by Sarah Morgan
‘I am responsible for those changes…’ his mouth brushed against hers ‘…and I love them.’
‘Trust you to take it as a personal achievement.’ Ella held her breath, desperately hoping that he might say something more than that in this cosy, intimate moment. Something that might make her believe that this wasn’t only about the baby.
But he didn’t. Instead, he angled his dark head as if he was listening to something outside.
‘What? What have you heard?’ She realised that it was only his presence that was preventing her from having another panic attack.
‘I was just thinking of the poor foxes,’ he drawled softly, amusement in his eyes as he rolled onto his back and snuggled her against him. ‘I can imagine the baby foxes saying to the mummy fox, “What are those noises?” And she will reply, “It’s just humans.”
Ella giggled, but she was slightly shocked by the response he’d drawn from her. ‘Do you think anyone heard us?’
‘I sincerely hope not.’ Nikos yawned and tightened his hold on her. ‘Because if they did, it means that they are outside, listening, and you’ve done enough running around with a saucepan for one night. Relax. I am here. I won’t let anything or anyone touch you or the baby.’ With that arrogant assurance, he slid his hand down her body again, a wicked look in his eyes. ‘Apart from me…’
Her body melted in instant response and she forgot about the world outside as he brought his mouth down on hers.
Ella woke to find herself wrapped around Nikos’s bronzed, powerful frame.
Rain was thundering onto the roof of the boat and the ring was back on her finger.
She stared at the winking diamond in numb, disbelieving silence as she remembered all the things they’d done in the protective darkness of the night.
Dear God, she’d fallen into his arms like a terrified animal and he’d taken it from there, ruthlessly taking advantage of her vulnerability.
Swamped with horror and self-loathing, she sat upright and he opened his eyes, a question shimmering in those dark depths.
‘Spider or daddy-long-legs?’
‘Neither. It’s you.’ Clutching the sheet to her breasts, she slid away from him, averting her eyes from his mouthwatering body. ‘You took advantage of me.’
‘Did I?’ He raised a dark brow. ‘In what way did I take advantage of you?’
‘I was scared and you—you…’
‘I gave you the reassurance you needed.’ He reached out a strong hand and pulled her back down beside him. ‘Don’t do this, agape mou. Don’t start pretending that last night should never have happened. Just accept that it did. It was always going to happen. You wanted it and so did I.’
‘No. No, I didn’t.’ She tried to pull away but he held her fast, moulding her body against his.
‘Ella, you are having my child.’ His hand was in her hair, his mouth a breath away from hers. ‘Stop fighting me because you know I will fight you back and I will win.’
This close, she couldn’t think straight—she couldn’t remember any of the reasons that this was a bad idea. She wanted him to kiss her again—she wanted that so badly. ‘You’re a bully.’ But the words held no conviction and she watched helplessly as his sensual mouth curved into a slow smile.
Oh, dear God, she was a lost cause.
‘I’m not a bully.’ His voice was husky and amused at the same time. ‘I just know what I want. And I know you want it too, but you’re afraid. Why?’
‘Because you’re only here because of the baby.’
‘What we just did had nothing to do with the baby.’
‘That was sex. It isn’t enough, Nikos.’ Before she could change her mind, Ella tugged the ring off her finger and pressed it against his chest.
Rolling onto his back, he closed his eyes, apparently bored with the discussion. ‘Every time you take that ring off your finger, I will put it back on again.’
Her body hummed with awareness and she knew that she had to get away from him before she made another bad decision. ‘I need the bathroom.’
He released her reluctantly and Ella slid out of bed, pulling a fresh T-shirt from the case that she hadn’t yet unpacked.
She stood in the tiny bathroom, knowing that she’d just made a hard situation even more difficult. Her body ached with delicious awareness and all she wanted to do was return to the bed and sample more of his raw male virility.
She closed her eyes for a moment, wondering why giving the ring back and leaving his bed hadn’t felt like an easy decision.
How had she let things go so far?
Why hadn’t she resisted?
But she’d never been able to resist him, had she?
She left the bathroom and walked towards the kitchen area. Rain streamed down the windows and the trees along the canal seemed greener than ever. It was indescribably beautiful and Ella wondered how on earth she could have been scared the night before.
Exasperated with herself, she reached for the kettle and then gave a tiny scream.
Instantly Nikos was by her side. ‘What? What is wrong?’ He followed her gaze and then grinned as he saw that five huge snails had crawled through the vent and were now slowly making their way down the window. ‘Ah—more nature. I suppose it is the rain that has brought them out. They climbed up the bulrushes and in through the window.’
Looking at their fat shiny bodies and the silvery trail that led into the boat, Ella shuddered. ‘They’re disgusting.’
‘They’re all part of living on the river,’ Nikos said mildly, and she closed her eyes, knowing that she didn’t have what it took to spend another night out here.
‘All right. You win. I’ll find a bedsit in town.’
In the process of relocating the snails to the river bank through the open window, Nikos frowned. ‘A what?’
‘A bedsit. It’s a room where you sleep, live.’ Ella lit the gas and put the kettle on. ‘You must know what a bedsit is. It’s basically one room.’
‘One room?’ Nikos threw a sardonic glance around their surroundings. ‘You are finding this too spacious? You would prefer to be a little more cramped, perhaps?’
‘A bedsit is all I’m going to be able to afford,’ she said irritably, wishing something would dent that cool confidence that she was finding increasingly infuriating.
‘Ella, when I said that you shouldn’t live here, I didn’t intend that you should find somewhere else.’ He gently dispatched the final snail on a new course. ‘You’re going to move in with me. And before you feel obliged to come up with a million objections, I ought to warn you that it’s not negotiable. I’m willing to postpone the wedding until you’ve got used to the idea, but you’re not spending another moment on this boat.’
Ella eyed the snails, now clinging to the dripping bulrushes. She looked at the overgrown path and the dark shadows that became even darker at night. And then she thought about how much trouble she’d had finding anywhere to rent at this time of year. ‘All right.’ Her tone was grudging. ‘But just because I’m willing to stay with you for a few nights, it doesn’t mean I’m saying yes to the rest of it. This is just temporary.’
She’d find somewhere of her own as soon as she could.
She wasn’t going to let him push her into making a decision she’d regret.
‘Of course it is temporary. We still need to have a discussion about where we will live permanently.’ Nikos opened one of her cupboards, a frown on his face. ‘Is there any food here? Get dressed. I’m taking you to your new home for breakfast.’
Ella turned the gas off, keeping one eye on the snails. ‘We’d better stop at a shop on the way because there won’t be any more food in your house than there is on this boat.’
‘There will be food.’ Nikos strolled back towards the bedroom area to retrieve his clothes. ‘I have a chef, a housekeeper and a gardener, and if between them they can’t manage to produce breakfast, they can search elsewhere for employment.’
Ella followed him down the passag
eway. ‘You have staff?’ She grabbed her jeans and tugged them on. Then she reached for her tiny suitcase and stuffed in the few items she’d got round to unpacking. ‘How can you have staff when the house doesn’t belong to you?’
‘I brought my own staff with me.’ He fastened his trousers and reached for his discarded shirt. ‘They are part of the team who run my home on Crete.’
‘You have a home on Crete?’
‘Crete and Athens.’ Deftly he fastened the buttons of his shirt and she glared at him.
‘How can anyone live in two homes?’
‘Crete is my real home. I still play a part in the family business so when I return to Athens I need somewhere that is mine.’ He reached for his watch. ‘I don’t like hotels and, much as I love my family, I do not wish to stay within the smothering confines of their homes when I am in Greece. I need to be able to escape from their interference.’
‘So where were you living when you were working in London?’
‘In a hotel. It was simpler.’
‘A hotel? I can’t imagine what you must have thought, roughing it in hospital accommodation with me.’
He took her face in his hands and delivered a lingering kiss to her mouth. ‘I thought that it was, without doubt, the best bed I had ever slept in,’ he said huskily. ‘And now stop being insecure. You wanted me to be honest with you, so I am being honest with you. Pack your things. We need to get some breakfast.’
CHAPTER SIX
NIKOS drove out of the city and down to the exclusive peninsula that boasted some of the most expensive, exclusive homes in England.
Ella’s heart pounded as they approached that area.
Why here? Dear God, why did it have to be here?
But of course it would be here. He was a billionaire, wasn’t he? And this was where the rich chose to live.
Should she say something?
Should she tell him exactly what this place meant to her?
Ella’s fingers curled tightly around the edge of her seat and she told herself that there were several fantastic houses on this stretch of coast. It didn’t have to be that one.
But it was.
Of course it was.
It was the best house in the area and it had direct access to the beach. Which other property would suit a Greek billionaire?
As Nikos parked the car at the end of the long, curving driveway Ella just stared. Her body felt strange as she contemplated her surroundings.
Fate, she thought bitterly. It was fate that he should bring her here. A test of how far she’d come.
Could she do it?
Could she live in this house that had played such a devastating role in her childhood?
She’d grown up looking at this house, staring at the outside and wondering about the inside. She’d pictured the whole place even though she’d never so much as peeped through a window.
‘What’s wrong?’ Nikos switched off the engine, his expression questioning as he studied her face. ‘You’re very pale.’
‘I’m fine.’ Her mouth was dry, her heart pounding with anxiety. A small part of her wanted to blurt out the truth but confiding in anyone was so alien to her that the words never reached her mouth.
‘I’m a doctor, Ella.’ He lifted his hand and rubbed her cheek gently with the backs of his fingers. ‘I can see that something is wrong. Tell me.’
The affectionate gesture brought a lump to her throat. Knowing that he wasn’t going to let it go unless she gave him an explanation, she told a half-truth. ‘Helen and I sometimes played on this beach as children and we always looked at this house. We used to dream up stories about the people who lived here.’ It was sort of the truth, she thought numbly, her eyes on the huge glass windows that were designed to catch every ray of light.
‘Well, now it’s your home.’ He switched off the engine. ‘And it will remain your home until we are married. Then we’ll decide where we are going to base ourselves.’
Feeling as though life was running away from her, Ella stared at the house. If ever she needed something to remind her that she couldn’t marry him, it was this place.
Because this house, with its air of pampered luxury, reminded her of man’s weakness.
She opened the car door, drawn to the house by a masochistic drive that she didn’t understand. Part of her wanted to tell him that she just couldn’t live here but another part of her was dying to look inside. How many hours had she spent wondering? Picturing what it was like.
She wanted to see. She wanted to stop imagining and know.
‘Do they let you in wearing jeans?’ She made the joke to divert attention from her reaction but she knew from his keen gaze that it hadn’t worked.
He knew something was wrong.
Wishing he wasn’t so astute, she rubbed her hands over her jeans. ‘Perhaps I’ll go shopping.’
‘I will take you shopping. It will fit nicely with a commitment I have in London. In the meantime, I’ll show you around.’
Rather than using the front door, Nikos guided her round to the back of the house, which faced the beach. Taking her hand firmly in his, he led her up the steps that led to the terrace.
Ella stood for a moment, almost expecting to feel a hand on her shoulder removing her for being an impostor.
From this privileged position on the cool wooden deck she had a view over the whole beach and she watched the families crowded together, playing on the sand.
‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’ His voice was soft and Ella kept her eyes on the beach because a tiny part of her wanted to tell him everything.
But that tiny part was firmly embedded under the barriers she’d erected to keep everyone away from her vulnerabilities. ‘I sat and dug in that very same spot, with Helen. We were eight years old.’
And she hadn’t been able to stop crying.
Her view of the world had been damaged forever.
Relationships were as fragile as sandcastles, she thought bleakly, staring at a child on the beach piling sand into a bucket and then tipping it out. Full of hope and expectations, you built something. And it took so little to knock it down.
‘You lived here as a child?’
‘No. I lived ten miles down the road.’ In a cramped one-bedroom flat that had been as different from this house as Africa was from Antarctica.
‘Do your parents still live locally? You’ve never talked about them.’
‘You never asked. Talking wasn’t part of our relationship, was it?’
‘I’m asking now.’
She gave the answer she always gave. The answer she’d memorised decades before. ‘My parents separated when I was young. Dad went abroad. We’re not in touch any more. Then my Mum died and I went and lived with Helen. I was lucky. They took me in.’ She was quite proud of the fact that she’d managed to make her childhood sound like something ordinary. Something that a million children might have experienced. Sure that she had a tight grip on her emotions, she was even confident enough to elaborate. ‘Helen used to build these fantastic castles. Moats, drawbridges, battlements—and then she’d work out ways that the prince was going to arrive and take her away to happy-ever-after land.’ The breeze was picking up and Ella rubbed her bare arms gently.
‘And you?’ He pulled her against him, warming her. ‘What was your prince going to do?’
‘I was much too realistic to think about princes.’ She felt the strength of him and the temptation to cling was so great that she had to force herself to pull away. Strolling forward to the edge of the terrace, she felt her knees shake. ‘I ought to unpack and get changed for work. Can I…?’ Her voice cracked. ‘Would you mind if I found my own way around?’ It would be easier that way. She wasn’t sure she could trust her reactions and at least this way she knew there wouldn’t be any witnesses.
He was frowning slightly, but he didn’t argue. ‘Go ahead. Take a shower and change and I’ll meet you out here for something to eat when you’re ready.’
Ella walked slowly t
owards the house feeling the same way she’d felt when she’d been eight years old.
Vulnerable. Exposed.
Hands clammy, heart out of control, she paused in the doorway and then inhaled deeply and stepped into her past.
Nikos stood on the terrace with his back to the beach, his fingers tapping an impatient rhythm on his thigh as he watched her enter the house.
Why did she want to look around the house on her own?
Was she insecure about the size of it?
Did she feel as though she didn’t belong?
Was this about the money?
Pondering that question, Nikos strolled after her.
Light poured through the soaring windows, emphasising the space and luxury. Nikos admitted to himself that he’d expected a more enthusiastic response from her.
Avoiding the master bedroom suite, he showered and shaved and then walked back onto the terrace to find Ella already there. She was standing by the railings that skirted the terrace, staring down at the beach that stretched into the distance.
In a single glance, Nikos admired her long, fabulous legs and the curve of her hips. She’d changed into a pair of linen shorts that stopped at mid-thigh, and her simple strap top was made decent by the sleek fall of her blonde hair.
But he had a feeling she’d dressed without thinking.
She didn’t seem aware of his presence and Nikos moved closer, his eyes drawn to the white peaks of her knuckles. She was gripping the railings as if trying to stop herself falling into a deep chasm.
Nikos felt a flash of concern, followed by frustration.
She was blocking him out.
On the other hand, he’d ended their relationship, hadn’t he?
His mouth twisted into a smile of self-mockery. What did he expect? Earning trust wasn’t that simple. It was going to take a while for her to trust him.
Acknowledging the similarities between them, he approached her and gently eased her hand off the railings and into his. Her fingers were cold and stiff. ‘Did you find everything you needed?’ He rubbed gently, warming and relaxing her hands with his.
