Tempted By Her Greek Tycoon

The convent, in the heart of Florence, had since become an exclusive five-star boutique hotel—a hotel his father had coveted since he and Loukas’s mother had visited on their honeymoon and just about been able to afford a drink in the bar. They had both fallen in love with its walled garden and cloisters, and his father—perhaps foolishly—had pledged to his mother that one day he would buy it in memory of their wedding and their honeymoon.

Loukas wanted it. For his parents. This was the first time that it had come up for sale in over a century. He might never get this opportunity again. He had to buy this hotel for his father. He couldn’t fail him yet again.

There was only one problem—to buy it, he had to be married. The religious order, for reasons that had been lost in time, had specified that the convent could only be sold to a married person.

His legal team had spent the past month attempting to have the clause removed. But it was watertight. As he had expected. In anticipation of this outcome he had employed a dating agency who specialised in executive clients.

He was not interested in finding love. He’d never had any intention of getting married. He had spent his childhood constantly fighting for his parents’ love—his father’s in particular—and constantly being rejected when he had not lived up to his expectations. He had learnt that loving others made him vulnerable and open to the constant fear and pain of rejection. Love was an exhausting emotional rollercoaster he had no interest in or intention of riding.

What he needed was a wife in name only, and in the past few weeks he had come to realise that he could turn this need for a wife of convenience into an opportunity to recruit extra talent into the business—someone who would help drive the business forward but would also have the toughness to tackle the ongoing problems with his family: namely Nikos’s irresponsibility, Marios’s stubbornness and Angeliki’s lack of independence.

It was a point that had been driven home when he’d recently returned from a business trip abroad to his apartment in Athens to find Angeliki drunk and almost incoherent... She’d been coherent enough though to tell him that she hated her two-timing boyfriend, Dimitris, but that she couldn’t break it off because he had the best body she’d ever seen. And all kinds of other stuff no brother should ever hear from his baby sister.

Angeliki needed a strong female role model—for far too long she had been indulged by her older brothers. She needed someone who would push her to want to achieve more in life than the approval of some lowlife guy.

The dating agency had put forward some promising candidates—successful and ambitious women. He had even dated some. But so far they had all come up short.

Tonight’s email from his legal team confirming that there was no way out of the clause, together with all the other debacles—an unfinished hotel, VIP guests set to arrive in less than a week, his siblings nowhere to be seen—had brought home the fact that he needed a wife with greater than ever urgency.

He picked up his office phone and called his dating agency account manager, Zeta.

‘Loukas... Hi...’ Zeta sounded more and more nervous every time he called.

‘I have called the three profiles you sent through today. The first had nothing to offer the business.’ Zeta tried to interrupt him but he continued on, ‘The second candidate laughed when I explained that Talos was a two-hour journey by land and sea from Athens...’

He swung around in his chair to face his office window and stared out towards the Saronic Gulf as he continued.

‘And the third couldn’t answer me when I asked her how she would deal with the scenario of an eighteen-year-old girl calling at four in the morning from a payphone in Athens asking if she knew where her phone and purse was.’

Zeta let out a weary sigh at the other end of the phone. ‘We’re running out of suitable candidates.’

‘Spread your net wider. I need a wife within the next month. A wife who will accept the nature of our marriage—that it will be in effect a business contract for a two-year period, with generous terms and conditions. The Christou Group is about to expand rapidly. We have already acquired five new hotels in the past year and plan on many more. This will be an ideal time for an ambitious person to be at the centre of that growth. I need someone who is driven, astute, already successful in her career, willing to live on Talos and support me in managing my family. That isn’t a lot to ask, is it?’

Zeta started to make some strangled-sounding noises at the end of the line. In no mood to hear her usual argument that he needed to be more flexible, he ended the call—but not before telling Zeta that he would quadruple her fee if she found him a suitable wife within the next month.

‘Is now a good time to talk?’

He twisted around to find the mermaid standing at his door, waiting for his answer.

Thrown by the sight of her hand, distractedly playing with the thin silver strap of her bikini top, and seeing the other resting on the smooth taut skin of her midriff, he looked away, silently cursing Nikos. Again.

Georgie Jones—all blonde hair, shiny eyes and sunshine personality—was exactly Nikos’s type. He didn’t need to go to Detective School to figure out that she was either Nikos’s newest love interest or soon would be. No wonder Nikos had given her the position as PA. How convenient to have her so nearby.

The idea of moving Nikos away to a monastery on a faraway island was rapidly becoming the best plan he’d had in a long time. But first he had to deal with returning this mermaid to wherever she belonged.

‘Please come in.’

She shuffled into the office, her full and rather enticing lips, painted a coral-pink, pulling into an open smile that slowly faded as she stopped in front of his desk.

She squared her shoulders and her hazel eyes held his steadily. ‘It would be a huge honour to work for you, and in a hotel as prestigious as The Korinna. I won’t lie or beat around the bush—I need this job.’

She gave him a quick smile that at first seemed open, but on closer inspection he saw that her eyes held a steely determination.

‘However, I respect the fact that you weren’t aware of my appointment and that it has put us both in a difficult position. I think I have a potential compromise, if you agree. And that is that I initially work for you for a trial period of a few days.’

* * *

Time slowed down to excruciatingly long seconds as Loukas studied her with obvious exasperation. Would he accept her proposal?

Life had taught her to be diplomatic, to negotiate and gently persuade rather than fight her way to acceptance by others. After years of being a newcomer she knew only too well that she had to give people space in order to come to realise that she posed no threat. And that included her new boss.

His office faced out towards the azure beauty of the Saronic Gulf, but when he stood up his huge Greek warrior size seemed to devour all the evening light that had been pouring in through the folding glass doors that led to a private balcony.

He moved to rest against a bookcase and asked, ‘Exactly what experience have you of being a PA?’

‘I’ve worked as a PA in an architectural firm in Spain for the past eighteen months. Before that I was a theatre hand, a trainee pastry chef, a dog walker...’ She paused, seeing that Loukas wasn’t overly impressed, and quickly added, ‘I’m flexible and I use my initiative, and I also speak Portuguese, Spanish, Italian...and passable Greek.’

His eyes narrowed in suspicion, he approached her as though he didn’t buy a word about her linguistic skills. ‘You speak all those languages?’

While her brain objected to his cynical tone, her heart was conducting a most peculiar dance in her chest. Goosebumps were popping up on her skin as her eyes were drawn to the smooth skin of his chest visible beneath the open neck of his shirt. She blinked as heat blasted inside her stomach.

She dragged her eyes away from the dark toffee skin tone and then, intending to let them travel up to meet his eyes, found herself waylaid by his mouth—was his lower lip slightly fuller than the upper one?—and then his nose, its straightness and perfection suiting his serious personality.

Eventually she managed to answer, ‘I moved around a lot as a child because of my dad’s work.’

‘Why are you here on Talos?’

Light golden-brown eyes marred by tension lines at the corners held hers. She needed to get Loukas to relax in her company.

She stepped back and gave her best excited smile. ‘I’m renovating a property.’

The tension lines tightened even more. ‘The old Alavanos property?’

His question came out in a rumble, his voice even lower than usual.

The nod of her head elicited a deep sigh of disbelief from him.

‘So, let me get this right... Nikos has employed as my PA someone who is soon going to be a business rival of ours?’

If only. The Talos Escape Guesthouse, as she had decided to call it, wouldn’t be opening anytime soon if she didn’t pull together enough money to actually furnish the guest rooms. But she wasn’t going to admit that to anyone. Sunny side up. That was her motto.

‘I’m going to open up a small guesthouse in the summer months, catering for the swimming holiday business. It’s hardly going to be a rival to The Korinna.’

Loukas shifted away from her and went and stood behind his desk. ‘Miss Jones, you can’t work here. I apologise that Nikos had you believing otherwise.’

He sat down at his desk, briefly gestured to the door and began to riffle through the paperwork on his desk.

Georgie opted not to take up his invitation to leave. She couldn’t let go of this financial lifeline.