A Ring to Secure His Heir

‘You can’t be serious? You’re asking me to get to know … a cleaner?’ Alexius prompted in flaring disbelief.

The old man looked grave. ‘I have never thought of you as a snob.’

Alexius stiffened and wondered how he could possibly be anything else with his background. After all, generations of very wealthy blue-blooded Greeks filled out his now much diminished family tree. ‘What could we possibly have in common? And how could I set up such a meeting without her guessing that something strange lay behind my interest?’

‘Hire the cleaning firm she works for … I’m sure if you think about it, you’ll come up with other ideas,’ Socrates Seferis asserted confidently. ‘I know it’s a big favour and that you’re very busy but I don’t have anyone else I could ask or trust. Do I approach my son—her uncle—or one of her untrustworthy cousins to take care of this for me?’

‘No, that would not be fair. They would view another family member coming out of the woodwork as competition.’

‘Exactly.’ Socrates looked relieved by the younger man’s quick understanding. ‘I will be deeply in your debt if you take care of this matter for me. If Rose’s namesake turns out to be greedy or dishonest you need never tell me the unsavoury details. I only need to know if she’s a worthwhile risk.’

‘I’ll consider it,’ Alexius pronounced grudgingly.

‘Don’t take too long—I’m not getting any younger,’ Socrates warned him.

‘Is there something I should know about?’ Alexius prompted tautly, worried that Socrates had health concerns that he was keeping secret. Alexius was touched by the faith the older man had in his judgement but he still didn’t want the job, which sixth sense warned him would be a solid gold poisoned chalice. ‘You have other friends—’

‘None as shrewd or experienced as you are with women,’ Socrates countered gravely. ‘You will know her for what she is. I’m convinced she won’t succeed in pulling the wool over your eyes.’

Alexius finally lifted his drink and sighed, ‘I’ll think this over. Are you well?’

The old man gave him a stubborn appraisal. ‘There is nothing that you need worry about.’

Nonetheless, Alexius was filled with concern, but the closed look of obstinacy on Socrates’s face kept him from demanding answers to that laden assurance. He was already disconcerted by Socrates’s abnormally frank speech. His godfather had buried his pride and virtually bared his soul when he openly admitted for the first time what a disappointment his three adult children had proved to be. Alexius perfectly understood that the old man did not want to add another idle freeloader to his family circle, but he could not approve of his devious approach to the problem.

‘Suppose this girl is the good granddaughter that you want?’ Alexius prompted uneasily. ‘How will she feel when she finds out about your relationship and realises that I’m your godson? She’ll know then that she was set up—’

‘And she’ll understand why if she ever meets the rest of my family,’ Socrates fielded without anxiety. ‘It’s not a perfect plan, Alexius, but it’s the only way I can face the possibility of letting her into my life.’

Having dined with his godfather, Alexius flew straight back to London in an unusually troubled state of mind. He lived for the challenge of business, the action of staying one step ahead of his closest competitors and the thrill of ensuring that his enemies fell by the wayside. What the hell did he know about working out whether or not his godfather’s long-lost granddaughter was a fit person to become the old man’s heir? It was a huge responsibility and an unwelcome challenge when Alexius did not consider himself to be ‘a people person’.

Indeed, his own private life was as regimented as his public life. He didn’t like ties and he gave his trust to very few. He had no family of his own to consider and believed that lack had simply made him tougher. His relationships were never complicated and, with women, were generally so basic that sometimes they filled even him with distaste. He had always avoided the ones who wanted commitment, and the other ones, the habitually shallow beauties who shared his bed, often put a price on their bodies that would have shamed a hooker. But he was a not a hypocrite even if he was aware that on one level he did pay for their services with the heady allure of the publicity being seen in his company offered and with the designer clothes, diamonds and the luxurious lifestyle he supplied. All such women had a natural talent for feathering their own nests and their greed was no worse, to his own mind, than his body’s natural need for sexual release.

‘So what’s so special about this job?’ Zoe demanded impatiently. ‘Why do we have to move here?’

Rosie suppressed a sigh as the two young women wheeled the cleaning trolley through the almost silent foyer into the lift, having shown their identification to the security staff on the doors. ‘STA Industries is part of a much bigger concern and this may only be a small contract but this is their headquarters. Vanessa is convinced that if we provide an efficient service here it could lead to more work and she chose us because she says we’re her best workers.’

The attractive brunette by Rosie’s side grimaced, unimpressed by the compliment. ‘We may be her best workers but she doesn’t pay us on that basis and it’ll cost me more to travel here.’

Rosie was no more enamoured of the change in her routine, but in the current economic climate she was relieved to still have regular employment, not to mention the invaluable accommodation that went with the job. After all, only a week ago Rosie had found herself unexpectedly and scarily homeless and only Vanessa’s offer of a room had saved Rosie and her pet dog, Baskerville, from ending up on the street with their possessions. It would be quite some time before she stopped being grateful for her reasonably priced bedsit in a building rented by her employer and shared with other staff.

Vanessa Jansen’s office-cleaning business was small and she only got contracts by severely undercutting her competitors, which meant that the profits were minimal and the contents of Rosie’s pay packet never seemed to increase. Times were tight in the business world, with non-essential services being cut, and Vanessa had recently lost a couple of regular clients.

‘You never call in sick and you’re never late. I always know that I can rely on you and that’s rare,’ her boss had told her warmly. ‘If we can get more work out of this contract I’ll up your pay … I promise.’

Although Rosie was used to such promises being broken by Vanessa, she had smiled appreciatively out of politeness. She was a cleaner because the hours suited and allowed her to study during the day, not because she enjoyed it. She also could have told Vanessa some very practical ways in which she could improve her business prospects. Well aware, though, that the advice would be resented, she said nothing when she saw lazy co-workers being retained and slapdash work done through lack of adequate supervision. Vanessa was great at juggling figures and seeking out new clients, but she was a poor manager, who rarely emerged from behind her desk. That was the real reason why her business was struggling to survive.

But then, Rosie had long since learned that you couldn’t change people. After all, she had tried for a long time to change her mother, had encouraged, supported, advised, even pleaded, and in the end it had all come to nothing because, regardless of what Rosie did, her mother had had no desire to change the person she was. You had to accept people as they were, not as you would like them to be, Rosie reflected with a pained sense of regret as she recalled that hard lesson. She remembered countless supervised sessions with her mother during which she had tried to shine bright enough to interest her parent in being a parent and in wanting to raise her own daughter. And now she winced, looking back at all that wasted energy and angst, for Jenny Gray had been infinitely fonder of booze, bad boys and a lively social life than she had ever been of the daughter she had purposely conceived.

‘I thought your father would marry me—I thought I’d be set up for life,’ her mother had once confided on the subject of Rosie’s conception. ‘He came from a rich family but he was a waste of space.’

As she was nothing like the ambitious fantasist her late mother had been, Rosie privately thought that a lot of men were a waste of space and that women were better company. The men she had dated had been boringly obsessed with sex, sport and beer. As she had no interest in any of that and better things to do with her few hours of free time, it had been many months since she had even had a date. Not that she was ever likely to be bowled over by a rush of male interest in her essentially unexciting self, Rosie conceded ruefully. Rosie was barely five feet tall and flat as a board back and front, embarrassingly bereft of the womanly curves that attracted the opposite sex. For years she had hoped that she was simply a ‘late developer’ and that if she waited long enough the required badges of womanhood would magically arrive and transform her body and her prospects, but here she was, twenty-three years old and still downright skinny and ultra-small everywhere it counted.

As a straying strand of pale hair brushed her cheekbone she reached up to tighten the band on her ponytail and groaned out loud when it snapped, digging without success through the pockets of her overall in search of a replacement. Her long, wavy hair tumbled round her in an irritating curtain and she wondered for the hundredth time why she didn’t just get it cut short for convenience. But then she did know why: her foster mother, Beryl, had often told her she had very pretty hair and had liked to brush it for her when she was a child. Sadness momentarily touched Rosie for, although it had been three years since Beryl had died, Rosie still very much missed the older woman’s warm common sense and affection. Beryl had been much more of a mother to Rosie than her birth parent.

Alexius sat in an unfamiliar office that belonged to one of his personal assistants, trying to get on with some work, but irritation tinged him every time he reached for something that wasn’t on the desk, for it was a discomfort he was not accustomed to meeting in life. Socrates, he thought grimly of his manipulative godfather, who had played on his conscience to force him into this juvenile masquerade. His even white teeth gritted as he heard the sound of a vacuum cleaner whirring somewhere on the same floor. At least the cleaners had finally arrived and the game could commence. Game? Some game! In fact, he felt infuriatingly and uncharacteristically on edge because deception wasn’t his style. Yet how could he ever get to know a cleaning operative in the guise of who he truly was? It was only sensible to pretend to be a more humble member of staff, but in doing that he was also making the assumption that Rosie Gray wouldn’t recognise him as Alexius Stavroulakis. He doubted that she read the Financial Times, where he was regularly depicted, but there was a chance that she was a fan of the celebrity magazines between whose pages he had also made occasional appearances. The more he thought of the deception involved, the more he thought that accidentally bumping into her in some way outside working hours might have been a wiser approach.

Rosie worked steadily down the line of offices, taking care of routine tasks while Zoe took care of the other side of the corridor. Only one office was occupied and the door stood open. She hated trying to clean round employees working late but couldn’t risk omitting that room in case checks were made on the standard of their work. Most daytime staff had gone home by eight in the evening and she had to ensure that the schedule of duties laid out for STA was completed right down to the last letter on the contract. She peered into the occupied office and saw a big guy with black hair working at a laptop. Only the Anglepoise lamp beside him was lit, casting light and shadow over his strong, dark features. He glanced up suddenly, startling her, revealing ice-grey eyes as bright as liquid mercury in his lean bronzed face. He was drop-dead gorgeous: that was her first thought and a very uncommon one for Rosie.

Alexius stared, both recognising and not recognising his quarry. Bleached of colour, Rosie Gray had looked so flat and uninspiring in that black and white photograph, but in the flesh she was glowing and unusual … and tiny. The Seferis family were kind of small in stature, he recalled abstractedly, but she was as ridiculously tiny and fragile in appearance as a fairy-tale elf. But if her diminutive size almost made him smile, her face and hair riveted him. He had never seen natural hair that colour, a glorious wavy fall as pale a blonde as frost sparkling on snow. It was dyed—of course it was, he assumed, his attention lingering longer still on that amazingly vivid little triangular face of hers: big ocean-green eyes, a neat little nose and a mouth made for sin with the sort of lush pouting outline that gave a man erotic fantasies. Or the sort of man who did erotic fantasies, Alexius adjusted, for he did not. When every woman he ever approached was immediately available, there was no need for fantasies. But those succulent pink lips were definitely sexy, although that was not a thought he wanted to have around his godfather’s long-lost granddaughter. The oddity of the situation was responsible, he decided impatiently. It was throwing him off-balance.

Colliding unexpectedly with those piercing light eyes enhanced by black curling lashes, Rosie swallowed hard and felt her heart hammer behind her breastbone as though she were trapped. He was so very, very good-looking, from the stark lines of his high cheekbones and the bold slash of his nose to the hard angular jaw line and beautifully moulded sensual mouth. But she was quick to recognise the impatience etched in the twist of that firm upper lip and she hastily withdrew from the threshold to vanish back down the corridor. Alarm bells had rung loudly inside her head: this was not a man she wanted to interrupt or inconvenience. She would vacuum the big conference room and then return to see if he had gone.

Her disappearance made Alexius bite back a groan of exasperation. As a male used to women going to often ridiculous lengths to attract and hold his attention, he had virtually no experience of pursuing one. But had he really expected a cleaner to walk up to him and start chatting? Naturally, she had gone into retreat. He strode to the doorway, long powerful legs eating up the distance, and his keen gaze narrowed on the small figure trundling a vacuum cleaner.

‘I won’t be here much longer,’ he said, his deep voice sounding unnaturally loud in the silence of the almost empty office suite.

Taken aback by the announcement, Rosie spun round, her pale hair flying across her face, green eyes openly apprehensive. ‘I can do the conference room first—’

‘You’re new, aren’t you?’ Alexius remarked, wondering what it was about those eyes, that face, that kept him staring longer than he should have done and continually drew his attention back to her.

‘Yes … this is our first shift here,’ she murmured so low he had to stretch to hear her. ‘We want to do a good job.’

‘I’m sure you will.’ Alexius watched her deal with a vacuum cleaner almost as tall as she was and considerably bulkier and he experienced a sudden crazy need to snatch it out of her small hands and force her to give him her full attention. What the hell was the matter with him? He studied her afresh and registered in shock that he was aroused. It had been a very long time since a sexual response that undisciplined had assailed Alexius. Diavelos, he was no longer a boy, horny in the radius of any attractive female. He didn’t understand it, he really didn’t understand the effect she was having on him at all because it was outside his experience. She was little and cute and he didn’t go for little and cute. He liked tall, shapely women with dark hair and almost never deviated from the type. In many ways outside the business world he was very much a creature of habit, unwilling to compromise, distrustful of anything new or different. His upbringing had taught him to be like that, encasing him in a protective shell of reserve, cynicism and objectivity. He had learned too young that to many people his immense wealth marked him out only as a potential source of profit, a literal target to be impressed, flattered, ultimately used and deceived by the ambitious and the greedy.

It was close to the end of her shift when Rosie finally found the occupied office empty. It was true that the light still burned and the laptop still sat open on the desk, but she was tired and she knew she wouldn’t get a better opportunity to finish on time. She was engaged in swiftly whisking a duster over what she could reach of the desk when he reappeared and she froze, intimidated by the size of him filling the doorway. So tall, so dark, so very handsome. And those astonishingly light eyes of his gleamed like polished silver in his strong face.

‘I’ll move this out of your way,’ Alexius breathed, scooping up the laptop, standing so close for an instant that the scent of him enveloped her: the smell of clean, warm male laced with a mouth-watering hint of some exotic cologne.

‘No need … I can work around you if you’ll just put up with me for another f-five minutes,’ Rosie replied a little shakily, her cheeks hot with the awareness of her recent thoughts.

Struggling to run through a mental checklist of small tasks to be done before she could consider her work complete, Rosie noticed the photo on the desk of a pretty blonde woman hugging two young children. ‘Nice kids,’ she muttered into the awkward silence.

‘Not mine. I share this office,’ he informed her abruptly, his slight but definable foreign accent obvious as she unfurled the vacuum cleaner for action.

Rosie glanced at him in surprise, for he didn’t look the type of male likely to take to sharing anything, although she had no idea where she had got that impression from. Perhaps it was something to do with the fact that he had as much physical presence as a ruddy great rock set in her path, not to mention an aura of command and arrogance that had suggested to her that he could be more than just another office drone, earning his daily bread by whatever means were within his power. Hot desking, wasn’t that what the practice of sharing desk space was called?

‘I’m Alex, by the way,’ he murmured smoothly. ‘Alex Kolovos …’

‘Nice to meet you,’ Rosie responded in even greater discomfiture, wondering why he was speaking to her in the first place, because it was certainly not the norm. Men usually only spoke if the cleaner was old enough to remind them of their mother or granny or if they were making a play for you. Zoe, christened by her fellow cleaners ‘the Bombshell’, had enjoyed several such approaches from men attracted by her pretty face and stunning curves, but no man had yet come on to Rosie during working hours. Was it the fact that her hair was loose? Irritated by the sudden wash of stupid thoughts that had taken over her normally logical brain and ill at ease in his company, she switched on the vacuum, engulfing them both in noise. With secret amusement she watched him wince as if she had scraped a chalk down a blackboard.

‘Thanks,’ she breezed as she gratefully switched the vacuum off again and sped from the room without a backward glance.

Alexius reflected that it was a humbling experience to chat to a woman without the aura of his billions enhancing him with a wondrous golden glow of magnetic attraction. It had not escaped his notice either that she couldn’t wait to get away from him. Was she shy? Or simply wary? Alexius had no experience whatsoever of either female trait and no desire to remedy his ignorance in that field either. He checked his watch: he had a business dinner to attend. Flipping shut his laptop with relief, he stood up to leave. She was extraordinarily sexy, he reflected grimly, hot enough to make him hard as a rock, not at all what he had expected.

Rosie went home that night to be greeted by Baskerville’s ecstatic barks and leaps in the tiny lounge off the kitchen that all the women used. Bas was a four-year-old chihuahua. He had belonged to Rosie’s foster mother, Beryl, and since Rosie had moved in he had become the house pet, moving freely between the occupants, being spoiled and looked after by whoever was at home. That was a relief for Rosie, who had worried about him getting lonely when she was out and about. Bas tucked securely under one arm, Rosie made herself a plate of cheese on toast and sat down to watch TV and chat with her housemates while she ate and Bas snacked on the crusts and anything else on offer.

At some stage of the night she wakened with pains in her stomach and she was violently ill. In the morning she felt better but washed out.