Buch lesen: «A Ring For The Greek's Baby»

CHAPTER ONE

WHEN THE SEVENTH TEST came back positive, Emily knew it was time to face the truth. Face it or spend a fortune on pregnancy tests until there wasn’t a pharmacy she could walk into in the whole of London without blushing with an ‘it’s me again’ grimace. She’d thought buying a jumbo box of tampons was embarrassing, but a basket full of pregnancy tests was way worse. There was no avoiding it. Those little blue lines weren’t lying even if she wished they were.

She. Was. Pregnant.

Not that she didn’t want to have a baby. Some day, with some nice guy who was madly in love with her and had married her at a big, white wedding first.

Her first ever one-night stand and look what had happened. How could she be so fertile? How could condoms be so unreliable? How could she have slept with a man so out of her league? Emily was all for aiming high in life, but a Greek billionaire? And not one of those short, fat, balding middle-aged ones, like those in her local deli, but a six-foot-four heart-stoppingly gorgeous man who had eyes so brown you could lose yourself in them.

Which she had promptly done. Completely and utterly lost herself in a sizzling sexual encounter unlike anything she’d experienced before. Which, truth be told, was not saying much, because her experience could hardly be described as extensive given she’d wasted seven years with her ex-partner Daniel. Seven years. Argh! Why couldn’t the number seven be lucky for her like everyone else? For seven long years she’d waited for a proposal. It had got so bad that every time her ex had bent down on one knee to pick something up off the floor she would get all excited thinking this was it—the moment she’d been waiting for.

It had never happened.

What had happened instead was she’d got cheated on. The ignominy of being betrayed was bad enough, but to be left for a male lover was a whole new level of humiliation. How could she have been the last to know Daniel was gay?

But it wasn’t the betrayal that hurt her the most. It was the loss of being a part of a couple; the shock of being single for the first time in so long she had forgotten how to be single. Going out at night without a partner by her side felt weird, like going out with only one shoe on. Or eating in a restaurant on her own, working her way through a meal, wondering if everyone was speculating if she’d been stood up or something.

She used to love going out to dinner with Daniel, who was a bit of a food and wine connoisseur. They would try different restaurants and cuisines and sit for hours over a meal, discussing the food, the presentation, the wine and even the other diners. She used to love coming home from work knowing she had someone to talk to about her day. Daniel had been her ‘guess what happened to me today’ person, her sounding board, her back-up, her anchor. The person who’d provided the stability she’d craved since she was a child.

She hadn’t had much luck since with dating. Her New Age relationship-therapist mother said it was because she was subconsciously sabotaging her male relationships because of her father issues. Father issues. And whose fault was it she didn’t have a father? Her mother hadn’t managed to get his name and number when she’d had sex with him under a rain-soaked tarpaulin at a music festival.

Emily looked at the pregnancy test again. No. She wasn’t having a nightmare. Well, she was. A living nightmare. A nightmare that involved fronting up to commitment-phobe Loukas Kyprianos and telling him he was going to be a father.

Oh, joy.

Such a task would be a whole lot easier if he had called her in the month since their night of bed-wrecking, pulse-throbbing sex. Or sent a text message. Or an email. A carrier pigeon, even. Given her some tiny thread of hope he might want to see her again.

Although, come to think of it, she hadn’t exactly done herself any favours in that department. She could write a book on how to get a guy to lose interest in one date. When she was nervous she talked too much. Way too much. When she gushed like that, she didn’t just wear her heart on her sleeve but on every visible part of her body. A couple of drinks down and she’d mentioned her dream of marriage, four kids and a dog—an Irish Retriever, no less. To a man who had a reputation as an easy come, easy go playboy.

What was wrong with her?

Emily walked out of the bathroom and picked up her phone. No missed calls. No text messages...apart from four from her mother with links to her prescribed daily meditation and yoga practices. It was easier to let her mother think she used the links than to argue why she didn’t. She had learned a long time ago that arguing with her mother was a pointless and energy draining exercise.

Emily didn’t have Loukas’s number even if she could summon up the courage to call it. She could get it from her friend Allegra, who was married to Loukas’s best friend, Draco Papandreou, but somehow telling Loukas over the phone didn’t seem quite the way to go. Hey, guess what? We made a baby! would probably not be such a great opening gambit.

No. This called for a face-to-face conversation. She needed to gauge his reaction. Not that he was an easy person to read. He had one of those faces that gave little away in terms of expression. His facial muscles were into energy saving or something. It was like trying to see what was behind a curtained stage. But he had an aura of quiet authority she’d found overwhelmingly attractive. His aloofness had intrigued her at the wedding. He didn’t seem to need people the way she did. She was like a too-friendly puppy at a garden party, moving from group to group, trying to win approval.

He, on the other hand, was like a statue.

Emily’s phone rang and she almost dropped it in surprise. She didn’t recognise the number and answered it in her best legal secretary voice. ‘Emily Seymour speaking.’

‘It’s Loukas Kyprianos.’

Her heart kicked her ribcage out of the way, leapt to her throat and clung there with hooked claws.

He’d called her. He’d called her. He’d called her.

The words were beating in time with her panicked pulse. She needed more time. She wasn’t ready for this conversation. She needed to rehearse in front of the mirror or something, like she used to do as a kid with a hairbrush as a pretend microphone. She tried to calm herself but her breathing was so choppy it felt as though she was having an asthma attack.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

She could do with some of her mother’s mindfulness techniques right about now. ‘Erm...hi. How are you?’

‘Fine. You?’

‘Erm...good, thank you. Great. Super. Fantastic.’

Apart from a little morning sickness.

There was a tick-tock of silence.

‘Are you free this evening?’

Emily swallowed. Free for what? Hook-up sex? She didn’t want to sound too available. A girl had her pride and all that. But she had to tell him about the baby. Maybe over dinner would be the best way to do it. No. No. No. Not in a public place. She would have to do it in private. Private was best. ‘I’ll have to check my diary. I seem to remember I have something...’

He gave a soft sound that could have passed for an amused chuckle. ‘You don’t have to play hard to get with me, Emily.’

Yes, well, it was a little late for that, she had to admit. The way he said her name with that subtle Greek accent made the base of her spine go all squishy. Em-il-ee. It wasn’t a name when he said it. It was a seductive caress, as if he had circled each and every bump of her vertebrae with a slow-moving fingertip. ‘Look, I think you should know, I’m not usually like that...like I was the night of the wedding. I don’t normally drink so much—’

‘Have dinner with me.’

Emily took umbrage at the way he said it, like a command instead of an invitation. Did he think she’d been sitting by her phone waiting for him to call? Well, she had, but that was beside the point. She wasn’t going to let him think he could call her out of the blue and get her to drop everything to have dinner with him—even if she had nothing to drop. ‘I’m not free this evening so—’

‘Cancel.’

Cancel?

What the hell? Why should she cancel something at his say-so? ‘I don’t think so.’

She was quite proud of the haughty I-haven’t-been-Superglued-to-my-phone-waiting-for-you-to-call tone in her voice.

‘Please?’

Emily let a small silence pass. Let him sweat it out, as she’d been doing for the last month.

‘Why do you want to have dinner with me?’ she finally asked.

‘I want to see you again.’ His voice was rough and smooth. Gravel dipped in honey.

He wanted to see her again? Why? He had a reputation as a playboy, perhaps not as wild and loose-living as some rich men, but he hadn’t had a relationship lasting longer than a few days.

Or, at least, none the press knew about. Since his best friend’s marriage, the media interest had shifted from Draco to Loukas. Before that, Loukas had been able to fly below the radar but now everyone was speculating on whom he would date next. Emily privately had been dreading seeing him with another woman in the weeks since the wedding. If he were involved with someone else then the task of telling him he was to be a father would be even more difficult.

‘Is that code for “sleeping with me”?’ she asked. ‘Because, if so, I think you should know I’m not that sort of girl. I’ve never had a one-night stand before and I—’

‘It wouldn’t be a one-night stand if we did it again.’

It was a good point. But she couldn’t sleep with him before she told him the result of their last encounter. Even thinking about that night in his arms made her insides do cartwheels of excitement. Listening to his voice was as good as foreplay. If he kept talking to her, who knew what might happen? ‘Just dinner, okay?’

‘Just dinner.’

‘Will I meet you somewhere?’

‘I’ll pick you up. What’s your address?’

Emily gave it to him while part of her mind was worrying about what to wear. Little black dress or colour? No. Not too much colour. Not red. Definitely not red. Red was too ‘come and get me’. Pink was too girl-next-door. Did she have time to do her hair? Should she wash and blow-dry it or just scoop it up and hope for the best? Not too much make-up. Subtle and classy was best. Which heels? She needed heels because he was tall—a pair of stilts, even. A night of craning her neck to maintain eye contact would send her muscles into spasm.

‘I would’ve called you before this but I was away on business.’

You still could have called me.

Was his ‘business’ a svelte blonde like the one she’d seen hanging off his arm when she’d searched him online? ‘Really?’

‘Yes. Really.’

Emily chewed at one side of her lower lip. Why had he called her? Hadn’t she put him off with her ‘marriage and kids’ manifesto? Why had she blurted that out anyway? It was a first date no-no. Although, strictly speaking, it hadn’t been a date at all. It had been a chance hook-up. An impulsive act she still couldn’t explain. ‘Why? I mean, it’s not as if I’m your type.’

‘Given your relationship with Allegra and mine with Draco, I wanted to make sure there wasn’t any uncomfortableness about that night, in case we run into each other again because of our connection with them.’

There was going to be a whole heap of uncomfortableness when Emily told him what had resulted from that night. ‘Right...good thinking.’

‘I’ll see you at seven.’

Emily didn’t get a chance to say anything in reply for he ended the call. She stared at her phone, wondering if she should press redial, but then she realised he had a withheld number.

Her mother would say it was a sign.

* * *

Loukas clicked off his phone, placed it on his desk and leaned back in his office chair. He was breaking a rule by contacting Emily Seymour but he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind, or the memory of her touch out of his body.

One-night stands were meant to be exactly that.

One night.

He had occasional relationships but he always kept things casual. Casual worked for him. Casual meant no emotional investment. Casual meant no promises he couldn’t keep. He kept his relationships short, simple and based on sex.

But the sex didn’t get much better than what he’d had with Emily. He wasn’t sure what it was about her that had got him so worked up that night. She was cute in a girl-next-door way, with her petite frame and wavy shoulder-length hair that was neither blonde nor brown but a combination of the two. ‘Bronde’ she’d laughingly called it.

Her eyes were like a fawn’s. Bambi eyes. Toffee-brown and dusted with dark spots that looked like tiny iron filings sprinkled over pools of honey. Her skin was peaches-and-cream and silk, with a scattering of freckles over the bridge of her retroussé nose that reminded him of a dusting of nutmeg. She had a sunny smile, bright and cheery with an endearing little overbite, and well-shaped lips built for kissing...and other things. Those other things had just about blown off the top of his head.

It was true she wasn’t his type. But in another lifetime she might have been. In a parallel life where he didn’t carry guilt like convict’s chains. A life where every day he didn’t relive the stomach-churning moment that had changed everything for his half-sister Ariana and had made him even more of an outcast in his family than he had been before. Even after seventeen years, every time he saw a child’s bike his breath would stop and his guts would turn to gravy. If he heard the sudden squeal of brakes his heart would bang against his sternum like a wrecking ball. The siren of an ambulance sent his pulse sky-rocketing. He still lay awake at night hearing the crunch and crumple of metal and the piercing scream of a critically injured child...

Loukas knew he shouldn’t be seeing Emily again. He shouldn’t have hooked up with her in the first place. But, after having gone straight to the wedding from visiting Ariana in hospital after her latest bout of orthopaedic surgery, those chains of guilt had dug in with a cruel bite. He couldn’t undo the past. It didn’t matter how many times he relived that day. He had ruined his sister’s life and destroyed his mother’s second marriage in the process.

Emily’s smile had been like a bolt of sunshine at the wedding. Her creamy cheeks had blushed when she’d first met his gaze. It had been a long time since he had been with a woman who blushed when he looked at her. He avoided that type usually. But something about Emily had drawn his interest, with her dancing eyes, neat little ballet dancer’s figure and her cute clumsiness. Not to mention her adorable little bunny rabbit twitch where her nose would wrinkle up as if she had an invisible pair of glasses on and was trying to hitch them back up on the bridge of her nose.

He wasn’t going to offer her anything but a temporary fling. He was only interested in the here and now. He was in London for a week working on some software for one of the government’s security agencies. It was too good an opportunity to waste. A week-long fling to enjoy a little more of what they’d experienced that night. He would be upfront and honest about it. He wouldn’t dress it up as anything other than what it was. He would offer her a no-strings, no-promises fling and leave it at that, just as he did with any other woman he took a fancy to.

And he had taken rather a fancy to Emily.

His mind kept going back to that night like a tongue going back to a niggling tooth. Loukas still wasn’t sure why he’d taken her back to his room after Draco and Allegra’s wedding. Emily had been staying on the same floor of Draco’s private villa and he could easily have left her at her door after accompanying her back from the reception. But somehow the impersonal ‘it was nice to meet you’ kiss he’d intended to plant on her cheek had turned into something else. It was as if his lips had had their own agenda. They’d moved from her cheek to her lips like a missile finding a target.

Wham.

One kiss hadn’t been enough. Her soft lips opening under his unleashed a ferocious desire from somewhere deep inside him. A desire that had swept away to some far-off, unreachable place every reason not to sleep with her.

They hadn’t talked much—or at least, he hadn’t. But then, that was his way. Talking had never been his currency in relationships. He was the strong, silent ‘get on with the job’ type. Emily, on the other hand, had talked of her fairy-tale dreams as though he’d been auditioning for the role of handsome prince.

As if that was ever going to happen.

But once it might have...

Loukas pushed out of his chair and turned to look out of the window to the motherboard-like grid of London’s streets below. Crowds of people bustled about like busy ants. He was content with his life as it was...more or less. He had more money than he knew what to do with, a career that was global and a lifestyle that was enviable. It wasn’t like him to leave it a month between lovers, but he hadn’t been with anyone since Emily. He’d been over-the-top busy, certainly, but that didn’t usually stop him from engaging in a bit of sex to relieve the tension with someone who was agreeable to his terms. Terms that didn’t include anything long-or even mid-term. Short-term suited him because he could leave before things got too intense.

However, he didn’t care for the term ‘playboy’ the press labelled him with because it suggested he was shallow and exploitative with women. In reality it was because he wanted to spare his partners unnecessary hurt. He wasn’t like his father who moved from woman to woman with no regard for their feelings, promising them everything and then leaving them with nothing.

Loukas was the opposite. He promised them nothing and left them with generous gifts to soften the end of the affair.

But now the press’s interest in him had gone up a notch. With his best friend now off the market the focus had switched to him. Everywhere he went he had to be mindful of who was watching. The paparazzi were bad enough, but everyone had a camera phone these days, hankering after the money shot, so it was harder and harder to escape the intense interest in his private life.

Was it risky to see Emily again? Probably. But it was only for a week while he was in London. Seven days of sex without strings. The sex had been so damn good that night after the wedding. Good was an understatement. Everything about that night still reverberated in his body like a plucked cello string. He had only to think of her soft little hands with their butterfly touch to feel an aftershock roll through him. Just hearing her voice gave him goose bumps along the flesh of his spine. The soft breathlessness of it, the way she talked too much when she was nervous. The way she chewed at her lower lip and shielded her gaze with those spider-leg-long lashes. The way her cheeks pooled with pink as delicate as the blush of a rose.

He normally steered clear of sweet homespun girls like her. He always kept his head in relationships. Always. But just this once he wasn’t listening to his head. His body was telling him to go for it.

And just this once that was exactly what he planned to do.