Taken By Her Greek Boss

She shrugged. ‘Not at all,’ she told him politely.

‘You looked bored every time I saw you.’

‘You were watching me?’

Nick didn’t like the intonation in her voice when she said that. ‘It’s my duty to make sure that my guests are having a good time.’

‘Then I’m surprised your keen sense of duty allowed you to sneak off to this office and work.’ Yet again, she had the nagging, unpleasant suspicion that she was a charity case. ‘Anyway, it was very interesting. It always is, meeting people from different walks of life.’

‘Now why do I get the feeling that you don’t really mean that?’ When she didn’t answer, he added, interested against his will, ‘What’s your walk of life?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘What do you do for a living?’

‘I…I work in computers.’ God, that sounded dull, especially when she considered the flamboyant, beautiful people who cluttered his life. How on earth, as a businessman, was he so well connected with the media set? she wondered. Then the question was answered virtually before it was posed. He dated cover girls. Money and looks would always be attracted to money and looks.

‘That’s very interesting.’

‘There’s no need to patronise me.’

‘I’m not. What exactly do you do? In computers?’

‘Nothing very exciting.’

At this point, Nick knew that he should just give up. Getting anything out of this woman was about as rewarding and straightforward as pulling teeth, and if it was one thing he didn’t do, it was to work at making small talk with a woman. But her awkward response was like an invitation to press harder. In front of him, the screensaver came up on the computer and he switched it off.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Look—’ Rose looked at him steadily ‘—I know you probably feel sorry for me…’

‘Why should I feel sorry for you?’

‘Because I don’t slot into your category of an interesting woman.’

‘As you quite rightly pointed out, it’s always an eye opener meeting people from different walks of life.’

‘Well, if you really want to know, I pretty much do everything with computers. Programming, updating systems, designing websites…’ She heard herself rattling off a curriculum vitae that sounded deadly dull. ‘It’s actually very absorbing,’ she stressed.

‘I’m sure it is,’ Nick agreed. ‘Odd that you and your sister should have ended up in such completely different worlds. Computing and acting…’

Rose shrugged and stood up. ‘I’ve got to go and find Lily. It’s late. Time to head back.’

Nick met his fair share of clever, career-oriented women in his working life. He had frequently sat opposite top female lawyers in the early hours of the morning closing deals. Several of them had even tried to flirt with him, but he had never been interested in developing a relationship with any of them outside the boardroom. Put simply, nothing could compete with the archetypal brainless bimbo when it came to relaxation. Who needed to be mentally challenged twenty four seven? He had derived enough mental challenges in his working life.

Or so he had always maintained.

Right now, he was beginning to feel inordinately curious about what the computer whiz kid did in her spare time.

‘Is this a late night for you?’ he asked blandly.

Rose was suitably riled by the question. ‘Not particularly,’ she lied. ‘But there’s a limit to how long I can carry on chatting to people I don’t know about things I’m not particularly interested in.’

‘What would you rather be doing?’

‘Going to bed, as a matter of fact.’

‘With anyone in particular?’

Rose’s mouth dropped open at the sheer audacity of the question, which had sprung from nothing but, once voiced, seemed to fill the room with thick, electric tension.

‘I really don’t think that’s any of your business,’ she finally managed to stutter, red-faced. She turned and began walking towards the door, head held high. He might be a millionaire many times over, but that didn’t give him the right to say whatever he wanted to say and ask whatever he wanted to ask, without reserve.

She was aware of him behind her before she had even reached the door and when he stood in front of her, blocking her exit, she had to clench her hands at her sides to steady her nerves.

‘I like things that aren’t my business,’ Nick murmured lazily. ‘So tell me what you do in your spare time. When you go out until the early hours of the morning.’

He towered over her and she felt as if she were suffocating. Was he laughing at her? She rather imagined that he was because he certainly wasn’t interested in anything she had to say. He was bored with his own party and had decided to have a little fun at her expense. She was sure of it.

Having worked all that out, it still left her with the little problem of how to get out of the room when he was standing in front of the door like a prison warden with a taste for sadism.

The man was loathsome. Yes, he was sinfully good-looking and, yes, she could see those flashes of charm that turned women into mindless robots ready to do whatever he asked them to do, but to her he was someone who was happy to play with other people, in much the same way as a cat played with a mouse. No serious harm intended, just a spot of good fun.

‘I don’t have to do anything,’ Rose told him coolly. ‘Lily’s always been the clubber.’

‘And you’ve always been…what?’ Hand it to her, he thought, she wasn’t going to let herself be daunted by him, even though her mounting colour signalled her discomfort. Nor was she flattered by his interest. In fact, he would have been hard-pressed to think of any woman less flattered by his undivided attention. That in itself was an interesting concept.

‘I talk when I go out with my friends,’ Rose said quietly. ‘And I don’t need to drink to excess or have loud music blaring in the background to feel as though I’m having a good time.’

Nick could hear the implicit sarcasm in her voice and was amused by it.

‘Sounds like fun.’

‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

‘And what do you do afterwards?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When you’ve had fun setting the world to rights?’

‘I don’t set the world to rights.’ Rose gritted her teeth together and reminded herself that he was just goading her and that the last thing she should do was play into his hands by reacting. ‘And even if we did sit around setting the world to rights, it would still be a heck of a lot more fun than slowly getting drunk and bitching about everyone and everything.’

‘Referring to anyone in particular?’

‘Several in general,’ she said waspishly, ‘and they’re all out there. I believe they’re called your friends.’

If she had hoped to insult him, then she had been mistaken, because instead of being suitably offended he just burst out laughing.