LITMIR.BIZ

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was right, she’d followed the good-girl playbook her whole life, Holly thought suddenly. What had being sensible and safe and good ever done for her, except to leave her working overtime for free for a manipulative boss and sacrificing all her dreams to spoil her little sister—only to feel used and taken for granted by both?

      “Say yes,” Stavros urged huskily, stroking his hands slowly through her hair. “Come away with me. Be free.”

      A Rolls-Royce pulled up to the curb. She looked at him, her heart pounding.

      “Yes,” she breathed.

      A trace of silvery moonlight caressed the edge of his sculpted, sensual lips as he drew back to make sure she meant it. “Yes?”

      “Let’s live like we’re alive,” she whispered.

      Glancing back at the waiting car, he held out his hand. “Are you ready?”

      Holly nodded, her heart pounding. But as she took his hand, she didn’t feel ready. At all.

      As she sat next to him in the back of the limo, she barely noticed the driver in front. She didn’t notice anything but Stavros beside her. The journey seemed like mere seconds before they pulled in front of a famous luxury hotel in Midtown.

      “This is where you live?” Holly said, looking up at the skyscraper.

      He smiled wryly. “You don’t like it?”

      “Of course I do, but…you live in a hotel?”

      “It’s convenient.”

      “Oh.” Convenient? She supposed her shabby one-bedroom walk-up in Queens was convenient, too. She only had to change trains once to get to work. “But where is your home?”

      He shrugged. “Everywhere. I travel a lot. I prefer not to keep permanent live-in staff.”

      “Right.” She nodded sagely. “I prefer that, too.”

      His lips quirked, then he turned back toward the glamorous hotel, all decorated and sparkling with Christmas lights.

      “Mr. Minos!” a uniformed doorman called desperately, rushing to hold open the door. “Thank you again. My wife hasn’t stopped crying since she opened your Christmas card.”

      “It was nothing.”

      “Nothing!” The burly man swore under his breath. “Because of your Christmas gift, we can finally buy a house. Which means we can finally start trying to have a baby…” His voice choked off.

      Stavros briefly put his hand on the burly man’s shoulder. “Merry Christmas, Rob.”

      “Merry Christmas, Mr. Minos,” he replied, unchecked tears streaming down his face.

      Holding Holly’s hand tightly, Stavros led her through the gilded door into the luxurious lobby, which had at its center an enormous gold Christmas tree decorated with red stars stretching two stories high. All around them, glamorous guests walked, some briskly and others strolling, many trailing assistants and bodyguards and holding little pampered dogs. But Holly only looked at the dark, powerful man beside her.

      “That must have been some Christmas gift.”

      “It was just money,” he said shortly, leading her through the lobby.

      “The doorman—did he do a big favor for you or something?”

      As he led her to the elevator, he gave an awkward shrug that made him look almost embarrassed. “Rob holds the door for me. Always smiles and says hello. Sometimes arranges for a car.”

      “And for that, you bought him and his wife a house?”

      Pushing the elevator button, Stavros said again, “It was nothing. Really.”

      “Nothing to you,” she said softly as the door slid open with a ding. “But everything to them.”

      Wordlessly, he walked into the elevator. She followed him.

      “Why did you do it?”

      “Because I could.”

      The same reason he offered me a job as his secretary, she thought. “Stavros,” she said, “is it possible that, deep down, you’re actually a good guy?”

      She saw a flash of something bleak in his dark eyes, quickly veiled. He turned his face toward the sensor then pressed the button for the penthouse. “I’m a selfish bastard. Everyone knows that.”

      But there was something vulnerable in the tone of his voice. “I’m finding it hard to believe that. Unless there’s something else,” she said slowly. “Something you’re not telling me. Is there—”

      Her voice cut off as Stavros pressed her against the elevator wall, and hungrily lowered his mouth to hers.

      He kissed her with such hot demand that the questions starting to form in her mind disappeared as if they had never been. All that was left was heat. She felt molten with desire.

      With a ding, the elevator door slid open.

      Gripping her hand, he pulled her forward. Knees still weak, she followed, looking around her.

      The enormous, starkly decorated penthouse was dark except for the white lights glittering from a ten-foot fresh-cut Christmas tree, which stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sparkling lights of the city below.

      Still shivering from the intensity of his kiss, she looked at him. “Nice tree.”

      Stavros glanced at it as if he hadn’t noticed it ’til now. “The hotel staff arranged that.”

      She looked around the apartment. There were no photographs on the walls. Nothing personal at all. The white-and-black decor looked like something out of a magazine, curated by a museum. “Did you just move in?”

      “I bought this place five years ago.”

      She looked at him, startled. “Five years?”

      “So?”

      Holly thought of her own shabby walk-up apartment, filled with photos of family and friends, her comfortable, beat-up old furniture, her grandma’s old quilt, the tangled-up yarn from her hopeless efforts to learn how to knit. “It seems unlived in.”

      “I hired the top designer in the city.” He sounded a little disgruntled. “It’s a look.”

      “Um.” She bit her lip, then turned with a bright smile. “It’s nice.”

      He pulled her into his arms. “You don’t really think that.”

      “No.” Butterflies flew through her belly as she stared at his beautiful mouth. Her gaze fell to his thick neck above his black tuxedo tie, to his broad shoulders in the white bespoke shirt, down all the way to the taut waistline of his black trousers to his powerful thighs. Butterflies? The crackle in her core felt more like the sizzle of lightning, burning through every nerve.

      “Tell me the truth.”

      Biting her lip, she said, “I think your apartment is horrible.”

      “Better,” he breathed, and he lowered his mouth to hers.

      She tasted the sweetness of his mouth, and surrendered to the strength and power of his larger body wrapped around hers. Surrendered? She hungered for more.

      Stavros kissed her for hours, or maybe just minutes, holding her body tightly against his as they stood in his shadowy, stark penthouse, beside the lights of the Christmas tree.

      Heart pounding, dizzy from his passionate embrace, she pulled away with a shuddering breath. “This doesn’t seem real.”

      “Lots of things don’t feel real to me right now.” Brushing tendrils of red hair away from her face, he said softly, “Except you.”

      As he pulled her tight against his body, his tuxedo jacket

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