‘I…I don’t have to listen to this, Vanessa.’
‘Oh, but you do, Rebecca, you most certainly do. You’ve not just lost me one of my most prestigious customers—but all the possible associates he might have brought with him! The least you can do is hear me out!’
‘But there’s nothing left to say, is there?’ asked Rebecca, her heart beating fast, intuition telling her that Vanessa still hadn’t worked out the worst part of the whole situation.
‘There’s plenty to say!’ stormed Vanessa. ‘You’ve made my organisation look unprofessional and you’ve only helped to further ruin the reputation of cabin crew everywhere!’
‘Look, I’ve said I’m sorry,’ said Rebecca again. ‘Really I am—but Xandros was so persistent…and I…I…’
But Vanessa’s face went red with rage. ‘Oh, was he? Well, in my experience men are never persistent unless they get the green light from a woman.’ She slammed her pen down on the desk. ‘And let me tell you something else—and that is that you’ll never work in this industry again. I’ll make sure of that. Now get out.’
There was one hazy segment of her mind which made Rebecca wonder if you could be kicked out on the street in this day and age. Until she reminded herself that what she had done would rightly be defined as gross misconduct, which was a sacking offence. And what would she prefer: to walk out of here now and never see anyone from Evolo again—or to work out her notice and really give them something to talk about?
‘I’ll have my uniform sent back,’ she whispered.
‘Dry-cleaned, if you please,’ said Vanessa sharply.
All the way home, Rebecca felt like an alien who had just landed from outer space and was masquerading as a human. As if she didn’t belong—not anywhere. She needed someone to turn to, but who could you turn to at a time like this?
Her widowed mother had remarried and gone to live in Australia. How could she ring her up and say: Mum, I’m going to have a baby with a man I never expect to see again?
She couldn’t possibly tell any of the friends she’d made through work, could she? Vanessa would probably accuse them of fraternising with the enemy and it might put their own jobs on the line. And although her two best girlfriends were always there for her, both were busy with their careers and neither of them lived in London. If they had done, then maybe her terrible news would have all come tumbling out over a cup of coffee—but the truth of it was that she felt oddly ill at ease about telling anyone.
Especially when you haven’t even told the father!
Rebecca shivered. The hot August sun was beating down on her head, but inside she felt as if someone had replaced her blood with ice cubes as the undeniable words rattled round and round in her head.
I’m going to have a baby. That was the reality.
With no man, no job and no prospects. That was reality, too.
Rebecca stood stock-still as a red London bus swept by, the faces on it all blurred as one question kept going round and round in her head. What the hell was she going to do?
There weren’t really a lot of options open to her.
Surreptitiously, her hand crept to her belly. It was bigger, definitely bigger—but no one else had noticed. Not yet. Because Vanessa would surely have leapt on that if she’d thought that Rebecca was carrying Xandros’s baby.
Xandros’s baby. She shivered. Her Greek ex-lover was going to be a father and he didn’t know. No one knew, but soon it would become all too apparent—and then what?
Then what?
She went home and carefully removed her uniform before putting on a summer dress—turning to look at herself from every angle in the mirror which stood in one corner of her tiny bedroom. The dress was filmy—it hinted at the body beneath instead of hugging it. To the uninformed eye, she looked just like a healthy and curvy young woman—with no clue to the new life which was growing within.
Among a clutter of bangles in a half-open drawer she caught a glimpse of something shiny. A stab of pain catching her unawares, she saw the silver and amber earrings which Xandros had given her that last, fateful night.
Had they been intended as a farewell gift? She thought so. In the end it had worked out differently from the way she suspected he must have planned it. Their relationship had ended dramatically—but the fact that it had finished hadn’t come as a complete shock to her, had it?
But now there was a huge and lasting consequence to their liaison and she needed to be as grown-up about it as she had ever been in her life. Because Xandros might not have chosen to create a new life in those circumstances—she certainly wouldn’t have done—but it was a done deal now. This baby existed and didn’t he, as the father, have the right to know about it?
Of course he had a right. Rebecca had adored her own father—how terrible if she had been denied a relationship with him simply because he and her mother had not been together.
Yet deciding to tell him was one thing, actually doing it was another matter—especially after she had her twelve-week scan, when she knew that she really could not delay it for a second longer. A letter seemed so impersonal—and this was most definitely about a person. Several times she picked up the telephone and put it down again. How could you tell a man like Xandros something as momentous as this over the phone?
But it was more than that. A long-distance call could conceal so much, no matter how good the connection. And what if he refused to take her call—what then? Something was driving her on and she wasn’t sure what it was, knowing that she wanted—no, needed—to see his face when she told him. Was it a perverse desire to see the truth in his eyes, no matter how hurtful—would that help free her from her feelings for him once and for all? Or just some need to take some control back in a life which seemed to have run off the rails in so many ways?
Once she’d made her mind up, Rebecca set things in motion very quickly—and somehow it was comforting to have things to occupy her. As if, by concentrating on the logistics of going to see him, it took her mind off the future. She booked her flight to New York, found a hotel and rang her mother.
‘You might as well take a half-empty suitcase,’ her mother said, on a very crackly line from New South Wales. ‘The shopping in New York’s supposed to be terrific value.’
‘Yes, it is,’ said Rebecca, trying to sound ‘normal’. Yet shopping was the last thing she felt like doing—even though she supposed a sensible person might scour the stores for pregnancy clothes. But, inevitably, money was tight. She had signed on with a temp agency, and although they had been providing as many office jobs as she cared to do it didn’t exactly pay her a fortune and she needed to hang onto every penny she could until she was no longer able to work.
Rebecca hadn’t been to America for years—when she’d worked for Evolo she’d done mainly short-haul. But she loved flying and would normally have savoured the experience—had not the significance of her trip made her unable to sleep or to concentrate on any of the films on offer.
Now that she wasn’t being paid for by the airline she discovered there was no such thing as a cheap hotel in the middle of the city and the small room she’d ended up with was clean, but soulless. There were fake flowers in a vase and an enormous TV dominating the limited space. But at least the shower worked and afterwards she felt one hundred per cent better.
She lay down, intending to shut her eyes just for a moment—but when she opened them again she realised that it had been a lot longer than that. The artificial light which was streaming in through the small window showed that she had been asleep for hours and a glance at her watch confirmed it. It was almost ten o’clock at night!
Rebecca’s heart sank. She had been planning to go to Xandros’s place of work and just ask to see him—without giving him time to think up some reason why he shouldn’t. But now she could see that she hadn’t really been thinking straight—or did she really think that a man in Xandros’s position would be instantly accessible to the general public?
At Evolo, she had worked wit
h enough powerful people to know that they were always protected. Whether it was night or whether it was day, she would still need Xandros to give his permission if she wanted to see him. There was no way she would ever have been able to burst in on him, unannounced—not unless she was planning to hang around the entrance to his offices like some tramp waiting for a handout. And how undignified would that be?
Rebecca flinched. Well, there was no way she was going to postpone the inevitable—not for a moment longer. The sooner she had done her duty, then the sooner she could go away.
But it’s ten o’clock at night—what if he’s with another woman?
Then she would just have to face up to it—because that, too would be reality.
Her hair was all rumpled where she’d slept on it while it was damp, but there was no time to redo it. And this wasn’t some kind of beauty contest. Rebecca had very firmly banished from her heart and her mind the idea that Xandros would take one look at her and realise what a fool he’d been. Because life wasn’t like that—and even if it was she had been growing her self-respect in the intervening weeks. And there was no way she wanted a man who treated her like a sexual commodity, the way Xandros had done—even if she had gone along with it at the time.
Applying only a little make-up, she tied her hair back and put on the floaty dress. Then she pulled her phone out and tapped out his number with a trembling finger.
It rang for so long she thought it was going to go straight to messages but at last there was a click, and he said in his distinctive accent, ‘Yes?’
Her name must have come up on the screen because she heard the wariness in his voice and it made her want to weep. If only she could have put the phone down. But she couldn’t. She sucked in a deep breath.
‘Xandros? Hello, it’s me. Rebecca. Am I disturbing you?’
He didn’t answer that. Staring out at the bright glitter of lights on the skyline with narrowed eyes, Xandros thought how to respond to her question in a thousand different ways. He hadn’t expected her to ring him—and he didn’t particularly want her to. But his curiosity was aroused—and he wondered what had made her swallow her pride to get in touch with him. ‘How are you, Rebecca?’
That was quite a difficult one to answer. ‘I need to see you.’
Need? A pause. ‘But I’m in New York.’
‘Yes, I know. So am I.’
This time the pause was so long that Rebecca actually thought he might have hung up on her. To her surprise he didn’t demand to know just what she was doing in New York—but maybe that shouldn’t have surprised her. He was many things, but never predictable.
‘Where exactly are you?’ he questioned.
She read out the address from the top of the laminated room-service menu which was lying on the bedside table. ‘Do you know it?’
Did he know it? Ah, the exquisite irony of life! Briefly, Xandros closed his eyes. He remembered staying in that self-same area when he’d first arrived in the city—presumably for the same cost-cutting reasons as her—and thinking how the fabled streets of New York were certainly not paved with gold. He had seen homeless people, and hungry ones, too. He recalled his sense of shock—and his determination, too—that one day he should conquer this great city. Within weeks, he had found himself a job to help support him through college—and had never been back there since. ‘Can you come here?’ he questioned silkily.
‘Where?
‘I’m in the office.’
Rebecca stifled her instinctive sigh of relief. At least he wasn’t cosying up to whoever must have replaced her by now. ‘That’s late,’ she commented.
His mouth hardened. He wanted to tell her that the hours he worked were none of her damned business. Why the hell was she here? Deliberately, he injected his voice with steel. ‘I will send a car for you,’ he said.
And the cool note in his voice reminded Rebecca of another stark reality of the situation. They were ex-lovers. There was no fondness for her in Xandros’s heart. And even less when he discovers what you are about to tell him. ‘No, I’ll take the subway—’
‘Don’t be so ridiculous, Rebecca,’ he cut in, with an impatient click of his tongue. ‘It’s late and I’ve said I’ll send a car. The driver will ring you when he’s outside.’
Rebecca recognised that there was no sense in arguing with him—and that to do so would be fairly stupid, under the circumstances. Why turn down his offer of safe transport in a strange city at night?
‘Thanks,’ she said, and put the phone down quickly.
And, besides, she was beginning to feel rather peculiar and she couldn’t quite work out whether that was because she was pregnant or slightly jet-lagged or because she hadn’t eaten since early on in the flight.
So eat something!
Her burgeoning body craved food and she had no desire to faint in front of him. Raiding the mini-bar like a guilty teenager, she ate chocolate, some pretzels and a glass of juice and worried how much they would charge her for the pleasure of eating junk. And then her phone began to ring and she felt a little like someone going to face their own trial.
A dark limousine was waiting outside with a uniformed driver holding open the door for her. She sat back on soft leather as the powerful car negotiated the streets—so new to her and yet strangely familiar from years of having seen them on TV programmes—but Rebecca wasn’t really paying attention to them. She was too wrapped up in choosing her words as carefully as possible.
But how did you tell someone who was so definitely in your past that you were carrying part of his future?
The car stopped outside a vast, towering building lit mutedly save for the very top of it, which shone as brightly as a planet. A young woman stood waiting by the entrance, her tumble of dark curls and striking scarlet dress suddenly making Rebecca feel very pale and unexciting. Who was she? she wondered—hating herself for still caring as the brunette opened the car door.
‘Hi. I’m Miriam.’ The woman smiled, her teeth gleaming like a dentistry advertisement. ‘Xandros asked me to come and meet you. He’s upstairs in his office.’
‘Thanks,’ said Rebecca, feeling more than uptight now as a glass lift sped upwards. He hadn’t come to fetch her himself, had he? And how, she wondered, had Xandros explained her sudden appearance to this woman Miriam? Was this his girlfriend—sent down to fetch her so that there could be no possible misunderstandings? Or was she a powerful man’s gatekeeper—would she expect to sit in on what was probably going to be the most difficult conversation of Rebecca’s entire life?
Well, she was going to have to assert herself. She was not going to have an audience while she stumbled to tell him. If he wanted he could tell Miriam later, once Rebecca had gone.
She was taken into a large and very beautiful office, dominated by a giant desk on which lay a few large sheets of drawings in various stages of development, and a pot full of pens and pencils. Apart from that, the room was completely bare of adornment—with no pictures on the walls or trinkets on his desk. At first, Rebecca didn’t see Xandros, but then she sensed rather than heard him behind her and she turned to find him at the far end of the long room, watching her—and she could not help the instinctive shiver of awareness that felt midway between fear and desire.
‘That will be all, Miriam,’ he said.
Well, she didn’t sound like a girlfriend. ‘Is that your secretary?’ asked Rebecca hopefully when the other woman had closed the door behind her.
‘She’s another architect, actually,’ drawled Xandros, noticing her flinch at the unmistakably caustic note in his voice—but what did she expect? He had no idea why she was here today—whether it was all part of some sophisticated game-plan. Was that why she had jumped in and ended the relationship before he’d had a chance to do so? As a kind of emotional one-upmanship—a clumsy effort to try to make him commit to her? But if so, it had backfired spectacularly—and she was just about to find that out.
She had made him feel…what? Trapped and irritated by her g
rowing neediness and her desire to want to read all the secrets of his heart? Yet along with that he had felt oddly out of control, too. Hadn’t it been a relief to be free of her strange, sensual power—even if he had found himself sometimes missing the passion of her embrace? Hadn’t he terminated his contract with the airline because he had no wish for repeated contact with her or the temptation of her continuing allure? Those violet eyes and the silky hair like dark honey, which had trickled through his fingers so sweetly.
‘Won’t you sit down?’
‘Thank you.’ Despite the food she’d taken from the mini-bar Rebecca’s knees were trembling and she sank into a leather chair with relief.
‘You would like a drink? Some water, perhaps?’
She shook her head, feeling as if she were on a job interview—praying that her composure would not leave her at a time when she had never needed it more badly. ‘No, thank you.’
Xandros stared at her, waiting for some kind of explanation for her appearance, but she had bent her head and was studying her clasped fingers intently—as if they were about to reveal something fascinating. And suddenly he was irritated. What the hell was she doing here? ‘So?’
Rebecca looked up, braving herself to meet the expression on his face. How best to say it? The carefully chosen words she had been silently rehearsing on the way over suddenly seemed as inadequate as someone trying to staunch the flow of a burst dam using their finger. There is no ‘good’ way to say this, Rebecca—so just say it.
‘I’m pregnant, Xandros.’
He didn’t move, or react—grateful, if such a word could be used at such a time, for the enigmatic exterior which had never let him down.
Rebecca’s voice wasn’t quite steady as she searched his face. ‘Did you hear me, Xandros? I said—’
‘Ne, I heard you.’ Inexplicably, he found himself thinking of Notus—the great south wind of Greece which brought with it the storms of summer and autumn—and what greater storm than this to have exploded in his life? A baby—by a woman who meant nothing to him? Yet still his face gave nothing away. Meeting her violet-blue eyes with nothing but stony question, he said: ‘Are you certain?’
The Greek Tycoon's Baby Bargain Page 6
