Читать книгу The Secret Kept From The Greek - Susan Stephens - Страница 11

CHAPTER ONE

‘DAMON GAVROS! LONG TIME, no see!’

Damon Gavros! Lizzie felt weak. Surely there had to be more than one Damon Gavros in London? She could hardly breathe as Stavros, her excitable boss, burst into the busy restaurant kitchen where Lizzie was ploughing her way through a mountain of dirty dishes at the sink. No. There was no mistake. She didn’t have to turn around to know it was the Damon Gavros when she could feel Damon in every fibre of her being. Was it really eleven years since they had last seen each other?

Steadying herself against the sink, Lizzie braced herself for an encounter she had never expected to happen—least of all here in the safety of her workplace.

Images of Damon started flashing behind her eyes. Impossibly compelling and dangerously intuitive, Damon Gavros was the only man to have made an impact on Lizzie so powerful that she had never forgotten him—never could forget him. And for more reasons than the fact that Damon was the most charismatic man she’d ever met.

‘Welcome! Welcome!’ Stavros was calling out on a steadily mounting wave of hysteria. ‘Damon! Please! Come in to the kitchen! Follow me! I want to introduce you to everyone...’

Lizzie remained rooted to the spot. Head down, with her fists planted in the warm suds, she drew a deep, shuddering breath as a spurt of the old anger flashed through her. Standing outside that courtroom in London eleven years ago, she had never felt more alone in her life, and she had cursed Damon Gavros to hell and back for being part of the root cause of that upheaval.

Now she could see that Damon and his father had done a good thing, and that the fault had rested squarely with Lizzie’s father, who had defrauded so many people out of their life savings. At the time she had been too confused and angry and upset to see that. It had only been when she had returned home and her stepmother had thrown her out of the house that Lizzie had finally accepted that her father was a crook and her stepmother was a heartless, greedy woman.

And Damon...?

She’d never forgotten Damon.

But where had he been for the past eleven years?

He certainly hadn’t been part of Lizzie’s life. Not that she held him responsible for anything except his absence. In fact she thanked him for making her life infinitely richer. She wondered what he would think of her now. She’d been such a rebel then, and now she was conventional to a fault. Would that make him suspicious?

Her body trembled with awareness as he drew closer. She hadn’t felt this affected by a man in eleven long years. She’d sworn off sex after Damon—and not just because no man could compare with him.

Damon and Stavros were growing closer to the dishwashing section of the busy kitchen, and the warmth between the two men reminded Lizzie of the warmth between Damon and his father after the trial. How she’d envied them their closeness. To have someone to confide in had seemed such an impossible dream. Looking back, she could see now that the court case had done her a favour. She had learned to stand on her own feet and now, though she didn’t have much, she earned her living honestly and she was free.

‘Lizzie!’ Stavros’s voice was full of happy anticipation as he called out her name across the banks of stainless steel counters. ‘May I present a very good friend of mine, recently returned from his travels...? Damon Gavros!’

She turned reluctantly.

There were a few seconds of absolute silence, and then Damon said, ‘I believe we know each other.’

Damon’s voice slicked through Lizzie’s veins like the slide of warm cream. It was so familiar she felt as if they’d never been apart.

‘That’s right,’ she agreed, trembling inside as she made sure to give Stavros a reassuring smile.

‘I’ll leave you two together,’ Stavros said tactfully, practically rubbing his hands with glee at the thought that he had finally managed to play Cupid.

‘It’s been a long time, Damon.’

‘Indeed it has,’ he agreed, scrutinising her with matching interest.

She felt vulnerable. She was hardly kitted out in her armour of choice for this reunion, in rubber overshoes, with an unflattering overall over her old clothes and an elasticated protective hat covering her wilful red curls, and her face was no doubt red and sweaty from the steam of the kitchen.

And I don’t know you, she thought as she stared into a ridiculously handsome face that had only improved with age. Apart from the information in press reports about his public persona, she didn’t know who Damon Gavros had become. And if he was back in London for good she had to find out.

Incredible eyes. Seductive eyes. Laughing eyes...

Dangerous eyes. They saw too much.

Damon’s impact on her senses was as devastating as it had ever been—which was the only warning Lizzie needed that she should take care. From the flash of black diamonds on his crisp white cuffs to the faintly amused stare that could obliterate her sensible mind at a stroke, Damon Gavros, with his power and money, was the most terrible threat to everything Lizzie held dear.

And still her wilful body clamoured for his attention while her sensible mind screamed caution. Damon was overwhelmingly charismatic, as well as physically imposing, but it was the power of his mind that dominated everything—and that frightened her.

‘Success suits you,’ she said, carelessly speaking her thoughts out loud.

He gave a slight nod of acknowledgement to this, but made no reply. That was probably the best he could do, after finding her here in the kitchen.

Business pundits spoke of Damon’s unparalleled success, and his monumental wealth since taking over his father’s company. When their articles weren’t referring to him as the world’s most eligible bachelor, they were dubbing him the benevolent billionaire, because of his charitable interests. She doubted he’d feel charitably disposed towards her if he discovered how she’d lived for the past eleven years.

Tamping down her alarm, Lizzie accepted that they’d both changed. She was more savvy, and better able to handle Damon.

‘Why don’t we get out of here?’ he suggested.

‘I beg your pardon?’ She looked at him in surprise, thinking she must have misheard him.

‘I’m not keen on holding our reunion here, are you?’

His stare seared through her, and for a moment she didn’t know what to say. The thought of going anywhere with Damon Gavros was alarming.

* * *

Damon could understand Lizzie’s surprise at seeing him. Seeing her had been a shock for him too—especially finding her so changed. He was keen to know what had been happening to Lizzie over the past eleven years, and why on earth she was working here.

‘I’m sure Stavros can spare you for an hour or so,’ he insisted.

Confident that Lizzie would follow him, he was already halfway to the door.

‘I can’t,’ she said flatly, bringing him to a halt. ‘As you can see...’ She spread her hands wide in the ugly rubber gloves when he turned around. ‘I’m working.’

It had never occurred to him that she might say no. ‘Stavros?’ he queried, turning his attention to her boss, who was hovering at the back of the kitchen.

‘Of course,’ Stavros insisted with enthusiasm. ‘Lizzie deserves a break. She can join you at your table. My chefs will prepare a feast—’

‘I’d rather not,’ Lizzie interrupted.

Damon had caught a glimpse of shabby jeans and a faded top beneath Lizzie’s overall and could understand her reservations. Stavros’s restaurant was seriously high-end, but now they’d met again he was determined to find out everything about her, and bury the hatchet so many years after her father’s trial.

‘We don’t have to eat here—somewhere casual?’ he suggested. ‘Another time, Stavros,’ he was quick to add, with a reassuring smile for his hovering host. ‘I’d like the chance to fill in the past eleven years, wouldn’t you?’ he said, turning to Lizzie.

She gave a nervous laugh. This was so unlike the Lizzie he’d known that he felt instantly suspicious. ‘Unless your eleven years includes a husband or a fiancé?’

‘No,’ she said, lifting her chin to regard him steadily. ‘It doesn’t.’

‘Then, do you have a coat?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘An hour or so of your time?’ He shrugged. ‘What harm can that do?’

Stavros intervened before she could reply. ‘How can you refuse?’ Stavros asked Lizzie, with a warm smile and an expansive gesture so typical of the genial restaurateur. ‘I’ll get someone to take over your work. Go now,’ he chivvied, ‘Lizzie never takes time off,’ he confided to Damon. ‘Half an hour for old times’ sake?’ he urged Lizzie, doing Damon’s work for him.

Short of being rude to both of them, there was only one thing Lizzie could do.

‘I’ll get my coat,’ she said.

* * *

She went to the staff bathroom and sluiced her face in cold water. Staring at herself in the mirror above the sink, she wondered where eleven years had gone. Did it matter? Damon Gavros was back. She had to handle it.

At least Stavros was delighted. He was always trying to fix her up with a man. Billionaire and pot-washer? Even Stavros couldn’t make that one fly, though Damon seemed happy enough. That had better not have been a smile of triumph on his lips. Lips that had kissed her into oblivion, Lizzie remembered, trying not to think back to the most significant night of her life.

Her heart jumped when she walked out of the restroom to find Damon relaxed back against the wall. Had he always been so hot?

Yes, she thought, smiling politely as he insisted on helping her with her coat.

To his credit, his expression didn’t falter, though her coat, with its plucked threads and plastic buttons, and a collar that had already been bald when she’d bought it in the thrift shop, was miles too big for her. She’d just needed something warm, while Damon’s coat had probably been custom-made. It was a soft alpaca overcoat, in a blue so dark it was almost black.

With a cashmere scarf slung casually around his neck, he looked like the master of the sexual universe. He had to be thinking, What the hell has happened to Lizzie Montgomery?

Life. Life had happened to Lizzie Montgomery, Lizzie reflected as Damon held the door. And life changed people. For the better, she could only hope, in both their cases.

‘I’m driving myself tonight,’ Damon explained as he stopped by the passenger door of a fabulous brand-new black Bentley with a personalised number plate: DG1.

‘Of course you are,’ she teased in a pale imitation of her old self. ‘Chauffeur’s night off?’ she suggested.

Damon chose not to answer as he opened the passenger door. The scent of money and leather assailed her the moment she sank into, rather than perched on, the most incredibly comfortable pale cream kidskin seat.

‘This is lovely,’ she observed, looking around as Damon slid in beside her.

She didn’t want him to think she was so downtrodden and disadvantaged that she was overwhelmed by his obvious wealth. She’d been bold when they’d first met, and now, in spite of how she must appear to Damon, she had everything she could possibly need. He might have made millions, and she might be poor, but there were more ways than one to feel a deep sense of satisfaction with life and she’d got that.

When Damon started the engine it purred—in contrast to the jangling conflict inside Lizzie. Pulling smoothly away from the kerb, he joined the sluggish London evening traffic. This was how the rich travelled, she concluded. They didn’t bounce along, crushed on every side in an over-full rush hour bus. They glided in their opulent private space, enjoying classical music playing softly in the background.

‘Do you enjoy your job?’

The blunt question jolted Lizzie back to the unlikely reality of being cocooned inside the most luxurious vehicle in London with the world’s most eligible bachelor.

‘Yes,’ she confirmed, lifting her chin. ‘I have great friends at the restaurant—especially Stavros. I’m exactly where I want to be, working alongside genuine people who care for me as I care for them.’

Damon seemed taken aback for a moment, and then he said, ‘Hungry?’

She was—and for more than food, she realised as Damon flashed a glance her way. She hadn’t felt like this in eleven years, but he only had to look at her for her to remember how it had felt to be in his arms. Which was a complete waste of good thinking time, she accepted, drawing her shabby coat closer around her trembling body.

‘Surprising even myself, I’m hungry too,’ he admitted.

‘You can take me back.’

‘Now, why would I do that?’

She stared down in shock as his hand covered hers. He’d better not be feeling sorry for her.

He drew the Bentley to a halt on the Embankment running alongside the river Thames. By the time she had released her seat belt he was opening her door. It was such a romantic view it took her attention for a moment.

‘Burger or hot dog?’ he said.

She almost laughed. Perhaps it was just as well he’d shaken her away from the romantic sight of the Palace of Westminster and stately Big Ben. It wouldn’t do to lose focus around Damon. ‘Hot dog, please.’

‘Ketchup and mustard?’

‘Why not be lavish?’ she said.

He gave her a look and turned away, allowing her to take in the powerful spread of his shoulders as he started chatting easily to the guy behind the food stand not far from where they had parked. Damon had always got on well with everyone—but how would he handle what she had to tell him?

Not yet, she decided. She would have to know this older, shrewder Damon better before she could tell him everything. She had to know what made him tick and how he lived his life.

As he handed the hot dog over their fingers touched and a quiver of awareness ran through her. It seemed that however hard she tried to remain detached, so she could think straight, her body insisted on going its own way. And her body wanted Damon as much as it ever had.

‘Thinking back?’ he said, reading her mind.

Thinking back to when she had been an eighteen-year-old virgin with nothing certain in her future except that it would change? Yes—unfortunately. ‘I’m thinking maybe I have too much sauce?’ she suggested.

‘You always had too much sauce,’ Damon observed.

She decided to ignore the jibe. Damon was standing under a street lamp, leaning back against it, and the spotlight suited him. He was so dark and swarthy—so compelling in every way. The shadowed light only enhanced his sculpted features.

‘I didn’t realise how hungry I was,’ she said, biting down hard on the delicious snack in an attempt to distract herself from Damon’s brazen physicality. And, truthfully, it was a treat to have someone other than Stavros buy her a meal and to care a damn if she enjoyed it.

‘Where did you disappear to after the trial?’ he asked with a frown.

‘Where did I “disappear to”?’ she repeated thoughtfully.

Good question. Not to a loving home—that was for sure.

‘Who’ll support me now?’ That had been Lizzie’s stepmother’s first question when Lizzie had returned home to find her suitcases waiting in the hall.

She should have known what was happening, but she had rushed up to her bedroom, thinking to bury her grief in her pillows, only to find her bedroom had been cleared. She had wasted a few precious minutes railing against fate before pulling herself together and accepting that this was her life now, and she’d better get on with it.

On her way out of the house she’d found her stepmother in her father’s study, going through the drawers of his desk. ‘I guess we’ll both have to work,’ Lizzie had said.

Her stepmother’s expression had twisted into something ugly. ‘I don’t work,’ she’d said haughtily. ‘And if you think you can persuade me to let you stay, you’re wasting your time. You’re one expense I can’t afford.’

That had been the last time they’d seen each other, and it had taken Lizzie’s stepmother less than a week to replace Lizzie’s father with a richer man.

She decided on a heavily edited version for Damon. ‘It wasn’t all bad,’ she said, thinking back. ‘The shock of finding myself homeless was good for me. I had to stand on my own two feet, and I found I enjoyed doing it.’

‘Sacrificing your dreams?’ He frowned.

‘Sometimes dreams have to wait,’ Lizzie said frankly. She’d done more than survive. She’d thrived, and had proved herself capable of far more than she’d imagined.

‘You’ve got ketchup on your chin—’

She sucked in a fast breath as he wiped it off. His touch was still electric.

‘Next time I’ll take you out for a proper meal—’

‘Next time?’ she queried. ‘So you’re back for good?’ Her heart drummed a tattoo as she thought about all the implications of that.

He chose not to answer her question. ‘Stavros says you work too hard. You have to take a break sometime,’ he insisted.

What else had Stavros told him? she wondered. She had so much to lose. Damon had been absent from her life for a long time, but he was still a core part of her existence. He didn’t know it yet, but he could rip her world apart on a whim.

‘Soda or water?’ he asked.

‘Water, please.’ Her throat was tight and dry.

As Damon turned to speak to the vendor she thought back to her first deception on their night together, when she’d been a virgin pretending not to be, embarking on a romantic adventure with a handsome Greek—or so she’d thought. Her life had been in chaos at the time. She hadn’t been thinking straight. Hated by her stepmother, she’d been desperate for her father to notice her.

She’d failed.

She’d almost failed with Damon too. Clinging to him, begging him to take her so she could forget her wretched home life, she had exclaimed with shock as he’d taken her, and he’d pulled back. It had taken all her feminine wiles to persuade him to continue.

Of course she was on the pill, she’d insisted.

He’d used protection anyway.

Belt and braces? she’d teased him.

Damon had proved to be a master of seduction, a master of pleasure, and they’d made love all night. But there had been chances to talk too, and it had been then that they had discovered a closeness that neither of them had expected. Surprising both of them, she was sure, they had enjoyed each other’s company.

‘Let’s walk.’

She glanced up as Damon took the top off her bottle of water. ‘I’d like that.’

A walk promised a welcome break from the past. She could take in the majesty of London instead...that was if she could stop looking at Damon.

Life and responsibility had cut harsh lines into his brow and around his mouth, but those only made him seem more human. Harsh, yet humorous, ruthless, yet empathetic, Damon was an exceptional man.

‘When I’m in London I walk a lot,’ he revealed, glancing down, his eyes too dark to read. ‘Sometimes it’s good to be alone with your thoughts, don’t you think?’

‘That depends who you are and what you’re thinking, I suppose,’ she said, remembering how quickly their whispered confidences in bed had turned to mistrust the following day in court. It would take more than walking together to clear the air between them, she suspected.

At the time the press reports—coming on top of everything else that had been happening at home—had destroyed Lizzie’s confidence. She’d lost her self-belief, as well as her confidence in her own judgement. She’d lost her trust in everyone—and in herself most of all. But then she’d realised that with no one to pick her up she’d better get on with it, and so she’d rebuilt her life along very different lines, far away from privilege and trickery.

A pawnbroker had given Lizzie her first break, taking what few scraps had remained of her mother’s jewellery in exchange for enough money to pay her first week’s rent. She remembered begging him not to sell her mother’s wedding ring. ‘There’s nothing exceptional about it,’ she’d protested when he’d informed her that he wasn’t a charitable institution. ‘You must have dozens like it—’

‘Not with three seed pearls set in the centre of the band,’ he’d said as he’d studied the ring with his eyeglass.

‘I’ll clean your shop for nothing,’ she’d offered in desperation. ‘I’ll pay you back with interest, I promise...’

But life had caught up with her, making the necessity of keeping a roof over her head more important than her mother’s wedding ring, so it would have to wait. Maybe one day...

‘Something wrong?’ Damon asked as she bit her lip and grimaced.

‘Nothing. Why?’ she gazed up at him evenly.

‘You made a sound like an angry kitten.’

She made no comment. Being compared to a kitten would not have been her choice. She felt as if the past few years had required her to be a tigress.

‘Enough?’ he said, when she shivered.

‘I’d better get back,’ she agreed.

The Bentley sat waiting for them, gleaming black and opulent. It was attracting admiring glances from passers-by, and now they were attracting interest too, as they approached it. The elegant vehicle was a fabulous representation of privilege, and Lizzie thought it the most visible proof of the yawning gulf between them. She couldn’t imagine what people must be thinking about the suave billionaire and the shabby kitchen worker getting into a car like that.

Did there ever come a point when a cork stopped bobbing to the surface? she wondered as Damon opened the passenger door and saw her safely settled in?

No. She hadn’t come this far to give up now.

‘Home?’ he asked.

So he could see where she lived?

‘Back to the restaurant, please.’ She tried not to look at him. ‘There are things I need to pick up.’

She didn’t want him visiting her home. She couldn’t risk it. This had been pleasant, but there was more to life than Damon’s riches and his personal success. What Lizzie was protecting was infinitely more precious, and she had no intention of risking everything she cared about by acting carelessly now.

Damon had the power to steal everything away from her.

She wouldn’t let him. It was as simple as that. Whatever it took, that wasn’t going to happen.

He started the engine and the Bentley purred obediently.

‘Your mother was Greek, wasn’t she?’ he asked conversationally as he pulled onto the road.

‘Yes, she was.’

‘I suppose that accounts for your unusual colouring. I never thought about it before, but with your Celtic red hair and those chocolate-brown eyes and long black lashes your colouring is quite unusual...’

‘I suppose it is,’ Lizzie agreed, realising that she had never thought about it either, beyond the fact that when things had been at their bleakest she had sought refuge in the warm, home-loving Greek community in London, where there was always someone who knew someone, she reflected wryly. But wasn’t life like that? Paths crossed, then separated, and then crossed again.

‘I think we should see each other again.’

She stared at Damon in amazement, feeling a little defensive. ‘Should we? Why?’ Her heart thundered as she waited for his reply.

He shrugged. ‘I promised you a proper meal?’

‘I won’t hold you to that.’ But they would have to see each other again, she accepted. That was inevitable now.

‘We’ll make a date before I leave tonight,’ he said, glancing across at her.

Would they? Could she risk spending an entire evening with Damon? Could she risk becoming relaxed with him and yet not telling him about anything of significance that had happened in her life over the past eleven years? Could she risk her feelings for him only to lose him again—and for good this time?

She had never shrunk from a challenge yet, Lizzie concluded as Damon slowed the Bentley outside the restaurant, whether that challenge had been battling the demand for clean plates when Stavros’s industrial-sized dishwashers decided to pack up in the middle of service—or having a second meeting with the man who didn’t know he was the father of her ten-year-old child.