by Lynne Graham
Alexandros winced. She had overheard that?
‘The friend was a gossip. I was protecting our privacy.’
Katie grimaced through the tears threatening her. ‘No, you were telling the truth. That’s all I ever was, all I was ever meant to be…the maid warming your bed.’
‘You make it sound cheap and sordid, but it wasn’t!’ Alexandros thundered at her. ‘The first day I allowed you to shout at me without fear of retribution you were no longer the maid. You were my equal!’
Taken aback by that explosion of temper, Katie shot him a startled glance and walked on faster than ever. ‘Well, today was cheap…What did you do? Bring in decorators and stylists to set the scene for my seduction?’
‘Theos mou…’ Alexandros grated. ‘As long as I live I will never try to please you again…you are the most contrary woman!’
‘I don’t trust you as far as I could throw you. Do you blame me?’ Catching sight of the vast villa ahead, Katie spun round, hands planted on her slim hips to confront him again. ‘Where were your security guards this afternoon? Their absence is proof that you planned to get me into bed!’
Alexandros spread lean brown hands in a graceful gesture. ‘No comment…’
His obvious lack of shame outraged Katie to the brink of screaming. ‘May you rot in hell for this, Alexandros Christakis!’
‘It’s not a crime for me to want to marry you—’
‘Look, when I’m so desperate for a husband that I have to take one who just feels guilty that he got me pregnant, I’ll let you know!’
Below the pillared portico of the giant villa, Alexandros brought her to a halt by the simple method of closing a lean brown hand over hers and holding fast until she was forced to turn back to him. ‘Maybe I appreciate the existence of those little boys much more than you give me credit for,’ he bit out in a raw undertone. ‘Ianthe pursued every fertility treatment known to the human race and still failed to conceive!’
Dumbfounded by that information, Katie stared at him with wide, unblinking green eyes. Hurt and regret twisted through her, and only caused more pain. Her very first thought was that her own fertility must have struck him as a bitterly ironic blow when his late wife had had to endure repeated disappointment in her desire to bear his child.
‘And maybe I’m also aware of how much I owe to my grandparents for taking me into their home and raising me as their son,’ Alexandros completed.
‘If I ever marry, I want a more personal connection with my husband than my children,’ she told him stiltedly.
As Katie spun on her heel and hurried into the villa, Alexandros felt as if a detonator was going off inside him, and he strode through the inner doors to the marble hall like a tornado blowing in. ‘What could be more personal than what we have now?’ he roared in her wake.
Astonished by his dark fury, scorched by the blaze of his fierce golden stare, Katie stilled. ‘That’s just physical,’ she mumbled, in a tight dismissive tone.
‘And what’s wrong with that?’ Alexandros grated in a tone of naked aggression. ‘I’d fly round the globe just to spend one hour in your bed! It’s the best sex I’ve ever had. I’m happy with that—more than happy. Why can’t you be?’
A floodtide of embarrassed colour flushed her face. She could not initially credit that he had said that to her. ‘Alexandros…’
Somewhere behind her she heard a cough. It sounded very much like the sort of warning cough people employed when they were keen to draw attention to their presence. Before her very eyes Alexandros froze, his lean, darkly handsome face shuttering, his lush lashes semi-screening his stunning eyes to wary glimmers of piercing gold.
‘Alexandros…’
Slowly, reluctantly, her face very pink at the awareness that someone might have overheard a line or two of that ferocious and very private argument, Katie spun round. A white-haired older man, with her eldest son, Toby, comfortably clutched in one arm, was smiling widely at them both from the foot of the long hall.
‘Pelias Christakis,’ the old man acknowledged, in the most cheerful, friendly way. ‘And you have to be—’
‘Katie,’ Alexandros sliced in flatly, closing his hand briefly over hers to palm the bra she held and dispose of it she knew not where—for his hand was empty when she dared to glance down again. ‘Allow me to introduce you to my grandfather.’
Banding his free arm round Katie’s taut spine, Pelias urged her to precede him into the drawing room. ‘Katie…this is my wife—Calliope.’
A plump older lady, with shining silver hair and Connor cosily ensconced on her lap, greeted her in accented English.
Alexandros dismissed the nanny hovering in attendance while Katie felt that she was doing well not to succumb to an attack of hysterics. Her cheeks were certainly hot enough to fry eggs on. How long had Alexandros’s grandparents been waiting for them to put in an appearance? Did they suspect the cause of their absence? They could hardly fail to have noticed that her hair was a tangled mop and her mascara smudged, and that Alexandros, mysteriously shorn of his usual sartorial elegance, lacked a jacket and socks. Nor could Pelias and Calliope have missed out on the fact that their grandson and the mother of their great-grandchildren had just been engaged in a ghastly argument. But neither of Alexandros’s wonderfully charming grandparents betrayed the slightest hint of discomfort or disapproval.
Pelias beamed when Toby held out his arms to be reunited with Katie, and passed him back. ‘Of course he wants his mother. Calliope and I were very excited when we heard about the children. I hope you will understand that we could not wait one day longer to meet them. Time is precious at our stage in life.’
Alexandros, who realised that he had been very wrong to assume that his grandparents were devastated by the scandal of his illegitimate sons, gritted his even white teeth. To his jaundiced gaze, the older couple looked as if all their Christmases had rolled in at once. He bent down to press a kiss to his grandmother’s soft powdered cheek.
‘Your grandfather wanted to warn you of our intended visit, but you know how much I love surprises,’ she informed him chirpily.
‘It’s a wonderful surprise,’ Alexandros responded without hesitation.
Explaining that arthritis made her a little stiff, Calliope invited Katie to come and sit beside her.
‘They are wonderful little boys. Strong, healthy, full of life. You must be very proud of them,’ Calliope remarked, petting Connor, who was lying back and enjoying every minute of such keen attention.
Equally misty-eyed, Pelias patted Toby’s black curls before Katie lowered her son to the rug so that he could crawl. ‘We are overjoyed by their existence.’ He gave Katie a level look. ‘I want you to know that, no matter what happens between you and Alexandros, we will always consider you and the children as a part of our family and you will be welcome in our home.’
Katie was touched to the heart by that sweeping declaration. She watched Toby making a beeline for his father. The best sex I’ve ever had. Her face heating at the inopportune recollection, she was wildly aware of the ache between her thighs. Their renewed intimacy had taken her by storm—to such an extent that even meeting Alexandros’s eyes was a challenge.
‘You’ll stay for a few days, of course?’ Alexandros was saying quietly to his grandparents. ‘Unfortunately I have an early meeting in Brussels tomorrow, and will have to leave later this evening. But Katie would welcome your company.’
Extreme guilt assailed Katie. Was he making work an excuse because of the row they had had? She watched him scoop up Toby with an easy confidence that she could see surprised and impressed the older couple. Doubt and confusion engulfed her. The twins were already learning to love their father. Had she made the right decision? Or the wrong one? All her emotions were at sixes and sevens; all her reactions seemed to be on a razor’s edge.
Half an hour later, Alexandros insisted on helping Katie take the twins upstairs. Once they had been settled for the night—the little boys had already eaten and
been bathed—he strolled back down the corridor with her and came to a halt outside the bedroom that was to be hers for the duration of her stay. ‘I have one question I’ve been meaning to ask you…it dates back to when you were carrying the twins.’
Katie glanced at him in surprise.
‘When exactly did you make those calls to that phone number I left with you?’
Katie compressed her generous pink mouth. ‘It was the summer…late June into July.’
Alexandros surveyed her with arrested dark golden eyes. ‘And the letter you mentioned? When was it sent?’
‘About the same time.’
‘But that would have been six or seven months after we broke up. By then you must have known you were pregnant for a long time. Why did you wait until then before trying to contact me?’ he demanded incredulously.
Katie almost winced, for it was a question she had hoped he would never ask. But now that he had asked she felt she had to give him an honest reply. ‘I was waiting to see if you would phone me first.’
His ebony brows pleated. ‘I don’t get it.’
Katie lifted her chin, denying the raw sense of rejection she still felt. ‘I wanted to know if you would get in touch with me again off your own bat. You didn’t, which told me all I needed to know.’
‘I’d have phoned if I’d known you were pregnant!’ Alexandros launched back at her in disbelieving frustration. ‘By the time you made the effort to call me, your name had been removed from the list—and that’s why you didn’t get to speak to me!’
‘Some of us don’t operate a datelined filing cabinet approach to our love-lives,’ Katie murmured sourly.
At that crack, which was full of a defiant feminine logic utterly at war with the unemotional reserve, practicality and self-discipline that Alexandros prized, he drew in a slow, steadying breath of restraint. He was shocked to appreciate that he was a hair’s breadth from losing his temper with her again. His scorching golden eyes veiled and cooled. Not with his grandparents still under the same roof. He had witnessed his grandfather’s dismay that his grandson should even have raised his voice in Katie’s vicinity. He had been dourly relieved that the older man’s hearing loss would have prevented him from distinguishing words at such a distance. Unhappily, Pelias thought all women were like his wife—fragile flowers, with eternal smiles, adoring yielding natures and no temper whatsoever.
The only place Katie yielded was bed, Alexandros reflected grimly, reckoning that it was a great shame that he had ever allowed her out of the tower. Never again would he put food before sex. It was a time to think out of the box and come up with a fresh creative approach. But in the short term he felt he should step back and let her work out for herself what she was missing.
‘Stay on here at the villa for a while,’ Alexandros advised Katie equably, rising magnificently above that last comment of hers. ‘It’ll give me more time to sort out a suitable apartment for you in London.’
Katie was disconcerted at that change of subject, and at the calm agreement that she should have a home of her own. She looked up at him uncertainly. ‘Alexandros…I understand if you’re still annoyed with me, but I really feel we’ve taken a wrong turn and—’
‘A couple of hours ago you were in my bed…don’t please ask me to be friends now,’ Alexandros incised with slashing derision. ‘It’s too late for that.’
‘Maybe that was never a possibility,’ Katie conceded, responding to a barely understood desire to soothe and placate that embarrassed her. She found it easy to argue with him, but the instant he started to pull back from her something perilously like panic took hold of her.
‘Don’t expect me to stand by and watch you bedding other men either.’ Alexandros was determined to spell out her boundaries before he departed.
Dismayed that he could think that she would lurch straight out of his arms into another man’s, Katie reached down to touch a lean brown hand in an intimate gesture that she did not even think about. ‘I’m not like that. Don’t you know that yet? I’m not planning—’
‘You are pushing your luck.’ Hard golden eyes glittering with warning, Alexandros backed her up against the wall and braced his hands on either side of her head, effectively imprisoning her. ‘Don’t touch if you don’t want to be touched back, pedhi mou.’
Her breath snarled up in her throat and her mouth ran dry. The fire in his gaze set up a shameful tingle in her body. He was so close that she shivered, and she was shamed by the awareness that it was not apprehension that powered her. A helpless anticipation was making her heart-rate pick up speed
‘You need to work on your resistance level, because I haven’t given up,’ Alexandros spelt out, soft and low like a purring tiger. ‘When I want something, I go all out to get it. The next round, I may well fight dirty, thespinis mou.’
With a sardonic smile, he dropped his hands, straightened, and stepped back with exaggerated courtesy to allow her free passage.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FOUR weeks later, Katie attended the opening of an art gallery in the company of a handsome young Greek businessman and his sister.
When she had returned from Italy Alexandros had been in New York, and she had spent more than a week as a guest in Pelias and Calliope Christakis’s comfortable London home. There she had met a lot of people, because the sociable older couple had made a special effort to draw her into their social circle. Damon and Eugena Bourikas, who had initially visited Pelias and Calliope in the company of their elderly father, had been welcome new acquaintances as they were in Katie’s own age group.
For the first time in a long time Katie was in a position to enjoy a social life, and she was trying to push herself out and about to do exactly that. She was also planning to look for a part-time office job, to ease her back into the swing of working life. The breathtaking speed of change over the past weeks, however, had challenged her more than she had expected.
She had finally picked up the courage to phone her mother in New Zealand and tell her about the twins. The news that she was a grandmother had come as a shock to Maura. Although she had been hurt that her daughter had not confided in her, she had phoned Katie back a day later to ask a flood of questions about the little boys and request some photos of them.
Although Katie was now free of any immediate financial or accommodation woes, she was suffering from shamefully low spirits—which she did her best to conceal behind a cheerful smile. She felt that a job would give her a fresh focus. If she got back into the employment market she would start earning some independence again. Was she planning to live as some sort of kept woman on Christakis largesse for ever? No way. And perhaps a return to the workplace would give her something better to think about than the fact that she missed seeing Alexandros. That intense sting of loss wasn’t getting any easier to bear with the passage of time. He had been abroad a great deal on business. He had also contrived to visit the twins on three separate occasions when she was out; what contact they had enjoyed had been bereft of privacy and distinctly edgy in tone.
Only a week had passed since Katie had moved in to the stunning fully furnished apartment which Alexandros had organised for her. It was infinitely larger, fancier and more centrally located than she could ever have envisaged. Alexandros, however, had dismissed her protests with the declaration that his sons had a right to benefit from every possible advantage and comfort.
‘I guess the rumours about you and Alexandros Christakis must be true.’ Damon Bourikas allowed that provocative statement to trail in the air while they wandered round the gallery exhibits.
Wishing his sister had not drifted off, leaving them alone, Katie tensed. ‘I never talk about Alexandros…’
‘Did the tabloids say it all for you?’ the young Greek riposted.
Katie went scarlet. ‘My goodness, that was all rubbish! What are the rumours you mentioned?’
‘That you’re not together in any way with him. I made the comment because I saw your nanny when she brought the children
to visit Pelias and Calliope.’
Katie studied him in bewilderment. ‘I don’t understand…’
‘Your nanny, Maribel, is a seriously tasty package,’ Damon explained. ‘Only a woman unafraid of competition would employ a nanny who resembles a supermodel in her home. Particularly one who is an exact match of the female profile preferred by the Christakis males: a leggy blonde with heavenly curves…’
As his meaning sank in, Katie turned bone-white. Until that moment Katie had never thought about the fact that Maribel was a beauty, but now her thoughts went into overdrive. Did the nanny’s undeniable charms explain Alexandros’s recent visits to the twins when she herself was elsewhere and unavailable? Was Damon trying to give her a warning? Was Alexandros chasing her nanny and was she, Katie, the very last to know?
‘Yes, she is lovely, isn’t she?’ Katie managed to say through teeth that were almost chattering from the sudden chill that was creeping through her taut body. ‘I suppose she might remind him of his late wife.’
‘She would be a hard act to follow, I would think.’
‘Who are you talking about?’ His sister Eugena, a talkative brunette, rejoined them at that point.
‘Ianthe Christakis,’ Damon supplied.
‘My mother used to hold her up to me as a role model,’ Eugena confided with a rueful expression. ‘Of course Ianthe was much older than me. She was gorgeous, though, and always doing charity work. She was also totally devoted to Alexandros—’
‘He married her and turned into a workaholic,’ Damon remarked.
‘Everybody knows that they had the perfect marriage!’ Eugena shot her brother a look of reproof.
Thrown off-balance by Eugena’s generous litany of praise, Katie swallowed hard. ‘Pelias and Calliope never mention Ianthe.’
‘They were all devastated when she died. It was so tragic that she never had a child.’ Then, as if realising what she was saying, Eugena reddened with discomfiture. ‘I’m sorry, Katie. I hope you don’t think I meant—’
