Horrified by the damage she had caused, and devastated by that personal rebuke, Maddie scrambled hurriedly upright and said tautly, ‘I really am sorry, sir. I didn’t see the wire.’
At that moment Giannis wondered what it was about her pale, delicate features that struck an eerie chord of familiarity with him. Whatever—a hint of tears had given her green eyes a soft radiance. An identification tag dangled from her shirt, but Giannis couldn’t read it. He studied her from below the black screen of his dense lashes, his brilliant dark eyes glittering. Her pouting mouth reminded him of a crushed strawberry. ‘And you are…?’ he queried drily.
‘Maddie…er…Madeleine Conway, sir.’ Catching an urgent, dismissive jerk of the head from Annabel, who clearly wanted her to get out, and fast, she retreated back to the trolley and made a hasty exit.
Maddie felt so hot and flustered and furious with herself that she had to splash her face with cold water to cool down. Having actually got to meet Giannis Petrakos, she had contrived to make the worst possible impression on him. Her nerves had made her inexcusably ham-fisted. She winced at the suspicion that he might have seen the involuntary tears of dismay that had briefly filled her eyes when she’d realised the extent of the damage she had caused. How professional was that?
She felt even more uncomfortable about the way she had behaved around him. Being a touch naïve and inexperienced when it came to men now struck her as being a hanging offence. However, she had had little opportunity to be anything else when, from her teenage years right through to her early twenties, she had been restricted by her responsibilities at home. A social life had been impossible, school-friends had fallen away because she had never been free to go out. Though in some ways she had grown up older than her years, because she had spent so much time with her grandparents, when she’d moved to London to find work, after her grandmother had passed away, she had discovered that she was uncomfortably out of step with her peers. Sex as casual as a takeaway meal and heavy drinking ran contrary to the mores she had been taught to respect.
But Maddie was also honest enough to admit that until the moment she had looked across that conference room and seen Giannis Petrakos she had genuinely not known what it was to be strongly attracted to a man. In that instant her brain had turned to mush and her body to an alien entity that reacted with responses she had not known she had. The strength of that physical pull had taken her by surprise, and even in retrospect it shocked her. That disturbing awareness of the more private parts of her body still lingered like a secret taunt, to remind her that she had sexual responses that paid little heed to common sense or self-control. Could he have guessed why she was staring at him? The suspicion made her cringe. While he had to be accustomed to attracting female attention, he was entitled to expect more prudent behaviour from an employee.
‘Miss Conway?’ Annabel Holmes murmured from the doorway. ‘A word, if you please.’
Maddie paled and turned obediently away from the trolley she had been clearing to face the manager.
‘Are you sure you’re all right? That was quite a fall you had,’ the other woman remarked rather stiffly.
‘I’m great—only my dignity dented,’ Maddie asserted awkwardly. ‘Were you able to hold the presentation?’
‘I’m afraid not. There was a delay, and Mr Petrakos had another appointment. He’s never here for long, and when he is his schedule is packed. Mistakes are an inconvenience and an annoyance that he doesn’t forget,’ Annabel breathed tautly. ‘I messed up by asking you to do the refreshments—’
‘No, I’m the one who messed up!’ Maddie protested in dismay.
‘I’m afraid Mr Petrakos has a low tolerance threshold for screw-ups. I’m pretty sure I’ll be forever associated with that ruined presentation in his mind.’
Guilt assailed Maddie in an even more powerful wave. ‘Surely not…I mean, I’m sure he’s a reasonable guy.’
A humourless laugh fell from Annabel’s lips. ‘You’re suffering from the Petrakos effect, aren’t you? All our hearts beat a lot faster the first time or so, but now mine just goes into panic mode when he’s around,’ she confided heavily. ‘He may be drop-dead gorgeous, but he’s cold as ice below the surface and he expects perfection. If you don’t shape up, he ships you out fast.’
Initially ready to argue with that hard assessment of Giannis Petrakos, Maddie bit down on her tongue—because she had already learned for herself that he did not suffer fools in silence. She apologised again, for she could see that the brunette was sincerely worried about her future employment prospects.
Annabel shrugged and told her not to worry about it. ‘That’s the joy of being a temp,’ the other woman added. ‘You’ll be out of here tomorrow and starting a clean sheet someplace else the next day.’
With a heavy heart, Maddie cleared the abandoned cups from the empty conference room. Surely Annabel Holmes was wrong about Giannis Petrakos, and was overreacting to an unfortunate blunder? But some highly successful business magnates were reputed to be total slave-driving tyrants in the office, Maddie acknowledged unhappily. And what did she really know about Giannis Petrakos as an employer? Was the other woman’s career likely to suffer as a result of Maddie’s clumsiness? If that was the case, wasn’t it her duty to speak up on Annabel’s behalf and ensure that she herself took the blame? Grovel in the hope that his memory of the unfortunate incident was forever associated with a very clumsy temp instead?
Tomorrow she would make every possible effort to speak to him. Perhaps when he arrived in the morning—or later—she’d be able to just manage to catch him on his own for a moment. She could always make him a cup of coffee and use that as an excuse to interrupt him. A couple of minutes would be all she needed. It was wonderful how a few well-chosen tactful words could smooth over an awkward episode…
GIANNIS woke hot and aching from an erotic dream and cursed with rare savagery. Maddie, the graceless little redhead, had hotwired his libido. What was it about her? The lure of forbidden fruit? The prospect of sex at the office? He had never had it, but had often thought about it.
Over the past decade he could have fulfilled that fantasy time and time again. Yet, in spite of the fact that innumerable female staff had made sexual approaches, he had never responded. He had withstood the ones who’d stripped off just as easily as he had rejected the looks, and the verbal and written invitations. In fact all those workplace come-ons had exasperated him, because he was first and foremost a businessman. He was a firm believer in enforcing the rules that kept his staff keen, disciplined, and motivated to deliver only their very best. By no stretch of the imagination could his shagging the temp do anything but damage that streamlined operational efficiency, Giannis told himself grimly.
On the other hand, he mused over breakfast at six, there was no reason why he should not pursue the temp once she had moved on from Petrakos Industries.
In the act of mulling over that fact, and its possibilities, on his chauffeur-driven journey through the London traffic, Giannis got a distinct cold chill down his spine. Why was he thinking about Maddie Conway so much? Why did he even remember her name? It was weird. He was acting weird. Since when had sex been a big deal to him? All his needs in that department were met by two highly sophisticated beauties, one in London and another in Greece. Both understood his requirements to the letter, and met them with the utmost style and discretion.
He set up a meeting over lunch with his English mistress. Obviously he was suffering from sexual frustration.
At noon, Maddie felt a yawn creeping up on her. She had been given a heap of photocopying to do, and it was so tedious that she could have fallen asleep standing up. Stacy’s moans made the chore no more enjoyable.
‘We