Chapter Three #2
She’d never been so bored in her life. The tasks he set her were so mind-numbingly tedious that a trained monkey could do them.
Her hopes had been raised slightly when he’d informed her he had a job for her to do from one of his other business ventures, but then dashed when he’d given her a printout of email addresses thicker than her arm and told her to go through them one by one and strike out those who’d unsubscribed.
She was one hundred per cent certain it was a task without any meaning and that once she was done—probably when she reached the age of ninety-eight—the printout would be shredded with no further action.
So yes, she was bored out of her skull and yet…
The work itself was mind-numbing but there was a fizz in her veins that sustained her through the long working hours.
Draco was so focused and serious that distracting him had become a thing of joy.
She knew perfectly well he woke every morning cursing her name and probably cursed her under his breath an average of five times an hour, but the times he wasn’t quick enough to stop his eyes crinkling or his lips twitching at something she said never failed to accelerate the fizz.
As incredible as it was to believe, she would step into her apartment after another long working day and her spirits would plummet.
She supposed the novelty of living alone after a lifetime living in a household filled with people and noise had sustained her the first month in her dingy flat, but since Draco the Dragon had decided to tether her to his side she was finding the solitude of her new life harder to endure.
The childish art she’d long ago created as a way to switch her mind off enough to sleep was now being used to stave off this new loneliness.
She was reaching for her drawing book and charcoal tin earlier and earlier.
She told herself it was this secret loneliness that meant she increasingly liked that Draco had turned himself into her personal human alarm clock.
He had no idea his was the first and last face she saw each working day.
He had no idea that the weekends she’d spent since being tethered to him had been spent entirely alone.
She liked, too, that she got to share her first coffee of the working day with him. Liked that he always made it while she showered and dressed. Liked that he would always raise an unimpressed eyebrow at whatever boundary-pushing outfit she was wearing.
Obviously, she would never share any of these likes with him because what she didn’t like was the way her fizzing blood heated those times their gazes would inadvertently meet across the vast office space, times when it didn’t feel that he was looking at her to ensure she wasn’t procrastinating.
She would tease and flirt with him—often outrageously—and he would give her ‘the look’, but that was all fun and meaningless.
The inadvertent gazes didn’t feel meaningless.
Sometimes she would do some actual work just to distract herself and drive away the feelings they induced.
‘Just so you’re prepared, we’re flying to California on Sunday evening,’ he told her when she joined him in the kitchenette. ‘Pack enough clothes for a week.’
She picked up the coffee he’d made her. ‘Why?’
‘Because that’s where the North American headquarters of Manolis Technology is located.’
‘I know that, but why am I going?’
‘Because I don’t trust I’ll have any Greek staff left if I leave you behind. If you don’t think you’ll be back from Sephone in time, I’ll arrange for a helicopter to collect you…on second thoughts, I’ll send the helicopter anyway.’
Athena’s fingers tightened around her cup.
That evening, her entire family were flying to Sephone so her brother Alexis and his wife Lydia could have their baby baptised in the private island’s chapel.
This was the same chapel where Thanasis had married Athena’s nemesis, her stepsister Lucie.
‘No need, I’m not going.’ Just as she hadn’t gone to Thanasis and Lucie’s wedding.
Surprise furrowed his forehead. ‘You’re not going to your own nephew’s christening?’
She smiled breezily to prove she didn’t care.
‘My malevolent presence has been deemed unwanted.’ Or, translated, Thanasis and Lucie had refused to let Athena set foot on the island.
As Thanasis, who was Lydia’s brother, owned the island, his word was law there, and none of the Tsalikis had cared enough to argue for Athena’s inclusion.
She didn’t care. Sephone was the most boring island in the whole of Greece, and if Alexis wanted to put his stepsister over his blood sister then she didn’t care about that either. Her family had been putting Lucie’s feelings over Athena’s since Athena was five.
‘I think they’re worried I’m going to curse the child like Carabosse in Sleeping Beauty.
’ Her nephew was three months old. She’d been allowed precisely one visit.
In that visit, she’d been allowed to hold the baby for less than a minute, both her brother and sister-in-law staying close and watching her like hawks as if worried she was going to deliberately drop their precious bundle.
‘You mean they haven’t invited you?’
‘More accurate to say I’ve been ordered to stay away.’
He stared at her with disbelief. ‘Don’t you care?’ Contempt laced his voice.
She pulled a face. ‘What’s there to care about?
Babies are incredibly boring so it’s not as if I’m going to be missing out on anything, and I wouldn’t be able to go even if I had been allowed—I’m going clubbing tonight and intend to spend tomorrow in bed catching up on all the sleep I’ve missed since my dragon boss decided it was acceptable to wake me in the middle of the night every day just to get me to work on time. ’
Contempt was no longer confined to his tone, etching itself in the lines of his face.
It was a contempt she hadn’t seen since that first early human alarm clock morning when she’d so angered him, an incident that had never been mentioned by either of them since.
Seeing it cut her deeper than she could have imagined.
‘That’s you all over, isn’t it—putting your own pleasure above your family and everyone else. ’
She dredged her best Athena-everyone-loved-to-hate smile. ‘Life is short, and a girl needs to get her kicks where she can.’
‘The rate you’re going, the only kicks you’ll be able to get soon are from people you have to pay to take them from you.’ Disdain positively dripping from him, he turned sharply and strode to the door.
Athena had to swallow hard to loosen her throat enough to drink her coffee. Clutching her bag tightly to stifle the tremors in her hand, she lifted her chin and straightened her spine, and then followed Draco out to the waiting car.
After a drive conducted entirely in silence, Athena trudged up the twelve flights of stairs in her purple stilettoes without a single one of her usual complaints, and it wasn’t because Draco was impervious to her complaints.
Everything inside her felt all tight, as if all the cells in her body had wound themselves into a coil.
The coil loosened a little when her phone buzzed in her hand.
Heart skipping, she took her seat at her desk and swiped it, only to see that it wasn’t a message from any of her family or friends but a bank deposit notification.
She’d been paid. Well, that was one good thing.
She’d actually have money to spend that evening.
Despite telling Draco she was going out clubbing, she’d worried she’d be forced to stay in due to lack of funds.
Her credit card was maxed out and when she’d called Alexis the night before, asking him to increase the limit, he’d laughed and told her to get a second job.
As if she had the time for a second job!
Her phone pinged another message. Hope rose then was dashed, finding it was from her favourite beauty store, emailing a discount code.
‘Are you planning to turn your computer on any time soon?’
She looked across the room to meet Draco’s baleful stare, smiled, and made a big deal about putting her finger to the on switch.
‘Well done. Now go and make us a coffee.’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘And leave your phone on your desk.’
She smiled through her scowl, then disappeared to the kitchen area and fixed the coffee in the exact way Draco liked it, which handily was the same way she liked it.
When he’d first ordered her to make it, she’d deliberately made it too bitter, thinking it would stop him asking her to do it again, but all it had resulted in was him demanding she make it again and again and again until she got it right.
When she carried the cups back into the office, she set his down carefully, having learned her lesson not to deliberately slop it everywhere when he’d forced her to clean his entire desk as punishment.
‘Thank you, Athena,’ he said, his voice deliberately edged with politeness.
‘You’re welcome, boss,’ she said, mimicking his tone.
She had to wait until he left the office for a party planning meeting before she could snatch another look at her phone.
Draco was throwing a huge party to celebrate his acquisition of Tsaliki Shipping but, despite the whole of Greece knowing Athena was the queen of parties, she was excluded from all planning.
They were the only meetings he attended that he didn’t drag her along to, which was incredibly unfair as all the meetings he did make her attend were as exciting as watching vegetables grow.
No new messages. The coil inside her tightening a little more, she impulsively called Stelios, the only one of her brothers she shared a mother as well as a father with. He was working in the company’s logistics department and no one had demanded he be fired!
‘I’m about to go into a meeting,’ he said tersely when he answered.
‘Poor you. Fancy meeting for lunch?’
There was a beat of silence that was a beat too long. ‘I’ve already got plans.’
‘Can I gatecrash?’
‘The others won’t want you there.’
‘Then dump them and come out with me,’ she half-joked.
‘I’m not going to do that.’ There was another too long beat of silence. ‘How about lunch one day next week?’
‘The dragon’s making me go to California with him, but we can definitely do that when I get back. Are you flying straight to Sephone after work?’
‘You know I am.’ Yet another too long beat of silence. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Of course! Glad it’s Friday—this has been a long week!’
‘Good… I need to go.’
‘So do I! Don’t get too bored this weekend, and don’t miss me too much.’
She ended the call to find Draco standing in the doorway, glaring at her. Her heart made the familiar jump. She was glad she hadn’t let the smile she’d maintained throughout that whole wounding call drop.
He strode to his desk to collect a file he’d forgotten to take into the meeting with him. ‘Next time I catch you making personal calls in work time, I’m going to put you on toilet cleaning duty.’
Somehow, she managed to widen her smile. ‘Yes, boss.’