Unworldly Secretary, Untamed Greek. KIM LAWRENCE
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to earn her indignation—on this occasion.
Also she was guessing that he had limited experience of people, especially lowly secretaries like her, yelling at him.
She wasn’t totally sure why she had made him the target of all her pent-up anger and frustration; the only thing he had done was notice she was miserable—he was the only person to notice.
It was Beth’s turn to look astonished when, after a long pause, instead of blasting back with one of his legendary icy put-downs, he simply suggested, ‘It might be an idea if you slept on this decision.’
Had his brother slept with her? Theo’s expression froze and he didn’t breathe for a full thirty seconds.
This rather startling explanation for the tears and tantrums fitted. How many times had he told Andreas that mixing romance and the workplace was the perfect recipe for disaster?
An expletive was an expletive in any language and Beth, who had never seen anything make a dint in this ultra-controlled man’s composure, dropped her jaw as Theo swore, twitched the letter from her fingers and, after ripping it in half, tossed it in a waste paper basket.
‘While you are not indispensable—’ His sardonic smile flashed, the muscles in his jaw relaxing as he realised there was no way that Andreas would sleep with a woman who did not wear lipstick.
And Elizabeth Farley did not.
As Theo studied the surprisingly lush outline of her generous lips, he decided this was not a bad thing. Had she decided to highlight this particular natural asset, she might have proved a distraction for his easily distracted sibling, who might even have started wondering—this would have been a natural direction for any man’s thoughts to take—what other assets she might be hiding beneath her buttoned collars and frumpy A-line skirts.
‘—I think you are good at what you do,’ he observed, continuing to study her lips.
For the second time in minutes Beth was stunned into silence; she had not imagined he had noticed her any more than he noticed the office furniture and now he was expressing a grudging appreciation—or was he?
She still wasn’t sure.
Reluctantly, she met his eyes. ‘You do?’
‘Am I wrong?’
Normally self-deprecating, Beth responded to the challenge glittering in his dark, heavy-lidded stare. ‘I am good at what I do.’
So good that, from what he had observed, this office would fall apart without her in it. What, he wondered with a fresh surge of irritation, had Andreas done or not done to bring this about?
Taking sex out of the equation, as he now felt sure he safely could, he wasn’t sure what was left.
A deep furrow formed between his brows as a possible answer occurred to him. ‘Have you had a better offer?’
Beth’s confused gaze lifted from the waste paper bin containing the remains of the letter she had redrafted three times already; fortunately, all she had to do was print out another. ‘Offer?’
‘Do not be coy,’ he advised, a shade of impatience creeping into his abrupt manner. ‘Has someone approached you?’
‘For a job, you mean?’ Her eyes widened at the startling suggestion. Did he really think she’d been headhunted?
He angled a questioning brow and Beth shook her head. ‘No, I haven’t.’
His eyes narrowed speculatively as his dark glance swept across her face. ‘If challenge is a problem?’ She was obviously intelligent, though the blank way she was looking at him at the moment suggested otherwise. ‘If you are not feeling stretched with the work here?’
Theo, who thrived on challenge himself, understood this frustration of boredom and recognised it in others. Many people enjoyed being in a job that they could do on autopilot, but it was possible this woman was not one of those.
‘Do you not think it more sensible to discuss the situation with Andreas before you make any rash decisions?’
The casual way he tossed the suggestion brought a mutinous sparkle to Beth’s eyes as she got to her feet, her chest heaving with indignation.
Did the man actually think she had made this decision without a great deal of soul-searching? She was in no position to walk away from any job, let alone one this well paid but the alternative was even less palatable.
It was one thing to fall for the boss; it was another entirely to find yourself expected to help him pick the engagement ring for his girlfriend. After finding herself in that situation the previous week, Beth knew that she did not have the masochistic leaning required for this situation, or this job, any longer.
It probably made her weak, stupid or both but it wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried to fall out of love with him!
‘I can’t do it!’ she yelled. ‘If I have to watch him—’
Encountering the expression of total amazement etched on Theo Kyriakis’s lean face, she dropped back into her chair and felt a mortified flush climb to her cheeks. ‘You’d better go in,’ she mumbled, allowing her hair to fall in a concealing curtain around her face.
Conscious of his silent presence, it felt like an age to Beth before he responded. The breath left her body in a sigh of relief as she heard the interconnecting door open.
Theo’s thoughts still very much occupied by the baffling behaviour of Elizabeth Farley, the unexpected passion in her outburst and the sexiness of her quivering lips, it took him a few seconds to fully assimilate the scene he walked into.
His brother in a passionate clinch with the woman he had once been engaged to.
It was a moment of déjà vu—but not quite. On the previous occasion he had walked in on her in another man’s arms, he had not been the intended target audience; it did not seem a big leap to assume that this time he was!
The scene was strikingly similar but there were significant differences—in both the scene and his reaction to it.
Last time had involved naked flesh but, happily, his brother and Ariana were both fully dressed. Last time, his illusions had been shattered. He no longer had illusions, romantic or otherwise, which meant he could view the scene with an objectivity—tinged, admittedly, by distaste—he had not been capable of six years ago.
Six years ago, he’d been romantic and optimistic enough to consider himself the luckiest man in the world; he had met his soulmate—back then, he had firmly believed that such things existed—he had been in love.
And it had not been unpleasant to be the object of his friends’ envy—he had a beautiful bride-to-be.
She was still beautiful and his brother clearly thought so too.
Was it genetic or was making a total fool of yourself with this woman a rite of passage that all Kyriakis men had to experience? If this was indeed so, it was a rite of passage that he had personally passed with flying colours! But no experience, however humiliating, was wasted and he had learnt from it.
In his professional life Theo had always worked on the premise that everyone had an angle, an agenda; now, thanks to Ariana, he had extended this attitude very successfully to his personal life.
He continued to enjoy sex—it was, after all, as much of a basic need as eating—but he no longer expected or wanted any mystical connection. He sometimes wondered how long he would have gone on believing the romantic fantasy he had bought into had not fate in the guise of a cancelled flight stepped in—the same fate that had brought him to the open door of his fiancée’s apartment at the same moment as her much older ex-husband, Carl Franks.
Theo did not anticipate the time would ever come but if, by some cruel twist of fate, or possibly a blow to the head, he ever found himself in a situation where he was tempted to express his carnal