by Lucy Monroe
His sister burst into gales of laughter. “Oh, this is fabulous. The one woman in New York who doesn’t know who you are.” She whipped out her phone. “Just wait until my followers hear about this.”
Kayla frowned. “I’m starting to feel like I’m really missing something here.”
“I’m the lead in...” He named a new and rising-in-popularity Broadway production. “And the brat doing the tweeting? She’s my twin, but she’s also a famous model. Just ask her.”
The beautiful younger woman put her phone where Kayla could see the screen. “It’s true. See? I have over a million Twitter followers.”
“I’m a software designer. I don’t get out much,” Kayla muttered.
Both Jacob and his sister laughed, clearly more amused than offended.
“So, you’ll let me show you my city?” Jacob asked persuasively.
His supermodel sister grinned and winked. “Oh, do say yes. It’s been an age since he’s been out with anyone who wasn’t a total sycophant.”
She didn’t want to go back to the hotel, where Andreas would be soon. “Maybe I will.”
“Maybe we can start our evening early.” Jacob jumped onto Kayla’s tentative agreement.
“I hate to break it to you, but I’m not done shopping.”
“I make a great shopping buddy.” He smiled engagingly. “Just ask my sister.”
“He really does,” said the woman, still very busy with her smartphone.
And that was how Kayla found herself spending the next several hours in the very pleasant company of a Broadway star. It was kind of amazing. Other than a couple of people asking for Jacob’s autograph, people mostly left him alone. New Yorkers took his presence and even Kayla’s with him in stride.
“Do you want to stop at your hotel and get ready to go out?” he asked solicitously later.
No, she really didn’t, not and risk running into Andreas. Kayla’s backpack had everything she needed besides the clothes and shoes she’d bought while out shopping.
“It might make more sense to get ready at your place so you could get ready at the same time,” she offered.
“I like the way you think.”
He put the arm not carrying packages for her around her shoulder. “Don’t take that as some kind of invitation.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” The laughter in Jacob’s voice mocked her.
But Kayla smiled anyway.
Jacob lived in an older, secure building, not far from the theater district. Jacob came out of the bedroom dressed in designer jeans that showed off his manly assets in delicious ways and a white silk shirt.
He approached Kayla, who had changed into the new dress in his tiny bathroom and applied makeup before pulling her tight curls into a messy bun on top of her head. Masculine approval glowed in his blue eyes. “You look amazing, Kayla.”
“Thank you.”
Jacob put his hands on her shoulders, intent unmistakable in his eyes.
Pounding on his door startled them both. Jacob jumped back. “What the hell?”
“Open the damn door,” Andreas bellowed from the other side.
Kayla gasped. “Andreas.”
More pounding. “I know you are in there, Kayla. Tarkent, open this door!”
Jacob’s last name was Tarkent?
“Do you know who that is?” Jacob asked.
“My boss.”
“Your boss?” Jacob asked. “Not your boyfriend.”
“No. Boss.”
“He sounds like a pissed-off lion.”
The door shook with the force of Andreas’s pounding. “Kayla!”
“Um, yeah.”
“Do I open it or call the police?”
“I wouldn’t call the police.” She’d never seen Andreas in this mood. She didn’t know what he was capable of, but she did know theater productions needed backers and backers meant money and Andreas knew how to manipulate money.
“Are you afraid of him?”
“Afraid of him?” Sudden fury filled Kayla and she marched to the door. “The day I’m afraid of Andreas Kostas is the day I stop being Kayla Jones. I am not afraid of that man, or any other man, Jacob Tarkent.”
She threw the locks and yanked the door open. Then stood there, her arms crossed, glaring at her boss, not moving one inch backward.
Andreas had to pull his hand back from another set of furious pounding. “There you are.”
“Here I am. The question is, what the heck are you doing here, Andreas? I don’t believe you were invited on this date.”
“You can’t go on a date with him. You don’t know him!” Andreas looked as disheveled as Kayla had seen him in a very long time. His tie had been loosened to dangle away from his collar, the first button on his shirt undone. His hair looked like he’d been running his fingers through it, his face showing the signs that he’d missed his second shave of the day.
“I met his sister. I spent the day with him. I’m fine.”
“You are not fine.” Andreas managed to maneuver his way into the apartment. “You are coming back to the hotel with me and we are talking.”
“I am going on a date with Jacob. Then if I want to I am spending the night with him. If I come back to the hotel, whenever that might be, you can explain to me how you found me here.” She turned to face Andreas, bothered by the fact that he was now inside Jacob’s apartment and that had not been Kayla’s intention at all.
“He had to have set private investigators on you. They probably found you through my sister’s tweets,” Jacob said.
“Did you?” Kayla demanded, fury riding her like it hadn’t in years.
Andreas’s cheeks burnished red in admission of guilt. “I am not leaving you here,” he insisted stubbornly, without bothering to answer the accusation.
Jacob came up beside her, putting his arm around her shoulders possessively. “You are not invited on our date.”
Andreas’s jaw twitched.
Kayla wanted to feel something at having an attractive man’s arm around her, some spark of desire and sexual appreciation. She didn’t. She didn’t even feel truly comfortable. If she wasn’t so annoyed with Andreas and wanting to make a point, Kayla would have stepped away from Jacob’s hold for her own sense of peace.
“Kayla, you and I need to talk.” Andreas had that tone and expression he used when he was trying very hard to be reasonable but was a nanosecond away from losing his Greek temper.
“Not tonight,” she denied.
“I canceled everything.”
“Funny. I did the same thing. Only I’m on vacation time. Do you know what that means, Andreas?”
“No,” he gritted out.
Andreas Kostas was a man who disliked not having all the answers. Who was she kidding? He hated not having just one answer out of a hundred questions. The man defined overachieving perfectionist.
“Oh, I know the answer to this one,” Jacob drawled, not realizing what dangerous waters he was swimming into. “It means, Mr. Armani-Suited Businessman, she’s not obliged to spend her off-hours with you. Talking or otherwise.”
“Kayla is not merely my employee, she is my business partner.”
Kayla snorted at that stretching of the reality of their situation.
“Am I lying?” Andreas demanded, his voice gone dangerously soft.
“Can I stop you from selling the company?” she demanded back.
Andreas’s face went stiff, the color draining from his naturally olive complexion. “It is not uncommon for one partner to have controlling interest.”
“Ninety-five percent is more than simple controlling interest.” Her 5 percent still gave her leverage, though. With Sebastian Hawk, if not with Andreas.
“We built that company together.”
“I used to believe that too. Until you decided on your own to sell it.”
Jacob’s arm fell from around her waist as he moved to stand between Kayla and Andreas. “As fascinating as all this business talk is, I get one night off per
week and I plan to spend it showing Kayla the best side of my city.”
“That is not going to happen.” Andreas’s tone had gone hard and icy.
Kayla could hear the warning in it if Jacob couldn’t.
“That’s not your decision to make,” the Broadway actor said to prove his deafness.
Kayla almost groaned.
Andreas turned the full weight of his glacial green gaze on the other man for the first time since arriving at his apartment. “You would be smart to stay out of this.”
“Are you threatening me?” Jacob asked, sounding unimpressed.
Andreas stepped forward so he towered over the other man. “My suit is bespoke, not Armani, and if you knew the difference, you might understand that I would make a very unpleasant enemy.”
Kayla laid her hand on Jacob’s arm before he could reply. “Don’t. He’s right. He’s talking about major money, Jacob.”
“I don’t care about his money, Kayla.”
She smiled up at the actor, really liking the man, wishing again she felt even an inkling of sexual attraction to go with the liking, something that would make fighting Andreas worth it. But she wasn’t putting Jacob’s career at risk for principle alone.
“No, I know. You’re a special guy. Good to your sister. Fun.”
Andreas made a displeased sound.
Kayla ignored him. “I would have enjoyed tonight more than I think either of us could imagine.”
“I’m an actor, I have a great imagination.” Jacob’s drawl was only slightly less suggestive than his wink.
She laughed. “I bet, but if I go with you, he’s just going to follow us around. He’ll figure out a way to ruin our evening.” To ruin Jacob’s career, or at least his current role.
“That sounds like pretty stalkerish behavior for a boss.”
“He used to be my best friend.”
“Until when?” Jacob asked, with surprising insight and compassion.
“Until yesterday morning when he told me he was selling our company out from under me.”
Andreas made a sound that could have been hurt, but Kayla refused to look at him.
Jacob nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. For what it’s worth, I was really looking forward to tonight.”
“I don’t think it was going to end like I was hoping, though.” There was no accusation in Jacob’s tone, just rueful disappointment.
She shrugged, but she couldn’t lie. “Probably not.”
“It would not,” Andreas butted in with his obnoxious Greek hobnailed boots. “She doesn’t do casual sex.”
She rounded on him. “You are such an ass.”
“And you are the best woman I know. Apprizing Jacob of the fact you are one of the best women he has had the honor of meeting is not a bad thing.”
Kayla stared at Andreas, speechless.
Jacob burst out laughing. “You are one clueless bastard, aren’t you?”
“I am a brilliant businessman.” The bewildered offense in Andreas’s tone was almost funny.
Jacob pulled Kayla to him and laid a screen-worthy lip-lock on her. “It really was a pleasure meeting you, Kayla Jones. If you can get away from your boss while you’re in town, call and we’ll do something.”
She grinned. “I will.”
Andreas glowered at Jacob the entire time Kayla collected her things, giving the actor one-word answers to his conversational forays, if the Greek deigned to answer at all.
Andreas put his hand out imperiously for her bags. “Let me help you.”
“I’m fine.”
He didn’t bother to argue, just waited for her to pass the packages over. Andreas had an innate sense of courtesy that her own sense of independence had never been able to win against.
He somehow managed to get between her and Jacob so the other man could not kiss her again before they left either, all the while avoiding shaking the actor’s hand in farewell because of the packages Andreas had taken from Kayla.
“You think you’re a slick operator, don’t you?” she demanded as they rode the elevator downward.
“I know what I want.”
“Really? What part of what you want has you in New York right now, Andreas? Because I really don’t understand. You want to sell the company? I can’t stop you. You want the bride pimp to find you a wife? I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen while you’re here. So, what purpose is you being here going to serve?”
“I’m here for you,” he said, like it should be obvious.
“But why?”
He didn’t answer. Not in the elevator, not when they walked out onto the crowded New York streets, not when they got into the cab he hailed. In fact, Andreas remained stubbornly mute until the cab stopped in front of their hotel, where instead of letting her out, he imperiously waved at the doorman.
The man came over and Andreas handed over Kayla’s packages with instructions for taking them up to the suite along with a generous tip.
“Where are we going?” she asked when Andreas got back in the cab.
“You were going to dinner. I would not deprive you of nourishment.”
“We could have ordered room service.”
“You were looking forward to a night out on the town.”
Was he kidding? “Not with you.”
“We are still friends, Kayla.”
“I’m not sure we are, Andreas.” It hurt to say.
The tightening of his jaw said he didn’t like hearing it either. “Do no say that.”
“Don’t pretend like it matters to you.”
“Of course it matters!” he roared.
Kayla jumped, shocked. Andreas did no lose his temper. Not with her. Not like this.
“Six years ago, you told me how much I mattered to you. I was just too desperate to believe something else.”
“What? What are you talking about six years ago?” He turned to face her in the back seat of the cab, green gazed laser-like focus entirely on Kayla. “I thought you were angry about the meeting yesterday.”
Kayla could feel the tears at the back of her throat, burning in her eyes. “I did too, but it’s all part of the same thing, isn’t it? I’ve never been more than a means to an end to you. What I don’t understand is why you’re here, why you tracked me down to Jacob’s apartment, why you had to ruin my night with him. I guess I’ve never really known you, have I? I never thought you were petty.”
“Petty?” Andreas demanded in a near roar. “The only reason that damn playboy still has his coveted role on Broadway is because he tried to protect a woman I care about very much.”
“You don’t care about me. You have never cared about me.” Of that one fact Kayla was absolutely certain.
She’d been the piece of the puzzle Andreas needed to get his business off the ground. The brain behind the software to make the dream a reality so he could thumb his nose at Barnabas Georgas and prove that Andreas Kostas didn’t need his father’s money or his name, or anything else from the family that had hurt him so much.
“Turn this cab around!” Andreas sounded as out of control as she’d ever heard him, his big body fairly vibrating with stress.
“What do you mean?” The cabbie’s hand gestured wildly. “I can’t do no U-turn. This is a one-way street, buddy.”
“Take us back to the hotel,” Andreas demanded in only slightly lower decibels.
Kayla crossed her arms over her chest and glared. “I thought we were going out to dinner.”
“We are not having this conversation in front of a room full of strangers.”
“Sounds more like a fight from where I’m sitting,” the cabbie piped in.
Andreas ignored him and shook his head at Kayla. “You don’t understand.”
“On that we agree.”
He didn’t look calmed by that acknowledgment. The silence between them on the ride back to the hotel seethed with resentment and things left unsaid.
Kayla was terrified that after tonight the only p
erson she’d considered family wouldn’t be anything but a bad memory. But if she was right, if her place in his life was what she thought it was, that was all he’d been for six years and she’d been fooling herself all along.
CHAPTER FOUR
ANDREAS HADN’T BEEN this out of control since his father had come storming into Andreas’s life, demanding he move to Greece, forcing him to use the Georgas name, pretending it meant something that they were blood.
When it hadn’t meant anything at all. He’d hated being a Georgas. Hated living in that mausoleum mansion that had been the family home for generations.
Formally recognized as heir to the Georgas shipping empire, Andreas had been trained to his father’s likeness, all the while planning his escape.
He’d wanted nothing of the man who could so callously discard the woman who had loved him with her whole heart. Melia Kostas had been an amazing mother who had not allowed a broken heart or the rejection of her family to stop her from raising her son to believe he had value and that he was worth every sacrifice she’d had to make to give him a different life.
She’d immigrated to America, only to die when Andreas was a teen, leaving the door open for Barnabas, that bastard, to come swooping in. That was the one time in Andreas’s life that he’d felt completely helpless. He’d done a lot of yelling before settling down to plan.
Not until today had he felt so completely at the whim of another again. He had not felt such fear since the day his father had him physically carried onto the Georgas private jet and forced to fly to Greece against his will. Kayla leaving Portland, leaving Andreas, had paralyzed him. They were a team. Didn’t she realize that?
Clearly not.
Never was his temper so close to the surface, so beyond his control.
But seeing that playboy actor’s lips on his Kayla’s face? That had made Andreas see red. She deserved better.
Kayla Jones deserved the best.
Maybe once Andreas was settled down with a wife who would complete his revenge plan on his father, he would hire Genevieve to find Kayla her own Prince Charming. A man who would care for her like she deserved. Someone who could appreciate the rare gem that she was.
Not some damn New York actor just looking to add another beautiful notch to his bedpost.
