an effort, Emma sucked in a deep breath in an attempt to control her ragged breathing but she could do nothing about the wild acceleration of her heart. ‘I was married to a man who abused drugs and alcohol, Mr Constantinides,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I had no idea of that when we met. I was very young and I made a mistake. Have you never made a mistake?’
Grimly, Zak shook his head. Not with relationships he hadn’t, no—he made sure of that. And the occasional slip-up in business had been far too minor to ever qualify as a true mistake. But this was different. Very different. He was known for his old-fashioned and traditional values and he was proud of them. And a woman who had lived the life that Emma Geary had lived would certainly never be welcomed into the arms of his family.
He began to pull a series of photos from an envelope on his desk and Emma’s face blanched as she fixed her eyes on them. They were old photos. Very old photos—but she recognised them instantly.
‘Recognise these?’ drawled Zak Constantinides.
She forced herself to look at the image which was on top of the gleaming pile he had spread over the desk, like a croupier fanning out a pack of cards. It was of her and Louis on their wedding day.
The press had gone mad—but then, it had been a big story at the time. A nineteen-year-old nobody marrying a rock-star more than twice her age. Emma flinched as she looked at her face in the photo, marvelling at how young she’d been. She’d worn a garland of wildflowers in her hair and a floaty dress of silk chiffon. Her blond hair had hung almost to her waist and the overall effect had been that of some kind of flower fairy who had wandered into the city by mistake. Or at least, that was what Louis had said. He’d even written a song about it on their honeymoon, between slugs of the bourbon bottle, which was never far from his side.
‘Of course I recognise it,’ she said flatly, her fingers straying to the other pictures—forcing herself to confront them as if to demonstrate to Zak Constantinides that she wasn’t afraid.
But she was afraid. She was afraid of the pain which the past could still provoke. She studied the familiar images of her and Louis leaving restaurants—with her supporting her husband and trying desperately not to let the waiting press see his lurching stagger. Some of the shots were of the interiors of once-iconic nightclubs, which had long since disappeared. The blonde girl in the thigh-skimming dress dancing wildly on the podium now seemed like a stranger to her. She had tried so hard to please Louis. To be what he’d wanted her to be. It was what her mother told her that men desired. It was only afterwards, at the sordid end to the marriage, that Emma realised that her mother was the worst possible role model she could have adopted.
‘You must have gone to a lot of trouble to get these,’ she said, praying that her voice wouldn’t betray her with a tremble. ‘It’s nearly ten years ago.’
‘Ten years is nothing—and information is always easy to find if you look in the right places.’ Slightly appalled at his own sudden jerk of lust, he pushed one of the photos out of sight—the one which showed the disturbingly distracting image of her shaking her bead-covered bottom in time to the music. He swallowed. ‘But you must admit that you aren’t my number-one choice as prospective sister-in-law.’
She saw the sudden tightening of his features and knew that she could not let him browbeat her like this. ‘Do you always assume that marriage is on the cards whenever your brother dates? Isn’t that what’s known as jumping the gun?’
‘I base my assumptions on experience,’ he responded acidly. ‘And I know women well enough to understand the lure of vast amounts of money. The Constantinides name is usually enough to guarantee instant devotion from the opposite sex.’
‘Even in your case?’ she flared.
‘Even in mine,’ he conceded.
She heard the sarcasm in his voice and was just about to leap to her own defence. To tell him that he’d got it completely wrong and that she and his brother were nothing more than good friends. But something stopped her and she recognised it as the desire to want to hurt him back. To attack him as he had just attacked her by delving into her painful past. It bothered him to think she was in a relationship with his brother, did it? Well, good! Let it bother him a bit more until she had the chance to speak to Nat herself.
‘It’s very difficult for me to tell you exactly what I think of your outrageous accusations since you happen to be my employer,’ she said quietly. ‘And you seem draconian enough to try to fire me if I speak my mind.’
‘On the contrary.’ He scowled. ‘Your English employment laws seem designed to protect the employee instead of the boss and therefore I can’t give myself the satisfaction of firing you unless you do something so outrageous that you really give me no choice.’
Briefly, she wondered whether hurling the pottery jar of pencils at his smug face would qualify as grounds for dismissal, but she kept her hands planted firmly in her lap.
‘Then, unfortunately, you seem stuck with me,’ she responded and saw his face darken in response to the studied sweetness in her voice.
‘Unfortunately, I do,’ he agreed, and leaned back in his chair. ‘Unless we could come to some mutually agreeable arrangement?’
‘Such as?’
He shrugged. ‘I could offer to buy out your contract?’
Emma made her eyes widen even though inside she was burning with rage. Did he think his money could buy him whatever he wanted? ‘Make it worth my while to leave, you mean?’
‘Of course.’ He wondered how much it would take to guarantee her departure and his voice dipped as he now found himself around the familiar territory of the negotiating table. ‘I can be very generous if I need to be.’
His quiet boast appalled her but what appalled her even more was her body’s instinctive response to the velvet caress of his voice. For a moment her breasts began to prickle in a way which was alien to her and, disbelievingly, she acknowledged it as the ache of sexual desire.
Self-recrimination flooded through her and Emma prayed that it would dull the hot, melting tightness in her stomach. How could she possibly find him sexy—him of all people? She didn’t find any men attractive—and especially not the kind of men who thought so little of women in general and her in particular that he thought he could just buy her out, like some sort of commodity.
For a moment she was tempted to play along with him. To name a sum outrageous enough to shock him and then to tell him that she had been testing him. But instinct told her to proceed carefully. Already, Zak Constantinides didn’t like or approve of her and, while she wasn’t looking for either of those things from him, she’d be unwise to make him an outright enemy, unless she had some sort of industrial death wish.
Instead she sat back in her chair and fixed him with a steady look—because she’d seen off worse things in her time than some bullying tycoon with a mistaken belief that he had the right to vet his brother’s friends. ‘I hate to disappoint you, Mr Constantinides, but I’m perfectly happy with my job—and as long as I continue to perform it to everyone’s satisfaction, then I’d prefer to carry on just as I am, if it’s all the same with you.’
Staring into her pale green eyes, Zak saw the light of determination and recognised that she had a streak of stubbornness which would not be swayed by the force of his will. She was an employee and she was a woman and she was daring to defy him! And yet his sense of outrage was pacified by the prospect of a looming battle—for he liked nothing more than a fight.
Because he liked to win. He enjoyed the sweet taste of victory. Wasn’t that what drove his ambition—what fired up his constant need to acquire new businesses? For a man in his position, there was little that could not be had for the asking—or the taking—yet it seemed that Miss Emma Geary was determined to hang on to her job, even though he wanted her to go.
For a brief moment he thought of sacking her and daring her to sue him—for he had never known anything but triumph