Doukakis's Apprentice

Acting on an impulse he didn’t want to examine too closely, Damon reached out and caught her chin in his hand, feeling the softness of her skin under the hard pads of his fingers as he forced her to look at him. ‘You’re right. I am as ruthless as they say I am. You might want to remember that. And tears just irritate me, Miss Prince.’

‘I’m not crying.’

But she was close to crying. He recognised the signs and he could feel the betraying tremble of her jaw. She was the same age as Arianna and yet that was where the similarity ended. For a fleeting moment he wondered what her life must have been like—an only child brought up by her father, a notorious playboy.

‘I took nothing your board of directors did not readily give.’

‘You made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.’ Her emotional accusation almost made him smile.

‘I’m Greek, not Sicilian. And the people working for me would never sell me out, no matter how good the offer.’

He saw something flicker in her eyes and then she jerked her chin away from his grasp. ‘Everyone has their price, Mr Doukakis.’

And she should know, Damon thought grimly, remembering the reason she’d been excluded from school. Definitely nothing like his sister. ‘I’m afraid I have to politely decline your offer. When it comes to my bed partners I’m extremely discerning.’

For a moment she stared at him blankly and then her mouth dropped. ‘I was talking about business.’

Damon found himself looking at those lips. ‘Of course you were.’

‘You are so offensive. Have you finished?’

‘Finished? I haven’t even started.’ Damon slowly lifted his gaze and stared into her eyes. The chemistry was unmistakable but it didn’t worry him in the slightest. When it came to women he made his decisions based on logic, not libido. He had no time for people who were unable to exercise control over their impulses when the need arose. ‘At the moment the staff have their jobs. Whether or not they keep them is up to you and your father. I’ll expect you in my offices at two o’clock this afternoon. You’re going to start doing some work. And don’t waste time appealing to my emotions, Miss Prince. I never let emotions cloud my decision-making.’

‘Really?’ Those blue eyes locked on his and he saw the same fire and determination in her he’d seen that day in the school. ‘That’s interesting, because I’d say that your decision-making in this instance has been entirely driven by emotion. You’re using this takeover as leverage against my father. If that isn’t an emotional decision, I don’t know what is. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to organise the staff for the office move. If you really want all this “dead wood” transferred to your offices by this afternoon then I’d better get my useless, lazy self moving.’ She stalked towards the door, all long legs and youthful attitude as her dress swung tantalisingly round the tops of her thighs and the spiked heel of her boots tapped the floor.

Hauling his gaze away from the seductive curve of her bottom, Damon slammed the lid on that part of him that wanted to flatten her to the boardroom table and indulge in raw, mindless sex. ‘And do something about the way you dress. Theé mou, you look like a flamingo in your hot pink tights. I expect the people working for me to look professional.’

‘So you don’t like what I do and you don’t like the way I look.’ Her back to him, she stood frozen to the spot. ‘Anything else?’

He wondered if she kept her back to him as a gesture of defiance or because she was close to tears.

There was something disturbing about the fragile set of her narrow shoulders, but Damon was out of sympathy. If she really cared about the staff, the business wouldn’t be in the state it was in. Because of this woman and her father Prince Advertising was in a pitiful state and a hundred people now risked losing their jobs. A hundred families risked having their lives shattered. A chill spread down his spine as he contemplated the possible fall-out from that scenario. ‘I want all the system passwords handed over to my team so that we can access everything. If I’m going to unravel the mess you’ve created here I need to know what I’m dealing with. That’s it. You can go.’

He could have told her that he considered redundancies a sign of failure. He could have told her that he understood his responsibilities as an employer better than anyone and that he ran his business according to his own rigid principles.

He could have told her all of that, but he didn’t.

She’d contributed to this shameful mess.

Let her suffer.

‘I’m going to kill him. I’m going to put my hands round that bronzed throat and squeeze until he can’t utter another sarcastic word and then I’m going to cut holes in his perfect suit and squirt ketchup on his white shirt …’ Feeling powerless, Polly lowered her head onto her hands and thumped her fist on the desk. ‘What do women see in him? I cannot imagine voluntarily spending a single minute in his company. He’s a heartless, sexist monster.’ But that hadn’t stopped her being hyper-aware of him all the way through their confrontation. There was a sexual energy between them that seriously unsettled her. How could she find him attractive?

‘I don’t know about him being a monster. The man is smoking hot.’ Debbie put a stack of empty boxes onto the floor and started clearing the office. ‘At least we still have our jobs. Let’s face it, the figures are so bad he could have dumped us all and no one could really have blamed him.’

Knowing that it was true, Polly lifted her head and stared at her friend in despair. ‘Trust me, that might have been the better option.’

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘I don’t know what I mean, but I know I can’t work for that man.’ Exhausted and stressed, she tried to blot out images of his cold, handsome face. Cold, she reminded herself. Cold, with no sense of humour. ‘I’m not going to last a week. The only thing in doubt is whether I kill him before he kills me.’

‘You can’t walk out! The future of the staff depends on you staying!’

‘How do you know that?’

‘We were listening at the door.’

Polly sank down in her chair. ‘Have you no shame?’

‘This was a crisis. We needed to know whether to ring the job centre or not.’

‘Ring them anyway. You won’t want to work for him for long.’ Trying to galvanise herself into action, Polly tugged open the drawer in her desk and stared down at the jumble of belongings. ‘I need a different pair of tights. Hot pink clearly isn’t his favourite colour. I cannot believe I’m about to change my clothes because a man asked me to. How low can a girl go? I should have told him where to stuff his dress code but I’d already antagonised him more than I should have done.’

‘He didn’t like the tights?’ Debbie raised her eyebrows. ‘Did you tell him you’re wearing them because—?’

‘Tell him?’ Polly rummaged through the drawer. ‘No one tells Damon Doukakis anything. They just listen while he commands. This is a dictatorship, not a democracy. How the hell does the man keep his staff?’

‘He pays top rate and he looks bloody gorgeous.’ Debbie stacked books into the boxes. ‘Calm down. I know you’re angry, but look on the bright side—he fired the board. And you were brilliant.’

‘I lost my temper with Michael the Moron.’

‘I know. You were amazing. You really let him have it. Pow. Smack.’ Debbie abandoned the packing and punched the air like a boxer. ‘Take that you sexist pig. No more looking up our skirts. No more demanding cups of coffee while we’re all running round like demented baboons doing the work he’s too lazy to do. We were all cheering.’

‘There’s nothing to cheer about. Haven’t you ever heard the phrase out of the frying pan into the fire? Damon Doukakis is a macho control freak with serious anger issues—’ Polly silenced the internal voice that reminded her that he was protecting his sister. That was no excuse to go completely over the top.

‘You can forgive a man a lot when he looks like that.’

‘I’m not interested in the way he looks.’

‘Well, you should be. You’re young and available. I know you’re anti-marriage because of your dad, but Damon Doukakis scores a full ten on the sexometer.’

‘Debbie!’

‘Oh, chill, will you? You’ve been uptight all week. It’s bad for your blood pressure.’

Polly had her nose back in the drawer. ‘I don’t have any boring black tights.’

‘Just wear leggings. Here’s a box—start packing.’

She took the box and forced herself to breathe slowly. Even though she’d grown up knowing that sex and love were two different things, the sexual tension between her and Damon horrified her. ‘I wouldn’t touch the man with a long pole. Apart from the fact that I can’t be attracted to a man who doesn’t smile, I wouldn’t want to have sex with a guy who is about to make a load of innocent people redundant. It doesn’t show a caring personality.’

‘You can’t expect him to smile when he’s taking over a company as unusual as ours.’ Debbie closed the box she was packing and started on another. ‘Most people just don’t get the way we work here. I mean, I love it, but we’re not exactly conventional, are we? Nothing about your dad is conventional.’

‘Don’t remind me.’

‘Relax. When your dad finally emerges from wherever he is this time, at least he’ll still have an intact company even if it does belong to someone else. If Demon Damon was thinking of making everyone redundant immediately he wouldn’t be mobilising an army of removal people to transport us from economy city to Doukakis World.’ Debbie carefully lifted a plant. ‘I’m excited. I’ve always wanted to see inside that building. Apparently there’s a fountain in the foyer. The plants are going to love that. So are the fish. Running water is very soothing. He must care about his employees to give them something as lovely as a fountain.’

‘It’s probably there so that despairing employees can drown themselves on their way out of the building.’ Polly walked across to the noticeboard she had on her wall and started taking down photographs.

‘You always say that everyone has a sensitive side.’

‘Well, I was wrong. Damon Doukakis is steel-plated. There’s more sensitivity in an armoured tank.’

‘He’s super-successful.’

Polly stared at a photograph of her father standing on a table at a Christmas party with a drink in one hand and a busty blonde from Accounts in the other. ‘Whose side are you on?’

‘Actually, Pol, I’m on the side of the person who pays my salary. Sorry if that makes me an employment slut, but that’s the way it has to be when you have dependants. Principles are all very well, but you can’t eat them and I have two cats to feed. Careful with those photographs.’ Debbie looked over Polly’s shoulder and gave a nostalgic sigh. ‘That was a good night. Mr Foster had one too many. He’s been nice to me ever since that party.’

‘He’s a lovely man but he’s not a very good accountant. He won’t last five minutes if Damon Doukakis decides to analyse what he does.’ Overwhelmed with the responsibility, Polly carefully slid the photographs into an envelope. ‘I’m sure the Doukakis financial department are killer-sharp, like the boss. They’re not going to be impressed when they see Mr Foster using a pen and a calculator. It will destroy him to lose his job.’

‘Maybe he won’t. You’ve been teaching him to use a spreadsheet.’

‘Yes, but it’s slow going. Every morning I have to go back over what we did the day before. I was hoping we could sneak him past the inquisition without anyone actually wanting to know what he does but it isn’t going to be easy. I bet Doukakis knows if his staff stop to draw breath.’ The responsibility swamped her. ‘Debs, we can’t give him a reason to let anyone go. Everyone has to pull their weight and if they can’t pull their weight then we have to cover for them.’

‘So this probably isn’t a good time to tell you that Kim’s child-minder is sick. She’s brought the baby into the office because that’s what she always does, but …’ Debbie’s voice tailed off. ‘I’m guessing Damon doesn’t have a soft spot for babies.’

Swamped by the volume of work facing her, Polly tipped the contents of a drawer into the box without bothering to sort it. ‘Tell Kim to quietly take the rest of the day working from home, but get her to try and find childcare for tomorrow.’

‘And if she can’t?’

‘We’ll give her an office and she can hide in there. I suppose it’s a waste of time asking if my father has phoned? I’m going to fit him with an electronic tagging device. Did you phone any of those hotels I gave you?’

‘All of them. Nothing.’

‘I wouldn’t put it past him to have bribed some blonde hotel manager to keep his booking quiet.’ Polly put the photographs into a box. ‘We need to get the rest of this packed up. The barbarian hoards from Doukakis Media Group are going to be descending on us any minute to help us move.’

‘The takeover is headlines on the BBC. You dad must know by now.’

Polly paused to swallow two painkillers with a glass of water. ‘I don’t think he’s exactly watching television, Debs.’

‘Do you have any idea who he’s with this time?’

Yes.

Her father was with Arianna, a girl young enough to be his daughter.

Humiliation crawled up her spine as she anticipated the predictable reaction from everyone around her. Polly was no more eager to share the information with the world than Damon Doukakis.

For once in his life, couldn’t her father have picked someone closer to his own age?

‘I try not to think about my father’s love-life.’ Dodging the question, she crammed the lid onto the box. ‘I just don’t see how we can move our entire office in the space of a few hours. I’m exhausted. All I want to do is go to bed and catch up on sleep.’

‘So go to bed. You know how chilled your dad is about flexitime. He always says if the staff don’t want to be there, there’s no point in them being there.’

‘Unfortunately Damon Doukakis is about as chilled as the Amazon jungle. And he wants me in his office at two o’clock.’

Debbie’s eyes widened. ‘What for?’

‘He wants me to start working for my money.’

Debbie stared at her for a moment and then burst out laughing. ‘Sorry, but that’s so funny. Did you tell him the truth?’

‘What’s the point? He’d never believe me and he’s made it his personal mission in life to make my life hell.’ Polly ripped off a piece of tape and slammed her foot down on the bulging box to flatten the lid. ‘So far he’s succeeding beyond his wildest fantasies.’

Debbie picked up a stack of prospectuses from universities. ‘What do you want me to do with these?’

Polly stared at them and felt slightly strange. ‘Just shred them.’ If Damon Doukakis found those on her desk, he’d laugh at her. ‘Get rid of them. I should never have sent off for them in the first place.’

‘But you’ve always said that what you want more than anything is to—’

‘I said, shred them.’ She resisted the impulse to grab them and stow them carefully in a box. What was the point? ‘It was just a stupid dream.’

A really crazy dream.

Numb, she watched as her hopes and dreams were shredded alongside the paper.

Five hours later, exhausted from having supervised the packing of the entire building and seen the staff safely into the coaches laid on to transfer them to their new offices, Polly took her first step into the plush foyer of the Doukakis Tower. The centrepiece was the much talked about water feature, a bubbling monument to corporate success, blending seamlessly with acres of glass and marble. Blinded by architectural perfection, Polly could see why the building was one of London’s most talked about landmarks.

Directed to the fortieth floor by the stunning blonde on the futuristic curved reception desk, she walked towards the glass-fronted express elevator. From behind her she heard the bright-voiced receptionist answer the phone. ‘DMG Corporate, Freya speaking, how may I help you?’

You can’t, Polly thought gloomily. No one can help me now. I’m doomed.

Everywhere she looked there was evidence of the Doukakis success story.

Used to staring at a crumbling factory wall from her tiny office window, she felt her jaw drop in amazement as she saw the view from the elevator.

Through the glass she could see the River Thames curving in a ribbon through London and to her right the famous circle of London Eye with the Houses of Parliament in the distance. It was essentially a huge glass viewing capsule, as stunning and contemporary as the rest of the building. Damon Doukakis might be ruthless, she thought faintly, but he had exceptional taste.

Depressed by the contrast between his achievements and their comparative failure, Polly turned away from the view and tried not to think what it would be like to work for a company as progressive as this one. Everyone employed by him probably had a business degree, she thought enviously.

No wonder he’d been less than impressed with her.

She stared at herself in one of the two mirrored panels that bordered the doors of the elevator and wondered how she could prove to him that she knew what she was doing.

She was now working for the most notoriously demanding boss in the city of London. She still wasn’t really sure why he’d kept her on instead of just firing her along with the board. Presumably because he saw her as his only possible link with her father.

Or possibly just to torture her.

Once the shock of seeing the board of directors leave the building had faded, the staff had erupted into whoops of joy, relieved to still have their jobs. Surprisingly, even the thought of moving to new offices didn’t seem to disturb people. Everyone seemed excited about the prospect of a move to more exciting surroundings.

The only person not celebrating was Polly.

She didn’t know much about Damon Doukakis, but she knew that he didn’t do anyone favours. He was keeping people on for a reason, not out of kindness. When it suited him to let them go, he’d let them go. Unless she could persuade him that the staff were worth keeping.

All morning she’d multitasked, talking to clients via her wireless headset while packing up boxes and masterminding the move. Somewhere in the middle of the chaos she’d stripped off her pink tights and replaced them with black leggings. It was her one and only concession to the strict Doukakis dress code.

Now, she wondered if she should have avoided conflict altogether and worn a suit. Trying to summon sufficient energy to get through the rest of the day, she slapped her cheeks to produce some colour and ignored the hideous squirming in her stomach.

First days, she thought grimly. She hated first days. It was like being back at school. Whispers behind her back. Is that her? The humiliation of her father driving her to school in a flashy car with his latest embarrassingly young wife installed in the front seat. Giggles heard across the length of a playground. Mysterious collisions in the corridor that sent her books flying and her self-esteem plummeting. Standing alone in the lunch queue and then finding an empty table and trying to look as though eating alone was a choice, not a sentence.

Polly glared at her reflection in the mirror. If those days had taught her anything it was how to survive. No matter what happened, she was not going to let Damon Doukakis close down the company. Not without a fight.

Somehow, she had to impress him.

Wondering how on earth you impressed a man like Damon Doukakis, she pressed the button for the executive floor and the doors of the elevator slid closed. But at the last minute a gloved male hand clamped itself around the door and they opened again.

Her hope for two minutes peace dashed, Polly squashed herself back against the far corner as a man dressed in motorbike leathers strode into the lift. She caught a glimpse of wide, powerful shoulders and realised that it was Damon Doukakis himself.

Their eyes clashed and she had a sudden urge to bolt from the lift and use the stairs.

The temperature in the tiny capsule suddenly shot up.

He didn’t even have to open his mouth, she thought desperately. Even the way he stood was intimidating. Irritated by the fact that he looked as good in leather as he did in fine wool, Polly raised an eyebrow.

‘I thought we were supposed to wear suits?’

‘I had a meeting across town. I used the motorbike.’ He wore his masculinity like a banner, overt and unapologetic, and Polly was horrified to feel her insides liquefy.

‘So you don’t change into leather just to beat your staff.’

The glance he sent in her direction was both a threat and a warning. ‘When I start beating my staff,’ he said silkily, ‘you’ll be the first to know because you’ll be right at the top of my list. Perhaps if you’d had some discipline at fourteen you wouldn’t have turned out to be such a disaster. Evidently your father didn’t ever learn to say no to you.’

Polly didn’t tell him that her father had abdicated parental responsibility right from the beginning. ‘He had trouble handling me.’

‘Well, I won’t have trouble.’ His tone lethally soft, he took in her appearance in a single glance. ‘I’ll give you marks for being on time and for changing out of those fluorescent tights.’

For some reason she couldn’t fathom, his derision brought a lump to her throat. She had blisters on her hands from carrying boxes that were too heavy, her feet ached, her back ached, and she hadn’t slept in her bed for four nights. And just to add to her frustration her phone had stopped ringing. All morning clients had called her, but now, when she was desperate for a senior client to ring her for advice so that she could sound impressive and prove to Damon just how good she was at her job, it remained silent.

And there was no point in telling him, was there? He’d made up his mind about her based on that episode in her teens and the state of her father’s company.

The whole situation was made a thousand times worse by the fact that a small part of her knew she was deserving of his contempt. It was because of her that Arianna had been excluded from school. It didn’t surprise her that he had such a low opinion of her. What surprised her was how much she cared. It shouldn’t matter what he thought of her. All that mattered now were the jobs of the innocent people who worked for her father.

‘The headlines on the one o’clock news were pretty brutal. They’re calling you the hatchet man.’

‘Good. Perhaps it will bring your father out of hiding.’ His sensuous mouth curved into a grim smile as he hit a button on the panel and sent the lift gliding upwards.

Transfixed by his mouth, Polly felt her stomach drop. His features were boldly masculine, from the hard lines of his bone structure to the subtle shadow that darkened his jaw. Desperate, she looked for evidence of weakness but found none. ‘My father isn’t hiding.’

‘Miss Prince—’ his voice was a soft, dangerous purr ‘—unless you want to experience first-hand experience of the impact of my temper in an enclosed space, I suggest you don’t force me to think about what your father might currently be doing.’

Polly instinctively retreated against the glass. ‘I’m just saying he isn’t hiding, that’s all. My father isn’t a coward.’ London slowly grew smaller and smaller until it lay beneath them like a miniature toy town. By contrast, the tension in the capsule rocketed.

‘He’s allowed his business to decline rather than make the difficult decisions that should have been made. He needed to make serious cuts but he chose not to do it. If that isn’t cowardice, I don’t know what is.’

‘You shouldn’t make judgements on something you know nothing about.’

‘I run a multinational corporation. I make difficult decisions every day of my life.’ His innate superiority infuriated her almost as much as the fact that he was right. Her father should have made some difficult decisions. But the fact that it was Damon Doukakis who was now pointing that out somehow made it more difficult to hear.