‘That was not my question.’
Mia shifted restively. ‘The article says—’
‘Alleges…’
‘Alleges,’ she echoed with the barest hint of a snap. ‘She was quite distressed at the time she made the charges and she wore bruises on her arms and her face…There are photographs.’ Mia pointed towards the file.
Allowing the lush curve of his eyelashes to droop again, Nikos looked at the photographs, the twist of his mouth showing his distaste before he used long fingers to slide the images aside.
‘This article says that Brunel denied all knowledge as to how the lady acquired her bruises. He claims she set him up.’
‘For what purpose would she do that?’ Mia stared at him in bafflement.
‘For the purpose of receiving the nice hefty pay-off she eventually got?’
‘What about the baby?’
‘Could be anyone’s baby,’ Nikos said with an indifferent shrug.
‘But that is such a cynical way to view the situation,’ Mia immediately flared up. ‘You cannot know that for a fact, and—’
‘You cannot know for a fact that Brunel’s version isn’t the truth,’ Nikos cut in with incisive logic. ‘I suspect the truth probably sits somewhere in the middle of both story versions, but since it was never proven either way I suppose we will never know.’ Casting the sheet of paper aside he looked up at her. ‘So tell me again why you included this in your report?’
Mia shifted from one foot to the other, not really wanting to answer that question. ‘I—I don’t like him,’ she finally contrived to push out.
This time both sleek eyebrows rose upwards. ‘But you’ve only met him once, the other day over lunch.’
‘He has an—uncomfortable manner…’
Nikos suddenly lurched forward, his calm demeanour gone in a single sharp blink of his eyes. ‘Explain that,’ he commanded.
‘I…No.’ Feeling her cheeks start to heat, Mia lowered her gaze.
‘You damn well will, Mia,’ he countered harshly. ‘And you will do it right now!’
‘Why are you angry with me?’ she queried hotly. ‘You instructed me to find out everything I could about Lassiter-Brunel. I found these articles. You prefer that I pretended I did not?’
She was trying to divert the subject, Nikos recognised, narrowing his eyes as he swung his mind back to the working lunch they’d shared earlier this week with John Lassiter and Anton Brunel. The two men were good-looking, arrogantly confident cut-throat businessmen—nothing wrong with any of those characteristics in people that strove for success.
However, his PA had been wearing a sexy red summer dress that fitted tightly beneath the voluptuous thrust of her breasts. The little black shrug thing she’d worn with it helped to cover nothing which mattered, and her hair had been drawn loosely back from her face in a big red clip. She’d looked like an exotic flower in a room packed with staid dark suits. Each time she let her big blue eyes drift across the lunch table the other two men lost the plot as to what they were talking about. Lush red lipstick, Nikos remembered. The warm and throaty tones of her Italian accent whenever she found the courage to speak.
Something he did not want to feel brought him to his feet with the smooth graceful movement of a leaping big cat. ‘I want to know why you’ve decided you don’t like Anton Brunel,’ he insisted. ‘Did he say something to offend you?’ he quizzed sharply. ‘Did he make a pass?’
Wishing now that she had not started this by including that article, Mia shifted uncomfortably. ‘No—’
‘What then—?’ he shot at her.
‘It was n-nothing!’ Her eyes widened in alarm when he came striding around the side of the desk and pulled to a stop only when he towered right over her. Intimidated by the whole macho physicality of his stance, Mia took a wary step back. ‘W-what is the matter with you?’ she husked out.
‘Just answer the question.’ Nikos stepped in close again, halting her next backward step by catching hold of her arms to make her stay where she was.
Feeling the pressure of his fingers slither a streak of heat over her shoulders, Mia hurriedly tried to bury the sensation in a rush of speech. ‘He—he said something I took offence to when—when we were leaving and you were talking to John Lassiter.’
‘What did he say? And look at me when you talk to me,’ Nikos rasped in annoyance. ‘It infuriates me when you hide your eyes from me like that.’
Pulling in a tense breath, Mia did as he bade her, found herself clashing with a pair of polished-mahogany eyes, a flame in their depths she had never seen there before. For a second she forgot what they were talking about while she absorbed this fascinating new discovery and—
‘Speak,’ Nikos commanded.
Mia blinked, elaborately long soot-black eyelashes a trembling framework around the startling rich blue of her eyes. ‘He—he claimed I was m-making the big eyes at him, then made a—a personal remark about you and me,’ she enlightened. ‘It’s your own fault, Nikos!’ she then flared up before he could react. ‘You make me follow you about like a pet dog on a leash! You glare at me if I move. You glare at me if I smile. You touch my hair, my arm, my fingers if I rest them on the table. You slide your hand around my waist when we walk! Look at you now,’ Mia charged up heatedly. ‘You are holding me here in front of you as if you have some special right to do so! That horrible man must have misread the signals you were giving, and dared to tell me he would like to enjoy a little slice of what y-you were getting from me!’
Nikos snapped his fingers from her arms as if she’d burned him. Mia almost staggered off the heels of her shoes in shock. The stunned expression on his face made her wring out a little laugh. ‘You don’t know you do it, do you?’ she choked out unsteadily. ‘You have no clue at all that you do any of the things I said! Well, you do, and he assumed from your behaviour towards me that we are—intimate.’ The word struggled to leave her throat. ‘And—and he asked me if I would like to meet with him one afternoon when you were unavailable.’
Nikos turned to stone in front of her. Shaken up by what she had just said to him, Mia tried to tug in a strained breath. In the two weeks she’d been working with him, Nikos had been treating her more like his lowly slave than his personal assistant. He’d dragged her out to every business luncheon he had attended. He’d brought her tumbling out of bed at ungodly hours of the morning to accompany him to working breakfasts too. If she spoke he didn’t like it; if she smiled he didn’t like it. If she let her attention drift to take in her surroundings he touched her hand to bring her gaze back to him, then frowned at her as if she had committed a mortal sin. Then he dumped her back at her apartment in the evenings and left her there alone—to recover, she presumed, while he went out and—did whatever it was he did in the evenings with whoever it was he did it with!
‘So we drop the Lassiter-Brunel deal.’
Tuning in too late to catch what he’d said, Mia saw that he’d moved back round his desk and lowered himself back into his chair again.
‘See to it,’ he instructed, pushing the now-closed folder back across the desk.
‘S-see to wh-what?’ she stammered out warily.
He lifted eyes to look at her. It was like being pinned to the wall by shards of black glass. Whatever it was that had exploded inside of him was gone now and the cold hard ruthlessly controlled animal was back.
‘I’m s-sorry,’ she felt compelled to apologise. ‘But I did not catch w-what you s-said to me.’
‘My command of the English language is that poor?’ he mocked.
‘N-no.’