Kidnapped by the Greek Billionaire (2 page)

Kizzy’s heart was pounding hard enough to hike up her blood pressure until she felt sick.

She was not enjoying this enforced captivity one bit.

“I should have asked,” he continued blandly as he gestured toward the now-elevated view over the city. “Have you ever been up on the Eye before?”

“No, never,” she replied and took a nervous sip of her icy champagne. “This view over London is quite spectacular.”

“It is,” he agreed, and another taut smile briefly dressed his lips. “And we’re now too far off the ground for you to evade me.”

Kizzy’s heart plunged to her feet and her entire body stiffened. She felt her eyes widen with alarm. “Evade you? Look, this capsule is transparent. You’ll never get away with—”

He laughed harshly.

“With what? Taking gross advantage of you?
Please
.” The gorgeous stranger snapped his gaze away from her and gestured toward the rapidly shrinking Houses of Parliament. “Look at that view. A hotbed of corruption and deceit these days, I gather.”

Kizzy stared at his sharp features and cowered against the curved glass wall until his eyes rounded on her.

“So…
Isabella
…” His eyes were blacker than anything she had ever seen. “I am very keen to know your secret.”

“M-my secret?”

“Mmm, like how you managed to totally transform yourself in the space of an hour.” He exhaled slowly and the curl of his lips exuded disgust. “Just
how
did you get all that scarlet nail polish off?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Then you’re not very good at this, are you?” He took a sip of his champagne and swallowed hard. “I assume you
are
the unbelievably persistent and annoying Kizzy Dean? The pint-pulling, napkin-folding thorn in my side that’s been badgering my offices over the past two months?”

Kizzy’s legs trembled with the appalling realization of what was happening, of how stupid she must look.

It was
him
!

Lazarides had been handed to her on a plate, she finally had his full attention, but… She almost choked when she began to remember the things she’d said about him down on the ground. Her entire world seemed to be shriveling to nothing beneath his looming shadow.

“There’s no need to be so rude,” she whispered, even as her mind raced around the fact that there was no way out of this awkward situation.

“I don’t think we’ll get on to
rude
, Kizzy, do you? I don’t recall ever being called a bastard to my face—not even by a woman scorned. And there have been a few.”

Kizzy felt her cheeks blaze with humiliation. “Look, this is horrifically embarrassing—”

“Big of you to admit it.”

Kizzy’s voice shook. “I’ve dealt with this very badly and I can’t apologize enough for my remarks earlier, but I was—
am
—convinced that Timi’s Taverna can still work. I’ve brought my business plan—”

“Forget it, the restaurant is finished.” He frowned at the way her violet blue eyes seemed to exude innocence and he disliked the strange feeling it caused inside him. He deliberately sharpened his tone, suddenly aware that the lush shape and color of her mouth had been distracting him. “It’s no reflection on your abilities or efforts since the Antonides family left you as manager, but the whole mess is now beyond making economic sense.”

“But—”

“As stated in my letter, you will receive three months’ salary in lieu of notice and must vacate the flat above the restaurant within the month. It’s a reasonable settlement in my opinion, going over and above what is strictly required legally, so I’d take the offer and run if I were you.” He paused and his eyes narrowed to charcoal slits as his voice dropped to a menacing whisper. “I could be much more of a
bastard
if I wanted to be, believe me.”

Kizzy’s hand trembled as she produced a folder that held hours of work and represented many nights of lost sleep. “So you’re not even going to look at this then?” She couldn’t just give up.

“There’s no point. The numbers speak for themselves. The business is a dead duck.”

“But I can turn it round. Just give me a chance.”

He shrugged. “I can’t.”

“You
can’t
?” Kizzy replied bitterly. “I don’t believe you.”

For one inexplicable moment, Andreas was tempted to inform her that as executor of his mother’s will he was merely carrying out her wishes. But he restrained himself. Whatever he had to do in England was none of her business and he was not in the habit of explaining himself to anyone.

He took a step nearer and lowered his face to within an inch of hers.

“Okay then, let’s make this simple.
I won’t!
” He frowned harder, rattled for some reason by the altercation. “Besides, there are other factors, things about which you know nothing. I admire your spirit, but Timi’s has to go.”

“But I came all this way, even prepared a presentation for you—”

“I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey.” Andreas Lazarides waved his hand dismissively. “But it was
you
who
insisted on coming here with all your big ideas after hounding the office for weeks until I gave in. And that
was just to stop Isabella moaning about your twice-daily calls. To be frank, you’ve made a bloody nuisance of yourself. This unpleasantness could have been settled much more conveniently by e-mail.”

Anger simmered in Kizzy’s belly. Such persistence hadn’t come easily to her, but she had been so sure that her new boss would have a speck of fair play about him and that he would at least
listen
. She had been terribly wrong about the Greek business tycoon.

“Instinct tells me that you would have found me much easier to ignore by e-mail, Mr. Lazarides. I wouldn’t put it past you to have dumped me straight into the spam folder, unread.”

“There is every possibility of that, yes. And then I imagine I would have pressed ‘delete.’ It would have been an enormous relief.”

Kizzy felt the metaphorical slap in the face, and then the random kicks for good measure. She felt herself tremble. In spite of everything she had done at the restaurant following its sale to Heliades International Inc., her future now looked utterly bleak.

Any excitement or optimism she had felt that morning had evaporated.

“What a mess.” She tipped her head skyward to contain the humiliated tear she felt growing in the corner of her eye. “I was so certain about all this. I went over it so many times in my head, on paper and spreadsheets.”

“It is most unfortunate,” he muttered.

Kizzy lowered her gaze, summoning hidden reserves to challenge the black ice that crackled mercilessly in his eyes. “Listen, I’d never have sunk what was left of my savings into the taverna if Mr. Antonides hadn’t promised me it was going to be a long-term thing, that you supported appointing a manager to run the place when he retired. There was no indication that I was going to have the rug pulled right out from under my feet.”

“You’ve spent your own money on the venture? That was a pretty stupid thing to do. Managers take a salary; they don’t go ‘investing’ all over the place.” Andreas shook his head at her in disbelief. “Your file says you’re a graduate, a woman with a brain. What on earth made you act so dumb?”

He’d read her file?

She felt the tenacious tear drip onto the floor, and loathed her lack of control. But there seemed to be little point in keeping up appearances now.

“Timi’s is all I have left; it’s my home and only source of income. Or it was.” The silence was as heavy as the sky was becoming dark. “I can’t believe this is what the Antonideses intended. They’re friends. And they’re going to be so upset when I tell them what’s happened.”

Andreas reached her in three long strides and gripped her by the upper arm. “You will tell them
nothing
! Nothing at all, do you hear?” His grip only loosened as he registered the shock on her face. “They must never hear of this.
Never
.”

Kizzy’s brain was now a confused tangle. The Antonideses had been like family to her since her mother died, and she was still in regular contact with them. In fact, Mrs. Antonides had e-mailed a few pictures of their new villa that morning, so it would be impossible
not
to tell them without being dishonest.

The first acrid threads of anger and indignation began to rise to her defense; roughly, she wrenched her arm free.

“And why the hell shouldn’t I tell them? To protect your reputation or something?” Kizzy let out a bitter laugh. “You want me to lie for you, is that it? I don’t think so.”

“You have no idea what damage you could cause with that mouth of yours. The Antonideses are good people who have worked hard, asked for little and given back a hundred-fold all they received. But they are not good businesspeople. Incredibly proud, but hopeless with money.” He began to pace the floor, and heads turned in the adjacent capsule as he spoke tersely, gesturing. “How do you think they’ll feel if you tell them their lives’ work was just a mountain of debt? That it was all for nothing? And then you intend heaping guilt on them for leaving poor little you in the gutter!”

“No! I’d never—”

“Your indiscretion will ruin their happy retirement and condemn them to spend the rest of their lives in shame and regret. Believe me, Miss Dean, I know how these people are. Prouder and more honorable than you could ever imagine. Besides that, no one owes you a living either; times are hard for everyone right now.” He raked a hand through his black hair. “And please. You’re a pretty little graduate, you can get a reasonable job if you apply yourself, so spare me the crocodile tears.”

Kizzy snapped her jaw shut, crushing her teeth together so hard it hurt. She’d stupidly let him see her cry and he’d pounced on that moment of incredible vulnerability.

No one owes you a living.

As if she didn’t know that already. The man was a beast.

“Of course I would do anything to avoid hurting Theo and Ana. They don’t deserve that.”

He fixed her with a stare as hard and cold as stone. “So how much do you want?”

Kizzy swallowed back more bitter, acid tears. “What?”

“You heard me,” he replied, dark lashes narrowing his eyes until it looked as if he was sneering at her. “How much do I have to pay you to say that you have decided to resign your position, and then to sign a legal document promising you won’t do anything to cause mental or emotional harm to the Antonides family?”

Kizzy’s mouth gaped with disbelief that this dreadful man could think so badly of her. “I told you I would never hurt them deliberately!”

Andreas pretended to choke on a hollow laugh. “And why on earth should I believe that?”

“Because I said so?” Kizzy folded her arms tightly across her chest to stop her hands from shaking.

“What? You? The woman who introduced herself to me as my very own secretary of five years? Who lied with the very first breaths of London air we shared? I can’t take that risk.” Andreas turned abruptly away and, raising both palms above his head, leaned against the cool glass of the capsule window. “I might be a bastard, but I’m not an idiot. Name your price.”

“I don’t want your money.”

“No?” He laughed unpleasantly and pushed himself away from the window. “I find that almost impossible to believe, since you lost everything you possessed in the world only a few seconds ago. So, tell me, what do you want?”

“I want back what’s been taken from me. My job, my home, and my plans for the future. I don’t want your handouts, or anyone else’s for that matter. All I want is the chance to prove myself and to earn my way out of—to earn a reasonable living. Enough to be independent.”

“Interesting.”

Kizzy was beginning to feel more annoyed than upset now that all seemed to be lost and her best efforts had come to nothing. “Well, I’m so glad you think so,” she replied.

At least she’d stopped crying now, Andreas thought disparagingly. “So,” he began. “Would you consider yourself to be a risk-taker?”

Kizzy regarded him suspiciously. “I’m not sure.”

He waited for a moment to see if she would elaborate. “Or do you perhaps see yourself spending the next forty or so years in a dusty office ticking boxes for a living?”

Kizzy’s thoughts strayed to her late mother as she posed in a very old photograph, young, beautiful, and deliciously wild with large golden hoops in her ears. She yearned to be cast to the four winds by circumstance. She would relish the freedom and exhilaration but there were the debts to consider, a bitter legacy she had to bear. She couldn’t just run away from that.

“Absolutely not,” she told him.

“How brave are you feeling at the moment?” Andreas asked, his expression deadly.

Kizzy was perplexed at the tone of his question; something had changed behind those demanding black eyes of his. “I think this is the bravest I’ve ever had to be in my life.”

He gestured to the London skyline. “Brave enough to leave this place straight away? To leave London with me?”