During the eighteen months that she had worked in the accounts department before her promotion, she’d heard that the company’s board members disapproved of Alekos’s playboy lifestyle, which attracted the wrong type of press interest, and she understood why he was determined to keep his relationship with his staff on a strictly professional footing. What Alekos wanted from his PA was efficiency, dedication and the ability to blend into the background—and plain, conservatively dressed Sara had fitted the bill perfectly.
In truth she would have worn a nun’s habit to the office if Alekos had required her to because she was so keen to secure the job. Her promotion to personal assistant of the chairman of Gionakis Enterprises had finally won her mother’s praise. For the first time in her life she had felt that she wasn’t a disappointment to Joan Lovejoy. The surname was a misnomer if ever there was one because, as far as Sara could tell, there had been no love or joy in her mother’s life.
She’d wondered if her mother had loved the man who’d abandoned her after he had made her pregnant. But Joan had refused to reveal Sara’s father’s identity and only ever made a few oblique references to him, notably that he had once been an Oxford don and it was a pity that Sara hadn’t inherited his academic brilliance.
Sara had spent most of her life comparing herself to a nameless, faceless man who had helped to create her but she had never met—until six weeks ago. Now she knew that she had inherited her green eyes from her father. He was no longer faceless, or nameless. His name was Lionel Kingsley and he was a well-known politician. She’d been stunned when he had phoned her and revealed that there was a possibility she might be his daughter. She had agreed to a DNA test to see if he was really her father but she had been sure of the result before the test had proved it. When she looked into a mirror she saw her father’s eyes looking back at her.
For the first time in her life she felt she was a whole person, and so many things about herself suddenly made sense, like her love of art and her creativity that she’d always suppressed because her mother had pushed her to concentrate on academic subjects.
Lionel was a widower and had two grown-up children. Her half-siblings! Sara felt excited and nervous at the thought of meeting her half-brother and half-sister. She understood Lionel’s concern that his son and daughter from his marriage might be upset to learn that he had an illegitimate daughter, and she had told herself to be patient and wait until he was ready to acknowledge publicly that he was her father. Finally it was going to happen. Lionel had invited her to his home at the weekend so that he could introduce her to Freddie and Charlotte Kingsley.
Sara had seen pictures of them and discovered that she bore a striking resemblance to her half-siblings. But the physical similarities between her and her half-sister did not apply to their very different dress styles. Photographs of Charlotte wearing stylish, figure-hugging clothes had made Sara realise how frumpy she looked in comparison. The smart suits she wore to the office reflected the importance of her role as PA to the chairman of the company and she had reminded herself that if Alekos had wanted a decorative bimbo to be his PA he wouldn’t have chosen her.
The new clothes she had bought while she had been on holiday did not make her look like a bimbo, Sara reassured herself. The skirt and blouse she was wearing were perfectly respectable for the office. Shopping in the chic boutiques on the French Riviera where her father owned a holiday villa had been a revelation. Remembering the photos she’d seen of her stylish half-sister had prompted Sara to try on colourful summery outfits. She had dropped a dress size from plenty of swimming and playing tennis and she loved being able to fit into skirts and dresses that showed off her more toned figure.
She ran her fingers through her new layered hairstyle. She still wasn’t used to her hair swishing around her shoulders when she turned her head. It made her feel more feminine and, well...sexy. She’d had a few blonde highlights put through the front sections of her hair to complement the natural lighter streaks from where she had spent a month in the French sunshine.
Maybe it was true that blondes did have more fun. But the truth was that meeting her father had given her a new sense of self-confidence. The part of her that had been missing was now complete, and Sara didn’t want to fade into the background any more. Travelling to work on the Tube this morning, she’d wondered if Alekos would notice her changed appearance.
She stared at her flushed face in the mirror and grimaced. All right, she had hoped he would notice her, instead of treating her like a piece of office furniture: functional, necessary but utterly uninteresting.
Well, she had got her wish. Alekos had stopped dead in his tracks when he’d seen her and his shocked expression had changed to a speculative gleam as his eyes had roamed over her. Heat had swept through her body when his gaze lingered on her breasts. She felt embarrassed thinking he might have noticed that her nipples had hardened in a telltale sign that he excited her more than any man had ever done.
Her decision to revamp her appearance suddenly seemed like a bad idea. When she’d dressed in dowdy clothes she hadn’t had to worry that Alekos might catch her glancing at him a dozen times a day, because he rarely seemed to notice that she was a human being and not a robot. Remembering the hot, hard gleam in his eyes when she had been in his office just now sent a tremor through her, and a little part of her wished she could rush back home and change into her safe navy blue suit. But when she’d returned home from her holiday she’d found that all her old clothes were too big, and she’d packed them into black sacks and donated them to a charity shop.
There was no going back. The old Sara Lovejoy was gone for ever and the new Sara was here to stay. Alekos would just have to get used to it.
AT EXACTLY NINE THIRTY, Sara knocked on Alekos’s door and took a deep breath before she stepped into his office. He was sitting behind his desk, leaning back in his chair that was half turned towards the window, and he was holding his phone to his ear. He spared her a brief glance and then swung his gaze back to the window while he continued his telephone conversation.
She ordered herself not to feel disappointed by his lack of interest. Obviously she must have imagined that earlier he had looked at her with a glint of desire in his eyes. Just because she had a new hairstyle and clothes did not mean that she had become Alekos’s fantasy woman. She knew his type: elegant blondes with legs that went on for ever. In the past two years a steady stream of models and socialites had arrived in his life and exited it a few months later when Alekos had grown bored of his affair with them.
Sara had hoped she would be able to control her reaction to Alekos but her heart leapt wildly in her chest as she studied his profile. Slashing cheekbones, a square jaw shadowed with dark stubble and eyes that gleamed like polished jet all combined to give him a lethal magnetism that women invariably found irresistible. His thick black hair had a habit of falling forwards across his brow and she was tempted to run her fingers through it. As for his mouth... Her eyes were drawn to his beautiful mouth. Full-lipped and sensual when he was relaxed and utterly devastating when he smiled, his mouth could also curve into a cynical expression when he wished to convey his displeasure.
‘Don’t stand there wasting time, Sara.’ Alekos’s voice made her jump, and she flushed as she registered that he had finished his phone call and had caught her out staring at him. ‘We have a lot to get through.’
‘I was waiting for you to finish your call.’ She was thankful that two years of practice at hiding her reaction to his smouldering sensuality allowed her to sound calm and composed even though her heart was racing. The way he growled her name in his sexy accent, drawing out the second syllable...Saraaa...was curiously intimate—as if they were lovers. But of course they were not lovers and were never likely to be.
She forced herself to walk unhurriedly across the room, but