The Heir: A Standalone Greek Billionaire Romance Page 3

  “Shut up!” I smack her on the arm. I feel my cheeks heat, and somewhere in the back of my mind is a flash of an image—me, Niko Stephanos, a desk, papers scattering, skin sliding, clothes rumpling. I take a deep breath, squashing the desire to fan myself. Change the subject. Quick.

  “What’s going to happen with you and Anton when you go back to Chicago to finish school?” I ask the first thing that pops into my head.

  Cass grins, an all too knowing look on her face. “We’ll be apart some in the spring, but he’s going to come see me once, and I’m going to come back to see him once. Then in May I’ll be returning to start a job at my aunt’s shop. I worked there all summer too, but I won’t be now that school is starting back up.”

  “You have family here?” I ask, suddenly understanding why she speaks so much Greek and seems so comfortable with the whole place.

  “Yeah, my mom is Greek and her family still lives here. She met my dad when he was stationed in Athens for a year. He married her, took her back to the States, and the rest is family history.”

  I stand and take the empty dishes to the sink where I rinse them and load them into the miniature dishwasher.

  “That’s really cool.”

  “What’s even cooler is that my aunt loaned me that car. You want a ride to work?”

  I know eventually I’m going to have to learn the bus system, but for now, as nervous as I am? I can be independent later. After I’ve faced down my first day at an office where they don’t speak English and my new boss is a cocky billionaire.

  “Yes, please.” I grin at Cass.

  “Good, but before we go, put on some higher heels. You need to show Niko Stephanos that he can’t mess with you, and he’ll never buy it if you look like a Polly Pocket doll.”

  Being short sucks.

  * * *

  The receptionist in the accounting department at Stephanos Shipping speaks perfect English. She’s also five foot nine, voluptuous and perfectly put together in that way only European women can be. Her skirt and blouse are relatively conservative, but display her figure to perfection. She’s statuesque with long, dark, glossy hair and perfect make-up.

  “I’m Juliet,” she says as she rises from her desk to shake my hand.

  “It’s nice to meet you. And I’m so glad you speak English. I want to learn as much Greek as I can while I’m here, but it’s not really a language you can take a lot of courses in at American Universities. So I don’t know any yet, but the foreign exchange office at my school said there would be someone who spoke English for me here at the internship.” I stop, having run out of breath, and yeah, I’m really nervous and I need to shut up.

  Juliet looks at me with an indulgent expression. “Stephanos is an international corporation,” she tells me smugly. “All of our employees speak multiple languages. I imagine you will be the only one who doesn’t.”

  Oh. Okay. Well, that was embarrassing. I swallow and try to stand up straighter. Maybe even these heels aren’t tall enough to garner me respect.

  “If you’ll come this way there’s a staff meeting every Monday morning. We can get you set up at your desk afterwards.”

  I follow tall and crabby through a maze of hallways and cubicles until we get to a back conference room that holds about a dozen people at a table and another dozen in chairs around the perimeter of the room. The Stephanos shipping offices are right next to the dock where I disembarked two days ago. Several squat, white buildings line the corridor along the docks, and across the street enormous ships with “Stephanos Shipping” stamped on their hulls lurk, taking up all the good ocean frontage on this side of the island.

  When we arrive at the conference room Juliet gestures for me to take one of the leftover chairs along the wall while she gracefully slides into a seat next to the head of the table. Everyone is murmuring amongst themselves and I take a look around. No one seems to notice me. Most of the people are older, but there are two women and one guy who look closer to my age. The guy is good looking in that typical Greek way—olive skin, dark hair, metrosexual European clothes. He reminds me a little of Niko, but without the raw sexuality that Niko has, that magnetism that makes you feel lightheaded and overheated.

  I find myself wondering how old Niko is? Is it hard for him to be the boss of people who are so much older than he is? I also wonder what being the boss means here. Does he actually do stuff like come to staff meetings, or do his minions handle all that for him?

  The door to the room swings open and a deep voice chuckles before saying, “Okay Brian, we’ll get those numbers out to you today. This is going to be a great project. Looking forward to it.” My eyes snap up right as Niko reaches the conference table and ends the call. Everyone in the room shifts a touch in their seats like they’re all drawn to the magnetic presence at the front. I blink, sort of mesmerized myself. He’s the sun and I’m only a lowly planet.

  His thick hair is gelled into submission, and his eyes are made even bluer by the contrast with that dark, shiny mass of waves. He’s wearing black narrow cut slacks with a white dress shirt but no jacket or tie, and he’s already rolled up the sleeves. When my gaze reaches his hands I’m reminded of what it felt like to have them touch me when he caught me off the end of the gangplank. Heat flows through me like a wave of liquid lava. His fingers are long and perfectly manicured, but not effeminate. No, his hands definitely look strong and capable. Of many things. I work to catch a breath.

  “Excuse me for being late,” he says, shuffling the stack of papers sitting in front of his chair before he looks up to greet the room. His eyes fall on me immediately, and he pauses for a split second. Maybe no one else notices, but I do. The pause is followed by a slow, cocky twist of his lips as he shifts his eyes from me to the rest of the room.

  “I hope you all had a good weekend?” he prompts. Everyone answers in the affirmative, and that knowing little smile on his face grows bigger before he looks back to me.

  “We seem to have someone new here today. Would you like to introduce yourself?” he asks, gesturing my direction.

  My throat is dry and tight, and I’m having a difficult time catching my breath. The spark in his eyes says he’s enjoying putting me on the spot. Bastard. I take a breath, and prepare for battle.

  “My name is Tess Richardson,” I say, voice a little quivery. I hate when that happens. I take a deep breath and feel better when I sound stronger. “I’m a new intern majoring in forensic accounting at Chicago University, and I’ll be continuing my coursework at the American University here. I’m afraid that I don’t speak Greek—yet—but I want to learn, so feel free to teach me as much as you can. About Greek and accounting.”

  When I’m done I look around. For the most part people look friendly enough. The good-looking guy I noticed earlier is grinning at me like I’m the most interesting thing to come to Stephanos Shipping in years. I give him a little smile back and he winks. My eyes land on Niko next. He scowls at the other guy, then turns to me.

  “Welcome to Stephanos,” he says, his face giving away nothing. “I’ll let everyone introduce themselves as we run through the meeting, but if you’ll stay afterwards, you and I can have a chat.”

  Then he drops the bomb.

  “You’ll be working directly for me.”

  * * *

  This. Can not. Be happening. The meeting has ended although I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what it was about. I know people told me their names, I know each division gave some sort of report, beyond that it was all a low grade buzzing around me as I silently went batshit crazy inside my head. Working directly for him? For the billionaire brat who doesn’t think rules apply? For the most gorgeous and irritating man I’ve ever met? I am so screwed.

  First of all, he’s going to make me work in a dark pit somewhere to punish me for my insolence. Then I’m going to have to watch that sexy smirk every single day while he undoubtedly gives me the worst assignments in the whole company. And to top it all off, every woman in the office hat
es my guts now. Tall and perfect Juliet spent the rest of the meeting shooting daggers at me with her professionally made-up smoky eyes. She doesn’t realize that he isn’t doing this to hit on me, he’s doing it to torture me.

  As people file out of the room they murmur “goodbye” and “welcome to the team” things at me. A couple of the women give me the once over, sneering at my obviously American, obviously college girl cheap clothes. They’re all so sophisticated and European. My plain black cotton skirt and white button up blouse make me look like a waitress. Thank God Cass made me put on the heels. They’re the only thing saving me from total fashion humiliation.

  And then we’re alone. Niko Stephanos and me. I stand up as straight as I can and take a step toward the conference table where he’s looking down at his phone screen.

  “It’s nice to meet you formally,” I say as business-like as possible, extending my hand to shake his.

  He looks up at me and a wry smile spreads across his incredibly handsome features. He leans a hip against the table and crosses his arms. “Yes. Isn’t it though?”

  My heart skips a beat. It’s because I’m scared of what he’s going to do to me, not because his biceps are straining against that finely woven shirt, his throat like a golden column rising from the snowy whiteness.

  I take my hand back since he’s obviously not going to shake it, and stand in awkward silence, not sure what to say. I can tell he’s enjoying it. Then, when I think I might scream or cry merely to break the discomfort, he drawls, “We have some rules here at Stephanos—”

  I grimace, waiting for the hammer to fall.

  “So I think you’d better start learning them.” He walks over to a bookshelf in the corner and grabs a five-inch thick binder. The damn thing easily weighs as much as I do. He ambles back toward me and holds it out, one eyebrow raised.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Shit. There went my pretense of acting professionally with this guy.

  “I thought you liked rules?” he says.

  “I think they’re important for society to function properly.”

  “And I think they’re important for my company to function properly,” he responds, still holding out the binder.

  I look down at the cover. It’s in Greek. “I can’t read that, you know. It’s in Greek.” I can’t help the smile of triumph that I struggle to keep smothered.

  He drops the tome on the table in front of me. “English is on the backside of each page,” he quips.

  Dammit. My heart sinks.

  “Read the first three chapters on our personnel policies and my secretary will come get you in a bit to show you your office.”

  Oh. Only the first three chapters? I look up and see his cocky grin. He did that on purpose. He’s totally screwing with me.

  My eyes narrow and I grit my teeth. A small growl works its way up my throat, but is silenced before it can escape because he leans in right next to my ear and whispers, his breath hot, his words silky, “This is going to be fun.” Then he strolls past me, a single finger grazing the skin on my arm as he passes, leaving behind a trail of fire. Seriously. I’m. On. Fire.

  When the door to the room shuts behind him I’m still standing there, trying to remember how to breathe.

  * * *

  “He said what?!” Cass hollers at me from the kitchen as I stand in the middle of our living room.

  “You heard me,” I answer, throwing myself on the couch and burying my head in a pillow.

  “What does that mean?” she asks, her voice closer. I lift my head and she’s there, a chunk of baklava on a plate in her hand. She sets it down on the coffee table, hands me one of the forks, and flops next to me. We both dig into the honey-drenched pastry, and I can’t help but moan in delight, talking with a full mouth.

  “Most likely that he’s going to enjoy tormenting me because I was so surly to him at the docks the other day.”

  Cass grunts and mutters, “Yeah, right.”

  “What?”

  “I think he’s talking about fun, like fun in your pants kind of fun.”

  I choke and give myself a coughing fit. What the hell?

  “Fun in your pants? What are we, twelve?”

  “I’m just sayin’, you didn’t see the way he was looking at you at the docks—like he wanted to have you for dinner. I don’t think he’s intending to torment you, at least not the way you’re supposing.”

  A shiver runs through me at the mere thought of being tormented by Niko Stephanos that way. Yum.

  “As delicious as that could be, it would never happen. We’re total opposites and I can tell he hates me. It’s going to suck working for someone who wants to see me miserable all year.”

  Cass snorts. “You keep telling yourself that. And call me when you wake up in his bed one of these days.”

  I roll my eyes. “He’s gorgeous, I grant you that, but he’s really not my type.”

  Cass stands and picks up the empty baklava plate. “Tess. Niko Stephanos is every woman’s type.”

  I stare out the window and sigh as she cleans up the kitchen. I’m afraid that she might be right, and I might be in really big trouble.

  Niko

  I wake up Wednesday morning before work and come to a realization—I want Tess Richardson. Plain and simple. I couldn’t get her out of my head all weekend, and when I walked into the office Monday and saw her sitting there in my conference room, I knew that once again the universe had handed something to me on a platter. But this time I won’t complain. In fact, this time, I’ll give thanks to whoever set this whole thing up—the gods of internships or whatever—because Tess is the most interesting thing to enter my world in a very long time.

  She’s like this tiny ball of conviction and determination. The way she stood in that staff meeting, nervous as I could see she was, and faced down a roomful of older people, her eyes flashing and her voice becoming stronger with each word she spoke. There she was, two days in a foreign country, admitting she doesn’t speak a word of the native language, but ready to work her hardest and learn whatever it is she needs to in order to succeed. I’ve never met anyone quite like her.

  And God she’s fun to tease. The look on her face when I tried to hand her that giant binder of crap that no one in our office has ever read, was priceless. I could have told her everything I needed her to know about our personnel policies in about two minutes, but since she loves rules so much I figured why not let her read the damn policies for herself? I don’t even know what’s in those policies. I think the only reason we have them is because my cousin Mira went to the London School of Economics and learned all about human resources, so to be supportive my dad let her write us a bunch of personnel regulations. All Tess really needs to know is that payday happens every other Friday, we open the doors at nine a.m., and lunch is from noon to two. That pretty much sums up the rules in my office.

  The good news in all of this is that there are no rules in my world that say I can’t go after Tess—intern or not. Yeah, I’ve spent enough time in the US and UK to know that it’s frowned upon there. Person in a position of power and everything, but none of that has anything to do with what happens outside the office, and I’m thinking there are all sorts of things that could happen.

  As I finish off my cup of coffee and hand it to my housekeeper, I grab my car keys off of the table in the front hallway of the villa I share with Christos. My mother will never understand why I don’t live with the family since I’m not married, but my dad gets that, at my age, a guy wants his own space. Eventually I’ll have to get married and have kids to carry on the family business, but no one’s rushing me, so for now, I date—a lot—and Christos and I live in the villa my dad bought for us, complete with housekeeper, gardener, and a chauffeur that I refuse to use. Driving my vintage Aston Martin is something I’m not willing to give up.

  As I head outside to hop in the car, the sun is shining, the sky is clear, and I’m smiling because I’ve got a new prize to pursue, at a moment when I thought I�
��d already won every prize there was to have.

  * * *

  My good mood is shattered when I walk into the office and am greeted by a very pissed off Juliet.

  “Mr. Stephanos,” she hisses as I walk past her desk on the way to my office.

  “Good morning,” I mutter, hoping like hell that she’ll leave it at this and let me get on with my day.

  “May I have a word?” she asks, flashing me a seriously psychotic smile.

  I sigh and turn back to her. “What is it Jules?”

  “I thought you should know that I have an appointment with your father.”

  I feel my eye twitch. “Okay. Is there some reason why you wouldn’t go to your immediate supervisor—me—first?”

  “I did go to you. You’ll recall our discussion at church last weekend?”

  I nod, every muscle in my body growing tenser.

  “In said discussion you threatened my job, Mr. Stephanos. Because I dared to ask why you had suddenly ended our personal relationship with no warning. I shouldn’t be punished because I questioned your morals.”

  My morals? Does she remember some of the things we did in her bed? And they weren’t all my ideas either. Juliet’s got some pretty damn questionable morals if you ask me.

  “Look, Jules, do what you got to do. But you’re wasting your time and my dad’s. He doesn’t give a shit about your hurt feelings. All I said was that I don’t want a bunch of crap here at the office—crap like this. Just let it go and we can get back to normal. You answer the phones, I sign the paychecks. It’s easy.”

  I see her fist clenched at her side, but I don’t stick around for more drama. I stride full tilt to my office and shut the door after I get inside. I hate this shit. It makes me want to go out on the water and not come back in again. But then again, if I didn’t come in to work I wouldn’t get to see Tess, and that’s something I’m not willing to give up. I can only hope that she wasn’t around to see Juliet’s latest display. It’s going to be hard enough convincing her to go out with me. The last thing I need is for her to think I drag a slew of baggage along behind me.