Excerpt: The Alexakis Bride
Book 1: NY! NY! Series
Chapter One
"A man can never have too many women."
Damon Alexakis could remember his father saying that as far back as he was able to recall. The old man's rich baritone practically caressed the words as he said them. And then he would look at his only son and give him a conspiratorial wink.
At the ripe old age of thirty-four, when a single man in possession of all the right instincts might mostly likely have been expected to concur wholeheartedly, Damon Alexakis begged to differ.
It wasn't that he didn't like women. He did. The sort that he could take to dinner, take to bed, and forget about the next morning.
It was the other women who were the bane of his existence — the women Aristotle Alexakis had most adored.
But then Aristotle had never been surrounded by and responsible for a widowed mother and six — count them six
The old man had died when Damon was only eighteen, while the girls were still charming everyone in sight. His father, Damon often thought grimly, didn't know what he'd missed.
Now, as Damon drummed his pen on the top of his broad teak desk, then stared distractedly out the window at the midtown New York skyline, he wished, not for the first time, that he were an orphaned only child.
He could have done without them all — without his mother, who was trying to settle him down and provide him with the Perfect Alexakis Bride, without Pandora who had lately dashed off with a shifty Las Vegas blackjack dealer, without Electra who was shedding her clothes in that off-color, off-off-off Broadway production in the name of art, without Chloe who had taken off for darkest Africa without a word, without Daphne who'd bought all those chinchillas on the hoof because she was sorry for them and not because they'd make lovely coats, without Arete who just this morning had stalked into his office and quit to take a job with Strahan Brothers, Importers, his biggest competitors, and most especially, at the moment, without his eldest sister, Sophia, whose pregnancy was at present complicating his life.
Why, Damon lifted his eyes and asked the heavens, should any man have to worry about his sister's pregnancy? Why shouldn't it be her husband's problem?
Because, he answered on behalf of the heavens, her husband, Stephanos, was the problem
He and Kate McKee.
Kate McKee.
The woman even sounded like trouble. A fiery and frolicsome Titian-haired temptress — exactly the sort of woman that his philandering brother-in-law would be eager to take to bed.
Had no doubt already taken to bed, Damon reminded himself savagely, stabbing his pen into the desk blotter.
All those other mother's helpers Stephanos had hired — Stacy and Tracy and Casey and whoever else had come and gone keeping an eye on his and Sophia's impish twins in the last two months — had been mere red herrings.
It was Kate McKee whom Stephanos had been intent on installing in his and Sophia's Park Avenue apartment. And in his bed.
Damon knew he should have been suspicious from the moment Stephanos had announced that the doctor recommended a nanny. His brother-in-law was never eager to lay out a penny more than necessary, much less voluntarily pay someone to help not him but his wife.
But Stephanos had been all soulful eyes and deep concern when he'd come into Damon's office that afternoon two months ago. "The doctor is worried about Sophia. He says she's in danger of miscarrying. She needs someone to keep an eye on the twins."
"I'll take care o fit," Damon had promise,d phone against his ear. He scratched Sophia's name on a pad at the same time he was trying to catch the particulars on a crystal shipment due from Venice that afternoon.
But Stephanos had given Damon an airy wave of his hand. "It's not your problem. I'm just telling you. I'll interview the girls myself."
Damon ground his teeth now. He should have known better. Everything that even vaguely affected the lives of any of the Alexakis women ended up being his problem sooner or later!
Kate McKee.
What the hell was he going to do about her?