Gorgeous Greeks: Seductive Secrets

Eleanor groaned. ‘I’m feeling freaked out. You know I haven’t had much time—or inclination—for relationships, Allie. I can’t do this—’

‘Does he want a relationship?’

Eleanor groaned again. ‘No, of course not. That is—I don’t think so. I shouldn’t even care.’

‘But you do,’ Allie filled in quietly and Eleanor bit her lip, nipping hard.

‘No,’ she finally said, firmly. ‘I don’t. I can’t. Ten years ago he broke my heart and—more than that.’ She twisted the mug, her tea barely touched, around in her hands. ‘My whole life collapsed, Allie. Everything. I never told you how—how bad it was, but it was. Bad.’ She tried to smile wryly, but her lips trembled instead. ‘Really bad.’

‘Oh, Eleanor.’ Allie reached over to place a hand on top of hers. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘So am I. And that’s why this kiss—for whatever reason—was a bad idea. I’m not going to ever let myself feel that way again. Be used that way. And,’ Eleanor finished, her voice turning hard and flinty, ‘the simple fact is, I may have changed a lot in ten years, but Jace Zervas hasn’t.’ Not enough. Not in ways that mattered. She smiled grimly at her friend. ‘I don’t think he’s changed at all.’

Eleanor spent the night on Allie’s futon, and slept deeply and dreamlessly. By the time she swam to consciousness the next morning, the sun was high in the sky and Allie had already gone out for the coffee and croissants.

‘I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck,’ Eleanor muttered as she pushed her hair out of her face and blinked in the sunlight flooding the room. She hadn’t even washed her face before going to bed, and her eyes felt sticky both with sleep and dried mascara.

‘You basically were,’ Allie replied cheerfully. ‘The Jace Zervas Express.’ She handed Eleanor a paper cup of coffee and a flaky croissant. ‘Here. Sustenance.’

‘You’re amazing.’

Allie grinned. ‘I know.’

Eleanor sat cross-legged on the sofa and ate the buttery croissant, licking the crumbs from her fingers, before she started on her coffee. She hadn’t eaten much last night, as busy as she’d been with the details of the party, and she was starving.

Her cellphone beeped just as she took her first sip of coffee.

‘My boss,’ she explained when she’d located the phone and listened to Lily’s brief message. She sounded her usual terse self, and simply asked her to call, which made Eleanor feel a flutter of panic. Had Jace talked to Lily? Had the party not been a success after all?

Had that kiss changed everything?

She ended the message and dropped her cellphone back into her bag. Leaning back against the sofa she took a sip of coffee, determined to forget Lily, forget Jace, forget everything, if just for a day. It was Saturday; she was with Allie. And she needed a break. She turned to Allie, smiling with bright determination. ‘Let’s go out. Do something fun. Go to the Greenmarket in Union Square and buy funky jewellery at St Mark’s Place.’

‘Funky jewellery?’ Allie repeated, eyebrows arched. ‘When have you ever worn funky jewellery?’

Eleanor bit her lip, her smile wobbling just a little bit. She used to wear funky jewellery. She used to look and feel and be so different.

She simply wasn’t that person any more, and she didn’t think she ever could be again. After she’d lost both Jace and their baby, she’d ruthlessly gone about becoming someone else… the person she was now.

The kind of person you never wanted to be.

Shrugging away the sorrow this thought caused, she smiled once more at Allie. ‘Well, let’s go to a museum, then. The Met or the MOMA.’ She took her last sip of coffee, her voice taking on an edge. ‘You’re right, I’m really not a funky jewellery kind of person.’

Monday morning came soon enough, and as Eleanor walked through Premier Planning’s office she was uncomfortably aware of the curious looks of everyone on the office floor, the sideways glances, the open speculation. Her skin prickled. What had happened? What had Jace done?

Then she stopped in the doorway of her office, for there in the centre of her desk was the most enormous, most outrageous bouquet of flowers she’d ever seen. She dropped her bag on the floor and approached the arrangement of creamy white lilies and small, violet blooms that a card tucked in among the leaves told her was glory-of-the-snow.

Snow.

Her heart constricted. A little envelope had been taped to the crystal vase, and Eleanor took it with trembling fingers. She slipped the stiff white card out and read the two words printed on it: Sorry. Again.

Her fingers clenched on the card. Sorry for what? Sorry for the kiss? Sorry for—

‘Well, well.’

Eleanor turned around, the card still clutched in her fingers. Lily stood in the doorway, as sharp and freshly pressed as ever, the expression on her thin face impossible to read.

‘Good morning, Lily.’

‘I’d say from those flowers that Zervas was pleased with the party.’

‘I hope so.’

‘I know he was pleased because he called me Saturday morning to tell me so. I knew we could do it,’ Lily told her in a smug voice that made Eleanor wonder if her boss was taking credit for pulling off the event.

‘That’s… wonderful?’ she said numbly.

Lily narrowed her eyes. ‘It is, isn’t it? You don’t sound too thrilled, though. And you look terrible.’

Leave it to Lily not to sugarcoat it, Eleanor thought sourly. She moved the flowers to a side table. ‘I’m just exhausted. Organising a party like that in just a week takes it out of even me.’

‘You’re right,’ Lily conceded grudgingly. ‘You can take a half-day, if you like.’

Eleanor shook her head. She didn’t need more time to think, to dwell, to wonder. Nor did she need people like Jill or Laura eager to keep her clients or steal more while she was away. She needed to be here, at work, where she was needed and useful and busy. ‘No, thanks. I’m fine. I need to catch up on all my other accounts anyway.’

Yet even as Eleanor worked solidly throughout the day, she found it still gave her mind plenty of time to wonder. To remember. She relived every second of that kiss with Jace, how unbearably good it had felt to be held by him again. How she realised her body had been waiting to be held again—by him—for ten long years.

How infuriated and frustrated and scared it made her feel. She didn’t want to want him.

She was just about to leave for the day when her phone rang. Thinking it was a callback from a client, she reached for the phone quickly, her voice brisk and professional.

‘Eleanor Langley.’

‘Hello, Ellie.’ A pause, and she heard a wry note of laughter in his voice as he corrected himself. ‘Sorry. Eleanor.’

Her fingers clenched on the phone. Blood drained from her face, raced to other parts of her body. ‘Hello, Jace.’

‘I’m leaving for Greece tomorrow.’ He spoke quietly, almost sadly. ‘I just wanted to say I’m sorry. For the other night. I know me kissing you wasn’t on either of our agendas.’

Agendas. She pictured herself pencilling in kiss Jace. No, that had definitely not been on her agenda. And obviously not on Jace’s either, Eleanor acknowledged bleakly. ‘The flowers did the job admirably,’ she said after a moment, her voice sounding constricted.

‘I’m glad you liked them.’

Eleanor didn’t answer, couldn’t, because her throat had tightened so terribly. The silence ticked on between them, punctuated only by the soft sound of their breathing.

Finally Jace spoke again. ‘So I suppose this is goodbye. I don’t intend to return to New York.’

‘Not even to manage Atrikides Holdings?’

‘I’ve appointed a CEO,’ Jace said. ‘Leandro Atrikides’s nephew. That was the plan all along.’

‘Whose plan?’

‘Leandro’s.’ He sounded weary, and Eleanor realised with a jolt that the corporate takeover might not have been quite as ruthless as she’d thought. Jace wasn’t as ruthless as she had thought.

But it didn’t matter, because he was leaving New York. And there could be—would be—nothing between them anyway, which was how she wanted it. How it had to be. The past could be forgiven, maybe, but not forgotten. Not undone.

‘I see,’ she managed. Her voice sounded distant and polite despite the ache in her throat and even in her heart. ‘Well, goodbye, then.’

Jace was silent, long enough for Eleanor to wonder what he was thinking. What he wanted to say. What she wanted him to say.

‘Goodbye, Eleanor,’ he said, and then he put down the phone.

Staring into space, Eleanor realised that Jace had just left her a second time. At least this time he’d said goodbye.

Jace stood up and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window of Leandro Atrikides’s office, the view of Central Park now shrouded in shadows.

Tomorrow morning he’d take his private jet back to Athens. He had plenty of work to keep him busy, meetings to attend, companies to control, decisions to make. A life.

Yet right now it all felt empty, meaningless, and all he could think of was the woman he’d left, the woman he was leaving again. The life he’d lost a decade ago.

Irritated, Jace shook off his maudlin thoughts. They were not worthy of him. Regret was a useless emotion. The best option, the only option, was to move on. To forget. As they both surely should do.

And that was what he wanted to do, anyway. He wasn’t interested in resurrecting some youthful affair that had most likely been doomed from the start. He wasn’t interested in becoming that carefree young man again, the man with a heart to break, even if he grieved the loss of the woman he’d once known. He’d wanted to bring that woman back last night; he thought apologising would help. Kissing her wouldn’t. Didn’t.

That kiss, Jace knew, had been a mistake. Even if it hadn’t felt like one at the time.

That kiss had unearthed memories, desire, regrets—all of which Jace wanted to keep buried, and he had no doubt that Eleanor did too.

Sighing, shrugging off these thoughts, he told himself he should return to his penthouse hotel suite. He’d order in and go to bed early, take a morning flight back to Athens. He was neither needed nor wanted here.

Yet still he remained, hands in his pockets, staring out at a darkening sky.

Three months later

‘Why do you work so hard?’

Jace looked up from the financial newspaper he’d been scanning as he drank his morning coffee. ‘Sorry,’ he said, giving his sister Alecia a still-distracted smile. ‘Habit.’ He reached for one of the rolls on the table. They were sitting in one of the cafés off Kolonaki Square, in one of Athens’s best neighborhoods.

Across from him Alecia made a face and reached for a roll herself. ‘I don’t mean reading your newspaper, Jace. It’s everything. Ever since you came back from that trip you’ve been like a grumpy bear, growling at everyone who sees you. And you’ve missed three family dinners—that’s at least two too many. I know you try to miss them anyway, but still…’ She smiled teasingly as she said it, but even Jace could see the shadows of worry in her eyes.

He broke his roll in half. ‘What trip do you mean?’

‘The one to the States. New York, wasn’t it?’

Jace shouldn’t have asked. He already knew what trip, knew what lay behind his sister’s concerned comments.

Eleanor. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. He hadn’t been the same since he’d seen her. Since he’d left her. Again.

Sighing, he reached for his cup and took a small sip of the strong, syrupy Greek coffee.

‘I’m worried about you, you know.’

‘Don’t be.’ The words came out harshly, too harshly, for he and Alecia had always enjoyed a close relationship. She was older than him by only eighteen months, and the only one of his sisters still to be unmarried. She understood him perhaps better than anyone else did, and she was the only person he’d told about Ellie. Yet he hadn’t told her about Eleanor, or what had happened in New York three months ago.

‘Jace? What’s going on?’

‘Nothing.’ His throat constricted and his fingers tightened around the coffee cup. He wasn’t ready to share everything he’d learned in New York: that he’d made a mistake, that he wasn’t infertile, that he’d ruined what might have been his only chance at happiness and perhaps even love. He could barely voice those sentiments to himself. For the last three months he’d been working as hard as he could to keep from thinking about them. To keep from thinking about anything.

Yet it obviously hadn’t worked, for Alecia had seen that something was amiss, and Eleanor never really left his thoughts. She invaded his dreams. He felt her like a constant presence, a mist over his mind, even though she was thousands of miles away.

‘Is it a woman?’ Alecia asked playfully, and Jace’s head jerked up.

‘What?’

‘A woman.’ Alecia smiled, her chin resting on her laced fingers. ‘If I didn’t know you better, I’d think it was a woman. You seem almost lovesick.’

Lovesick. What a terrible expression. Love. Sick. And he didn’t love Eleanor; he didn’t even know her any more.

‘Alecia, that’s ridiculous.’

‘Is it?’ Alecia cocked her head. ‘I know you haven’t given any women a chance since that conniving slut back in Boston—’

‘Don’t.’ Jace bit the word off, heard the tension and anger in his voice. Alecia blinked in surprise. ‘I don’t want to talk about her.’

‘I know how much she hurt you, Jace. Even if you’ve never wanted to admit it.’

‘Don’t,’ he said again, and barely managed to get the word out. He turned his head, not wanting Alecia to see the naked emotion and pain on his face. Not wanting to feel it himself. He missed her, he knew. He couldn’t hide from it. He missed Ellie. Eleanor. Since seeing her in New York, he hadn’t felt complete or whole or happy.

He needed her.

He just didn’t want to.

‘All right, then,’ she said after a moment. ‘Let’s talk about something else. Papa is going to be seventy next month, and no one’s done a thing about it.’

Jace tensed, as he always did when his father was mentioned, but then he made himself relax. ‘And what,’ he asked Alecia with a bland smile, ‘are we supposed to do about it exactly?’

‘A party, Jace! I know Elana usually organises such things, but she’s busy with her four—Lukas is applying to university this year—and Tabitha is pregnant with her third—’

‘Her third?’ Jace murmured. ‘Already?’ He could never keep track of his sisters and their growing brood. Admittedly, he didn’t try very hard. He sent expensive presents and occasionally he showed up. For so long he’d felt separate from all of them, with their busy lives and their bands of children. He’d felt so other.

Yet now he didn’t need to; he’d gone to a fertility specialist as soon as he’d returned to Athens, and the results had come back two weeks ago. He had, the doctor told him, limited fertility. It would still be possible to have a child; it would have been possible ten years ago.

It had been. He thought of the daughter he’d had and never known, and then closed his mind off from the memory-that-wasn’t.

He’d avoided thinking about the implications of the doctor’s news because it hurt too much. It hurt to realise he had wasted so many years of his life; it hurt even to think how glad his father would be at the news now. His existence would finally be validated. Jace hadn’t told him—or anyone—yet. It wasn’t as if he were about to run off and make that oh-so needed heir. Unlike his father, he had no desperate urge to create a dynasty. He refused to be defined by either his inability or ability to have children.

‘Jace, are you listening to a word I’m saying?’ Alecia asked, good-natured impatience edging her voice, and Jace smiled in apology.

‘Sorry. Go on. Tabitha’s pregnant and Elana’s busy.’

‘And Kaitrona is hopeless at organising these things, and Parthenope isn’t speaking to Papa—’

‘Parthenope isn’t? Why not?’

Alecia waved a hand in dismissal. ‘Oh, who knows? Someone’s always in an argument with him. He said something rude to Christos once—’

‘Ah.’ Christos was Parthenope’s husband, a charming city type that his father didn’t trust. And, Jace knew well, his father had always been a plain speaker.

You’re sterile. You cannot have children. What use is it to me, to have no more Zervas men to follow me? What good are you?

‘What about you, then?’ he asked, pouring them both more coffee.

‘I just started a new job and it has crazy hours,’ Alecia replied. ‘Which you’d know, if you listened to me for more than five minutes. Honestly, Jace, you’re hopeless. Who is she?’

‘She is no one,’ Jace replied, an edge to his voice. ‘Don’t start assuming things and spreading rumours, Alecia.’

‘Who, me?’ She blinked innocently. ‘Anyway, since none of us can do it, that only leaves one person.’

‘Mother?’ Jace guessed, and Alecia rolled her eyes.

‘You, Jace, you! You can organise a party. I thought we could have it out on that island villa of yours. You hardly ever go there, and it’s the most amazing place I’ve ever seen.’

Jace stilled, his face blanking. Give his father a party? A celebration thrown by the son who had been nothing but a disappointment? Such a party could only be an insult, a mockery, especially considering how strained and distant their relationship had been and still was. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Alecia.’

‘I know you and Papa have your differences, Jace, but you’re his son—’

‘I’m not the right person to do this,’ Jace cut her off flatly. He knew his sisters didn’t understand the tension between him and his father; Aristo Zervas had wanted to keep his son’s infertility—his family’s shame—a secret.

‘Fine, then hire someone to do it,’ Alecia replied. A steely look that Jace knew well had entered her eye. She wasn’t going to let go of this.

‘Alecia—’ He stopped as her suggestion sank in. Hire someone to do it. The words echoed in Jace’s mind, reverberated in his heart. He felt, bizarrely, as if everything had just slid into place. As if everything suddenly made sense. It was as if he’d been waiting for this opportunity, and now that it had fallen into his lap he knew just what to do. What he wanted to do, what he needed to do.

‘So?’ Alecia asked, sipping her coffee, her smile turning just a little bit smug. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think,’ Jace said slowly, ‘that it’s a good idea. And I know just the person to do it.’

Eleanor picked up another stone, worn silky smooth by the endless tide, and, aiming carefully, threw it into the Long Island Sound. Satisfied, she watched it skip four times before sinking beneath the waves. She heard the crunch of footsteps on the sand behind her.

‘You’ve been doing that for hours.’

Eleanor reached for another stone, offering her mother a quick smile. ‘It’s therapeutic.’

‘You need therapy?’

‘I live in New York. Doesn’t everyone there need it?’

‘Probably.’ Her mother sighed and sat down on the hard, cold sand. It was almost April, and, although the trees were starting to bud and daffodils lined the drive up to Heather Langley’s beach cottage, the wind and waves were still cold. ‘You want to tell me about it?’ she asked eventually and Eleanor skipped another stone across the water. She’d arrived at her mother’s place last night, and she’d leave tomorrow. They hadn’t spoken much beyond pleasantries; her mother knew better than to press.

‘Not particularly,’ she replied lightly. She knew her mother—and her mother knew her—too well to dissemble or pretend there wasn’t anything going on. Yet she didn’t trust her mother with the truth.

Their relationship had always been a strained one, marred by ambition and yet marked with moments of intimacy and caring. Still, it wasn’t enough to make her want now to unburden her heart and reveal her vulnerabilities.

‘Lily says you’re doing well at work. Amazing, really.’

‘Thanks.’ It seemed like the only thing in her life that was going right. Since Jace had left, she’d poured herself into work more than ever before. It grated on her nerves that her mother and her boss talked about her, checked up on her. It was ridiculous and even inappropriate, yet Eleanor knew she couldn’t tell either of them that. They were best friends, competitors and colleagues until a minor heart attack had forced Heather into early retirement. She’d left her job and the city and taken this cottage out on Long Island. Once in a while she planned someone’s beach party in the Hamptons, but her career was essentially finished, and Eleanor thought it was the best thing that had ever happened to her mother—and to their relationship.

She sighed, sinking onto the sand next to her mother, her elbows resting on her knees. ‘It’s nothing, really. I’m just restless.’

‘You’ve been at Premier Planning for a long time,’ Heather said after a moment. ‘Maybe you should think about something else.’

Eleanor rounded her eyes in mock horror. ‘Give up my job? That’s the last thing I’d expect you to say.’

Heather shrugged. ‘A job doesn’t have to be everything. I know it seemed like it was for me, but—’ She stopped, uncertain, and Eleanor smiled to help her out.

‘I know.’

Her mother smiled in apology. There was still so much that hadn’t been said between them. From her fatherless childhood and her mother’s workaholic schedule, to the whole mess of Jace and her pregnancy—an entire language of loss and hurt that neither of them knew how to speak.

‘Well,’ Heather said finally, ‘a sabbatical maybe.’

Eleanor shook her head. ‘I’m okay.’ She couldn’t give up work; it was all she had. Yet she didn’t know what she wanted to do. Ever since Jace had left New York—ever since he’d kissed her—she’d been feeling restless and edgy and uncertain. Wanting something different. Something more. Maybe even wanting Jace. Yet she wasn’t about to abandon her senses or her job for some impossible dream, some distant fantasy that was never meant to be real.

Smiling, she stood up and stretched her hand out to her mother. Heather took it. ‘Come on. It’s pretty cold out here. I’ve got one more afternoon before I have to head back to the city, and I fully intend to beat you at Scrabble for once.’

Laughing, Heather let her change the subject. ‘I’d like to see you try.’

Monday morning came soon enough, and Eleanor arrived at work a bit weary from her three-hour journey on the Hampton Jitney the night before.

Shelley, the receptionist, rose from her desk as Eleanor entered the office. ‘I have your nine o’clock waiting in your office.’

‘My nine o’clock?’ Eleanor repeated. She’d gone through her schedule that morning while sipping coffee at the sink, and her first appointment was at ten.

‘Yes, he said he’d like to wait there.’ Shelley, all of twenty-two years old, made a swoony type of face that caused Eleanor a ripple of unease.

‘All right,’ she murmured, walking down the hallway. Her office door, she saw, was closed. Lily poked her head out of her own office.

‘I pencilled him in,’ she told Eleanor briskly. ‘Apparently he was very impressed. Would only have you for this project, and this time there’s no rush.’

Eleanor’s unease increased to foreboding as she reached for the knob of her door and turned.

‘Hello, Eleanor.’

Jace Zervas stood in the centre of her office.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘WHAT are you doing here?’

Eleanor closed the door quickly behind her before her boss could hear any more of the conversation. Her heart was thudding heavily and her palms felt slick. Even more alarming were the sudden nerves that fluttered through her, making her tingle in—what? Annoyance? Anticipation? Excitement?