Heiress's Defiance
Autor:in
Lynn Raye Harris
Gelesen
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Kapitel
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HarlequinChapter One
“TAKE CARE OF it now,” Christos Giatrakos said into the phone, his voice hard and clipped and way sexier than Lucilla would have liked. Oh, how she hated Christos! And yet, sitting here in his office, waiting for him to finish whatever dictatorial phone call he was currently making, her belly churned with heat at the mere sound of that voice.
Certainly it did not help that he looked more like a male underwear model than a CEO. Christos should have been strutting his stuff on a runway in Milan, dressed in nothing but his tightie-whities, instead of sitting in what should be her chair—at what should be her desk—and making everyone’s lives miserable.
Especially her life. She’d worked too damn hard and too damn long, and sacrificed too damn much, to have this Greek god of an upstart usurping her position in her own family company.
Lucilla ran a hand over her sleek twist, making sure her hair wasn’t out of place, and fumed. She wanted to get up and walk out, but she couldn’t let Christos see that he had that much power to anger her. He’d summoned her by email, as he so often did, and then forced her to cool her heels on his couch while he made phone calls.
She sat ramrod straight, with her tablet on her lap, scrolled through emails and pretended not to care that Christos was ignoring her. Her gaze took in the office that should have been hers. Christos hadn’t claimed the desk in the manner that she’d expected, but there were subtle differences—the way the computer sat at a precise angle, the pen—worth more than her monthly salary—perfectly positioned in line with the keyboard, and a small coin sitting just to the right of the pen. From where she was sitting she could only tell that the coin wasn’t English. The photographs that had once lined her father’s desk had been pushed back into the corner of the bookcase behind the desk. Her mother’s ancient edition of Aesop’s Fables was still in its usual position in the case, however.
“If you can’t get this done, then don’t call back. The Chatsfield has other suppliers, Ron. And I will not hesitate to use them.”
Christos put the phone back in the cradle with a firm click and muttered something in Greek. And then he looked up, hitting her with the full force of those icy blue eyes. Lucilla shrugged off the internal shiver making its way down her spine and met his gaze evenly.
“What is the problem with the Frost wedding reception this weekend?”
Lucilla’s insides boiled at his tone. No polite greeting, no reasonable query. Just a demand. And an insulting one at that.
“Problem? There is no problem, Christos.” She refused to call him Mr. Giatrakos, though he insisted on it from all the employees. Well, damn him, she wasn’t just any employee. She was the rightful CEO of this company and she refused to act subservient just because her father had chosen this man over her. Not happening.
His gaze did not soften. “I have heard there is a problem.”
At times like this, Lucilla wanted to wrap her hands around his gorgeous neck and squeeze. “Then you heard wrong.” She flipped through the schedule on her tablet and ran down the page of tasks for the Frosts. “The only thing that could have ever been considered a minor issue—and trust me, it is not an issue for us—is the seating arrangements for the bride’s mother and father. I have taken care of it.”
“And why would this have been an issue?”
“Because they are divorcing, acrimoniously as it happens, and Mr. Frost is attending with his new, much younger girlfriend. Something he should know better than to do but apparently does not.”
Christos’s eyes were chips of ice. “Lucca may have pulled off the coup of the century and made a success of the royal wedding in Preitalle, but this means now, more than ever, the world’s eye is upon us. And the Frosts’ wedding has the potential to explode in our faces, Lucilla. You will see that it does not.”
Lucilla stood and tried not to look flustered. Dammit. Every time he said her name, a heated shudder rolled through her. His accent wasn’t heavy, but it was definitely pronounced, and the way it rolled over the syllables of her name was too sensual, too disturbing. Yet he would not call her Ms. Chatsfield because she would not call him Mr. Giatrakos. In that respect, it was her own fault. If she didn’t like her name on his lips, she had no one to blame but herself.
“I have been seeing that things do not explode for quite some time. I will continue to do so, even when you are history.”
And he would be history, if she had anything to say about it. If Antonio came through with the hostile takeover of the Kennedy Group, they could prove to their father that they did not need Christos Giatrakos. However, given that Antonio had missed their meeting last week she was starting to worry.
Lucilla frowned. The only thing that bothered her about the scheme was Antonio himself. Although Antonio was living in this hotel, she wasn’t seeing him any more than she had over the past few years. And when she’d seen him this last time he’d looked…different somehow. More agitated and preoccupied.
Concern speared into her at the thought of her big brother, but she pushed it aside and concentrated on the man before her. If they could just get rid of Christos, life could be good again. They would all be happier when she and Antonio were in control of the family empire once more.
And that was a goal she intended to work tirelessly for.
One corner of Christos’s mouth lifted in a grin. It was not a friendly grin, however, and she cursed herself for showing her irritation yet again. Sometimes, she just could not help her reaction.
“I am not history at the moment, Lucilla mou, and you will do as you are told or face the consequences.”
Lucilla tried so hard to keep her tongue in check. But some things were impossible to stomach. “You have no control over me, Christos, no matter what you think. Yes, you control the Chatsfield empire, and you control access to my trust fund. But you won’t intimidate me the way you’ve intimidated my family.” She walked over and put her palms on his desk, leaned over until her eyes were at the same level as his. She was all in now, her emotions whipped to a furious froth that had been bubbling for weeks, ever since this man showed up and started giving orders like a despot.
“I won’t be bullied by the likes of you. You need me right here, doing what it is I do every day, or you will fail. I’ve been running this hotel for years. Fire me, and see what happens then. My father will send you packing without a shred of remorse once you fail to do whatever it is he thinks you’re going to do.”
Christos’s eyes glittered. He stood, very slowly, and Lucilla straightened. Even in her heels, she wasn’t as tall as he was. He looked down on her as if she were a bug beneath his custom shoe.
“You’ve been wanting to say that for a while, have you not?” His voice was mild, amused, and yet it also managed to be hard and unflinching.
Her heart raced, her skin heating from the inside out. Yes, she’d been holding it in, and yes, it felt good to finally say what she’d been thinking. But she also felt as if she’d committed an error. She’d admitted to the enemy that she cared very much about his elevation over her when what she really needed to do was be quiet and take him down from the inside.
She absolutely could not let him get wind of what she’d talked Antonio into doing.
Because she would take this arrogant Greek down. One way or the other, Christos Giatrakos’s reign would be short and sweet, a footnote in the history of the hotel chain. It still stung that her father had chosen this stranger over her, but she could not let her wounded feelings get in the way of what she had to do to win.
Yes, she should have kept her mouth shut. But she hadn’t, and now there was nothing to do but own it. Lucilla tilted her chin up. “I have indeed. You might be congratulating yourself on dispersing my siblings on your errands, but don’t think you’ll handle me quite so easily.”
His eyes slid over her then, and her stomach clenched. “I wouldn’t dream of handling you, Lucilla. But if I did, rest assured you would do as I wished. And you would enjoy every moment of it.”
Her heart lodged in her throat. Were they still talking about the hotel? Or about something else?
“You are a deluded man, Christos. I will never enjoy a moment with you. I despise you and wish you would crawl back into whatever hole you crawled out of.”
His expression changed then, went from coolly amused and arrogant to hard and cold and…resentful? Lucilla blinked. She had the impression she’d hurt him, but that could not be possible. Christos Giatrakos had no heart to wound.
His next words proved it. “I care not what you think of me, Lucilla mou. You are as spoiled and useless as the rest of your kind.” He held up a hand to stop any protests. “Oh, you play at working, and you do a good enough job in your duties as the director of guest services. You are correct that I need you, but make no mistake—if I have to fire you, I will. No one is indispensable to the running of this company, Lucilla. Not even you.”
“Or you,” she threw back at him.
One eyebrow lifted. “Or me. And that is as it should be. Any company that is so invested in the talents of a single person and cannot recover should that person die or leave is a very stupid company indeed. My goal is to make the Chatsfield number one in the luxury field again. But I do not expect that this company will not ever run without me, nor would I want it to. That, I believe, is the difference between us. You would see it fail out of spite. I would see it succeed.”
There was a pinch in her chest as she pulled in a sharp breath. Of all the arrogant assumptions. Yes, she wanted the Chatsfield to be number one again—but she didn’t think it took Christos to do it. She could have done it if her father had given her the chance. She still could. She would.
“I do not wish to see us fail at all. And I resent that you would think so.”
“Then grow up and act like it.” He flicked his hand. “And now if you will get out of my office, I have important work to do.”
Lucilla clutched her tablet tight to stop her from flinging it at his head. “As you command, O Lord of Everything.” She took two steps, then whirled back around to find him still watching her. “You won’t always be here, Christos. Enjoy the big corner office while you can.”
He lowered himself into the plush leather chair with a smile. Then the arrogant bastard had the nerve to lean back and put his feet on the ancient cherry desk.
“I am enjoying it very much, thank you. Now be a good girl and get to work.”
Lucilla stalked out of his office with her head held high. But she could feel the blood pounding in her veins, feel the hate coursing through her. She wanted to scream. And, perversely, she wanted to kiss the bastard. She marched past Jessie—her able assistant—and into her own, much smaller office, slamming the door satisfyingly before throwing herself into her chair and closing her eyes while she fought for calm.
Why on earth could she not face the damn man without thinking about how his lips must taste? It was getting worse, not better. Every time she was with him, she thought of how he might taste, of how those muscles would feel beneath her hands. It was just her perverse nature, going left when she wanted to go right. She’d always been this way. Tell her she couldn’t do something and she set out to prove she could.
Like run the hotel chain. She’d spent years proving she was the rightful heir to the CEO position, and what did her father do? He hired a smoldering Greek with a bad attitude and a sexier-than-sin body to do the job she’d been training for all her life. She’d put her dreams aside at the age of fourteen, when her mother had walked out and left her and Antonio, her older brother, to be the surrogate parents for their siblings. Her father had been useless after Liliana left and so it had fallen to her and Antonio.
Well, dammit, she’d done what she was supposed to do. She’d been a good girl and played by rules that should never have been imposed on her at such a young age. She’d done her time and she wanted her due. She wanted control of the Chatsfield empire. The hotels were in her blood. They were not in Christos’s. He was not a Chatsfield and he didn’t care, other than where dollars, pounds and euros were concerned.
Lucilla chewed her lip, thinking. She’d researched Christos thoroughly when he’d arrived, but there was one thing she couldn’t find out. He didn’t seem to come from anywhere. He didn’t have a family. He was Greek, he claimed Athens as his hometown, and that was it. There’d been no record of his life before he was about twenty-five and burst onto the scene as the man who’d turned around a very old and venerable shipping company.
Then he’d moved on to another company, and another. He was good at what he did—and ruthless beyond belief. He slashed and burned and what emerged from the ashes was always better and brighter than before.
Yes, he was pretty good. But she didn’t trust him. And she damn sure didn’t like him. She couldn’t believe that her father had turned over control to this man they knew so little about. Gene Chatsfield had handed over the keys to the kingdom and then flown back to the U.S. to be with his new fiancée as if he hadn’t just turned Lucilla’s world—and her siblings’ worlds—upside down in the process.
Lucilla wanted to know more. She wanted to know who Christos Giatrakos really was, where he came from and why he thought he could be so cold and ruthless with everyone. And then she wanted him gone.
That, really, was the deciding factor. Lucilla wanted him gone, no matter how sexy or smoldering he was. And she was willing to do just about anything to achieve that goal. She picked up the phone. It was time to call in every last favor she was owed in exchange for information.
* * *
The Chatsfield was hosting a gala tonight in the main ballroom. An art auction for charity that would bring out the richest members of London society. As CEO, it was Christos’s duty to be there as the new public face of the company. Whatever the Chatsfield children had done to tarnish the venerable name, Christos was determined to erase those memories from the public consciousness. Yes, it would take time, but he would turn the company around. Of that he had no doubt.
He frowned as he thought of Lucilla Chatsfield standing in his office and glaring at him. She didn’t like him; that much was plain. He didn’t like her, either. She was utterly spoiled, though perhaps not quite as useless as most of her siblings.
Yet he found her oddly compelling and he did not like it. For instance, her brown eyes were flecked with gold. Why did he know this detail? He had no idea, but he did. And whenever she came into his office, he found himself watching those gold flecks and wondering if they might change with passion. What would staid Lucilla look like mussed? Her hair was always sleek and smooth, either twisted up on her head or slicked back into a thick ponytail. Her suits were crisp and tailored. Not too conservative, not too sexy.
He should not notice her at all, really. She was not a classically beautiful woman. Her cheeks were a little too plump and her hips a little too curvy to be stylish. She was too serious and frowned entirely too much.
And yet he found himself wondering what she would look like naked and sprawled across his bed. A clear sign he’d been working too much and not getting enough sex if he was thinking of uptight Lucilla Chatsfield this way.
Tonight, that would change. He had a date to the gala, and she’d hinted more than once that she was available all night long. After a trip home to shower and change into his tuxedo, Christos got behind the wheel of his Bugatti Veyron and went to pick Victoria up at her apartment. She was waiting just inside the glass doors, her blond hair a mass of luscious curls, her body encased in something shiny that looked almost like rubber.
She sashayed from the building and two men on the sidewalk nearly tripped on their tongues. Christos should be ecstatic at the sight of her, and yet he was somehow disappointed as he opened the door and helped her into the car. She is lovely, he told himself. Lovely.
“I’ve been looking forward to tonight,” Victoria said, sliding her hand up his thigh once he’d gotten into the driver’s seat again. She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. Other than the shock of being touched so blatantly, he felt no excitement. His body responded as her hand drifted over him—a woman was touching his groin, after all—but he didn’t find the prospect particularly thrilling.
“Enough of that, Victoria,” he clipped out. “We have a long evening to get through first.”
She laughed and ran her thumb over his cheek, presumably removing the lipstick she’d left there. “I can’t wait, darling.”
Soon, they were at the hotel, and Christos went around to join Victoria on the red carpet while the valet slipped inside his car and drove off. Photographers were stationed on either side of the entrance, corralled behind velvet ropes, their flashes popping again and again as he walked up the carpet with Victoria on his arm.
They passed inside. Staff members were busily taking care of the guests, but he had no doubt he’d been seen. No one nodded, though. He did not expect it. It wasn’t his job to be liked. Gene Chatsfield had hired him because he was the best. Not because he was the nicest.
The gala was in full swing when they walked into the ballroom. The soaring art-deco walls and ceilings were a work of art themselves, which is why the room showcased the art on display so well. Men in tuxedos and women in glittering gowns mingled, drinks in hand, rotating past the displays and making marks in their catalogs.
Christos circulated, shaking hands and talking with the guests, smiling with satisfaction at their compliments on the decor and service. Victoria clung to his side until he grew tired of having her there and deposited her with a group of expensively dressed women. When he left, they were comparing notes on their dress designers.
He continued to talk to the guests as the clock ticked down to the moment the auction was scheduled to start. At one point, when the conversation bored him and his mind began to drift, the crowd parted and a flash of red caught his eye. It was a dark-haired woman, standing with her back to him, her body encased in a clinging ruby gown sewn with sparkling crystals. She was alone in front of a painting, and he had a sudden urge to find out just what she seemed so captivated by that others did not.
He did not know her or what drove her, but she appeared lonely and isolated in the single beam of light shining down on the spot she stood in. Her head was bowed, her shoulders bent forward, as if the weight of something terribly sad pressed down on her.
Her isolation and loneliness spoke to him because he so often felt the same things. By choice, yes, but still. He’d had to isolate himself to survive the hell of his childhood. It was a skill he’d perfected by the time he was fourteen. A necessary skill to keep from going insane in the juvenile-detention facility he’d been sent to.
Christos excused himself from the conversation and moved toward the woman. He wanted to know who she was and what was in the picture that affected her so much. She turned then, and he stopped, stunned. Lucilla Chatsfield’s brows were pulled together, her face creased with sadness and pain. And she was utterly beautiful standing alone in that beam of light.
The light picked out her bone structure, highlighted the luminous quality of her skin and transformed the darkness of her hair into a chestnut cloud flowing down her back. She was still Lucilla, but Lucilla as he’d never seen her before. The beauty of her hit him like a lightning bolt, stole the air from his lungs, sent blood rushing into his groin.
He wanted to possess her. He wanted to erase that sadness from her eyes, and he wanted to strip that red dress from her body and expose the creamy skin underneath. The need to do so rocked him. And angered him.
He had no time for this. Lucilla was an obstacle in his path, not a dalliance on the side. She hated him. Despised him for sending her brothers and sister away on errands, and for thwarting her ambition.
Christos plucked two glasses of champagne from a passing tray and moved toward her. She’d turned to look at the painting again, and he found himself focusing on the swell of her hips, the curve of her back and the lush beauty of her hair as it tumbled over her shoulders in rich, reddish-brown waves. She never wore her hair down. He was suddenly thankful that she did not because the urge to plunge his fingers into it and feel the silky mass gliding over his hand was almost overwhelming.
“See something you want?”
She whirled to face him, clutching a hand over her heart. “Oh, my God, you scared me.”
He held out the champagne. “Then I apologize.”
She took the glass. Then she turned to look at the painting again. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
Christos stared at the small portrait of a woman. It wasn’t an old painting, though it wasn’t recent, either. The woman was wearing a long gown, pearls and a mink, and she was laughing. It was not a staid portrait at all. Christos frowned as he scanned the portrait. This woman looked familiar in a way. He turned to look at Lucilla’s profile, saw the same lines as in the painting, and a new feeling took root in his soul: anger and even a modicum of pity. Gene Chatsfield had put a portrait of his missing ex-wife into the auction, and Lucilla seemed sad about it.
No one knew where Liliana Chatsfield had gone, but one day she’d walked out on her family and never came home again. He knew the history, as so many did, but for the first time he could see how it must have affected at least one Chatsfield child.
It made him feel almost tender toward her. A complication he did not need. “She is indeed. Your mother, I presume?”
She took a sip of her champagne and he saw that her fingers trembled. “Yes.”
“And does it bother you this picture is in the auction?”
She sniffed. She did not look at him. “Of course not. It’s for a good cause, and my father is right to get rid of it. Graham Laurent painted it before he was quite so famous, so it will fetch a high price simply because of that. Obviously, my father knows this.”
And Gene Chatsfield was marrying again, so his new wife-to-be probably didn’t want a portrait of the old wife still in his possession. Though why he didn’t gift it to one of his children, Christos couldn’t say. It seemed the logical thing to do.
“You could buy it.”
She turned to look up at him again, and he felt the power of that gaze down to his toes. The gold flecks in her eyes sparkled in the light from above. “Oh, no, I couldn’t. It wouldn’t be seemly.”
He didn’t quite understand that logic, but it was not his concern really. If she didn’t want to buy it, what did he care?
“As you wish, Lucilla mou.” He didn’t know why he called her my Lucilla, but the first time he’d done it, she’d seemed annoyed—so he’d kept doing so because it amused him to irritate her. He had not meant to irritate her now, but of course she could not know that. Her eyes narrowed.
“Don’t you have some souls to collect elsewhere in the room?”
Christos couldn’t help the laugh that burst from him then. Lucilla tried to frown but ended up smiling, though she kept biting her lip to stop. He wished she would let it out because he was certain a smile would transform her face.
“I have met my quota of souls for the day, unfortunately.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Tomorrow is a new day. I’m sure you’ll find some lives to wreck before the morning runs out.”
He took a sip of champagne, uncharacteristically amused. She was acerbic and tart, not at all what he was accustomed to in a woman. It was a novelty, and he enjoyed it more than he should. He never cared if he was liked. Companies hired him to do the tough jobs, to make the decisions no one else would.
He didn’t care if this woman liked him, either—but he found himself hoping she wouldn’t go away just yet.
“It is on my schedule,” he said.
“Of course it is.” She pulled in a deep breath and turned away from the painting as if she had made a final decision to slice herself off from the allure of it. “Tell me about you, Christos. Where did you grow up? What did you like to do as a child?”
Her questions punched him in the gut. He never talked about his childhood. It was too painful. Too dark and disgusting. Compared to hers, even with an absent mother, his was hell on earth.
“I grew up in Greece. I had a happy life, I got an education and I went to work. What else is there to know?” The lies flowed easily from his tongue these days. He’d had years to practice them, after all.
She was staring at him. “Where in Greece? Near the sea? Inland?”
Ice formed in his veins. He did not like it when people pried. “Everywhere in Greece is near the sea.”
“That’s a very vague answer.”
He shrugged as if it were nothing to him. “We are not friends, Lucilla. There is no point in engaging in idle chitchat. You do not care about my childhood, nor I yours. You care about what I am doing to your precious company, and I care about returning the Chatsfield name and all it stands for to its former glory. We are not on opposite sides, no matter how you wish to view it. And we don’t need to engage in polite banter in order to pretend we like each other.”
Her eyes had narrowed considerably. And her color was high. The flush over her breasts was intriguing. He wanted to slip her gown off her shoulder and press his mouth just above her heart.
“With an attitude like that, no wonder you don’t have any friends. You refuse to let anyone get close enough to be a friend.”
He snorted. “And do you really want to be my friend, Lucilla? Or is there something more to this query?”
She tilted her chin up. “No, I don’t want to be your friend. But I was trying to be polite. I thought maybe life would be easier if we at least pretended to like each other.”
He took a step closer to her, watched the thrum of her pulse kick up in her neck. He had to admire that she did not back away. She stood her ground, though she had to tilt her head back to look up at him since he towered over her.
“I am quite willing to pretend, Lucilla mou. I find myself utterly intrigued by the cut of that gown and the mystery of what lies beneath. If you wish, we can leave together and pretend to like each other in my bed.”
Her eyes grew as wide as saucers. The color in her cheeks bloomed redder than before. And then she looked completely furious, as if he’d tricked her somehow. He didn’t have time to figure it out because she poked him in the chest with a manicured finger.
“You are not serious, Christos, and this isn’t funny.”
“I was not trying to be funny.”
She poked him again, harder this time. “I saw you come in and I know who you’re with. Don’t insult me by pretending you find me more appealing than you do your supermodel girlfriend.” She dropped her finger and straightened her shoulders. “I am not that desperate or that stupid and I resent you thinking I am.”
