Bound to the Greek (2 page)

She turned back to Jace. He still held his mug, his long, brown fingers wrapped around the handle, his expression brooding and a little dark. ‘That’s not how I remember it.’

Disconcerted, Eleanor took too large a sip of coffee and burned her tongue. ‘What?’

Jace leaned forward. ‘You weren’t interested in meeting a market. You weren’t even interested in business. Don’t you remember, Ellie?’ His voice came out in a soft hiss. ‘You just wanted to have a place where people could relax and be happy.’ He spoke it like a sneer, and Eleanor could only think of when?and where?she had said that. In Jace’s bed, after they’d made love for the first time. She’d shared so many
pitiful, pathetic secrets with him. Poured out her life and heart and every schoolgirl dream she’d ever cherished, and he’d given her?what? Nothing. Less than nothing.

‘I’m sure we remember quite a few things differently, Jace,’ she said coolly. ‘And I go by Eleanor now.’

‘You told me you hated your name.’

She let out an impatient breath. ‘It’s been ten years, Jace. Ten years. I’ve changed. You’ve changed. Get over it.’

His eyes narrowed, the colour flaring to silver. ‘Oh, I’m over it, Eleanor,’ he said softly. ‘I’m definitely over it.’

But he didn’t sound over it. He sounded angry, and that made Eleanor even angrier despite all her intentions to stay cool, not to care. He had no right, no right at all, even to be the tiniest bit furious. Yet here he was, acting as if she’d been the one to do something wrong. Of course she
had
done something wrong, in Jace’s eyes. She’d made the classic, naive mistake of accidentally getting pregnant.

Jace stared at her, felt the fury rise up in him before he choked it all down again. There was no use in being angry. It was ten years too late. He didn’t want to feel angry; the emotion shamed him now.

Yet even so he realised he wanted to know. He needed to know what had happened to Eleanor in the last ten years. Had she kept the baby? Had she married the father? Had she suffered even a moment’s regret for trying to dupe him so damnably? Because she didn’t look as if she had. She looked as if she was angry with him, which was ridiculous. She was the guilty one, the lying one. He’d simply found out.

‘So.’ She sat down again, behind the desk, so it served as a barrier between them. Not that they needed one. Time was enough. Putting her coffee carefully to one side, she pulled out a pen and pad of paper. Jace watched the way her hair swung down in a smooth, dark curtain as she bent her head. Everything about her was so different from the Ellie he had known, the Ellie he remembered. The woman in front of him was no more than a polished, empty shell. She gave nothing
away. She looked up, her hazel eyes narrowing, her mouth curving into a false smile. ‘Can you give me a few details about this party?’

Damn the party. Jace leaned forward. ‘Did you have a boy or a girl?’ God only knew why he wanted to ask that question. Why he even wanted to know. Surely there were a dozen?a hundred?more relevant questions he could have asked.
When did you cheat on me? Why? Who was he? Did he love you like I did?

No, he wasn’t about to ask any of those questions. They all revealed too much. He had no intention of letting Eleanor Langley ever know how much she’d hurt him.

His voice was no more than a predatory hiss, an accusation, yet Ellie’s expression didn’t change. If anything it became even more closed, more polished and professional. The woman was like ice. He could hardly credit it; the Ellie he’d known had reflected every emotion in her eyes. She’d cried at commercials. Now Ellie?Eleanor?simply pressed her lips together and gave her head a little shake.

‘Let’s not talk about the past, Jace. If we want to be professional?‘Her voice caught, finally, and he was glad. He’d almost thought she didn’t feel anything and God knew he felt too much. So this icy woman could thaw. A little. Underneath there was something, something true and maybe even broken, something
real,
and for now that was enough.

He leaned back, satisfied. ‘Fine. Let’s be professional. I want to hold a Christmas party for the remaining employees of Atrikides Holdings.’

‘Remaining?’ Ellie repeated a bit warily.

‘Yes, remaining. I bought the company last week, and there has been some unrest because of it.’

‘A corporate takeover.’ She spoke the words distastefully.

‘Yes, exactly,’ Jace replied blandly. ‘I had to let some of the employees go when I brought in my own people. Now that there is a new workforce, I’d like to create a feeling of goodwill. A Christmas party is a means to that end.’

‘I see.’

Yet Jace could see from the flicker of contempt in her eyes, the tightening of her mouth, that she didn’t see at all. She was summing him up and judging him up based on very little evidence?the evidence he’d given.

Yet why should he care what she thought of him? And why should she judge at all? She’d been just as ruthless as he was, as enterprising and economical with the truth.

And he’d judged her with far more damning information.

Eleanor wrote a few cursory notes on the pad of paper on her desk. She wasn’t even aware of what she was writing. Her vision hazed, her mind blanked.

Was it a boy or a girl?

How could he ask such a question now, with such contempt? His
child.
He’d been asking about his child.

She closed her mind on the thought like a trap, refusing to free the memory and sorrow. She couldn’t go there. Not now, not ever. She’d kept those emotions locked deep inside herself and even seeing Jace Zervas again wouldn’t free them. She wouldn’t let it. She drew in a deep breath and looked up.

‘So what kind of Christmas party are we talking about here? Cocktails, sit-down dinner? How many people do you anticipate coming?’

‘There are only about fifty employees, and I’d like to invite families.’ Jace spoke tonelessly. ‘Quite a few have small children, so something family-friendly but elegant.’

‘Family-friendly,’ Eleanor repeated woodenly. She felt her fingers clench around the pen she was holding. She could not do this. She could not pretend a moment longer, even though she’d been pretending for ten years?

Was that all her life had been? Pretending? Pretence? And she hadn’t realised it until she’d come face to face with Jace Zervas.

Stop,
she told herself yet again.
Stop thinking, feeling.
Another breath. Somehow she made herself nod as she wrote another note on the pad of paper. ‘Very well. Now—’

‘Look,’ Jace exhaled impatiently, ‘I don’t really have time to go over every detail. I came here as a favour, and I have a lot to do. I’m only in New York for a week.’

‘A week—’

‘I need the party to be this Friday,’ Jace cut her off.

Eleanor’s mouth dropped open before she quickly closed it.
That
hadn’t been on the memo. ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible. Venues are booked, I have a complete client list—’

‘Nothing is impossible if you throw enough money at it,’ Jace replied flatly. ‘And I chose your company because I was assured you could make it happen.’ His gaze, cold and contemptuous, raked over her. ‘I was told the top event planner would see to me personally. I suppose that’s you?’

Eleanor merely nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

‘Then email me a list of details to go over by tomorrow morning.’ Jace rose from his chair. ‘You’ve done very well for yourself, Ellie,’ he said softly. ‘I wonder how many people you had to climb over to get to this lovely little spot.’ He glanced out of the window at her view of Madison Square Park, the leafless trees stark against a grey winter sky.

His comment was so blatantly unfair and unwarranted that Eleanor could only gasp. And fume. What right did he have to make such a judgment? If anyone should be
judging
?

Jace headed for the door. ‘I don’t think I’ll need to see you before the party,’ he said, and somehow this bored dismissal stung her more than anything else had.

He was going to leave, just like that, after raking up the old wounds, after asking about her baby—their baby—

‘It was a girl,’ she burst out, the words like staccato gunfire. Her chest burned, and so did her eyes. Her fingers clenched into a fist on her desk. Jace stilled, his hand on the door. ‘A girl,’ she repeated tonelessly. ‘Since you asked.’

He turned around slowly, lip curled in an unpleasant sneer. ‘So I did,’ he replied. ‘But actually I really don’t care.’

And then he was gone.

‘E
LEANOR?
Did Jace Zervas just leave the office?’

Eleanor jerked her head up to see her boss, Lily Stevens, standing in her office doorway. Under her glossy black helmet of hair her eyebrows were drawn together sharply, her mouth a thin red line. The elegantly disapproving look reminded Eleanor of her mother, which was unsurprising since Lily and her mother had been business partners until five years ago.

‘Eleanor?’ Lily repeated, more sharply, and Eleanor rose from her desk, trying to smile. How long had she been lost in her own miserable reverie? ‘Yes. We just concluded our meeting.’

‘That was fast.’

Eleanor moved around her desk to put Jace’s coffee cup—barely touched?back on the tray. ‘He’s a busy man.’

‘Jill said things seemed tense when she came in here.’

Of course Jill would run to her boss, Eleanor thought with resentment. What a frenemy! This business could be cut-throat, and everyone was trying to claw a way in or up. She gave a little shrug. ‘Not really.’

‘I don’t think I need to tell you,’ Lily said, her tone making it clear she thought she did, ‘that Jace Zervas is a very important client? His holdings are worth over a billion?’

‘You don’t need to tell me.’ She didn’t need Lily telling her how rich and powerful Jace was. She’d known that already. When she’d met him as a twenty-two-year-old exchange
student in Boston, he’d been from money. Rich, entitled, spoiled.

Except he’d never seemed spoiled to her… until he’d left. Then he’d seemed rotten right through.

‘I want you to do everything in your power to make this party a success,’ Lily told her. ‘I’m releasing your other clients to Laura for the week.’

‘What?’ Eleanor heard the outrage in her voice, and strove to temper it. She had several clients she’d been working with for months, and she knew Laura?another frenemy?would be eager to scoop up the contacts and run with them. Eleanor gritted her teeth. This business could be brutal. She’d toughened up a lot in the last ten years, but it still made her weary. She also knew there was nothing she could do about it.

If Lily was going to make that kind of executive decision, so be it. He wasn’t worth her jeopardising her career; he wasn’t worth
anything.
She would work on Jace’s damn party for a week. And then she would forget—again?that she’d ever met him.

Lily’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is that going to be a problem, Eleanor?’

Eleanor bit the inside of her cheek. She hated that tone, that silky, dangerous, warning tone that her mother had always taken with her as a child. Funny, how she’d ended up in a job just like her mother’s, with a boss just like her mother.

Except there was nothing remotely funny about it, or even coincidental. Every choice, every decision had been intentional, a way of distancing herself from everything she’d been or believed in. A way of reinventing herself.

And it had worked.

Now she turned to smile sweetly at her boss. ‘Of course not. I’m absolutely thrilled—and honoured, Lily—to be working with Mr Zervas. Getting his account is a coup for the agency.’

Lily nodded, seemingly satisfied. ‘So it is. Are you meeting with Zervas again?’

‘I’ll email him the particulars tomorrow.’ Eleanor shuddered inwardly to think what that meant. She’d be tied up in begging calls for the rest of the day, recalling favours and currying some more so she could make this thing happen.

The idea that she would have to slave away all for Jace burned in her gut, her heart. It was just
wrong.

But she wasn’t about to lose her job over this, or even her cool. And, Eleanor told herself, there could be some sweet, sweet satisfaction in showing Jace how he hadn’t hurt her at all.

Even if he really had—and horribly at that.

She spent the rest of the day immersed in work, planning Jace’s party while refusing to think of the man himself. A call to Atrikides Holdings yielded some interesting?and unsurprising?information.

‘It all happened so fast,’ gushed the staff member Eleanor had been connected to when she asked to speak to someone about details. Eleanor leaned back in her chair and prepared to hear some gossip. ‘One minute everything was fine—it’s a family business, you know?and the next he swooped in and took over. Fired half the people.’ The woman?Peggy? lowered her voice to an awed hush. ‘They had to leave that very day. Pack their stuff in boxes. Even Talos Atrikides?the CEO’s son!’

‘Well, hopefully this party will go some way to smoothing things over,’ Eleanor replied. She could listen to the gossip, but she wouldn’t indulge in it herself. She knew better.

Still, as she hung up the phone, the conversation left her a little shaken. She’d fallen in love with Jace Zervas when he’d been just twenty-two years old, charming, easy-going, carefree and careless. She hadn’t realised just how cold—and cold-hearted?he’d been until he’d walked away.

And hearing about his actions with Atrikides Holdings today confirmed it. He really was that man.

The other one?the one she’d fallen in love with?had been nothing more than a mirage. A lie.

It was nearly midnight by the time Eleanor finally
stumbled out of the office, exhausted and eyesore from scanning endless sheets of paper with their myriad details. Still, she had the basis of a party to propose to Jace—via email?tomorrow. Massaging her temples, she headed out into the street, the only cars visible a few off-duty cabs. It looked as if she would have to walk.

It was only a few blocks to her apartment in a high-rise condo on the Hudson River, a gleaming testament to glass and steel. Eleanor didn’t particularly like the modern architecture, or the building’s fussy, high-maintenance residents, but she’d bought it because her mother had said it was a good investment. And she didn’t spend much time there anyway.