Heiress's Defiance

Lucilla chewed her lip, thinking. She’d researched Christos thoroughly when he’d arrived, but there was one thing she couldn’t find out. He didn’t seem to come from anywhere. He didn’t have a family. He was Greek, he claimed Athens as his hometown, and that was it. There’d been no record of his life before he was about twenty-five and burst onto the scene as the man who’d turned around a very old and venerable shipping company.

Then he’d moved on to another company, and another. He was good at what he did—and ruthless beyond belief. He slashed and burned and what emerged from the ashes was always better and brighter than before.

Yes, he was pretty good. But she didn’t trust him. And she damn sure didn’t like him. She couldn’t believe that her father had turned over control to this man they knew so little about. Gene Chatsfield had handed over the keys to the kingdom and then flown back to the U.S. to be with his new fiancée as if he hadn’t just turned Lucilla’s world—and her siblings’ worlds—upside down in the process.

Lucilla wanted to know more. She wanted to know who Christos Giatrakos really was, where he came from and why he thought he could be so cold and ruthless with everyone. And then she wanted him gone.

That, really, was the deciding factor. Lucilla wanted him gone, no matter how sexy or smoldering he was. And she was willing to do just about anything to achieve that goal. She picked up the phone. It was time to call in every last favor she was owed in exchange for information.

The Chatsfield was hosting a gala tonight in the main ballroom. An art auction for charity that would bring out the richest members of London society. As CEO, it was Christos’s duty to be there as the new public face of the company. Whatever the Chatsfield children had done to tarnish the venerable name, Christos was determined to erase those memories from the public consciousness. Yes, it would take time, but he would turn the company around. Of that he had no doubt.

He frowned as he thought of Lucilla Chatsfield standing in his office and glaring at him. She didn’t like him; that much was plain. He didn’t like her, either. She was utterly spoiled, though perhaps not quite as useless as most of her siblings.

Yet he found her oddly compelling and he did not like it. For instance, her brown eyes were flecked with gold. Why did he know this detail? He had no idea, but he did. And whenever she came into his office, he found himself watching those gold flecks and wondering if they might change with passion. What would staid Lucilla look like mussed? Her hair was always sleek and smooth, either twisted up on her head or slicked back into a thick ponytail. Her suits were crisp and tailored. Not too conservative, not too sexy.

He should not notice her at all, really. She was not a classically beautiful woman. Her cheeks were a little too plump and her hips a little too curvy to be stylish. She was too serious and frowned entirely too much.

And yet he found himself wondering what she would look like naked and sprawled across his bed. A clear sign he’d been working too much and not getting enough sex if he was thinking of uptight Lucilla Chatsfield this way.

Tonight, that would change. He had a date to the gala, and she’d hinted more than once that she was available all night long. After a trip home to shower and change into his tuxedo, Christos got behind the wheel of his Bugatti Veyron and went to pick Victoria up at her apartment. She was waiting just inside the glass doors, her blond hair a mass of luscious curls, her body encased in something shiny that looked almost like rubber.

She sashayed from the building and two men on the sidewalk nearly tripped on their tongues. Christos should be ecstatic at the sight of her, and yet he was somehow disappointed as he opened the door and helped her into the car. She is lovely, he told himself. Lovely.

“I’ve been looking forward to tonight,” Victoria said, sliding her hand up his thigh once he’d gotten into the driver’s seat again. She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. Other than the shock of being touched so blatantly, he felt no excitement. His body responded as her hand drifted over him—a woman was touching his groin, after all—but he didn’t find the prospect particularly thrilling.

“Enough of that, Victoria,” he clipped out. “We have a long evening to get through first.”

She laughed and ran her thumb over his cheek, presumably removing the lipstick she’d left there. “I can’t wait, darling.”

Soon, they were at the hotel, and Christos went around to join Victoria on the red carpet while the valet slipped inside his car and drove off. Photographers were stationed on either side of the entrance, corralled behind velvet ropes, their flashes popping again and again as he walked up the carpet with Victoria on his arm.

They passed inside. Staff members were busily taking care of the guests, but he had no doubt he’d been seen. No one nodded, though. He did not expect it. It wasn’t his job to be liked. Gene Chatsfield had hired him because he was the best. Not because he was the nicest.

The gala was in full swing when they walked into the ballroom. The soaring artdeco walls and ceilings were a work of art themselves, which is why the room showcased the art on display so well. Men in tuxedos and women in glittering gowns mingled, drinks in hand, rotating past the displays and making marks in their catalogs.

Christos circulated, shaking hands and talking with the guests, smiling with satisfaction at their compliments on the decor and service. Victoria clung to his side until he grew tired of having her there and deposited her with a group of expensively dressed women. When he left, they were comparing notes on their dress designers.

He continued to talk to the guests as the clock ticked down to the moment the auction was scheduled to start. At one point, when the conversation bored him and his mind began to drift, the crowd parted and a flash of red caught his eye. It was a dark-haired woman, standing with her back to him, her body encased in a clinging ruby gown sewn with sparkling crystals. She was alone in front of a painting, and he had a sudden urge to find out just what she seemed so captivated by that others did not.

He did not know her or what drove her, but she appeared lonely and isolated in the single beam of light shining down on the spot she stood in. Her head was bowed, her shoulders bent forward, as if the weight of something terribly sad pressed down on her.

Her isolation and loneliness spoke to him because he so often felt the same things. By choice, yes, but still. He’d had to isolate himself to survive the hell of his childhood. It was a skill he’d perfected by the time he was fourteen. A necessary skill to keep from going insane in the juvenile-detention facility he’d been sent to.

Christos excused himself from the conversation and moved toward the woman. He wanted to know who she was and what was in the picture that affected her so much. She turned then, and he stopped, stunned. Lucilla Chatsfield’s brows were pulled together, her face creased with sadness and pain. And she was utterly beautiful standing alone in that beam of light.

The light picked out her bone structure, highlighted the luminous quality of her skin and transformed the darkness of her hair into a chestnut cloud flowing down her back. She was still Lucilla, but Lucilla as he’d never seen her before. The beauty of her hit him like a lightning bolt, stole the air from his lungs, sent blood rushing into his groin.

He wanted to possess her. He wanted to erase that sadness from her eyes, and he wanted to strip that red dress from her body and expose the creamy skin underneath. The need to do so rocked him. And angered him.

He had no time for this. Lucilla was an obstacle in his path, not a dalliance on the side. She hated him. Despised him for sending her brothers and sister away on errands, and for thwarting her ambition.

Christos plucked two glasses of champagne from a passing tray and moved toward her. She’d turned to look at the painting again, and he found himself focusing on the swell of her hips, the curve of her back and the lush beauty of her hair as it tumbled over her shoulders in rich, reddish-brown waves. She never wore her hair down. He was suddenly thankful that she did not because the urge to plunge his fingers into it and feel the silky mass gliding over his hand was almost overwhelming.

“See something you want?”

She whirled to face him, clutching a hand over her heart. “Oh, my God, you scared me.”

He held out the champagne. “Then I apologize.”

She took the glass. Then she turned to look at the painting again. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

Christos stared at the small portrait of a woman. It wasn’t an old painting, though it wasn’t recent, either. The woman was wearing a long gown, pearls and a mink, and she was laughing. It was not a staid portrait at all. Christos frowned as he scanned the portrait. This woman looked familiar in a way. He turned to look at Lucilla’s profile, saw the same lines as in the painting, and a new feeling took root in his soul: anger and even a modicum of pity. Gene Chatsfield had put a portrait of his missing ex-wife into the auction, and Lucilla seemed sad about it.

No one knew where Liliana Chatsfield had gone, but one day she’d walked out on her family and never came home again. He knew the history, as so many did, but for the first time he could see how it must have affected at least one Chatsfield child.

It made him feel almost tender toward her. A complication he did not need. “She is indeed. Your mother, I presume?”

She took a sip of her champagne and he saw that her fingers trembled. “Yes.”

“And does it bother you this picture is in the auction?”

She sniffed. She did not look at him. “Of course not. It’s for a good cause, and my father is right to get rid of it. Graham Laurent painted it before he was quite so famous, so it will fetch a high price simply because of that. Obviously, my father knows this.”

And Gene Chatsfield was marrying again, so his new wife-to-be probably didn’t want a portrait of the old wife still in his possession. Though why he didn’t gift it to one of his children, Christos couldn’t say. It seemed the logical thing to do.

“You could buy it.”

She turned to look up at him again, and he felt the power of that gaze down to his toes. The gold flecks in her eyes sparkled in the light from above. “Oh, no, I couldn’t. It wouldn’t be seemly.”

He didn’t quite understand that logic, but it was not his concern really. If she didn’t want to buy it, what did he care?

“As you wish, Lucilla mou.” He didn’t know why he called her my Lucilla, but the first time he’d done it, she’d seemed annoyed—so he’d kept doing so because it amused him to irritate her. He had not meant to irritate her now, but of course she could not know that. Her eyes narrowed.

“Don’t you have some souls to collect elsewhere in the room?”

Christos couldn’t help the laugh that burst from him then. Lucilla tried to frown but ended up smiling, though she kept biting her lip to stop. He wished she would let it out because he was certain a smile would transform her face.

“I have met my quota of souls for the day, unfortunately.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Tomorrow is a new day. I’m sure you’ll find some lives to wreck before the morning runs out.”

He took a sip of champagne, uncharacteristically amused. She was acerbic and tart, not at all what he was accustomed to in a woman. It was a novelty, and he enjoyed it more than he should. He never cared if he was liked. Companies hired him to do the tough jobs, to make the decisions no one else would.

He didn’t care if this woman liked him, either—but he found himself hoping she wouldn’t go away just yet.

“It is on my schedule,” he said.

“Of course it is.” She pulled in a deep breath and turned away from the painting as if she had made a final decision to slice herself off from the allure of it. “Tell me about you, Christos. Where did you grow up? What did you like to do as a child?”