Chapter Three
Axel could see her throat work as she looked at him. Eventually she said, ‘You really are serious.’
‘I don’t joke about my business, Hope. A contract will be drawn up to protect both our interests and lay out the parameters.’
Axel had to try and dampen the heat in his blood. Just watching her take off those ugly court shoes and lift a foot behind her to slip on the higher heels had been more erotic than… His mind drew a blank. He hadn’t found much erotic at all lately.
Anyway. This had nothing to do with eroticism.
He didn’t want her for that. He wanted her to help him advance his cause with Baros because this deal had assumed a kind of talismanic importance and Axel knew it wasn’t just about the material or reputational gains.
It was about advancing to a place of success where maybe he didn’t feel a dull ache every time he thought of his estranged brother.
Because maybe by then he’d have done enough to feel some measure of peace. Atonement. For not doing more to protect Ares.
Hope backed away from the mirror and went into the living-room again.
Axel leant against a doorframe and watched her from behind.
He couldn’t fail to notice how the shoes thrust her forward slightly and made her legs look longer.
The pencil skirt outlined the length of her thighs and the high perfect curve of her ass.
His cock twitched and he straightened up. What the hell was wrong with him? He wasn’t usually at the mercy of his hormones like this.
Hope turned around to face him and folded her arms across her chest, as if she could pick up on his unwelcome lusty thoughts.
She said, ‘No matter what you say, we aren’t a match. Not physically or socially. Why do you think this would work?’
Axel knew that he should be listening to her logic.
And welcoming the fact that she wasn’t seizing on his interest to feather her bed.
And he should just tell her he’d lost his mind momentarily, apologise for taking up her time and walk away and find someone else who could be his plus-one in the interim.
But…he wasn’t doing any of that. His feet were welded to the ground. It was precisely because she wasn’t behaving like everyone else that he wasn’t walking away. And because her background was a blank slate. And because…
‘You’re different.’ The words came out of his mouth before he’d even registered them in his head.
She rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t need you to tell me that.’
‘In a good way. Refreshing. I think I intimidate you but you’re not scared of me, or all that impressed.’
Now she looked uncomfortable. ‘My flatmate, Claire, tells me I need to work on my facial expressions.’
Axel shook his head. ‘I don’t mean like that. I mean I can be brutally honest with you and tell you that if we do this it doesn’t mean that anything more is promised. With any other woman, she’d see an opportunity to take advantage.’
‘Maybe that’s more about the kind of woman you surround yourself with.’
He inclined his head to acknowledge her point. ‘I move in circles that tend to entice a certain type of…person.’ Then he asked her abruptly, ‘What is it you want most in life?’
She blinked at him. ‘I barely know you, Mr—’ She stopped and said, ‘Axel.’
Hearing his name on her mouth had a direct effect on his body, igniting a surge of heat. He exerted iron control.
‘I think it’s fair to say we’ve transgressed several boundaries.’
‘Well, in that case, you tell me first.’
Now he blinked. No one ever asked him questions like this. They just followed his orders. ‘I want to build on the hard work and success of my ancestors and take us to the next level, to become the best in the world.’
‘That’s work. What about life? Family? Happiness?’
Axel’s skin prickled. For the first time he thought maybe he’d made a mistake. Her easy, uncomplicated manner and open curiosity rubbed a little too raw coming so close on the heels of his recent moments of introspection.
Happiness? What even was that?
But he was here now and he’d already divulged more with Hope in the last hour than he had with anyone else.
He tried to make her understand a world that was aeons away from here.
‘My work and my family’s legacy is my life.
My heirs—children—will carry on the name and consolidate our success.
That’s where my happiness lies.’ But even as he said that, he felt something hollow echo inside him and had a sense that he was trying desperately to continue down a path that was starting to look less and less certain.
He pushed it down. ‘So, what is it you want?’
‘A house.’
‘A house?’
Hope nodded. ‘I’ve never had a home of my own. I’ve grown up in other people’s houses—in the foster-care system. And now I rent a flat in someone else’s house.’
Axel found he was curious to know more—what else did she want apart from this house?—but he told himself it wasn’t his business.
‘I can buy you a house, any house you want.’ He could afford to buy her a castle if she wanted. He could buy her multiple castles.
‘I can’t let you do that. I’m quite happy and prepared to work to save to buy a house.’ Unmistakable pride stiffened her body. Axel recognised it.
‘And how’s that going for you?’
Her cheeks flushed a dull red and Axel’s conscience pricked just as she said, ‘I am well aware it will take me most likely half of my life to be able to save to buy a house, but at least I can say I did it myself and didn’t have some…
billionaire buy it for me just because he wanted to flash his cash. ’
Axel was a bit dumbfounded. He’d never had to fight to give someone money before. It did occur to him that she could be bluffing, but the heat in her face and that pride told him that she was the real deal.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. What I could offer you, then, if you agree to this…promotion, is to double…or even triple your salary for the duration. Surely that would go some way to adding to your savings to buy a house?’
She looked slightly mollified. ‘I think that could be…more acceptable.’
‘So you’ll consider my offer?’
* * *
Was she really about to consider the most outlandish offer anyone had ever made her…ever?
There was something very seductive about a man as impressive as Axel Drakos singling her out for his attention. Even if it was only because she wasn’t going to get notions that he cared for her or wanted her.
And yet a part of her felt a pang that she’d appealed to him only on this very pragmatic level.
Her ordinariness must be interesting to a man who could literally have whoever and whatever he wanted.
And she wanted him to want her for more than her ordinariness.
She shouldn’t indulge this dangerous fantasy.
‘What if I say no, right now?’
‘Then I would thank you for your time and leave you to your evening.’ She felt a betraying lurch at that. She had no doubt he would too.
‘Would you fire me?’
His nostrils flared as if she’d insulted him. He said, ‘No, I am not so petty.’
She believed him. She could imagine that next time she encountered him on his private jet, he would merely glance over her and they would go back to being boss/employee.
But something had happened as soon as she’d looked at him today.
Something inside her had come to life. And she had to admit that the thought of going back to some sort of sterile arrangement after everything that had happened between them up to now was…
not appealing. Even though she knew it was the right thing to do.
‘Can I think about it?’ It felt really important to maintain some level of control when she was being tempted by everything she’d ever wanted. But it felt a bit like cheating to suddenly have her dream within her grasp for doing not very much at all.
She’d always fantasised about the satisfaction that would come from having worked hard to fulfil her dreams, herself, with no one else’s help, because the people who should have loved and supported her the most had left her behind and she’d survived against the odds.
It was one of the reasons she’d never tried to find her mother—too much hurt had calcified into a sense of pride. Of course, Hope knew that underneath the pride she was terrified she’d be rejected again, but she diverted that line of thought now.
‘Of course,’ Axel said. ‘I can contact you tomorrow morning?’
‘That would be…acceptable.’
He turned to leave and she said, ‘Wait, do you have my number?’
He stopped. ‘Yes, Hope, I can get your number.’
She felt heat in her face again. Of course, he could. He could probably go to the moon and back for a meeting. ‘OK, then. Goodnight, Mr Drakos.’
‘Axel.’
Her heart thumped unevenly. ‘Axel.’
And then he was gone and Hope stood there in her flatmate’s vertiginous high heels and, even though she heard the faint sound of the engine of his car pulling away outside, she had to wonder if she’d just been having a very vivid hallucination.
* * *
But the next morning when her phone pinged with a text message she knew it hadn’t been a fantastically realistic and crazy dream.
From a number she assumed to be his, there came this message: Morning, Hope. I trust you rested well. Have you come to a decision about my offer? A.
Rested well? Not really. She’d kept having strange dreams where she was in crowded places with a very tall man in front of her and she’d try to get his attention only to be pushed aside or ignored.
But she also knew what she was going to say…because for the first time in her relatively safe and mundane existence she felt the urge to do something completely out of her comfort zone.
She’d made this decision on her own. Claire had sent her a text last night reminding Hope that she had gone away for a few days with her boyfriend.
And in a way she was glad because she wondered was this a grubby, unethical thing to do?
But, she reminded herself, he had mentioned a contract, and he was unmistakably proud.