He’d never held a baby in his life. ‘How breakable is he?’
‘If you don’t drop him, we won’t find out.’ Then she smiled. ‘You won’t drop him, so don’t worry. Here.’ She passed the happy, curious child to him.
Baby Nikos, completely unperturbed to be handed to a stranger, immediately grabbed at Nikos’s nose.
Having expected something light and noticeably fragile, it was a relief to feel his son’s solidity, even if it did come with additional bounce.
He laughed and met Marisa’s stare again. ‘He’s beautiful,’ he said, awestruck.
‘Yes. He is.’ She sighed but her expression was as enchanted as he knew his must be. It was an expression that put to rest his fears that she could be anything like his own mother. Then her expression changed into something wistful. ‘Let me change his nappy and then we’ll get him some breakfast.’
* * *
The hours that passed were the most surreal of Nikos’s life. As someone who’d never wanted to be tied down by anything so had never considered having a child, even as some distant future thing, the depth of feelings for his son were like nothing he’d felt before. And they were immediate. One look and he’d been spellbound.
But that wasn’t the most surreal aspect. Marisa’s willingness to show him the ropes and to answer all his questions about their child—and there were many, he had almost a year of his son’s life to catch up on—was astounding. Considering how his resurrection had affected her, he’d braced himself for a fight, had half expected her to make a quick introduction and then boot him out of her home.
He’d also braced himself for her mother’s appearance but Rosaria had surprised him too. She’d returned from the hotel and joined them for brunch in the dining room, much thinner than he remembered but as impeccably made up, her demeanour curious but with only a little of the frostiness he’d expected.
Not until Marisa announced she was going to put their son down for a nap and would take a shower, leaving him and Rosaria alone together, did she bring up the elephant in the room. Namely, his faked death.
He explained it as he’d done to Marisa the night before. She listened carefully and asked many questions, only little tells of emotions flickering on her face. He’d just finished his narration when Marisa returned.
When she’d left the dining room she’d still been wearing the ugly party dress she’d slept in and her hair had turned into something that had resembled a rat’s nest.
The transformation was remarkable. Her slim body was wrapped in a summery patterned teal chiffon off-the-shoulder dress that fell just below the knees, her hair damp and already drying into its natural curl with no frizz in sight. She’d applied a little make-up and, as she strode to the table, he found himself straightening when he caught a waft of her perfume. She smelled amazing.
She sat next to her mother opposite him and poured herself a coffee before turning her dark brown stare on him. ‘You’ve been filling Mama in on your death?’
Nerve endings stirring, he clenched his hands and shifted in his seat as he inclined his head. ‘Is Niki sleeping?’ Nikos couldn’t believe how easily the diminutive of his son’s name had come to him.
‘Yes.’ She put the baby monitor on the table.
‘Good. I have a proposition to discuss with you both.’
His lips twitched to see their heads tilt in unison.
‘I want to buy into your business.’
* * *
The time spent alone after putting Niki down for his nap had given Marisa time to collect herself. She’d been certain Nikos would want to discuss access and custody and all the things he, as a father, had a right to discuss, and she had wanted to be cool, calm and collected enough to deal with it.
The traumas of the last eighteen months had aged her inside and out. She’d carried a child. Her previously flat stomach was now rounded with silvery scars across her abdomen. Permanent exhaustion meant her skin no longer glowed with health and vitality, but the simple acts of showering and changing into non-horrible clothes had calmed her and made her feel better in herself, and she’d entered the room confident she was now in the right mental space to handle him.
But her confidence had been a delusion. One look at Nikos breathing and talking was enough to make her poise wobble. His comment that he wanted to buy into the business shattered it.
Nikos’s stare flickered to her mother before his light brown eyes settled on her. ‘If you’re in agreement, we’ll have the business independently audited and I will pay the recommended value for a third share of it. We will draft an agreement where the three of us each own a third or, if you prefer, the two of you and Elsa own two-thirds between you. Marisa retains overall control but we appoint someone—I have someone in mind—to manage the day-to-day running of it.’ He nodded his head at her. ‘That person will report directly to you.’
Marisa was too dumbfounded to speak. Nikos owned a chain of nightclubs across Europe. He invested in tech companies. His business interests were diverse but the common theme amongst them was that they were ‘hip’. The Lopezes’ shipping company was far too old-school and traditional to ever be called hip. In their six months together he’d been interested in the work she did but had never shown the slightest interest in the business as an entity, so for him to make this proposition...
It was left to her mother to pull herself together and ask the pertinent question. ‘You want to buy into the business...but why?’
‘To dissuade Raul Torres from starting a war against you.’ He turned his gaze back to Marisa. ‘I spoke to him last night, after you fell asleep. You were right about him wanting revenge for ending your engagement.’
Her head felt light. Fuzzy. Since waking, she’d been so wrapped up in Nikos and their son that she’d forgotten all about Raul. ‘You spoke to him? About our engagement?’ While she’d been zonked out on his sofa?
He shrugged. ‘He called your phone. I didn’t want to wake you so I answered it. We met in the lobby.’
Marisa clutched at her cheeks, digging her nails into the skin to sharpen her wits. ‘What did you talk about?’
‘It wasn’t a long conversation. I told him the engagement was off and that your businesses would no longer be aligning. He wants the ring returned,’ he added indifferently.
She touched the finger it should have been on. She’d stopped wearing the ring within weeks of the engagement, only slipping it on when she saw Raul. It had never felt right there.
It had been little over half a day since Nikos had appeared like a ghost at her engagement party. He’d lobbed one shock after another at her, all without breaking a sweat. Look at him now, announcing the termination of her engagement and the business deal she’d arranged with the nonchalance of someone announcing what they’d be having for their dinner.
She inhaled deeply through her nose and said through gritted teeth, ‘What gave you the right to do that?’
‘Can someone tell me what’s going on?’ her mother interjected. ‘You’re ending your engagement to Raul?’
Glaring at Nikos for revealing something she hadn’t got round to telling her mother about, she braced herself. ‘Yes.’
‘Thank God for that.’
Marisa faced her mother, open-mouthed with shock.
Her mother smiled wanly and shrugged. ‘I never thought he was right for you.’
‘Then why didn’t you say anything?’
‘I did try,’ she reminded her gently, her eyes conveying a reminder of a conversation between them that she would never repeat in front of Nikos. That she’d thought it was too soon for her. That Marisa shouldn’t commit to another man when her heart still belonged to Nikos.
Marisa had batted her mother’s doubts away. Giving her heart wasn’t part of the deal with Raul. She had no choice when it came to loving her son, that was something primal and ferocious, but her love for Nikos had been too
strong, the pain of his loss too much to ever risk feeling like that about anyone again.
Turning back to Nikos, she glared at him even as her heart cried. ‘I want you to explain why you took it on yourself to end my engagement when I have a voice of my own.’
Her eighteen months spent mourning him had allowed her to put rose-tinted glasses on some of the less savoury aspects of his personality, namely his take-charge attitude. She wouldn’t go so far as to call him a control freak but when given a problem, he would immediately see a solution and implement it, which was great if you’d asked for a solution, not so great if you hadn’t.
She remembered them speaking via their personal laptops once when her screen had kept turning itself off. In the morning, a package had arrived before she’d set off for work. A brand new laptop from Nikos. It hadn’t occurred to him that she would prefer to fix her current laptop and that if it wasn’t fixable, choose a new one for herself. She’d been touched at the gesture but irritated that he’d gone ahead and sorted it without any consultation with her.
‘You were worried he’d turn nasty,’ he said with a shrug. ‘And you were right to be. But he will only pick a fight he knows he can win. He’ll think twice about starting a war against you if I’m part of the business.’
Her jaw would snap if she ground her teeth any harder. ‘Is that because only a man can save us?’
His eyes flashed. ‘No, because I’m someone who’s dealt with bullies like him before and know how to handle them.’
‘What do you think we’ve spent the past year doing against the cartel?’ she snapped back. ‘My mother met with their representatives on her own with a secret recording device to get evidence against them. Hers was the only non-circumstantial evidence that allowed their arrests. Without her you’d still be playing dead.’
Nikos dug the tips of his fingers on the table and leaned forward, glowering into the furious wide brown eyes.
He knew exactly the danger Rosaria had put herself in, knew too that she’d done it out of the protective mothering instinct his own mother had been born without. The united front and open defiance the whole Lopez family, Marisa included, had shown the cartel in the face of their intimidation tactics and violence had been astounding, but her insinuation that he’d hidden away like a coward until it was all over was beyond insulting.
That it was also close to how he’d felt during those impossibly long months only added fuel to his fury.
Having to stay hidden, far from civilisation, thousands of kilometres from the action, reliant on emailed reports for news of what the hell was going on, unable to influence anything, his only contribution the millions of his own money he’d thrown into it, had been torture. If the cabin he’d been given to bunker down in hadn’t needed constant maintenance, he would have gone stir crazy.
He’d given up his life to bring those bastards down. He’d lived as a recluse in an alien landscape. He’d done all that in part to protect her. To neutralise the cartel’s interest in her as a means to get to him.
‘What you two did to help defeat the cartel was incredible,’ he said, keeping a tight hold on his anger. ‘But Raul is a different kind of danger. You said so yourself. During my talk with him last night, I made it clear that if he attempts any kind of sabotage, I’ll come after him.’
Mimicking his pose, she put her own fingers on the table and leaned towards him. ‘For all we know, your threats might have made it more likely that he’ll try to sabotage us.’
‘My buying into the company puts my presence front and centre for him, and if he’s got any sense and searches my history, he’ll learn I’m not a man who makes threats—I make promises.’ There was a big part of him that hoped Raul did try some sabotage. It would give him the excuse he needed to destroy the man who’d abandoned his son and his son’s mother when they’d most needed him.
Never had he felt such loathing for another human being, different even from his hatred for the cartel who’d wreaked such evil damage. Every second of their chat had been spent fighting the urge to ram his fist in his face. Not even spelling out in graphic detail exactly what he would do should Raul attempt any retribution against the Lopezes and witnessing the Spaniard’s smug exterior crack had sated the urge.
‘You didn’t even consult me about it!’ she raged. ‘You took it on yourself to end my engagement and threaten, promise, whatever you want to call it, a man I categorically told you I did not want to start a war with!’
‘My chat with him last night was to prevent a war,’ he bit back.
Her dark brown eyes were ablaze and locked on his, the sparks shooting from them landing on his skin and penetrating into his bloodstream. The angry colour heightening her cheeks brought to mind so clearly the exact shade on her skin when he brought her to orgasm that he pressed his fingers even harder on the table to stop them snatching her to him. Theos, she aroused him, every part of him.
‘And I don’t know why you’re directing your anger at me when I’m trying to help you,’ he continued. ‘You proposed to Raul because you wanted a father for Niki and help in running the business—I’m his father and I’m offering you that help. I’m also offering an investment in it and giving you the opportunity that you wanted to have someone help you so you can take a step back without losing control. My offer gives you everything you wanted with added protection and your family retains majority control.’
The babbling that suddenly came through the baby monitor cut through the tense atmosphere like a grenade.
CHAPTER FIVE
MARISA LOOKED FROM the baby monitor to Nikos, blinking rapidly as she got to her feet. ‘I’ll get him,’ she said tightly. ‘Mama, don’t agree to anything without me.’
Her exit did nothing to lessen the tension permeating the air, which had tautened Nikos’s muscles.
Rosaria had dropped her attempt at friendliness, her demeanour now cool and scrutinising. She studied him for a long time before speaking. ‘Why do you really want to buy into our business?’
‘For the reasons I’ve already said. Your family has been through enough—it doesn’t need a war with Raul Torres.’
‘I was never happy about that relationship. There’s something about him I never trusted. I offered to stay on and help her with the business but my role was so limited there was little help I could give.’ Her tone softened, eyes turning misty. ‘Marisa inherited her business brain from her father.’
The business had always been her father’s domain, Nikos remembered. Rosaria had been involved too but to a much lesser extent. Both Marco and Rosaria had looked forward to handing the reins to Marisa and retiring together. And Marisa had looked forward to it too. He’d admired her dedication, her insistence in learning every single aspect of the business before she took over, her determination to run it as well and as profitably as her father had.
It was supposed to happen when she turned twenty-five. She’d turned that age two months ago. The business had been hers a year before she would have considered herself ready to take it on.
Suddenly it hit him fully what a torrid time she’d had. The responsibility that had been cast onto her young shoulders. All that while grieving, juggling the threat of the cartel and the demands of a newborn baby.
The angry tension in his muscles loosened as he imagined the strength it must have taken her to get through all that.
‘But Marisa is headstrong,’ Rosaria continued in a stronger voice. ‘You tell her not to do something, she’s twice as likely to do it. She inherited that from me. But what I don’t understand is why you would want to help us in this way.’
‘For my son. Taking the pressure off Marisa can only benefit him, and I’m not being entirely altruistic—it’s a good investment.’
‘I know it’s a good investment.’ Her gaze did not waver. ‘What I’m wondering is if your intention is to invest in my daughter too.’
Invest
in a bed to take her in, he thought before he could stop himself. His blood still hummed from the fire that had blazed between them only minutes ago.
Theos, he needed to find himself a new lover.
Keeping his tone even, he said, ‘My only interest in your daughter now is as the mother of my son.’
Rosaria leaned across the table and covered his hand, forcing him to keep their stares locked together. ‘Marisa has been to hell. If you ever had any feelings for her, do not put her back there. And don’t look at me like that,’ she continued when he raised a brow. ‘Marisa is as strong a woman as I’ve ever known but she’s only human. I won’t have her hurt again. If you don’t see yourself having a future with her then...’
‘I’ve already made that clear to her,’ he interrupted, removing his hand. Then, reminding himself that this was a woman whose husband had been killed and whose youngest daughter had been targeted for kidnap, he modulated his tone. ‘I’m not here to rekindle our old relationship. We’ve both moved on but we do need to form an amicable relationship for our son’s sake.’ He knew better than anyone how children could suffer from parents at war who put their own needs and desires first.
‘You don’t need to worry about me, Mama. Nikos and I are history.’
The buzz in his veins flared up again.
Carrying their son in her arms, Marisa strode back to her seat. She threw a saccharine sweet smile at him before speaking to her mother. ‘Tell me you haven’t agreed to anything yet.’
‘I’m going to respect your judgement on this one,’ her mother said before slipping into Spanish. ‘If you do agree to it, make sure you have it written into any contract that he’s forbidden from killing himself again.’
Marisa’s gaze landed on him as she replied, also in Spanish, ‘I’d kill him myself if he did that again.’
A surprising bubble of mirth rose up his throat, a welcome antidote to the bile that had lodged in it at Marisa’s chirpily delivered announcement that they were history.
The Secret Behind the Greek's Return Page 5
