The Secret Kept From The Greek

Just how much of a mistake he was about to discover as Lizzie’s father was taken down to the cells and he found Lizzie waiting for him outside the court. Her language was colourful. The slap came out of nowhere. He supposed he deserved it.

Touching his cheek, he held her blazing stare. She was half his size, but when Lizzie was roused she was a firebrand—as he had discovered last night in bed.

Uncaring of the crowd gathering around them in the expectation of a scene, she balled her fists and raged at him. ‘You bastard! How could you have sex with me last night knowing this was going to happen?’

‘Calm yourself, Lizzie.’ He waved the Gavros legal team away. ‘You’re making a spectacle of yourself.’

‘Calm myself?’ she exclaimed bitterly. ‘Thanks to you, my father’s a convicted criminal!’

Charles Montgomery would always be innocent in Lizzie’s eyes. As far as she was concerned the rest of the world—and most especially the man she’d clung to, panting out her lust the previous night—could go hang.

‘And don’t look at me like that,’ she blazed. ‘You don’t frighten me,’

‘I should hope not,’ he agreed.

‘Don’t!’ she warned, deflecting him when he reached out to comfort her.

In his peripheral vision he could see the Gavros security men politely but firmly ushering the spectators away, and now the head of his father’s legal team was approaching. He waved him back too. Lizzie was due some consideration. Her voice was shaking with shock. The judge had wanted Lizzie’s father to be an example to others who might think of following his lead, and had handed down a prison sentence lengthy enough to shock everyone in court.

‘Your father hurt a lot of people, Lizzie. It wasn’t just my family that suffered—’

‘Stop it! Stop it!’ she screamed, covering her ears with her hands. ‘All you care about is money!’

‘I have a family to protect,’ he argued quietly. ‘And not just my family but all those people who work for our company. Don’t they deserve justice too?’

‘And you’re such a saint!’ she yelled before swinging away.

Guilt speared him as her shoulders heaved with silent sobs. Would he have acted differently last night if he’d known this would happen? However hard he tried, he could not regret having sex with Lizzie. His only thought now was to comfort her, to shield her from curious eyes, but Lizzie Montgomery was in no mood to be consoled.

‘I hate you!’ she yelled as her friends came over to lead her away.

The words sounded torn from her soul. ‘Well, I don’t hate you,’ he called after her.

Lizzie wasn’t to blame for her father’s actions, and however misplaced her loyalty might be he could understand it. He felt the same about his father, who had spent a lifetime building the business Charles Montgomery had almost destroyed.

Damon’s father had always been keenly aware of the families who depended on him—a responsibility that would pass to Damon one day. He looked forward to following in the great man’s footsteps. Lizzie didn’t know it yet, but she was another of her father’s victims. His best guess was that by the time her avaricious stepmother had finished with her Lizzie would be out on the street.

‘I’d like to help you,’ he offered.

‘Help me?’ Lizzie derided. ‘Not this side of hell freezing over! Go back to your wealthy friends and your comfortable life, rich boy!’

Several more ripe epithets followed as Lizzie’s friends tried to lead her away.

He would miss Lizzie. Who wouldn’t? Even in just one night he’d seen that she was a wildcat with a heart of gold.

‘My father’s innocent! Innocent!’ she yelled back at him with every ounce of strength she possessed.

‘Your father’s been found guilty on all counts,’ he countered mildly, ‘and by the highest court in this land.’

Breaking free of her friends, Lizzie spun round to face him. ‘Because of you and your kind!’ she raged, in a tone that was closer to an agonised howl than it was to speech. ‘I’ll never forgive you for this! Do you hear me? Never!’

He smiled faintly as he turned away. ‘Never say never, Lizzie.’

CHAPTER ONE (#u10a103ea-f9ef-5b61-8ae5-b4ced8b09bdb)

‘DAMON GAVROS! LONG TIME, no see!’

Damon Gavros! Lizzie felt weak. Surely there had to be more than one Damon Gavros in London? She could hardly breathe as Stavros, her excitable boss, burst into the busy restaurant kitchen where Lizzie was ploughing her way through a mountain of dirty dishes at the sink. No. There was no mistake. She didn’t have to turn around to know it was the Damon Gavros when she could feel Damon in every fibre of her being. Was it really eleven years since they had last seen each other?

Steadying herself against the sink, Lizzie braced herself for an encounter she had never expected to happen—least of all here in the safety of her workplace.

Images of Damon started flashing behind her eyes. Impossibly compelling and dangerously intuitive, Damon Gavros was the only man to have made an impact on Lizzie so powerful that she had never forgotten him—never could forget him. And for more reasons than the fact that Damon was the most charismatic man she’d ever met.

‘Welcome! Welcome!’ Stavros was calling out on a steadily mounting wave of hysteria. ‘Damon! Please! Come in to the kitchen! Follow me! I want to introduce you to everyone...’

Lizzie remained rooted to the spot. Head down, with her fists planted in the warm suds, she drew a deep, shuddering breath as a spurt of the old anger flashed through her. Standing outside that courtroom in London eleven years ago, she had never felt more alone in her life, and she had cursed Damon Gavros to hell and back for being part of the root cause of that upheaval.

Now she could see that Damon and his father had done a good thing, and that the fault had rested squarely with Lizzie’s father, who had defrauded so many people out of their life savings. At the time she had been too confused and angry and upset to see that. It had only been when she had returned home and her stepmother had thrown her out of the house that Lizzie had finally accepted that her father was a crook and her stepmother was a heartless, greedy woman.

And Damon...?

She’d never forgotten Damon.

But where had he been for the past eleven years?

He certainly hadn’t been part of Lizzie’s life. Not that she held him responsible for anything except his absence. In fact she thanked him for making her life infinitely richer. She wondered what he would think of her now. She’d been such a rebel then, and now she was conventional to a fault. Would that make him suspicious?

Her body trembled with awareness as he drew closer. She hadn’t felt this affected by a man in eleven long years. She’d sworn off sex after Damon—and not just because no man could compare with him.

Damon and Stavros were growing closer to the dishwashing section of the busy kitchen, and the warmth between the two men reminded Lizzie of the warmth between Damon and his father after the trial. How she’d envied them their closeness. To have someone to confide in had seemed such an impossible dream. Looking back, she could see now that the court case had done her a favour. She had learned to stand on her own feet and now, though she didn’t have much, she earned her living honestly and she was free.

‘Lizzie!’ Stavros’s voice was full of happy anticipation as he called out her name across the banks of stainless steel counters. ‘May I present a very good friend of mine, recently returned from his travels...? Damon Gavros!’

She turned reluctantly.

There were a few seconds of absolute silence, and then Damon said, ‘I believe we know each other.’

Damon’s voice slicked through Lizzie’s veins like the slide of warm cream. It was so familiar she felt as if they’d never been apart.

‘That’s right,’ she agreed, trembling inside as she made sure to give Stavros a reassuring smile.

‘I’ll leave you two together,’ Stavros said tactfully, practically rubbing his hands with glee at the thought that he had finally managed to play Cupid.

‘It’s been a long time, Damon.’

‘Indeed it has,’ he agreed, scrutinising her with matching interest.

She felt vulnerable. She was hardly kitted out in her armour of choice for this reunion, in rubber overshoes, with an unflattering overall over her old clothes and an elasticated protective hat covering her wilful red curls, and her face was no doubt red and sweaty from the steam of the kitchen.