At The Greek Tycoon's Pleasure

It was a smile he had not used for a long time. For years, an ever changing assortment of beautiful women had been the object of his massive charm. Then he had met Elena, quite accidentally at his mother’s house on one of his quick stop overs. The stop over had lasted ten days longer than he had originally planned and, at the end of it, he had left an engaged man, smitten with the young golden-haired girl who had agreed to be his wife. Five months later Elena had been killed and with her his dreams of marriage and family. Since then, and despite the women who still flocked around him, Theo had remained steadfastly and bitterly celibate. The easy charm that had seen him fêted as the most eligible bachelor in London, the biggest catch in the sea, had been locked away behind a forbidding coldness that could deter even the most persistent.

He realised that he must be feeling ridiculously uneasy with his surroundings to have encouraged the woman to stay. Especially when she was now staring at him like a wild animal caught in a trap with no visible means of escape.

‘I’m not sure that would be entirely appropriate, Mr Andreou…’

‘Why not?’ He headed towards the kitchen, eschewing the walking stick but taking it slowly. Despite what the doctors had said, putting pressure on the foot had seemed to encourage a healthy immunity to the pain and discomfort. A day spent sitting in a car had now made him realise how tender it still was and he scowled at the limitations of a body that had never in his life let him down before.

Sophie closed the door quietly behind her and counted to ten. She reminded herself that she had to be polite. As the odious man had pointed out, he was paying her bills.

‘Aren’t you tired?’ She followed him into the kitchen and avoided his question by going down a different route. Watching from the kitchen door, he didn’t look tired. In fact, he didn’t strike her as the sort of man who ever succumbed to something as routine as exhaustion, but he wasn’t walking properly. ‘I know that trip down from London can be a killer, especially when there’s traffic around. Although I guess you travelled down by train. I didn’t notice any car parked outside.’

‘Big house for one person, or were you living here with someone else?’

Sophie drew in a deep breath and kept trying to smile. ‘Big house for a single man to rent, or are you intending to bring down someone else to keep you company?’

Theo turned and looked at her, one hand on the bottle, the other slowly drawing out the cork. His impression of her was deteriorating by the second. Added to the unacceptable insolence, he could sense simmering just beneath the surface a stubbornness that was only thinly disguised by the stiff smile on her face.

‘I mean…’ Sophie continued hastily, stepping into the kitchen and sitting down at the table, the old, worn pine table that had seen a thousand meals and school books and, later on, art work and designs ‘…Cornwall is very popular with families…Do you have a family, Mr Andreou?’

Theo yanked out the cork and poured two glasses of wine.

‘There is no need to call me Mr Andreou. The name is Theo.’ He placed a glass in front of her and was relieved to sit down and give his foot a rest.

‘And will you be bringing your family down at some point, Mr And…Theo? Or do you prefer to have solitude for your writing?’ Sophie sipped the wine and decided that she had made a good choice. She didn’t know too much about it, but obviously going for the most expensive bottle in the off licence had been a good idea.

‘I beg your pardon?’ About to deliver a short, sharp sermon on which subject she would do well to avoid, Theo was caught on the back foot by her remark. Did the woman seriously imagine that any single man renting a cottage by the sea was automatically a writer?

‘I asked whether you planned on bringing…’

‘I have no family, Miss Scott.’

‘Right.’

‘You were asking about…my writing…?’

‘Yes. I just wondered whether you rented the cottage because you needed to be on your own to write.’ She took another gulp of the wine. Meeting the man’s gaze was next to impossible. Those fabulous eyes were doing weird things to her.

‘And you think I am a writer because…?’

‘Because Johnny told me. I’m sorry. I realise that it’s none of my business. Actually, I should be on my way.’ She half stood up.

‘Sit back down!’

Sophie literally jumped at the command and glared at him. ‘Shouldn’t writers be a bit more sensitive?’ she snapped. Politeness flew out of the window as did the last residue of her patience. ‘Shouting at people is no way to behave, Mr Andreou! And, I tell you this right now—if you intend to act in that manner, then I shall have no option but to withdraw the services of Catherine and Annie. They’re both sweet-tempered girls and I won’t have you yelling at them!’

It was one of those extremely rare moments in Theo’s life when he was literally lost for words.

He was a man who had become accustomed to saying exactly what he wanted and to having his orders followed. Indeed, there was rarely any need for him to even raise his voice. He spoke and others obeyed. It was as simple as that.

He looked at her rising colour and knew that the best thing he could do would be to tell her to go. She was too abrasive, too outspoken, and a personality clash was the last thing he either needed or felt inclined to deal with.

‘You haven’t finished your wine, Miss Scott,’ he countered mildly. ‘Why don’t you finish it and tell me who this Johnny character is? I don’t approve of having my personal life discussed behind my back. Gossip is something I have little time for.’

Sophie clasped the edge of the table and breathed deeply. How many times could one person count to ten before it lost its value as a calming mechanism? How dared he imply that she was a gossip?

She sat back down as calmly as she could manage. ‘I don’t gossip, Mr Andreou.’

‘Theo. I told you.’

Sophie ignored the interruption. ‘John Taylor is the man at the estate agency who arranged this letting. Apparently the lady working on your behalf informed him that you would be here to do a bit of writing. He thought it useful to let me know because he knew that I was reluctant…Well, let’s just say that it was important for me to know that you weren’t going to be the sort of tenant to wreck the house. There have been a few incidents here over the years where houses have been let to people in the movie industry and damage has been caused by wild parties and the like. So we weren’t gossiping about you. It was an exchange of factual information.’

Theo smiled at the thought of Gloria protecting his identity. But writer? He wondered what sort of books he would be interested in writing.

‘What sort of books do you write?’

‘Ah. Thrillers, as a matter of fact.’

Sophie felt curiosity reluctantly creep under her skin. ‘What sort of thrillers? You must write under a pseudonym…’

‘Perhaps thrillers isn’t quite the right description for my…ah…books…’ Theo said. As conversations went, it was bizarre but strangely liberating not to be typecast as the formidable and extremely powerful businessman deserving of the greatest respect, if not downright fear. ‘More factual accounts of people who have been in life-threatening situations. Right now I am working on something to do with black runs.’

Sophie could make sense of that. The man exuded an air of danger. It seemed fitting that he would write about lives lived on the edge.

‘Must be very exciting for you—making a living doing what you love—writing about the things that interest you. Much more stimulating than some boring office job somewhere in the city!’ She thought of the boring office job which she had been compelled to take. Her father might have been interested in all manner of medical things but his passion for invention had turned out to be more than an amusing hobby to keep his brain ticking over. He had, it turned out in the messy wake of his death, poured money into his obsession with creating any manner of things, helped struggling scientists and inventors and literally travelled the breadth and width of the country over the years, going to various science shows and turning small overnight trips into week-long stops. And spending money with the absent-minded innocence of someone quite clueless when it came to all things financial. Leaving her here now, doing her best to clear things up.

She dragged herself away from the depressing thoughts and looked at Theo from under her lashes.

‘Would I have read any of your books? I mean, what name do you write under? How far have you got on the one you’re working on?’

‘I really would rather not discuss my writing.’ Theo poured himself another glass of wine and relaxed back in the chair. ‘Tell me about the village. I shall probably have to venture into it at some point.’

Putting her in her place. That was the impression that Sophie got. In not so many words, he was telling her to mind her own business and, for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why he would be so secretive about what he did for a living. Shouldn’t he be promoting his books? After all, she was a member of the public and it was a buying public who kept him in this lifestyle.

And a very good lifestyle, considering the amount he was paying for the use of her cottage, not to mention the housekeeper and the cook. She glanced at him, to find that he was looking at her with a cool shuttered expression, almost as though he was waiting for her to digest the conversational boundaries he was laying down.

Nothing personal, in fact. And his remark about gossiping had been a warning that she should steer clear of talking about him behind his back. Maybe he thought that, simple peasant lass that she was, the only thing that preoccupied her would be shooting her mouth off about the mysterious handsome stranger in the cottage.

She returned his cool expression with one of her own and began telling him about the basic shops in the village and where he could go if he wanted to explore further afield. As she spoke, she began getting to her feet and tightening her jacket around her, noticing that he was not bothering to stand up. In fact, he dragged over a chair and propped his feet up on it. Sophie resisted the urge to tell him to remove them.

‘And do you live in this exciting little village?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.’

‘And how do you amuse yourself in the evenings?’ He fleetingly wondered whether she had a boyfriend or not and decided that she probably didn’t. What man could ever be attracted to a woman with such a sharp tongue? Elena, he thought painfully, had been angelically soft spoken. He snapped out of his thoughts to hear the tail-end of a sentence and registered that whatever had been said had been yet another example of unladylike sarcasm. He could tell from the badly concealed aggression of her stance. Hand on hip. Fist curled tightly around the strap of her bag.

‘What did you say?’

‘You asked me how I amused myself in this exciting little village.’ She could tell that his thoughts had been miles away, probably on a ski slope with some cutting edge daredevil, the likes of whom would never darken her exciting little village. The man who had invaded her cottage now saw fit to sneer at the lifestyle it represented! ‘Mostly we just sit around in the local, wearing our cloth caps, with twigs in our mouths, knocking back the ale.’