The Marakaios Baby

‘You’ve known for that long and you are only telling me now?’

Colour touched her cheeks faintly. ‘I’ve been very ill. Extreme morning sickness, apparently.’

‘Are you taking medication?’ he asked sharply, and she nodded.

‘It helps a little.’ She sighed and shifted in her seat. ‘The truth is, Leo, I didn’t know how you would respond, or if you’d even see me. And I wanted to tell you in person. But with being so sick I couldn’t face travelling all this way until now.’

He nodded. It all sounded so very reasonable and yet he still felt angry. He should have known. He should have had the choice to be involved from the beginning. And now...?

‘If this is indeed my child,’ he told her, laying his hands flat on the desk, ‘there is no question of my not being involved.’

‘I know.’

‘And I don’t mean some weekend arrangement,’ Leo continued, knowing he meant it even though he was still reeling from her news. ‘I won’t be the kind of father who sees his child only on a Saturday afternoon.’

‘No,’ Margo agreed quietly. ‘I don’t want that either.’

‘Don’t you?’

He gazed at her narrowly for a moment. He still didn’t understand why she was here. She hadn’t possessed enough honour to be faithful to him, so why would she care whether he knew about his own child or not?

‘I would have expected you to have had a termination,’ he said abruptly. ‘Or, if you wanted the child, to pass it off as this other man’s.’

She winced at that. ‘Clearly you don’t have a very high opinion of me.’

‘And you think I should?’

‘No.’ She let out a little defeated sigh. ‘No, I don’t.’

‘So why didn’t you do either of those things, Margo?’

It was the first time he’d said her name since he’d seen her again, and it caused him a sudden, surprising flash of pain. He clenched his hands into fists, then deliberately flattened them out, resting them again on his desk.

‘Because I am not, no matter what you think, completely without morals,’ she replied with a bit of her old spirit. ‘I want my child, and I want my child to know its father.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And more than that I want my child to have a loving, stable home. A home where it knows it’s safe, where its parents are, loving and protecting. Always.’

Her dark brown eyes seemed to glow with an inner fire, an utter conviction.

‘And how,’ Leo asked after a pause, ‘do you suppose that is going to work?’

‘That’s the other thing I want,’ Margo said, still holding his gaze, her eyes like burning coals in her pale face. ‘I want you to marry me.’

* * *

In another situation, another life, Margo might have laughed at the way Leo’s expression slackened with surprise. He hadn’t been expecting that—and why would he? The last time he’d seen her she’d sent him away with a scornful rejection, told him lies of infidelity that she’d known would make him hate her. And here she was now, with a proposal of her own.

‘You must,’ Leo said, his voice like ice, ‘be joking.’

‘Do you think I’d come all the way to Greece just to make a joke?’ Margo asked quietly.

Leo stood up, the movement abrupt. He paced in front of the window that overlooked the Marakaios olive groves, now stark and bare in winter, which produced Greece’s finest olive oil.

‘Your proposal,’ he said, his teeth clenched and the word a sneer, ‘is offensive.’

‘I mean it sincerely—’

He cut her off, his voice now low and pulsating with fury. ‘The last time I saw you, you told me you didn’t want marriage or children.’

She gestured to the gently swelling bump that was just barely visible under her coat. ‘Things have changed.’

‘Not that much. Not for me.’

‘Don’t you want to know your own child?’

‘Who says I won’t? Who says I won’t sue for custody?’

Her stomach plunged with fear at that, but she forced herself to stay calm.

‘And do you think that would be in the best interest of our baby, Leo?’

He sat back down in his chair, raking his hands through his hair. With his head lowered she could see the strangely vulnerable nape of his neck, the momentary slump of his shoulders, and everything in her ached.

‘I’m sorry, Leo, for springing this on you,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve thought long and hard over these last few months about what is best for our baby, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s to live in a stable home with two parents.’

It hadn’t been an easy decision to make, but Margo’s own sorry history made her wary of going it alone as her mother had. Just like her, her mother had had no friends, no family, no safety net. And she’d lost everything.

Margo would not subject her child to the same risk.

He lifted his head, his eyes flashing although the set of his mouth was grim, bleak. ‘Even two parents who don’t love each other? Who have absolutely no reason whatsoever to respect or trust each other?’

She flinched slightly. ‘I respect you, Leo.’

‘You’ve had a funny way of showing it, then.’

She should tell him, Margo knew, that she’d made up the other man. Any hope of a marriage that was amicable at least was impossible with that perceived betrayal between them. But she was afraid Leo wouldn’t believe her if she told him now, and even if he did believe her he would want to know why she had told such an outrageous and damaging lie. The answer to that question was to admit her own fear, and that was something she was not ready to do.

‘I know you don’t respect me,’ she said.

She clenched her hands in her lap and fought another wave of nausea. The sickness had eased a bit in the last few weeks, but she still felt as if she had to drag herself through each day.

‘I know you don’t trust me. I hope that maybe, in time, I can win back both your respect and your trust. But this marriage would be for the sake of our child, Leo. To give our baby the opportunity of a stable home. And even if we don’t love each other we’ll both love this child.’

‘So you’re willing to enter a cold, loveless union, all for the sake of a baby you professed to not even want?’

Another deep breath and she met his gaze without a flinch. ‘Yes.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Why would I be here, then?’ she asked quietly.

‘You want something. Are you in trouble? Did this other man throw you over? Do you need money?’

‘I told you before, I’m not asking for a hand-out.’

‘You also said,’ Leo reminded her ruthlessly, ‘that having this baby would be a struggle financially.’

‘A struggle, yes, but not impossible. I could do it. I’ve thought about doing it,’ she continued, determined to make him believe her, even if he didn’t—couldn’t—understand her motives. ‘I thought very hard about raising this child on my own and not even telling you I was pregnant.’

‘And yet you now want me to trust you?’

‘I didn’t choose to do that, Leo,’ Margo said, her voice rising. She strove to level it; giving in to temper now would not help her cause. ‘I knew that you needed to know, and that our child needed more. Two parents. Stability, safety—’

‘You don’t think you could give this child those things on your own?’

‘No. Not for certain. I don’t...I don’t have a lot of friends, and no family. This baby needs more than just me. He or she needs a father.’

‘If I am the father.’

‘Please...’

She closed her eyes, waves of both nausea and fatigue crashing over here. Coming all this way, dealing with the plane and the rental car and the endless travel, had completely exhausted her.

She summoned what little strength she had left and made herself continue. ‘Let’s not argue. I want to marry you for the sake of our child. I’m not expecting you to love me or even like me after—after what I did, but I do hope we might act amicably towards each other for the sake of the baby. As for...’ She dropped her gaze, unable to look him in the eye. ‘As for the usual benefits of a marriage...I’d understand if you chose to look elsewhere.’

Leo was silent and Margo risked a look up, wondering if he’d taken her meaning.

‘Am I to understand,’ he asked, his voice toneless, ‘that you are giving me permission to violate my marriage vows?’

‘It would be a marriage of convenience—’

‘But still a marriage.’

‘I’m trying to make this more amenable to you—’

‘To sweeten the deal?’ He cut across her, his voice hard. ‘It still tastes rancid to me.’

‘Please, Leo...’ She swallowed, hating the fact that she had to beg.

Maybe he was right. Perhaps she should go back to Paris, raise the baby on her own. Leo could be the sort of weekend father he claimed he didn’t want to be. Plenty of couples did it—why not them?

Because she was afraid of going it alone. Because she wanted more for her child. So much more than she’d had.

‘You ask so nicely,’ Leo said, his eyes glittering now.

He was furious with her, even after so many months apart. She wondered if his anger could ever be appeased. Perhaps if she told him the truth...if only he would believe it.

‘I’m willing to live in Greece,’ she continued, deciding she might as well say it all.

‘Even in the “middle of nowhere”?’

‘I’d leave my job at Achat. I’d want to stay home with the baby for the first few years, at least.’

‘I thought the whole “housewife routine” bored you to death?’

Once again he was throwing her words back in her face, and she couldn’t blame him. ‘It’s different now.’

‘So you’re saying you want those things? That life?’

He sounded incredulous—contemptuous, even—and bile surged in her stomach again. She swallowed past the metallic taste in her mouth. ‘I’m saying that I am willing,’ she answered. ‘It’s a sacrifice I’m prepared to make.’

‘So I’d be marrying a martyr? What an appealing thought.’

‘You’d be making a sacrifice too,’ Margo replied. ‘I understand that.’

‘I still don’t understand you,’ Leo answered.

‘Why is it so hard to believe I’d be willing to do this?’ Margo demanded. She could take only so much of his sneering disbelief. ‘Most women would.’

‘And yet,’ Leo reminded her softly, ‘you aren’t “most women”.’

She closed her eyes, felt herself sway.

She heard Leo’s sharply indrawn breath. ‘Margo, are you all right?’

His voice was rough, although with impatience or anxiety she couldn’t tell.

She forced her eyes open.

‘I’m just very tired, and still quite nauseous,’ she said levelly. ‘Obviously you need time to think about my—my proposal.’ Not the word she’d wished to use, and Leo’s mouth twisted cynically when she said it. There had been too many proposals already. ‘If you could let me know when you’ve decided...’

‘Are you actually intending to return to France?’ Leo asked sharply. ‘You’re in no condition to travel.’

‘I’ll spend the night at a local hotel,’ she answered, ‘and fly out of Athens tomorrow.’

‘No.’ Leo’s gaze was cold and implacable as he gave his order. ‘You’ll stay here. I’ll give you my answer tomorrow.’

Which made her feel like Scheherazade, wondering if she was to be beheaded in the morning. Not the way she would have wanted to think about her marriage, but she’d reconciled herself, or thought she had, to what life with Leo would be like. She’d told herself it was worth it, that anything was worth it if she could give her baby a stable, loving home.

Even if you and Leo will never love each other?

Some sacrifices, she reminded herself grimly, were necessary. And maybe it would be better this way. Without the complication and risk of loving someone, you could never be hurt. Hopefully.

She rose from her chair, blinking back dizziness. Even so Leo must have seen something in her expression, for he reached forward and steadied her elbow with his hand. It was the first time he’d touched her in three months, since he’d made love to her against the window and then walked away.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, and shook off his hand. ‘Just a little dizzy when I stand up, that’s all.’

‘I’ll arrange for someone to show you to the guest suite,’ Leo said.

He was frowning, although over her dizziness or the whole situation she didn’t know. Couldn’t think. He was right: she really wasn’t in a fit state to travel.

She stood, swaying slightly, as Leo made arrangements on his phone. Then he ended the call and gave her one last, hard look.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said, and Margo knew it was a dismissal.

CHAPTER FOUR

A BABY. HE WAS going to be a father... If the child was truly his. Leo knocked back his third whisky and stared grimly out at the starless night. It had been eight hours since Margo had confronted him in his office, and he was still reeling.

He hadn’t seen her in all that time. Elena had taken her to the house, and then his personal staff had seen to her comforts. He’d called his housekeeper Maria to check on her, and she’d told him that Margo had gone to her room and slept for most of the afternoon. He’d requested that a dinner tray be taken up to her, but Maria had told him it hadn’t been touched.

Anxiety touched with anger gnawed at his gut. If the child was his, he wanted to make sure Margo was staying healthy. Hell, even if the child wasn’t his, he had a responsibility towards any person under his roof. And he hadn’t liked how pale and ill Margo had looked, as if the very life force had been sucked right out of her.

Restlessly Leo rose from the leather club chair where he’d been sitting in the study that had once been his father’s, and then his brother Antonios’s. And now it was his. Six months into his leadership of Marakaios Enterprises and he still burned with the determination to take the company to a new level, to wield the power his father and brother had denied him for so long.

A lifetime of being pushed to the sidelines, being kept in the dark, had taken its toll. He didn’t trust anyone—and especially not Margo. But if the child was his...then why not the cold marriage of convenience she’d suggested? It was what he’d determined he’d wanted after she’d turned him down. No messy emotion, no desperate searching for love. He just hadn’t expected Margo to be his convenient bride.

Grimly Leo turned back to the whisky bottle. What she’d suggested made sense, and yet everything in him resisted it. To live with a woman who had been unfaithful, who had rejected him, and who was now viewing their marriage as the altar upon which she’d sacrifice herself, her hopes and dreams... It was a bitter pill to swallow—and yet what was the alternative? To come to some unsatisfactory custody arrangement and not be nearly as involved in his child’s life as he wanted?

If the child was his.

If it was then Leo knew he had to be involved. He wanted to be the kind of father his own father hadn’t been to him. Loving, interested, open. And he wanted a family—a child, a wife. Why not Margo? He could control his feelings for her. He had no interest in loving her any more.

He could make this marriage work.

* * *

Margo had thought she wouldn’t be able to sleep, but she was so tired that she’d fallen into a deep and thankfully dreamless sleep the moment her head had hit the pillow, after Leo’s housekeeper had shown her to her room.

When she awoke it was dark and the room was chilly, the curtains open to the night sky. Margo rolled over in bed, feeling disorientated and muzzy-headed, as if she were suffering from jet lag or a hangover, or both. She heard a knock on the door, an urgent rat-a-tat-tat that made her think it was not the first knock.

She rose from the bed, pushing her hair out of her face, and went to answer the door.

The housekeeper Maria stood there, with a tray of food. The salad, bread, and lentil soup looked and smelled delicious, but Margo’s stomach roiled all the same. She didn’t think she could manage a mouthful.

‘Efharisto,’ she murmured, and reached out to take the tray.

But Maria would have none of it. She shook her head and bustled into the room, setting the tray on a table in the corner. Bemused, Margo watched as she drew the curtains across the windows and remade the bed, plumping the pillows. She turned on a few table lamps that were scattered about the room and then looked around, seemingly satisfied with how cosy she’d made it in just a few minutes.

‘Efharisto,’ Margo said again, and Maria nodded towards the food.

‘Fae,’ she commanded, and while Margo didn’t recognise the word she could guess what it meant. Eat.

She gave the housekeeper a weak smile and with another nod Maria left the room.

Margo walked over to the tray and took a spoonful of soup, but, warm and nourishing as it was, her stomach roiled again and she left it.

Now that the cobwebs were clearing from her brain she remembered every excruciating detail of her conversation with Leo. His disbelief and his contempt, his suspicion and anger. And now she was stuck here, waiting to see if he would marry her.

Shaking her head at her own stubborn folly, she crawled back into the bed and pulled the covers over herself. She wouldn’t back out of her offer. She cared too much about this child inside her—this child she’d never expected to have, never dared want.

This child she would sacrifice anything for to ensure it had a better childhood, a better life, than she had had. To keep her, or him, safe.

She slept again and when she woke it was dawn, with the first grey light of morning creeping through a crack in the closed curtains. She dozed for a little while longer and then finally got up and went to shower, to prepare herself to meet with Leo and hear his answer—whatever it was.

At eight o’clock Maria knocked on the door and brought in a breakfast tray. Margo didn’t know whether to feel like a pampered princess or a prisoner. At some point, she realised, Maria must have removed the untouched tray from the night before. She must have been sleeping at the time.

‘Efharisto,’ she said again, and Maria gave her a stern look.

‘Fae.’

‘Yes—I mean, ne.’ Margo smiled apologetically. ‘I can’t keep much down, I’m afraid.’

Maria clucked at that, but Margo didn’t think the older woman understood her. She bustled about a bit more, pouring coffee and juice, taking the lids off jam and butter dishes. Finally she left and Margo gazed in dismay at the lavish breakfast Maria had left. The smell of the coffee made her stomach lurch.

For the housekeeper’s sake she tried to eat some yogurt with honey, but after two spoonsful she left it aside and then paced the room, wondering if she should go in search of Leo or wait for him to summon her.

She’d paced for several minutes, restless and anxious, until she realised she was being ridiculous. Had she lost all her spirit since coming here? She might be tired and unwell, and afraid of Leo’s response, but she’d faced far worse obstacles than this and survived. Her strength in the face of adversity was something she clung to and prided herself on.

Determinedly she strode to the door and flung it open—only to stop in her tracks when she saw Leo standing there, looking devastatingly handsome in a crisp white shirt and grey trousers, his ink-dark hair still damp and spiky from a shower. He also looked decidedly nonplussed.

‘Going somewhere?’ he enquired.

‘Looking for you, actually,’ she replied crisply. ‘I’d like your answer, Leo, because I need to get back to Paris. My flight is at two o’clock this afternoon.’

‘Cancel it,’ he returned. ‘You won’t be returning to Paris. Not right now, at any rate.’

She stared at him, as nonplussed as he’d been. ‘Excuse me?’

His eyes flashed and his mouth thinned. ‘Which part of what I said didn’t you understand?’

Margo gritted her teeth. Yesterday she might have donned a hair shirt and beaten her chest in grief and repentance, but clearly that hadn’t been enough for Leo. She didn’t think she could endure a lifetime of snide remarks, all for a crime she hadn’t even committed.

Except you told him you did.

‘Perhaps,’ she suggested, with only a hint of sharpness, ‘we could discuss our future plans in a bit more detail?’

‘Fine. I was coming to get you, anyway. We can go down to my study.’

‘Fine.’

Silently she followed him down the terracotta-tiled corridor to the sweeping double staircase that led to the villa’s soaring entrance hall. Yesterday she’d been too overwhelmed and exhausted to take in any of her surroundings, but today she was keenly aware that this grand place was, in all likelihood, her new home. It seemed, based on what Leo had said about cancelling her flight, that he was going to agree to marry her.

And from the plunging sensation in her stomach she knew she wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

He led her to a wood-panelled study overlooking the villa’s extensive gardens. This late in November they were stark and bare, but Margo could imagine how lush and lovely they would be come spring. Would she walk with her baby out there? Bring a blanket and lie on the grass, look up at the clouds while the baby gurgled and grabbed its feet?

‘Let me cut to the chase,’ Leo said, and Margo was jolted out of her pleasant daydream to the current cold reality.

He stood behind a huge desk of carved mahogany, his hands braced on the back of a chair, his expression implacable.

In the two years they’d been together she’d seen his lazy, knowing smiles, his hooded sleepy gazes. She’d seen him light and laughing, and dangerously, sensually intent. But she hadn’t seen him like this—looking at her as if she were a difficult business client.

Well, if he could be businesslike, then so could she. She straightened and gave him a brisk nod. ‘Please do.’

‘I will marry you—but only on certain conditions.’

Margo took a deep breath and let it out evenly. ‘Which are?’

‘First, we drive to Athens this afternoon and you undergo a paternity test.’

It was no more than she’d expected, although the fact that he believed the baby might not be his still stung. This, at least, was easy to comply with. ‘Very well.’

‘Second, you resign from your job immediately and come and live with me here in Greece.’

So he wanted complete control of her and their child? She couldn’t say she was really surprised. ‘Fine.’

‘Third, you agree to have a local doctor of my choosing provide you with medical care.’

Her temper finally started to fray. ‘I think I’m capable of finding my own doctor, Leo.’

‘Are you?’ He arched an eyebrow, coldly sceptical. ‘Because you came here looking dreadful.’

‘Thanks very much, but my looks have nothing to do with my medical care or lack of it,’ Margo snapped.

How much of this was she supposed to take? Maybe, she thought with a surge of reckless fury, the answer was none of it. She’d come to Leo as a supplicant, truly believing that their child should know his or her father. Trusting that she was making the right decision in seeking to provide the kind of stable home life she’d never had...no matter what the sacrifice to her.

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