The Greek Millionaire's Secret Child. Catherine Spencer

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СКАЧАТЬ explaining that you might not care for the new bed he ordered. He’s afraid you’ll think he was interfering.”

      “He was. I broke my hip, not my brain. I’ll decide what I do and don’t need.”

      “Not as long as I’m in charge.”

      “Don’t boss me around, girl. I won’t put up with it.”

      “Yes, you will,” she said equably. “That’s why you hired me.”

      “I can fire you just as easily, and have you on a flight back to Vancouver as early as tomorrow.”

      Recognizing the empty threat for what it really was, she hid a smile. Exhaustion and pain had taken their toll, but by morning he’d be in a better frame of mind. “Yes, sir, Mr. Leonidas,” she returned smartly, and swung the wheelchair toward the bedroom. “Until then, let me do my job.”

      Niko had seized the first opportunity to vacate the premises, she noticed, and could have slapped herself for the pang of disappointment that sprouted despite her best efforts to quell it. The faithful Georgios, however, remained on the scene, anxious and willing to help wherever he could. Even so, by the time Pavlos had managed a light meal and was settled comfortably for the night, darkness had fallen.

      Damaris, the housekeeper, showed Emily upstairs to the suite prepared for her. Decorated in subtle shades of ivory and slate-blue, it reminded her of her bedroom at home, although the furnishings here were far grander than anything she could afford. Marble floors, a Savonnerie rug and fine antiques polished to a soft gleam exemplified wealth, good taste and comfort.

      A lady’s writing desk occupied the space between double French doors leading to a balcony. In front of a small blue-tiled fireplace was a fainting couch, its brocade upholstery worn to satin softness, its once-vibrant colors faded by time. A glass-shaded lamp spilled mellow light, and a vase of lilies on a table filled the room with fragrance.

      Most inviting of all, though, was the four-poster bed, dressed in finest linens. Almost ten thousand kilometers, and over sixteen hours of travel with its inevitable delays, plus the added stress of her patient’s condition, had made serous inroads on her energy, and she wanted nothing more than to lay her head against those snowy-white pillows, pull the soft coverlet over her body and sleep through to morning.

      A quick glance around showed that her luggage had been unpacked, her toiletries arranged in the bathroom and her robe and nightshirt laid out on the bench in front of the vanity. But so, to her dismay, was a change of underwear, and a freshly ironed cotton dress, one of the few she’d brought with her, hung in the dressing room connecting bathroom and bedroom. And if they weren’t indication enough that the early night she craved was not to be, Damaris’s parting remark drove home the point in no uncertain terms.

      “I have drawn a bath for you, Despinis Tyler. Dinner will be served in the garden room at nine.”

      Clearly daily protocol in the Leonidas residence was as elegantly formal as the villa itself, and the sandwich in her room, which Emily had been about to request, clearly wasn’t on the menu.

      The main floor was deserted when she made her way downstairs just a few minutes past nine, but the faint sound of music and a sliver of golden light spilling from an open door halfway down the central hall indicated where she might find the garden room.

      What she didn’t expect when she stepped over the threshold was to find that she wouldn’t be dining alone.

      A round glass-topped table, tastefully set for two, stood in the middle of the floor. A silver ice bucket and two cut-crystal champagne flutes glinted in the almost ethereal glow of dozens, if not hundreds, of miniature white lights laced among the potted shrubs lining the perimeter of the area.

      And the final touch? Niko Leonidas, disgracefully gorgeous in pale gray trousers and matching shirt, which together probably cost more than six months’ mortgage payments on her town house, leaned against an ornately carved credenza.

      She was sadly out of her element, and surely looked it. She supposed she should be grateful her dinner companion wasn’t decked out in black tie.

      “I wasn’t aware you were joining me for dinner,” she blurted out, the inner turmoil she thought she’d conquered raging all over again at the sight of him.

      He plucked an open bottle of champagne from the ice bucket, filled the crystal flutes and handed one to her. “I wasn’t aware I needed an invitation to sit at my father’s table.”

      “I’m not suggesting you do. You have every right—”

      “How kind of you to say so.”

      He’d perfected the art of withering pleasantries, she decided, desperately trying to rein in her swimming senses. The smile accompanying his reply hovered somewhere between derision and scorn, and left her feeling as gauche as she no doubt sounded. “I didn’t mean to be rude, Mr. Leonidas,” she said, her discomfiture increasing in direct proportion to his suave assurance. “I’m surprised, that’s all. I assumed you’d left the house. I understand you have your own place in downtown Athens.”

      “I do—and we Greeks, by the way, aren’t big on honorifics. Call me Niko. Everyone else does.”

      She didn’t care what everyone else did. Finding herself alone with him left her barely able to string two words together without putting her foot in her mouth. Resort to calling him Niko, and she’d probably manage to stuff the other one in next to it.

      “At a loss for words, Emily?” he inquired, evil laughter shimmering in his beautiful green eyes. “Or is it the prospect of sharing a meal with me that has you so perturbed?”

      “I’m not perturbed,” she said with as much dignity as she could bring to bear. “Just curious about why you’d choose to be here, instead of in your own home. From all accounts, you and Pavlos don’t usually spend much time together.”

      “Nevertheless, I am his son, and the last I heard, my choosing to spend an evening under his roof doesn’t amount to trespassing. Indeed, given the present circumstances, I consider it my duty to make myself more available. Do you have a problem with that?”

      Hardly about to admit that she found him a distraction she wasn’t sure she could handle, she said, “Not at all, as long as you don’t interfere with my reasons for being here.”

      “And exactly what are those reasons?”

      She stared at him. His eyes weren’t glimmering with laughter now; they were as cold and hard as bottle-green glass. “What kind of question is that? You know why I’m here.”

      “I know that my father has become extremely dependent on you. I know, too, that he’s a very vulnerable old man who happens also to be very rich.”

      She sucked in an outraged breath at the implication in his words. “Are you suggesting I’m after his money?”

      “Are you?”

      “Certainly not,” she snapped. “But that’s why you’re hanging around here, isn’t it? Not because you’re worried about your father, but to keep an eye on me and make sure I don’t get my hooks into him or his bank account.”

      “Not quite. I’m ‘hanging around’ as you so delicately put it, to look out СКАЧАТЬ