Читать книгу Modern Romance Collection: May 2018 Books 1 - 4 - Эбби Грин, Люси Монро, Люси Монро - Страница 20
ОглавлениеKAYLA’S LIMBS WENT KERSPLUNG, her arms flailing of their own accord, her legs shooting off the chair, nearly taking the rest of her body with them. Shock deprived her lungs of oxygen as the towel she was covered with fell away at her body’s jerky movements.
“What?” she demanded, absolutely sure she was hearing things.
Deep emerald eyes widened at her reaction, Andreas dropping to his knees beside her chair again. “It is the only thing that makes any sense.”
Even fully covered by the luxurious robe, he was still a risk to her equilibrium. If the topic of their conversation hadn’t been so shocking, she would have lost her train of thought with his nearness. Andreas Kostas as a friend was dangerous to her heart and sanity, but this close? This intimate? He was pure kryptonite.
“No... You don’t know what you’re saying.” She grabbed at the bath sheet, pulling it back around her, pulling her knees back up, curling into herself and staring at him with near hatred for making her hope when she knew he didn’t mean it. “You’re not being serious.”
“Believe me.” Warm, masculine hands covered her now-cold fingers and squeezed. “I have never been more so.”
“But, Andreas, Genevieve would never approve of me for you.”
“I fired Genevieve.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?” His thumbs caressed her chilled hands, seducing her with warmth.
“You don’t want to marry me.” If he had, he would have done so six years ago. Right?
She’d finally come to terms with the truth of their relationship. He couldn’t turn everything on its head. Not now.
“But I do.” His smile was as close to self-deprecating as she’d ever seen on this arrogant Greek-American’s features. “I think you’ll realize if you consider it that you will find marriage to me a good thing.”
Was he kidding? He was the one person she’d always wanted to call family, but this made no sense. And she said so. Again.
“On the contrary, it makes all kinds of sense.”
“Oh, really?” she managed to snark past her very slowly dissipating shock. “How is that?”
His smile was devastating. “We are already family. This would simply make it official.”
Did he really believe that? The expression of sincerity in his emerald gaze said he did.
She shook her head. “But you wanted a bride pimp. For the perfect wife.”
“You fulfill every one of my requirements.”
“Requirements?” He had requirements? Wasn’t that kind of clinical? Did he think marriage was a business contract?
Clearly, the answer was yes.
“Preferences. However you want to put it.”
Yes, to Andreas, any preference he evinced, he would consider in reality to be a requirement. Kayla almost had it in her to pity Genevieve if she’d kept the position of matchmaker for such an exacting client.
“I don’t see how.”
“How what?”
“Focus, Andreas,” she said with some asperity. “That I could fulfill your requirements. I don’t have social position or family standing.”
She didn’t have any family at all, except him apparently.
He jumped up and crossed the room, coming back for the second time that day brandishing his phone. “It’s all right there.”
She looked down at the screen. It was opened to an interview intake form for Genevieve’s matchmaking service. He’d already scrolled to the question that asked Andreas to list his top-five preferences for his future partner.
He had made a neat, succinct list.
Practical, not given to emotional displays.
Must have own career.
Must have post-high-school education.
Not Greek.
Must want children.
Kayla shook her head. “Why not Greek?” was the first thing she thought to ask.
Andreas made a sound somewhere between disgust and anger, averting his gaze for a moment before meeting her eyes again, his a window into an old torment. “When I was in Greece, forced to live with my father, forced to take his name, forced to do so many things, I heard over and over again how one day I would marry a good Greek girl, someone who would do the Georgas name proud.”
There was so much old pain in his taut body right now, she couldn’t have stopped herself reaching out with one hand and sliding it into the opening of his robe to press against his heart. “Your mother was a good Greek girl.”
“I know, but even after he decided to acknowledge me, Georgas was never going to acknowledge that, or his part in her downfall with her family and community.”
“So, you are determined not to give in to even the least of his demands.”
“Exactly.”
Lucky for Andreas he’d never fallen in love, particularly with some beautiful Greek woman. It might have broken him. But then, maybe that was lucky for Kayla too, she was finally beginning to realize.
“You weren’t ever looking for someone with social standing, a family that dated back generations.”
“No. Those would be Georgas standards for measurement of a person’s worth, not mine. I am a Kostas, my own person.”
“I can be emotional,” she pointed out. She wasn’t going to pretend to be an automaton after all this time.
“You are eminently practical.” Andreas sighed and smiled. “When you aren’t haring off to New York and refusing to tell me where you are.”
“I have emotions, Andreas. I am capable of love.” She knew her social awkwardness was often interpreted as a lack in that department, or any kind of sentiment, but the truth was nothing like that.
“Good. Then you will love our children.”
She hugged her knees tighter as a thrill of hope went through her that even six years of practice tamping it down didn’t seem able to diminish. “I want to adopt out of foster care.”
“I know.”
She’d told him her dreams of doing so six years ago, but assumed he’d forgotten. “That’s not a problem for you?” she pressed.
“No. Though I am hopeful your willingness to forego birth control today indicates an openness to trying for children with our DNA, as well. I want Melia Kostas to live on in my children.”
It was such a sentimental, emotional thing to say, Kayla was flabbergasted. “I did the math, the chances of pregnancy during this time in my cycle were astronomically low.”
“There’s that practical side to your nature showing itself.” His lips quirked, his green eyes filled with amusement.
“Do not laugh at me, Andreas.”
“I’m not, pethi mou. The fact is, even a one-in-a-thousand chance remains a chance and you would not have taken it if you were unwilling to have children with me.”
“I know.”
“So?”
“Would you treat all our children the same?” His answer mattered, enough she would turn him down if he gave the wrong one.
Kayla had spent her entire childhood standing on the outside of the families she lived with, looking in. She would never allow that for her own children. Not if she could help it.
And she was determined to help it.
He curled both hands over hers again, scooting farther into her personal space, his body heat surrounding her. “Any child we bring into our home, any child who has reason to call me Papa, will enjoy every ounce of my protection, my support and my love. Adopted, natural or born to us within our marriage, no child of mine will ever doubt their importance to me. How can you doubt it?”
Kayla’s heart just melted. Was it any wonder she’d loved this man since she knew him? Despite his corporate-shark side, he understood what really mattered.
“I guess I don’t.”
“Good.”
She wanted to give in, but part of her still wondered how this could be real. “Why now? Why not six years ago?”
“Six years ago, I was not ready to marry.”
Right. It hadn’t been part of the plan right out of graduate school. “Now you are.”
“It is time.”
His words served as a cold reminder that Andreas was not asking her to marry him in some grand romantic gesture, but because he had a plan to prove to his overbearing father that Andreas Kostas was every bit as good, or better than he ever would have been as Andreas Georgas.
And if Kayla said no, Andreas would find a wife. One way or another.
“Come, Kay-love. Marriage between us will give you the safety and security you crave. From this point forward, no matter what business lies between us, you will know where you belong, where you have always belonged. With me.” She could not doubt the sincerity of his words, but they also proved that he knew just what buttons to push to get to her.
And that helped her stay just that little bit wary. “But marriage isn’t a business contract. I’m not sure you understand that.”
“Is it really so different?”
“Yes.” She needed him to understand that.
“If you say so, but I keep my promises. You know this. Once I sign a contract, I keep my side of the bargain, just as you will always keep yours. I do not break my word.”
She knew that in business and life as she’d seen it with Andreas, he had a deep well of integrity. She could not deny his words, but still...who wanted to see their marriage likened to a business arrangement?
Andreas did, apparently. Kayla was not so enamored by the classification.
“What kind of promises are you proposing we make?” She wanted it spelled out, needed to be sure that Andreas understood the kind of commitment he would be making and what she would require him to make.
What might be just another business deal for him, though apparently with much longer duration, was her life and her chance at the family she craved.
“Fidelity, lifetime companionship, family. It will be a real marriage in every sense of the word. How could it not be?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. You’re the one talking about it being like a business contract.”
“Because that is what I know. What I understand.”
That she could believe. He’d never understood the emotional devastation he’d wreaked when he broke up with her so he could bring her on board in his fledgling company.
“What about love?” she asked.
There was that look again. Disgust warring with anger. “My mother said she loved my father. Only that love destroyed her life.”
“But not all relationships blow up like theirs did,” she had to point out.
“My father claimed to love his wife, but he cheated on her. I will never take a mistress, or even have a one-night stand.”
“That’s about integrity and commitment, not love.”
“According to many they are the same thing. My father has plenty of integrity in business. It was his supposed love for my mother that gave him the freedom to cheat, to bring about her disgrace with her family.”
Kayla didn’t have an answer for that and she didn’t need one.
Andreas was not finished. “He said he loved me, that as his son, I was precious to him, but never once did he take into account my needs, my feelings, much less a single thing I wanted. He did nothing but disrupt and destroy the life my mother worked so hard to give me. Love is an excuse people give to justify their selfishness with others, or their own bad decisions.”
Her heart hurt, bleeding from the wounds his words inflicted. “I don’t believe that.”
“What do you know about love?”
The stark demand of the question hit her like a physical blow. Kayla nearly blurted out her six-year-old secret then, but self-preservation kept her silent. “I know that you just got through promising you would love our children, all of them.”
“That is different,” he dismissed with a wave of one hand. “Melia Kostas taught me how to love a child as she loved me.”
And despite how his father’s love had caused major havoc in Andreas’s life, apparently the big bad tycoon was still unafraid to love his own children.
“But you can never love me?” She picked at the wound in her heart like a sore tooth, needing him to say the words.
“Does it matter?” he asked, sounding pained. “Doesn’t what we have transcend romantic drivel?”
Transcend love? Was he serious? But she could see he was. “A man who claimed to love you might walk away from both you and his children. It happens often enough, but I will never leave you.”
She took a deep breath and then spoke some of the most difficult words she’d ever said. “I’ll give you my answer back in Portland.”
Instead of the anger she expected, Andreas nodded. “I expected as much.”
He had?
He tipped his head down and kissed her, his lips firm but gentle. “I know you, Kay-love, no matter what you may think.” He tugged at the haphazard tuck at the top of the towel. “Until then, why don’t we spend more time exploring the benefits of joining our lives and our bodies, hmm?”
She had no answer as her mouth was too busy kissing him back, her body too intent on getting close to his.
They made love into the evening, ordered dinner via the special room service menu only available for their floor and the one below, and then returned to Andreas’s bed, insatiable lovers who had spent too long apart.
* * *
Kayla was unsurprised when Andreas insisted on accompanying her to her meeting with Sebastian Hawk. That didn’t mean she had to like it.
She crossed her arms and glared up at him. “You aren’t part of this deal, Andreas.”
“I’m not leaving you alone to tear around New York on your own again.”
“You’re being ridiculously controlling.”
“I am not trying to control you.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Then why come to the meeting?”
“Is it so hard for you to believe I want to watch out for you? You are brilliant in the lab, Kay-love, but Hawk is a shark at business.”
For a man who didn’t believe in love, he certainly threw the word around a lot. She couldn’t decide if she liked it or it just hurt more to hear him using it, knowing there were no feelings of love behind it. “Oh, you mean like you?”
“Don’t you want a shark sitting beside you?”
“Undermining my position?” She gave him a sour look. “No, thank you.”
“You believe I would do this?”
“You won’t?” she asked, stunned.
“You have my word.”
She stared at him. Could she trust him? If she didn’t, she could only give one answer to the marriage question once they got home.
Sighing, still trepidatious, but certain she had to take a leap of faith, she said, “Okay, you may come, but I mean it, Andreas. No undermining my deal with Sebastian.”
Andreas didn’t bother to answer, he was too busy texting Bradley to fix the reservations at the restaurant to accommodate one more person.
“Seriously? Andreas, he’s probably still sleeping.”
The chime of a return text said she was wrong, until she saw Andreas’s wince. Yeah, the überefficient PA had not liked being woken, but she had no doubt the reservations would get updated to a table for three.
* * *
Sebastian Hawk was already at the table when Kayla and Andreas arrived at the upscale restaurant for their meeting.
He stood from the table set formally with full linens, shaking Kayla’s hand first. “It’s very nice to see you, Miss Jones.” He turned to Andreas. “I wasn’t expecting you, but I wondered at the extra place setting.”
“Andreas is convinced you’re going to try to eat me,” Kayla said with her usual forthrightness. “And please, call me Kayla. Formality makes me nervous.”
Andreas winced, but Sebastian Hawk laughed. With the warmth in his smile and gorgeous features, it was easy to see why an Arabic princess would walk away from her intended prince to marry this man.
“Then by all means, let us dispense with it. You will call me Sebastian.”
“Stop flirting with her, Hawk. Your wife would not approve.”
“Lina understands the difference between polite conversation and flirting, Andreas.”
Andreas frowned, but took his seat after helping Kayla into her brocade dining chair. They ordered their food before Sebastian broached the subject of business. And it was then that she discovered just how dedicated Andreas was to her interests, as well as the difference between this glam restaurant and the one they’d been to for dinner.
The waitstaff here were attentive, but clearly used to business being conducted over lunch as they handled the food service with subtle difference.
“I’m thrilled you want to stay on at KJ Software.” Sebastian’s handsome face creased in a genuine smile. “As far as I’m concerned, you are the reason the security software is so much above the others in the industry.”
Andreas gave the other business tycoon a less-than-warm look. “She wants more than to stay on, she wants to keep her interest in the company.” Andreas’s tone brooked no argument.
Kayla nodded her agreement.
“Why?” Sebastian’s brows drew together, his expression perplexed. “If you allowed me to buy your shares, you would be a wealthy woman. I assure you that your employment package would be commensurate with your skills and very real importance to R & D.”
“It’s not about the money.” Kayla hadn’t really considered how she was going to explain her desire to stay partial owner of KJ Software to Sebastian Hawk.
The idea of baring her soul to him did not appeal.
“It’s not?” Sebastian appeared a tad disbelieving.
“Kayla has a different attachment to the company than I do,” Andreas said. “Unlike me, she has no desire to start a new venture.”
“You do not like change?” Sebastian was clearly still trying to understand.
“Would you sell Hawk Enterprises?” Kayla asked instead of answering.
Sebastian’s expression cleared, but remained serious. “No. I would not. You’re right, Kayla, sometimes it is not about the money.”
“I’m glad you understand.”
“I do, but I am not sure I like the idea of you retaining five-percent ownership in my subsidiary company.”
“You’re a possessive bastard, Hawk.” Andreas didn’t sound like he was insulting the other man, despite the words he used.
Sebastian shrugged. “Lina would agree with you.”
“We were talking business,” Kayla felt compelled to point out.
“It’s a deeply pervasive personality trait.” Sebastian’s lips barely twisted in recognition of his admission.
Andreas leaned back in his chair, almost a relaxed pose, but his arms crossed and his features were cast in intractability. “You’ll have to keep it in check in this instance. Kayla wants to keep her stake in the company and knowing that, I can’t do a deal without assuring she does.”
Sebastian’s eyes flared with surprise, but that was nothing compared to the shock coursing through Kayla’s body. She’d think Andreas was just posturing, but she knew the truth. He never said something he would not back up with action. Not in business, not in life.
It was just that she’d never considered he would lay such a condition on him selling his 95 percent. It was all she could do to hold back her gasp of disbelief.
Sebastian looked at Kayla, his dark gaze probing and speculative. “Some of my top employees in certain subsidiaries enjoy company stock as part of their bonus package. Nothing that would allow them anything like a five-percent stake in even a subsidiary, but I am not without understanding in how to best motivate performance.”
“I am aware.” Andreas met Sebastian’s gaze squarely. “You want Kayla’s brains, she keeps her stake in the company.”
That was more like the argument she had intended to make.
“You are aware I am building up my conglomerate to have worthy companies, not simply a name to give to my children.”
Sebastian gave a short nod. “You’re building a damn dynasty. I am aware.”
Sebastian’s smile was wry. “Lina chose an American businessman over royalty. Our children will have a legacy worthy of such a mother.”
Kayla shook her head. Andreas wasn’t the only business tycoon with something to prove.
“So, we have a deal?” She pressed her hands tightly together under the table, still unable to believe after all her angst Andreas had come down so strongly on her side during this negotiation.
Sebastian looked at her and then back at Andreas. “I have a counteroffer.”
“What is it?” Kayla asked, unwilling to allow Andreas to continue running the meeting, no matter how successful his words might have been.
“You sell half your five percent to Andreas.”
“Why?” Andreas demanded.
Kayla frowned in thought. Was 2.5 percent enough to maintain her sense of security? The money would certainly come in handy for the shelter.
“You can consider it one of your first investments for your new venture capital company,” Sebastian said. “So long as you own skin in the game, the new CEO will have access to your brains and industry contacts. One day, you’ll be there to help mentor my children.”
No matter how much Kayla might like the idea, Andreas would never go for that. It wasn’t part of his grand plan and he never gave up a plan once he made it.
“Why would you need me, now or later?” Andreas asked. “Your CEO would come to you for advice, surely, and you’ll mentor your own children.”
“I can give my children no greater gift than to assure they have access to good mentors in their lives.”
Kayla didn’t know about Andreas, but she was touched on his behalf.
He actually looked kind of gobsmacked. “That is quite an honor, but you know I planned to move on completely from KJ Software.”
Kayla’s heart sank at his confirmation of what she already knew.
“Yes, but would it really be such a burden to maintain nominal ownership in the company?”
And Kayla suddenly realized something. Sebastian Hawk really wanted this, had probably wanted it from the beginning of his negotiations with Andreas.
She looked at both men, realizing their arguments sounded almost rehearsed. Or rehashed. “You asked Andreas to stay on as nominal partner to begin with, but he refused.”
“Despite his possessive attitude toward his business, he did.” Andreas sounded disgruntled. “I let him know it was not an option.”
“Things have changed, haven’t they?” Sebastian prompted.
“Because I’m asking for something you don’t want to give.” Kayla didn’t try to stifle her sigh of disappointment. Sebastian Hawk would rather have her as an employee than a business partner.
Kayla wasn’t offended. She knew her strengths and they happened in the computer lab, not the conference room. That was undeniably Andreas’s forte.
“Oh, I’m positive that under his cool demeaner, Hawk is thrilled you want to keep your ownership, pethi mou. He couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t be headhunted otherwise.”
Kayla looked between the men. Sebastian Hawk’s expression gave nothing away. Andreas looked about as movable as a rock.
Things were not looking good for her.
“I can tell you that Andreas has not changed his mind about pulling out of KJ Software completely.” Kayla’s hope for a positive outcome to this meeting dwindled by the second. “I can also tell you that if you try to push me out of ownership of my company, I will walk away from it and I won’t be signing any non-compete contracts either.”
It wasn’t a threat exactly. She knew she couldn’t hope to compete with a company the size of Hawk Enterprises, but if he wasn’t lying about truly valuing her expertise and creative programming ideas, he wanted to keep her on at KJ Software.
“You’ve trained her well, Andreas.” Sebastian didn’t sound annoyed. He did look just slightly amused.
Kayla could have cheerfully kicked his shin under the table. This was her life they were talking about.
Andreas must have read something on her face because he reached out and pulled her right hand out of its clasp with her left to hold it. “Stay calm, pethi mou. Hawk is a reasonable man.”
“I have not refused and you are quite right, Kayla, your value to the company is such that I have no desire to see you move on. However, both of you must realize that KJ Software itself will do better with both Andreas and my expertise at its CEO’s disposal. It’s still a fairly new company and even folded into the structure of Hawk Enterprises, there are growing pains ahead.”
Kayla agreed. Of course she did. If she had her way, Andreas wouldn’t be selling the company at all, but that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to take his money and business skills and bring success to other ventures.
Andreas frowned. “Those growing pains will happen because it’s a strong company that will add significantly to Hawk Enterprises.”
“Agreed.” Hawk didn’t add anything else.
No compromise there. From either man.
“I came to New York to settle my future, not scuttle Andreas’s plans.” Kayla stood up. “I won’t allow you to make my keeping my five percent a condition of the deal, Andreas. This is too important to you.”
“And it is not important to you?” He stood too, his hand still holding hers. “Come, sit back down, this is part of business. I know not a part you enjoy, but that is why you needed me here.”
She’d needed him there because he knew that Sebastian Hawk wanted something Kayla could never have promised on Andreas’s behalf. Nor would she want to. She ignored his claim when she answered, “I think we’ve all said what needed saying.”
She pulled her hand from his and turned to offer it to Sebastian. “Thank you for meeting with me. Let me know if you decide my terms are acceptable.”
Sebastian had stood when Andreas did. He took her hand and shook it with all evidence of friendliness and good will. “Kayla, you are a brilliant programmer. Do not underestimate how much I want you to stay on at KJ Software.”
Just not enough to make the deal without the added incentive of Andreas maintaining a connection to the company. She got the silent message.
Unable to force words past her suddenly constricted throat, she simply nodded.
Andreas cursed in Greek. It was something he did when he was really frustrated, a habit he’d developed young, he’d told her once. He’d learned the words from friends of his mother’s, other transplanted Greeks she made sure he was exposed to during his childhood, wanting him to maintain a heritage from her homeland.
He moved quickly to stand beside her, his arm going around her waist in a way that was not at all appropriate for a business meeting. But then calling her by Greek endearments hadn’t been either.
Andreas pulled her into his side. “Pleasure, Hawk. I put my own proposal forward to Kayla yesterday. If she agrees, you can consider your terms acceptable.”
Kayla nearly choked on the air she was trying to drag into her lungs. He had not just said that. Peeking up at his profile, she was snagged by an all-too-serious green gaze.
She bit back her own epithet. Oh, he’d said it all right. And just like everything else he said, he meant it.
“Whatever you proposed must be very important to you.” Sebastian was back to looking at her quizzically.
Kayla gave him a sickly smile. “Goodbye, Sebastian.”
