CHAPTER FIVE
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.