The Cozakis Bride

But how much more shattered would her trusting mother have been had Olympia ever told her the whole dreadful truth of what had happened in Athens a decade earlier? Olympia had never told that story, and her awareness of that fact still disturbed her. Then, as now, Olympia had kept her own counsel to protect her mother from needless distress...

The next morning, Olympia took up position in the waiting area on the top floor of the Cozakis building three minutes after nine o'clock.

She made the same request to see Nik as she had made the day before. The receptionist avoided eye contact. Olympia wondered if this would be the day that Nik lost patience and had her thrown out of the building.

At ten minutes past nine, after a mutually mystified con­sultation with another senior member of staff, Gerry Marsden approached Nik, who had started work as usual at eight that morning. 'Miss Manoulis is here again today, sir.'

Almost imperceptibly the Greek tycoon tensed and the si­lence thickened.

'Have you the Tenco file?' Nik then enquired, as if the younger man hadn't spoken.

The day wore on, with Olympia praying that a pretence of quiet, uncomplaining humility would ultimately persuade Nik to spare her just five minutes of his time. By the end of that day, when the receptionist apologetically announced that Mr Cozakis had again left the building, Olympia experienced such a violent surge of bitter frustration that she could have screamed.

On the third day, Olympia felt hugely conspicuous as she stepped out of the lift on to the top floor.

Before leaving home she would have liked to have filled a vacuum flask and made herself some sandwiches, but to have done so would have roused her mother's suspicions and her concern. Since Olympia had yet to admit to her mother that their slender resources were now stretched unbearably tight Irini fondly imagined that her daughter bought lunch for herself while she was out supposedly seeking employ­ment.

However, at noon, when Olympia returned from a visit to the enviably luxurious cloakroom on the top floor, she found a cup of tea and three biscuits awaiting her. Her strained face softened with her smile. The receptionist gave her a decidedly conspiratorial glance in return. By then, Olympia was convinced that just about every person of importance in the building had traversed the reception area to take a peek at her. Sympathy was now softening the discomfiture her initial vigil had inspired. Not that it was going to do her much good, she conceded heavily, when Nik obviously had an alternative exit from his office.

At three that afternoon, when the last of her patience had worn away, her desperation started to mount. Nik would soon be on his way back to Greece and even more out of her reach. Olympia reached a sudden decision and got up swiftly from her seat. Hurrying past the reception desk that she had pre­viously respected as a barrier, she started down the wide cor­ridor that had to lead to Nik's inner sanctum.

'Miss Manoulis, you can't go down there!' the young re­ceptionist exclaimed in dismay.

She would be a loser now whatever she did, Olympia re­flected with despairing bitterness. Forcing a confrontation with Nik was the wrong line to take. No Greek male appre­ciated an in-your-face female challenge. He would react like a caveman, every aggressive primal cell outraged by such boldness.

As she headed for the door at the foot of the corridor, a set of male hands whipped round her forearms from behind and stopped her dead in her tracks.

'I'm sorry, Miss Manoulis, but nobody goes in there with­out the boss's say-so,' an accented Greek voice spelt out tautly.

'Damianos...' Even after ten years Olympia recognised that gravely voice, and her rigid shoulders bowed in defeat. Nik's bodyguard, who was built like a tank. 'Couldn't you have looked the other way just once?'

'For your grandfather's sake, go home,' Damianos urged in a fierce undertone. 'Please go home, before you are eaten alive.'

Olympia trembled as the older man's fingers loosened their hold. But that reluctance on his part to treat her like any other unwanted visitor was Damianos's mistake. Breaking free without hesitation, she literally flung herself the last ten feet and burst through that door.

There was a blur of movement from behind the desk: Nik rising with startled abruptness at so explosive an interruption.

In the split second that she knew was all she had at her disposal before Damianos intervened again, with greater ef­fect, Olympia parted her lips and breathed rawly, 'Are you a man or a mouse that you won't face one woman?'

CHAPTER TWO

From behind Olympia, Damianos read Nik's face and avoided seeing the slight inclination of his employer's head which signified his own dismissal.

Out of breath, and expecting at any minute to be dragged out again, Olympia focused on Nik Cozakis for the first time in ten long years. Shock shrilled through her. He had got taller, his shoulders wider, and he had been tall and wide even to begin with. Well over six feet, he had towered over his relatives and friends. Now he cast a shadow like an in­timidating stone monolith.

Olympia could feel his outrage like a physical entity, churning up the heavy silence, beating down on her in suf­focating waves. Man or mouse? A truly insane, derisive opening likely to push the average Greek male to violent response. She marvelled at his self-control, even as she winced at the loss of her own. Had she been a man, Nik would have knocked her through the wall for such an insult.

'I'm sorry,' Olympia said, though she wasn't one bit sorry.

'Damianos...' Nik murmured flatly.

The door behind her finally closed.

Olympia stared at him, couldn't help it. His sheer impact hit her and she reeled back an involuntary step, her tummy full of butterflies, her skin dampening. She took all of him in, all at once, in a single, almost greedy visualising burst. The devastating dark good looks, the raw, earthy force of his sexual aura, the contrasting formal severity of his beautifully cut dark suit. All male, nothing of the boy left but that aching beauty which had once entrapped her foolish heart. And those eyes, amber-gold as a jaguar cat, spectacularly noticeable in that lean, strong face.

'Why are you humiliating yourself in this way?' Nik en­quired in a drawl as lazy as a hot summer afternoon.

Belatedly, Olympia recognised her disorientation for the weakness it was. Angry dismay trammelled through her. She dredged her dilated pupils from his and stilled a shiver. 'I haven't humiliated myself.'

'Have you not? Were it not for the respect I have for your grandfather, I would have had you forcibly ejected on the first day,' Nik shared in the same conversational tone.

That dark, deep drawl betrayed no anger, but still a reflex­ive quiver snaked down Olympia's taut spinal cord. Colour ran up over her cheekbones. She forced her head high, dared a second collision with those stunning eyes, but was now careful to blank them out. 'I have a proposition to put to you.'

'I'm not listening to any proposition,' Nik asserted dryly. But in spite of that cool intonation the atmosphere sizzled. She could feel goosebumps rising on her arms. She forgot to look through him without focusing and registered that those extraordinary eyes of his were now roaming over her with unconcealed derision. And instantly she became aware of her creased suit, the flyaway tendrils of hair that had dropped round her hot face, indeed of how very, very plain she was. In fact, just plain ugly next to him: Beauty and the Beast with a transfer of sexes.

And it was mat harsh, long-accepted reality that hardened Olympia and gave her the backbone she had almost lost. Ten years ago it had broken her heart not to have even a smidgen of the beauty that might have attracted Nik to her. Now, that contemptuous look of his only reminded her of the pain he had caused her.

'How can you look me in the face?' Nik growled in sudden disgust.

'Easily...a clean conscience.' She flung her head back, challenging him.

'You're a little whore,' Nik contradicted with purring insolence.

Untouched by an accusation so far removed from the truth Olympia was, however, quite amazed that he still felt a need to abuse her so long afte

r the event. It struck her as almost hilariously ironic that she appeared to have made a bigger impression on Nik with her apparent infidelity than she had ever contrived to make on him as his fiancée.

As a rueful laugh fell from her lips, his darkly handsome features clenched hard. 'Call me what you like,' she advised with patent indifference. 'But I have genuinely come here with the offer of a business deal.'

'Spyros Manoulis would not employ you as his messenger,' Nikos derided.

'Well...in this particular case, of the three of us, it seems that only I have the indelicacy it requires to make this direct approach,' Olympia informed him in taut and partial apology for what she was about to spring on him. 'Can't you just take your mind off what happened ten years ago and listen to me ?'

'No.'

Olympia frowned in honest surprise. 'Why not?'

Nik studied her with blazing golden eyes full of even greater incredulity.

Refusing to be discouraged, Olympia breathed in very deep. 'My grandfather still wants you to take over Manoulis Industries. Now, let's face it...that's all he ever wanted, and all your father ever wanted was to ensure that you got it. I was just the connecting link...I wasn't remotely important except as a sort of guarantee of family kinship and mutual trust.'

'What is this nonsense?' Nik demanded with raw distaste.