Doukakis's Apprentice Read online

  ‘This is the wrong hotel. I booked myself somewhere cheap and miserable.’ Prepared for something seedy, Polly blinked at the glamour and elegance of the luxurious hotel foyer. After seeing the inside of Damon’s private jet she’d thought that nothing could ever impress her again. Evidently she’d been wrong. ‘Unless the place has had a major upgrade in the past twenty-four hours, this definitely isn’t the place I chose.’ Light shafted off gold, marble and glass and every person who glided through the revolving doors looked like a multi-millionaire. A sense of inferiority nibbled the edges of her confidence and she stood up a little straighter and tried to look as if she belonged.

  No matter how many times she told herself that she deserved to be here she still felt like a fake. It depressed her that she could still feel that way.

  The moment Damon set foot in the exclusive hotel there was a subtle shift in the atmosphere. Heads turned, staff straightened uniforms and descended on him with just the right degree of discretion and deference. Smiles were plentiful. Nothing was too much trouble.

  Accustomed to staying in cheap hotels, checking in with grumpy, overworked staff and hauling her ancient suitcase up endless stairs only to find herself in an airless room with a window overlooking a grim car park, Polly was fascinated by the contrast.

  The staff were attentive to the point of smothering. Damon’s presence had an electrifying effect on those around him. He barely acknowledged them, accepting the fawning attention with the same arrogant assurance he displayed in every other part of his life.

  This was his normal.

  ‘I can’t afford to stay here.’ Seriously worried, Polly was mentally running through the budget. ‘I could never charge this to the client.’

  ‘I think we both know that finances aren’t your strong point. From now on you can leave that side of the business to me. You just concentrate on the creative side, which apparently is your forte.’ Leaving his security team to sort out the details with the hotel staff, Damon strode through the foyer. ‘I’ve booked out a floor for us.’

  A floor? ‘Could you slow down? Just wait a minute.’ Worried that her ‘creative side’ might have gone on vacation, Polly jogged to keep up with him as he strode towards a bank of elevators. ‘I can’t ignore the finances. I have to think about it.’

  ‘You’re the one who mentioned teamwork. This is teamwork. We each do the bit we do best. For you, that’s scribbling in your pink notebook. Leave the money to me.’

  ‘Yes, but—’ Her phone buzzed and she paused outside the elevator. ‘Wait a minute. I need to answer this … Bonjour, Gérard, ça va? Oui … d’accord …’ When she finally finished her call, Damon was standing inside the elevator, watching her through those thick, dusky lashes that tipped his looks from handsome to spectacular.

  Her heart skittered and bumped as she joined him. ‘Sorry about that, but I couldn’t exactly put a VP of marketing on hold.’

  ‘I didn’t expect you to put him on hold. I also didn’t expect you to speak French.’

  ‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me. I have hidden talents.’

  ‘So I’m discovering.’ That disturbingly acute gaze didn’t shift from her face. ‘You haven’t stopped e-mailing and talking to people since you woke up. When did you learn to speak French?’

  ‘We had a seriously hot French master at school. It was the only lesson we were all awake in—’ Remembering too late that mentioning school probably wasn’t a good idea, Polly flushed. ‘Just kidding. I promised myself that if a gorgeous Frenchman ever whispered sweet nothings in my ear I wanted to be able to understand him.’

  ‘If he’s whispering nothing it would probably be better not to understand him,’ Damon said dryly and his words made her laugh.

  Then she realised she was laughing and stopped instantly. But the connection remained. A connection she didn’t want or need and yet still it sucked her in, driving her heartbeat faster. The sudden darkening of his beautiful eyes told her he felt it too and rejected the unwanted chemistry as completely as she did. Perversely, that rejection didn’t hurt as much as aggravate. Her emotions spun and suddenly she wanted to press her mouth to his and kiss away the sarcasm and cynicism that flowed from him.

  The impulse was so alien to her that if she’d been in possession of a thermometer she would have taken her own temperature. Was she ill?

  Alarmed by her own thoughts, Polly was relieved when they reached the palatial suite.

  ‘C’est magnifique.’ Grateful for the size of it, she walked the length of the spacious living room and out thought the open glass doors to the roof terrace. The fresh air brushed away the claustrophobic cloud that had smothered her in the confines of the lift. That crazy impulse to kiss him faded and she breathed a sigh of relief as she stared over the rooftops of Paris. Enjoying the moment of relative calm, she tensed as she heard his footsteps behind her.

  ‘Where would your father stay?’

  ‘He’d stay somewhere no one would think to look for him. That’s the sort of guy he is.’ Thinking wistfully that it would be nice to enjoy the luxury of the hotel and the romance of Paris without having to think about work or her father, Polly turned from her contemplation of the city. ‘This isn’t just about my father, you know. It’s also about your sister. She hasn’t been on the phone to you, has she? That sort of implies that she doesn’t want to be found.’

  ‘She’s very impulsive and easily led.’

  Polly clenched her jaw. ‘If you’re still going on about that episode at school, can I remind you that I was fourteen? That was ten years ago. She’s an adult now.’

  ‘She doesn’t behave like an adult. She doesn’t always make good decisions.’

  ‘Isn’t that part of growing up? You have to make some bad decisions in order to discover they’re bad.’ Polly attributed the sudden warm flush on her skin to the hot French sun shining down on the terrace. ‘Didn’t you ever make a bad decision? Or were you born doing the right thing? I suppose life just fell into place for you.’

  The fruits of that success were all around him. Not just in this hotel and the private jet that had transported them to Paris in such luxury, but in his lifestyle. He owned an island in Greece, didn’t he? A penthouse in New York and a ski chalet in Switzerland. People fell over themselves to befriend Damon Doukakis and his sister. They walked through life without hindrance, doors swinging open to welcome them.

  ‘You think I was born into this? You think I had it handed to me?’ His voice held a raw, rough edge that increased her tension. ‘My father worked for an engineering company. A badly managed engineering company. When he was made redundant, he was so ashamed that he’d let his family down that every morning he kissed my mother goodbye and left to go to work. Only instead of going to work he used to sit in the library and hunt for jobs. But there weren’t any.’

  Shocked into silence by that unexpected revelation, Polly simply stared at him. When she finally managed to say something it came out as a croak. ‘D-did he get another job?’

  ‘No. My father was Greek. Proud. Not being able to provide for his family was the ultimate failure. Overwhelmed with the responsibility of it, he drove his car off a bridge.’ The words were emotionless and matter of fact. ‘I was waiting for them to come home when the police knocked on the door.’

  Polly couldn’t breathe. ‘Them?’

  ‘My mother was in the car, too. No one understood why he did it. Whether he lost all hope and decided to take her with him—whether she even knew what he intended—’ His eyes were blank as he stared over the city. ‘Do you know the worst thing? The redundancies weren’t necessary. I found that out a few years later when I’d learned a few sharp lessons about business. It was all down to bad decisions and I decided right then that I was never going to work for anyone else. I was never going to let someone else control my destiny.’

  It explained so much. His ruthless approach. The rigid control with which he managed his business.

  Polly realised that her
impression of him was as false as his was of her.

  It was as if the pieces of a jigsaw had been thrown in the air and, on landing, had created a different picture.

  ‘You were left to raise your sister.’

  ‘She was six.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘I was sixteen years old and the only skill I had was with computers. I was always in trouble at school for hacking, so I decided there had to be a way of turning that to my advantage. I developed a way of analysing data that every company wanted.’ He shrugged. ‘Right place, right time. I was lucky.’

  ‘But your business isn’t computers now—’

  ‘Something else I learned—diversify. That way if one part of the business is in trouble, another part may be performing well.’

  He’d thought it all through. Done everything he could to provide security for his sister.

  Feeling a strange ache behind her ribcage, Polly turned away. She shouldn’t envy someone who had suffered such a tragic loss, but she did. Even without parents, they’d been a family. Everything he’d done, everything he’d achieved, had been driven by his love for Arianna. Protecting her had been his priority from the moment she’d been left in his care.

  ‘It must have been very hard losing both your parents like that.’

  ‘Life can be hard. It happens.’ He glanced towards her, his expression unreadable. ‘What happened to your mother? Presumably she was divorce number one?’

  The ache behind her ribs didn’t fade. ‘She walked out when I was a toddler. Being a mother didn’t suit her. Or maybe I was just hard work. Whichever—my dad hated being on his own. Whenever a relationship fell apart, he moved onto the next woman.’

  Even now, at twenty-four, she found her father’s behaviour still had the power to embarrass her and she hated that. She hated the mixed-up feelings that came with every new relationship he started.

  ‘The women are always younger?’

  Hearing the judgement in his voice, Polly felt her face heat and wanted to fall through the floor. ‘Mostly.’

  ‘Is that embarrassing?’

  ‘Hideous.’ In the face of his startling honesty about his own background there didn’t seem any point in lying about her feelings.

  He let out a long breath. ‘So you don’t approve of his relationship with Ana?’

  ‘You didn’t ask me if I approved. You asked me if I found it embarrassing. The answer to that is yes. As for whether or not I approve—’ She broke off, wondering why on earth she was sharing her deepest thoughts with this man whose opinion of her was so low. He couldn’t possibly understand, could he? ‘He’s my dad and I love him. I just want him to be happy. Isn’t that what you want for Arianna?’

  ‘Yes, which is why I don’t approve of this relationship.’

  ‘I think all relationships are complicated and I’m not sure age makes any difference to that.’

  ‘When you see a twenty-four-year old girl with a fifty-four year old man, don’t you ask yourself why they’re together?’

  Polly chewed her lip, wondering whether to confess that the entire relationship merry-go-round terrified her. The whole thing seemed designed to wreck lives. ‘This is the twenty-first century. Age of same-sex marriages, the toyboy and the cougar. Relationships don’t always conform to rigid tradition any more. Why does it bother you? You’re too big and tough to care what people think.’ But Damon Doukakis was rigidly traditional. Greek. If she’d learned anything about him over the past twenty-four hours it was that family was the most important thing to him.

  ‘I don’t care what people think. I do care that Ana will be hurt. Let’s face it, your father doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to commitment.’

  Polly made a weak attempt to defend him. ‘You’re not exactly famed for long-term commitment.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘You move from one woman to the next. Apart from the obvious—prenuptial agreements, huge payouts to lawyers etc—what’s the difference?’

  ‘Marriage is a responsibility and I have more than enough responsibilities.’ He took a deep breath as if the mere thought of it was enough to unsettle him. ‘In my relationships there are no broken promises. No one gets hurt.’

  ‘For a woman not to care when a relationship ends, the man in question has either got to be incredibly boring or a real bastard. What I’m saying is that I’m pretty sure plenty of women get hurt when you dump them. They probably just don’t show it. Pride and all that. And I don’t really see the difference between your serial relationships and my father’s. Not every relationship has to be about marriage.’ But the fact that he felt so strongly about responsibility and commitment made her feel strange inside. It was so different from her father’s approach.

  ‘If you’re about to say my sister’s relationship with your father is about sex then don’t,’ he advised in a thickened tone. ‘I don’t want to think about that.’

  ‘That makes two of us. He’s my dad and no one wants to think about their parents having sex. Yuck.’ Polly gave a dramatic shudder. ‘But you have to admit that Arianna is an adult. My father hasn’t kidnapped her against her will. They enjoy each other’s company.’

  His brow lifted in a cynical arch. ‘Are you about to use the word “love”?

  She didn’t tell him that she didn’t believe in love. She’d seen what happened to people who believed in love and she’d made it her golden rule never to allow herself to be sucked into that particular delusion. ‘They get on well together,’ she said lamely. ‘They laugh all the time. They talk. There’s chemistry between them. Maybe they know it’s crazy but find it impossible to resist.’

  ‘Chemistry?’ There was an ominous pause and she could see the thought appalled him. His eyes locked on hers and suddenly thoughts of her father and his sister faded into the background. In the distance she heard the insistent cacophony of car horns, the shriek of tyres as Parisians drove their city like a racetrack, but the loudest sound was the insistent thrumming of her pulse.

  Suddenly it was hard to keep a grip on the conversation. ‘Chemistry,’ she croaked. ‘I’m just saying that chemistry can be a powerful thing.’ Or so she’d heard. Truthfully she couldn’t imagine a sexual attraction so strong that it overpowered caution but she wasn’t going to admit that to a red-blooded male whose sexual prowess was the subject of hushed rumour. ‘Perhaps it was something they couldn’t walk away from. I don’t know.’

  There was a long silence and then his strong hands captured her face and he lowered his mouth to hers. Caught off guard, Polly tumbled headlong into the addictive heat of his kiss, her mouth colliding with his in a fusion of intimacy that was shocking in its intensity. The exploding heat was fierce enough to fuel a nuclear reactor, the hunger so all-consuming it devoured her preconceptions about just how a kiss could feel because this kiss was like no other. Damon kissed the way he did everything else, with the instinctive assurance of someone who knew he was the very best at everything. That clever, sensuous mouth drove everything from her mind and he controlled it all, from the angle of her head to the depth of the kiss, the skilled erotic slide of his tongue taking over her mind, her body, her soul. She didn’t feel him move his hands but he must have done because suddenly she was flattened against his hard thighs, the contours of their bodies blending as fiery heat licked through her. Burning up, she slid her palms over his chest, feeling male muscle and latent strength. Her mouth still fused with his, she slid her fingers between the buttons of his shirt, desperate to touch, frantic to feel. Instantly his hand tightened on her bottom as he brought her into firm contact with the hard ridge of his erection.

  Liquid with longing, Polly moved against him but the moment she did so he released his grip on her and lifted his mouth, depriving her of the satisfaction her body craved. And that sudden deprivation was so sharply felt that she gave a faint moan of protest and swayed towards him. With a soft curse he locked his hands around the tops of her arms, holding her steady, as if he sensed she would not stay stand
ing without his support. But he kept the distance and didn’t kiss her again. Slowly, the implications of that penetrated her foggy brain and she opened her eyes to find him watching her with those eyes as black as jet and unfathomable as a deep mountain pool.

  Her body was screaming for more, refusing to adjust to the sudden withdrawal of pleasure. The craving was so intense she almost reached out and grabbed him just so that she could press her mouth to his again. She wanted to know why he’d stopped doing something that felt so perfect.

  His breathing fractionally less than steady, he released his supporting grip on her arms and stepped away from her. ‘You want to know how you walk away from chemistry? This is how it’s done. It’s called self-discipline. You just say no.’ The chill in his tone was as lethal to her tender, exposed feelings as a late frost to an early spring bud.

  Confronted by cool arrogance and an insulting degree of indifference, Polly wanted to say something flippant. Something dismissive that would indicate that the earth hadn’t moved for her. But it had. It hadn’t just moved, it had shifted—reformed her entire emotional landscape into something terrifyingly unfamiliar. And that shift strangled any words she might have spoken.

  She wanted to slap his handsome face, but to show that level of emotion would be to betray what that kiss had done to her so she stood still and silent, holding everything inside. Fortunately she’d had decades of practice.

  Insultingly cool, Damon glanced at his watch. ‘We’re meeting Gérard for dinner at the Eiffel Tower at seven.’ The ease with which he moved from nirvana to normal was another blow to her savaged pride. ‘Dress is elegant.’ Having delivered that lowering statement, he turned and walked back into the apartment—back into his world of pampered luxury and elegance where real life was filtered and sifted until it appeared in its most refined form.