Despite the absence of her boss—in fact, because of the absence of her boss—today was shaping up to be an exceptionally busy one, and so Cecelia forced herself up and out of bed.
She showered quickly and began to get ready.
Her routines were set in stone and, despite the extensive travel and odd hours required by her job, there were certain things that never changed. She could be in Florence, New York, or home in London but these things remained—her clothes were set out the night before, as was her breakfast, which she ate before tackling her hair.
Routines were vital to Cecelia’s sense of well-being, for during the first eight years of her life, when she had lived with her mother, chaos had been the only certainty.
The reddish fire to Cecelia’s strawberry blonde mane had, courtesy of foils, been dimmed to a neutral blonde. She smoothed and sleeked out her long curls and then tied them back into a neat, low ponytail.
Next, Cecelia applied her make-up.
She didn’t wear much, but as Luka’s PA it was expected that she was always well turned out.
It wasn’t always the case. A famous actress she had once worked for had insisted that Cecelia wear no make-up whatsoever as well as extremely plain clothing. With another employer, for practical reasons, her wardrobe had mainly consisted of boots and jeans.
Cecelia’s skin was pale and needed just a dash of blusher to liven it up. She added a coat of mascara to her lashes, which enhanced her deep green eyes, but, as she did so, a rather bitchy voice coming from the radio caught her attention.
‘What on earth did she expect, getting mixed up with Luka Kargas?’
Cecelia stabbed herself in the eye with the mascara wand at the sound of her boss’s name.
It wasn’t so much that it was a surprise to hear Luka mentioned, more an annoyance that even at seven a.m. and alone in her bedroom still there was no escape from him.
Luka was extremely prominent and, although his name often graced the finance reports, his antics and bad-boy ways were regularly discussed in the tabloids and on the news.
They were having a field day discussing him now!
It would seem that he had used every last second of the weekend to create his own particular brand of havoc. A wild party had taken place aboard his yacht, currently moored off the coast of Nice, on Friday.
Cecelia sat at her dressing table, lips pursed as she heard that the raucous celebrations had continued on to Paris, where Luka and selected guests had hit the casinos. Now it was a case of tears after bedtime for some supermodel who had hoped that things might be different between herself and Luka.
Well, more fool her, then, Cecelia thought.
Everyone knew Luka’s track record with women.
But they didn’t really know Luka—there was a private side to him that no one, and certainly not his PA, had access to.
From what Cecelia could glean, Luka had led a very privileged life. His father owned a luxurious resort in Xanero. The famed Kargas restaurant there was now the flagship venue of its own very exclusive brand in several countries. Luka, though, focused more on expanding the hotel side of things and lived life very much in the fast lane. He dated at whim and discarded with ease and all too often it was Cecelia mopping up the tears or fielding calls from scorned lovers.
Yes, he was a playboy in the extreme.
And he unsettled her so.
Cecelia had once glimpsed that life.
Her mother Harriet’s death had been intensely embarrassing for her well-to-do family for she had died as she’d lived and had gone out on a high—knickers down and with the proverbial silver spoon up her nose.
Harriet had left behind a daughter with whom no one had quite known what to do. Her father’s name did not appear on the birth certificate and Cecelia had glimpsed him just once in her life.
And she never wanted to see him again.
Cecelia’s staid aunt and uncle, who had always sniffed in disapproval at Harriet’s rather bohemian existence, had, on her death, taken in the child. With tangled curls and sparkling green eyes, little Cecelia had been a mini replica of her mother, but in looks only.
The little girl had craved routine.
In fact, it had been a very young Cecelia who had kept any semblance of order in her mother’s life.
She had put out her own school uniform and taken money from her mother’s purse to ensure there was food, and she’d always got herself up in the morning and made her own way to school.
After an unconventional start, Cecelia now lived a very conventional life and was efficient and ordered. Even though she travelled the globe with her work, she was generally in bed by ten on weekdays and eleven at weekends.
She had perfectly nice friends, though none close enough to remember her birthday, and this time last year she had been engaged.
Gordon and the break-up had been the only problem she had caused for her aunt and uncle, who could not fathom why she might end things with such a perfectly decent man.
It hadn’t been Gordon’s fault, and she had told him so when she’d ended it.
It was bloody Luka’s!
Though of course Cecelia hadn’t told Gordon that.
Still, there wasn’t time to dwell on it this morning.
She pulled on her flesh-coloured underwear and then glanced out of the window where the sun split a very blue sky, and found she simply could not face putting on the navy linen suit that she had laid out last night.
To hell with it!
Given that Luka wouldn’t be in the office today, and that she wouldn’t now be sitting in on meetings, Cecelia made an unplanned diversion to her wardrobe.
She wasn’t exactly blinded by colour. But there was the dress she had bought to wear to a friend’s wedding she had recently attended.
It had been a rare impulse purchase.
It was a pale cream halter neck, which Cecelia had decided as soon as she’d left the boutique was too close to white and might offend the bride.
She loved it, though, and, maybe because it was her birthday, she decided to wear it.
While it showed rather too much of her back and arms, she took care of that with the pale lemon, sheer, bolero-style cardigan she had bought on the same day.
The dress was mid-calf-length so she didn’t bother with stockings, and then she tied on some espadrilles.
Yes, perhaps because Cecelia knew she would soon be leaving Kargas Holdings she was finally starting to relax.
As she closed the front door to her flat, Cecelia decided that despite Luka’s absence she would still be giving in her notice today. It would be far easier to do it over the phone or online.
‘You’re looking very summery,’ Mrs Dawson, her very nosy neighbour, said as she passed her in the hall. ‘Off to work?’
‘I am.’
The pale lemon bolero didn’t even make it past the escalators to the underground. It was hot and oppressive and as she stood, holding a rail, she saw that Luka’s weekend escapades had made headlines on the newspaper a commuter held.
She looked at the photo beneath the headline. It was of Luka on the deck of his yacht moving in on a sophisticated, dark-skinned beauty. His naked chest and thick black hair were dripping water over the woman and though their bodies did not touch it was an incredibly intimate shot.
Cecelia tore her eyes from the picture and stared fixedly ahead but that image of him