Doukakis's Apprentice

That whole striptease had been his undoing.

Striding into the bathroom, he stepped into the shower, hoping that a blast of freezing water would cool his body and his brain.

He needed to stop feeling and think.

As if his life wasn’t already complicated enough, he’d now complicated it still further. It wasn’t just the situation between his sister and her father, or even the fact that she now worked for him and he made a point of never becoming involved with an employee. No, the real complication was that he didn’t want a serious relationship. There was no way he wanted to be responsible for yet another human being’s happiness. It was enough to have the burden of thousands of employees and one wayward sister. He didn’t need anyone else added into the mix.

Damon turned the jets of the shower to full blast, knowing that the only way to deal with the situation was to be blunt. Honest.

The question was whether it was better to do it immediately, and risk subjecting himself to the company of an emotional female for the journey home, or whether to delay that conversation until they reached London and he could extricate himself from the fall-out with greater ease.

It was going to make it impossible to work with her, and it was clear to him that, despite his previous thoughts, she was a key player in the business. He suspected that Gérard’s devotion to her was as much due to her creative imagination as her long legs.

Postponing the moment when he had to shatter Polly’s romantic illusions, he shaved, dressed and dealt with his urgent calls. By the time he’d returned calls to people in London and Athens there was still no sign of her.

After the intimacies they’d shared the night before, he was surprised.

His jaw tightened and he tried to free himself of the uncomfortable suspicion that she’d been a virgin. Twenty-four-year-old virgins didn’t exist, did they? Especially not virgins who seduced a man with a striptease and then proceeded to indulge in hot, steamy sex without a single blush or bat of an eyelash.

Dismissing the thought, he strode through the apartment in search of her.

Theé mou, he wasn’t a man who avoided awkward situations. He just did what needed to be done, so why was he dragging his feet?

Even though he reminded himself that she’d been a more than willing partner, he still felt a sense of responsibility. He’d started it, hadn’t he? By kissing her.

It was time to put an end to something he never should have started.

He found her seated on the balcony, talking to someone on the phone while she plugged numbers into a spreadsheet on her laptop.

Damon studied her face for evidence of distress but she looked animated and energised as she negotiated a price with someone on the end of the phone.

When she finally ended the call she was so absorbed in the work she was doing she didn’t immediately notice him. Looking at her now, he wondered how he could ever have accused her of being lazy. It was obvious she’d been working for hours.

‘Don’t you ever sleep?’

She glanced up then, her cheeks dimpling into a warm smile. ‘You’re a fine one to talk. I hear your average working day is twenty hours.’

‘I’m the boss.’

‘So you’re setting an example? Never mind that. I’m glad you’re here because I really need to talk to you.’ She hit ‘save’ and Damon drew in a breath, bracing himself for the inevitable conversation.

She looked so happy. Lit up inside.

It was obvious she’d succumbed to that dizzy, crazy feeling that came at the beginning of a new relationship.

No doubt she was plotting out their future as women always did. And he was about to take those plans and shatter them. This was why he avoided responsibilities. He never forgot that the fear of letting down the people close to him was what had driven his father over the edge of despair.

Sweat broke out on the back of his neck. ‘Polly—’

‘Can you take a quick look at this?’ She turned the laptop so that he could see the screen. Her hair was pinned haphazardly on top of her head and she was wearing a dress in a wild shade of purple. Her pink notebook lay face-down on the table. ‘I’ve prepared two proposals—one for a massive budget and one for a shockingly massive budget.’ She gave a wicked smile. ‘I’m hoping that Gérard will be so impressed by the ideas he won’t look at how much they’re costing. What do you think? You know him better than me—if you think I’ve gone over the top then just say so. I suddenly decided that we might be able to do something in Fashion Week so I’ve made a few calls.’

Her focus on work threw him. ‘You want me to look at the budget? That’s what you wanted to talk about?’

‘Yes.’ Her eyes were back on the screen as she reached for the glass of water she’d placed on the table. ‘Ideally I’d like to e-mail this today while he’s still excited about everything we discussed. I don’t want him to back down on that figure he mentioned last night. If this piece of business is going to be worth that much to the company, there’s no way you’ll have to make the staff redundant.’

Braced for an entirely different conversation, Damon

couldn’t focus. ‘I’ll take a look at your proposal later.’