Kim Lawrence - Unworldly Secretary, Untamed Greek

‘Don’t start minding my feelings now. If you’re trying to say I’m not sexy, go ahead,’ she invited. ‘It’s not exactly news to me.’

There was a gleam in Theo’s eyes that Beth found most disturbing as his glance slid down the length of her body before returning to her face.

‘Now, that,’ he approved, ‘is a good look for you. Just carry on thinking what you are now and we’re halfway there.’

‘I’m thinking you are a hateful creep!’

The mocking glint in his dark eyes deepened. ‘Why, Elizabeth, you’re fighting it, but I think you’re starting to like me.’

By

www.millsandboon.co.uk

KIM LAWRENCElives on a farm in rural Anglesey. She runs two miles daily, and finds this an excellent opportunity to unwind and seek inspiration for her writing! It also helps her keep up with her husband, two active sons, and the various stray animals which have adopted them. Always a fanatical consumer of fiction, she is now equally enthusiastic about writing. She loves a happy ending!

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THEO did not break stride as he walked across the room, but the expression on his dark lean features bore signs of lingering disbelief. Was he imagining it or had he just received a reprimand from his brother’s mousey little secretary?

Extraordinary!

He replayed the scene in his head. When she’d deigned to glance up from her computer screen it had only been to dish up a look of supreme contempt before she’d politely explained that he was expected—adding, primly, half an hour ago.

He almost laughed but amusement rapidly tipped over into annoyance. The woman who ran his brother’s professional life had irritated him from day one; there was just something about her. He couldn’t pin it down—it wasn’t just her prim pedantic manner, though that did grate on him, or even her overprotective attitude towards his brother.

Theo did not require the love or approval of those on his payroll, but he couldn’t help but wonder when and how he had ever given her reason to view him as a dark force of evil.

She might privately have cast him as a villain in her own private melodrama—the woman did have a definite repressed Victorian thing going on—but up until today she had always been scrupulously polite in their dealings, even while projecting a level of hostility that was, quite frankly, bizarre.

He didn’t know what her problem was, and he didn’t want to know. He was prepared to cut her some slack because she was competent—actually, competence was the one thing she had in her favour. The same could not be said of many of her predecessors. Andreas’s weakness for a pretty face meant that aptitude and ability frequently came at the bottom of his list of requirements during the interview process.

But Elizabeth Farley’s ability not to go into meltdown when organising his brother’s diary or the fact that she did not need to leave midway through a working morning to have her nails done didn’t change the fact that she would not have been Theo’s own first choice or even his last. But then, unlike his brother, he did not enjoy being the object of slavish adoration.

A flicker of distaste crossed his face as he considered the spaniel-like devotion and dedication she displayed that went way beyond the call of duty, but not, he suspected, as far as she would like it to go, not that anything was ever going to happen unless she ditched the ugly suits, grey in winter, taupe in summer.

His brother had no problem with slavish adoration but the women in Andreas’s life could all have stepped from the pages of a fashion magazine—several had.

Female fashion was not a subject that was high on Theo’s agenda of interesting topics but he appreciated confident women who made the effort to look good. The only effort Elizabeth Farley appeared to make was to hide any sign of her femininity.

The woman clearly had major issues but they were none of his concern. Being treated with an appropriate degree of respect in the workplace was, however, and while Theo did not expect grovelling sycophancy from employees within the building that bore his family name, he did not expect to be admonished by junior members of staff when he visited.

He had rarely—actually, never—been called upon to remind anyone who was boss, but he decided that this young woman needed to have her bubble of self-importance pricked.

When he stopped a few feet short of his brother’s office door it was Theo’s intention to do just that.

He turned and, slipping a button in his immaculately tailored jacket, cleared his throat. The small figure hunched behind the desk lifted her head and Theo’s expression froze in icy put-down mode; behind the hideously unattractive spectacles she wore when doing paperwork, Elizabeth Farley’s eyes were swimming with unshed tears.

Theo knew that some men were melted by female tears; he found such displays, even when they were not faked, irritating. So it was with some surprise that he found himself impelled to offer sympathy.

After a pause, he did so with a stilted reluctance. ‘You are having a bad day?’

It wasn’t just the understanding; it was the source, the suggestion of gentleness in a voice that she had previously only heard sounding hard, callous or sarcastic that loosed the sob locked in Beth’s throat and she was utterly horrified to hear it emerge as something midway between a wail and a whimper.

It was so typical of the wretched man that he’d decided to be nice at totally the wrong moment; why couldn’t he be his usual supercilious superior self?

Struggling to regain control and repeating I will not cry over and over in her head, she blinked furiously and mumbled something incoherent about allergies as she fought to escape the uncomfortably mesmeric eyes that held her own.

There were beads of sweat along her full upper lip when she did manage to tear her gaze clear.

It was utterly bizarre but, from the very first time she had seen him, Theo Kyriakis’s eyes—deep set and fringed by long, lustrous curling lashes so dark they were almost black and shot with silver flecks—had bothered her. Actually, the rest of him made her pretty uneasy too.

Beth had always tried hard not to judge people on first impressions, but in the case of both Kyriakis brothers she had been unable to follow this rule.

Her gut reaction to both men had been instant and powerful. Beth didn’t dislike many people but Theo Kyriakis wasn’t people ; he was the most coldly arrogant, condescending man she had ever met.

He was, in fact, the exact opposite of his brother; the moment Andreas had smiled at her, she had been his willing slave. The memory of that occasion brought a fresh flood of tears to her eyes.

Horrified by this unprofessional display, Beth bit her quivering lip and reached for a tissue from her bag, conscious all the time of the tall disapproving presence of the man everyone knew—no matter what it said in the firm’s last upbeat Christmas letter—was the only boss of Kyriakis Inc looming over her.