisteria.
She sucked in a breath, experiencing a warm, rosy feeling she could only describe as love-at-first-sight. The Victorian residence had a fairy-tale quality—a delicate castle, created from a romantic marriage of brick, stone and wood.
It was a three-storied cornucopia of Victorian elements, cleverly mingled from its gables, dormers and Palladian windows to the wraparound graystone veranda and lofty tower. The dwelling was unique and whimsical—a charming reflection of childhood fantasies and make-believe.
“Oh,” she cried, her passion for her work cresting and overflowing. “There’s so much—so much—” Her voice broke, so she waved a broad arch in the air, indicating its potential. The home was not merely plaster, board and stone to Kalli. It was a living, breathing entity—a being with a soul and character, who, over the years, had been wronged and degraded with regrettable paint choices and injurious additions.
To be given the chance to save such a treasure, to restore it to its original glory, would be a dream-come-true to anyone in her profession. Kalli gawked, overwhelmed that Mr. Varos would entrust such an undertaking into her care.
The mansion began to quiver before her eyes, then blurred. As the sports car pulled to a stop, she blinked, dislodging tears of gratitude.
“I gather the house is a real, bottom-line disappointment?”
Pal’s cynical remark coming so near her ear made her cry out. She jerked to glare at him. “You scared me!” She swiped at the tears with the back of her hand, not even slightly embarrassed that he’d seen her cry. Some things were simply worth crying over, and this superb mansion was one of them.
He shifted to lounge against the leather and draped an arm across the back of her seat. “I thought you knew I was here,” he said, his tone dripping with mockery. “I’m sorry.”
If she’d ever heard a you’re-a-pain-in-the-neck anti-apology, that was it. She bounced around, presenting her back to him and focusing on the house. Her hands trembling with anger, she busily straightened her suit jacket and finger-combed her hair.
“You really should be sorry, you know!” She spun back to glower at him. “And to answer your question, no. The house is not a disappointment. It’s wonderful. I’m deeply moved that Mr. Varos wants me to refurbish it. There’s such innate beauty, such graceful transcendency. With the right creative hand, the right artistic eye, Mr. Varos’s home could become a work of art.”
He lifted his chin, a clear indication his attention had moved in the direction of the house, somewhere behind and above her. She gave him a hard, offended look. Why was she bothering to explain? He wasn’t listening. Besides, this insensitive part-time-chauffeur-handyman-all-round-disagreeable-underling couldn’t possibly understand how aesthetics could stir the receptive spirit.
“Oh—never mind.” Shaking her head, she indicated the rear of the car. “If you’ll pop the trunk, I’ll get my bags. I wouldn’t want to keep you.”
“I’ll get your bags, miss.”
This new male voice came from behind and slightly above her. She jerked around. A trim, white-haired man in black stood midway down the brick staircase that led to the arched entry. The servant wore white gloves and a reserved, yet welcoming, smile. Kalli heard a click as the car trunk popped open.
Without waiting for further evidence of permission to retrieve her bags, the man descended the steps and headed to the rear of the car. Kalli pushed open her door and got out, only partly in a desire to help with her bags. One unruly portion of her brain had an urge to turn and gaze just once more at—well, it was a stupid urge, and she fought it by leaping from the convertible.
As she shut the car door, another man emerged from the shadows of the wide, covered porch. This new arrival was tall and thin, wore a dark suit, green-and-navy striped tie, and carried a black leather briefcase. His long, pale face and receding hairline seemed familiar. Kalli paused to scrutinize him, digging into her memory. When his glance shifted to meet hers, he came to a dead stop, his eyes going wide. That was it! That startled doe look told her exactly were she’d seen him before. She gasped, wagging an accusing finger at him. “But you said you wouldn’t be here!”
She didn’t like the panic in her voice. She’d meant to sound stern, all business. She noticed her finger, still wagging in his direction. It looked so moronic, she dropped her hand to her side, struggling to keep her lower lip from trembling. She felt rotten about what she’d done to Mr. Varos, and she was still acting badly. Working to regain her poise, she made herself breathe evenly.
“I—I’m just leaving.” The man she’d jilted walked down the remainder of the steps to the brick driveway.
Kalli felt wretched. How could she have shouted, especially considering he’d offered her this wonderful job? She hurried over to him and took his free hand in both of hers. “Oh, Mr. Varos, you must think I’m an ungrateful shrew.” She pumped his cool, limp fingers. “Thank you so much for this chance. I’ll do my very, very utmost to make your home the showpiece it deserves to be. I’m thrilled to be here. You’re too kind, and I’ll never, ever forget—”
“Miss Angelis,” Pal cut in. “If you’ll kindly release my assistant, he’s on a tight schedule.”
Kalli stopped pumping and opened her mouth to ask Pal what he was babbling about, but he’d turned to the pale man whose hand she clutched. “Charles, I left the Magnason contracts on my desk. Express mail them this afternoon. Then drive the Boxster to the garage. It needs to be detailed.”
“Yes, sir.” The pale man’s gaze darted from Kalli to Pal and back to Kalli.
Pal held out the car keys but when they weren’t immediately retrieved, he frowned, pointedly staring down at the pallid hand Kalli gripped with all her strength. “Don’t cut off his circulation, Miss Angelis. Charles needs those fingers. He types one hundred words a minute.”
Pal lifted away his sunglasses to reveal darkly fringed eyes the color of smoke. Those eyes captured her gaze and her breath. Without looking away, he signaled the butler. “Take Miss Angelis’ bags inside, Belkin. She’s thrilled to be here.”
Those lips Kalli had found disturbingly sensuous curled in a wicked grin and he winked, the most brazen, most calculated act she’d ever seen. Her reaction was just short of apoplexy.
“What—what’s going on here?” she asked in a fragile whisper. “Isn’t this…” She jerked to stare accusingly at the pale man whose hand she held. “But—aren’t you…?”
“No, ma’am. I’m Charles Early.” He made a sickly effort to smile. “I’m pleased to meet you.”
“But—but…” Horrified, she gaped at Pal. The truth trying to seep into her brain was too terrible to contemplate. “But you can’t be…”
He bowed his head slightly, as though being introduced at a formal gathering. “Nikolos Varos, at your service.” Slipping the convertible’s keys into Charles’s coat pocket, Niko kept her gaze locked with his, his grin crooked. “It’s my pleasure to meet you—at last.”
Even in her dazed stupor, Kalli was hit between the eyes with his brazen insolence. He’d made a fool of her and he loved it. As far as Nikolos Varos was concerned, their alliance was so completely opposite from a pleasure, she could feel the antagonism pulsating through her as surely and painfully as if she were standing on a downed electric cable. He didn’t like her, didn’t want to be in the same state with her. So why…
He took her arm, short-circuiting her thought processes. “Allow me to show you to your room.”
Groping around in her brain for balance and sanity, she belatedly managed to yank from his hold. “You promised you wouldn’t be here!”
Niko stood a step below her, but she still had to look up to scan his expression. “Actually,” he corrected, “Charles said he wouldn’t be here.” One dark brow rose as he observed her, his smile gone. “More to the point, you promised to marry me. Why are you still Miss Angelis?”
The blunt rebuke broadsided Kalli. She felt dizzy and she couldn’t catch her breath. This wouldn’t work. She couldn’t be here, couldn’t stay. Suddenly ice-cold, she hugged herself. “This is impossible, Mr. Varos,” she whispered. Her ex-fiancé might not have a broken heart because of her rejection, but his bloodthirsty streak was all too real. “Under the circumstances, I—I can’t stay.”
Niko’s brow furrowed for an instant, then his features became unreadable. “It’s your decision, of course,” he said in that rough-sexy drawl. “Most people in your profession would endure hell on earth to get a prestigious opportunity like this.” He indicated the house. “Look at it again, Miss Angelis. Tell me I’m wrong.”
She didn’t have to look. She knew he was right. In all her experience she’d never seen a more spectacular example of the American Victorian style. With proper refurbishing, the grand edifice could be a masterpiece of the period. How many people got the chance to help create a masterpiece?
Her sense of loss was like a molten steel weight in her belly and she had to fight to keep from bursting into tears. She shook her head, befuddled and stupid. She wished she could be anywhere else, but she knew her cowardly behavior toward Mr. Varos had to end. Choking back a sob, she resolutely met his gaze. “Since you obviously detest me, why would you offer such a five-star job —to me? It doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s very simple, Miss Angelis.” A knife-edged chill clung to his words. “Because I keep my promises.”
CHAPTER THREE
THAT stinging insult hadn’t been Niko’s most shining hour. He watched his ex-fiancée wince. Odd, he didn’t feel quite the surge of satisfaction he’d thought he would.
She opened her mouth, but before she could respond, he grasped her elbow and steered her up the steps into the mansion’s foyer.
“But, Mr. Var—”
“By the way,” he cut in, uncompromising in his plan to teach his fickle ex-fiancée a lesson about breaking pledges. “Regarding your gushing thanks earlier—you’re quite welcome. It’s my pleasure.” He knew his forbidding expression would underscore the lie.
She startled him when she yanked from his hold and spun to confront him. “Will you be here the whole time?” Her eyes, a captivating lavender-gray, sparked with animosity and distress. Though her face was the perfect oval he’d admired in her picture, he was becoming acquainted with her chin of iron determination. At the moment, it jutted accusingly. Her jet-black hair flowed out in soft waves from a center part. Disheveled from the convertible ride, the thick mane gleamed, a dusky aura around her flushed face.
She looked a little crazed, in an engaging way. His heated reaction to a mass of glossy hair and a blush made him furious with himself. He didn’t like this woman. She might be attractive but she was flighty and couldn’t be trusted to keep important promises. This flaw in her character had caused him no end of embarrassment. He hadn’t been able to go anywhere in the city without being ribbed that he’d been “left at the altar,” not to mention all the pointing and staring from strangers.
“Well,” she demanded, aiming that lethal little chin at his heart. “Are you planning to be here?”
With a studied nonchalance he didn’t feel, Niko shrugged his hands into his jeans pockets. “If you’ll recall, I’m on vacation.”
“Don’t you have a place in town?” Her voice had gone high-pitched and shrill. She was truly alarmed about this turn of events. That knowledge sent a rush of malevolent pleasure through him. “My place in town needs repair work,” he said. “I’ll be staying here for the duration.”
“Duration?” she squeaked.
“Three weeks.”
Her horrified expression almost made him smile.
“But—but that’s how long…” Her voice broke and she didn’t finish. They both knew she needed to be there that long. He watched her swallow several times, obviously trying to get her voice under control. “You lied to me,” she whispered at last.
“Did I?” He challenged her with his most innocent expression.
“Yes!” She glared, clearly attempting to kill him with that look. “When you said you wouldn’t be here. You lied!”
“Charles told you he wouldn’t be here.”
“But he—you—allowed me to assume—”
“What you assume, Miss Angelis, is hardly my fault.”
She blinked, then her stare grew wider, as though she’d had a distasteful thought. “Do you think you need to keep an eye on me? Is that why you’re staying? You don’t trust me to get the job done?”
That wasn’t the reason, but the idea had merit. “Why would I need to do that?” he asked. “When have I ever known you to break your word?”
She opened her lips, but plainly shaken by his direct shot, couldn’t seem to form words. Niko gave her no time to recoup and dropped a bomb. “The fact is, this is a beautiful piece of property. I own it, so why shouldn’t I stay? After all, this was supposed to be my honeymoon.”
He heard her guttural moan and knew he’d drawn blood. “This is—this is bad!” She rubbed her temples as though trying to ward off a headache. “I can’t take your insults for three weeks. I can’t even take them for three minutes.” The butler came down the steps. At the sound of his approach, she whirled. “Excuse me, sir.” She waved frantically. “Please, get my bags. I’m leaving.”
“I thought you’d bail out, again,” Niko said, baiting her.
“Bail out?” She whirled, giving him another direct shot with that lethal chin. “How dare you say I’m bailing out! It’s nothing of the sort! I simply won’t subject myself to your mocking and insulting, and if you even thought I might, you’re—you’re demented!”
“I never thought you would,” he lied. He knew damn well what she would do, and stared her down as she blustered and stammered, trying to convince herself she wasn’t a quitter. She might have been able to bail out on him and their marriage, but she had never met him. Her job was another thing entirely. She knew her job, and was passionate about her work. He’d done enough research on her to be sure of that. She would stay, or Niko Varos wasn’t the hotshot international financial consultant people thought he was.
“N-nothing—” she stammered, “not this house, not any house—is worth—” she indicated the faded grandeur of an entry hall, decorated in retro-fifties camp “—worth putting up with your—with your…”
Her glance trailed her broad gesture. Before she completed her sweep, she stilled. Her lips sagged and her distressed expression changed into one of abject horror, as though she only now absorbed the scandalous violation done to this mansion and its proud Victorian roots.
The fine old wood floor had been painted in a green-and-yellow checkerboard pattern. The wallpaper bore a splashy, modern art look Niko assumed were supposed to be untidy piles of pipe. The dangling light fixture consisted of three beach-ball-size yellow, plastic orbs. Beneath them sat a sprawling amoeba-shaped table with a marbled mirror top, supported by spindly metal legs.
She covered her mouth with both hands and strangled a gasp as she staggered around in a circle. Niko watched as her glance fell to a side wall. A round, molded plywood table stood between two doors. Atop its indented surface squatted a funky lamp made to resemble a big lightbulb. Kalli bit her lip, her glance skidding to another wall where a yellow, rectangular clock, the size of a breakfast tray dominated.
The clock’s hands were disconcertingly off-center. An oversize, red secondhand tick-tick-ticked as she stared, wide-eyed. Niko had the sense each jerk of that red, mechanical arm boomed in her head as she suffered, second by painful second. He had to fight a knowing grin as he observed her sluggish, stumbling body language. Only seeing her scream and collapse in a traumatized heap would have made it more obvious she was experiencing a gut-wrenching ache to rescue the place from its gross defilement.
“Cute, isn’t it?” he taunted, well aware he was being cruel. “I especially like the lead-pipe motif in the wallpaper.”
“Oh—dear heaven…” she whimpered, shaking her head. “It’s so—so wrong. It’s dreadful.”
“But is it dreadful enough to endure a brief captivity in a hell-on-earth?”
She stood with her back to him, her shoulders slightly drooped. He sensed her turmoil and gave her a moment to agonize over the knowledge that beneath layers of wrong-headed embellishments a masterpiece cried out to be liberated. He could almost hear her thinking, I could save this house. I must save it! He pursed his lips to suppress a shrewd grin.
The thud of his butler’s footsteps drew his gaze once again to the central staircase. The liveried man descended, carrying a suitcase and shoulder tote.
Niko’s attention slid to his angsting ex. She, too, had heard the butler and looked up. Niko waited, silent. At the moment, it would be unwise to remind her of his unwelcome presence. In order for her to make the decision that fit with his ploy, she needed to think of the house and only the house.
“I—uh…”
Niko watched her straighten her shoulders. “I’m sorry.” She moved toward the stairs, addressing the butler. “I’m staying, after all.” She rushed up the steps and took the bags. “Please show me to my room.”
Belkin glanced at his employer, his expression pinched with confusion.
Niko nodded, experiencing a rush of satisfaction. He allowed himself a crafty grin as he watched her trudge, stiff-backed and squeamish, into the lion’s den.
Kalli unpacked her bag in a bizarre trancelike state. She walked back and forth from her suitcase to the chartreuse dresser with its aluminum top and side trim and cane inset drawers.
