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She hadn’t called him that since her initial interview, when, for some reason, the sound of it falling from her lips had spiked his temperature high enough to make him demand she never use it again.
He walked over to the door and held it open for her to walk through. ‘You’re not going anywhere. I’m not ready to do without you. Not just yet anyway.’
A look flitted through her eyes, gone before he could decipher it. Then her head dipped in a stiff nod as they walked together down a short corridor to the lift that would take them down to his office. ‘That’s good to hear. Your executive chef sent through the autumn menu today. I’d hate to be deprived of his culinary delights this side of Christmas.’
‘I’m sure his ego will be boosted to know he’s the only reason you’re bringing yourself to remain in my employ.’ He pressed the button to summon the lift, noting the reduced desire to stab at it. He didn’t want to admit her presence was the reason he’d calmed down, but Christos couldn’t deny it.
Her unflappability in the face of his sometimes heated Greek temperament was one he appreciated.
‘I’ve tried to resist his cooking, but he gets me every time. I’ve had to up my thrice-weekly gym sessions to counterbalance the high calories.’
Christos’s eyes narrowed as she preceded him into the lift. ‘Is that the reason you’ve been absent from your desk between six and seven lately?’
She leaned past him to press the switch that closed the doors before resting her gaze on the bright green digital floor counter. ‘Yep. I didn’t think you noticed, though.’
His gaze drifted past her profile and down her trim body to her slim legs and heeled feet. ‘I noticed both your absence, and the fact that your efforts aren’t necessary.’
Their gazes met and again he experienced a split-second connection that froze time, before she raised a cool eyebrow. ‘You pound your treadmill every night without fail. Are your efforts necessary?’
This time the smile that threatened stayed for longer than a second. ‘Touché.’
Her gaze dropped to his mouth, lingering as her own lips curved.
Then the doors opened, and Christos was back in his true domain. In the kingdom he’d built brick by brick with one simple but solid go
al in mind: to make sure people like his father never got another chance to perpetrate their despicable wrongs on helpless victims like him and his mother. And if his clients came to him already in the clutches of such vile treatment, to ensure he used the rule of law to make the perpetrators pay as high a price as possible.
Before he tackled this recent rare failure, however, he needed to safeguard the two-miles-square piece of land in the Aegean that had been his sanity and salvation as a boy. The place where the seeds of the man he was today had been sown. The only place where he’d known a semblance of acceptance. Perhaps even affection? He shrugged the question away. While he wasn’t overly eager to probe the emotions tied to his need to possess Drakonisos, he wasn’t prepared to sit back and let his grandfather hand it over to his cousin either.
To do that he needed to revisit his private agreement with Alexis. One that, in his moments of quiet, he’d repeatedly questioned his sanity over.
‘Alexis.’ The throb of...something in his voice stilled her.
‘Yes?’ Her response was a little wary. Between heartbeats, that momentary lightening of tension receded, and they were back in the tight bubble of awareness that flared up so readily between them these days. ‘Did you want something else?’ she tagged on when he took a moment to form the words.
‘Yes. It’s time to reprise your other role.’
Christos wasn’t quite sure how to process her visible paling. The widening of her eyes. The decisive step she took back from him. All negative reactions when he wanted the opposite. When he’d dared hope for enthusiasm, even?
‘But...it’s only June. We’re not supposed to travel to Greece for another two months.’ Her voice held a shaky, uneven texture that spoke to how she felt. How, probably like him, she preferred to keep the entire subject at the back of her mind, calling upon it only when strictly necessary.
But again, when he should’ve taken her response in his stride, because this was only another clinical transaction after all, he felt...disgruntlement.
Their deal hadn’t been a one-sided affair. She’d negotiated her own terms, extracted her own rewards.
Just as everyone had seen him in the key moments of his life, he’d been seen as a pawn. A means to an end.
He refused to feel guilty about stacking the deck in his own favour.
‘There’s been a development regarding my grandfather.’ Another twist in their relationship he suspected was orchestrated by yet another greedy party.
Her eyes widened even further, another layer of tension and electric awareness arcing in the space between them. Space he closed by strolling towards her until they were a foot apart. Until he was certain he could hear her frantic heartbeat and the tiny rush of air leaving her parted lips. ‘And? What exactly does that mean?’
‘It means it’s time for you to be my wife again, Alexis.’
CHAPTER TWO
YES, SHE WAS married to her boss, according to the pristine little document tucked in the farthest corner of her lingerie drawer that proclaimed her as Mrs Alexis Drakakis, wife of Christos Drakakis, enigmatic multimillionaire, world-renowned lawyer and rumoured heir to his grandfather’s billion-euro empire.
