AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She’d known his office was near here, but...an entire building? Her heart started to race and she rubbed her suddenly damp palms on her trousers, resenting the physical manifestation of a hormonal shift in adrenaline and cortisol. As if in defiance, Summer hitched her rucksack higher onto her shoulder and pushed her way through the circular doorway into a large atrium.
Instantly she found herself gawking as she looked up at the ceiling that reached thirty storeys up, feeling a strange sense of vertigo. The press of the air conditioning cooled the sweat slicking her skin and she resisted the urge to shiver. Summer looked to the reception desk where a beautiful dark-haired woman was waiting, her smile a slash of bright red lipstick.
‘May I help you?’ she said in perfect English as she approached, without Summer even having to do the awkwardDo you speak...?dance.
Summer bit her lip, releasing it only when she finally had the courage to utter the words, ‘I would like to see Mr Agyros, please.’
The receptionist hit her keyboard with a few furious strokes. ‘I see, and do you have an appointment?’
‘Unfortunately, no. Could you tell him that... Mariam Soames would like to see him?’
The receptionist looked at Summer, a little confused. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’
‘I’m sorry, I know I don’t have an appointment but it really is quite urgent that I speak to him.’
‘Iappreciatethat, but it’s not possible because he’s not here. He is away with family.’
Family.The word sliced through Summer and, although she knew it was just a word, knew Kyros Agyros would have a family, it hurt unaccountably. He was supposed to be here. She’d done her research.
Her expression must have betrayed her because the receptionist was looking at her as if worried. ‘Is there someone else I can put you in contact with?’
‘No, thank you,’ Summer said, shaking her head. ‘Do you know when he’ll be back?’
‘I’m not at liberty to say,’ the receptionist said, not unkindly.
Summer left the building feeling utterly shocked. She’d checked—he was supposed to be at a conference here in Athens according to several press releases and two different websites.
Back out on the street, the wave of heat made her feel nauseous and she sank onto the stone wall surrounding the building, trying to ease the seesawing motion the world seemed to suddenly take on. She felt solost. She had wasted almost her entire savings on this trip. Savings that she’d planned to use to pay back her sisters. Sofoolish. Did she really think that...what—she’d come all the way here, head into his office, introduce herself and he’d welcome her like the long-lost daughter he’d always wanted?
The online research she’d done on Kyros had shown a lifetime of financial success stories and philanthropic endeavours, but very little about the man himself. He seemed to have kept himself out of the public eye as much as possible and the few articles she’d found indicated that he protected his privacy with two things: ruthlessness and a man called Theron Thiakos.
And as she looked up at the entrance to the building the man himself emerged from the revolving doors and Summer put her hand to the stone to steady herself. He stopped a few feet from the building to take a call. There, in the middle of the pavement, he seemed utterly heedless of the people having to swerve around him, an innate authority signalling his superiority.
She had seen pictures. Vague impressions of dark hair and formidable expressions, but at the time her attention had been on her father. Now, as she took in the entirety of Theron Thiakos, Summer lost her breath, as if the full Technicolor image was too much for her brain to handle.
Angles. Sharp, clean angles she wanted to trace with the palm of her hand. That was what Summer saw first. The wedge of his shoulders, the slant of a determined brow, the sharp cheekbones and the slash of his lips. They made her want to touch. She’dneverfelt like that before. She shook her head and tried to appraise him clinically, like the scientist she was.
He was tall, at least six foot.
Sleek. Fine.
She frowned at the useless descriptors, but they wouldn’t stop coming.
Dark. Brooding.
She slowed her breathing, hoping it would help calm her erratic pulse, forcing her online research to mind. Thiakos was only six years older than her and, at twenty-eight, he had achieved a status and security that some could only dream of. He had graduated from averyprestigious school that counted the children of princes and diplomats amongst its alumni.
Elite.
Summer bit her lip at the rising heat on her cheeks.
After excelling in his national service with the Greek armed forces, staying for longer than the allotted time period, he had walked straight into a high-level position in Agyros’s company before branching out with his own security company. Agyros had been Thiakos’s first contract, but was by no means his only client. But nothing in her research of Theron Thiakos had prepared her for...him.
She looked down at her hands and noticed that they were fisted against her trousers, before shaking them out. By the time she looked up she couldn’t see him any more. Panic rushed through her as suddenly what felt like her only connection to her father had disappeared.
The receptionist hadn’t been able to tell her when her father would be back, but Theron Thiakos might.
She jumped up, blood rushing to her head as if she’d been holding her breath, and ran across the road, ignoring the blaring of car horns behind her. Careening round a corner, she caught sight of him again and the wave of relief that struck her was so powerful she sagged against the nearby building. Forcing her legs to move again, she took measured breaths, trying to slow the pulse raging in her ears, and focused her gaze squarely on his back. Her eyes tripped along the inches of his very broad shoulders and danced downward to lean hips and...
