Savas's Wildcat

by Anne McAllister

  “I’m sure I’ll need it,” Yiannis replied grimly, shutting the door but, with his other hand, still holding Cat’s arm as if he was afraid she’d run away.

  She turned to face him under the street lamp. He looked hard and fierce and hollow-eyed. His lean cheeks were unshaven. He didn’t look happy. In fact, he looked about as miserable as she had been.

  She stared at him, wished he would say something. Her heart was pounding crazily. She felt breathless, dazed. “What are you—?”

  “It’s freezing out here,” he broke in. “Can we go in?”

  “I—Yes. Of course.” He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and a thin jacket. All right for Southern California. Not so good for San Francisco in March. She led him up the front steps, unlocked the door and brought him in. The staircase was steep and narrow. “How long have you been here?” she asked over her shoulder as she preceded him.

  “Five, six hours.”

  She spun around and stared. “Five or six hours?”

  He shrugged irritably. “I didn’t think you’d be at the damn ball. I thought you’d finished with him.”

  “Because you proved to me that I didn’t love him?”

  She thought she heard him grind his teeth. She wasn’t sure she wanted him in her apartment at all if they were just going to fight this all out again.

  But before she could make her stand, he took the key out of her hand, unlocked the door himself, pushed it open and bent his head. “After you.”

  It was all she could do not to kick him in the shins. As it was, she went in just far enough to turn and glare at him as he shut the door behind them. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”

  He didn’t. He didn’t say anything. He only succeeded in making her living room feel the size of a hamster cage as he paced and prowled its confines.

  Then at last he stopped and stared at her. “You look beautiful.” It sounded like an accusation.

  “Thank you.” She stood there—looking beautiful—and didn’t back down. Met his gaze, refused to look away, waited for him to say whatever he had to say.

  “This isn’t about Landry.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” At least this time they could fight about something else.

  “I know you wouldn’t marry him.”

  Still she waited.

  “Will you marry me?”

  Maybe the music had been too loud at the ball. She hadn’t thought so. But clearly she wasn’t hearing right. She stared, sure she’d misheard. “Harry’s what?” she said because that must have been what he was saying.

  “Damn it.” The words seemed torn from him. “I said, will you marry—m.a.r.r.y—me?

  Okay, that time Cat heard him. She looked around for somewhere to sit down. The closest chair was two steps away. She made it. Barely. Had he really asked her to marry him?

  Yes. He had. But even knowing she hadn’t mistaken the words, she wasn’t sure she believed it. Or that he did.

  This was the man who didn’t believe in marriage, after all.

  She swallowed. Looked up at him. “Why?”

  Yiannis rubbed a hand over his face, took a breath, then plunged in. “Because I love you. Because I want a life with you. Because I want to wake up with you in the morning, and go to bed with you at night. Because I want to talk to you and listen to you and make love with you and have kids and grandkids with you. How’s that—for a start?” He looked at her, anguished, still standing on the other side of the room.

  Thank God she was sitting down. It might have been the fact that he was still on the other side of the room that made her believe him. He’d made no attempt to sway her with his undeniable physical charms. There had been no kisses, no touches.

  Nothing but words.

  The right words.

  She laughed shakily. “Starters? There’s more? You had me at ‘I love you.’”

  And then he was there, beside her, kneeling by the chair, wrapping his arms around her. “Oh, God, Cat, are you sure?”

  She’d never been more sure of anything in her life. He’d been too honest before for her to doubt him now. “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.”

  Then she dragged him up again, and he scooped her into his arms and settled in the chair with her in his lap. She tore off his jacket and fumbled the buttons of his shirt. He put his hands on her sparkly midnight sky dress and then groaned.

  “I don’t even know how this thing works.”

  “Simple,” Cat said and she stood, found the hidden zipper, slid it down, did a quick shimmy and the dress simply pooled at her feet.

  “I like it,” Yiannis said hoarsely and then he drew her back again.

  But Cat had a better idea. She took him by the hand and led him to her bedroom where he finished undressing her, then shrugged off his jeans and shorts, and fell with her onto the bed.

  Their love-making was fast and furious this time. Hungry. Desperate. As if they could not get enough.

  And after, lying with him on the bed, stroking her hand down his side as he lay looking at her, Cat wondered if she would ever get enough of this man.

  He ran his hand over her hair, tangled his fingers in her annoying curls and kissed them. “Beautiful,” he murmured. Then he lifted his gaze and met hers. “Mine,” he said, like the king of the beasts she’d seen in him.

  “Yours,” she agreed. “I always have been.”

  He nodded. “I know. I understand now. A little, at least.”

  “What do you mean? How?” Because whatever it was that he understood, it had brought him back to her.

  He told her, then, about his mother, about his father. About suddenly realizing how much he’d complained about what he’d always taken for granted. “I was selfish,” he told her frankly. “I wanted the comforts of family, the support of family. I always knew they were there—usually more of them than I wanted,” he admitted wryly. “I never stopped to think about what went into making that family. Now I do.”

  “But he’s there now? Your dad? I mean, they’ve worked it out?” she asked him urgently because he hadn’t been lying about the pain their separation had caused him. She’d heard it in his voice, seen it in his face.

  “I hope to God they have,” he said. “I was tempted to call them while I was sitting on your doorstep.”

  “You should have!”

  But he shook his head. “No. I did my bit. I told them how much they mean to all of us. I know how much they mean to each other. But they have to find the words.” He paused and a corner of his mouth tipped as he played with her hair. “I had to find the words—and the guts to say them.”

  “I’m glad you did,” Cat told him, leaning in to kiss him, to breathe the words against his lips. “I’m so very very glad you did.”

  His lips smiled against hers. “Me, too.”

  “Enough family for you?” Yiannis asked his new bride.

  They were standing on the deck of his parents’ house on Long Island, taking in the sea and the sand and the two hundred or so brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins and assorted Savases and in-laws whose connections he’d never entirely figured out.

  “They’re all yours,” he told her expansively with a grin. “My wedding present to you.”

  Cat laughed and put her arms around him and lifted up the inch or so she needed to touch her lips to his. “I love them, each and every one,” she told him, eyes dancing.

  Her eyes had been dancing all week. Ever since he’d put an engagement ring on her finger. It had been his mother’s ring.

  “An heirloom,” his mother had told him laughing through tears as she’d pressed it on him when he’d told her he was getting married. “Your father says we’re making a new beginning, that he’s becoming a new man, so he’s giving me a new one.”

  “I don’t want to take your first one,” Yiannis had protested.

  “You’re not taking, I’m giving,” his mother had said. “But only if your Cat wants it.”

  Of course Cat had wanted
it. She loved his parents. And they loved her. She was going to be a daughter of the heart to his mother. And she could wrap Socrates around her little finger with nothing more than a smile.

  “I think you’ve got this family thing figured out,” he’d told her.

  “I’m learning,” Cat had assured him.

  They’d had a small intimate wedding, just the two of them, Cat’s grandmother, Yiannis’s parents and Misty and Harry because Devin was back in the field somewhere.

  “If we knew where, he’d have to kill us,” Cat had told Yiannis, laughing when she’d got off the phone from inviting Misty. She hugged him. “I’m so glad they’re coming.”

  “Me, too. Maybe Harry will remember us.”

  “He wouldn’t forget in a couple of weeks. And Misty says she tells him about us all the time. She says he loves his bunny,” she added, her expression growing serious. “Thank you for sending him the rabbit.”

  Yiannis had smiled. “Every boy needs a rabbit,” he said and kissed the tip of her nose.

  And every girl—at least the one he’d married—needed a never-ending family like this one. He’d promised her his the night he’d asked her to be his wife.

  But he didn’t think she had really understood the scope of it until today. Now in the midst of Malena Savas’s Mother’s Day cum wedding reception cum family reunion, she couldn’t move without tripping over some relation.

  He even met one he’d never met before.

  “Daniel,” his brother George said, introducing them to his five-week-old son.

  “Can I hold him?” Cat had asked, and Daniel was duly deposited in her arms. The maternal bit still looked good on her. She seemed almost to glow.

  “You’re up for the godfather bit, are you?” George asked. He sounded pleased, but a bit surprised that Yiannis had agreed.

  Yiannis nodded. “I am.”

  “It’ll be good practice for him.” Cat looked up from admiring baby Daniel.

  George raised a brow. “Will it now?”

  And Yiannis, as the meaning of her words penetrated his thick skull, felt as if he’d been punched in the chest. “Cat?” He stared at her.

  She really was glowing. And smiling. Not at George. At him.

  “A baby?” He felt a shaft of panic, followed by one of elation.

  “Our very own,” Cat said, putting her arms around him, leaning her head against his chest. And Yiannis drew her close and kissed her hair, and tried to imagine the child they had made. He couldn’t begin to.

  But then, he hadn’t imagined any of this.

  Against his chest, Cat was humming a song he recognized. He listened closely, then he smiled.

  It was indeed a beautiful day.

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II BV/S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ® and TM are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

  First published in Great Britain 2012

  by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited.

  Harlequin (UK) Limited, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road,

  Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

  © Barbara Schenck 2012

  ISBN: 9780-1-408-97381-3

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Excerpt

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Copyright