When Christakos Meets His Match(5)
His eyes flashed and momentarily stopped her breath. They were so unusual and stark against his dark skin. He was like a specimen from some exotic planet.
‘There’s two hundred and ten, actually, and I don’t doubt that there are many others who have important appointments lined up—which makes my question even more relevant.’
Sidonie barely registered the fact that he knew exactly how many were on board and bristled at the way his eyes had done that quick sweep up and down her body, clearly deducing that she wasn’t on her way to an important meeting.
‘For your information,’ she said frigidly, ‘I have a connecting flight to Dublin from London and I’ll be very inconvenienced if we’re late. But that’s just life, isn’t it?’
He leant back a little and looked at her. ‘I wondered where your accent was from. It’s intriguing.’
Sidonie wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not, so she clamped her mouth shut. Just then someone dressed in uniform with a cap came alongside their seats and coughed slightly to get the man’s attention.
Releasing Sidonie from his compelling gaze, the man turned, and the pilot bent down and said discreetly, ‘Mr Christakos, sorry about this delay. It’s beyond our control, I’m afraid... They’ve got a backlog of planes waiting to take off. It shouldn’t be much longer, but we can get your private jet ready if you’d prefer?’
Sidonie knew her eyes had gone wide as she took in this exchange.
After a few moments the man said, ‘No, I’ll stay, Pierre. But thank you for thinking of it.’
The captain inclined his head deferentially and left again and Sidonie realised that her mouth was open. Abruptly she shut it and looked out of the window before the man could see. In her line of vision was a similar plane to theirs, standing nearby, with the distinctive Christakos logo emblazoned on the side, along with a quote from a Greek philosopher. All of Alexio Christakos’s planes sported quotes.
Alexio Christakos.
Sidonie shook her head minutely, in disbelief. The man next to her—now on his phone, with that deep voice speaking in a language that sounded like Greek—could not be the owner of Christakos Freight and Travel. That man was a legend. And he would certainly not be sitting beside her, with his long legs constricted by the confines of economy class seating.
He’d been a case study in their business class at college before she’d had to leave. Astonishingly successful while still disgustingly young, he’d made headlines when he’d cut himself off from his father’s inheritance to go his own way, never revealing to anyone his reasons for doing so.
He’d then grafted and worked his way up, starting up an online freight company that had blown all of the competition out of the water, and when he’d sold it after only two years he’d made a fortune. It was that early success that had given him the finances to branch out into air travel, and within the space of five years he’d been competing with and beating the best budget airlines in Europe. He had a reputation for treating customers like people and not like herded cattle, which was a trademark of a lot of Christakos’s competition.
He was also one of the most eligible bachelors in Europe, if not the world. Sidonie was not a gossip magazine aficionado, but after they’d studied his entrepreneurial methods in college she’d had to listen to her fellow classmates wax lyrical about the man, drooling over copious pictures of him, for weeks. With a sinking feeling in her chest, she realised why he looked vaguely familiar. Even though she’d not shared in their collective drooling she’d glanced at a couple of pictures, dismissing him as a pretty boy.