by Lynne Graham
‘I bet you anything he won’t want a scandal,’ Leanne declared. ‘According to what I’ve read, bankers are supposed to be a very conservative bunch…anything else makes the punters nervous!’
Conservative? That adjective danced around in the back of Katie’s mind when she was on the bus. On first acquaintance, Alexandros had struck her as conservative—indeed, icily reserved and austere. She hadn’t liked him, hadn’t liked being treated like a servant, and had hated the innate habit of command that was so much a part of his bred-in-the-bone arrogant assurance. But not one of those facts had snuffed out the wicked longing he had stirred up inside her. Her response to him had shocked her, and shattered all her neat, bloodless little assumptions about her own nature. His sizzling passion had shocked her even more. He had just grabbed her up and kissed her, and then carried her off to bed without hesitation or discussion. She cringed at that recollection, which she rarely let out of her memory-bank. She had acted like a slut and—not surprisingly, in her opinion—he had treated her like one.
CTK Bank was situated in the heart of the City of London, an impressive contemporary edifice with a logo hip enough to front a top fashion brand. She stared up at the light-reflecting gleam of ranks of windows, marvelling at the sheer size and splendour of the office block. Anger flared through her nervous tension, making her restless. Alexandros Christakis was, she finally appreciated, a very wealthy and powerful man. She positioned herself at the corner of the building so that she could watch both the front and the side entrances. Employees were starting to arrive. Rain came on steadily, quickly penetrating the light jacket she wore and drenching her. With her head bent to avoid the downpour, she almost missed the big car purring to a discreet halt in the quiet side street.
Straightening with a jerk, she began to walk very fast towards the limo—if the VIP passenger was Alexandros she didn’t want to miss him. Two other cars had also pulled up—one to the front of the luxury vehicle, the second to the rear. Several men emerged and fanned out across the street. Katie’s scrutiny, however, was glued to the tall dark male descending from the limousine. The breeze ruffled his luxuriant ebony hair. Without warning, a painful sense of familiarity, sharp as a knife-blade, pierced Katie. She would have known him anywhere just by the angle of his imperious head and the economic grace with which he moved. The chill of sudden shocked recognition engulfed her. Her attention locked to his lean, powerful face, marking the straight slash of his black brows, the dark, deep-set allure of his brilliant gaze. Her tummy flipped and she was dazzled.
‘Alexandros…’ She tried to speak but her voice failed her. Because even though he could not have heard her, for she was still too far away, he did seem to be looking her way.
Alexandros had picked up on the alert stance of his security team and zeroed in on the source. But the instant he saw the small slender figure approaching him he knew her, and he was so surprised he stopped dead in his tracks. The wet gleam of her wine-red hair and her pale heart-shaped face struck a haunting chord that plunged him into an instant flashback. He remembered sunshine streaming through a rain-washed window over that amazing hair, lighting up eyes of an almost iridescent green. It had been a stark moment of truth in an interlude that he was reluctant to recall. One of his bodyguards blocked her path with practised ease, just as a posse of paparazzi came charging down the street behind her, waving cameras.
‘Inside, boss,’ Cyrus, his head of security urged as Alexandros hesitated. ‘Paparazzi and a homeless kid…could be a set-up!’
In one long stride, Alexandros mounted the steps and vanished into the building. A set-up? A homeless kid? Cyrus could only have been referring to Katie. Why was she still dressing like a scruffy student? And why had she come to see him? He could not believe that her sudden appearance after so long would be a coincidence. What did she want from him? Why would she try to approach him in a public place? Had the paparazzi been waiting and watching to see if he acknowledged her, ready to spring some kind of a trap in which he was the target? Hard suspicion flaring in his shrewd gaze, he told Cyrus to watch Katie’s every move.
It took a lot to surprise Cyrus, but that instruction achieved it.
‘The female you assumed was a homeless kid? Her name is Katie Fletcher. Don’t let your team lose her!’ Alexandros warned in rapid Greek. ‘Follow her. I want to know where she lives.’
As his efficient security chief hurried back outside to carry out his orders, Alexandros switched back into working mode. Stepping into the executive lift held in readiness for him, he was immediately immersed in a quote of the latest share prices and the final adjustments to the press release to be made about the merger. When another memory tried to surface from his usually disciplined subconscious, he rooted it out with ruthless exactitude. He was not introspective. He did not relive past mistakes. In fact he had long since accepted that on the emotional front he was as cold as his reputation.
At the end of his first meeting he discovered that he had printed a K and encircled it, and the knowledge of that brief loss of concentration, that subliminal weakness that had defied his control, infuriated him.
Taken aback by the blocking technique of the security man, who had got in her way, and then rudely crowded off the pavement by the heaving, shouting and disgruntled members of the press, who had surged past her in an effort to get at Alexandros, Katie was momentarily at a loss. Alexandros had seen her. But had he recognised her? Had he sent that beefy security guy to ward her off? Would he have spoken to her if the journalists had not been present?
She thought not. He hadn’t smiled, hadn’t shown the smallest sign that a friendly welcome might be in the offing. He was such a bastard, she thought painfully, a horrible sense of failure seeping through her. But even as her shoulders drooped, a defiant spirit of rebellion was powering her up again. She marched back round the corner and through the front doors of the bank, and right up to the reception desk.
‘I’d like to speak to Mr Christakis,’ she announced.
The receptionist who came to attend to her studied Katie fixedly, as if trying to decide whether or not she was pulling her leg. In that intervening moment of assessment Katie became uncomfortably aware of her sodden hair and shabby jacket and jeans.
‘I’ll take your name.’ The elegant young woman behind the desk switched on her professional cool. ‘But I should warn you that Mr Christakis is exceptionally busy and his appointments are usually booked months in advance. Perhaps you could see someone else?’
‘I want to see Alexandros. Someone else won’t do. Please just see that he gets my name. He knows me.’ Aware of the silent disbelief which greeted that declaration, Katie retreated with as much dignity as she could manage to a seat. She watched the receptionist commune with her two colleagues. Someone stifled a giggle, and her anxious face burned as she affected an interest she did not feel in the heavy-duty financial publications laid out for perusal on a coffee table. She was getting paranoid, she scolded herself. In all probability nobody was talking about her—just as the most likely explanation for what had happened outside was that Alexandros simply hadn’t recognised her.
She lifted an uncertain hand to her wet hair and suddenly reached round to undo her ponytail. She dug a comb out of her bag and surreptitiously began to tease out the limp damp curls, praying for her natural ringlets to emerge, rather than the pure frizz that had made her scrape her hair back so tightly when she was a teenager that her eyes had used to water. She wondered why she was bothering. He wouldn’t agree to see her.
While she sat there she finally registered a fact that should have occurred to her sooner. She had got his name totally wrong. Had Alexandros ever even received her letter telling him that she was pregnant? She had sent one to his Irish residence, and when there had been no answer she had sent a second one care of the rental company that had leased the house to him. But would a letter with the wrong name on it have been forwarded? What if Alexandros hadn’t got either?
‘Miss Fletcher?
Katie stood up hurriedly. ‘Yes?’
‘I have a call for you.’
Surprise marking her delicate triangular features, Katie accepted the cordless phone extended to her.
‘Katie?’
It was Alexandros, and she was so taken aback by the sound of that dark melodic drawl of his that she almost dropped the phone. ‘Alexandros?’
‘I’m waiting for a fix on a satellite link and I’m afraid that I only have a few minutes. You’ve picked a bad day to call…’
‘The merger,’ she filled in, the receiver crammed tight to her ear as she wandered away in a preoccupied daze. His voice had an aching familiarity that tugged cruelly at her heartstrings and threatened to take her back in time. ‘But that’s why I came. I knew you’d be here, and I have to see you.’
‘Why?’ Alexandros enquired with the most studious casualness. Everything she had so far said was setting off warning bells of caution. ‘Do you need some sort of help? Is that why you asked to see me?’
‘Yes…but it’s not something I can discuss on the phone or without privacy,’ Katie told him tautly. ‘Just out of interest…er…did you ever receive a letter from me?’
‘No.’
‘Oh…’ Katie was stumped by that unhesitating negative, for if he didn’t even know that she had been pregnant he was in for a huge shock.
‘Why can’t you just tell me in brief what this is about?’ Alexandros enquired drily.
‘Because I have to see you to talk about it,’ she reminded him, feeling under unfair pressure and not knowing how to deal with it in the circumstances.
‘That may not be possible—’
Katie lowered her voice to say, almost pleadingly, ‘I wouldn’t have come here if I wasn’t desperate—’
‘Then cut to the chase,’ he cut in with cold clarity. ‘I’m not into mysteries.’
A surge of angry tears burned the back of Katie’s eyes. ‘Okay, so you won’t see me,’ she gasped. ‘But don’t say I didn’t give you the chance!’
With that ringing declaration, Katie cut the connection and marched back to the desk to return the phone. Before she could even set it down it started ringing again, and as she walked away the receptionist called her name a second time. She spun round. The handset was being offered to her. She shook her head in urgent refusal. She was uneasily conscious that quite a few people seemed to be staring in her direction, particularly a thin fair man with sharp eyes that made her colour. Without further ado she turned on her heel and headed hurriedly out of the bank.
She was furious that she had been so impulsive and naive. It had been downright stupid to try and speak to Alexandros again! He didn’t want to speak to her or hear from her, and the news that he was the father of twins would be even less welcome. She reckoned that the only way she was likely to get financial help from Alexandros now would be by approaching a solicitor to make a paternity claim. But she also knew that legal wheels turned very slowly, and would not provide an answer in the short term. So she needed to think about overcoming her scruples and approaching a newspaper, she conceded unhappily.
Alexandros would be very angry with her. A shard of all too vivid memory was assailing her. She remembered throwing a breakfast tray at him and screaming. His expression of shock would live with her to her dying day. It had dawned on her then that nobody had ever spoken to Alexandros like that before, or told him that he was absolute hell to work for and impossible to please. Her disrespect had affronted him. Only when he had been persuaded to see her side of things had he been willing to forgive the offence, and he had still ended up getting his own way. My way or the highway was a punchline that might have coined for Alexandros Christakis.
It took Katie an hour to get back to Leanne’s flat, but nobody was in when she got there. Her friend had warned her that she might go shopping with her mother, she recalled ruefully. As she walked back along the street, a limousine nudged into the kerb just ahead of her, and a big middle-aged man in a suit leapt out to jerk open the passenger door.
‘Mr Christakis would like to give you a lift,’ he announced.
Taken by surprise, she froze, studying the tinted black windows of the long glossy silver vehicle with frowning intensity before moving forward in abrupt acceptance of the invitation. Whether she liked it or not, she knew that it was the best offer she was likely to get. Her heartbeat racing so fast that she felt dizzy, she climbed into the limo.
CHAPTER TWO
ALEXANDROS dealt Katie a grim nod of acknowledgement that would have made her shiver, had not less cautious responses already been running rampant within her.
Lounging back in a black designer suit teamed with a striped shirt and smooth silk tie, he was the very image of the billionaire banker she had read about on the internet. Handsome, incredibly sophisticated, and intimidating to the nth degree though that sleek image was, there was also something impossibly sexy about him. She went hot pink with shame at that perverse thought. He had not lost the power to reduce her principles and her common sense to rubble round her feet.
‘If you wanted my attention, you’ve got it,’ Alexandros delivered with lethal cool, while he appraised her, his keen scrutiny highly critical. She had the heart-shaped face of a cat, big eyes above slanted cheekbones and a generous mouth. Unusual, rather exotic, but ultimately nothing special, with a tangle of bright copper hair that cruelly accentuated the hollows and shadows in her pale features. She was tiny and fine-boned—too thin for his tastes. By no stretch of the imagination was she beautiful—and some of the most beautiful women in the world had adorned his bed. He could not imagine why she had once made him seethe with lust.
Her lashes lifted on languorous eyes as rich and deep a green as moss. His gaze instantly narrowed, increasing in intensity almost without his volition. She shifted position with an indescribably feline movement of slender limbs that made his big powerful frame tense.
The silence stretched and stretched.
‘So…?’ Alexandros prompted, his dark drawl rough-edged as he fought the raw tide of sensual memory afflicting him. She had always smelt of soap and fresh air. The most expensive perfume in the world made her sneeze uncontrollably. He cleared his mind of that frivolous imagery with the rigorous restraint that had been second nature to him from his early twenties. He had learned then how to shut down and shut out unwelcome emotions and reactions. He thought it significant that he had got involved with Katie Fletcher when he had been emotionally off balance. Presumably, and ironically, that had added an extra edge which his encounters had lacked since then.
‘What’s this about?’ he asked with level austerity.
Just watching him, Katie felt her mouth run dry—because he was so incredibly handsome. She found herself tracing the image of her sons in his lean bronzed features, noting the straight dark brows, the definite chin and nose, and the ebony hair that gleamed with vitality. Her little boys were like mini-clones of their father. She lowered her lashes, discomfiture taking over, for what she had to tell him loomed over her like a mountain that shut out the sun. He would soon be wishing that he had never laid eyes on her, she thought painfully. ‘I wish you’d got that letter I sent you…’
To Alexandros she looked so young at that moment that guilt penetrated even his polished armour of self-containment. What lustful madness had overcome his scruples eighteen months ago? He might as well have seduced a schoolgirl. Every word she spoke underlined the reality that she had been defenceless. The other women he had known wouldn’t write him letters after he dumped them.
‘Let’s move on from the letter.’ Alexandros was now taking further note of her shabby clothes, and the fact that the sole was peeling off one of her trainers. Her poverty was obvious and his distrust increased. He could not forget the potential threat with which she had concluded their exchange on the phone. ‘What’s happened to you?’
Wretchedly aware of his visual inspection, and inwardly cringing from it, Katie muttered tightly, apologetically, ‘I know…I don’t look the same, do I? Life’s been tough over the past year—’
‘If you need money, I’ll give it to you. Drama and sob stories are not required,’ Alexandros imparted.
Her pointed chin came up in a defiant motion, her green eyes full of strain and hurt pride. ‘My goodness, did you think I was about to make you sit through some sob story? Well, then, I won’t try to wrap up the bad news. I’ll just get to the point. You got me pregnant…’
Astonished by that claim, Alexandros went straight into defensive mode, not a muscle moving on his darkly handsome face.
Katie was as pale as milk. ‘I wasn’t very pleased either. Well, to be honest, I was just terrified—’
‘Is this some kind of sting? It’s a very clumsy one.’
Her white brow indented. ‘A sting?’ she repeated blankly.
‘I don’t believe that I made you pregnant. Why would I only be hearing about it now?’ Alexandros demanded in a smooth, derisive undertone that suggested that what she had said was too stupid for words. ‘How can you expect me to believe this nonsense?’
‘The reason that you’re only hearing about it now is that you didn’t give me your address.’
‘But I left you a phone number.’
‘And I rang it more than a dozen times, and every time I was told you were unavailable or in a meeting!’ Her voice rose as she recalled how her sense of humiliation had grown with every fruitless phone call.
Alexandros continued to look stonily unimpressed. ‘I don’t accept that. My staff are very efficient—’
‘Eventually one of your employees got so tired of my calls that she took pity on me. She explained that I wasn’t on the special list she had. And, as she said, “If your name isn’t on my boss’s list, you won’t get to speak to him this side of eternity!”’ Katie completed rawly.
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