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“Don’t cry, sweet’n. Just as soon as we get inside, I’ll give you a bottle.”
Damon stuck out his lower lip as if considering whether or not to accept her offer.
Philip handed the doorman his car keys. “Have someone bring the luggage in the trunk.” He started toward the bank of elevators.
Ginny trailed after Philip, trying to ignore the speculative stares she was getting from the people in the lobby. She breathed a sigh of relief when the elevator doors finally opened, but her relief didn’t last long. A young woman wearing five-inch heels and a superbly cut, slinky black sheath dress hurried into the elevator after them.
“Why, Philip, I didn’t know you were back in Greece. Who’s this?” The woman gestured toward Ginny.
To Ginny’s shock, Philip put his arm around her waist and pulled her up against his hard side. She could feel him pressing into her hip and the heat from his body was crowding her, forcing her out of her comfort zones. But she wasn’t the only one disconcerted by Philip’s actions, Ginny realized, when she saw the incredulous look on the woman’s face.
“This is Ginny Alton.” Philip’s voice deepened as if with a hint of some deeply held emotion. “Ginny, this is Thera Spirios, an old friend of my sister Clytie.”
“Not Clytie, Philip. Sophie.” The woman’s features sharpened in annoyance. “Clytie is years older than me.”
“I’m pleased to meet you,” Ginny lied.
The woman nodded impatiently at Ginny and turned back to Philip. “You are coming to the reception at the French embassy this evening, aren’t you, Philip?”
“No.” Philip gave Ginny a smoldering look that implied he intended to spend his evening making love to her. Even though Ginny knew the look was strictly for show, it still sent an involuntary shiver of anticipation through her.
Why couldn’t Philip have been more like Creon? she thought in dismay. She had had no trouble resisting that philanderer. Why was Philip different?
“Who’s that?” Thera peered closer at Damon who reacted to the unfriendly face by shrieking.
To Ginny’s relief, the elevator doors slid open before Philip could answer Thera. Not waiting for him, Ginny hurried through them into the spacious hallway beyond.
Philip paused a moment to say something to Thera that Ginny couldn’t quite catch. But whatever it was, it didn’t sit well with the woman. Her face turned an unbecoming shade of red, and her thin lips twisted as she stared in impotent frustration as Philip walked out of the elevator.
A discarded girlfriend? Ginny wondered, but had better sense than to ask. Instead, she jiggled the wailing Damon as she waited for Philip to unlock his apartment door.
Ginny followed Philip inside, looking around curiously. The apartment was expensively decorated and very spacious, but it was also strangely impersonal. It looked more like a luxury hotel suite than a private home.
Damon’s howls increased, and Ginny set his car seat down and struggled to unbuckle his squirming body.
“You’re doing that wrong.” Philip brushed her fingers away and deftly unfastened the buckles.
“Fine. Since you know so much, you can take care of him while I heat his bottle.”
Rather to her surprise, he didn’t refuse. Instead, he picked Damon up, holding him out in front of him as if he were a live grenade that might explode at any minute.
“Don’t hold him like that,” Ginny ordered as she rummaged through Damon’s diaper bag for a bottle of formula. “Babies need to feel secure. Where’s the kitchen?”
“Through there.” He nodded toward the right with his head as he gingerly put Damon on his shoulder. “He squishes!” Philip’s eyes widened in horror.
Ginny gave him a limpid smile. “So change him. There’s plenty of diapers in the bag.”
Grateful that Damon was too young to understand the meaning of some of the words Philip was muttering, Ginny headed toward the kitchen.
It didn’t take her long to heat the bottle. She was testing the warmth of the formula on her wrist when she heard Philip bellow. It was immediately followed by Damon’s shriek.
For a moment, she was tempted to leave Philip to solve whatever mess he’d managed to get himself into. Or that Damon had managed to create. But she finally decided that poor Damon had had to put up with enough today.
Ginny followed the sound of Damon’s crying to a large bedroom that was dominated by a huge bed. She gulped as her skin began to tingle. Grimly she tried to squash the unwanted reaction, but it simply burrowed deeper into her chest, raising all sorts of longings. She felt rattled and uncertain—like an adolescent who’d unexpectedly found herself alone in a bedroom with a boy, and she didn’t like the feeling one bit.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was curt with the effort she was making to control her emotions.
Philip raised his head and gave her an agonized look. “The boy...” He gestured from the baby to his chest.
Ginny frowned and then grinned as she suddenly realized what must have happened. When Philip had taken Damon’s wet diaper off, the baby had reacted to the room’s air-conditioning by urinating. All over the front of Philip. Her lips twitched at the thought of the ultrasophisticated Philip being caught unawares. She tried to swallow her laughter, but a giggle escaped.
“I’m sorry,” she choked out with far more politeness than sincerity. “But you...” She completely lost her attempts to control her mirth.
The warm, happy sound of her laughter rolled over Philip’s annoyance, vanquishing it. Intrigued, Philip watched the way her soft lips quirked at the corners. He wanted to take her in his arms and press his mouth against her quivering lips. To absorb her laughter into his own body.
If this was the side of her personality that she’d shown to Creon, it was no wonder that he’d... No! Philip emphatically banished the traitorous thought.
“You finish the boy. I’m going to take a shower.” He stalked toward his bathroom, angry at himself for even considering that she might be telling the truth. Creon wouldn’t have done such a despicable thing to Lydia, and he was dishonoring Creon’s memory by even considering the idea.
Philip’s abrupt exit successfully stilled Ginny’s mirth, and she hurried over to the bed before Damon rolled over and fell off.
“Poor little angel,” she murmured soothingly as she deftly diapered him. “Don’t you worry. I don’t hold it against you. Come on, love. Let’s get some food into your tummy and then you can go to sleep.”
Picking Damon up, she went back to the living room and, sitting down on the very comfortable sofa, popped the nipple into Damon’s mouth. He began to gulp the formula down as if he were in imminent danger of starvation.
Damon polished off his bottle in record time, and Ginny was trying to coax a burp out of him when the phone suddenly rang. She glanced from the phone on the end table to the hallway that led to Philip’s bedroom. Was he still in the shower? Would he want her to answer it?
But even if she did answer it, the person calling might not speak English.
“Should I answer it?” Ginny asked Damon, who wrinkled his button nose and then emitted a huge burp. She chuckled and kissed his downy head. “My sentiments exactly. We’ll...”
She turned at the muffled sound of footsteps on the thick carpeting behind her.
Two
Ginny tensed as she watched Philip stride across the living room. He was wearing a short, white towel wrapped around his lean waist, and nothing else. She stared at his broad chest in fascination. It was covered with a thick pelt of dark hair that intrigued her. She wanted to run her hands over it and see what it felt like. To find out if it were soft and silky or crisp and abrasive.
Mesmerized, Ginny watched the supple movement of the muscles beneath his tautly stretched skin as he picked up the phone. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. Anywhere. Her eyes drifted lower, down over his flat hips and strong legs. Her mouth dried as she watched water droplets trickle down his legs. Slowly, enticingly, the drops caressed his flesh as they meandered downward. She wanted to follow their path. To trace over it with her fingertips and then with her lips.
Philip gestured emphatically as he responded to something his caller had said, and Ginny shivered as Philip’s towel momentarily parted, giving her a tantalizing glimpse of his masculinity. Her eyelids felt heavy, and a tightness was wrapping itself around her chest, making it difficult to take a deep breath.
This was crazy! She made a valiant effort to regain control of her wayward responses. How could she be sitting here all but drooling over a man that she barely knew, and what little she did know she didn’t like? It made no sense.
Ginny tried closing her eyes to shut out the temptation, but it didn’t help. She found Philip’s powerful body clearly imprinted on the back of her eyelids.
Flustered, she opened her eyes and tried concentrating on Damon, but it didn’t help. All she could think about was how closely the color of Damon’s hair matched Philip’s.
It’s only a mindless chemical reaction, she assured herself. Purely physical. The kind of thing that writers had been immortalizing in song and legend since time immemorial. And the very ferocity of her attraction guaranteed that it would quickly consume itself and burn out. A seed of doubt floated through her mind, but she refused to allow it to take root. She was a competent, modern woman who was more than capable of handling an unwanted sexual attraction, starting right now. She would look at him and see nothing but a superb physical specimen.
Ginny slowly raised her head and looked at Philip. Only a superb physical... Her determination wavered as he raised his hand and the muscles in his chest rippled. She found herself wondering what it would feel like if he were to hold her close to his chest. Close enough to feel the movement of those muscles. Close enough...
“No, I don’t think the boy is Creon’s.”
Philip’s curt words ripped through the sensual fog that had entrapped her, and her arms tightened protectively around Damon’s defenseless little body. Grimly, Ginny bit back a furious retort. Yelling at him wouldn’t help Beth. It would only make Philip feel justified in his pigheaded opinion. Besides, what Philip Lysander thought wasn’t all that important in the final analysis, she reminded herself. It was what Jason Papas thought that counted.
“We’ll be there tomorrow morning, Jason.” Philip hung up the phone and turned to Ginny, frowning when he noticed how rigidly she was holding herself in the chair. She looked brittle enough to break, and there was a deep flush on her pale cheeks.
“Umm...” he began, not sure what he wanted to say.
“What?” Ginny clipped the word out, her eyes focused on a point beyond his left shoulder.
Was she embarrassed? he wondered. Embarrassed because he had so easily seen through her lies? Or angry that he had?
He watched as she leaned over the boy and the light from the lamp created golden sparkles in her hair. How could she look like a Botticelli Madonna and yet have had an affair with another woman’s husband?
Philip watched the graceful movement of her hand and she swept back a tendril of hair that had escaped her chignon. What would it feel like to have her hair brush across his skin? He clenched his teeth as he felt himself reacting to the thought. The urge to touch her again was fast reaching a compulsion. A compulsion that worried him. He knew her to be a fraud, preying on a sick old man, so how could he be attracted to her?
“No one is ever going to believe that you’re supposed to be my lover,” he snapped, irritated at the way she refused to look at him. As if he were the one who was doing something wrong.
Ginny cautiously looked up and then wished she hadn’t when her eyes landed on the slight swell visible beneath his towel. Determinedly, she dragged her gaze upward to his face.
“Might I remind you that pretending we are lovers was your bright idea, not mine,” she said. “No one who knows me would believe it.”
“Why not?”
“Because the men I date are all calm, reasonable men who examine the facts before they leap to conclusions.”
“They sound like bloodless bores!”
Ginny frowned at him, refusing to admit even to herself that some of them had been just the faintest bit stultifying.
“They are men of high principles.” She retreated into platitudes.
“You’re trying to tell me that your dates have all been men of high principles, and yet you claim that a married man is your son’s father?” he asked scathingly.
“Be—” Ginny hastily caught herself and rushed on. “I didn’t know he was married. He certainly never said so.”
“He wore a wedding ring.”
“Not in New York he didn’t! And all that’s immaterial.” Ginny tried to redirect the conversation. She most emphatically didn’t want to discuss her love life—such as it was—with Philip. She was edgy enough.
“It isn’t immaterial that no one will believe that we are lovers.”
“You could take out a newspaper ad!”
“Lovers should be comfortable around each other,” he persisted.
Ginny grimaced. She didn’t think she’d ever feel comfortable around him.
“We can start the process by you touching me.” Philip walked over to where she was sitting, stopping scant inches from her.
She could smell the faint cedary fragrance of the soap he’d just used. It reminded her of Christmas and the anticipation that she always felt. As if something wondrous were about to happen. An anticipation much like that which gripped her now.
Touch him? Ginny considered his command. Where? Her eyes lingered on the contrast between his snowy white towel and the dark tone of his skin. Unconsciously, she rubbed the fingers of her free hand over her skirt to try to stop the tingling sensation that danced over them.
Touching him was definitely not a good idea, her mind decided even while her fingers curled in anticipation. But what could it hurt? Ginny tried to rationalize her growing need. In fact, it might help to speed up the time when her fascination with him would fade. And it wasn’t as if she could do more than touch him. Not while she was cradling a sleeping baby.
Giving in to the temptation, Ginny reached out and poked his thigh with a fingertip. There was no give. He was solid muscle.
“Oh, for the...” Philip grabbed her hand and pressed it flat against his bare thigh.
Heat from his body flowed into her receptive flesh, loosening her inhibitions. Tentatively she moved her hand slightly, shivering as the hair on his leg scraped abrasively over her palm. To her mingled dismay and relief, Philip suddenly stepped back.
“It’s a start,” he muttered, and it seemed to Ginny that his voice was deeper.
Could he have been affected by her touch? Was that why he’d retreated? It was an intriguing thought, but not a relevant one, Ginny told herself. It didn’t matter what Philip felt because she couldn’t allow anything to develop between them. Beth was counting on her to get Jason Papas to acknowledge Damon’s right to the family’s financial support, and she couldn’t do that if she were to become emotionally involved with what appeared to be the main opposition to the idea.
“There’s a nursery at the end of the hall off the kitchen that my sisters use when they stay at the apartment,” Philip said. “The boy can sleep there. Your luggage is in the bedroom beside it.”
Without another word, he turned and left the room. A minute later she heard the sound of his bedroom door slam shut.
“And a good-night to you, too,” Ginny muttered as she got to her feet, being careful not to jar the sleeping baby. Things would be better after a good night’s sleep, she told herself as she went to find the nursery. At least she had the comfort of knowing that they couldn’t get much worse!
Absently, Philip pulled his towel off and dropped it on the thick plush carpet. Her continued insistence that Creon was the boy’s father annoyed him, but didn’t really surprise him. Having come this far, she would hardly be likely to change her story simply because he told her he knew that she was lying. She was probably thinking that she would have better luck at convincing a lonely old man that the boy was his grandson.
Philip shoved his fingers through his damp hair in frustration. He knew she was lying. She had to be. Creon couldn’t have had an affair with another woman because Lydia would have said something about it. She would have asked his advice about what to do, and she hadn’t. She’d never said a word against Creon.
He paused as he suddenly realized something. Lydia had never discussed Creon with him. She mentioned Jason occasionally, and she was always talking about her daughters, but he couldn’t ever remember her saying anything about Creon. A trickle of unease oozed through him. Was there some significance to her silence?
He didn’t know, and there was no way he could ask her without revealing what he was trying to hide. And he couldn’t risk that. Lydia had always been the most sensitive of his sisters. The most vulnerable. Creon’s death had hit her very hard. She’d lost weight she couldn’t afford to lose, and her always reserved personality had become almost withdrawn. If she were to find out that a beautiful woman had suddenly appeared, claiming to have had Creon’s son, it could push her so deeply into her shell she might never be able to climb out. A feeling of desperation gripped him.
He had to protect Lydia. But could he? For the moment, Ginny Alton was willing to go along with the charade that the boy was his, but how long her cooperation would last was anyone’s guess.
Philip dressed as he considered his limited options. He needed a lever to use against her, but what? Maybe the fact that Creon hadn’t been seeing her while he’d been in New York? It wasn’t much, but if he could find out how Creon had spent his time when he’d been in New York last year, perhaps it would convince Ginny that her claim wouldn’t stand up to an investigation.
Philip picked up the phone and dialed the number of his company’s New York office. His manager wouldn’t be there at this time of night, but he could leave a message on Essing’s voice mail telling him what he wanted him to do. With luck he’d have a report by tomorrow.
In the meantime, he’d simply have to keep as close to Ginny as he could to make sure she didn’t do or say anything to upset Lydia. He’d stay very close. Philip felt a surge of anticipation that made him vaguely uneasy. Since he couldn’t explain it, he ignored it and went to his study to go over the latest developments in the labor problems at one of his Athens’ factories.
The following day dawned clear and sunny, unlike Ginny’s mood. To her dismay, even though she was now well rested, her first view of Philip over the breakfast table was enough to convince her that a good night’s sleep hadn’t changed anything. He still had a very unsettling effect on her central nervous system. Even the fact that he was casually dressed in tan slacks and a powder blue knit shirt didn’t help.
Sitting down across from Philip, she gave Damon his bottle. That meant that the only thing she could do was to simply wait her compulsion out.
“Don’t you ever feed the boy any real food?”
Ginny looked up to see Philip frowning at Damon’s bottle.
“Damon. His name is Damon. And this is real food if you happen to be four months old.”
