But this was Damian.
And this was, as he’d promised, the difference between having sex and making love.
I love you, she thought, Damian, I love you…
Had she said the words? Was that why he was rolling away?
“Don’t go,” she said, before she could stop herself.
Damian’s arms closed around her. He drew her close to him, their faces inches apart.
“I’m not going anywhere, glyka mou,” he whispered. “I’m just too heavy to lie on top of you.”
“You’re not.”
He kissed her, his lips warm against hers.
“My sweet fraud,” he said softly.
It was a soft, teasing endearment. She knew that. Still, it hurt because she was a fraud.
She hadn’t told him about her past.
Hadn’t told him about his baby.
And she had to tell him. He had to know. But when? When?
“You’re trembling.” Damian drew the comforter over them both. “Better?”
“Yes. Fine.”
“Mmm.” He grinned. “Indeed you were.” He gave her a long, tender kiss. “I was afraid I might hurt you, sweetheart. You were so tight.”
His voice was low and filled with concern. This was either the exact moment to tell him everything—or the exact moment not to.
How could she admit to her ugly past?
How could she admit to the lie she’d told him?
“Sweetheart? Did I hurt you? God, if I did…”
“No! Oh, no, Damian, you didn’t hurt me.” Ivy took his hand, brought it to her mouth and kissed it. “What we did—”
“Making love.”
“Yes. It was wonderful.”
He held her against him for a long moment. Then he cupped her face and tilted it to his.
“I’m sorry I frightened you before.”
“It wasn’t your fault. I was—I was dreaming. And then I heard the thunder and I saw the lightning and—”
“And, you thought I was someone else. Someone who’d hurt you.”
She couldn’t lie, not when his arms were around her. “Yes.”
Rage swept over him. Her whisper only confirmed what he’d already suspected.
“A man.”
Ivy buried her face against his throat.
“Who?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Yes, but he did. He wanted a name. He wanted to find this faceless son of a bitch and kill him.
Ah, God, Ivy was trembling and he knew damned well it had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. Damian cursed himself for being an ass.
“Forgive me, sweetheart.” He kissed her hair, her temple, her mouth. “I’m a fool to talk about these things at a time like this.”
“You’re not a fool,” she said fiercely, looking into his eyes. “You’re a good, kind, wonderful man.”
He forced a smile to his face. “That’s quite an improvement over being—let’s see. An SOB, an arrogant bastard, a son of—”
She laughed, as he’d hoped she would. “Well, sometimes…No. Seriously you’re not any of those things I called you.”
His hand moved slowly down her spine, cupped her bottom, drew her more closely against him.
“We didn’t know each other,” he said softly. “And it’s my fault. I stormed into your life—”
“Seems to me I was the one who did the storming.”
Good. She was smiling. He hadn’t spoiled this amazing night for her after all.
No more questions…for now. But he would ask them again. A monster had done something terrible to Ivy.
Something sexual. Something violent.
Had he been caught? Had he paid for what he’d done? Not that it mattered. He would find the man and deal with him in his own way…
“Damian?”
He blinked. “Yes?”
“I’m glad we stormed into each other’s lives.”
He smiled and lifted her face to his so he could kiss her again. How had he lived his life without this woman?
“So am I. And now we have all the time in the world to get to know each other.”
Ivy put her hand against his jaw. “Being with you tonight has been—has been—”
“Making love, you mean.”
Her heart lifted. “Making love with you, yes. It was—it was so wonderful…”
How he loved the sound of her voice. The feel of her in his arms. How he loved—how he loved—
“For me, too,” he said huskily. “I’ve never—I mean, you and I…” He cleared his throat, amazed at how difficult it was to say the next words but then, they were a kind of commitment, given all the women in his past. “What happened between us is…It was very special, glyka mou. I’ve never experienced anything like it before.”
Ivy’s face was solemn. “I’m glad because…” She touched the tip of her tongue to her lips. “Because this was—this is—it’s the very first time I ever—I ever—”
She was blushing. Amazing, that this beautiful, sophisticated woman would blush when she talked about having an orgasm.
Amazing, too, that his damnable ego took pleasure in the thought that he had done for her what no other lover had done.
“Your first orgasm,” he said softly, and smiled. “Part of me is sorry that’s been denied you but I have to admit, part of me is…What?”
“I’m not talking about having an orgasm.” Her voice was so soft he had to strain to hear it. “I’m talking about…” She swallowed. “You’re right,” she said, rushing the words together. “Something did happen to me, a long time ago. And because it did, I never took a lover until—until—”
The hurried words trailed off. Ivy tried to look away but Damian wouldn’t let her. He cupped her face, kissed her mouth, told her what honor she had brought him, by letting him be her first lover.
Then he rolled her gently on her back.
“And your only lover, for the rest of our lives.”
He kissed her. Caressed her. Touched her as if she were as fragile as a cobweb until she sobbed his name and showed him with her mouth, her hands, her body that she would not break…
Showed him, without words, what was in her heart.
Showed him that she had fallen deeply, forever in love.
They flew to Athens the next morning to see an obstetrician, who examined Ivy, looked over the records that Damian, ever in command, had somehow had transferred from her New York OB-GYN, smiled and said, neh, everything was fine.
Was she certain? asked Damian.
The doctor said she was.
Because, Damian said, he’d noticed things.
The doctor and Ivy both looked at him. “What things?” they said in unison.
Well, his Ivy didn’t eat as much as she should.
His Ivy? The phrase went straight to Ivy’s heart. She smiled and put her hand in his.
“My appetite’s just fine.”
“Yes, glyka mou, but you are eating for two.”
“Ms. Madison’s weight is right on target.”
Damian didn’t look convinced but he had another question. What about exercise? He had walked her all around Kolonaki Square only yesterday. Was it too much? Should he have permitted—
“Permitted?” Ivy said, her eyebrows rising again.
Should he have let her do that? Damian asked
“Ms. Madison is in excellent health, Your Highness. And,” the doctor added gently, “she is hardly the first woman to have a baby.”
Damian’s authoritative air vanished. “I know that,” he said, “but I am the first man to have one.” A beat of silence; the doctor smiled but not Ivy. “I mean, I mean—”
“You mean this is your first child,” the doctor said. “Of course, Your Highness. And I promise you, everything is fine.”
Outside, on the street, Ivy turned to Damian. “I understand why you’re so concerned. You—you lost a baby, with my sister.”
“I thoug
ht I lost a baby,” Damian said carefully. “But it was a lie.”
“Yes.” Her eyes clouded. “A terrible lie. But believing you’d really lost a baby must have been almost as bad as having it happen.”
Damian wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her, but they were on a crowded street. He made do with taking her hand, bringing it to his lips and pressing a kiss into the palm.
“I’m concerned because of you,” he said. “If anything happened to you…” He took a deep breath. “Ivy. You are—you are—”
My love.
The words were right there, on the tip of his tongue, but that was crazy. He hardly knew this woman. And there were still so many unanswered questions…
Besides, a man didn’t fall in love after, what, a week? There was no reason to be impulsive. To make a move he might regret.
“You are important to me.” He brought her hand to his mouth, kissed the palm and folded her fingers over the kiss. “Very important.”
Ivy nodded. They weren’t the words she yearned to hear, but they were close.
“I’m glad, because—because you’re very important to me, too.”
A smile lit his face. “Words meant to feed a man’s ego,” he said teasingly.
“Words that are true. Being with you, carrying your baby…” She hesitated, afraid she would blurt out too much. “I’ve never been this happy. And I want you to know that—that no matter what happens, you will always be—you will always be—”
She fell silent as their eyes met.
Damian’s heart turned over at what he saw in her face.
Years ago, he, Lucas and Nicolo had celebrated surviving finals week at Yale by driving to an airport in a little town called Danielson.
They’d taken a couple of hours of instruction, strapped on parachutes and boarded a plane after drawing slips of paper to decide which of them would go first.
He’d won.
“Or lost,” Nicolo had said, grinning.
It came back to him now, the way he’d felt standing in the plane’s open door, the wind trying to pluck him out, the ground beckoning from a million miles below.
What in hell am I doing? he’d thought.
“Jump,” his instructor had yelled.
And he had.
God, it had been incredible. Stepping into space. Soaring above the earth, then falling toward it.
Incredible.
He’d jumped for years after that but as much as he’d loved skydiving, he’d never quite felt the excitement, the sheer wonder of that first time.
Until now.
Until he saw the smile in Ivy’s eyes. Felt his heart thump as she lay her palms against his chest.
He reminded himself that he really knew nothing about her.
Reminded himself that she hadn’t given a reasonable answer as to why she’d agreed to Kay’s incredible request.
And now there were more questions. Who had hurt her? Why wouldn’t she talk about it?
One call to a private investigator and he’d have the answers he needed in, what, a week?
That was what he had to do. He was a logical man. He always had been. That was how he’d saved Aristedes Shipping. With logic. Common sense. By taking one step at a time.
By not jumping into space.
Skydiving, skiing down a glacier…A man could run risks in such things but not in those that were life-changing.
Damian took Ivy’s hands in his. They were icy-cold, despite the heat of the day. She had opened her heart to him and now she was waiting for him to say something.
And he would.
Something logical. Something sensible. Something that would not put him at risk…
“Ivy,” he said, “my beautiful Ivy. I love you. I adore you. Will you be my wife?”
She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. Well, maybe he had. But when she smiled, and her eyes filled with tears, and she said she loved him with all her heart and yes, she would be his wife, yes, yes, yes…
It wasn’t anything like that first jump.
It was ten thousand times better.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IVY stood ankle-deep in the surf, her face turned up to the hot kiss of the sun.
A month ago, Minos had been a forbidding chunk of rock rearing up from a depressingly dark sea.
Now, it was paradise.
White sand beaches. Towering volcanic rock. Firs, pines, poplars that climbed its slopes, anemones and violets that poked slyly from the deep green grass.
And around it all, the Aegean, wine-dark and magnificent, just as the poet, Homer, had described it centuries before.
Could a place look so different just because you were happy?
Yes. Oh, yes, it could.
Not just a place. The world. The universe. And happy wasn’t the right word to describe how she felt.
She was—she was complete.
Being with Damian, being part of his life, having him a part of hers, was wonderful.
He was everything. The sun, the moon, the stars…She laughed out loud, threw up her arms and did a little dance right there, as the wavelets foamed around her ankles.
Surely nobody had ever been this much in love. It just wasn’t possible.
Ivy eased down to the sand, legs outstretched in the warm surf, arms back, basking in the glorious warmth of the Greek sun.
The only thing warmer was Damian’s love.
That so much joy had come from something that had started so badly…Not the baby, she thought quickly, putting a protective hand over her belly. Never that. She’d wanted the baby almost the moment she’d missed her first period and known, for sure, she was pregnant.
Known she wanted the baby—and that she’d made a terrible mistake, agreeing to Kay’s awful plan.
That was the bad start. The plan. Not the original one, which had been hard enough to say “yes” to, but the one Kay had dropped on her at the last possible second.
How could she have agreed to it?
Ivy shut her eyes. The truth was, she’d never agreed to it in her heart.
The joy of the sunny morning fell away.
In the end, Kay had asked too much of her. She’d owed her so much, yes, so much, but giving up the baby?
She knew now that she could not, would not have done it.
Wasn’t it time to explain that, to explain everything, to Damian?
Slowly Ivy rose to her feet, tucked her hands into the back pockets of her white shorts and began walking along the sand.
Of course it was.
At the beginning, Damian had assumed she’d made a devil’s bargain. He knew better, now, that she’d never do something like this for money.
And because he loved her, he’d stopped asking.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t entitled to the truth.
It was just that telling him meant telling him everything, starting with what had occurred when she was fifteen and ending with the day a doctor was to implant Kay’s eggs, mixed with Damian’s sperm, in her womb.
Except—except, it hadn’t happened that way.
Ivy swung blindly toward the sea, remembering her stepsister’s face that day.
Kay had shown up at Ivy’s apartment hours ahead of their scheduled appointment at the fertility clinic.
“Everything’s changed,” she’d said desperately. “My doctor says my eggs are no good. There’s no point in implanting them inside you.”
Ivy had taken Kay in her arms, patted her back, said she was sorry even as a mean little voice inside her whispered You know you’re not really sorry, you’re relieved. Carrying a baby, even one that wasn’t actually yours, would have been agony to give up.
“Oh, Ivy,” Kay had sobbed, “what am I going to do? You have to help me!”
“I wish I could but—”
Kay had raised her face. Amazingly her tears had not spoiled her makeup.
“Do you?” she’d said. “Do you really wish you could help me?”
And she’d laid out a plan s
o detailed, so complete, only a fool—a fool like Ivy—would have believed she’d just come up with it.
Ivy had listened. Halfway through, she’d raised her hands in horror.
“No! Kay, I can’t do that! You can’t really ask me to—”
Kay’s eyes had darkened. “So much for all these years you’ve told me how grateful you were I took you out of that foster home.”
“Of course I’m grateful! But—”
“Out of a situation you’d created.”
“I didn’t. I didn’t!”
“Of course you did,” Kay had said coldly. “Flirting with that man. Hanging all over him.”
“I never did! I was just a kid. He—he hurt me, Kay!”
“Spare me the sob story,” Kay had snapped. “What counts is that I was your lifeline and now, when I ask you to be mine, you look at me as if I’m the devil incarnate and you whimper ‘no, I can’t!’ Is that your idea of how to repay a debt?”
“Kay. Please. Listen to me. What you’re asking—”
“What I’m asking for is what you owe me, Ivy. You’re always saying I saved your life. Well, now you owe me mine.”
It had gone on for hours, Kay talking about what she’d done for Ivy, how Ivy owed her everything, Ivy saying no, no—
In the end, she’d finally given in even though she knew it was wrong, knew she was taking the first step toward breaking her own heart, knew she could not imagine how she would ever give up a baby conceived with a sperm-filled condom, with a syringe, both conveniently tucked inside a little box her stepsister had produced…
“Glyka mou?”
Ivy looked up. Damian smiled as he walked toward her. He was shirtless, barefoot; he wore only denim shorts. His jaw was stubbled because today was Saturday and he hadn’t shaved…
Her heart rose into her throat.
How she loved him!
And how cruelly she was deceiving him.
She wore his ring now—a diamond so magnificent it made her breath catch just to look at it. A tiny gold shield that bore his family crest—a lance, a shield and, she now knew, an ancient Minoan bull—dangled from a delicate chain around her neck. Their wedding day was only a week away—and she was still living a lie.
Tears welled in her eyes just as Damian reached her.
“Hey,” he said, taking her in his arms, “sweetheart, what’s wrong?”
The Billionaires' Brides Bundle Page 28
