Finally, they alighted from the taxi and Lexi stretched and looked around. The port of Piraeus was teeming with activity and various large ferries and boats were docked at the tiny, industrious harbour, Athens rising behind her in a tier of mostly grubby, worn, age-old buildings.
‘Look, Ty—’ she pointed up the hill, where a cluster of deep green trees circled below the rocky ledge that housed the Parthenon and other ancient ruins ‘—the Acropolis.’
The little boy looked, but of course showed none of the excitement that she felt.
‘Hurry up, it’s hot,’ Leo demanded grumpily behind her.
She turned and spotted the four casually dressed bodyguards she was still not used to flanking them.
‘Of course it’s hot.’ She smiled, determined not to let his dark mood, or her own awareness of him as a man, colour her enjoyment of her surroundings. He had forced her to come, but it was her natural inclination to try and find the best in every situation. ‘It’s summer in Greece. Have you been to the Acropolis before?’
Leo scowled down at her. ‘No.’
‘Is this your first time in Athens, then?’ she asked interestedly, shading her eyes against the sun as she looked up at him.
‘I come here to work, not play.’ He glanced at Ty and then back. ‘Is he heavy?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Danny will give you a tour of Proteus and see to anything that you need.’
‘Oh, what will you be doing?’
Her question caught Leo off guard and he didn’t know if it was the heat of the sun, or her annoying serenity, or the fact he’d just spent the better part of an hour pressed up against her in a stifling taxi, but his patience was paper-thin. ‘If I wanted to answer to someone, Miss Somers, I’d have a wife.’
Her eyebrows shot up and her exotic eyes, which had sparkled before as she’d enjoyed her surroundings, turned frigid. ‘A novel concept for you, to be sure,’ she retorted, stalking off ahead of him as if she were a queen dismissing a minion.
No, angel, you’re the novel concept.
Simmering with frustration, Leo found himself absently watching the provocative sway of her hips in jeans that were surely a size too small before indicating to two of his security detail to follow her.
He boarded his yacht and his captain and two engineers were waiting to give him a personal tour. When that was done, he headed to his private office to work.
Only his mind wouldn’t focus and by nightfall he had given up. Tomorrow he would have up to thirty guests enjoying a weekend on-board and he would need to be in top form for the meetings he had planned.
Even though it was late, he decided to stop by the pool deck for a drink. It was empty, the bar closed and most of the sun loungers packed away for the night. He took a seat in a deckchair under the awning, out of sight of the prying lens of any roving paparazzi that had got wind he was on-board, and enjoyed the peaceful sound of the sea slapping against the sides of the nearby vessels and the distant rumble of city traffic.
He heard a door behind him slide open and presumed it was a steward come to see if he wanted something to drink. Then he heard the soft sound of flip-flops crossing the deck and knew it wasn’t a staff member. He watched Lexi Somers stroll to the railing and gaze out over the harbour and back towards Athens.
There wasn’t anything overtly sexual about her in hot pink leggings and a jade-green oversized shirt but he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She had been getting under his skin since the moment he had met her. But he couldn’t for the life of him understand the attraction. She didn’t appear to be like any other woman he’d met before. She was beautiful but didn’t flaunt it, she seemed intelligent and switched on and yet she played children’s games with ease and enthusiasm. And she spoke her mind—a quality he had never admired in a woman before.
In some ways she reminded him of the way his mother had been with Sasha—gentle and loving. Although Leo knew that his mother must have cared for him too, he knew that she had never approved of him. Where Sasha had been gentle, he had been rough. Where Sasha had been passive, he had been aggressive. He remembered that too often she had told him he was just like his father and she hadn’t meant it as a compliment.
He returned his attention to Lexi Somers, who looked almost lost as she gazed out over the water, and he wondered if she was thinking about Paris. About her Parisian lover. Missing him, even.
‘Unless your intention is to be on the cover of the morning paper tomorrow, I suggest you stand back from the railing.’
‘Oh.’ She jumped at the sound of his voice and squinted to where he sat in the semi-darkness, the deck lit only by a few well-spaced down-lights.
‘I didn’t see you sitting back there in the dark.’
Leo crossed one foot over his opposite knee, his hands clasped behind his head as he slouched a little further into his deckchair. ‘So it seems.’
‘I was trying to see if I could see the Parthenon at night. I hear it’s beautiful.’
‘All you’ll see is camera flashes going off if you’re not careful. Or is that what you want?’
‘Oh, yes, that would be great,’ she scoffed. ‘As you can see, I’ve dressed for the occasion.’
Leo reluctantly ran his eyes over her. She looked more than fine to him. ‘They won’t know who you are anyway. And since I wasn’t standing beside you they’re unlikely to dig. Most likely they’ll assume you’re staff. Except if you wander around in that red bikini you had on today. I don’t usually let my staff dress like that when they’re working.’
‘Lucky I’m not staff.’
‘Your choice,’ he said, reminding her of her wish not to be paid for the weekend. Which still irked him. If he was paying her the lines of their relationship would be clearer and he wouldn’t always be thinking of crossing them.
She narrowed her eyes as she walked towards him. ‘I didn’t see you by the pool earlier today.’
‘I was on the bridge.’
‘Spying?’
‘Going over the itinerary with my captain,’ he advised curtly.
‘I was teasing,’ she informed him and Leo felt his teeth gnash together at her amused expression.
She wandered over and stood beside his table. ‘Ty loves the water. In summer we get out buckets and let the kids play with water in the sandpit and he’s first in line. He also loves to run. I don’t know if you noticed but when he gets going he’s—’
‘What’s that you’re holding?’
She glanced at the white plastic object in her hand. ‘A monitor.’
Leo frowned, immediately suspicious. ‘For what?’
‘Ty. It was one of the things I requested on the list I put together this morning.’
‘What’s it for?’
‘If he wakes up and cries out I’ll hear him. It’s a bit like a walkie-talkie but it only transmits signals one way.’
‘You can’t be available to him day and night,’ he said somewhat churlishly.
‘Somebody has to be.’
Leo ignored the shaft of guilt that speared his gut and made a mental note to ask his housekeeper to organise someone to assist her during Ty’s sleep time.
Just then a steward came out and asked if they would like drinks and Lexi surprised him by