by Lucy Monroe
“I want your smiles to be real when they are pointed in my direction.”
“I cannot guarantee that.”
“That is not acceptable to me.”
“Get over it.”
“I will not get over it. You will stop giving me those fake smiles, Kayla. Save them for other people.”
“Andreas, you are not being reasonable.”
“I am eminently reasonable.”
She laughed. Loudly. She could not help herself. “I’m sure that’s exactly what Jacob thinks.”
“Jacob has no place in this discussion.”
“You do not get to tell me to just forget about someone like he never existed.”
“Watch me.”
“Watch me ignore you.”
This time the cabbie’s coughing could not hide his laughter.
Andreas glared at the hapless man and Kayla had never been as happy to arrive at her destination. The pedicab came to a stop in front of one of New York’s many tall buildings, the walls seemingly made of glass.
“You will love the view at this place. Men, they take their women here to impress them,” the cabbie said to her as he turned around to them.
Andreas grunted. It could have been agreement. It could have been Mind your own business.
“I’m sure you are right. Andreas is very good at guessing what I’ll like.” Except when it came to selling their company and uprooting her one certain sense of security.
* * *
The restaurant turned out to be on an upper floor with a view every bit as amazing as the cabbie had implied. Designed with the feel of Asian-modern fusion, the waitstaff were all dressed in crisp black and white and offered the kind of service found in only the most elite dining rooms.
They were perfectly solicitous, making sure she and Andreas had everything they needed. Kayla got the feeling that if they’d asked for something completely outside the restaurant’s purview, the smart maître d’ would have made it happen. The food was fantastic.
Andreas did his best to be an entertaining companion and that was doing nothing for Kayla’s determination to tell him no about the sex thing.
At one point she glared at him. “Would you just stop?”
“Stop what?”
“Being so nice.”
“You do not want me to be nice to you?” His brilliant green eyes widened with disbelief.
“No.” She let out a huff of frustration when his whole body got into the incredulity thing. “I know what you want and the answer is no.”
“Do not be so sure on either count, pethi mou.”
“Stop with the Greek endearments too. They aren’t going to work.”
“Work at what precisely?” he teased, his eyes glinting with devilment.
She humphed at him. “Whatever your plans are for later.”
“I assure you, you will like my plans.”
“You always think that. You are not always right.” The past forty-eight hours should attest to that definitively.
“I am almost always right.” The humor was there in his voice, right under the surface.
“You’re laughing at me.”
“Maybe a little. Relax, Kayla. You are perfectly safe in this nice restaurant.”
“It is a nice place. Very nice. It’s a date kind of place, or the kind of place you take a client you want to impress. I’m neither.” Both of them needed the reminder. “I’m not even sure how you got reservations on such short notice.”
“Maybe you are simply a woman I care about, whom I would also like to impress, hmm?” he said, ignoring her comment about the reservations.
But that was a real thing, so he had to have exerted some kind of influence to get them. It made her feel more special than she wanted to. “Right. The day you care about impressing me, I’m going to eat my straw walking hat for breakfast with hot sauce.”
“I hope you like hot sauce because I have always cared about impressing you.”
“Don’t be dumb, of course you don’t.”
“You are the only living person I do.”
“That’s... I...” She just didn’t believe it.
“You know I do not care if I impress my Greek family.”
“And yet you have this elaborate plan designed to prove to them how great you are.”
“Or rather how much I do not need them.” He said it like she should know this. She supposed he’d said it often enough.
She shrugged. She simply didn’t believe him.
He raised his brows. “Who else do I care to impress?”
“Your future wife? Genevieve? Other billionaires? I don’t know.”
“None of the above.”
“Then why would you care what I think?”
“Because you are my friend.”
“You say that like you don’t have any others and we both know that isn’t true.” Well, sort of. He wasn’t a social guy.
Andreas Kostas was focused on his goals.
“Acquaintances, contacts, even casual friends maybe,” he listed. “But not people whose opinions will ever matter to me enough to change the course of my life.”
“Mine doesn’t either.”
He looked around them, then at her, his expression belying her words. “And yet here I am, in New York, when I am supposed to be in Portland having a makeover with the matchmaker.”
“I wonder if she’s going to give you hair extensions and a man bun. They’re pretty popular right now.”
Andreas shuddered. “Not going to happen.”
“Oh, I know, she’ll put you in jeans every day and those graphic tees that cling to your muscles and show off all the goodies.”
“You like to tease me.”
“Well, she’s not going to leave you in your perfectly tailored bespoke suits and an overpriced businessman’s haircut.”
“Why not?” Andreas demanded, aggrieved.
“How should I know? You’re the one who said she insisted on a makeover.” Kayla thought he was plenty devastating just the way he was.
“Genevieve believes I am not approachable enough for husband material.”
“What kind of husband does she think you need to be?”
“That is a good question and perhaps one I should have asked before paying her a twenty-five-thousand-dollar retainer.”
“You think?” Kayla asked with heavy sarcasm.
Andreas frowned at her. “It is not as if I asked her nothing.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” Kayla started ticking off on her fingers. “Can you find me a bride who will fit these requirements? Will she be an asset to my business? She must be of a certain age and come from an acceptable background.”
“You know I am not seeking to marry some wealthy socialite.”
“That’s not what I meant by acceptable background. I know you well enough to know your list of background attributes ran more to the lines of came from a stable home so she knows what good parenting looks like for when you have children.” Which left Kayla out of the running right there. “Has an education, but isn’t a PhD because you’re enough of a chauvinist it would bother you if your wife was more educated than you.”
“It doesn’t bother me that you are smarter than me.”
“I’m smarter at computers, not more intelligent and we have the same number of years in our degrees. Do not tell me if I had a PhD in engineering it wouldn’t bother you.”
“I would be proud of you. Do you wish to go back to school?”
Sometimes Kayla did. She loved learning, but more because she thought maybe someday she’d like to teach at the adult level. She didn’t say that now, though. She just stared at him.
“What?” he demanded.
“My future plans aren’t your concern.”
“I do not agree.”
“Andreas, you’re going to be way too busy with your new venture capital firm to worry about what I do on the daily with my life.”
“That is not true.”
“You’re so stubborn.”
He laughed. “Have you met yourself?”
“Seriously, Andreas. You have this picture of how everything is going to be and you assume everyone is going to fall into it. That’s not the way the world always works.”
“As you have proven. We are in New York.”
“So you have reminded me.”
“It is a fascinating city, but I had no plans to visit this week.”
“Neither did I before you dropped your bomb.”
“It was not my intention to explode your life.”
“Just move yours forward. I know.”
“In my defense, I believed I was moving both our lives forward.”
“Because you are arrogant and believe you know what is best for other people.”
“Are you trying to pick a fight with me?”
“No. Just not letting you get away with anything. It’s what I do.”
“It has been too long since we shared a meal like this.”
“You’ve been busy the past couple of months.” She looked at him as the pieces started to fall into place. “Getting ready for the sale to Sebastian Hawk, right?”
Andreas grimaced. “You make it sound like I was sneaking around. I did nothing in secret.”
“Then why didn’t I know about it?”
“Because neither did I advertise the fact.”
Kayla just shook her head. “Sneaky.”
“No.” His phone buzzed, indicating a text message of low priority, but then it chimed with Bradley’s tone and Andreas looked at the screen, his face taking on a thunderous appearance as he read.
“What’s the matter?” Kayla asked.
He looked up at her, his jaw set. “I’ll explain in a moment.” Then he dialed a number on his phone.
The sound of a woman’s tones answering could be heard. If Kayla wasn’t mistaken it was Genevieve.
Andreas barely listened for a second before saying, “You are fired.”
Outraged squawks followed.
“I do not care what you saw on some social feed. I do not answer to you for my time and I will not have my instructions ignored or questioned by those who work for me. I expect a breach-of-contract portion refund of my retainer. Our business dealings are at an end.”
The woman was no longer yelling, clearly trying to cajole Andreas into changing his mind, but Kayla could have told her it was a waste of her breath. He had made up his mind before making the call. Whatever she’d done had pissed him off on a level that there was no coming back from.
Not in Andreas’s world.
“Goodbye, Genevieve.” He ended the call without any more words.
Kayla stared at him. “What was that all about?”
Andreas looked pained. “You sure you want to know?”
With that look on his face? “Definitely.”
“Genevieve wanted to come to New York to give me the infamous makeover, but I told her no. She decided this morning to ignore my wishes and come anyway. Bradley learned of her plans because my administrative assistant has ears everywhere and gave me a heads-up. Not that Genevieve hadn’t told me herself in a text.” Oh, Andreas sounded pissed.
“What would make her think that would be okay with you?”
“More like what made her think she might be losing a lucrative client?”
Kayla had a bad feeling. “And what was that?”
“Someone posted a picture of us kissing to one of those social media sites.”
“But how would she have seen that? Surely they didn’t know our names.”
“A stroke of bad luck, I think. First an enterprising social media paparazzo saw you with Jacob and made it her mission to find out who you were, which wasn’t hard after his sister apparently dissed you on Twitter for bailing on your date with him. The social media paparazzo happened to be on the cruise with us this morning. She decided to update the scandal of your botched date with Jacob by posting the picture of you and me kissing this morning.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Improbable. Ridiculous timing. But not impossible.”
“And Genevieve found out already?”
“She’s a shark and stuff like this is blood in the water to her.”
“Wow.”
“That is no excuse for her ignoring my instructions.”
“She was clearly worried about your commitment to finding a wife.”
“I’m not married yet. I’m not even dating any of her candidates.”
“Still.”
“Still nothing. I fired her and she’ll refund at least eighty percent of that retainer or she’ll learn why there are risks involved targeting my demographic as her clientele.”
“Okay, relax, Andreas. She told you all that just now?”
“She wanted me to know what a bad risk you are for involvement.”
“That wasn’t very nice of her.” Not that Kayla expected any different.
“She’s not a very nice person, but she is efficient.”
“That’s good I guess.”
“Don’t sound so enthusiastic.”
“You’re the one who fired her.”
“You know I don’t tolerate being ignored.”
“I ignore you, you’ve never fired me.”
“You are the exception to the rule.” He winked at her and was too darn sexy with it. “Don’t let that get out.”
“We can’t have anyone thinking you are a pushover.” Kayla couldn’t help the warmth that filled her at this reminder of her unique place in Andreas’s life.
“Because I am not.”
“No, you are not.” He was selling the company out from under her after all. Andreas was no sentimental pushover.
“Have you finished?” Andreas asked, indicating her mostly eaten plate that she hadn’t touched in over ten minutes.
“Yes.”
“Are you ready to do some more sightseeing?”
Funnily enough, she’d expected him to ask to go back to the hotel. The sexual tension in the air was thick enough it should be an opaque cloud around them, but it was as if he was intent on building the anticipation to maximum levels.
He used to do that, back in the day, when they’d been lovers.
It had driven her crazy, in the best possible way.
* * *
A new-model, dark sedan was waiting for them when they reached the street.
“Where to now?” she asked as he handed her into the back seat, her slacks sliding easily over the plush leather seats.
There was something odd in his expression, almost hesitant as he joined her. “I thought the Brooklyn Bridge. You were fascinated by it this morning on the tour.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“And you like bridges.”
Portland had its own fair share, and she’d spent enough time exploring them, photographing them, walking across the ones with pedestrian ways and lost in contemplation staring at the river from their heights.
She shrugged. “They’re like code, you know. They make a way between where you are and where you want to be.”
“Your mind is unique, Kay-love. You realize this?” His voice was warm with approval.
And she wasn’t sure what to do with that. “I know I don’t think like normal people.”
“What is normal?” His dark Greek brow creased. “Are we supposed to strive for average? I do not think so.”
“Your arrogance is showing again.” But she knew he absolutely believed what he said.
Andreas Kostas had never strived to be like other people. He’d forged his own path and taken Kayla down it with him.
He reached out and took her hand, his fingers warm and strong as they curled around hers, giving her a sense of reassurance and other feelings she did not want to examine right then.
It was too dangerous for her equilibrium.
His emerald gaze locked hers in place. “If honesty is arrogance, so be it, but you should never think less of yourself because you do not fit the mold of normal.”
“You’ve gotten very affectionate all of a sudden.” Not to mention complimentary.
Color slashed his masculine cheekbones.
“What?” she demanded.
He shook his head. “It is nothing.”
But it was clearly something.
“You’re losing your contractions again.” It was a funny quirk of his, when he was really worked up. She wasn’t sure if it was a speech pattern he’d gotten from his mother or something he’d picked up in Greece, but Kayla had always found it endearing.
“Do you think the way I dress makes me unapproachable?” he asked, apropos of nothing.
“Are you serious right now? Where did that come from?”
Andreas’s lips gave a sardonic twist. “You know.”
“Genevieve.” The shark matchmaker.
“Yes. You know she wanted to make me over.”
“Are you worried whatever matchmaker you hire to replace her will want the same thing?”
“There will be no replacement matchmaker.”
Kayla wasn’t sure how he was going to achieve his whole wife and two-point-five children with the white picket fence and billion-dollar bank account to rub into his father’s face that way, but she couldn’t deny a profound sense of relief.
“So, why ask?” Was he planning to go about this the old-fashioned way and date? Horror rolled over her. Did Andreas think Kayla wanted to be his advice buddy on this adventure?
“Why not answer?” Andreas pushed.
“I like the way you dress, whether it’s in your bespoke suits or the blue jeans you keep hidden in your bottom drawer. You’re just you, okay? If a woman needs you to dress like someone else to find you appealing, maybe she’s not the right fit for you long-term, what do you think, Andreas?” If she sounded slightly waspish, well, life went on. Seriously, the man needed to catch a clue.
Maybe she’d buy him a fishing pole.
And some bait.
Rather than looking offended by her blunt speech, Andreas looked entirely too pleased with Kayla’s answer. “I agree.”
Then, keeping with his whole today-let’s-shock-the-bananas-out-of-Kayla theme, he reached right out and ran his fingertip along the scooped neckline of her tank top. She gasped as his touch left all too familiar, if almost forgotten, static shocks of pleasure in its wake.
He smiled. “I like the way you dress as well, Kay-love. I always have.”
