Pretending with the Greek Billionaire(40)

Once he had all the relevant contracts signed for the new project his father had assigned to him, he turned back to the other papers on his desk.

“How’s our plan going?” he asked Joe.

“I’ve pulled up the main sites and there are a selection of the usual papers on your desk. All carry the pictures from the jewelry store, of course. There’s lots of buzz online about the ring, several flattering pictures. There are a few, however, that Miss McMurty might find objectionable.”

Luca snorted while browsing the different websites. “What doesn’t she find objectionable?”

Joe didn’t answer that but instead pointed out the article in question on his computer screen. Someone had been doing their homework. While most sites offered up the usual information on Constance, this one had gone a bit deeper. They’d reported she was the daughter of James McMurty, whom she had said worked at the embassy. He was the United States ambassador to Greece, something she’d neglected to mention, but the journalists had discovered quickly enough. They detailed her schooling, her rather boring yet educationally impressive resume, and her relatively new situation as a House Mother, but it didn’t stop there.

The world wanted to know who Constance McMurty was, and they weren’t being scrupulous about finding out. Her whole life story was written in those pages, things Luca had never dreamed were a part of her past—like her abandonment at an orphanage when she was three. Her adoption by the ambassador and his wife two years later. The death of her adoptive mother a few years after that. He never would have guessed she’d suffered so much.

He flipped through a few more sites. They all had pretty much the same images and info. There were a few pictures that he hadn’t expected, however, and Constance probably wouldn’t be happy.

A loud crash and the sound of someone running past his door jerked his attention away from the computer.

“What the hell was that?”

“The sound of six children in your house, sir,” Joe said.

“I was aware of that much,” Luca said, giving him the sarcastic look that remark deserved and headed for the door.

He marched down the hallway to the great room. The site that met him had him frozen in shock.

The girls scurried everywhere, their arms full of his belongings. Constance sat on the couch in the center of the room, supervising the depositing of those belongings into boxes, while Mrs. Lasko and the maid stood by watching, their faces etched with wary amusement, until they caught sight of him. Then all amusement fled and only the wariness remained. Smart women. They were right to be worried.

Constance, on the other hand, looked up at him with a smile, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was allowing the children to ransack his house.

“What the fu—”

“Sir,” Joe said, shaking his head.

Luca glared at him but minded his language. After all, he wouldn’t want to corrupt the little kleptomaniacs who were looting his house.

“Constance, what in the ever-loving hell is going on?” he asked, keeping his voice just under a shout by sheer force of will.

She blinked at him innocently. “You said if I wanted to remove the dangerous items in the house to go ahead. So I am.”

He snagged an R-rated movie out of the arms of a passing kid who looked like she’d just robbed a Redbox and held it up. “How is this dangerous?”

“Aside from the rating, it’s a horrible movie. Totally inappropriate for children.”

“And you think they might accidentally pop an R-rated movie into the Blu-ray one night and have a go at it, do you?”

She shrugged. “You never know. Better safe than sorry.”

He was really starting to hate that phrase. He stared at her, so dazed with astonishment he wasn’t sure how to react. Another kid hurried by with a bottle of Ouzo in each hand.

“Hey, you…”

“Lexi,” Elena supplied helpfully.

Constance looked up in surprise but Luca was too busy chasing down the Ouzo thief to notice much.

“Give those back,” he said, making a grab for them.

She made it to Constance and the box she was amassing before he caught up with her.

He stood in front of her, fists clenched at his sides as he surveyed the damage. His shelves had been stripped bare of anything even slightly objectionable, his bar had been cleaned out, and even the coffee table had disappeared.

Constance stood and looked him straight in the eye. His anger faded a hair. Pissed or not, he couldn’t help but be impressed that she could hold her ground when he was less than six inches from her and ready to seriously spank someone. The sudden image of the prim and proper Miss McMurty squirming over his knee in carnal delight was a delicious thought…