LITMIR.BIZ

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like this normally, but after being hauled over the coals the day before she’d known that she had no choice but to buy the kind of uniform that someone like Aristotle Levakis would expect—and that meant expense, and things like silk as opposed to cotton. She breathed out thankfully. At least she’d had that change of clothes. No way could she have faced him this morning looking like the drowned rat she’d been just moments before.

      With the shirt finally closed she tucked it in hurriedly and desperately listened out for a heavy footfall or the door opening. She knew he was due in any minute—he was more punctual than any boss she’d ever known. That had to be the reason her heart was thumping so hard: the fear of being caught like this. She raked a brush through her hair, wincing as it caught on the still-damp strands, and quickly twisted it up into a chignon of sorts. It would have to do.

      Slipping her feet into flat shoes, she stuck her glasses back on, gathered up her wet things, looked up—and stopped breathing. In the crack of the open door her boss was just standing there, looking at her.

      Chapter Two

      HOW long had he been standing there? The words barely impinged on Lucy’s consciousness. She was too full of raging heat, embarrassment, and something more disturbing.

      On some self-protective level she refused to believe he had seen her yanking her clothes on with all the grace of a baby elephant. He wasn’t moving. He looked slightly shell-shocked, and mortification rushed through Lucy. She managed to move and opened the door fully, gabbling something she hoped was coherent to fill the awful silence.

      ‘I got caught in the rain shower. I was just changing.’

      She stepped out and past Aristotle, who turned to follow her with his eyes as she retreated to the safe zone behind her desk, not even sure why she needed to feel safe.

      When she could bring herself to look at him, she registered that his hair was damp, his suit slightly wet. She met his eyes, and in that instant something passed between them, something electric and elemental, and Lucy knew that he had seen her dressing—even though stubbornly she still refused to believe it. She recoiled from the uncomfortable awareness deep within her. It scared the life out of her.

      Still babbling, she said, ‘Looks like you got caught too. Do you want to change before we go? I’ve instructed Julian to have the car downstairs in fifteen minutes, and I can have your suit sent out to be cleaned.’

      Aristotle, seemingly completely unconcerned about the meeting or changing his clothes, lounged back against the doorjamb and crossed his arms. His gaze swept down over Lucy’s outfit and she cringed, wondering if she’d left a tag on somewhere. She fought the urge to check herself.

      He just continued to look at her with that disturbing intensity before saying, ‘Tell me, did you wear that skirt yesterday on purpose? Aware of how provocative it was?’

      Shock, disbelief and cold horror slammed into Lucy. Her mouth opened for a moment but nothing emerged. She couldn’t articulate, but finally managed a strangled, ‘Of course not. I would never be so…’ Words failed her again and she closed her mouth helplessly.

      Aristotle could see injured pride straighten her spine, the shock on her face. He had the absurd impulse to apologise, but couldn’t help remembering the way she’d looked so wantonly luscious in it, straining against the material. He could imagine inching it up over those pale quivering thighs as she stood with her back against him, how the full globes of her bottom would press into him as he pushed her forward over his desk, reaching down between them to hitch her skirt higher and free his own—What the hell was wrong with him? His mind never deviated to lurid sexual fantasies with so little provocation.

      He stood away from the door abruptly and curtly informed Lucy to make sure she had all the necessary papers and documents required for the meeting ready. He then went into the dressing room and breathed deep, as if he could inhale some common sense. But instead an evocatively feminine scent teased his nostrils and brought the last few minutes vividly back. Along with his libido.

      With a growl of intense irritation Aristotle yanked a clean suit from the well-stocked wardrobe and stripped off to step into the shower, turning it onto cold. It did little to help.

      Lucy flinched minutely and scowled at her computer when she heard the phone being slammed down in her boss’s office. He’d just taken a call from his half-brother in Athens, and while he never seemed to welcome those calls he usually acted with more restraint than that. She shook her head. He’d been in a foul humour for two weeks now. Ever since that morning. Heat still crawled over her skin when she thought of the way he’d lounged against the door and looked at her, and mentioned that skirt. He believed she might have worn it like that on purpose.

      And yet since then he had proceeded to treat her either as if a) he couldn’t bring himself even to mention her name, or b) as if he might turn to stone if he so much as looked at her for longer than two seconds.

      Lucy had to assure herself that nothing had happened, and if anything this was just a normal working relationship. Aristotle was famous for his brusque, no-nonsense approach. What had she expected? Warm and fuzzy? She shifted in her seat uncomfortably, the fact was she did feel inordinately warm—especially when he was around. She also felt constantly on edge, as if a kind of prickly heat lay just under the surface of her skin. She felt achy and jittery, but no symptoms of a flu or a cold had developed, so she couldn’t put it down to that. She was beginning to despair of ever having any sense of equilibrium again. At times like this she longed for the uncomplicated working relationship she’d had with her last boss. Her mouth quirked wryly. But then, he had been nearing seventy, well past retirement age, and had a huge typically Greek family.

      Lucy nearly shot out of her chair when she heard a coolly drawled, ‘Something funny on the internet today?’

      She quickly pressed a key so that her blank document disappeared, and took a breath before looking up, steeling herself. She had to steel herself a lot around this man. She smiled brightly, but it faded when she saw something dark cross his face.

      ‘No…I was just…going over the latest mail from the Parnassus Corporation.’

      She mentally crossed her fingers and breathed a sigh of relief, because that was exactly what she had been doing—before she’d been looking at a blank document for minutes on end like some moon-eyed idiot.

      Aristotle emerged from his office and prowled towards Lucy. Her blood-rate shot up.

      ‘Liar,’ he said softly.

      Her back straightened. ‘Excuse me?’

      He came to her desk and rested on his hands over it, looming over her. She fought against shrinking back as his eyes bored into hers. It was making her dizzy after days of only the most cursory eye contact.

      He arched one slashing dark brow. ‘If that’s the case, tell me what Parnassus proposes we do in the final stages of sealing the merger?’

      Lucy looked up, spellbound. As if from a long way away her more rational and professional self, the one that wasn’t melting into a puddle in her chair, came back. Miraculously, information came into her brain, and she clung onto it like a life-raft.

      Unable to break eye contact, and feeling as if her voice had been dipped in rust, Lucy said, ‘He…he suggests that the final stages take place in Athens, as that’s where the two companies originated one hundred years ago. He thinks it should be there that the merger is finally revealed. He wants it to be a triumphant homecoming to the country he and his family fled from when he was young, and for Athens to be the symbolic and actual birthplace of the greatest merger in Greek shipping and industrial history.’

      Silence lengthened and tautened between them. Electric awareness quivered in the air until finally Aristotle just said quietly, ‘Good. And I presume you have everything in order for you to travel to Athens for three weeks?’

      Lucy just blinked stupidly for a moment as numerous things impacted her brain. Primarily the fact that she hadn’t actually

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