Most definitely not quailing, she huffed a sigh. ‘Yes, boss, I understand. And I understand why you were named Draco. You’re a right dragon.’
‘Actually, I was named for the first lawgiver of ancient Athens.’
‘That’s just as fitting, seeing as that’s where the word draconian originates.’
He stared at her meditatively. ‘You’re not as stupid as you like to pretend, are you.’
‘I assure you, I am. I failed every single school exam. Not even Daddy’s suitcases of cash were enough to get me into one of the Ivy League universities. He even offered to fund a new library for one of them, and they still said no.’
‘Athena?’
‘Yes, boss?’
‘Go home.’
‘What, now?’
‘Yes. Now. You’re giving me a headache. Use the afternoon to buy some appropriate attire. Tomorrow, we will work on your attitude and wewillsee an immediate improvement with it.’
She jumped up from the sofa and gave another beaming grin. ‘I love your optimism! See you in the morning.’
‘Eight-thirty sharp. No excuses—you will be on time, and I don’t care if the colour of your nails clashes with your outfit.’
She bounced out of his office without a backward glance. As the door closed, he heard her calling out to the staff, ‘See you in the morning, suckers!’
CHAPTER TWO
SOMEONE HAD PUTa drill to Athena Tsaliki’s head. Opening one bleary eye, her dream dissipated enough for consciousness to tell her it wasn’t a drill but her doorbell. Someone had their finger on it.
Opening her other eye, she focused enough to see her bedside clock telling her it was seven a.m. And still the ringing continued unabated.
Muttering curses under her breath, she crawled out of her lovely warm bed, padded to the front door and put her tired eye to the spy-hole.
Her heart slammed against her ribs, and she went from half-asleep to fully awake in a blink.
She didn’t know who she’d expected—in the month she’d been living in this dump of an apartment, she hadn’t had a single visitor—but the last person she’d imagined was Draco, suited and booted and ready to embrace another boring day of work.
For a moment, she debated ignoring him and going back to bed. She would never show it, but she found his presence increasingly disturbing. She didn’t know why; he was just a man. A good-looking man for sure, but her world brimmed with good-looking men. She didn’t think he’d had the surgery so many of them had started dabbling in though. If he had, he needed a new surgeon because his face was too lined to justify the cost. A manly, lived-in, rugged face with a firm mouth, straight nose tipped up at the end and a dark brown close-cropped beard, all topped with a thick head of dark brown hair worn short at the sides and slicked up at the top. He was also tall and muscular, but her brothers were tall and muscular so that couldn’t be it either.
He let go of the doorbell to rap loudly on the door. ‘I know you’re there, Athena,’ he called before putting his finger back to the bell. ‘I can do this all morning.’
Muttering another curse, she yanked the door open. ‘What do you want?’
‘Not a morning person, I see,’ he said, stepping uninvited into her temporary home, bringing in the winter air and a cloud of the cologne her nostrils always twitched to inhale deeply. ‘I thought as much.’
‘I am a morning person when it’s the morning. This is the middle of the night.’ And she was in her pyjamas. Embarrassingly, they were her oversized red and black checked pyjamas, the ones she wouldn’t let anyone see her dead in. Terrible reputations like Athena’s didn’t maintain themselves; they needed cultivation. ‘Why are you here?’
‘To get you to work on time.’
She groaned. ‘I will get to work on time. I just need another hour in bed.’
‘No, you need to do your Pilates and take a shower.’
‘How do you know I do Pilates? Have you been spying on me?’ She stepped backwards and feigned fear. ‘Are you secretly stalking me?’
He gave her the unimpressed face she’d been on the receiving end of more times than she’d had birthdays. ‘Athena, you sat in the middle of a warehouse the other week and did half an hour of Pilates and refused to move when people told you that you were in the way.’
‘Sometimes the mood just takes me.’ And she’d known it would get her, if not sacked, then moved to a different department. Of all the departments she’d been assigned to, the colossal warehouse in Inland Services had been the worst. It had been so cold in there that her hands had become all dry and she’d needed daily manicures to fix the terrible state they’d got into. At least, that was what she’d told her immediate boss all the times she’d failed to return after lunch. That boss had ended up threatening to resign if Athena wasn’t moved somewhere far, far away. Result!
