Kizzy’s heart was pounding hard enough to hike up her blood pressure until she felt sick.
She was not enjoying this enforced captivity one bit.
“I should have asked,” he continued blandly as he gestured toward the now-elevated view over the city. “Have you ever been up on the Eye before?”
“No, never,” she replied and took a nervous sip of her icy champagne. “This view over London is quite spectacular.”
“It is,” he agreed, and another taut smile briefly dressed his lips. “And we’re now too far off the ground for you to evade me.”
Kizzy’s heart plunged to her feet and her entire body stiffened. She felt her eyes widen with alarm. “Evade you? Look, this capsule is transparent. You’ll never get away with—”
He laughed harshly.
“With what? Taking gross advantage of you? Please.” The gorgeous stranger snapped his gaze away from her and gestured toward the rapidly shrinking Houses of Parliament. “Look at that view. A hotbed of corruption and deceit these days, I gather.”
Kizzy stared at his sharp features and cowered against the curved glass wall until his eyes rounded on her.
“So…Isabella…” His eyes were blacker than anything she had ever seen. “I am very keen to know your secret.”
“M-my secret?”
“Mmm, like how you managed to totally transform yourself in the space of an hour.” He exhaled slowly and the curl of his lips exuded disgust. “Just how did you get all that scarlet nail polish off?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Then you’re not very good at this, are you?” He took a sip of his champagne and swallowed hard. “I assume you are the unbelievably persistent and annoying Kizzy Dean? The pint-pulling, napkin-folding thorn in my side that’s been badgering my offices over the past two months?”
Kizzy’s legs trembled with the appalling realization of what was happening, of how stupid she must look.
It was him!
Lazarides had been handed to her on a plate, she finally had his full attention, but… She almost choked when she began to remember the things she’d said about him down on the ground. Her entire world seemed to be shriveling to nothing beneath his looming shadow.
“There’s no need to be so rude,” she whispered, even as her mind raced around the fact that there was no way out of this awkward situation.
“I don’t think we’ll get on to rude, Kizzy, do you? I don’t recall ever being called a bastard to my face—not even by a woman scorned. And there have been a few.”
Kizzy felt her cheeks blaze with humiliation. “Look, this is horrifically embarrassing—”
“Big of you to admit it.”
Kizzy’s voice shook. “I’ve dealt with this very badly and I can’t apologize enough for my remarks earlier, but I was—am—convinced that Timi’s Taverna can still work. I’ve brought my business plan—”
“Forget it, the restaurant is finished.” He frowned at the way her violet blue eyes seemed to exude innocence and he disliked the strange feeling it caused inside him. He deliberately sharpened his tone, suddenly aware that the lush shape and color of her mouth had been distracting him. “It’s no reflection on your abilities or efforts since the Antonides family left you as manager, but the whole mess is now beyond making economic sense.”
“But—”
“As stated in my letter, you will receive three months’ salary in lieu of notice and must vacate the flat above the restaurant within the month. It’s a reasonable settlement in my opinion, going over and above what is strictly required legally, so I’d take the offer and run if I were you.” He paused and his eyes narrowed to charcoal slits as his voice dropped to a menacing whisper. “I could be much more of a bastard if I wanted to be, believe me.”
Kizzy’s hand trembled as she produced a folder that held hours of work and represented many nights of lost sleep. “So you’re not even going to look at this then?” She couldn’t just give up.
“There’s no point. The numbers speak for themselves. The business is a dead duck.”
“But I can turn it round. Just give me a chance.”
He shrugged. “I can’t.”
“You can’t?” Kizzy replied bitterly. “I don’t believe you.”
For one inexplicable moment, Andreas was tempted to inform her that as executor of his mother’s will he was merely carrying out her wishes. But he restrained himself. Whatever he had to do in England was none of her business and he was not in the habit of explaining himself to anyone.
He took a step nearer and lowered his face to within an inch of hers.
“Okay then, let’s make this simple. I won’t!” He frowned harder, rattled for some reason by the altercation. “Besides, there are other factors, things about which you know nothing. I admire your spirit, but Timi’s has to go.”
“But I came all this way, even prepared a presentation for you—”
“I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey.” Andreas Lazarides waved his hand dismissively. “But it was you who insisted on coming here with all your big ideas after hounding the office for weeks until I gave in. And that was just to stop Isabella moaning about your twice-daily calls. To be frank, you’ve made a bloody nuisance of yourself. This unpleasantness could have been settled much more conveniently by e-mail.”
Anger simmered in Kizzy’s belly. Such persistence hadn’t come easily to her, but she had been so sure that her new boss would have a speck of fair play about him and that he would at least listen. She had been terribly wrong about the Greek business tycoon.
“Instinct tells me that you would have found me much easier to ignore by e-mail, Mr. Lazarides. I wouldn’t put it past you to have dumped me straight into the spam folder, unread.”
“There is every possibility of that, yes. And then I imagine I would have pressed ‘delete.’ It would have been an enormous relief.”
Kizzy felt the metaphorical slap in the face, and then the random kicks for good measure. She felt herself tremble. In spite of everything she had done at the restaurant following its sale to Heliades International Inc., her future now looked utterly bleak.
Any excitement or optimism she had felt that morning had evaporated.
“What a mess.” She tipped her head skyward to contain the humiliated tear she felt growing in the corner of her eye. “I was so certain about all this. I went over it so many times in my head, on paper and spreadsheets.”