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The Greek Tycoon's Baby - Линн Грэхем - Читать любовный роман онлайн в женской библиотеке LadyLib.Net
The Greek Tycoon's Baby - Линн Грэхем - Скачать любовный роман в женской библиотеке LadyLib.Net
Грэхем Линн
The Greek Tycoon's Baby
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CHAPTER THREE
AT TEN to three the next day, Susie presented herself on the top floor, dressed in a dark-green skirt suit, with a longer-length jacket, her streaky red-gold curls caught up in a clip, her emerald eyes were strained, the pallor marking her delicate features pronounced.
Two sleepless nights in a row. She had lain awake fretting about whether or not Leos now knew that she had a child. Leos, who had once angrily given forth on the subject of a friend “trapped for the next 20 years by a pregnant woman on the make!”
Had Leos looked at her personnel file? If he had, he would surely have found out that she had given birth to a premature baby, eight months after they broke up!
She was sent straight down the corridor to the managing director’s office. Sick with nervous tension, she knocked on the door and entered.
Leos was on the phone, his hard, chiseled profile intent. He indicated the chair set several feet from his desk and returned to his call. Susie sat down and tried to keep her hands steady. She tried crazily to recall what constituted defensive body language, for Leos was certain to know. As she watched him, an emotional pain that was almost physical held her taut.
He had replaced her with another woman without telling her. But then there had been extenuating circumstances for his behavior. And the truth was, Susie had yet to get over her affair with Leos Kiriakos.
“Sorry about that.” Pushing aside the phone, Leos sprang upright, emanating the megawatt energy that was so much a part of him. “Stop looking at me like a scared little mouse, Susie. I didn’t bring you up here either to sack you or abuse you. Believe it or not, I can take having been dumped without behaving like Neanderthal man!”
Was this the guy who had growled down the phone at her 14 months ago, “no woman dumps me!” Connecting with eyes of stunning tawny-gold clarity set below level ebony brows, Susie was mesmerized, her heart hammering, her bewildered mind blank. Fortunately Leos was still talking, his rich-accented drawl like evocative long-missed music on her ears.
“I need a social secretary for the next month.” Lithe as a jungle cat, Leos strolled over to the tinted windows. “You’re quick, you’re clever. You don’t irritate the hell out of me with stupid questions. When I move on from here, you’ll be an executive assistant on the management team.”
Disconcerted by his every word, Susie just sank deeper into shock. Clearly, she had been over-sensitive on the day of his arrival, mistaking his natural surprise at seeing her as hostility. “Social s-secretary?”
Leos quoted a salary that made her head spin and then glanced at his gold watch with impatience. “If you want the position it’s yours and you start tomorrow. We’ll discuss your duties then. I’m rather pushed for time today.”
“I’ll take it …” she heard herself say, even though his quite shattering indifference to their former relationship pierced her like a knife….
CHAPTER FOUR
LEOS was chairing a board meeting when Susie arrived.
Nervous as a cat on hot bricks, she organized the small office allotted to her. Finally, the phone rang and she was summoned into the boardroom. Leos immediately stood up, provoking a noisy thrusting back of seats as the all-male management team surged to emulate his good manners.
“Not only has Miss Marshall a topflight marketing degree, but she is also fluent in French and Spanish,” Leos said, disconcerting Susie a great deal with that introduction. “What was she doing down on reception?”
Looking aghast, the personnel manager froze.
“A business that fails to place promising staff in a key position is wasteful.” Leos delivered. “I have also taken note of the fact that there are no female managers, an extraordinary achievement in a firm this size.”
On that thought for the day, Leos closed the meeting. Suddenly, Susie understood that there had been nothing personal about his decision to promote her. He had simply used her to highlight his lecture about equal opportunities! A confusing mixture of reluctant admiration, pain and resentment assailed her.
A vision of masculine sophistication in a superb gray business suit, Leos showed Susie into his office. “Last month Devlin Systems settled two charges of sexual discrimination out of court. There will not be a third—”
“I thought you didn’t approve of working women—”
Leos raised a brow. “You were the first working woman I took to my bed and you were often unavailable when I wanted you. What I seek for my own satisfaction in my private life has no relation to my opinions as an employer.”
Hotly flushed in receipt of that blunt clarification, Susie tore her gaze from his and regretted her own over-familiar comment. All those months ago, she had only actually worked for Leos for three days before their passionate affair began and she had moved on to another agency placement.
“I have a long list of tasks for you,” Leos continued without skipping a beat, the heavy silence not seeming to disturb him in the slightest.
But then, she already knew that he did not have a sensitive bone in his body, didn’t she? Everything Leos did merely emphasized that she had never been more than a casual bed partner—on his terms. Her throat convulsed with tears.
He extended an audiotape to her. “It’s all on here. First, you send out the invitations to the dinner party. Then you can nip over to Bond Street and choose a bracelet for Brigitte. I’ll fill in the gift card.”
Powered by a near-agonizing sense of humiliation and pain, Susie lifted her head, green eyes alight with outrage.
“You are asking me to choose jewelry for your current lover?’ she exclaimed and flung the tape back at his feet. “You call that work? I call it victimization and revenge. Burn in hell, Leos!’
Leos studied her with incredulous tawny eyes.
“I hate you … I really hate you! You were the biggest mistake I ever made in my whole life!” And on that embittered declaration, Susie stalked out …
CHAPTER FIVE
AN HOUR LATER, Susie’s tumultuous emotions calmed enough for her to slowly fill with horror at her own behavior.
She had spent 10 minutes silently sobbing in the cloakroom, 20 minutes trying to pull herself back together and the subsequent 30 minutes hugging Ben in the day care.
Ben, whose comfort and security were dependant on her success in the job market. Ben, whose mother had just lost her foolish head and screamed like a shrew at a monstrously insensitive male. Ben, whose mother now had to eat humble pie for his sake.
Back on the top floor, Susie knocked on Leos’s office door with a hand she couldn’t keep steady. Infuriated with herself, she whirled back flat against the wall and breathed in deeply before going in.
Lounging back in his desk chair, Leos surveyed her, his lean, powerful face unreadable.
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