Behind The Boardroom Door: Savas' Defiant Mistress / Much More Than a Mistress / Innocent 'til Proven Otherwise

“My desk?” he’d asked with one raised brow.

“Your desk,” Neely had replied through her teeth.

And so he’d set to work in the living room. And she’d gone upstairs to fume because she certainly had no intention of betraying how upset she was to her new landlord.

She had no qualms about telling Frank exactly how she felt, though. “Really low. Sneaky, in fact,” she said now.

The look on Frank’s face said that he would have shut the door on her and bolted it fast if he thought he could get away with it.

He couldn’t. She’d have ripped it off its hinges to tell him her opinion of what he’d done.

“Um, hi, Neely. I, er…good morning.” He peered at her from behind the door as if it were a shield. As far as Neely was concerned, he needed one.

“Good, Frank?” She raised a brow. “Not exactly.” And determinedly she strode straight past the door, backing him into the living room and flinging the door shut behind her.

“Just a minute. Hang on now—” Frank was backpedaling and glancing behind him, as if to see if the window was open and might provide an escape route, no matter that they were on the third floor.

“Don’t even think it,” Neely warned. “If I want you to go out the window, I’ll push you.”

Frank almost managed a grin at that—as if she were kidding. “Aw, come on, Neel’, you know I wouldn’t have done it if the loan hadn’t fallen through.”

Neely did know it, but it didn’t make her any happier. She gritted her teeth.

Frank shrugged helplessly. “I know you’re mad. I’m sorry. But I couldn’t help it. It just…happened.”

“You didn’t tell me! You could at least have told me!”

“About Savas?” He looked appalled, as if doing that was more than his life was worth.

Neely shook her head. “About my financing falling through! I shouldn’t have had to find it out from Sebastian Savas walking through my front door and telling me he’d bought my houseboat! Your dear friend Greg should have told me.”

Frank cursed under his breath. Then he raked his fingers through his hair. “He tried to. Honest to God,” he insisted. “He didn’t call me until late. Said he couldn’t get hold of you. He tried your cell phone. And he didn’t want to leave it as a message. So when he couldn’t get you, he called me. Thought you might be at the office. But—” Frank spread his hands “—you weren’t.”

No. She hadn’t been.

Because she’d gone sailing with Max.

He’d called her the night before and said he was thinking of buying a sailboat, that he wanted to take it out on Friday, would she come along.

She’d been stunned—and torn. “Friday? It’s a workday.”

“Take it off.”

“But—what would my boss say?” she’d asked him, only half-joking.

Max laughed. “Guess.” But then the laughter died, and he said gravely, “He’d say you were doing him a favor, getting him out. Making up for lost time.”

And there had been a ragged edge to his voice that spoke of a depth of feeling that she couldn’t ignore. And as it was exactly the sort of “carpe diem” philosophy she’d preached at him more than once, how could she argue?

Still she hadn’t given in at once. “You’re sure?” she’d pressed him.

“Well, I’m going,” he’d said firmly. “Whether you come or not—that’s up to you. I’d like you to,” he’d added. “The question is, can you spare the time?”

Which meant he was still Max. The leopard hadn’t changed his spots entirely. He might not be Max Grosvenor, the 100-proof workaholic that he’d been when she’d first walked into his office seven months ago, but there was still a lot of the old Max Grosvenor inside him. And that was good, not bad.

He just needed balance in his life. By asking her if she had time, at least it showed he was learning how to weigh choices instead of always opting for work.

“I can spare a part of the day,” Neely decided. “But I need to be back by three.”

“Deal,” Max had said.

So she’d met him at the boatyard at nine—and she had been sailing on the Sound with Max while her financing was falling through yesterday afternoon.

She swallowed and accepted it. “Right.” she said to Frank now, squaring her shoulders. “My fault.”

Frank patted her on the arm. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Really. And, um, I just…didn’t know how to tell you about Savas.”

This last he added quickly, stepping away from her as he did so, as if he were afraid she might do him bodily harm. “Sit down,” he said, pacing the floor of the apartment, but jerking his head at a chair where he expected her to sit. But Neely shook her head and remained standing.

Frank shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He took a breath, raked a hand through his hair, then turned to face her. “Savas was…a gift from the gods.”

“Sebastian Savas?” Neely gaped at him. Greek gods bearing gifts, perhaps? Horrible thought. “I don’t think so.”

“You know what I mean. I was tearing my hair out in my office, telling Danny what had happened, and Savas came by—working late as usual—and Danny, joking, said, hey you want to buy a houseboat. And—” Frank shrugged, still looking dazed “—he did.”

Neely felt just as dazed as Frank. She’d lain awake half the night denying it to herself, convincing herself it was a bad dream. But it was actually just very bad reality, because when she’d come downstairs she’d still found half a dozen boxes of gear and a computer in the living room this morning.

“So…what happened?” Frank ventured after Neely stood there in silence, remembering the sinking feeling she’d experienced.

“Before or after Harm knocked him over the railing into the lake?”

Frank’s eyes bugged. “You’re joking.”

“I wouldn’t be capable of making that up.” The memory of it still made her smile, though very little else did. “He handled it with great aplomb,” she added grimly. “Just as you would expect. Swam back to the boat, pulled himself on board, stood there dripping and acted like that sort of thing happened every day of the week.”

Frank was shaking his head. “And…?” he prompted.

“And then he went upstairs, took a shower, changed his clothes, ordered a pizza, set up his computer and got to work. He was still working when I went up to bed.”

“He actually…moved in?” Frank sounded as if he couldn’t quite fathom it. “Without any warning?”

“He moved in,” Neely said wearily. There were no other words for it.

“So…what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Well, you can’t…I mean surely you’re not…”

“I have a lease,” Neely reminded him.

“But you’ll be living with Sebastian Savas!” Frank sounded as if he doubted her sanity.

“Well, what did you think was going to happen?” she demanded, exasperated by his astonished look, by the sight of his mouth opening and closing like a fish.

“I thought—” Frank shook his head “—I guess I don’t know what I thought. That maybe he wanted it as an investment?” It was more a hopeful question than a statement of fact.

“He’d have been far more careful if he were buying it for an investment. This was obviously a spur-of-the-moment decision.”

“I guess,” Frank scratched his head. “But why?”

“Maybe he wants to make Max jealous.” Neely grinned.

Frank gaped.

“I’m kidding,” Neely said quickly. “But he does think I’m sleeping with the boss. And he definitely doesn’t approve.”

“Oh, Lord.” Frank laughed at that. “You haven’t told him about Max.”

“Of course not. He can think what he likes,” Neely said righteously. “He hates me anyway. This is just one more reason.”

“Hates you?” That surprised Frank. “The Iceman?” As if he couldn’t be bothered to muster up enough emotion to hate anyone.

“He thinks I design fluff,” Neely qualified. Maybe that wasn’t hate. But it still rankled, his haughty dismissal of her work as “girly stuff.”

“He just has a different vision.”

Neely gave him a wry smile. “Oh, yes. A very pointed, vertical vison.”

“Be kind,” Frank grinned. “You’ll have to be, now that you are living with him.”

That wiped the smile off her face. “Thanks to you.”

“I said I was sorry. Besides, I thought he was going to find you another place.”

Neely’s gaze narrowed. “You discussed it with him? He knew I lived there?”

“I said I had a tenant.”

“But not who?”

“Your name wouldn’t sell property to Mr. Savas.”

“No joke.”

“So didn’t he find you a place? I thought he would before he moved in.”

“Oh yes, he offered me a studio.”

“Well—”

“Can you see me and Harm and the kittens and the rabbits and the guinea pig and the fish in a studio? Besides,” she said, “I don’t want anyplace else. I want the houseboat!”

And, of course, her vehemence made Frank wince. Too bad. It was true.

She had fallen in love with Frank’s houseboat the minute she’d come to see the room he had for rent. She’d been there six of the seven months she’d lived in Seattle.

When he’d said he needed to sell it, she’d instantly offered to buy it.

She loved it and, having moved so much during her youth, she’d never really felt “at home” anywhere. Not the way she had on the houseboat. To be able to buy it and put down “roots”—albeit hydroponic ones—had been a cherished dream.

“Well, maybe he’ll change his mind,” Frank said hopefully. “You don’t know—maybe he woke up this morning and regretted it. He might be ready to move out. Then he could sell to you,” he added brightly.

Neely sighed. “And maybe tonight for dinner a roast duck will fly over and fall in my lap.”

Frank blinked. “What?”

“It’s a metaphor for incurable optimism, Frank,” she said wearily. “Never mind. Unlike you, I’m not expecting miracles. But I’ll simply have to convince him to sell to me. He’s all about business. I’ll just have to find his price. But I am not leaving.”

She would leave.

Sebastian was sure of it.

He’d told her pointedly last night right before she went upstairs that she had to move.

“If you don’t want to go to the apartment, that’s fine. It wouldn’t be a good place for your animals. But you’ve got to go somewhere.”

She hadn’t answered. She’d just given him a stony stare, then scooped up all her kittens and carried them upstairs.

But she hadn’t been here this morning when he got up. Granted, it was after nine and she might be anywhere. But the fact that she wasn’t here boded well as far as Seb was concerned.

It was a good day. The sun was shining, and he’d had—once he fell asleep—the best night’s sleep he’d had in years. There was something about being close to the water that lulled his mind, soothed his brain and sent him out like a light.

He hadn’t expected that. Ordinarily he didn’t sleep well except in his own bed. But last night, even despite his uncharacteristic impulse purchase of the houseboat and discovery of its unexpected tenant, once he’d hit the bed it hadn’t taken long for the lap of the water against the hull, and the ever so slight movement to carry him back to his childhood, to the summers spent at his grandparents’ on Long Island.

Their house was by the shore, and his grandfather had a boat that he and Seb used to take out to sail. And every now and then he would cajole his grandfather into spending the night on the boat. It had been the treat of the summer.

Last night had reawakened that long-forgotten memory. And even this morning, that was what he was thinking of as he cradled a mug of coffee in his hands and stood in front of the wide glass window that looked out across Lake Union.

Just the sight, just the memory made him smile.

Neely Robson be damned, he’d done the right thing buying Frank’s houseboat. It already felt more like home than his penthouse ever had.

He went out onto the deck and had a look at Robson’s painting project. The ladder was still there. She’d cleaned up the paint and brushes and they sat in a neat row on one of the built-in benches around the edge of the deck.

He studied her choice of color in the light of the morning sun. She’d painted over a gunmetal grey with a softer more silvery shade of grey. It surprised him. He’d have expected her to go for pink. Or purple. Or some other gaudy touchy-feely color.

The grey wasn’t bad. It would weather well, soften in the sun and it fit in well with the surroundings. He hefted the paint can to see that there was plenty left and was pleased that there was. She’d taken down the gutters and painted them. He’d hang them back up, then take up where she left off. But first he had to go to the grocery store and buy some food.

He went back inside and plucked a piece of cold pizza out of the fridge—left over from the one he’d finally ordered last night—and ate it while he reconnoitered, getting a feel for the rest of the boat.

With Robson glaring at him—and clearly upset—he hadn’t spent a lot of time looking over his new purchase.

He’d gone upstairs, then stripped off his wet clothes, showered and changed—so he had a good idea what the bathroom was like, and was grimly pleased upon looking around to discover that she hadn’t overrun it the way his sisters were doing to his at that very moment.

But he hadn’t wasted time upstairs. Once he was cleaned up, he came back down, opened up his laptop and set up his printer on the desk in the living room and settled down to do some work.

Begin as you mean to go on, his grandfather had always advised.

It was cliché, of course, but it was true, as well. And Seb had long ago learned the wisdom of it. It had helped him cope with the bevy of new “mothers” his father brought home. It had stood him in good stead at work.

He never tried to please. He worked hard and he always kept his own counsel. It made life simpler that way.

If people didn’t like him, too bad.

Neely Robson didn’t like him.

As if he cared. He didn’t like her much, either.

And it would be a damn good thing when she and her menagerie were out from underfoot.

With luck, by the time he got back from grocery shopping, she’d already be packing.

Neely had never been a Boy Scout.

She did, however, believe in the motto: Be Prepared.

So she was prepared, when she let herself in the front door that afternoon, to lay a proposal on the line to Sebastian Savas.

She’d thought it all out after she’d left Frank’s. Maybe he was right. Maybe by now Sebastian had buyer’s remorse. Maybe he woke up this morning seasick. Well, probably not. But she could hope.

In any event, she spent three hours at the public library—because she wasn’t going home—reworking her finances, then calling her mother in Wisconsin to say that things would be a little tight for a few months. Lara wouldn’t care. She never thought of money anyway.

And then Neely came back to the houseboat, prepared to make Mr. Cold-Blooded Businessman an offer he wouldn’t refuse.

She wasn’t prepared to walk into the living room and find herself staring out through the plate glass window at a very different man entirely.

In the seven months she’d worked for Grosvenor Design she had never seen Sebastian in anything other than a suit. Sometimes he took his coat off and she saw his long-sleeved dress shirts. And once, on a job site, she’d seen his collar unbuttoned and his tie askew. Last night, of course, she’d seen him in a suit—dripping wet.

Even after Harm had knocked him in the water and he’d showered, Sebastian had come back downstairs wearing another dress shirt and a pair of pressed dark trousers. Okay, he hadn’t worn a tie. But big deal.

She’d told Max once that she thought Sebastian had been born wearing cuff links.

It didn’t seem far-fetched. He wore his cool, calm demeanor like a suit of well-fitting armor. And his well-pressed, totally-together look promised the icy aloofness and consummate unapproachability which was, with Sebastian Savas, exactly what you got.

So who was the guy with the bare tanned feet and faded blue-jean-clad muscular legs braced against the upper rungs of her ladder?

Neely stopped in her tracks. But even as her body stopped dead, her gaze kept right on moving up—until it was well and truly caught by the sight of several inches of hard flat masculine abs peeking out from beneath a sun-bleached red T-shirt.

There was even an arrow of dark hair visible until it disappeared into the waistband of the jeans as the man wearing them reached up and slapped paint on the wall above the window.

Neely wet her lips. She swallowed. Hard. And swallowed again.

Her heart seemed suddenly to be doing the Mexican Hat Dance in her chest. She forced herself to take a breath—and then another—as she tried to regain her equilibrium.

It was what came of being an architect, she told herself, still combating light-headedness. They just had extraordinarily well-developed senses of appreciation for physical beauty, for strength and economy and power all wrapped up in one neat, um, package.

Perhaps not best choice of words.

On the other hand, quite possibly the most accurate, she thought as her gaze fastened on the bulge beneath the soft denim right below his waistband and framed between the rungs of the ladder.

Her face flamed and, deliberately, Neely squeezed her eyes shut tight.

She didn’t see the kittens tussling right in front of her. And of course, she stepped on them.

“Mrrrrooowwwww!”

“Oh, help!” Neely stumbled, shrieked, caught herself against the back of the sofa and jerked open her eyes just in time to hear the paintbrush clatter to the deck and see Sebastian—who else?—skim down the ladder like a fireman on his way to a four-alarm blaze.

His gaze locked on her even as he reached down to scoop the brush up off the deck and toss it in the paint tray.

“What the hell—?”

“It’s n-nothing. N-nothing,” Neely said hastily.

“If it was nothing, why’d you shriek? What happened?”

“Nothing happened!” Face still burning, Neely crouched down and snagged up the kittens, clutching them to her chest and gently kneading their small squirming bodies to make sure they weren’t hurt.

Sebastian jerked open the door and glowered accusingly. “Don’t tell me you were shocked to see me. I live here.”

That wasn’t what had shocked her. She cuddled the kittens closer. “I stumbled,” she said. “I landed on the kittens.”

He looked skeptical, but finally he shrugged. Why did his shoulders look even broader in a T-shirt than in a dress shirt? Unfair.

“You should watch where you’re going,” he told her.

“Obviously.” And she wasn’t about to tell him why she hadn’t been. Instead she buried her face in their fur and took a few more deep breaths until finally she lifted her gaze again and said, “You don’t have to paint.”

He rolled his shoulders. “It’s my boat. Or were you going to say it’s your paint?”

Neely pressed her lips together. “It is, actually. But that’s not the point. The point is—” she took a breath, then plunged on “—I want to buy the boat. Still. From you.”

He opened his mouth, but she cut him off. “You can’t really want it. You didn’t have any idea it even existed twenty-four hours ago. It’s some spur-of-the-moment mad purchase for you. Maybe you think you want it now, but you won’t.”

He started to say something again, but Neely knew she had to get it all out now without interruption, had to make it clear how very badly she wanted the houseboat. Maybe it was foolish. Maybe it would make him even less likely to sell to her.

But yesterday, when Harm knocked him in the water and he didn’t take it out on her, when he actually sounded just slightly bemused. “More harm than good,” he’d said. And it was so unexpected that she couldn’t believe he was totally unfeeling.

“Hear me out,” she insisted. “I know you think you want it now. But you’ll get sick of it. You’ll hate the way the dampness makes your computer keys stick. You’ll get tired of the fog. You won’t want birds pooping on the deck. You’ll crave your penthouse again. I’m sure you will! So, I just want you to know that, when it happens—and it will happen—I’ll take it off your hands for what I agreed to pay Frank—or even ten thousand more,” she added recklessly. “And I will get financing.”

She’d let Max help if she had to.

She stopped and looked at Sebastian, waiting for him to say something. He didn’t say a word. Half a minute ticked by. Then he said, “Are you finished now?”

“Yes.” Tick, tick.

“So tell me why. Why do you want it?”

She wished he hadn’t asked that. Neely loved people and made friends easily. She’d had to, given how often she was in a new place. But she usually took her time exposing the personal side of her life. And she really didn’t want to do so to a man who formed judgments faster than the speed of light.

But he hadn’t said no. And he stood there now, waiting expectantly, those green eyes assessing her from beneath hooded lids.

Right. So be it. “It felt like home the first time I walked in the door,” she told him. “I don’t know why.” And she’d given it a lot of thought, too. “We lived all over the place. Here. In California. Montana. Minnesota. Wisconsin. To say we moved around is putting it mildly. We were always somewhere different and nothing was ever permanent…not until I was twelve, anyway.”

“What happened when you were twelve?”

“My mother got married.”

His eyes widened, as if she’d surprised him.

“My parents weren’t,” she said bluntly. “My father was a workaholic and my mother was a free spirit. Chalk and cheese. Worse,” she said, “they split before I was born. We stayed in Seattle for a year. But then my mother joined a commune and we went to California. Like I said, we moved around a lot. And then she met John. And something clicked. They got married. It was wonderful.”

Now he really did look shocked.

“It was,” she insisted. “We had a home. I loved it. For six years it was the best. Then I went away to college and—” she shrugged “—you know what college is like—nothing is ever ‘home.’ Then, after I graduated I lived in first one apartment and then another. Even when I came out here, at first I rented another apartment for a month. When Frank said he was looking for a roommate, I came to see the houseboat—and I felt it right away. Home. Still is.” She had been looking around at everything in the room as she spoke. But when she finished she looked straight at him. “That’s why.”

“All emotion,” he said.

She bristled. “Something wrong with that?”

He didn’t answer. “Are you going to paint it pink?”

“What?”

It was the accusation he’d thrown at her the one time they’d worked together—that she had wanted to paint everything pink. She had ignored the accusation because it was the client who had wanted pink, and in the particular funky magazine editorial offices she was designing, the color had worked.

Now she glared at him. And he looked back impassively, one brow lifted in that sardonic way he had of making you feel two feet high.

And then his cell phone rang.

Sebastian dug in his jeans’ pocket, making her aware once again of the way they fit his body, of how they gave a whole new tough rugged look to the smooth cool consummate professional she was accustomed to.

Not, she reminded herself, that he behaved any differently.

Are you going to paint it pink? What kind of a smart-ass remark was that? He’d opened her cans of paint. He knew perfectly well none of them was pink.

She scowled at him as he flicked open his phone, glanced at the phone number coming in, made a slightly wry face, then said, “Excuse me. I have to take this.”

Of course he did, Neely thought. “Go right ahead,” she said. But he wasn’t even listening. He’d already turned toward the door.

Neely was listening, however. And she was surprised he didn’t say, “Savas here,” in that steely businesslike tone she always heard at work.