opined the minute the two girls were alone. ‘You’re doing her a favour.’
Maddie grimaced. ‘It was a fair comment. But with my skirt in the wash I only have jeans left to wear.’
‘I bet she’s just jealous of your looks,’ Stacy contended with scorn. ‘Those men walking out of the lift couldn’t take their eyes off you, and she didn’t like it.’
Maddie went red with embarrassment. ‘I think she was just uptight about the meeting.’
‘You should make the most out of what you’ve got,’ Stacy told her impatiently. ‘With your face and body, I’d be coining it in as a glamour model or a lap dancer.’
Inwardly cringing at the concept of that amount of naked exposure, Maddie said nothing. Sometimes she thought she had been born into the wrong body, for she was very uncomfortable with the masculine notice awakened by her hourglass curves.
As she crouched down to remove a china tea-set from the cupboard where it was stored, Annabel thrust wide the door to issue further instructions. ‘Mr Petrakos will be present at the meeting. When you enter the boardroom, serve the refreshments quietly and quickly.’
Striding past in advance of his personal staff, Giannis caught a glimpse of the redhead just before the boardroom kitchen door flipped shut on her. In that split second a razor-sharp image of her imprinted itself on his brain: bright hair that gleamed like beaten copper and gold against her pale alabaster skin and fell in splendour halfway down her spine; the luscious pout of voluptuous breasts that segued down into an improbably tiny waist and then flared out again into the ripe fullness of a very feminine derrière.
A powerful wave of testosterone-charged response assailed Giannis. He always controlled his sexuality, and he was startled by the heady rush of blood to his groin. He assumed his response was a rude reminder of a private truth: he liked women with a little more flesh than the very slender models who invariably came his way. Even so, that disruptive surge of sexual arousal irritated him, and he banished the image of her from his mind. Most probably, he acknowledged, he just needed a woman.
Taut with nerves at the prospect of finally seeing Giannis Petrakos again, Maddie immediately doubled up the amount of coffee in the flask she was preparing. Very strong and very sweet: that was how he liked it. For just a moment memories took over and she smiled, but she blinked back the tears that were pricking at the back of her eyes.
Under cover of the spirited dialogue taking place round the vast conference table, she eased the trolley into the boardroom and gently closed the door. Only then did she allow herself to look in the direction of the male poised by the windows, and even though she had promised herself that she would simply steal one tiny glance, she was transfixed. In the tailored perfection of a black pinstripe business suit, he looked downright magnificent.
If anything, Maddie conceded rather dizzily, he was even more staggeringly beautiful than when she had first seen him. Nine years had eradicated all trace of the boy from his lean strong face, and his powerful muscular frame had filled out. But he still held his proud dark head at an imperious angle that she instantly recognized, and his eyes were unforgettable. As dark as bitter aloes and set deep below straight ebony brows. His gaze was coolly trained on the current speaker. He had incredible eyes: in certain lights or when he laughed they were the same colour as gilded bronze.
‘Why aren’t you serving?’ someone hissed in her ear.
Maddie unfroze, and jerked as though she had been slapped. As she reached for the first cup and saucer Giannis Petrakos glanced at her, and she stilled again. Her tummy flipped and her heart began to thump, making it hard for her to breathe. For the space of a heartbeat her surroundings vanished. All she was conscious of was the unfamiliar heaviness of her breasts, the dryness of her mouth, and the almost painful little twist of sensation making its presence felt low in her pelvis. She lowered her lashes in an instant of genuine confusion. It shook her that it took an almost physical effort to force her attention back to her task.
Coffee—strong, black, sweet, she reminded herself, while she wondered what on earth had come over her. And then, guessing, she felt a giant wave of shamed pink colour spreading up from her throat all the way over her dismayed face to her hairline. My goodness, she would never dare to look at him again! Dragging in a jerky breath, she poured his coffee, almost absentmindedly added four heaped spoonfuls of sugar, stirred it, and forced her feet in his direction.
Giannis had been bored, but now his ennui had fled. Had he not seen her again, he was sure he would not have thought of her. But her presence a scant twenty feet away put paid to that possibility. In a fluid movement he sat down at the table. Was she a private caterer? Or a member of the caterer’s staff? Looking at her, he speedily lost interest in the finer details of her identity. Although she was decidedly pocket-sized in the height department, she had a gorgeous face, and the lushness of her full pink lips was a fitting match for the striking symmetry of her abundant curves. Her eyes were the colour of the green glass he had collected as a kid from the seashore. His shapely mouth curled as he recalled his exquisite mother’s ridicule at receiving such a childish gift, but when he read the tiny curvaceous redhead’s reverent gaze that unpleasant recollection of his disturbing childhood totally vanished.
Maddie set down his coffee with a hand that was shaking so badly he put out his own to steady her wrist and ensure there was not an accident.
‘Be careful,’ Giannis admonished.
It was only necessary to maintain the contact for seconds, but it was long enough for the faint floral scent of her fair skin to flare his nostrils. And that fast he got hot and hard again. In the startled quick upward glance she gave him he registered just how vulnerable she was. So close to him, she scarcely dared to breathe, and he found that knowledge incredibly exciting. He imagined tugging her down on to his lap, opening the shirt stretched to capacity over her ripe breasts and using his mouth and his hands to toy with the prominent crests that made faint indentations through the fine cotton. The strength of that erotic imagery surprised him, and he suppressed the fantasy with fierce disdain. Since when had he hit on the equivalent of a tea lady? He took a sip of the strong sweet brew in his cup, but the tension in his aroused body stubbornly refused to subside.
Warm all over, and trembling, Maddie backed away. What a clown she felt! What must he think of her for staring at him like that? Naturally he had noticed her gaping at him like a silly schoolgirl. How could he not have? He had braced her wrist with his fingers when he saw the cup wobbling on the saucer and told her off. A sidewise glance reassured her that nobody else appeared to have noticed his intervention, or his reproof. Relieved, but mortified by the poor showing she had made, she mustered her wits and hurried to serve the rest of the table.
‘This coffee is undrinkable,’ a man complained with a grimace, and was speedily backed up by his neighbour.
Consternation assailed Maddie.
‘On the contrary—it’s the first decent coffee I’ve had in this office,’ Giannis said in an impatient tone of dismissal. ‘Let’s get on with the presentation.’
More flustered than ever by the critical comments, Maddie was quick to respond to a harried signal from Annabel Holmes that urged her to speed up the delivery of refreshments. In her eagerness to do that, and to contrive an escape from the conference room, Maddie caught her foot on an exposed wire. Stumbling, she pitched forward on to the carpet, and the laptop computer that had been jerked off the table when she tripped crashed down with her.
For split second there was total silence. Giannis studied the prone redhead with sardonic disbelief. She looked like an exquisite work of art but, being human, she had a fatal flaw: on the move, she was an accident waiting to happen.
‘Why didn’t you look where you were going?’ one of the executives demanded in a tone of anguish.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Maddie gasped, staring in dismay at the computer.
‘The USB memory stick has broken in half,’ the man groaned, crouching down to assess the damage. ‘I’ll have to get another copy of the presentation e-mailed over, sir.’