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He’d walked away from Natalie Ross once, for God’s sake. He’d done the right thing. The sensible thing. The only thing.

Now he gave up trying to work. He went out the front door and crossed The Strand, dropping down onto the path along the beach and beginning to run.

So, fine. The words pounded in his head as he picked up the pace. He’d resisted Natalie Ross before. He’d simply do it again.

CHAPTER TWO

FOR three days Natalie didn’t see Christo at all.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. She caught a glimpse or two of him in the morning as he headed off to work while she was taking her time, deliberately not venturing out of the apartment, staying in to feed the cat and do some scheduling work on her laptop for the rent-a-wife business she ran with her cousin, while she incidentally kept one eye on the window so she could see when he had left.

In the evening of the second day she saw him down on the patio of the garden sanding the boards that had been delivered for her mother’s bookcases.

That had been more than a glimpse. In fact, she’d stood there, unable to tear her eyes away from the sight of a shirtless Christo Savas bending over a board, a sheen of sweat glinting across his bare muscular back as he sanded the wood vigorously, then straightened and smoothed his hand along the grain.

She’d lingered in the window until his cell phone rang and in answering it, he turned and his gaze lifted to meet hers.

Instantly, Natalie stepped back, face burning at being caught out ogling him. She nearly tripped over Herbie in her haste to retreat to the kitchen where she poured herself a tall glass of ice water which she drank right down.

She stayed well away from the window after that, not venturing near until the sun had set and the world was completely dark.

The next day she didn’t see him at all. She got back to the apartment shortly before suppertime, expecting that she might run into him in the patio and steeling herself for the encounter. But he was nowhere to be seen, and the boards were stacked in the garage, still awaiting stain.

The next evening she didn’t see him, either.

Her mother rang that night. “I would have called sooner,” she said, “but I didn’t want you to think I was hovering.”

Natalie smiled. “Thank you for the vote of confidence.”

“So how are things going? Does Herbie miss me?”

“Of course. But things are fine. Herbie is thriving. The plants are surviving.”

“Of course they are,” her mother said with quiet satisfaction. “I knew I could count on you. How’s Christo?”

“What?” The unexpectedness of the question made Natalie’s voice crack.

“I wondered how Christo was coping,” Laura said. “I know you aren’t feeding him dinner, but I thought you might have talked to him, found out how things are going.”

“He doesn’t appear to be starving,” Natalie said drily. “So I assume he’s getting nourishment.” But then, because she knew her mother would wonder at her edgy tone, she said, “I really haven’t seen him to talk to, Mom. Only once, the day I got here.”

“Well, I hope things are going all right at work,” her mother said. “The temp who usually helps out is working elsewhere. So I had to train another woman before I left. It should be fine,” she said, but her voice trailed off and she sounded a little worried.

Natalie steeled herself against it. “You’ll have to ask Christo about that,” she said briskly.

“I have,” Laura said. “I called him tonight. He said everything was under control.”

“Then you should believe him.”

“I know. I do.” A pause. “But he sounded—I don’t know—stressed. I hope he’d let me know if it wasn’t all right,” Laura added pensively. “Oh, drat. There’s the bell again.”

“Bell?”

Her mother let out a weary sigh. “Your grandmother has a bell. She rings it when she wants something.”

“Let me guess. She wants things often.” Natalie smiled at the thought of her imperious grandmother ringing a bell to make her mother jump. It would delight the old lady no end.

“Every other minute,” Laura concurred. “Coming, Mother. I’ll give you a call in a few days,” she said to Natalie. “Wish me luck.”

Natalie hung up and was silently wishing her mother luck when there was a knock on her front door.

She opened it to find Christo standing there, still in the dark trousers and long-sleeved dress shirt he would have worn to work. The top button was undone, his tie was askew, and he had his suit coat slung over his shoulder.

“Your mother says you run a rent-a-wife agency,” he said without preamble.

Natalie blinked in surprise. But she stopped herself before she wetted dry lips. “That’s right,” she said.

“Do you rent office personnel, too?”

“Office…”

“I need someone to take your mother’s place.” His jaw worked.

“I thought everything was under control?”

When he narrowed his gaze at her, Natalie shrugged. “I just got off the phone with my mother. She said she’d talked to you and that you said everything was fine.”

“I lied.” He dropped his jacket over the porch railing and raked fingers through already mussed hair. “They didn’t work out.”

“They?”

“The first one was bossy to the kids. Acted like she was some damn mother superior.”

Kids? It took Natalie a moment to realize what he was talking about. When she thought about Christo she generally still thought of him at her father’s firm, but of course he wasn’t there. He’d left not long after she had at the end of that summer to go off on his own—to start his own practice in which he focused on family law. Because of Jonas? She’d often wondered. But of course she’d never found that out.

Now he said, “I sent her back, and they sent me another one. One your mother hadn’t trained,” he added grimly. “And she cried.”

“She cried?” Natalie echoed.

“A lot. Every time she couldn’t find something.” He ground his teeth.

“Every time you yelled at her?” Natalie guessed.

“I didn’t yell. I was very polite.”

She bet he was. Icy politeness from Christo Savas would be far worse than being yelled at. “And she left?” Natalie guessed.

He shook his head. “I sacked her, too. And today they sent two others, but they’re hopeless. I sent them back. And the agency doesn’t have anyone else. Not until next week. Lisa can come on Thursday. She knows the office. She’s worked with your mother. She’s worked with me. But I can’t put the office on hold until Thursday. And—” he paused and rolled taut shoulders as if doing so would loosen the tension in them “—I can’t tell your mother. She’d come back.”

She would, too. Natalie knew it. “She might be glad to,” she ventured with a slight smile.

Christo’s brows raised. “She would?”

“Yes.” Natalie sighed. “But she can’t. She needs to be there. To get Grandma through this and capable of being on her own again.”

He grimaced. “That’s what I thought, why I lied. Why I don’t want to call her back. So…do you have someone? Just through Wednesday.”

“I’ll check,” Natalie said.

And there it was again, lighting his face—the heart-stopping grin that had seduced her once before—the drop-dead-gorgeous, Christo-Savas-thinks-you’re-wonderful smile.

“Terrific,” he said. “Just send her to my office tomorrow morning by eight-thirty. I’ll get her up to speed. Thanks.”

He knew it was a long shot, asking Natalie to supply a secretary. He didn’t want to ask her for anything. He’d been vaguely distracted ever since she’d taken up residence at Laura’s place.

Not that he’d seen her—except for when he’d caught a glimpse of her in the window of the apartment when he’d been sanding the bookshelves. But she’d disappeared instantly, as if she had no more desire to see him than he did to see her.

Good, he’d thought. But that had been before he’d run out of office help.

He couldn’t believe the agency didn’t have anyone else. More likely they just didn’t have anyone he wouldn’t make cry.

Laura never cried. Laura was as tough—and compassionate—as they came. There was nothing she couldn’t handle—not his most difficult clients, not cantankerous judges or demanding opposing counsels, not irate parents or Christo himself when his own mother or father breezed in to complicate his life.

If he’d thought he was doing Laura a favor, offering her the job as his secretary and office manager after her divorce, he soon discovered he was the lucky one.

She made his office run efficiently. She smoothed and soothed everyone she came into contact with. She got them to slow down, think clearly, take a deep breath.

“How do you do that?” he’d asked her more than once.

She’d laughed. “Practice. For twenty-five years I was a wife and mother. You don’t forget.”

Then she’d told him her daughter was creating an agency of temps who could do the same thing. “South Bay Rent-a-Wife, she’s calling it.” Laura had laughed and shaken her head.

“Your daughter?” The only daughter he knew was Natalie. The other child, he was sure, was a son.

She nodded. “Natalie. You must have met her the summer she was clerking at Ross and Hoy.”

Oh yeah. He’d met Natalie all right. But all he’d done was nod. “She’s a lawyer.”

“No. She dropped out of law school.”

“Dropped out?” He remembered how shocked he’d been at Laura’s words. And how guilty he’d felt. She hadn’t left because of him, had she?

“She always wanted to be a lawyer,” Laura said. “Was always her daddy’s girl. But when Clayton left—” She paused, and he’d thought she was just going to leave it there, but after a moment, she continued. “Well, Natalie decided she didn’t want to be like her father after all.” She smiled slightly. “She said she’d rather be like me—but get paid for it.”

Christo’s eyebrows went up. “Paid for it?”

Laura laughed. “She’s a savvy girl, my Natalie. She and Sophy, her cousin, tried it themselves first—worked as ‘wives.’ Now they run the agency and only step in when they have to. But she tells me her ‘wives’ can do anything I can do.”

Now rifling through the filing cabinet of his office looking for papers yesterday’s temp was supposed to have filed there, Christo hoped that was true. Otherwise the next four days were going to be a nightmare.

He glanced at his watch. It was almost eight. He started digging through the file cabinet again. He was getting a bit desperate as he wondered where the hell that blasted woman could have put the Duffy file, when he heard the door to the outer office open.

“In here,” he bellowed.

He reached the end of the drawer and banged it shut just as his office door opened. “Good,” he said without turning. “You can start looking here. I need the Duffy papers.”

“Fine.”

His head whipped around at the sound of Natalie’s voice.

He opened his mouth, but she forestalled him with a steely smile. “Don’t—” she warned “—ask me what the hell I’m doing here. You know what I’m doing here. My mother’s job.”

She shut the door and set her briefcase on the floor by the coat rack, then straightened. “Struck dumb?” she asked wryly when he didn’t speak.

Almost. “You’re planning on running my office?” he said, narrowing his gaze.

The mere sight of her in a pencil-slim navy skirt and a high-necked white blouse and a trim navy blazer should have called to mind visions of repressed Catholic schoolgirls. Instead it was playing havoc with his hormones and giving them decidedly inappropriate ideas. Inappropriate ideas were the last thing he needed right now.

“What do you know about office work?” he demanded.

“I run one,” she said. “And I’ve worked in a law office. And I know my mother. Besides, we don’t have anyone else who can do it. So unless you’ve conjured someone up in the meantime…” She let her voice trail off, inviting him to suggest an alternative.

He didn’t have one.

“And you’re right,” she said. “I don’t want you calling my mother.”

Their gazes met, clashed. There was a challenge in hers that defied him to argue. He wanted to argue. He wanted her gone, because besides the challenge, that damnable sizzle was there, too. His jaw tightened. He cracked his knuckles.

But before he could figure out an alternative, the phone on the desk rang.

Natalie was closer to it than he was, also faster off the mark. She picked it up.

“Savas Law Office,” she said, in a voice that was both warm and professional. “Yes,” she said to the caller. “I’ll be happy to. I’m with Mr. Savas right now. Give me a moment and I’ll have a look at the appointment book and we can set something up.”

She put the phone on hold, set it down, tilted her head and looked at Christo. “Unless you’d like to take over.” Even her eyebrows were challenging him.

He sucked his teeth. “Be my guest,” he said gruffly. “Just don’t cry. I’ve got a case to prepare.”

It was going to be a salutary experience. Four days of working with Christo Savas and she’d be well and truly over him.

At least that’s what Natalie had been telling herself since she hadn’t been able to come up with an alternative to Sophy’s, “Well, then, I guess you’ll have to do it,” answer to whom they were going to send to work for him this morning.

“I don’t want to do it!” she’d protested, aghast.

She’d rung Sophy just past six, having spent most of last evening going through her files looking for a suitable temp. But while there were a few who might have some of the office skills, all of them were already on other jobs. And none of them was such a standout that it made sense to juggle things around.

She’d hoped her cousin would be able to think of someone she’d overlooked who could do the job in her mother’s place. But Sophy hadn’t—besides suggesting Natalie do it herself.

“I can’t do it,” she insisted again.

Sophy yawned on the other end of the line. “Why not? Because you still have a crush on him?”

Sophy was the one person Natalie had admitted her infatuation to. And unfortunately her cousin had a memory like an elephant. Thank heavens, she’d never confessed to the mortification in Christo’s bedroom.

“I do not have a crush on him,” she said firmly. “Once I did. Yes, I admit that. But that was years ago. I was a child then.”

“So,” Sophy said airily. “No problem.”

Problem. But she wasn’t going to get anywhere arguing with Sophy. “I’ll see what I can come up with,” she’d said.

“You know what you have to do,” Sophy responded. “I won’t bother you today.” And she’d rung off.

Even after Sophy had hung up, Natalie had tried to come up with alternatives. But short of calling her mother and telling her the problem, she didn’t see one. It was an indication of how badly she didn’t want to do it that once she actually picked up the phone and began to punch in her mother’s number.

But before she finished, she hung up again. She couldn’t be that selfish.

Not that her mother wouldn’t want to come home. Her phone call had made it clear just how much of a trial Grandma Kelling was.

But Laura’s duty, as she perceived it, Natalie knew, was to be there for her no matter how irritating it was.

Just as her own duty was to step in and take over for Laura. Her sense of familial love and responsibility was, after all, one of the moral tenets Natalie most admired about her mother, one her father had turned out to be notoriously lacking. Laura never hesitated to do the right thing even when it was the hard thing—like putting up with Grandma Kelling and her bell.

Like working for Christo Savas.

And so Natalie had dragged herself off to the shower, washed and dried her hair, put on a tailored, professional navy-blue skirt and white blouse, then added a matching navy blazer for good measure. It was armor, and she knew it. But she felt as if she were heading into battle.

Then, shortly before eight, she’d rung Sophy again.

“I’m going,” she said without preamble.

“Of course.” There was the sound of satisfaction in Sophy’s voice. “I knew you would.”

Natalie had known she would, too.

And she was determined to begin as she meant to go on—as the consummate professional. So she shut the door on Christo, leaving him to the files in his office while she went out to the reception area to finish the call she’d taken and schedule the appointment required.

It wasn’t difficult to step into her mother’s shoes. She understood the way her mother did things, her work-flow pattern as it were, the process she used to get things done.

Laura had never done things haphazardly as a wife and mother. She wasn’t rigid, but in the Ross household there had always been a place for things, and things were always in their place.

So it was no trouble now for Natalie to open the middle left-hand drawer of her mother’s desk and find the appointment book right where she expected it would be. She ran her eyes down Christo’s appointments for the next week, understood quickly the general pattern of his days, picked up the phone, and offered the caller three possible times.

She wrote the client’s choice in the book, hung up the phone and realized that Christo was standing in the door to his office staring at her.

“What?” she said.

He shook his head. “Three out of four of them couldn’t find the appointment book. Two of them said it should be on the computer.”

“My mother wouldn’t keep the primary schedule on the computer.”

“I know.” He rocked back and forth on his heels. For a moment he didn’t say anything else. Then he said, “Suppose you find the Duffy file then.”

“Did my mother file it?” Natalie asked.

He shrugged. “God knows.”

Life in the office got almost instantly better—and simultaneously worse.

It was better in the sense that Christo didn’t have to quit what he was doing to rescue and detraumatize young clients whom Tuesday’s martinet had pointed to chairs, fixed with a steely stare and commanded, “Sit there and don’t move.”

Natalie found the books and puzzles and toys her mother kept in the cabinet, and if a parent with children or a child he was representing had to wait for him, she saw that they were calm and engaged until Christo could see them.

She fielded phone calls without interrupting him. She took legible notes and reported conversations accurately. It took her a while to find the Duffy file—because it hadn’t been filed at all, but had been shuffled in with another case’s pre-trial motions.

When he was terse and demanding, which admittedly he sometimes was, she didn’t take it personally and burst into tears. She simply did what needed to be done. And more. When he missed lunch to attend a meeting, for example, he found a sandwich sitting on his desk when he got back.

As far as Christo could tell, by the end of the afternoon Natalie was up to speed and every bit as capable as her mother at juggling three opposing counsels, two cranky judges, one school social worker and, for all he knew, a partridge in a pear tree.

Workwise, then, Natalie Ross was everything he could ask for—her work wasn’t a problem at all.

Seeing her was.

When he opened the door to his office that afternoon, he felt an instant punch in the gut seeing Natalie at Laura’s desk. Her mother was an attractive woman, but Natalie was beautiful. And there was a light and a vitality about Natalie that took her beauty to a whole different level. She was smiling up at Madeleine Dirksen, one of his weepier clients, while at the same time bouncing Madeleine’s two-year-old on her knee.

“You can come in now,” he said to Madeleine.

“I’ll keep Jacob for you,” Natalie offered.

Madeleine gave her a grateful smile. “Would you mind?”

“Not at all,” Natalie assured her and slanted a quick glance in Christo’s direction. “He can help me file.”

Christo ushered Madeleine into his office, fully expecting to hear Jacob start howling or, before long, bookcases crashing. But no untoward sounds reached his ears. And when he and Madeleine emerged an hour later it was to find Natalie with the phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder while she scribbled notes with one hand and kept the other wrapped around Jacob who, thumb in his mouth, was sound asleep on her lap.

Madeleine blinked back her tears and gave her a wobbly wet smile. “Ah, wonderful.”

“He is,” Natalie agreed. “I’ll carry him out to your car if you’d like. That way he may not wake up.”

When she got back she had a question about one of the letters he’d wanted typed. “Here,” she said. “This doesn’t make sense to me.” She rattled off some of his legalese, pointing at it on the computer screen.

He crossed the room to have a look, and discovered that if the sight of Natalie rattled him, breathing in the scent of her distracted the hell out of him.

As he leaned over her shoulder to have a look at what she didn’t understand, he caught the scent of some wild-flowery sort of shampoo. Not a strong scent; it was barely evident, in fact. He stepped closer, breathed deeper. Shut his eyes.

“Did you leave a word out?” Natalie turned her head to look up at him so their faces were scant inches apart.

Christo jumped back. “What? What word?”

“I don’t know, do I?” she said with some aspersion. “You’re the one who’s writing the letter.”

“Er.” He had to step closer then to try to make sense of his words on the screen, to see what he’d been saying, to recapture his train of thought. And he caught another whiff of wildflowers. He stiffened and held his breath.

Natalie turned once more, her brows drawn together. “Are you catching a cold?”

“What?”

“You’re sniffling. Do you have allergies?”

“No, damn it. I don’t have allergies.” He spun away and stalked back into his office. “Forget it. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“We’re working tomorrow?”

“Not you. Me.” He’d need his Saturday morning in the office just to catch up from the week’s earlier disasters—not to mention from proximity to Natalie.

He shut the door, sank into his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose. Why the hell had he ever asked her to find him a secretary?

Why the hell had she agreed to do it?

He knew the answers. Or at least the acceptable ones. But three more days of this?

Be careful what you wish for, his Brazilian grandmother always used to tell him.

Now he really understood exactly what she meant.

“You’re still here.” The words were more accusation than question. Christo, arms braced on either side of the open doorway, collar unbuttoned, tie loose, was glowering at her as if she were doing something wrong. “It’s past six o’clock.”

Natalie shrugged. “I still had work to do.” She forbore pointing out that he was still here, too. “My mother taught me not to leave things undone.” She picked up the last of the papers she was filing and concentrated on finding the proper folder in the drawer, not allowing herself to look again at the man across the room.

The theory behind vaccinations—the one that had brought her here to work for him today—was that if you introduced a small dose of something dire into your system, you would develop antibodies that would help you resist the Big Bad Real Thing.

Good idea for resisting polio and smallpox and influenza. It didn’t help with resisting Christo Savas one bit.

A little exposure to Christo simply made her want more. And the more chance she had to look at him, the more her eyes tried to follow his every move. The more he demanded, the more she was determined to prove equal to the task. And as he shoved away from the door and came toward her, she found herself leaning toward him.

God, was gravity against her, too?

Certainly her own inclinations were. Far from getting over him, she was as attracted as ever. Possibly more, because Christo the litigator had been a brilliant incisive attractive man. But this Christo, who took time with weeping women and who had spent half an hour putting a puzzle together with a shy little girl before he ever got her to say a word—this Christo was even more appealing. He was kind, he was compassionate. He was caring. He was human.

He was everything she’d once believed him to be—except available to fall in love with.

“I’m going now,” she said, slipping the last file into the correct folder and shutting the drawer with a firm push. She plucked her blazer off the coat rack and put it on, feeling a sudden need for armor again under the intensity of his hooded gaze. “You don’t want me to come in tomorrow?”

“No.”

That was certainly clear enough. “Right.” She picked up her briefcase. “Well, I’ll see you Monday, then.” She opened the door.

“Natalie.” Her name on his lips stopped her in her tracks. She looked back.

He sucked in a breath. “Your mother would be proud.”

She smiled faintly. “I hope so.”

She left quickly, closing the door behind her. Three years ago she thought she’d made the biggest mistake of her life. Today—coming to work for Christo—she wondered if she might have made a bigger one.

Saturdays were catch-up day.

Christo didn’t work at his office every Saturday. But when things piled up during the week and he needed quiet time to work out his arguments, to think outside the box and get new perspectives on cases, he headed for his office.

There were no clients demanding attention on Saturdays. There were no judges or other attorneys calling, and there were no household chores to distract him.

Saturday at the office was, hands-down, the best day and the best place for productive, intense, focused work.

Or it had been until now.

Now, the minute he walked in the door he caught a hint of Natalie’s elusive wildflower shampoo. Her handwriting was on a note on the top of his pile of things-to-do. He found himself prowling through his file drawers looking into folders she’d filed, studying notes she’d made. Ostensibly it was because he needed the information.

But he couldn’t quite lie to himself well enough to believe it didn’t have something to do with his preoccupation with Natalie.

He shut the file drawer and went back to his desk, but he didn’t sit down. He paced the length of his office and asked himself, not for the first time, what the hell it was about Natalie that got under his skin?

Or was it simply that she was the one who’d got away?

She didn’t get away, he reminded himself irritably. She’d turned up in his bed and he’d effectively tossed her out. End of story.

Except it wasn’t the end of the story. And however hard he tried to concentrate on the argument he was trying to write, memories of Natalie kept niggling in his brain.

Instead of an annoyance it was a relief when his cell phone rang to distract him. And when he saw the number calling his mood lightened at once. “Avó!”

“Ah, Christo. I miss you.”

The sound of his Brazilian grandmother’s voice could always make him smile. He missed her, too. “What’s up?”

She was a dynamo, his grandmother, always involved in a hundred different things. He tipped back in his chair now and put his feet on the desk, letting her voice carry him back to the place she called home. She told him about the crops—it was a farm as well as an estate of note these days. She told him all about her neighbors and the extended family and her many bridge games. She kept him up to date on where his father was.

“In Buenos Aires this week,” she said. “Last week in Paris.”

Par for the course as far as Christo was concerned. Xantiago Azevedo, whom he’d never called Dad or Papa or anything other than Xanti, the name on the back of his father’s soccer shirt, had been on the move all of Christo’s life.

He hadn’t even met his father until he was nearly six. And then it had been a surprise to both of them.

Xanti had come to play in a match in L.A., and he’d had a night to kill before his plane left for Sao Paulo the next day. At loose ends, he’d apparently decided to look up an old flame. Probably, Christo realized later, he had decided to see if Aurora Savas wanted a roll in the hay for old time’s sake.

Xanti hadn’t actually said that in so many words—not that Christo would have understood them at the time if he had—but he’d definitely blinked in surprise when the door had been opened by a boy who looked just like him.

“Who’re you?” Xanti had demanded.

Before Christo could say more than his first name, his mother had come up behind him. “Meet your son, Xanti,” she’d said to his dumbstruck father. “Want to take him home with you for the summer?”

Surprisingly enough, Xanti had.

But not before he’d married Aurora.

“Of course, we will marry,” he’d said, adding with the foolish nobility Xanti generally approached things with in the short run, “It is my duty.”

Maybe. But his commitment to it didn’t last. It was the long run Xanti was never able to handle, which is why the whirlwind marriage had lasted barely two months.

Still, it had given Christo a grandmother who loved him and a home away from home in Brazil. Widowed Lucia Azevedo had welcomed her only grandchild with open arms. With her husband deceased and Xanti, her only child, jetting around the world playing soccer and sleeping with women, this unexpected grandchild quickly became the light of her life.

And Christo, after a week of determined indifference, found his resolve undermined by Avó’s equally determined love. Her gentle smiles and calm acceptance undid his resolution to remain aloof from this new world he’d been thrust into—a world in which he didn’t even speak the language.

“No matter,” Avó had said. “We will learn each other.”

Teach, she’d meant. But “learn each other” was exactly what they’d done. Now, twenty-six years later, Christo spoke with her in the same mixture of English and Portuguese that they’d come to then.

“’Stas bem?” he asked her. “Are you okay?” because she’d had fainting spells recently.