Stirring Up Trouble (Inspiring the Greek Billionaire) - Shelly Bell
CHAPTER 1
If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die. That strain again, it had a dying fall.
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, act 1, scene 1
Braden Angelopoulos stepped out of his office into the bustling activity of his restaurant’s kitchen and rolled his shoulders, ready to tackle the next task. “Where are my nuts?” he asked his head chef, Christopher.
Before the sixty-year-old Greek man had the chance to answer, Lola strutted out of the walk-in freezer licking an ice cream cone—an image he didn’t need right now. She stopped in front of Braden, peering up through her long brown lashes, then slowly lowered her gaze until it rested on what was now likely an obvious bulge between his legs. “I don’t know. You want me to check for you?” She winked as she swirled her tongue around the circumference of the vanilla ice-cream cone.
The pink-haired, multi-pierced woman had become the bane of his existence. Too bad he couldn’t fire her. Or sleep with her. He maintained a strict policy of not dating his employees, a rule he’d never considered breaking until the little spitfire practically skipped into his restaurant after her late Uncle Alexander had forced him to hire her as the headliner five nights a week. Good thing she could sing because Braden hadn’t dared to refuse the man who had held the lease to his restaurant.
“Don’t worry, boss,” Christopher said, shifting his attention from Lola. “Your nuts went out on the silver platter a few minutes ago while you were on the phone with the dairy supplier.”
Braden glanced back at Lola. She simply raised a pierced brow and laughed her way out of the kitchen.
In Braden’s Greek family, an engagement party wasn’t complete without koufetta, what Americans referred to as Jordan almonds. He’d tweaked the recipe and created his own take on them, replacing a portion of the orange blossom water with lavender. They had to be special today.
He pasted on a smile and strode through the swinging doors into the dining room of his restaurant, Acropolis. Squinting to look through the crowd of mingling guests, he spotted the man he needed to speak with standing across the room talking to Lola’s mother, Reina, a woman who wore her gray hair in a long braid down her back and appeared as though she'd never gotten past the nineteen-sixties.
With a microphone in his hand, his best friend, Ryan Sullivan, addressed the guests from the stage,". . . And last, Portia and I would like to thank my best man, Braden, and the maid of honor, her sister, Lola, for closing the restaurant for a couple of hours to throw us this engagement party. If it weren't for you guys, there may not have been an ‘us’ to celebrate. Braden, Lola, could you come up here and say a few words?"
Ah, hell. He forgot he'd agreed to give a speech.
He spun around looking for his pink-haired co-conspirator, but she'd conveniently disappeared. He made sure his smile remained on his face as he climbed up the steps to the stage, shook his best friend's hand, and hugged Portia.
Although he’d rather jump naked into a freezing lake than give a speech about marriage, he lifted the microphone to his mouth. “When Ryan and I were six, we took a blood oath to never fall in love. Instead, we were going to join the Navy, explore the world. And after our stint with the military ended, we were going to become pirates on our own ship. Sadly, that dream ended when Ryan went on his first cruise and spent the entire time throwing up in his room.”
Everyone laughed, including Ryan, now sitting with his fiancée at a romantic table for two at the foot of the stage.
“Before Ryan met Portia, he’d forgotten how to smile. I worried about him for a couple of years. Especially when he moved in with me and I couldn’t get him to move out.” He paused for the chuckles. “Portia helped rekindle the missing fire in him and inspired him in ways which his friends and family never could, and on behalf of all of us, I’d like to say ‘thank you’ to her for giving us back our Ryan. And last, I can say with all honesty and sincerity, from the bottom of my heart, and other more important parts, that I’m glad it’s you getting married and not me. Congratulations and na zisete!”
Assuming he’d been joking, most of the guests laughed and clapped. Only Ryan and Portia gazed up at him with knowing eyes.
He didn’t want their pity. Marriage wasn’t for him. Between his parents, they’d been married and divorced nine times. And then, in college, he’d proven the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. A mistake he would never make again.