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A security guard she hadn’t seen until that moment walked over to her.
‘Can I help you, miss?’
Ellie pushed her fringe out of her eyes and forced a smile. ‘I’m just waiting for my...friend.’
‘And your friend’s name is?’
Did she dare? And yet, wasn’t the reality that in her belly was growing a son or daughter who might one day be the boss of this mighty corporation? She sucked in a deep breath, telling herself that she had every right to be here.
‘His name is Alek Sarantos,’ she blurted out, but not before she had seen a wary look entering the guard’s eyes.
To his credit—and Ellie’s surprise—he didn’t offer any judgement or try to move her on, he simply nodded.
‘I’ll let his office know you’re here,’ he said, and started to walk towards the reception desk.
He’s going to tell him, thought Ellie as the reality of her situation hit her. He’s going to ring up to Alek’s office and say that some mad, overheated woman is waiting downstairs for him in Reception. It wasn’t too late to make a run for it. She could be gone by the time Alek got down here. She could go back to the New Forest and carry on working for the owner of Candy’s Cupcakes—who wasn’t called Candy at all—and somehow scrape by, doing the best she could for her baby.
But that wasn’t good enough, was it? She didn’t want to bring up a child who had to make do. She didn’t want to have to shop at thrift stores or learn a hundred ways to be inventive with a packet of lentils. She wanted her child to thrive. To have new shoes whenever he or she needed them and not have to worry about whether there was enough money to pay the rent. Because she knew how miserable that could be.
‘Ellie?’
A deep Greek accent broke into her thoughts and Ellie looked up to see Alek Sarantos directly in front of her with the guard a few protective steps away. There was a note of surprise in the way he said her name, and a distinct note of unfriendliness, too.
She supposed she ought to get to her feet. To do something rather than just sit there, like a sack of potatoes which had been dumped. She licked her lips and tried to smile, but a smile was stubbornly refusing to come. And wasn’t it crazy that she could look at someone who was glaring at her and still want him? Hadn’t her body already betrayed her once, without now shamefully prickling with excited recognition—even though she’d never seen him looking quite so intimidating in an immaculately cut business suit?
Keep calm, she told herself. Act like a grown-up.
‘Hello, Alek,’ she said, even managing what she hoped was a friendly smile.
He didn’t react. His blue eyes were cool. No. Cool was the wrong temperature. Icy would be more accurate.
‘What are you doing here?’ he questioned, almost pleasantly—but it didn’t quite conceal the undertone of steel in his voice and she could see the guard stiffen, as if anticipating that some unpleasantness was about to reveal itself.
She wondered what would happen if she just came out and said it. I’m having your baby.You’re going to be a daddy, Alek! That would certainly wipe that cold look from his face! But something stopped her. Something which felt like self-preservation. And pride. She couldn’t afford to just react—she had to think. Not just for herself, but for her baby. In his eyes she’d already betrayed him to the journalist and that had made him go ballistic. She couldn’t tell him about impending fatherhood when there was a brick-house of a guard standing there, flexing his muscles. She ought to give him the opportunity to hear the news in private. She owed him that much.
She kept her gaze and her voice steady—though that wasn’t particularly easy in the light of that forbidding blue stare. ‘I’d prefer to talk to you in private, if you don’t mind.’
Alek felt a sudden darkness envelop his heart as the expression on her face told him everything. He tried to tell himself that it was the shock of finding her here which had sent his thoughts haywire, but he knew that wasn’t true. Because he’d thought about her. Of course he had. He’d even wondered idly about seeing her again—and why wouldn’t he? Why wouldn’t he want a repeat of what had been the best sex he could remember? If only it had been that straightforward, but life rarely was.
He remembered the way he’d lain there afterwards, with his head cradled on her shoulder as he drifted in and out of a dreamy sleep. And her fingers—her soft fingers—had been stroking his hair. It had felt soothing and strangely intimate. It had kick-started something unknown inside him—something threatening enough to freak him out. He had felt the walls closing in on him—just as they were closing in on him right now.
He tried to tell himself that maybe he was mistaken—that it couldn’t possibly be what he most feared. But what else could it be? No woman in her situation would turn up like this and be so unflappable when challenged—not unless she had a trump card to play. Not when he’d left her without so much as a kiss or a promise to call her again. Somehow he sensed that Ellie had more pride than to come here begging him to see her again. She’d been strong, hadn’t she? An equal in his arms and out of them, despite the disparity of their individual circumstances.
He noted the shadows on her face, which suddenly seemed as grey as her eyes, and thought how drained she looked. His mouth tightened and a flare of anger and self-recrimination flooded through him. He was going to have to listen to her. He needed to hear what she had to say. To find out whether what he dreaded was true.
His mind raced. He thought about taking her to a nearby coffee shop. No. Much too public. Should he take her upstairs to his office? That might be easier. Easier to get rid of her afterwards than if he took her home. And he had no desire to take her home. He just wanted her out of his life. To forget that he’d ever met her. ‘You’d better come up to my office.’
‘Okay,’ she said, her voice sounding brittle.
It felt bizarre to ride up in the elevator in silence but he didn’t want to open any kind of discussion in such a confined space, and she seemed to feel the same. When the doors opened she followed him through the outer office and he looked across at Vasos.
‘Hold all my calls,’ he said—catching the flicker of surprise in his assistant’s eyes.
‘Yes, boss.’
Soon they were in his cool suite of offices, which overlooked the city skyline, and he thought how out of place she looked, with her flower-sprigged cotton dress and pale legs. And yet despite a face which was almost bare of make-up and the fact that her hair was hanging down her back in that thick ponytail—there was still something about her which made his body tense with a primitive recognition he didn’t understand. Even though she looked pasty and had obviously lost weight, part of him still wanted to pin her down against that leather couch, which stood in the corner, and to lose himself deep inside her honeyed softness. His mouth flattened.
‘Sit down,’ he said.
‘There’s no need.’ She hesitated, like a guest who had turned up at the wrong party and wasn’t quite sure how to explain herself to the host. ‘You probably want to know why I’ve turned up like this—’
‘I know exactly why.’ Never had it been more of an ordeal to keep his voice steady, but he knew that psychologically it was better to tell than to be told. To remain in control. His words came out calmly, belying the sudden flare of fear deep in his gut. ‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’
She swayed. She actually swayed—reaching out to grab the edge of his desk. And despite his anger, Alek strode across the office and took hold of her shoulders and he could feel his fingers sinking into her soft flesh as he levered her down onto a chair.
‘Sit down,’ he repeated.
Her voice was wobbly. ‘I don’t want to sit down.’
‘And I don’t want the responsibility of you passing out on the floor of my office,’ he snapped. But he pulled his hands away from her—as if continuing to touch her might risk him behaving like the biggest of all fools for a second time. He didn’t want the responsibility of her, full stop. He wanted her to be nothing but a fast-fading memory of an interlude he’d rather forget—but that wasn’t going to happen. Not now. Raising his voice, he called for his assistant. ‘Vasos!’
Vasos appeared at the door immediately—unable to hide his look of surprise as he saw his boss leaning over the woman who was sitting slumped on a chair.
‘Get me some water.’ Alek spoke in Greek. ‘Quickly.’
The assistant returned seconds later with a glass, his eyes still curious. ‘Will there be anything else, boss?’
‘Nothing else.’ Alek took the water from him. ‘Just leave us. And hold all my calls.’
As Vasos closed the door behind him Alek held the glass to her lips. Her eyes were suspicious and her body tense. She reminded him of a stray kitten he’d once brought into the house as a child. The animal had been a flea-ridden bag of bones and Alek had painstakingly brought it back to full and gleaming health. It had been something he’d felt proud of. Something in that cold mausoleum of a house for him to care about. And then his father had discovered it, and...and...
His throat suddenly felt as if it had nails in it. Why remember something like that now? ‘Drink it,’ he said harshly. ‘It isn’t poison.’
She raised her eyes to his and the suspicion in them had been replaced by a flicker of defiance.
‘But you’d probably like it to be,’ she answered quietly.
He didn’t answer—he didn’t trust himself to. He blocked out the maelstrom of emotions which seemed to be hovering like dark spectres and waited until a little colour had returned to her cheeks. Then he walked over to his desk and put the glass down, before positioning himself in front of the vast expanse of window, his arms crossed.
‘You’d better start explaining,’ he said.
Ellie stared up at him. The water had restored some of her strength, but one glance at the angry sizzle from his blue eyes was enough to remind her that she was here on a mission. She wasn’t trying to win friends or influence people, or because she hoped for a repeat of the passion which had got her into this situation in the first place. So keep emotion out of it, she told herself fiercely. Keep to the plain and brutal facts and then you can deal with them.
‘There isn’t really a lot to explain. I’m having a baby.’
‘We used a condom,’ he iced back. ‘You know we did.’
Stupidly, that made her blush. As if discussing contraception in his place of work was hopelessly inappropriate. But while it might be inappropriate, it was also necessary, she reminded herself grimly. And she was not going to let him intimidate her. It had taken two of them to get into this situation—therefore they both needed to accept responsibility.
‘I also know that condoms aren’t one hundred per cent reliable,’ she said.
‘So. You’re an expert, are you?’ He looked at her with distaste. ‘Perhaps there are other men to whom you’ve taken this tale of woe. How many more in the running, I wonder—could you tell me my position on the list, just so I know?’
Ellie clenched her fists as a wave of fury washed over her. She didn’t need this—not in any circumstances but especially not now. She made to rise to her feet, but her legs were stubbornly refusing to obey her brain. And even though at that moment she wanted to run out of there and never return, she knew that flight was an indulgence she simply couldn’t afford.
‘There’s nobody else in the running,’ she spat out. ‘Maybe you’re different, but I don’t have sex with more than one person at the same time. So why don’t you keep your unfounded accusations to yourself? I didn’t come here to be your punchbag!’
‘No? Then what did you come for?’ The brief savagery of his dark features realigned themselves into a quizzical expression. ‘Is it money you want?’
‘Money?’
‘That’s what I said.’
Ellie’s anger intensified but somehow that seemed to help, because it was giving her focus. It was making her want to fight. Not for herself, but for the tiny life growing inside her. Because that was what was important. That was the reason she had come here today, even though she’d known it was going to be an ordeal. So think before you answer. Don’t make cheap retorts just for the sake of trying to score points. Show him you mean business. Because you do.
‘I’m here to give you the facts,’ she said. ‘Because I thought it was your right to have them. That you needed to be aware that there were consequences to what happened that afternoon.’
‘A little dramatic, isn’t it? Just turning up here like this. Couldn’t you have called first to warn me?’
‘You think I should have done that? Really?’ She tipped her head to one side and looked at him. ‘I didn’t have your number because you deliberately didn’t give it to me, but even if I’d managed to get hold of it—would you have spoken to me? I don’t think so.’
Alek considered her words. No, he probably wouldn’t, despite his faintly irrational desire to see her again. Through Vasos, he would have demanded she put everything down in an email. He would have kept her at an emotional distance, as he did with all women. But he was beginning to realise that the whys and wherefores of what had happened between them were irrelevant. Didn’t matter that she’d broken a cardinal rule and invaded his workspace. There was only one thing which mattered and that was what she had just told him.
And this was one reality he couldn’t just walk away from. He asked the question as if he were following some ancient male-female rule book, but if his question sounded lifeless it was because deep down he knew the answer. ‘How do I know it’s mine?’
‘You think I’d be here if it wasn’t? That I’d be putting myself through this kind of aggravation if it was someone else’s baby?’
He tried telling himself that she might be calling his bluff and that he could demand a DNA test, which would have to wait until the child was born. And yet, once again something told him that no such test would be needed, and he wasn’t sure why. Was it the certainty on her pale face which told him that he was the father of her child, or something more subtly complex, which defied all logic? He could hear the door of the prison swinging shut and the sound of the key being turned. He was trapped. Again. And it was the worst feeling in the world. He remembered that distant fortress and his voice sounded gritty. Like it was coming from a long way away. ‘What do you want from me?’
There was a pause as those shadowed grey eyes met his.
‘I want you to marry me,’ she said.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_2267fa89-89f4-5bf4-adcd-5911b3e5583b)
WITH NARROWED EYES, Alek looked at her. ‘Or what?’ he questioned with soft venom. ‘Marry you or you’ll run blabbing to your journalist friend again? This would be a real scoop, wouldn’t it? Pregnant With the Greek’s Child.’
Meeting the accusation on his face, Ellie tried to stay calm. She hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that—in fact, she hadn’t really been planning to say that at all. She had meant to tell him that she was planning to have the baby and would respect whatever decision he made about his own involvement. She had intended to imply that she wasn’t bothered one way or another—and she certainly wasn’t intending to control or manipulate what was happening.
But something had happened to her during the awkward conversation which had just taken place in the alien surroundings of his penthouse office. With the air-conditioning freezing tiny beads of sweat to her forehead and her cotton dress clinging to her like a dishcloth she had felt worse than ugly. Surrounded by the unbelievable wealth of Alek’s penthouse office suite, she had felt invisible.
She thought about all the women she’d seen leaving the building—clipping along in their high-heeled shoes with not a hair out of place. Those were the kind of women he dealt with on a daily basis, with their air of purpose and their slim, toned figures. Where did she fit into that world, with her cheap dress and a growing belly and a feeling that she had no real place of her own?
Because she didn’t have any real place of her own. This was his world and neither she nor her baby belonged in it. How long before he conveniently forgot he had sired a child in a moment of ill-thought-out passion? How long before he married someone classy and had legitimate children who would inherit everything he owned, while her own child shrank into the shadows, forgotten and overlooked? Didn’t she know better than anyone that unwanted children usually stayed that way? She knew what it was like to be rejected by her own father.
And that was her light-bulb moment. The moment when she knew exactly what she was going to ask for. Her ego didn’t matter and neither did her pride, because this was more important than both those things. This was for her baby.
‘I’m not threatening to blackmail you,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve told you until I was blue in the face that the whole journalist thing was a stupid mistake, which I don’t intend on repeating. I just want you to marry me, that’s all.’
‘That’s all?’ he echoed with a cruel replica of a smile. ‘Why?’
‘Because you’re so charming, of course,’ she snapped. ‘And so thoughtful and—’
‘Why?’ he repeated, a note of steel entering his voice—as if he suspected that behind her flippancy she was teetering perilously on the brink of hysteria.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ With an effort she kept her gaze steady, but inside her heart was pounding so loudly she was certain he must be able to hear it. ‘Because I want my baby to have some kind of security.’
‘Which doesn’t need to involve marriage,’ he said coldly. ‘If the baby really is mine, then I will accept responsibility. I can give you money. A house.’ He shrugged. ‘Some baubles for yourself, if that’s what you’re angling for.’
Baubles? Baubles? Did he really think her so shallow that he thought jewels might be her motivation? ‘It isn’t,’ she said, her cheeks growing pink, ‘just about the money.’
‘Really? Woman claims money isn’t her sole motivation.’ He gave a cynical laugh. ‘Wow! That must be a first. So if it isn’t about the money—then what is it about?’
Distractedly, she rubbed at her forehead. ‘I want him—or her—to know who they are—to have a real identity. I want them to bear their father’s name.’
She saw the darkness which passed over his face like a cloud crossing the sun.
‘And I might not have the kind of name you would want to associate with your baby,’ he said harshly.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
But Alek shook his head as the old familiar shutters came slamming down—effectively sealing him off from her questions. Because marriage was a no-no for him—right at the very top of things he was never going to do. And although he’d shaken off his past a long time ago—he could never entirely escape its long tentacles. They reached out and whipped him when he wasn’t expecting it. In the darkness of the night they sometimes slithered over his skin, reminding him of things he’d rather forget.
His parents’ marriage had been the dark canker at the heart of his life, whose poison had spilled over into so many places. The union between a cruel man and a woman he despised so much that he couldn’t even bear to say her name. His mouth hardened. Why the hell would he ever want to marry?
Alek’s success had been public, but he’d managed to keep his life private. He had locked himself within an emotional shell in order to protect himself and he rarely let anyone get close. And hadn’t that been another reason for his anger with Ellie? Not just because her indiscretion had tarnished his hard-won business reputation, but because she’d broken his foolishly misplaced trust in her.
‘Maybe I’m not great husband material,’ he told her. ‘Ask any of the women I’ve dated and I’m sure they’d be happy to list all my failings. I’m selfish. I’m intolerant. I work too hard and have a low boredom threshold—especially where women are concerned.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Shall I continue?’
She shook her head, so that her ponytail swung from side to side. ‘I’m not talking about a real marriage. I’m talking about a legal contract with a finite time limit.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Because?’
‘Because I don’t want my baby to be born illegitimate—I’m illegitimate myself. But neither do I want to spend the rest of my life with someone who doesn’t even seem to like me. I’m not a complete masochist—’
‘Just a partial one?’ he put in mockingly.
‘I must have been,’ she said bitterly, ‘to have had sex with you.’
‘Pretty amazing sex, though,’ he said, almost as an aside.
Deliberately, Ellie pushed that thought away, even though just the mention of it was enough to start her body tingling. Yes, it had been amazing. It had started out in anger but it had turned into something else. Something passionate and all consuming, which had completely blown her away. Had he felt it, too—that incredible connection? Or was she doing that thing women were so good at doing? Believing something to be true because you wanted it to be true.
‘It doesn’t matter now what the sex was like,’ she said slowly. ‘Because the only thing that matters now is the baby.’
He flinched as she said the word. She could see his jaw harden so that it looked as if it were carved from granite.
‘Cut to the chase and tell me exactly what you’re proposing,’ he said.
