IT WAS raining in Piraeus, the seaport that had been Athens’ commercial lifeline to the world for more than 2500 years.
Rain was unusual in the Greek islands at this time of year, especially a downpour like this. Demetrios, seated at the head of an olive-wood table in the conference room of Karas Lines, watched as the fat drops beat against the windows. The effect was hypnotic. That was what he told himself each time his attention wandered from the meeting.
It was safer to pretend he was diverted by the rain than to admit he couldn’t concentrate because of Samantha. Samantha, who had burned in his arms that morning in New York—and who had since turned into an Ice Queen.
She was seated to the left and slightly behind him, the very essence of efficiency and decorum. He couldn’t see her, not without turning around, but he knew exactly how she looked. It was the same, day after day, week after week. By now, her image was lodged in his brain. She sat straight, holding a notepad and pen in her lap. Her knees were carefully aligned, her ankles demurely crossed. If she moved, it was only to write something on the pad or, occasionally, to lean towards him and speak softly into his ear.
That was what she’d done a few moments ago and he hadn’t heard much of what anyone said since then. His senses were still on overload, trying to get past the almost imperceptible brush of her breast against his arm, the scent of her skin.
It would have been easier to stop breathing.
How could a man drive such things from his mind?
Hiring her had been a mistake. Not because she wasn’t good at what she did. On the contrary. When he’d asked her if she was good, she’d said she wasn’t just good, she was excellent. It was true. She was the best translator he’d ever employed.
She was also the only one who had ever made it impossible for him to keep his mind on business. No one had ever had that effect on him before.
Did she know? How could a woman who never smiled at him, who never offered a word that was not related to her job, manage to find ways to drive him crazy?
She’d just made a notation—his senses were so attuned to her that he could hear the faint scratch of pen on paper. The Italian seated across from him, a man who owned a long-dead title as well as a company that built the fastest, most elegant cruise ships in the world, was droning on and on, mostly in English though he occasionally lapsed into his own tongue and turned to his translator for help. Demetrios was doing his best to pay attention but for the life of him, he couldn’t have repeated a single word the man had just said.
He could, however, describe Samantha’s perfume. Vanilla. Jasmine. Something delicate. Mysterious. She’d just leaned towards him again and murmured something in his ear. The faintest drift of her fragrance carried to his nostrils but he felt the impact in a far different part of his body.
“Excuse me,” he said abruptly.
He pushed back his chair, smiled—or hoped he smiled—and gave a casual wave of his hand to indicate that everyone should continue talking. His secretary had laid coffee and pastries on a table near the windows and he strolled to it, carefully examined the tiny cakes as if his life depended on making the correct selection even though the thought of biting into one and actually trying to chew and swallow it was beyond the realm of possibility.
Instead, he poured a cup of coffee he didn’t want. It gave him an excuse to stay away from the conference table and his unsmiling, silent, stiff-necked translator, the woman he’d agreed not to view as a woman…and how in hell could he manage that, when just the whisper of her nylons each time she crossed or uncrossed her legs was an aphrodisiac?
His reaction was ridiculous. He knew it. Determinedly, he turned his back to the conference table, lifted the coffee cup and sipped at the hot liquid.
A man wasn’t supposed to think the things he was thinking when he was in the middle of a multimillion dollar business deal. He wasn’t supposed to sizzle with tightly controlled anger, either. You needed a cool head when you dealt with people like these.
No sex.
He and Samantha had made an agreement, and he was adhering to it. Why wasn’t she?
She was a walking, talking, breathing symbol of seduction, and never mind that look of cool removal, the stark black suit and low-heeled shoes, the way she drew all that incredible hair away from her face and clasped it, demurely, at her neck.
Demetrios’s hand tightened on the cup.
He should have fired her that morning in New York. To this moment, he couldn’t figure out what had happened. All he knew was that things had gone wrong somewhere between that dingy lobby and her tiny excuse for an apartment. Not only had he veered from his original intention, he’d lost the upper hand.
One moment Samantha had been telling him she would not work for him, and the next…The next, he’d touched her. Felt the heat of her skin, the silk of her breasts. Tasted the sweetness of her mouth. And then she’d kissed him, all but given herself to him in that kiss…
God. He couldn’t do this. Have these thoughts. Let these memories turn his body hard and hot with desire.
All of this, all of it, was her fault. Why had she kissed him that morning? To tease him? To drive him out of his mind and leave him wondering what it would be like to take her to bed? But those moments had affected her, too. He could still hear her soft moans, feel the race of her pulse beneath his lips. He knew when a woman was lost in the heat of passion, and she had been lost that morning in his arms.
Could she forget that easily?
Anger hummed in his blood. Evidently, she could. Otherwise, she would not treat him as if he were a stranger. He swung around and looked at her. And she would not behave like this, smiling across the table at the Frenchman who owned a company the equal of the Italian’s and laughing at something he said.
A cold knot formed in Demetrios’s belly. Where were her ethics? Surely, she knew better. She worked for him. He had the right to expect her loyalty and obedience. Did she think she was here to socialize with the men with whom he did business?
Why didn’t she do what was expected of her? Nothing had gone as he’d intended. Not here. Not at his home on Astra, where he’d instructed his housekeeper to prepare a guest suite for her. Samantha had changed his plans in the blink of an eye.
“What’s that?” she’d said as his helicopter set down on his private island.
He’d barely glanced at the small house in the garden. “A guest cottage, but hardly anyone uses it.”
“I’ll use it,” she’d said. “That will give me the space and privacy I need to set up my computer and printer.”
“There is plenty of space in the main house,” he’d replied, and immediately found himself in the unbelievable position of arguing with an employee who didn’t seem to understand that it was her place to accept his decisions without question. That he’d let himself be drawn into such a situation still made him furious.
“Stay where you wish,” he’d said coldly, and ended the dispute.
She had.
She lived in the guest house, took her meals there despite his logical protestations.
“You are to dine with me,” he’d said, striding through the door to her quarters that first night after he’d found his dining room table set for one and listened to his housekeeper’s halting explanation of how the Amerikaníoa had told the gardener, who had told the laundress, who had told her, that she would take her meals on a tray in the guest house.
Demetrios had clenched his fists. “She told the gardener, who told the maid, who told you?”
Yes, the housekeeper said. The gardener spoke a little English, because he had a daughter who lived in America. The laundress, who had once lived in America, was more proficient, so the gardener asked the laundress to speak with the Amerikaníoa, and she said it was true, she would eat alone, and she would come to the kitchen to collect her own tray and to return it.
“To the kitchen,” Demetrios had ground out, between his teeth. “How thoughtful of her.”
He’d gone directly to the guest house and walked in, unannounced, to tell her she would learn to do as she was told, but Samantha had other ideas.
“In the future,” she’d told him, “please remember to knock and wait to be admitted.”
“Admitted?” he’d said incredulously, “admitted to my own guest house?”
“As long as I’m living in it, yes. As for dining with you…” She’d smiled politely. “You pay me to translate for you, Mr. Karas. That service does not include dining with you.”
What answer could he have given to such a statement? She saw dining with him as an obligation? So be it. He’d only been trying to be kind to her, a stranger in his country, but he was glad she’d turned him down. Why would he want to look across the table and see her each evening? It was far better to dine alone.
But, yes, he paid her to translate for him. That meant he expected her beside him all day, every day, at the office. She didn’t seem to understand that. For a week, he’d watched her hurry out of the building whenever they broke for lunch, then watched her return with her cheeks pink and glowing, her hair just a little disheveled.
She had a lover, he’d thought, and before the rage inside him had completely taken over, he’d realized that was ridiculous. Samantha knew no one in Piraeus or, for that matter, in Athens. Apparently, she took her lunch alone. The others—the Frenchman, the Italian, even their translators—often joined him for lunch in his corporate dining room. It was a small but handsome room, and there was a café not far away that could be counted on to send over whatever was requested.
The others seemed more than willing to avail themselves of the arrangement. Why didn’t she?
In the second week, he’d asked his secretary, very casually, if she knew where his translator went each day during lunch.
“She walks,” his secretary said.
“She walks? Here? Alone, on the docks?”
His secretary had shrugged as if to agree that such a thing was unheard of. “Yes, sir. I suggested it was unwise, but—”
“But, she does not take advice,” Demetrios said grimly, and his secretary had nodded.
He’d waited for Samantha to return. Then he’d explained that it was not safe for a woman to wander this part of Piraeus alone. He’d done it quietly, carefully, so that she might understand his concern was not the least bit personal but was only for her welfare, which was his responsibility.
It would have been more sensible to have expected a pig to fly.
“My welfare is my responsibility, thank you.”
Only a fool would not have known the simple words were meant as an insult. He was certain she would have gone right on with her midday strolls but, like it or no, she was his responsibility. She was a foreigner working in his country, for him. So, the next morning, he’d announced that he had given the matter some thought and he’d decided it would be more efficient…“and more conducive to our reaching an accord,” he’d added with a hard-won smile…if they had lunch as a group not just occasionally but as a daily practice.
From then on, they all met for a catered meal in the corporate dining room—until today, when Samantha had gone to lunch with the Frenchman.
“You don’t mind if I steal Mlle. Brewster for an hour, do you, mon ami?” the Frenchman had said over morning coffee.
Mind? Demetrios thought, mind?
There was a soft peal of feminine laughter behind him. He turned around. Samantha had left her chair. She was standing with the Italian. And with the Frenchman. The damned Frenchman, who’d breezed off with her at lunchtime as if she did not have a first, hell, a sole obligation to the man who was her employer…
“Miss Brewster,” Demetrios said. “Perhaps you would like to tell me what it is that you find so amusing?”
The room fell silent. He’d meant to sound lighthearted, as if he wanted to join in the fun, but from the way everyone was looking at him he knew he hadn’t pulled it off. Carefully, deliberately, he drew his lips back from his teeth.
“I hate to miss a good joke.”
No. Definitely not. He hadn’t fooled anybody. The Frenchman cleared his throat. “It was nothing, Demetrios. I merely asked your charming Miss Brewster a question in English and she explained that I had misused a phrase and thus given my question an entirely different meaning. Isn’t that right, mademoiselle?”
“Oh, but your English is generally excellent, monsieur.”
Sam’s voice was warm and low-pitched. She never speaks to me that way, Demetrios thought. She never looked at him that way, either, with a little smile. She never looked at him at all.
“You are too kind,” the Frenchman said pleasantly, “but I know that my English leaves something to be desired.”
It was the man himself who left something to be desired, Demetrios thought coldly. He had a translator of his own. Why did he need to talk to Samantha at all? And even if he did, she didn’t have to reply.
He would tell her that, later. Miss Brewster, he would say, from now on, you are to speak only to me…
Demetrios took a deep breath. Thee mou, he thought, I am losing my mind!
He was deep in negotiations it had taken months to set up, verging on a deal that was worth a huge sum of money. More than that, he was about to take his company in a direction he’d dreamed of for years. He should have been hanging on every word that was uttered in this room, but he wasn’t. He couldn’t. His concentration was close to nonexistent.
The rain, he thought desperately, it had to be the rain.
Sam returned to her place at the conference table and sat down. He followed and told himself to forget everything but the meeting. The Italian began speaking. Demetrios could catch the meaning of some of the words but, of course, he would rely on his translator’s expertise. He turned towards her. He’d learned to watch her face as she listened, to read her expression for subtle changes.
She was leaning forward, her brilliant emerald eyes fixed on the Italian as if he were the only man who’d ever interested her. Why didn’t she ever look at him that way?
Because she’s not trying to translate your words, his brain told him calmly.
His battered ego wasn’t listening.
How could she do that? Smile at one man, go to lunch with another, and treat the one who employed her as if he didn’t exist.
Because, his brain said patiently, that’s what she’s paid to do. That was her job; it was what they’d agreed, that morning in her apartment. He was pleased because she’d turned out to be an excellent translator. So what if she was also a beautiful woman? The world was filled with beautiful women. This one was nothing special. She was nothing to him at all. Hadn’t he proved that by never referring to what had almost happened in Brazil? By not letting her absence at his dinner table annoy him?
How could it annoy him, when he hardly ever spent the evening at home?
He sent her back to Astra in his helicopter each night. He stayed in Athens, dining out, getting home late, knowing she had to hear the roar of the ’copter as it made the return trip…not that she ever mentioned it. She didn’t give a damn what he did or who he did it with, not that he was doing anything but eating dinner in his club and then burying his nose in the day’s papers because his friends and acquaintances had taken to avoiding him.
“Trouble with a woman?” one had asked him the other night, and he knew he’d damn near snarled when he said no, why would he have trouble with a woman? Especially with this one, who he didn’t want despite a face that surely would have put Helen of Troy to shame and a body Aphrodite would have envied.
“…not quite what it seems,” Samantha whispered, her breath warm against his ear.
Demetrios snapped back to reality.
She was leaning towards him, speaking softly as if they were lovers lying in each other’s arms. It was only an illusion. She spoke of dollars and gross tonnage, not of passion and heat, and her language was formal, Mr. Karas this, Mr. Karas that, and the occasional “sir,” which she always managed to make sound like an insult.
Did she think addressing him as Mr. Karas would make him forget he’d almost taken her to bed the very first night they’d met?
His vision blurred. He held his breath, reminded himself that he was not the least bit angry—and exploded.
“A sto dialolo!” he growled, and shot to his feet so quickly that his chair fell over.
The silence beat against his eardrums. They were all staring at him, as if he’d changed into a dangerous animal.
Maybe he had.
He bent down, picked up the chair and righted it. Then he faced the little assemblage.
“My apologies,” he said stiffly. “I seem to—to have developed a sudden headache.”
He waited, but no one spoke.
“I suggest we adjourn for the day. We’ve made progress.” They’d made none, but what was the harm of one more lie? “But it is getting late.” That was true enough. It was dark outside. “And the rain will make the roads slick.” Another bit of truth, if not a vital one. “So, what I suggest…” What? What did he suggest, that would erase the bewildered expressions from the faces turned towards him? “What I suggest, since this is Friday, is that we meet tomorrow morning at, say, nine o’clock at my home. My driver will be at your hotel at eight. He will take you to the airport, where my helicopter will be waiting.” He managed to smile. “Perhaps we can discuss some of our concerns more easily in a less formal setting.”
Chairs were pushed back. Hands were shaken. Coats were put on, umbrellas gathered. People hurried to the door. Demetrios followed after them…and clamped a hand on Samantha’s shoulder before she could leave.
“You will stay.”
The look she gave him would have turned any normal man to stone but he was not a normal man. Not right now. He was a man filled with an anger he didn’t fully understand and that only helped convince him that his rage was her fault.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said, you are to stay.”
“Am I really?” Her eyes flashed. “Perhaps you’d like to amend that to an order to heel, sit and stay.”
Demetrios shot a look past her. “Lower your voice,” he growled.
“I am not a dog in need of training.” Her voice quivered with anger. “I do not sit or stay or do anything else on command, and I have nothing further to say to you. Good night, Mr. Karas.”
“You will not speak to me like that!”
“And you,” she said, shaking off his hand, “will not embarrass me in front of anyone, ever again!”
The look on his face was wonderful. Anger? Disbelief? No. Better than that. It was shock. Sam figured that nobody had ever told off the Greek God, nobody had ever dared to, not in his entire life.
“Goodbye, Mr. Karas,” she said, and strode away.
“Come back here,” he shouted.
Sam quickened her pace. She heard him pounding after her, then heard the murmur of his secretary’s voice and his harsh response, but his footsteps stopped.
“Samantha? Samantha! You will wait for me!”
Like hell she would. She burst from the building, waved away Demetrios’s driver, ran up the street, took the corner at top speed and didn’t slow down until she’d taken another half dozen turns. Then she slowed to a walk while her breath made steamy plumes in the chill darkness and an icy, wind-driven rain beat into her face.
She paused to get her bearings. Where was she? She’d walked these fascinating, ancient streets until Demetrios had put a stop to it, but never at night. Well, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except seeing to it that she never saw Demetrios Karas again.
How dare he? How dare he speak to her that way?
You will stay.
Sam shivered and pulled up her collar.
The no-good, self-centered, domineering son of a bitch! Ignoring her, day after day, except when it suited him to boss her around. Announcing she would take her meals with him, as if he owned her. Forcing her to have lunch in his company for no good reason. All that nonsense about her being his responsibility…
She’d never been any man’s responsibility. She never would. Her mother had gone that route and look where it had taken her. First she’d been a doormat for a weak man; now, she was the possession of a powerful one. Her stepfather treated Marta like a cherished piece of crystal kept safe on a shelf. And yes, Amanda and Carin were headed for that same kind of existence.
Sam quickened her steps.
No, thank you. Not only wasn’t she interested in marriage, she wasn’t interested in getting involved, even temporarily, with a man who thought of women as responsibilities. That was just a polite way men had of saying they had the right to dictate what women did with their lives.
Demetrios wasn’t her husband, he wasn’t her lover, he wasn’t anything but her boss and he’d already tried caging her. He’d tried to install her inside his house; he’d put a stop to her going off on her own at lunchtime. He wanted to watch her every move.
Did he actually think she’d let him do that? Treat her as if she were his property, except for the times he treated her as if she were invisible? Nothing but a grunt when she boarded his stupid helicopter each morning. Another grunt at night. Not that they returned to his island together all that often. He was too busy at night in Athens, doing whatever it was he did with whomever he did it. His secretary, maybe, and never mind all that stuff about not mixing business with pleasure.
The woman looked at him as if he was the most desirable man on the planet.
He wasn’t.
He was a walking ego. A self-important ruler of his own little kingdom. He was a man who thought he was irresistible to women.
Well, he wasn’t. Not to her.
Sam burrowed deeper into her coat and bent her head against the wind.
She’d seen right through him from day one. It was a damned good thing she hadn’t fallen into the trap and gone to bed with him. The nerve of him, to speak to her as he had just now. To look at her the way he’d been looking at her all afternoon, as if he’d finally remembered she was a woman, as if he were weighing the possibility of throwing everybody out, locking the door, backing her into a corner and doing things…
Hot, delicious things.
Sam shuddered again. She didn’t want any of that. Not from him.
A horn blared as she stepped off the curb. A car flew past and she jumped back but not in time to prevent a wall of cold, dirty water from drenching her from head to foot. She glared after the car and muttered a phrase that described exactly what she thought of the driver in the Greek she’d learned on the streets.
Mr. I-Am-The-Law Karas would have been surprised at how much Greek she’d picked up since she’d come here. She listened; she learned. That was what linguists did. Now she knew lots of polite words—and lots of impolite idioms. That had been one benefit of those lunchtime walks, until Demetrios had decided to leash her. So she’d known what to call the idiot driver who’d just soaked her to the bone.
More to the point, she knew what Demetrios said just before he’d overturned his chair.
A sto dialolo, he’d snarled. To hell with it.
If he meant, to hell with their arrangement, she agreed. Completely. She had no business here. Saying she’d work for him had been stupid. She should have stuck to Plan A, told him to take his job and stuff it, just as she’d intended.
Dammit, the puddles were ankle deep. There had to be a taxi around here. If only she knew where she was but everything looked different at night. Everything felt different, too.
The back of her neck prickled and she picked up her pace.
No, she didn’t belong here, not just in Piraeus but in Greece. She should never have let Demetrios turn his job offer into a challenge. Even that kiss…
Okay. So the kiss hadn’t been his idea, it had been hers. And it had been stupid, just as it had been stupid to let him touch her, but the temptation to give him a taste of what he’d never have, had been too strong to ignore. He’d deserved that little lesson. He was too sure of himself, accustomed to taking what he wanted though, dammit, there was something incredibly sexy about all that macho ego…
And that was crazy.
Hadn’t she always made it a point to avoid men who thought they owned the world and all the women who inhabited it? Hadn’t she always known what such a man would be like as a lover? That he’d be dominating, and possessive, and jealous?
And incredible.
Sam’s pulse beat quickened. She couldn’t forget that morning, when he’d put his hands under her robe as if he had the right to do whatever he wanted to her. With her. It was wrong. The way he’d made her feel was wrong, but she’d relived the moment a hundred times. A thousand times. All she had to do was close her eyes and she felt him touching her, the sensual roughness of his fingertips, the drugging heat of his hands and his mouth…
A horn screamed into the silence of the night as she stepped off the curb. Not again, she thought…
Tires shrieked as they clawed for purchase on the rain-darkened road. Sam looked up, blinded by headlights. A car was bearing down on her. She cried out, stumbled back. The car fishtailed, spun; she tripped over the cobblestones.
The car came to a stop just as she sank down, shaking, on the curb.
A door slammed. Footsteps pounded towards her. A dark shape bent over her and hard, angry hands closed on her shoulders. A stream of Greek words blistered her ears.
She had almost killed herself, the man was saying.
Sam looked up. His face was masked in shadow. “Seenghnómi,” she whispered, “I’m sorry…”
It wasn’t enough. She could feel the heat coming off him, the unbridled male fury. His hands tightened on her and he drew her to her feet.
A different kind of fear kicked in, a fear born not of her brush with death but of this enraged stranger.
“No,” she said, struggling against him. “Don’t! I’ll scream!”
“Scream all you like,” Demetrios said grimly, and he swept her into his arms, carried her to his car, and dumped her inside.