Leo Parnassus has returned to Athens to head the family empire. A New Yorker since childhood, he finds life is certainly different here with family feuds and expectations to marry and produce heirs! Amid all this tradition, the beautiful girl who catches Leo's eye is a welcome distraction.
She may be a lowly waitress, but Angel has her secrets.. Leo will be pleased to discover she's a virgin, but not that she's the daughter of his adversary! Or that, in nine months, there will be one more secret revealed.
Read Excerpt :
I’ll handle it. Those fatalistic words still reverberated in Angel’s head a week later. She’d gone to speak with Stavros’ father herself, to try and remonstrate with him, but he hadn’t even deigned to see her. It couldn’t have been made clearer that they were social outcasts.
‘Kassianides!’
Abruptly Angel was pulled out of her spiralling black thoughts when her
boss called her name. It must have been the second or third time, judging by the impatience on his face.
‘When you can join us back on earth, go down to the pool and make sure it’s completely clear and that the tea lights are set out on the tables.’
She stuttered an apology and fled. In all honesty Angel’s preoccupation had been distracting her from something much more panic- inducing and stressful. Almost too stressful to contemplate.
She was here at the Parnassus villa, high in the hills of Athens, to waitress at a party that was being thrown for Leonidas Parnassus, the son of Georgios Parnassus. Everyone was buzzing about the fact that he might be about to take over the family business and what a coup it would be, Leo Parnassus having become a multimillionaire entrepreneur in his own right.
It hit her again as she hurried down the steps that were expertly overgrown with extravagantly flowering bougainvillea. She was in the Parnassus villa, the home of the family who hated hers with a passion.
For a second she stopped in her tracks, a hand going to her breast as an intense pain tightened in her chest. This was the absolute worst place she could be in the world. For a second she felt hysteria rising at the irony of it. She, Angel Kassianides, was about to serve drinks to the crème de la crème of Athens, right under the Parnassuses nose. The thought of what her father would do if he could see her now made her break out in a cold sweat.
She bit her lip and forced herself to go on, breathing a sigh of relief when she had a quick look around the pool area and saw no one. The guests hadn’t started to arrive yet and, though there were some staying at the villa, Angel knew that they’d be getting ready. There was no reason for anyone to be by the pool, but still…an uneasy prickling skated over her skin.
She hadn’t been able to avoid coming here tonight. She and her waiter colleagues had been halfway to their secret destination in a packed minibus before it had been revealed, for ‘security reasons’. Angel knew well that if she’d bailed out of this evening her boss would have sacked her on the spot. He’d sacked people for less in his prestigious catering company. She couldn’t afford for that to happen—not when her income was the only thing helping put her sister through college and keeping food on their table.
She tried to reassure herself: her boss was English, recently moved to Athens with his English/Greek wife. He knew nothing of the significance of who Angel was, nor her scandalous connection to the Parnassus family. She busied herself placing out the tea lights in their antique silver holders in the middle of the white damask- covered tables, and sent up fervent thanks that, tonight of all nights, not one of the other staff were local. Things were so busy at the moment that her boss had had to call in their part- time workers, and they were all either foreign or from outside Athens.
Her only fear now was that someone at the party might recognise her. But, knowing these people as she did, she’d no doubt that in her uniform of black skirt and white shirt they’d not take a second look at her. She worried her lip again. Perhaps she could just stay in the kitchen and get the trays together and avoid—
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