Carrying the Greek's Heir
Splashed above his unsmiling face were the words: Has Alek Sarantos Struck Gold?
His hands knuckled as he read it.
One of London’s most eligible bachelors may be off the market before too long. The Midas touch billionaire, known for his love of supermodels and heiresses, was spotted in a passionate embrace with a waitress last weekend, following candlelit drinks on the terrace of his luxury New Forest hotel.
Ellie Brooks isn’t Alek’s usual type but the shapely waitress declared herself smitten by the workaholic tycoon, who told her he needed a vacation before his latest eye-wateringly big deal. Seems the Greek tycoon takes relaxation quite seriously!
And, according to Ellie, Alek doesn’t always live up to his Man Of Steel nickname. ‘He’s a pussycat,’ she purred.
Perhaps business associates should keep a saucer of milk at the ready in future...
Alek glanced up to see Vasos looking ill at ease, nervously running his finger along the inside of his shirt collar as he gave Alek an apologetic shrug.
‘I’m sorry, boss,’ he said.
‘Unless you actually wrote the piece, I see no reason for you to apologise. Did they ring here first to check the facts before they went to press?’ snapped Alek.
‘No.’ Vasos cleared his throat. ‘I’m assuming they didn’t need to.’
Alek glared. ‘Meaning?’
Vasos looked him straight in the eye. ‘They would only have printed this without verification if it were true.’
Alek crumpled the newspaper angrily before hurling it towards the bin as if it were contaminated. He watched as it bounced uselessly off the window and the fact that he had missed made him angrier still.
Yes, it was true. He had been making out with some waitress in a public place. He’d thought with his groin instead of his brain. He’d done something completely out of character and now the readers of a downmarket rag knew all about it. His famously private life wasn’t so private any more, was it?
But worst of all was the realisation that he’d taken his eye off the ball. He’d completely misjudged her. Maybe he’d been suffering from a little temporary sunstroke. Why else would he have thought there was something special about her—or credited her with softness or honesty, when in reality she was simply on the make? The reputation he’d built up, brick by careful brick, had been compromised by some ambitious little blonde with dollar signs in her eyes.
A slow rage began to smoulder inside him. A lot of good his enforced rest had done him. All those spa treatments and massages had been for nothing if his blood pressure was now shooting through the ceiling. Those solemn therapists telling him he must relax had been wasting their time. He must be more burnt out than he’d thought if he’d seriously thought about having sex with some little nobody like her.
His mood stayed dark for the remainder of the day, though it didn’t stop him driving a particularly hard bargain on his latest acquisition. He would show the world that he was most definitely not a pussycat! He spent the day tied up with conference calls and had early evening drinks with a Greek politician who wanted his advice.
Back in his penthouse, he listened moodily to the messages which had been left on his phone and thought about how to spend the evening. Any number of beautiful women could have been his and all he had to do was call. He thought of the aristocratic faces and bony bodies which were always available to him and found himself comparing them with the curvaceous body of Ellie. The one whose face had inexplicably made him feel...
What?
As if he could trust her?
What a fool he was. A hormone-crazed, stupid fool. Hadn’t he learnt his lesson a long time ago? That women were the last species on the planet who could be trusted?
He’d spent years building up a fierce but fair persona in the business world. His reputation was of someone who was tough, assertive and professional. He was known for his vision and his dependability. He despised the ‘celebrity’ culture and valued his privacy. He chose his friends and lovers carefully. He didn’t let them get too close and nobody ever gave interviews about him. Ever. Even the redhead—supposedly broken-hearted at the time—had possessed enough sense to go away and lick her wounds in private.
But Ellie Brooks had betrayed him. A waitress he’d treated as an equal and then made the mistake of kissing had given some cheap little interview to a journalist. How much had she made? His heart pounded because he hadn’t even had the pleasure of losing himself in that soft body of hers. He’d mistakenly thought she was too sweet and then she’d gone and sold him down the river. He’d behaved decently and honourably by sending her chastely on her way and look at all the thanks he’d got.
His mouth hardened in conjunction with the exquisite aching in his groin.
Maybe it wasn’t too late to do something about that.
CHAPTER THREE
I’M SORRY, ELLIE—but we have no choice other than to let you go.
The words still resonating painfully round in her head, Ellie cycled through the thundery weather towards the staff hostel and thought about the excruciating interview she’d just had with the personnel manager of The Hog. Of course they’d had a choice—they’d just chosen not to take it, that was all. Surely they could have just let her lie low and all the fuss would have died down.
Negotiating her bike along the narrow road, she tried to take in what they’d just told her. She would be paid a month’s salary in lieu of notice, although she would be allowed to keep her room at the hostel for another four weeks.
‘We don’t want to be seen as completely heartless by kicking you out on the street,’ the HR woman had told her with a look of genuine regret on her face. ‘If you hadn’t chosen to be indiscreet with such a high-profile guest, then we might have been able to brush over the whole incident and keep you on. But as it is, I’m afraid we can’t. Not after Mr Sarantos made such a blistering complaint about the question of guest confidentiality. My hands are tied—and it’s a pity, Ellie, because you showed such promise.’
And Ellie had found herself nodding as she’d left the office, because, despite her shock, hadn’t she agreed with pretty much every word the manager had said? She’d even felt a bit sorry for the woman who had looked so uncomfortable while terminating her employment.
She couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid. She had behaved inappropriately with a guest and had then compounded her transgression by talking about it to a woman who had turned out to be a journalist for some low-end tabloid. A journalist! Clutching on to the handlebars with sticky palms, she stared fixedly at the road ahead.
And that had been at the root of her sacking, apparently. The fact that she had broken trust with a valued client. She had blabbed—and Alek Sarantos was seething. Apparently, the telephone wires had been practically smoking when he’d rung up to complain about the diary piece which had found its way into a national newspaper.
The day was heavy and overcast and she heard the distant rumble of thunder as she brought her bike to a halt outside the hostel which was home to The Hog’s junior staff. Ellie locked her bike to the railings and opened the front door. Next to one of the ten individual doorbells was her name—but not for very much longer. She had a month to find somewhere new to live. A month to find herself a new job. It was a daunting prospect in the current job market and it looked as if she’d gone straight back to square one. Who would employ her now?
A louder rumble of thunder sounded ominously as she made her way along the corridor to her small room. The day was so dark that she clicked on the light and the atmosphere was so muggy that strands of her ponytail were sticking to the back of her neck. The day yawned ahead as she filled the kettle and sat down heavily on the bed to wait for it to boil.
Now what did she do?
She stared at the posters she’d hung on the walls—giant photos of Paris and New York and Athens. All those places she’d planned to visit when she was a hotshot hotelier, which was probably never going to happen now. She should have asked about a reference. She wondered if the hotel would still give her one. One which emphasised her best qualities—or would they make her sound like some kind of desperado who spent her time trying it on with wealthy guests?
Her doorbell shrilled and she gave a start, but the sense that none of this was really happening gave her renewed hope. Was it inconceivable to think that the big boss of the hotel might have overridden his HR boss’s decision? Realised that it had been nothing but a foolish one-off and that she was too valuable a member of staff to lose?
Smoothing her hands over her hair, she ran along the corridor and opened the front door—her heart clenching with an emotion she was too dazed to analyse when she saw who was standing there. She blinked as if she’d somehow managed to conjure up the brooding figure from her fevered imagination. She must have done—because why else would Alek Sarantos be outside her home?
A few giant droplets of rain had splashed onto the blackness of his hair and his bronze skin gleamed as if someone had spent the morning polishing it. She’d forgotten how startlingly blue his eyes looked, but now she could see something faintly unsettling glinting from their sapphire depths.
And even in the midst of her confusion—why was he here?—she could feel her body’s instinctive response to him. Her skin prickled with a powerful recognition and her breasts began to ache, as if realising that here was the man who was capable of giving her so much pleasure when he touched them. She could feel colour rushing into her cheeks.
‘Mr Sarantos,’ she said, more out of habit than anything else—but the cynical twist of his lips told her that he found her words not only inappropriate, but somehow insulting.
‘Oh, please,’ he said softly. ‘I think we know each other well enough for you to call me Alek, don’t you?’
The suggestion of intimacy unnerved her even more than his presence and her fingers curled nervelessly around the door handle she was clutching for support. Now the rumble of thunder was closer and never had a sound seemed more fitting. ‘What...what are you doing here?’
‘No ideas?’ he questioned silkily.
‘To rub in the fact that you’ve lost me my job?’
‘Oh, but I haven’t,’ he contradicted softly. ‘You managed to do that all by yourself. Now, are you going to let me in?’
Ellie told herself she didn’t have to. She could slam the door in his face and that would be that. She doubted he would batter the door down—even though he looked perfectly capable of doing it. But she was curious about what had brought him here and the rest of the day stretched in front of her like an empty void. She was going to have to start looking for a new job—she knew that. But not today.
‘If you insist,’ she said, turning her back on him and retracing her steps down the corridor. She could hear him closing the front door and following her. But it wasn’t until he was standing in her room that she began to wonder why she had been daft enough to let him invade her space.
Because he looked all wrong here. With his towering physique and jewelled eyes, he dominated the small space like some living, breathing treasure. He seemed larger than life and twice as intimidating—like the most outrageously alpha man she had ever set eyes on. And that was making her feel uncomfortable in all kinds of ways. There was that honeyed ache deep down in her belly again and a crazy desire to kiss him. Her body’s reaction was making her thoughts go haywire and her lips felt like parchment instead of flesh. She licked them, but that only made the aching worse.
The kettle was reaching its usual ear-splitting crescendo just before reaching boiling point and the great belches of steam meant that the room now resembled a sauna. Ellie could feel a trickle of sweat running down her back. Her shirt was sticking to her skin and her jeans were clinging to her thighs and once again she became horribly aware of her own body.
She cleared her throat. ‘What do you want?’ she said.
Alek didn’t answer. Not immediately. His anger—a slow, simmering concoction of an emotion—had been momentarily eclipsed by finding himself in the kind of environment he hadn’t seen in a long time.
He looked around. The room was small and clean and she had the requisite plant growing on the windowsill, but there was a whiff of institutionalisation about the place which the cheap posters couldn’t quite disguise. The bed was narrower than any he’d seen in years and an unwilling flicker of desire was his reward for having allowed his concentration to focus on that. But he had once lived in a room like this, hadn’t he? When he’d started out—much younger than she was now—he’d been given all kinds of dark and inhospitable places to sleep. He’d worked long hours for very little money in order to earn money and get a roof over his head.
He lifted his eyes to her face, remembering the powerful way his body had reacted to her the other night and trying to tell himself that it had been a momentary aberration. Because she was plain. Ordinary. If he’d passed her in the street, he wouldn’t have given her a second glance. Her jeans weren’t particularly flattering and neither was her shirt. But her eyes looked like silver and wavy strands of pale hair were escaping from her ponytail and the ends were curling, so that in the harshness of the artificial light she looked as if she were surrounded by a faint blonde halo.
A halo. His mouth twisted. He couldn’t think of a less likely candidate for angelic status.
‘You sold your story,’ he accused.
‘I didn’t sell anything,’ she contradicted. ‘No money exchanged hands.’
‘So the journalist is clairvoyant, is that what you’re saying? She just guessed we were making out?’
She shook her head. ‘That’s not what I’m saying at all. She saw us. She was standing behind a tree having a cigarette and saw us kissing.’
‘You mean it was a set-up?’ he questioned, his tone flat.
‘Of course it wasn’t a set-up!’ She glared at him. ‘You think I deliberately arranged to get myself the sack? Rather a convoluted way to go about it, don’t you think? I think being caught dipping your fingers in the till is the more traditional way to go.’
He raised his eyebrows in disbelief. ‘So she just happened to be there—’
‘Yes!’ she interrupted angrily. ‘She did. She was a guest, staying at the hotel. And the next day she cornered me in the restaurant while I was serving her and there was no way I could have avoided talking to her.’
‘You still could have just said no comment when she started quizzing you,’ he accused. ‘You didn’t have to gush and call me a pussycat—to damage my business reputation and any credibility I’ve managed to build up. You didn’t have to disclose what you’d overheard when you’d clearly been listening in to my telephone conversation.’
‘How could I help but listen in, when you broke off to take a call in front of me?’
He glared at her. ‘What right did you have to repeat any of it?’
‘And what right do you have to come here, hurling all these accusations at me?’
‘You’re skirting round the issue. I asked you a question, Ellie. Are you going to answer it?’
There was an odd kind of silence before eventually she spoke.
‘She told me you had a girlfriend,’ she said.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘So you felt that gave you the right to gossip about me, knowing it might find its way into the press?’
‘How could I, when I didn’t know what her job was?’
‘You mean you’re just habitually indiscreet?’
‘Or that you’re just sexually incontinent?’
He sucked in an angry breath. ‘As it happens, I don’t have a girlfriend at the moment and if I did, then I certainly wouldn’t have been making out with you. You see, I place great store on loyalty, Ellie—in fact, I value it above everything else. While you, on the other hand, don’t seem to know the meaning of the word.’
Ellie was taken aback by the coldness in his eyes. She had made a mistake, yes—but it had been a genuine one. She hadn’t set out to deliberately tarnish his precious reputation.
‘Okay,’ she conceded. ‘I spoke about you when maybe I shouldn’t have done and, because of that, you’ve managed to get me the sack. I’d say we were quits now, wouldn’t you?’
He met her gaze.
‘Not quite,’ he said softly.
A shiver of something unknowable whispered over her skin as she stared at him. There was something unsettling in his eyes. Something distracting about the sudden tension in his hard body. She stared at him, knowing what he was planning to do and knowing it was wrong. So why didn’t she ask him to leave?
Because she couldn’t. She’d dreamed about just such a moment—playing it out in her mind, when it had been little more than a fantasy. She had wanted Alek Sarantos more than she had thought it possible to want anyone and that feeling hadn’t changed. If anything, it had grown even stronger. She could feel herself trembling as he reached out and hauled her against him. The angry expression on his face made it seem as if he was doing something he didn’t really want to do and she felt a brief flicker of rebellion. How dare he look that way? She told herself to pull away, but the need to have him kiss her again was dominating every other consideration. And maybe this was inevitable—like the thunder which had been rumbling all day through the heavy sky. Sooner or later you just knew the storm was going to break.
His mouth came down on hers—hard—and the hands which should have been pushing him away were gripping his shoulder, as she kissed him back—just as hard. It felt like heaven and it felt like hell. She wanted to hurt him for making her lose her job. She wanted him to take back all those horrible accusations he’d made. And she wanted him to take away this terrible aching deep inside her.
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