A Deal with Demakis

“And you haven’t?”

“It’s not about who had the roughest life or who deserves kindness more, Nikos. Faith, for all her lies and manipulation, has no one. No one who cares about her, who would worry about her. And I know what that loneliness feels like. I don’t expect you to—”

“I know enough,” he said with a cutting edge to his words. “You haven’t signed the contract yet. Now you have forced me to fly back to New York for the express purpose of accompanying you to Greece.”

Way to go, Lexi, exactly what you wanted to avoid.

“I’ve been busy.”

He leaned forward in a quick movement. For such a big man, he moved so quickly, so economically. But she must be getting used to him because she didn’t flinch when he ran the pads of his thumbs gently under her eyes. The heat of his body stole into hers. “Are you having second thoughts about dear Tyler? Have you decided that he’s not worth the money I’m paying?”

It almost sounded as if he wanted her to refuse to help him. Which couldn’t be true.

She had been unable to sleep a wink ever since the horrid contract had arrived on her doorstep and she had taken a look at the exorbitant amount of money listed there. More than she had ever seen in her lifetime or probably ever would.

Just remembering it had her heart thumping in her chest again.

Money she could use to take art classes instead of having to save every cent, money she could use to, for once, buy some decent clothes instead of shopping the teenager section at the department store or thrift store.

Money she could use to take a break from her energy-draining bartending job and invest her time in developing her comic book script and develop a portfolio without having to worry over her next meal and keeping a roof over her head.

The possibilities were endless.

Yet she also knew that anything she bought with that money would also bring with it an ick factor. It would feel sullied.

But there had been something more than her discomfort that had held her back from signing that contract.

The man studying her intently had volunteered it happily enough. In fact, he had seemed more than happy to make her his paid employee.

Because it gave him unmitigated power over her. That was it.

She stilled in place, her stomach diving at the realization. That’s what had given her the bad feeling.

If she had accompanied him without complaint, it meant she was doing him a favor. This way, she wasn’t. It seemed he was either prepared to blackmail her into it or pay her an enormous amount of money so that she was obligated to do as he ordered.

Rather than simply ask her for help. The lengths he would go to just so that his position wasn’t weak made her spine stiff with alarm.

“About that money,” she began, feeling divided in half within. She couldn’t even stop seeing the number in front of her, a bag with a dollar sign always hovering in her subconscious as though she was one of her own comic characters, “I was angry with you for manipulating me. I can’t accept—”

His long, tanned finger landed on her mouth, short-circuiting her already-weak thought process. Her skin tingled at the barest contact. “In the week that I have had the misfortune to make your acquaintance,” he said, leaning so close that she could smell his cologne along with the scent of his skin, “asking for money to look after Tyler was the one sensible, one clever thing you did.”

Really, she had no idea what he would say next or what would suddenly send him into a spiral of anger.

“Don’t embrace useless principles now and turn it down, Ms. Nelson. Think of something wild and reckless that you have always wanted but could never afford. Think of all the nice clothes you can buy.” His gaze moved over her worn T-shirt, and she fought the impulse to cover her meager chest. “Maybe even something that will upstage Venetia in front of your ex?”

Her mouth falling open wordlessly, she stared at him. Apparently, her new, standard expression in his company. “I have no intention of competing with Venetia, not that I harbor any delusion that I even could.”

Dark amusement glittered in his gaze. It was as if there was a one-way connection between them that let him see straight into her thoughts. Like Mr. Spock doing a Vulcan Mind Meld. If only it worked both ways. She had absolutely no knowledge about him, whereas he literally had a file on her.

He settled back into the seat and crossed his long legs. “You’re a strange little woman, Ms. Nelson. Are you telling me you didn’t think of using this opportunity to win him back? That the idea didn’t even occur to you?”

“No,” she repeated loudly, refusing to let him sully her motives. She would love to have her friend back, yes, but she wasn’t going to engage in some bizarre girl war with Venetia to get Tyler back the way he assumed.

“Fine. My pilot’s waiting. We leave in four hours.”

“I can’t leave in four hours,” Lexi said, anxiety and the energy it took to talk to him beginning to give her a headache. “I have to find someone to sublet my room, have to get the plumber to fix the kitchen before I leave and I promised Mrs. Goldman next door that I would help her after her surgery in two days. I can’t just up and leave because your sister can’t bear the thought of not being the center of Tyler’s universe for a few more days.”

He shrugged—a careless, elegant movement of those broad shoulders. “I don’t care how many things you had lined up to do for your parasitic friends or how much you were planning to bend over backward for the whole world, Ms. Nelson. I won’t wait anymore.”

She frowned. “I don’t bend over back—”

His gaze sliced through her words. “You’re the worst kind of pushover.”

She slumped against the seat, bone-deep exhaustion taking away her ability to offer even token protest. She shouldn’t be hurt by his clinical, disparaging words. But she was.

And the fact that his words could even affect her only proved him right.

How could she feel bad about what a stranger, someone as ruthless as Nikos Demakis thought about her?

“Your room at the apartment will go nowhere. If there’s anything else you need help with—” his gaze lingered on her clothes again “—something that is solely your concern, your problem, I can have my assistant at your disposal.”

“If I don’t agree?”

He shrugged. “Your agreement or the lack of it doesn’t play into it. The choice is whether you travel as my guest or my captive.”

“That is kidnapping.”

He plucked a couple of pages from his case and pushed it toward her along with a legal pad and a pen. “It’s hard to admit, but I see that I did this all wrong.”

“What?”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His gaze solemn, he blinked. Really, no single man should be allowed to be so gorgeous. “I should have appeared on your doorstep with my heart in my hands, pleaded my sister’s case, begged you to help, tried to become your best friend. Maybe talk about my own horrible childhood, pretend to be on my death bed—”

“Okay, okay, fine. You’ve made your point,” Lexi said loudly, cutting off his mocking words. She had always liked to help if she could. She would not let the manipulative man in front of her make her feel stupid about it.

Pulling her gaze away from him, she scanned the document again. She’d had the contract looked over by a paralegal friend, but there was no discounting the hollow fear in her gut.

She would be in his personal employ for two months and would be paid fifty thousand dollars for it, half now, and half when he deemed her job done, subject to his sole discretion.

She was being paid an exorbitant amount of money to spend time with Tyler on a Greek island, the likes of which she had no other hope of seeing in this lifetime.

Yet as the limo came to a stop on her street in the cheap neighborhood of her apartment complex, she couldn’t shake off a feeling that there was an unwritten price that she would have to pay.

And she had no idea what that was.

CHAPTER FOUR

NIKOS CLOSED HIS laptop, and refused the stewardess’s offer of a drink. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in four days now. He had finalized the deal with Nathan Ramirez; he finally had a solution for Venetia’s problem. And yet he was restless with a weird kind of pent-up energy simmering just below his skin.