LITMIR.BIZ

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he grabbed her arm, steered her out the door and down the hallway, past the chattering temps and his flame-haired, goggle-eyed secretary and straight into his office. He shut the door with a definite click.

      Elias Antonides’s office was far smaller than the one he’d given her. It didn’t even have a window. It had a desk overflowing with papers and files, two filing cabinets, a blueprint cabinet, three bookcases and one glorious wall painted by the same artist who had done the murals in the entry downstairs.

      “Wow,” Tallie said involuntarily.

      Elias looked startled. “Wow?”

      She nodded at the mural. “It’s unexpected. Breathtaking. You don’t need a window.”

      “No.” He stared at the mural a long moment, his jaw tight. Then abruptly he turned his gaze back to her and gestured toward a chair. “Sit down.”

      It was more a command than an invitation. But it didn’t seem worth fighting about, so Tallie sat, then waited for him to do likewise. But he didn’t. He cracked his knuckles and paced behind his desk. A muscle worked in his jaw. He opened his mouth to speak, then stopped, paced some more and finally came to a stop directly behind the desk where at last he turned to face her. But he still didn’t speak.

      “The bet?” Tallie prompted, not sure she wanted to know this, but reasonably certain it would shed light on why Elias was so upset.

      “My father fancies himself a racing sailor,” he said at last. “And after he sold forty percent of Antonides Marine without telling anyone of his intentions—”

      Uh-oh.

      “—he hadn’t screwed things up badly enough yet. So he and your father made a little bet.” Elias cracked his knuckles again. She got the feeling he wished he was cracking his father’s head.

      “What sort of bet?” Tallie asked warily. Dear God, her father hadn’t bet her hand in marriage, had he? He hadn’t done anything quite that outrageous yet in his attempt to marry her off, but she wouldn’t put it past him.

      “The winner got the other’s island house and the presidency of Antonides Marine.”

      “But that’s ridiculous!” Tallie protested. “What on earth would my father want with another house?” He had five now—if you counted what the family called “the hermitage” on a little island off the coast of Maine.

      “I have no idea,” Elias said grimly. “I don’t think the houses had anything to do with it…even though,” he added bitterly, “in our case it was our family’s home for generations.”

      “So why did they do it? Because of the presidency?”

      Elias shrugged. “Not my father.”

      But hers would have cared a great deal, she thought. She didn’t say so, however. “Then why would your father bet?”

      “Because he thought he’d win!” Elias’s dark eyes flashed in anger. He shoved his hands through his hair. “He likes a good challenge. Especially when he’s got what he considers a sure thing. He didn’t count on your brother, the Olympic sailor,” Elias added heavily. He flung himself down in his chair and glared at her as if it were her fault.

      Tallie knew whose fault it was. “Oh, dear. Daddy got Theo to race.”

      It wasn’t a question. Of course he had got Theo to race—because just like Aeolus Antonides, Socrates Savas always played to win. And in this case, Aeolus had something that Socrates wanted far more than any house—the presidency for his daughter—and the consequent proximity to Aeolus’s Greek godson.

      At least he hadn’t offered her hand in marriage.

      But what he had done was almost worse.

      “Then we’ll just call it off,” Tallie said firmly. As much as she wanted the chance to prove herself, she was damned if she wanted the opportunity this way. “I’ll quit and you can have your house back.”

      Elias looked surprised at her suggestion. Then he surprised her by shaking his head. “Won’t work.”

      “Why not?”

      “Because it’s your father’s. He won it, fair and square.” Elias’s mouth twisted as he said that. “Or as fair as Socrates Savas is likely to be.”

      “My father doesn’t cheat!” Tallie defended her father fiercely on that count. He manipulated with the best of them. He played all the angles, pushed the edges of the envelope. But he didn’t cheat.

      Elias shrugged. “Whatever. He’s got the house. And he’s going to keep the house.”

      “I’ll tell him not to. If I can’t hand it back to you, I’ll quit. I won’t take the job.”

      “You have to take the job.”

      “Why?”

      “Because that’s the deal. That’s the only way he’ll deed it back.”

      Deals? Bets? She wanted to strangle her father.

      “Tell me,” she said grimly.

      “He told my father he’d deed it back in two years…” Elias stopped and shook his head.

      “If…?” Tallie prompted. She knew there was an if. There was always an if.

      Elias ground his teeth. “If I stay on as managing director of Antonides,” Elias said at last. “And you stay on as president.”

      “For two years?”

      Obviously her father didn’t have much confidence in her if he figured she would need two years to get Elias to the altar, Tallie thought wryly. Or maybe he thought it would take him two years to convince her that it was a good idea.

      It wasn’t a good idea. And she had no intention of doing any such thing!

      “That’s absurd,” she said at last. “We don’t have to play their games.”

      “The house—”

      “It can’t be that great a house!” she objected.

      “There are a thousand others like it,” he agreed readily.

      “Well then—”

      Elias steepled his hands. “My father was born there. His father was born there. His grandfather was born there. The only reason I wasn’t born there was because my folks came to New York the year before I was born. But generations of Antonides have lived and loved and died in that house. We go back all the time. I built boats with my grandfather there when I was a boy.” There was no tonelessness in his voice now. All the emotion he had so carefully reined in earlier was ragged in his voice now. “My parents were married there, for God’s sake! It’s our history, our heart.”

      “Then your father had no business betting it.” Tallie was almost as mad at his father as he was.

      “Of course he didn’t! And your father had no business taking advantage of a man who shouldn’t be let out alone.”

      They glared at each other.

      It was true, Tallie reflected, what Elias just said. Her father had always had an eye for the main chance. His own dirt-poor immigrant parents had taught him that. If the Antonides family had an ancestral home to lose, it was more than Socrates’s family had ever had. Tallie had been brought up on stories of how hard they’d worked for little pay. So when opportunities came along, you took them, Socrates said. And luck—well, that you made yourself.

      Tallie didn’t doubt for a minute that her father thought taking advantage of Aeolus Antonides was a prime bit of luck.

      “So what do you propose we do?” she asked politely, since she had no doubt he’d tell her anyway.

      “I don’t propose we do anything,” Elias said sharply. “I’ve been doing

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