The Balfour Legacy. Кэрол Мортимер

The silent curse burned its way around his head in protest for letting his imagination go in that direction. Two damn long weeks of this and she was still here driving him crazy.

      Did he really do all of those things she had listed or was she just out to pull his strings—?

      A curse locked in his throat. His new PA might not like him, but she lusted after him with a fever she was too inept to keep hidden, though he was equally certain that she was not aware that she was so transparent.

      And that was the reason Anton Brunel had picked up on the sexual vibrations at the lunch table, he determined. Her fault, not his fault. And as for all that touching stuff she’d accused him of—it only happened inside her overimag-inative head.

      She made him think of a living, breathing sexual grenade with the pin dangling halfway out—half precocious woman, half infuriating child—and she might heat him up like no women had ever done, but he did not want her in his bed!

      Oscar would never forgive him.

      On that final sense-cooling reminder, Nikos made a grab at the thread of this discussion. ‘Call John Lassiter,’ he instructed. ‘Tell him I’m no longer interested in doing business with them.’

      ‘Me—?’ Mia gasped. ‘But I don’t want—’

      ‘And bring me some coffee,’ he cut over her scared protest and sat forward to pick up his pen.

      If this didn’t teach her to keep her provocative ways in check, then nothing would. The Lassiter-Brunel deal was worth several million on paper. The innately frugal Mia Bianchi-Balfour was going to gag at the loss of such a lucrative deal. ‘And remind Fiona I will be out for two hours at lunch.’

      ‘But…Nikos please,’ Mia murmured painfully. ‘I don’t know how to do what you said!’

      ‘Make coffee?’ he incised with a cruelty he actually enjoyed inflicting.

      ‘Tell somebody a deal is to be broken!’

      ‘Then you are about to ride yet another steep learning curve,’ he relayed without a hint of care. ‘And just for the record, I don’t approve of office affairs, romances or even friendships. So stop taking swipes at me by the way you dress, or the way you look at me, or the way you put that Lassiter-Brunel file in front of me, expecting me to find that article and question your motives so you could tell me what Brunel presumed about us. It was irritating and juvenile. There is no us. The rest of what you said lives only in your head. Now I have some calls to make.’

      Dismissed, appalled, devastated—whipped by his cold assassination—Mia spun away and walked across his office on legs that shook.

      Irritating and juvenile….

      ‘I hate him,’ Mia whispered once she was on the other side of the door.

      ‘Did you say something?’ Fiona glanced up from her work.

      Wishing she was dead or at least far, far away from this place, Mia stumbled across the room to sink down in the chair behind her desk before her trembling legs crumbled altogether. ‘He’s in a very bad mood today and I hate him.’

      ‘Don’t we all, darlin’,’ Fiona responded dryly. ‘Our gorgeous boss is pure sex on legs but as cold as ice. It’s such a waste of good male flesh.’ Sitting back from her computer console, Fiona’s floppy blonde curls bounced on her head as she gave Mia’s pale face the once-over. ‘Bit your head off, did he?’

      More than just my head, Mia thought tragically. ‘I don’t know how you have put up with him for as long as you have.’

      ‘I’m immune.’ Fiona waggled her left hand at Mia, showing off the three sparkling rings she wore on her marriage finger. ‘I’ve got my own sexy brute to go home to each evening, and he’s never cold.’

      ‘He wants me to cancel the Lassiter-Brunel deal’.

      Fiona went still. ‘So you told him.’

      Mia pressed her trembling lips together and nodded. ‘He didn’t believe me.’

      ‘Then why is he pulling out of the deal?’ the secretary quizzed with a frown.

      ‘To—to punish me,’ Mia answered. ‘He knows I don’t know how to do such a thing so he’s making me do it to teach me a lesson about the consequences of making up stories.’

      ‘Nikos Theakis is throwing away a lucrative deal just to teach you a lesson?’ Fiona laughed. ‘I don’t believe it. There has to be more to his reasoning than that.’

      There was, Mia thought bleakly. She had told him some other things he had not wanted to hear about. ‘And he’s not taking me with him to his lunch today…’

      And that harsh rebuff was striking her as hard as everything else. It was like being cut off from the main lifeline which kept her functioning. She might hate him but she revelled in being around him.

      Why had she told him he constantly touched her? Why hadn’t she kept her big mouth shut?

      ‘Perhaps that’s a good thing,’ Fiona said gently.

      Blinking her ridiculously long eyelashes Mia brought her gaze into focus on the other woman, read her sympathetic expression and went hot.

      ‘He wants coffee.’ Looking away she stood and walked across the office to the coffee machine to prepare a small tray, then on impulse she begged Fiona, ‘Will you take it in? I don’t think I can stand another visit in there right now.’

      ‘Sure…’ Always relaxed, always sunny, Fiona came to take the tray from her, then paused. ‘Mia…’ she posed gently, ‘take a bit of advice from someone older and wiser than you are…get yourself a man.’

      Glancing up, she groaned, ‘Oh, Dio. Am I so obvious?’

      Fiona’s sympathetic smile said it all. ‘You know, when you first arrived here everyone in the building was more than ready to dislike you for who you are and how you came by this job. It took you just a week to win us all over. You’re hard-working, sweet and nice, but he isn’t nice—to women.’

      Mia started despising herself for bringing this lecture on.

      ‘He uses them, Mia,’ Fiona pressed on her. ‘He does not respect them.’

      ‘As they use him.’ She felt some crazy need to defend Nikos Theakis even though he did not deserve it.

      ‘Yes.’ Fiona couldn’t argue with that. ‘Especially Miss Supermodel Lucy Clayton who received her farewell gift by special messenger last week. By next week another woman just like her will have been put in her place. It’s the way he works. The way he likes to keep it,’ Fiona stressed. ‘He’s an amazing risk taker in the business arena. An absolute financial genius everybody admires and respects, and he’s com-mendably honest and committed to any promises he makes—in business—but in his personal life?’ Fiona shook her head. ‘He’s a smooth, cool, bone-meltingly gorgeous sexual predator. He does not connect sex with his emotions—if he has any—the jury is still out on that. So take my advice and don’t go there. Don’t even want to go there because if he decides to take you he will spoil you for ever. So get yourself a man,’ she repeated, ‘and wean yourself off him while you still can.’

      ‘Where is my coffee?’ the sexual predator demanded.

      Chapter Three

      BOTH women jumped guiltily and turned to see Nikos Theakis standing in his office doorway. By his closed expression there was no way they could tell if he’d overheard them talking about him, but for the first time since she’d started working here, Mia saw two hot coins of guilt hit Fiona’s creamy cheekbones and knew her own cheeks wore the same hot sting.

      Good, Nikos thought, tamping down hard on his anger for the second time this morning as he strode across the room to take the tray from his