belly quivered. She knew some close colleagues called him Aristotle, and she’d heard the beautiful blonde requesting breathily to speak to ’Ari’ when she’d phoned before the dramatics this morning, but the thought of addressing this man by his first name was having a seismic effect on her whole body.
‘Very well,’ she finally managed to get out. But couldn’t bring herself to actually say it.
Aristotle sat down as if he hadn’t just invited her to call him something far more intimate than Sir, or Mr Levakis, and proceeded to dictate with such lightning speed that it took all of Lucy’s wits and concentration to keep up. In truth she was glad of the distraction, but by the time he was done her head was ringing.
He dismissed her with a brusque flick of his hand, his head already buried in some paperwork, and Lucy stood up. She was at the door when she heard a curt, ‘Oh, and see to it, please, that Augustine Archer is sent something…’
Lucy turned around, and the look of dark cynicism she saw on Levakis’ face made her draw in a breath.
‘…suitable.’
Lucy looked at him, nonplussed for a moment. Her previous boss had never made such a request. Did he mean…?
As if he could read her mind, Aristotle said ascerbically, ‘That’s exactly what I mean. I don’t care who you call, just make sure it’s expensive, anything but a ring, and send it over with a note. I’ll e-mail you the address.’
Lucy’s hand was clutching the door, and she didn’t know why this feeling of something like disappointment was curling through her. Anyone with half a brain cell would have been able to tell her this was exactly how a man like him operated. And wasn’t it confirmation of another rumour about him? How well he compensated his lovers? But still…he wasn’t even taking the time to compose a note himself.
She forced herself to sound non-committal. ‘How would you like the note to read?’
He shrugged one broad shoulder and smiled sardonically, cruelly. ‘Make it up. What kind of platitude would you like to hear from a man who has just dumped you?’ His mouth twisted even more. ‘I think it’s safe to say that someone like Ms Archer will throw away the card and move straight to the main prize, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Just keep it as impersonal as possible.’
Shock at his cold words impacted Lucy right in her belly. Her face must have given something away, because Aristotle lounged back in his chair and looked at her with a dangerous gleam in those fascinating green eyes.
‘You don’t approve of my methods?’
Lucy could feel a tide of heat climb up from her chest. She alternately shook and nodded her head, and some garbled words came out. ‘Not at all…’ She realised what she’d said and groaned inwardly when she saw a flash of something dark cross his face. She could not let her own personal opinion of his behaviour jeopardise this job. Too much now depended on her wages.
She gestured clumsily. ‘I mean, I have no problem doing as you suggest. Your methods…are your methods. It’s not for me to judge.’
He sat up and raised a brow, and Lucy wondered dismally how on earth they had got onto this. She wanted to be back outside, with a wall and door between them, catching her breath and restoring her equilibrium, not discussing how best to let his mistress down.
But he said, ‘So you admit there is something to judge, then?’
Lucy shook her head, drowning in heat now. ‘No—look, I’m sorry, I’m not being very articulate. I’ll do as you ask and make sure that the accompanying note is appropriate.’ She added hurriedly, ‘I can show it to you before I send it…?’
He shook his head and his face became impassive, hard. Lucy stood there for another moment, not sure what to do and then he bit out,
‘That’ll be all.’
Stung, and more than mortified, Lucy mumbled something incoherent and fled, shutting the door behind her. Amidst the embarrassment, anger surged—why was she surprised or, worse, disappointed? She’d seen this kind of behaviour from men all her life.
But still, what an absolute—She halted her racing thoughts as she sat behind her desk and fought to steady her breathing and hammering heart. The last five minutes was the closest she’d come to a personal discussion with her new boss. She should have just bowed her head and walked out. She cursed her expressive face. Her mother had always told her it would get her into trouble. And hadn’t it just? Her inherent distaste for his coldly generous dismissive treatment of his ex-mistress hadn’t been well hidden enough. But the truth was it had tapped into a deeply buried pain, a very familiar pain. She’d witnessed the other side of someone on the receiving end of that treatment. Over and over again.
Lucy shuddered inwardly when she woke her computer from sleep and struggled to concentrate on work. Aristotle’s cynical view of how Ms Archer would receive his gift was no doubt spot-on; hadn’t she witnessed her own mother reduced to that level after years of similar treatment? Although Augustine Archer didn’t strike her as the kind of woman who had to survive on hand-outs. No, this was a different league. Lucy’s soft mouth tightened as bile rose from her belly. That kind of so-called main prize would have been just the kind of thing her mother would have used to pay for Lucy’s school uniform for another year—the sort of thing that had financed their lives.
Lucy forced her anger down. She had to think of her boss purely in professional terms. What he did or how he acted personally was none of her business. She didn’t have to like him; she just had to work for him.
Thank goodness she’d forged a different path. She would never be beholden to any man or, worse, held in his sexual or financial thrall. She’d worked too hard and her mother had sacrificed too much to make sure she avoided exactly that scenario. Just as her computer screen came back to life and she saw her bespectacled face momentarily reflected on the dark surface she felt unmitigated relief that she need never fear the kind of attention her mother and women like Augustine Archer courted. She was safe from all of that.
Aristotle watched the closed door for an inordinate amount of time. Heat still coursed through his body—heat that confounded him and every effort he made to try and dampen it. All he could see in his mind’s eye was the sway of that well-rounded bottom as she’d stopped by the door, and how he’d blurted out the first thing that had come into his head, as if he’d had to stop her, not let her leave.
He flung himself back in his seat and raked a hand through unruly hair, unusually diverted from work. He cursed the fact again that he’d had to let Augustine go at this point in negotiations. He briefly considered wooing her back, but his fists clenched in rejection of that idea. He would never debase himself by grovelling to a woman—not for anything.
He considered the request he’d just made of Lucy; he’d always made the call to a jewellers himself before, and would instruct them to compose a suitably impersonal note. Usually it wasn’t even a note—just his name. A clear indication that whatever he and the particular woman had shared was over and she shouldn’t come calling again. And invariably they knew not to. Few were as impertinent as Augustine Archer, confronting him directly. His mouth twisted in recognition of the fact that as he got older and remained single he represented some kind of irresistible challenge to those women.
He diverted his thoughts from an area he didn’t want to investigate: that of having to contemplate giving up his freedom, which he knew would be inevitable at some stage. The future was unavoidable. He would have to find a suitable wife and produce an heir, purely to protect all that he was now putting in place from the greedy clutches of others.
The prospect evoked no more emotion in him than mild uninterest and irritation. He’d long ago learnt the lesson of what marriage really meant—at the age of five, when his father had introduced Helen Savakis as his new stepmother and she’d quickly shown him the cold hatred she had for a son who wasn’t her own. Whatever dim and distant memories Ari might have had of his mother, who’d died when he was