The Greek's Ultimate Conquest

The advertising agency had clearly gone old school. There was nothing subtle about the message they were sending, just a straightforward fantasy for men to buy into. Use the brand of male face product clutched to the generous bosom of the woman in the bikini and you too would have similarly scantily clad and gorgeous women throwing themselves at you.

Not this one... His mobile mouth twitched into a sardonic smile; he was probably one of a handful of people who knew that this particular object of male fantasy was in a secret same-sex relationship. Secret, not because Lucy was concerned about any negative impact on her career, but because of a deal the couple had struck with her partner Clare’s soon to be ex-husband. The guy wouldn’t contest the divorce if the women waited to go public with their relationship until after he had landed the contract worth multi millions he was in the middle of negotiating with a firm who had built their brand on family values and a squeaky-clean image.

Maybe, Nik mused, if the guy had spent as much time on his marriage as he did on nurturing business deals he might still be married...? After all, if you believed everything you read, maintaining a good relationship took time, energy and hard work. Well, he definitely didn’t have the time. As for energy, he was quite prepared to be energetic, but not if the sex seemed like hard work... No, marriage really was not for him.

He was jolted from his reverie by another blast on a horn, from behind him this time. It had a knock-on effect...not quite a eureka moment but pretty damn close and, like all good ideas, it was perfectly simple. Actually he couldn’t quite figure out why it had not previously occurred to him to counter his sister’s relentless matchmaking by turning up with a date of his own choosing and acting like a man in love.

He smiled up at the inspiration for the idea looking down at him...was Lucy Cavendish in town? And if she was, he wondered if the idea would appeal to her sense of humour; failing that he’d appeal to her conscience. After all, she did owe him one as he was the person who’d introduced her to Clare.

* * *

The caterers were carrying boxes through the open front door when Chloe arrived. Tatiana had asked her to be early but maybe this was too early?

‘Go through to the office. Mum’s in there.’

Chloe did a double take and realised that one of the caterers holding a box was Eugenie, Tatiana’s teenage daughter.

The girl saw her expression and nodded. ‘Yeah, I know...not a good look, but Mum insisted I work at least half the holiday to reduce the danger of me being a rich spoilt brat who thinks money grows on trees. You look great!’ she added, her eyes widening as she took in the full effect of the sleeveless silk jumpsuit Chloe wore. ‘Of course, you have to have legs that go on for ever to get away with it.’

Chloe laughed as the girl whisked away.

The door of the study was open and after a brief tap Chloe went inside. The room was empty except for the dog that was curled up on top of a designer silk jacket that had been flung over a chair. Even crushed and underneath a Labrador the distinctive style of the design made the label it bore unnecessary. Tatiana had become famous for her use of bold, brilliant colours and simple wearable designs.

The animal opened one eye and Chloe went over, drawn by a silent canine command. As she stroked his soft ears she looked curiously at the drawings set up on the massive draftsman table that took centre stage in the room.

‘Oh, don’t look at those. I was having a bad day,’ Tatiana exclaimed, walking into the room. In one of her own designs, the petite brunette projected an air of effortless elegance. ‘Down, Ulysses!’ She gave a little sigh when the dog responded by wagging his tail and staying put. ‘Nik says a dog needs to know who’s master, but that’s the trouble—you already do, don’t you, you bad boy?’ she crooned.

Chloe gave a smile that she hoped hid the fact that her first thought whenever she heard the name of Tatiana’s younger brother was, Oh, God, not brother Nik again!

Nothing Tatiana said about her brother challenged Chloe’s growing conviction that the man thought he was an expert on everything—and was not shy about sharing his expert opinion.

But then, being reticent and self-effacing were probably not the most obvious characteristics for someone who was the head of a Greek shipping line, and though Chloe knew that Nik Latsis had only stepped into his father’s shoes relatively recently, it sounded to her as though they fitted him very well indeed!

Tatiana didn’t seem to question or resent the fact that her younger brother had inherited the company simply because he was male, so why should Chloe?

Maybe because she wasn’t Greek.

And there was no doubt the Latsis family considered themselves Greek even though they had been London based for thirty years. They were part of a large, well-heeled Greek community that had settled in the British capital. Rich or nouveau riche, they all had the rich part in common, that and being Greek, which seemed to be enough to make them a very tight-knit community where everyone knew everyone and traditions were important.

As she gave the dog one last pat she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror that made the generously sized room appear even larger, and made a conscious effort to iron out the frown lines that the thought of Tatiana’s invisible brother had etched in her forehead.

The invisible part was no accident. It was eighteen months since his father’s stroke had brought forward the younger brother’s ascension to the ‘throne’ of Latsis Shipping and he had kept a very low profile, something you couldn’t do unless you had loyal family and friends, limitless resources and, she supposed, an inside working knowledge of how the media worked that being an ex-journalist would bring.

The point being, Chloe, she told herself sternly, is that he is invisible. You’ve never met the guy, and yet here you are making all these judgements on the basis of a few comments and gut instinct. Something that she’d have been the very first to condemn in anyone else.

‘You’re being a hypocrite, Chloe.’

The softly voiced self-condemnation caused Tatiana, whose eyes had drifted with a distracted expression to the fabrics pinned on one of the boards, to look up. She directed an enquiring look at Chloe, who shook her head.

‘Those colours are beautiful,’ Chloe said, nodding to the fabrics, and lifted a finger to touch one piece of silk that was a shade or two deeper than the blue wide-legged jumpsuit she was wearing.

‘It would suit you, but I’m not sure...’ Tatiana stopped and shook her head. ‘Sorry, I just struggle to switch off sometimes.’

She smiled ruefully as she moved to kiss Chloe warmly on her cheek.

‘The trials of being artistic,’ Chloe teased.

‘I don’t know about that, but I do know that I am a bit of a workaholic...the work-life, home-life balance always did elude me.’ A wistful expression crossed her face. ‘Maybe that’s why I got divorced...’ She shook her dark sleek head slightly and smiled. ‘But never mind about that tonight...just look at you!’

Hands resting lightly on Chloe’s slim upper arms, she pushed the taller woman back a little. The sombreness of earlier drifted across her face when her glance stilled momentarily on Chloe’s legs covered in loose folds of sky-blue silk, but it was gone by the time her eyes reached Chloe’s face.

‘You look stunning, as usual. I’m not saying it’s all about a pretty face, but it definitely helps when you’re trying to get men to open their wallets for a good cause...and before you ask you have my permission to put the hard sell on everyone here tonight.’

‘People are usually very kind,’ Chloe said.

‘Especially when they are being guilted into it by the sister of a future queen. But why not use your connections? That’s what I always say, and, while I might not have the right sort, your sister certainly does.’ She sketched a curtsy and Chloe laughed. Her sister might be a princess and one day destined to be the Queen of Vela Main, but Chloe could not imagine anyone less royal. Both sisters had been brought up to believe that what a person did was more important than their title.

‘I’ll do my very best for the charity,’ Tatiana continued in earnest now. ‘In my book, I owe you.’ She walked across to the mantel where the marble surface was covered with framed photos. She selected one and held it up in invitation for Chloe to see it. ‘For what you did for Mel,’ she finished, looking fondly at the photo she held.

Chloe shook her head, uncomfortable with the praise. As far as Chloe was concerned, the young Greek girl was her inspiration. ‘I didn’t do anything.’ She took the frame that Tatiana offered and looked at the photo it held. It was a snap taken the previous month in a pavement café on a girls’ trip to Barcelona. ‘She’s a brave girl.’

Chloe had known Tatiana by sight and reputation before the other woman had boosted Chloe’s career by mentioning her blog in an interview she’d given covering London fashion week, two years ago now, Chloe realised, though it seemed more like a lifetime. Back then the interview was pretty much responsible for her blog becoming a profitable overnight success.

Chloe had contacted Tatiana to thank her for the plug and they had exchanged the odd email but they had never met in person.

That had happened in a very different context a year ago, after the designer’s god-daughter was moved into the room next to Chloe’s own in the specialist burns unit. Chloe had already been in there for three months; she’d known every crack in the ceiling and had been living vicariously through the love lives of the young nurses designated to her care.

Though the burns Chloe herself had received in a road traffic accident had been severe and painful and the healing process long, her own scars were easy to hide from view under her clothes. But the young woman in the next room had not been able to hide the damage done to her face by the fire caused by a gas explosion. Then, as if life hadn’t already thrown enough rubbish at her, the day after she had arrived at the burns unit her boyfriend had dumped her, at which point Mel had turned her face to the wall and announced she didn’t want to live.

As she’d listened through the partition wall Chloe’s heart had ached for the other girl. Their first conversation later that night shouted through the wall had been a one-sided affair, but it had been the first of many.

‘You got her through it, Chloe,’ Tatiana choked. ‘I’ll never forget that day I arrived and heard her laugh—you did that.’

‘Mel helped me as much as I did her. Did you see the information sheet she put together for me on make-up techniques?’ she asked, placing the photo back on the shelf. In doing so she accidentally nudged the one next to it and straightened it, admiring the frame; it was an antique one, the ebony wood delicately carved and rather beautiful.

Chloe was admiring the craftsmanship, running her fingers across the smooth indentations, when her glance drifted across the photo it held. Her mouth tugged into a smile; with a white-knuckle ride in the background, a younger Eugenie smiled back at her, complete with braces, from under the peak of a baseball cap with the logo of an adventure park emblazoned on it.

The jeans-clad man crouched down beside her in the shot was wearing the same cap, and he was... Chloe’s smile vanished like smoke as brutal stinging reality hit her like a slap across the face. Pale as paper now, she stared at the male in the picture, wearing jeans, a tee shirt, and a teasing, carefree expression on his handsome face, a face that bore no signs of a tortured soul. There were no shadows that she felt the need to banish; he was just a regular guy...well, only if the regular guy in question was more handsome than any man had a right to be with a body that an Olympic swimmer might dream of possessing.

She stood like a statue staring at the photo she held in a hand that quickly developed a visible tremor—the tremor penetrating past the skin level and moving deep inside her.

By sheer force of will she released the breath she was holding in her lungs, but not the avalanche of questions whirring in dizzying succession through her brain. She felt as though a dozen people were inside her shouting so loudly she couldn’t make out the individual questions.

Obviously it couldn’t be him but, equally obviously, it was! The man in the photos was the same man who she had spent a never-to-be-forgotten night of lust with. If all learning experiences were as brutal as that one had been, it would not be worth getting out of bed in the morning—happily they weren’t and she had moved on.

But that didn’t mean she’d forgotten any of it. Forgotten the feelings of emotional hurt and humiliation that had made her physically sick the next morning when she’d realised he’d slipped away during the night. And the worst part was, she had no one to blame but herself. Because she had been the one who had followed her instincts when she’d approached him in that bar, telling herself that what she was doing was somehow meant to be... If they had been handing out awards for naivety and general stupidity that night, she would have walked away with an armful of prizes!

She’d wondered if his name really was Nik. It seemed utterly incredible to her now that she’d ever thought it part of the romantic fantasy element of their night together that she hadn’t even known his full name! Time had stripped away the romantic gloss and revealed it for what it truly was—a cheap and tacky one-night stand, even if the sex had been utterly incredible.