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he isn’t nice—to women.’
    Mia started despising herself for bringing this lecture on.
    ‘He uses them, Mia,’ Fiona pressed on her. ‘He does not respect them.’
    ‘As they use him.’ She felt some crazy need to defend Nikos Theakis even though he did not deserve it.
    ‘Yes.’ Fiona couldn’t argue with that. ‘Especially Miss Supermodel Lucy Clayton who received her farewell gift by special messenger last week. By next week another woman just like her will have been put in her place. It’s the way he works. The way he likes to keep it,’ Fiona stressed. ‘He’s an amazing risk taker in the business arena. An absolute financial genius everybody admires and respects, and he’s commendably honest and committed to any promises he makes—in business—but in his personal life?’ Fiona shook her head. ‘He’s a smooth, cool, bone-meltingly gorgeous sexual predator. He does not connect sex with his emotions—if he has any—the jury is still out onthat. So take my advice and don’t go there. Don’t even want to go there because if he decides to take you he will spoil you for ever. So get yourself a man,’ she repeated, ‘and wean yourself off him while you still can.’
    ‘Where is my coffee?’ the sexual predator demanded.

Chapter Three
    B OTH women jumped guiltily and turned to see Nikos Theakis standing in his office doorway. By his closed expression there was no way they could tell if he’d overheard them talking about him, but for the first time since she’d started working here, Mia saw two hot coins of guilt hit Fiona’s creamy cheekbones and knew her own cheeks wore the same hot sting.
    Good, Nikos thought, tamping down hard on his anger for the second time this morning as he strode across the room to take the tray from his blushing secretary, then strode back into his office with it without uttering another word.
    Get yourself a man… His lips compressed into a tight line as he set down the tray. Why had he not thought of offering his PA the same piece of advice?
    The answer to that question was not a nice one. But then, as his secretary had just pointed out to Mia, he wasn’t nice.
    It rankled—the not-nice part and the man part.
    Throwing himself down in his chair Nikos swung it around to face the window. So I don’t respect women. A flash of irritation shot across his face. He did respect them or why the hell did he restrict himself to the kind that preferred to play the game the way he liked to play it? He wasn’t looking for love. He was not looking for marriage, so he steered well clear of the kind of women looking for either or both.
    And that was respecting them, he determined. It would have been nice if Fiona had recognised that.
    Vaguely surprised that there was a dose of hurt rolling round inside him, Nikos frowned. He was good to his staff, fair—generous, as Fiona had pointed out. He’d believed he had their respect. His secretary had shocked him with her view of him. It angered him that she’d felt it necessary to warn Mia off.
    He rested a long forefinger along the line of his mouth where the smooth skin covering his lips felt tightly stretched, his eyes narrowed by an unwanted feeling of distaste at the idea of Mia turning all of that untapped passion on for some other man.
    What if she took Fiona’s advice—?
    ‘Damn,’ he muttered, not liking what was rattling around inside him. Where was the guywho focused purely on business? The guy who barely noticed a woman unless she was stretched out naked on a bed?
    Perhaps that was it. He needed a woman. Sex, he named it. A long night of seething hot passion with the kind of woman who could appreciate what he could do for her without expecting the whole heavy emotional bit by return. He was not possessive. He was not even mildly demonstrative like Mia had dared to suggest. If he touched her like she said he did, it was done with attention to polite good manners and respect. She was the one who’d misread the