And it was being played for her.
‘Luka...’
Cecelia was embarrassed.
Pleased.
And utterly caught by surprise.
No one remembered her birthday.
Ever.
As a child, it had fallen in the school holidays and her mother had only liked grown-up parties, certainly not the type Cecelia had dreamed of. And after she had died, Cecelia hadn’t readily made friends. In fact, at boarding school she had been endlessly teased and bullied.
At eighteen, her aunt and uncle had given up on the perfunctory birthday card and last-minute present, which had always, always been something she needed rather than something she might want.
This was the first time that she’d truly been spoiled on her birthday.
There were two spoons and the cake was completely delectable—vanilla sponge drizzled in thick lemon syrup that was both tart and refreshing.
And she was sharing dessert on her birthday with him.
Luka Kargas.
Cecelia was almost scared to look up for she was worried there might be tears in her eyes.
‘Here,’ Luka said, ‘is the other reason I came into the office today.’
Now Cecelia did look up as he went into his jacket and pulled out a gorgeous parcel and slid it across the table.
It was a long box wrapped in deep red velvet and tied with ribbon that had a little gold charm attached to it.
And she frowned because Cecelia recognised the packaging.
On one overseas trip, she had enjoyed staring into the window of a lavish boutique in the foyer of a Florence hotel where they had been staying. Whenever she’d been waiting for Luka, she had indulged herself with the joy of admiring the beautiful jewellery.
She pulled back the bow, but first she had a question for she didn’t quite believe what Luka had said. ‘You didn’t really come in just because it’s my birthday?’
‘Of course I did. I always try to do the right thing on my PA’s birthday.’
Luka knew full well that for Cecelia he had done more than just the right thing. Usually it was flowers and perfume, or a voucher for a spa hotel, but a few weeks ago, on a business trip, he had stepped out of the elevator and Cecelia’s back had been to him. He had looked to where her gaze had been focused and spied the sparkling window display of the hotel boutique.
The next morning she had been looking again.
And the next.
It had sat in his bureau at home for weeks now.
Last night, just after he had fired off the text to say that he wouldn’t be in, he had remembered her birthday.
Luka had been partying hard, trying to forget the news that had come in about his mother, trying to extend the weekend into a long one, just to delay the return home.
And then he had remembered the box inside his bureau.
‘Oh!’ She gave a gasp of recognition when she saw the necklace. ‘How on earth...?’ It was thick and lavish, coiled with rubies, or glass, she wasn’t sure—Cecelia hadn’t even asked the price at the time, for in either case it would have been way out of her league; she had simply adored it, that was all. ‘Luka, it’s far too much.’
‘It can double up as your leaving gift,’ Luka brooded. ‘Do you want to put it on?’
‘No,’ she said too quickly, ‘I’ll wait till I’m home.’
She wouldn’t be able to manage the clasp and she would burst into flames at the touch of his hands if he so much as brushed the sensitive skin of her neck.
The breeze from the river wasn’t helping at all now. The tiny cardigan felt like a thick shawl around her shoulders and she simply didn’t know how to react.
‘How did you even know it was my birthday?’ Cecelia asked, because she hadn’t mentioned it and certainly she hadn’t made a note of it in his diary.
‘I make it my business to know.’ He could see she was shaken and her reaction surprised him. He had thought she’d be more than used to a fuss being made but she actually seemed stunned, even close to tears. ‘I fired a PA once, about ten years ago,’ he explained as a waiter put down two small glasses, a bottle of ouzo and a carafe of iced water on the table between them.
‘No, thank you,’ Cecelia said as he went to pour one for her. ‘You were saying.’
Luka went ahead and added iced water to the ouzo and she watched as the clear liquid turned white.
How she would love to try it, but she had to keep her guard up, for it was becomingly increasingly difficult to remember that this was work.
He did this for all his PAs, Cecelia reminded herself, and forced herself to listen rather than daydream as he told her just why he had made such a nice fuss.
‘As I was firing her she started to cry.’
‘Tears don’t usually trouble you,’ Cecelia said, thinking of the many tears women had shed over him.
‘They don’t,’ Luka said, ‘but as she was clearing out her things she said that it was her worst birthday ever. She was a terrible PA and deserved to be fired, but I didn’t set out to ruin her birthday.’
‘You really felt bad?’ Cecelia checked, pleased that he did have a conscience after all.
‘A bit,’ he agreed. ‘Since then I have tried to keep track. Normally I would have taken you for lunch. In fact, that was what I had planned to do but when it came to it I was sulking too much to do so...’
She smiled again and back came summer.
‘I thought, given it’s your birthday, that you would have plans tonight. That’s why I checked what time you had to leave by.’
‘No, no plans.’
It was her best birthday ever.
Luka couldn’t know that, of course, but even Gordon hadn’t made much of a fuss.
They’d gone for dinner.
But there had been no candles and no cake.
Gordon had bought her a cloying perfume Cecelia hadn’t liked.
It wasn’t so much the lavishness of the gift Luka had given her that made it the best, more the thought behind it.
How he had seen her looking at the necklace.
That he had noticed...
Yes, she was right to leave.
Because of this.
Because of those moments when he put her world to rights and she was utterly and completely crazy about him.
She had grown up with the dour warning that she did not want to end up like her mother and that men like Luka could only lead her down a dangerous path.
Yet, to her shame, it beckoned her at times.
Times like tonight.
When the easiest thing in the world would be to thank him with a kiss.
She knew where it would lead, though, for that was exactly where she wanted it to lead.
And Luka wouldn’t be hard to convince!
He was easy.
That much she knew.
He was, though, at least with her, the perfect gentleman.
Well, not perfect, and not always a gentleman, but from the beginning Luka had, in the main,