Page 4 of Her Greek Protector
Chapter 1
Thessaloniki, Greece…
“Damien? Damien, where are you?” Aimee Myers paused and listened, keeping her eyes alert for signs of a little boy who’d decided it was great fun to hide from her. More often than not, he only succeeded in hiding his head, believing if he couldn’t see her, the reverse was also true. “Damien?”
She scanned the edge of the beach, framed by a thick barrier of palm trees and flowering bushes. He hadn’t gone into the water as she’d been sitting with her feet in the waves and he would have had to pass her. A glance up the beach, towards the cabanas, set back beyond the high tide mark, caused her to smile. Peeking out from the back of the middle tent-like structure were a pair of little legs encased in red swimming trunks. “Damien? Oh, Damien?”
She made her way across the wet sand, readying her camera so she could capture his look of surprise when he realized she’d found him. When she was only a few feet away from him, she put the camera lens to her eye. “Damien.”
He spun around, losing his balance and falling in the soft sand. A click of her camera, and the look of surprise on his face was captured for eternity. “Aimee!”
His little boy giggles brought a huge smile to her face. She let the camera hang from the strap around her neck, catching the little body as he scrambled to his feet and lunged for her. She swung him up and into the air and he screamed in delight.
“Higher!”
Aimee chuckled. “My arms are only so long, little guy. What do you say we head back up to the house and see if cook has any more of those cookies?”
Damien wrapped his arms around her neck and placed an exuberant kiss on her cheek. “Cookies.”
Aimee hugged him and then set him down. “Let’s go pick up your shovels and the bucket and I’ll gather up our towels.” They’d taken an excursion down to the private beach owned by the Moustakas family as a way of helping Damien deal with the fact that his mother andpatéraswere leaving again.
Leo and Gemma were married four days earlier. Aimee had made the trip across the globe, accompanied by Gemma’s brother Tyler, to celebrate her best friend’s marriage to the man she loved. Tyler had rushed back the day after the wedding, needing to return to the States and finish the classes he was enrolled in. He would be graduating soon and then moving to Greece to work for Leo and the Moustakas company.
Aimee would also be sticking around Greece for the next several months. She’d grown tired of the direction her life was heading and, at Gemma’s suggestion, was going to spend the next few months re-evaluating her future. She needed a career where she could feel fulfilled, not just someone to get the next cup of coffee, or worse—a pretty face.
Aimee considered herself a competent and self-sufficient woman, but the politicians she’d worked with over the last several years just saw her as window dressing that gained them access to her superiors. The entire Washington D.C. lobbying scene was like that and she was done being a part of it.
No, she wanted a taste of what Gemma had found. Excitement. Novelty. A chance to do something she’d never done before.Maybe even find myself a romantic encounter of my own—but on my terms.She would never allow a man to dictate to her like Leo had originally done to Gemma.That is not going to happen to me!
And yet, Gemma seemed so happy. Even with their honeymoon plans being altered so abruptly, she was over-the-moon with happiness and joy. Something Aimee had no personal experience with, at least, not where men were concerned.
Leo and Gemma had been planning to spend a week on the Moustakas private island, theéchase parádeisos,and Aimee had volunteered to watch Damien in their absence.Their plans had altered after a guest at their wedding had shown Leo a picture, supposedly of himself, taken on a remote island in the South Pacific several weeks earlier.
Leo’s twin brother, Alexi, had gone missing when his yacht had encountered a storm and sunk. A search for survivors had yielded nothing and Alexi had been declared dead. With the picture, the Moustakas family now had evidence that Alexi had not drowned, but was very much alive.
“Momma?” Damien asked as Aimee settled him into the child safety seat secured in the back of the town car that Leo had provided for her use while she was in Greece. He’d also offered her the use of his sports car collection, but just thinking about driving a vehicle that cost well over a million dollars had cause Aimee’s stomach to clench. She wasn’t that good of a driver, choosing to use the Metro and other modes of public transportation available to her in the United States capital. When Aimee had declined, Gemma had, with a knowing smirk on her face, suggested to her new husband that her best friend would be more comfortable being chauffeured around. Leo had immediately agreed.
Always wanting to be self-sufficient, Aimee would have been content with an old beat up rental car, but Gemma had dangled a carrot in front of her that Aimee just couldn’t refuse; A man at her disposal, whose only duties were to see to Aimee’s comfort and safety.
“She and daddy went to find Uncle Alexi,” Aimee told him, slipping into the vehicle and nodding at Grigo, Leo’s man of affairs and for the time being, her personal chauffeur. “We’re ready to go home.”
Grigo nodded and then looked over his shoulder. “Did you have a nice time at the beach, Damien?”
Damien nodded and Aimee answered for him. “We attempted to build a sand castle.”
“I hope it was a big castle?”
Damien shook his head and stuck his bottom lip out. “Fall down.”
Grigo shared a look with Aimee in the rear-view mirror as he started the vehicle moving. “That is too bad. You’ll have to try again another day.”
Aimee looked at Damien and hid her smirk. He had his little arms crossed over his chest, and the look on his face clearly indicated a storm was brewing if the subject wasn’t changed immediately. “Maybe after our snack we can finish reading about Aladdin and the lamp?”
Damien yawned and nodded. “Cookies.”
“We’ll get some cookies first and then read a story.”And maybe you’ll take a long nap so I can at least check my email and go through all the pictures I’ve taken in the last few days.
An hour later, Aimee got her wish. Damien slept peacefully in the middle of the large bed in her room, and she’d already checked her emails–an exercise that had proven to be filled with frustration, providing no new direction for her life.