Bastard.
Though she was used to wealth, her inheritance still had her eyes popping. After purchasing the building, redesigning and redecorating it, kitting out all of the amenities, and adding tons of services, she’d borrowed around fifty million from her papa. That was less than a third of her trust fund. Her grandpapa had been obscenely wealthy—she was only realizing that now.
But then, she realized she’d inherited his dab hand with investments. She’d reinvested the profits she’d made from The Corsakis and had paid her father back four years earlier than their contracts had stated.
“I know. The trust is more than I ever imagined it would be. But, I would like to ask…Now I’m twenty-eight, I’m free to do what I want. Isn’t that so?” she asked, wanting to clarify this point. “I’m not going to turn into a party girl overnight, but if I chose to do so, there’s nothing in the trust to prevent me from receiving my stipend.”
“That’s correct. The terms and conditions of the trust change once you reach twenty-eight. If your Aunt's death hadn’t caused him such pain, I think he’d have been a lot more lax with the terms. As it was, he was terrified you’d fall into Xanthe’s bad ways, and was determined to save you from yourself. But, he also trusted you to be wiser than your aunt, to have learned from her mistakes by now.”
Alexa grimaced. “I don’t know if that’s true or not, but Aunt Xanthe certainly casts a long shadow.”
“I think we can safely say you’d have made Antonis proud,” Stavros Speros murmured, one of the trust executors. She’d known him since she was a little girl. He’d been one of her grandpapa’s best friends.
She smiled at his words. “I’d like to think so.”
“The Corsakis…” Stavros nodded. “Antonis always said the locale was a ripe spot for a hotel. You were wise to buy the old mansion and to restore it.”
Alexa grinned. “Never let it be said that I don’t listen to my elders.”
Stavros’s laugh was husky. “Little minx.” His laughter bled into a pleased sigh. “If only Antonis was around to see you now. Watching over you is one thing, but I know he would have loved to see you carrying on in his name. He’d be proud as punch. You’ve far surpassed your cousins.” There was a twinkle in his eyes. “Girl power, I’m all for it.”
Her grandpapa had been the first man in the Corsakis family to be wealthy, to earn his own fortune. He’d started in a hotel, built his riches, and diversified into God only knew how many different industries. Her cousins, thankfully, ran that part of the business. Corporate infighting interested her about as much as a game of football! But she was the only one who had gone it alone and who had a private fortune—not related to the corporation.
“I try to do him proud,” was all she said, touched by Stavros’s words, but it wasn’t the first time he’d spoken such a tribute.
“And you do, you do.” He eyed Adrian, who passed her a final sheet to sign, then tucked it away in a clear sleeve. “Now, if that’s it for the both of us, Adrian, I’m off to the club.” When the lawyer nodded, Stavros murmured, preening like a peacock, “I have a date, you know.”
She cocked a brow. How typical was it that a seventy-eight-year-old man saw more dating action than she did? “Not another one, Stavros,” Alexa chided, snorting at the twinkle in his eye.
“Why not, Alexa? I may have lived a staid and dull life, but I need not end it that way too! Hedonism is, I’m discovering, a bloody wondrous thing.”
“I’m sure Max appreciates your newfound lust for life.”
Stavros waved a hand. “What my son chooses to appreciate is his own business. I’m old enough, rich enough, and healthy enough to do whatever I want.”
Getting to her feet, she reached for his hand and squeezed it. “Just be good, eh? Don’t be breaking too many hearts.”
He grinned. “I shall try my very best.”
“Some promise that is! If I happen to see a horde of widows sobbing into their tissues, I’ll know you’ve been about. Till later, old friend.”
“Less of the old. And I’ll see you at your father’s yacht tonight. I want a huge piece of your birthday cake.”
She eyed him. “What about your diabetes?”
He pouted, crinkling the deep lines scored into his face. “One slice on your birthday won’t kill me.”
“If you say so.”
“I do,” he grumbled.
She just winked, then started to leave, when Adrian called her from his desk.
“Yes, Adrian?” She’d never liked him. He’d been her grandfather’s favored lawyer, and Stavros his favored friend.
According to Antonis, Alexa deserved only the best. Stavros, well, she loved him. He was unlike her grandpapa’s other friends, all stiff and rigid in their self-importance. He didn’t demand the formality due to him because of his age. If anything, he demanded the opposite. Stavros had had a similar beginning to Antonis. He’d worked his way to the top. Because of that, he had a bawdy streak that most people found disconcerting but never failed to make her laugh.
Adrian was a stick-in-the-mud, and a creep to boot. She trusted in her grandpapa’s judgment, but she doubted he’d seen the way Adrian looked at her. Antonis certainly wouldn’t appreciate the amount of time Adrian spent gawking at her legs.
“Yes, Adrian?” she repeated in response to his blank stare. “What do you want—aside from to drool over my legs, that is?”
His hooknose curled up at the question, but he didn’t even have the decency to deny his attention had most definitely been focused below Alexa’s waist. “It isn’t what I want, Alexandra. It’s what you want. You were asking some strange questions during the meeting.”
She quirked a brow. “I was, was I?”
“You’re not intending on becoming a media whore, are you?”
“I find that question offensive, Adrian.”
He narrowed his eyes. “It is a valid question. Many of your peers have taken to the television to advertise their riches. I wondered if, now you were free from the trust’s parameters, you were going to do the same.”
His tone implied that he didn’t doubt she was so foolish. God, she hated this prick. “I’m a businesswoman, Adrian. I don’t have time for parties—save for hosting them,” she snapped. “As it is, I would like written confirmation from you that my behavior is no longer tied to my receiving my trust fund.”
“If you don’t intend to shame the family name, why would you even need such confirmation?”
“Because my life has been policed for so long within certain limits that I’d like to know if I’m truly free from them or if there are more rules that apply to the way I lead my life. And I’d like that confirmation before the end of the week. If I don’t have it, now I have control over my own money, I might just look into a different firm to handle the fund!”
Eyes flashing, Adrian slammed his palms down on the desk. “How dare you make such a threat?”
“I dare because I can.” The simplicity and the truth of her words had his glare darkening. She’d always contemplated switching firms once she was of age. The threat wasn’t an empty one. If anything, it was delicious holding something over his head.
Mean? Perhaps, but then, Adrian was a dick. She wouldn’t be surprised, if she happened to look up the words “jerk off“ in the dictionary, that his picture would be the definition.
“I’ll have the letter sent to you before the day is up.”
“Good,” she bit out. “Treat me fairly, Adrian, and not like I was a girl in my school uniform, and I’ll treat you the same.”
Adrian’s mouth tightened, but he nodded. She turned on her heel, waved once more at Stavros, who looked at her knowingly—he was fully aware of her dislike for the lawyer. With her back to Adrian, she shot Stavros a quick grin, then strode out of the office. A free and wealthy woman.
Once the glass door was closed, blocking off Adrian’s office, and she’d passed the receptionist and exited the outer doors, she looked around and, spying no
one, pressed her back to the wall to suck in a deep breath of air.
The trust had always been a distant safety net. Something she could rely on when she came of age. She had never spent a fortune, racked up her own weight in debt because she knew at twenty-eight she could pay it off. Alexa didn’t work that way.
But now, to finally have it, to be able to dip in and out of the fund whenever she wanted…she wouldn’t deny, it was liberating. She had no intention of going out and spending it. Hell, there wasn’t anything in particular she even wanted to buy at the moment. The difference was she could, and that difference counted.
Standing in the commercial center where Adrian had his offices—the top floor of the swanky building no less—Alexa felt tears prick her eyes in thanks to the grandpapa who had left her years before and who wasn’t here to see her today.
Even if he was a meddling bugger who had caused her a shitload of misery, how could she not love the man who had gone to such measures to protect her?
Sucking in a breath, Alexa walked to the elevator. One press of the button and the doors immediately opened. Revealing three occupants. Three well-known occupants.
She wouldn’t lie—Alexa gawked at them. Seeing them as a trio always did that to her. Their power, the sheer masculine edge they exuded seemed to send an electric pulse to every single feminine part of her body.
It wasn’t just that they were gorgeous. It was that they were hers. Intrinsically hers. Since childhood, when they’d befriended the only girl in the group instead of picking on her and teasing her, she’d belonged to them as equally.
That was why losing them had been so very hard. It hadn’t been just the loss of three girlhood pals. They belonged to her. Doing without them, be it their advice or their presence, had made her life a much sadder place.
Could she say that the reason for her hermit-like ways rested on these three sets of shoulders?
Maybe. Her grandfather had certainly gotten his wish. She in no way resembled her aunt—thanks to his actions.
All three were very, very Greek. And imposing. In the elevator, standing there looking at her like fallen angels, she didn’t know how to react. Anger, relief, pain, sadness, happiness…she was awash with emotions. That they contrasted made some sense, but it was damn confusing.
She’d seen them six weeks ago. Her cousin Lara had recently wed one of Aaron’s cousins. All of them had attended the wedding. She’d watched them from afar, taking in their beauty and wishing things were different. These last few weeks, she’d spoken to Aaron regularly on the phone, but he’d seemed intent on talking about the future and the present, rather than dealing with the past. Now that the future was here, she couldn’t help but wonder what their intentions were.
Loukas and Aaron were archetypal Greeks. Dark-as-night hair, olive skin, but with perfect cheekbones that chiseled out their faces. They were tall, although Aaron was the shortest of the group at five-eleven. Loukas’s dark eyes could peer into her soul. Aaron’s gray-green orbs could pierce her to the quick. Leon was the only one who didn’t fit the mold. He had brown hair that, in the height of summer, grew streaked with blond. His skin was lighter too. It tanned rather than turned swarthy. His eyes were green, almost crystalline with amber shards.
All three of them were trim, but Loukas was bulkier than the others. They were fencers, and at fourteen, she’d tried to emulate their training, only to nearly poke herself in the eye with one of their slim sabers.
That the accident had been an impossibility, yet she’d almost managed to achieve it, had turned her parents right off the idea of her taking up the sport. They’d been mad at the hulking trio in front of her for a few weeks, too. Her dad had steered her toward rowing, of all things—with the reasoning that it would be harder to hit herself in the face with an oar.
He’d been right. She’d never managed such a feat, and she still practiced rowing to this day…and from the way the guys were looking at her, she was glad she’d continued with the exercise.
Not that she should be thinking that way.
Ten years of misery and feeling like a leper, and while her papou had been involved, they could have come to her. Could have explained. There was no reason to let her suffer the way she had.
“What are you doing here?” she asked coldly, making sure they knew she’d been studying them and that their masculine beauty didn’t lessen her fury any.
Loukas’s voice was a taut rasp when he told her, “If you didn’t think we’d be here as soon as the ink dried on that damn contract, then you were mistaken.”
Before she could make any kind of retort, he swept down and pressed a kiss to her lips. Her mouth trembled under his, words and tears, pain and declarations quivering on the small bow, but she let him drown them in his affection. An affection she’d missed for so many years.
His hands came to her shoulders, and it was only then she realized she’d been shaking. Her entire body one trembling mass, until he pulled her against him and let her lean on him. His tongue entwined with her own, and before she could devour him in return, she was pulled from his arms and passed to Leon. Those crystalline eyes of his tormented her with the need written within. She groaned as he lowered his mouth in a gentle kiss, a tender rubbing of their lips, before she teased him, tickling the tip of her tongue against the fleshy bottom pad. He groaned, and she swept inside, playing the aggressor, feeling flushed with success when his hands swept around her back and he pulled her tight into him. Her hands went up to his hair, and she grabbed a hold of it. He was the only one that let it grow to his shoulders, and her fingers appreciated that fact as the silken strands caressed her palms.
At her back, there was suddenly a hot presence, and she almost felt faint as she realized Aaron was there. He pressed himself into her, pushing her into Leon’s chest, letting her feel the erections against her belly and butt. She wanted to cry, scream, moan at the realization all of her dreams were on the brink of coming true.
As Aaron’s mouth settled at her throat, his lips and tongue teasing the sensitive skin there, sending shivers up and down her spine, that thought, that everything she’d ever wanted was on the cusp of actually happening, was enough to make her pull away from them.
It was only then she realized they’d been traveling down in the elevator. Almost to the second, enough to make her think her papou was watching over her—not that she wanted him to be at such an intimate moment—the doors opened, and the noise from the busy hall of the center cascaded over her senses.
She wiped a hand over her mouth, gently caressed her lips as she felt how tender they were from such a short kiss, and stepped back and away from them. It was the wisest move because, just her luck, her heel lodged in the rim between elevator and floor. She almost fell head over heels, but Loukas reached forward, grabbed her, and pulled her into him.
“Still need a keeper, I see,” he told her with a grin.
It was the grin that acted like an electric shock to her system. Her stomach clenched down hard as emotion twisted through it. “I’ve had to do without one for ten years. I usually manage, or deal with the bruises afterward,” she retorted coolly, as though the kiss had never happened.
As though the first contact they’d had in ten years hadn’t involved the press of mouth to mouth.
Loukas sighed. “You still think it was our choice? Because if you do, you’re crazy, agape mou.”
“Don’t call me that,” she hissed. “You haven’t earned the right to call me your love.”
His eyes flashed. “I earned the right by having to go without it. For your benefit.”
She pursed her lips. “Why didn’t you tell me? Huh? I’m patient. I could have coped with knowing that we had some potential but we couldn’t act on it. I could have coped with hiding our relationship. Anything but cutting me off. Completely.”
Aaron shook his head. “This isn’t the time or the place, Alexa. Come with us, and we’ll explain.”
“I brought my own car.”
�
�Follow us then. Please, Alexa. I promise, we’ll answer any questions you might have.”
She studied him for a second, then sighed. She wanted answers. She needed to know the details—if she did, then maybe she could decide how she ought to feel.
Should she be angry or sad?
Happy and relieved?
At the moment, she was pissed off and hopeful. More contrasting emotions that only added to her confusion.
“Okay.”
Aaron’s smile was gentle. “Thank you.”
She nodded, and pulled away from Loukas’s hold. She didn’t appreciate that pulling away was the last thing her body wanted to do. If anything, it was quite content where it was.
Grunting at the thought, she said, “I’m parked on the fourth floor of the parking garage. I’ll meet you outside the entrance of the building. I’m in a silver Bentley.”
“Your taste in cars has certainly improved,” Leon commented with a wry grin.
It inspired a smirk of her own. “Porsches still sit pride of place in my garage. Even if I have a new favorite.”
Leon chuckled. “A woman after my own heart. We’re in a black Jag. But, you know the way to our place. We’re in the old Antakis mansion on the waterfront.”
Her eyes widened at that. “The grapevine doesn’t even know who bought that old pile. You bought that place?”
As three, they nodded.
“Together?”
Another nod had her stating, “I don’t know how you managed to contain the gossip.”
Aaron snorted. “How do you think? Only our three names are keeping anything out of the gossip rags. But most in our circle just think we’re inseparable. Mostly because we have been for the last twenty-odd years. Undoubtedly, when the right woman comes along for each of us, they think we’ll part.”
Leon inserted swiftly, “But we know we’ve already found the right woman, and she won’t want us to separate.”
The statement was a direct hit to her cunt. She felt the gentle warming of her pussy as it readied itself for everything these men had to offer, even if her mind was still on lockdown, waiting to hear and finally come to terms with the real reasons behind a ten-year purdah.
Old Enough to Know Better [The Corsakis Hotel 2] (Siren Publishing Menage Amour) Page 3
