Kostas's Convenient Bride

by Lucy Monroe

  Andreas had always been crazy protective when it came to the company and pure predator in his role as president. The idea that he would even consider selling it should be ludicrous. Only, the calculating expression in Andreas’s green gaze made Kayla’s short nails dig into suddenly sweaty palms.

  No. He’d made comments over the past year. Sarcastic one-offs about selling KJ Software that she’d given the credence they deserved.

  None.

  Andreas might be the lifeblood of the company, but Genevieve had gotten it wrong. Kayla’s job might technically be director of research and development, but she was KJ Software’s heart and she couldn’t be that when her own stopped beating. Didn’t they realize that?

  “Are you all right, Kayla?” Andreas asked, handsome features etched with concern.

  She stared at him, not sure she could answer. Her entire world was imploding.

  “We’ve done what we set out to do with this company.” Andreas leaned back in his chair, his big body relaxed, his tone satisfied...like his words weren’t slashing jagged wounds right into her heart. “Sebastian Hawk has approached me about a merger with his security firm.”

  “A merger or a buyout?” she demanded.

  Andreas winced, perhaps recognizing his news was not as welcome as he’d expected it to be. “A buyout is the most likely final scenario.”

  “Why?” Owner of one of the largest security firms worldwide, Sebastian Hawk was one of their biggest customers and had been since the beginning. “He already licenses our software.” For his own company and in a secondary capacity for his own clients.

  Andreas replied, “He wants to own it.”

  “He’s a control freak, like you.”

  Andreas shrugged. “He has three children and a legacy to leave them.”

  “What about your children?” Presumably if Andreas was ready to get married, he was looking forward to parenthood, as well.

  He had often said the only reason he would ever marry was to have a real family. Didn’t he want a legacy for his own children?

  “I’m thinking about going into venture capital investments.”

  “You’ve been watching that show again, haven’t you?” she asked, referring to a favorite reality television show of his.

  They’d watched the show about venture capitalists who invested in and mentored start-up businesses together many times. Andreas prided himself on being able to guess which entrepreneurs were going to get multiple offers from the “sharks” and which would leave the “tank” without a single offer at all.

  “As fascinating as all this is, we need to wrap this meeting up.” Genevieve’s voice grated in unwelcome reminder of her presence as she glanced at her designer watch. “I have another client meeting.”

  Really? Lots of superwealthy guys were looking for bride pimps? “How many clients do you take on at a time?”

  “That is privileged information,” Genevieve informed her haughtily.

  But Kayla had spent most of her life in the foster care system. Haughty wasn’t going to intimidate her. “Not with the kind of retainer you charged Andreas.”

  “I was under the impression you paid out of your personal account?”

  Andreas’s expression filled with annoyance. “Of course I did.”

  “Then, I do not see where this is any of your business.” The matchmaker’s condescending tone might have annoyed Kayla, but she had concerns much closer to her heart right now.

  She stood on shaky legs. “You’re right. It’s not. In fact, I still don’t know what the heck I’m doing here at all. If you’re going to sell the company, my tiny minority percent isn’t going to stop you. If you want to pay this woman more than a lot of people make in a year to find you some dates when I don’t see you struggling for company now, that’s none of my business.”

  The cold inside her grew with every word, but so did Kayla’s resolve. “I do not appreciate being called away from my work for something you could have handled in a text.” I’m hiring a matchmaker.

  “You expected me to tell you I was selling the company in a text?” Andreas demanded, sounding shocked.

  “I didn’t expect you to sell the company at all, certainly not to tell me about it as a fait accompli in a meeting with a third party.” Dismissing Genevieve’s presence, Kayla met Andreas’s gaze. “But I’m realizing now I’ve been wrong about a lot of things.”

  He’d said this meeting was about the matchmaker. The selling of the company had come up as part of the discussion. Or that was how it had seemed. But apparently, it had been part of his agenda all along.

  Kayla turned on her heel and walked out of the office, the numbness spreading with the cold. She’d been like this a few times before in her life.

  The day she realized her mom was not coming back. She hadn’t spoken for two years after.

  The day her foster mom died and she was placed in the first of another string of homes.

  The day she realized Andreas wanted her for her programming skills more than her place in his bed, or even their friendship.

  Andreas’s personal assistant stood up as Kayla came out of the office. “Are you okay?”

  She just shook her head.

  “What’s going on?”

  “He’s getting married.” Kayla wasn’t going to mention the possibility he was going to sell their company. After all, that wasn’t supposed to have been the reason for the meeting.

  “To her?” Bradley’s eyes widened, his face going slack.

  “She’s the matchmaker.”

  Bradley laid his hand on Kayla’s arm. “I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t say anything else, but he’d been working for Andreas from the beginning. Other than Andreas, Bradley knew Kayla better than anyone else alive. Maybe better, because he’d realized the first year they worked together that she was in love with the oblivious Greek.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A COUPLE OF hours later, Kayla was lost in the code of a program they’d scrapped the year before as unfeasible when a hand landed on her shoulder. She knew immediately whom that hand belonged to. “I’m busy, Andreas.”

  “You’re not on a development team right now.”

  “I’m the director of research and development. That means I get to choose what projects I work on.”

  “So, what are you working on?”

  “A program that will make Sebastian Hawk another hundred million if I can get it working.”

  “We haven’t sold our company yet.”

  “But we are selling it.”

  “I don’t know, are we?”

  She spun around to face Andreas. “Don’t play games with me, Andreas.”

  He sighed, running his fingers through his jet-black hair, his green eyes troubled. “Yes, we’re selling.”

  “When were you going to tell me?” She wanted to scream, to rail at him and demand answers to how he could rip everything out from under her on one go, but she wouldn’t.

  For one thing, he wouldn’t understand. The fact they were standing here having this conversation at all told her that. For another, if she let out some of the pain, it would all come out and she wasn’t about to let that happen.

  “After our meeting with Miss Patterson.”

  “Why did you pull me into that?”

  “She wanted to ask you some questions.”

  “Why?” Kayla did her best to stop that one word coming out sounding like the pain-filled cry it was, but she could hear the ragged edges to her voice if he couldn’t.

  Andreas winced. “You’re my closest friend.”

  “And she interviews your friends?” How invasive was that?

  “Yes.”

  “What happened to separating personal from business?”

  “We’ve managed to stay friends.”

  They had until today.

  Did he have any idea how arrogant he sounded, or how hurtful his words were? No, of course he didn’t. Andreas was so far removed from human feelings, it was scary sometimes.


  “We’re such good friends, you didn’t bother to tell me you wanted to get married. That you’d hired some high-priced matchmaker to make it happen. You didn’t talk over the plan with me, much less the plan to sell our company. Yeah, we’re great friends.” The sarcasm was so thick in her voice there was no way even Mr. Clueless himself could miss it.

  “I did tell you about Genevieve.” He frowned, completely ignoring the issue of KJ Software. “Today.”

  Kayla felt a headache coming on behind her left eye. “Friends talk about that kind of thing before they do it.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I just do.” She might not have a lot of friends, but she had more than he did. “I know how to be a friend.”

  His green gaze narrowed. “Are you saying I don’t?”

  “Unless it comes to throwing money at a problem, I’m going to go with no on this one.”

  “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that because I am aware you are upset over the sale of the company.”

  How magnanimous of him.

  She rubbed her temple. It didn’t help the growing headache. Only one thing would. Ending this conversation. “Bradley would have told me.”

  “I pay him well, but not enough to hire Genevieve Patterson’s services. It would not have come up.”

  “He doesn’t need them.” When Bradley decided to settle down, he would do things the old-fashioned way. He’d look for someone he loved.

  “Is that relevant?”

  Her hand tightened around the stylus she’d been using to take notes. “To you? Probably not.”

  “Bradley is not my friend. He is my employee.” Andreas grimaced.

  “He’ll figure that out right away when he finds out you’re selling the company and making his position redundant.”

  “I plan to take Bradley with me.”

  She wasn’t surprised, but looked into Andreas’s green gaze for confirmation of his words. Her trust factor was at an all-time low with this man right now. “Into your venture capital firm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” She wanted Bradley to be okay. And he worked well for Andreas.

  Andreas smiled, that winner’s grin. The one he used when he was sure things were going his way. “You’ll have enough from the sale of the company to participate materially in the new company.”

  “No.” She’d made plans for the money going public would give her. Changing the source of that windfall to an outright sale wouldn’t change her plans.

  “We make a good team.”

  “No.”

  For the first time, Andreas looked disconcerted. “You haven’t even heard me out.”

  “There’s nothing to hear. I’m not interested in changing careers. I love what I do and I plan to keep doing it.”

  “You’d start a new business in competition with Hawk? Do I need to remind you that business is not your strong suit?”

  Oh, if she were a violent woman! He’d have a hand-sized print on his cheek right now. Just to take that smug look off his face. “No. If I wanted to start my own software development company, I’d find a partner. But I don’t see any reason to leave this one. Sebastian Hawk respects my abilities and I’m sure he realizes that without me, the software development department would be crippled.”

  Especially if she took the team with her.

  “You have a high opinion of your abilities.”

  “You used to too.”

  “I still do.”

  She didn’t reply to that. In fact, she was done talking. Kayla turned back to her computer and changed a line of code before inserting the new series she’d written over the last hour.

  “Kayla.”

  “Go away, Andreas.”

  “Genevieve wants to meet with you.”

  “I don’t know why. Anything she needs to know, she can send me an email.”

  “I thought we could meet together.”

  Because that went so well the first time around. “Go away, Andreas.”

  If she kept saying it, he would eventually obey. Everyone did. Even Andreas.

  He said her name again. She ignored him, putting in her earbuds and turning on her favorite work playlist. She began typing.

  He stood behind her a lot longer than she expected, but after the second song, he was finally gone.

  Kayla’s shoulders sagged and her heart hurt in her chest.

  She looked at the computer screen that had been designed to be unreadable by anyone not directly in front of it. It was filled with a series of lines that all said the same thing. “I need you to go away.”

  She carefully deleted the dozens of lines saying the same thing, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not get back into programming mode.

  She needed to know what her future held, now that she realized it wasn’t going to have Andreas Kostas in it.

  She left her development station with the computer with no conduit to the internet and moved to her desk and tablet. It was a lot easier than she expected to find a flight to Sebastian Hawk’s headquarters the following day.

  Kayla marked herself as out of the building the next day, canceled the one meeting she had to attend and sent off two emails requesting coverage for the others she wouldn’t be at.

  * * *

  Andreas swore as he read the gushing but uncompromising email from Genevieve telling him he had to fill out the entire personality and interests form before their next consultation. He’d thought the intake form had asked everything pertinent.

  Apparently, the matchmaker did not agree.

  If Kayla wasn’t pissed at him, he could have asked for her help. As awkward as she could be socially because of her overly literal mind, she got stuff like this with surprising understanding.

  The meeting between her and the matchmaker could have gone worse, but he wasn’t sure how. Both he and Genevieve had gotten Kayla’s back up.

  It had been a couple of years since she’d tuned him out with earbuds. But when she did it, there was no point trying to communicate with her.

  Kayla had a stubborn streak that could outlast his own when the issue mattered to her.

  She was angry he’d decided to sell the company, that she’d learned today in the meeting.

  Telling Genevieve his plans to sell before talking to Kayla had been a mistake. He could see that now.

  He owed his partner more respect than that.

  It was also clear that she believed as his friend, he should have talked to her about hiring the matchmaker ahead of time too.

  He didn’t see it.

  If anything, Kayla should have realized this was the next step. She was the only person he’d ever shared his plans with, but he had shared them.

  A long time ago, when their friendship had included sex and no business partnership.

  He didn’t like knowing she was upset with him. Kayla Jones was the only person whose opinion really mattered to him.

  Breakfast apology éclairs might be in order tomorrow.

  Hell, why not deal with it tonight and take her to dinner at that Vietnamese place she liked?

  Kayla wasn’t in the computer lab when he got there and didn’t answer her phone when he called.

  She was still ignoring him.

  Too bad for her, he wasn’t in the mood to be ignored.

  He’d just go by her condo. It wasn’t exactly a trip, a few floors below his penthouse that was double the size of her small one bedroom. At least she’d moved into his building and out of the hopeless apartment in an unacceptable part of town.

  Forty-five minutes later, he sent a short text. Where the hell are you?

  When she didn’t reply in five minutes, he sent another one. I can keep this up all night until your damn phone’s batteries die from all the alerts.

  He was surprised when she didn’t reply after that one. Andreas didn’t make idle threats, though. He proceeded to blow her phone up with texts every five minutes, even more shocked when the first few did not elicit a r
esponse and moving into downright worried by the time his phone rang forty-five minutes and eight texts later.

  “Stop!” Anger and exasperation warred in her shout.

  More than a little annoyed himself, he demanded, “Where are you?”

  “You’re not my keeper.”

  Knowing he did not have to be worried for her safety allowed him to ratchet back on the irritation. He went for calm, rational. “We need to talk.”

  “Maybe you should have thought of that little thing before this minute, you think?”

  “We would have talked this afternoon if you hadn’t thrown a hissy fit and stormed out of my office.” Okay, maybe not so calm.

  “That? Was not a hissy fit. I do not lose my cool, storm anywhere and I never throw fits, hissy or otherwise.” Oh, hell. Her voice had gone cold and devoid of emotion, like it did when she was protecting herself.

  He didn’t like thinking she felt the need to protect herself from him. “Be reasonable, Kayla. You’re blowing this all out of proportion.”

  “What exactly? The fact you’re planning to take my home away because that wife pimp says you need to?”

  “I’m not doing anything with your condo.”

  “Don’t play the idiot!” Kayla’s shout stunned him into silence.

  She was right; she didn’t lose her cool. The only time he’d ever heard her raise her voice was when they used to sleep together. And no matter how good a lover he was, the times she let herself go enough to scream were few. Allowing himself to remember their sexual past was not productive, as he had learned early on after taking her on as a business partner.

  He could not afford that kind of distraction from his goals.

  Right now, his goal was figuring out what was going on with his best friend. “Kayla?”

  “I’m taking the day off tomorrow.” The even tone of her voice after that primal scream of pain was almost worse than the shout itself.

  “Why?”

  “I have things to do.”

  “What things?”

  “How did your wife pimp put it? None of your business, Andreas.”