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She checked her watch. ‘Ninety minutes.’
‘Hire another crew. Three teams working in eight-hour shifts are better than two working in twelve-hour shifts. I don’t want anything missed because they’re exhausted. And they’re to work around the clock until the missing crew are found. Make it happen, Moneypenny.’
‘Yes, of course.’
The lift doors opened. Brianna nearly stumbled when his hand settled in the small of her back to guide her out.
In all her time working for him, he’d never touched her in any way. Forcing herself not to react, she glanced at him. His face was set, his brows clamped in fierce concentration as he guided her swiftly towards the waiting helicopter. A few feet away, his hand dropped. He waited for the pilot to help her up into her seat before he slid in beside her.
Before the aircraft was airborne, Sakis was on the phone again, this time to Theo. The urgent exchange in Greek went right over Brianna’s head but it didn’t stop her secret fascination with the mellifluous language or the man who spoke it.
His glance slid to her and she realised she’d been unashamedly staring.
She snapped her attention back to the tablet in her hand and activated it.
There’d been nothing personal in Sakis’s touch or his look. Not that she’d expected there to be. In all ways and in all things, Sakis Pantelides was extremely professional.
She expected nothing less from him. And that was just the way she wished it.
Her lesson had been well and truly learned in that department, in the harshest possible way, barring death—not that she hadn’t come close once or twice. And all because she’d allowed herself to feel, to dare to connect with another human being after the hell she’d suffered with her mother.
She was in no danger of forgetting; if she did, she had the tattoo on her shoulder to remind her.
* * *
Sakis pressed the ‘end’ button on yet another phone call and leaned back against the club seat’s headrest.
Across from him, the tap-tap of the keyboard filled the silence as his assistant worked away at the ever-growing list of tasks he’d been throwing at her since they’d taken off four hours ago.
Turning his head, he glanced at her. As usual her face was expressionless save the occasional crease at the corner of her eyes as she squinted at the screen. Her brow remained smooth and untroubled as her fingers flew over the keyboard.
Her sleek blonde hair was in the same pristine, precise knot it had been when she’d arrived at work at six o’clock this morning. Without conscious thought, his gaze traced over her, again feeling that immediate zing to his senses.
Her dress suit was impeccable—a black-and-white
combination that looked a bit severe but suited her perfectly. In her lobes, pearl earrings gleamed, small and unassuming.
His gaze slid down her neck, past slim shoulders and over the rest of her body, examining her in a way he rarely permitted himself to. The sight of the gentle curve of her breasts, her flat stomach and her long, shapely legs made his hands flex on his armrests as the zing turned stronger.
Moneypenny was fit, if a little on the slim side. Despite his slave-driving schedule, not once in the last year and a half had she turned up late for work or called in sick. He knew she stayed in the executive apartment in Pantelides Towers more and more lately rather than return to... He frowned. To wherever it was she called home.
Again he thanked whatever deity had sent her his way.
After his hellish experience with his last executive assistant, Giselle, he’d seriously contemplated commissioning a robot to handle his day-to-day life. When he’d read Brianna’s flawless CV, he’d convinced himself she was too good to be true. He’d only reconsidered her after all the other candidates, after purporting to have almost identical supernatural abilities, had turned up at the interviews with not-so-hidden agendas—ones that involved getting into his bed at the earliest opportunity.
Brianna Moneypenny’s file had listed talents that made him wonder why another competitor hadn’t snapped her up. No one that good would’ve been jobless, even in the current economic climate. He’d asked her as much.
Her reply had been simple: ‘You’re the best at what you do. I want to work for the best.’
His hackles had risen at that response, but there had been no guile, no coquettish lowering of her lashes or strategic crossing of her legs. If anything, she’d looked defiant.
Thinking back now, he realised that was the first time he’d felt it—that tug on his senses that accompanied the electrifying sensation when he looked into her eyes.
Of course, he dismissed the feeling whenever it arose. Feelings had no place in his life or his business.
What he’d wanted was an efficient assistant who could rise to any challenge he set her. Moneypenny had risen to each challenge and continued to surprise him on a regular basis, a rare thing in a man of his position.
His gaze finally reached her feet and, with a sharp dart of astonishment, he noted the tiny tattoo on the inside of her left ankle. The star-shaped design, its circumference no larger than his thumb, was inked in black and blue and stood out against her pale skin.
