Free Doukakis's Apprentice by Sarah Morgan Page A

by nothing more than a power point and a phone socket.
    Damon Doukakis was focused on the success of his business to the exclusion of everything else.
    She paused in the middle of deleting an e-mail.
    Well, not
quite
everything else.
    Her cheeks burned and she stared down at her hands, remembering. The attraction had been like a searing blade, driven straight through her. And she was pretty sure he’d felt it too.
    He’d looked horrified, she remembered, which should have dented her ego except that she was a realist. There was no way he would sully himself with a mongrel like her. She’d seen enough pictures of him in the gossip columns to know that the women he chose were sleek and groomed. Elegant. Dignified. Controlled. Everything about his life was ruthlessly controlled, from work to women.
    Polly looked down at herself. The women he dated would no more dream of sitting shoeless and cross-legged on the floor unpacking a box than they would be seen in public without perfectly blow-dried hair.
    Wondering why she was wasting time thinking about what sort of women Damon Doukakis dated, Polly finished emptying the box and put it ready for recycling.
    Her desk was covered in pink sticky notes with various phone messages taken by Debbie while she’d been on the phone to other people.
    Urgent. Call Vernon White about the Honey Hair campaign.
    Ring the media buyer at Cool Campaigns about the media strategy for Fresh Mouth mints.
    David Mills from Fox Consumer wants to talk urgently …
    Urgent, urgent, urgent. It was all urgent. She felt a rush of panic as she contemplated all the work she still had to do. Everyone had heard the news of the takeover and was wondering whether Prince Advertising was going to exist in a month. And she couldn’t give them an answer. She had no idea what Damon Doukakis intended to do so all she could do was sound positive and up-beat.
    Knowing that if all her clients walked in the opposite direction then the staff would definitely lose their jobs, Polly peeled off the notes one by one and added the calls to the list. Then she settled back into her cross-legged position on the floor and worked out a priority for the morning.
    She was wondering whether it would be any help to get a second phone, when she heard the swish of a door opening and saw Damon Doukakis striding towards her.
    Her confidence melted away like chocolate held in a child’s palm.
    When it came to work she was more than ready to fight her corner but she had no idea how to fight these other feelingsthat squirmed inside her whenever she was in the same room as him.
    Once glance at the exquisitely cut black dinner jacket and bowtie told her that his plans for the evening were infinitely more exciting than hers and she held her breath as he approached. His startling good-looks made it impossible to do anything but stare when he was in the room. It didn’t help that he carried himself with that inborn confidence that seemed genetically embedded in people born into wealth. It had been years since she’d felt that awful creeping sense of inferiority but she felt it now as she stood trapped by those glittering dark eyes.
    Polly’s head began to spin and suddenly she was glad she was sitting down, because at least sitting down didn’t require strength in one’s legs. It was just the tiredness, she told herself. Nothing more. He wasn’t
that
gorgeous.
    As he stood looking down at her from his formidable height, she was forced to revise that opinion. OK, so maybe he was gorgeous. To look at. But it was all on the surface.
    Feeling out of her depth, she made a vague attempt to defuse the crackling tension. ‘Nice outfit. I didn’t know you had a second job as a waiter.’
    There was no answering smile and she felt a flash of relief. There was no way she could ever find a man without a sense of humour remotely attractive, even if he
did
have an incredible body that did miracles for a dinner jacket. She told herself that the flutter of