by Julia James
‘What fools we’ve been. Denying what we both craved.’
‘Each other!’ Nikos finished, and then he swept her to him, wanting no more pointless words, no more unnecessary doubts, no more fleeting fears.
He was free, finally, to hold her, to embrace her, to kiss her—to love her. As she was free to love him in return. And they were both free to love the child she carried.
Free to be happy with each other—all their lives.
A cough sounded from the doorway. They sprang apart. The nurse took in Mel’s tear-stained face and frowned slightly.
‘Happy tears or sad tears?’ she asked enquiringly, with a lift of her eyebrow.
‘Happy,’ said Mel and Nikos in unison.
The nurse’s gaze went to their fast-clasped hands, and she nodded. ‘Not too much emotion,’ she advised, with another nod and a smile. ‘Not good for baby.’
She picked up the notes from the foot of the bed, glancing at them. ‘Overnight stay for observation,’ she confirmed. Then she glanced at Nikos. ‘I’m sorry to tell you this, but it’s not actually visiting hours at the moment. It’s only because your—’
‘Wife-to-be,’ Nikos inserted, throwing a glance at Mel.
‘Your wife-to-be,’ echoed the nurse dutifully, ‘has come up here from A&E.’ She looked again at the pair of them. ‘It’s visiting hours at six, so come back then. In the meantime...’ her mouth twitched, and her expression was sympathetic now ‘...you’ve got five more minutes.’ She whisked out.
Nikos turned to Mel. His heart was soaring. Soaring like a bird in flight.
‘Will five minutes do it?’ he asked her, his brow lifting questioningly.
Mel shook her head. She was floating somewhere above the surface of the hospital bed—she didn’t know where. Didn’t care.
Had it been so simple? Had a holiday romance been the real thing all along?
I wanted freedom, but my freedom is here—here with Nikos. Here with our child, waiting to be born.
She felt her heart constrict. Whatever names Nikos might want, one she knew. If their baby was a boy it would be named for her grandfather. The grandfather she had loved so much. Not the stricken husk he had become, but the loving, protective grandfather she remembered so clearly.
Oh, Gramps—you wanted me to find a good man—and now I have. I have!
‘OK,’ said Nikos. ‘Well, if five minutes won’t do it...’ his eyes softened as he gazed down at her, the woman he had claimed the freedom to love ‘...how about fifty years?’
Her face lit. ‘Sounds good to me,’ she said. ‘Sounds very good!’
He bent to kiss her. ‘To our Golden Wedding Anniversary, then, and all the golden years between.’
‘To our golden years together,’ echoed Mel, and kissed him back.
EPILOGUE
THE CHRISTENING PARTY at Nikos and Mel’s newly acquired family-sized villa on the coast outside Athens was crowded with guests. Mel sat in almost regal splendour on the sofa, and young Nikos Stephanos Albert—already known as Nicky—lay on her lap, resplendent in his christening gown, fast asleep, oblivious to all the admiring comments that came his way.
The vast majority of those came from his doting parents, and Nikos, standing beside the sofa, was gazing down at his newborn son with an expression little short of besotted, accepting all the homage as nothing more than perfectly right and reasonable. Their son was the most amazing baby ever, and no other could possibly be even a fraction as wonderful.
They were not alone in this view, for Nikos’s parents shared it with them.
‘Hah!’ exclaimed Stephanos Parakis proudly, gazing benignly down at his grandson.
‘He looks like you,’ said his wife fondly. His new wife.
Nikos’s eyes tore themselves away from his infant son and settled with approval on Adela Parakis. Even if she hadn’t turned out to be a very calm and level-headed divorcee of forty-plus, rather than the sultry mistress he’d assumed, Nikos would have approved of her. For she had been the catalyst that had finally triggered his parents’ decision to call time on their tormented marriage.
One of the catalysts, Nikos acknowledged.
The other was the elegant silver-haired man at the side of Nikos’s mother—the new Principessa Falesi. The widowed Principe had met her at a party in Milan, and such had been his admiration for her that his mother had received with equanimity the news that her husband wished to remarry.
Now, as Principessa, she was enjoying a new lease of life—and of beauty. For as her son’s eyes perused her they could see that his mother had clearly undergone a facelift, chosen a dramatically more flattering hairstyle and, if he were not mistaken, had a few additional discreet nips and tucks, as well.
He was glad for her—glad for both his parents. Glad for their late happiness with other partners, and glad that their respective remarriages had enabled them—finally—to be civil to each other...especially when they now had a common fascination with their grandson.
‘He has my eyes,’ observed the Principessa with complacent satisfaction, approaching with her new husband.
‘He does,’ Mel smiled. Nikos’s mother was being very gracious towards her, and Mel wanted to keep her that way. So she didn’t point out that all newborns had blue eyes.
Nikos refrained from telling his mother that, actually, his son had his wife’s eyes—which just happened to be the most beautiful eyes in the world...
Memory struck through him—how Mel had flashed her sapphire eyes at him in that very first encounter, and how they had pierced him like Cupid’s proverbial arrow.
Happiness drenched through him. And disbelief.
A holiday romance? How could he ever have been idiotic enough to think Mel—wonderful, fabulous, adorable, beloved Mel—could be nothing more than a holiday romance? She was the most precious person in the world to him.
Along with Nicky, of course.
Instinctively he lifted Mel’s free hand in his and wound his fingers warmly into hers. She shifted her gaze to look at him, love shining in her eyes.
‘A daughter next, I would recommend,’ the Principessa said to Mel.
‘Oh, yes,’ agreed Mel. ‘That would be ideal.’
‘But you must watch your figure, my dear,’ her mother-in-law reminded her.
‘I fully intend to aspire to be as elegant as you in that respect,’ Mel assured her, and nodded admiringly.
The Principessa gave a little laugh, and bestowed a careful smile of approval on her daughter-in-law. ‘You must visit us in Milan, my dear, when my grandson is old enough to travel,’ she said, catching her new husband’s arm.
‘Oh, that would be lovely!’ enthused Mel. She glanced up at Nikos. ‘Wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Are you leaving already?’ he asked.
‘Alas, we must. We are flying home this evening.’
The guests were starting to disperse, and shortly after his mother’s departure Nikos’s father left as well, informing his son as he did so that Mel, Nicky and he were also invited to visit himself and Adela whenever they liked.
Nikos thanked him heartily, and saw them both to their car. As he came back into the villa Mel was in the hallway, cradling Nicky, who was now wide awake.
‘He needs a change,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Want to help?’
‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ Nikos grinned. ‘Do you mean a nappy-change? Or a change out of that metre-long silk embroidered concoction he’s wearing?’
‘Both,’ said Mel. ‘And then, if you won’t think me a bad mother, I’ll hand him over to Nanny, and you and I can sneak off to dinner before he needs his next feed.’
She gave a wry little smile of gratitude. It was amazing, she acknowledged, just how easy motherhood was when there wa
s a nanny on hand. And when the baby’s father was as devoted and willing as Nikos was.
‘Great idea,’ Nikos said with enthusiasm. ‘It’s more than time I had you to myself again.’
As they headed upstairs to the lavishly decorated suite that was Nicky’s nursery Nikos said, ‘By the way, we’ve been invited to a wedding—’
‘Oh? Whose?’ asked Mel interestedly.
Nikos gave a glinting smile. ‘Would you believe Fiona Pellingham—and Sven?’
Mel gave her gurgle of laughter. ‘His name’s Magnus,’ she said. ‘But it’s lovely news. I’m so glad for her.’
‘Well, you were the matchmaker there,’ Nikos reminded her.
Mel smiled fondly at her husband. ‘And she was ours in a way, too, if you think about it. If she hadn’t been pursuing you, you’d never have asked me out.’
Nikos put his arm around her shoulder. ‘I’d have found another reason,’ he answered. ‘There was no way I could ever get you out of my head.’
She paused at the top of the stairs to kiss his cheek. Her eyes were soft with love. ‘Nor me you,’ she assured him.
The dark eyes glinted with wicked humour. ‘Love at first sight, was it?’
She spluttered, remembering their intemperate sparring at that first prickly encounter in the sandwich shop. ‘We got all the aggro out of the way,’ she told him firmly. ‘Oh, and on the subject of sandwich shops—I heard that the Sarrie’s Sarnies franchise is going great guns. Thanks to your business loan.’
‘Well, didn’t I promise that if his turnover increased I’d consider funding his expansion?’ Nikos reminded her as they gained Nicky’s bathroom and got to work on the delicate task of parting him from his ornate christening robe.
‘He’s very grateful,’ Mel assured him. ‘And so,’ she added, ‘is Joe. For sponsoring that new homeless shelter he’s in, and the medics for addiction and alcoholism treatment.’
‘Well, I’m grateful to Joe in return,’ Nikos riposted. ‘When I showered him with all those damn pound coins you’d dumped on me in your splenetic rage...’ he ducked as Mel swung him a playful thump of objection, then lifted Nicky free of his gown ‘...I realised you were right about more than just how the booze was killing him—that you were entitled to be put out about the way I behaved to you. And that I owed you flowers to make amends.’
Mel gently laid their infant son down on his changing mat. ‘Well,’ she said, throwing another wicked glance at her husband, ‘you can go on making amends.’ She stepped aside. ‘Go on—your turn for the nappy-change.’
‘I couldn’t just hand you the clean nappy, could I?’ Nikos asked hopefully.
‘Nope,’ said his wife sternly.
Her husband dropped a resigned kiss on her forehead. ‘It’s a price I’ll pay willingly for a happy marriage,’ he told her.
Mel reached up to him with her mouth. ‘Correction,’ she told him. ‘For the happiest marriage in the world.’
She took a wad of cotton wool, holding it at the ready for Nikos, talcum powder in her other hand.
Nikos grinned. ‘Right, as always,’ he agreed.
Then, with a squaring of his shoulders, he got to work to prove to the woman he loved just how much he loved her...
And beneath their joint ministrations the child who had brought them back together gazed cherubically up at the two people who loved only him more than they loved each other.
*****
Read on for an extract from CLAIMED FOR HIS DUTY by Tara Pammi.
CHAPTER ONE
LEAH HUNTINGTON COLLAPSED onto the plastic chair behind her small desk, her knees buckling out from under her. The red stamp spelling out “REJECTED” on the application form blurred in front of her eyes. Her heart squeezed painfully as she fingered the flat sketches on her drawing board, the possibility of seeing her creation take form now evaporating like a puff of smoke.
Sweat ran down her back, the slow whir of the ceiling fan scraping against her nerves. She ran cramped up fingers over her neck, feeling the muscles tighten with tension.
Mrs. DuPont, the buying manager for a retail store, had given Leah only two months to create her first collection and all Leah had now were flat sketches. And as she had to do everything herself instead of contacting a factory like she did for the fashion house, every minute was important.
The most important of it being the funds she required to source raw materials... There were a hundred things she needed and it was all sitting in that bank.
She dialed the number for the bank manager she had spoken to just two days ago.
Her heart hammered painfully, thudding faster and faster, an ominous pounding she couldn’t breathe past. There could be only one man behind this. Her stomach twisted as the bank manager coughed on the other end of the phone. His answer was curt, immediate as though he had been rehearsing the explanation, waiting for Leah to call.
They couldn’t use the trust fund as security to approve her loan because—Leah could hear the hushed reverence in the manager’s voice as he uttered the name—the trustee overseeing her fund had denied the use of the trust fund, her trust fund, as security.
Stavros.
Leah threw the handset across the room, every inch of her shaking. She kicked the chair aside, the impact of it jarring up her leg, every nerve cell in her humming with outrage.
How much more was he going to punish her? How long was she going to let him?
She picked up the phone again, her vision blurry now with unchecked tears. Her throat burned as she took a deep breath, her thumb hovering over the numbers on the handset.
She wanted to demand an explanation, she wanted to...
But what was the point? His secretary would politely tell her that he was not available. It was the same answer she had received over the last year every time she had tried to contact him. Even though they both lived in Athens, they might as well have been living on the opposite ends of the planet.
She bit her lower lip, her nails digging into her skin. A sob built inside her chest, fury rising through her like a storm that could swallow her in its clutches.
She had to put an end to this. She had to break free of the leash he bound her with, controlling her every step, every choice, while he enjoyed his life. She had let him do it for five years.
Five years of a sterile life, five years of being his prisoner—that she had accepted out of guilt and fear.
Scrubbing the tears from her cheeks, she pulled up the society feature she had purposely clicked away from this morning on her laptop.
Stavros’s business partner and her grandfather’s second godson, Dmitri Karegas, was throwing a party aboard his yacht.
Stavros and Dmitri were cut from the same cloth—breathtakingly gorgeous, built their empires from nothing under her grandfather Giannis’s guidance, and considered themselves gods, their will law for the normal mortals they walked amongst.
Stavros hated parties with an intensity Leah had never been able to understand, but Dmitri would be there.
She just had to make sure the decadent playboy, who apparently was always surrounded by a group of willing women, noticed her presence aboard his latest toy.
Had to, somehow, gain his attention.
Her stomach clenched as she shoved the bedroom door open and walked toward the closet.
Every step toward it, every thought in this direction—was like walking to her own doom.
But Stavros had left her no choice...left her with no way out.
She dialed another number on her phone and booked a taxi. A shiver traveled over her spine as she viciously pushed the cotton tops and skirts in her closet away until she reached the end.
She pulled the gold silk dress, the one designer label she had kept, her fingers shaking violently as she realized how little fabric
there was of the dress. Her back would be totally bare, which meant she had to go without a bra.
And it would leave most of her legs, her thighs bare too. So no underwear either.
Five years ago, she hadn’t even blinked when she had worn it. Had thought it nothing to parade around with Alex and Calista, showing every bit of skin she could expose, barely looking decent...
And she had been almost twenty pounds heavier...
Just thinking of how she must have looked then made her cringe.
What the hell had the designer been thinking? What the hell had she been thinking?
She had been trying to please Calista, who had decreed she wear it that night... That’s what she had been thinking.
Yet nothing else in her closet would do for tonight.
Of all the things to think about when her life was eternally stuck in this rut, when the very walls of this apartment were closing in on her...
Her palms were sweating as she pulled the dress to herself. The dress would fall scandalously above her knees, just about covering her buttocks.
It was the most outrageous dress she owned, the sartorial equivalent of a tramp and she had worn it the night Stavros had decided her fate. Fitting then that it was the one that would at least get her an audience with the man who was her jailor.
Every muscle in her trembled, and her mouth was coated with bitter fear as she walked into the bathroom and splashed water on her face.
He was going to explode, he was going to despise her even more, if that was possible. But she couldn’t bear this...this isolation anymore.
She couldn’t bear to continue like this. Something had to give.
* * *
Leah clutched the leather seat of the taxi, holding onto it a like a lifeline, the curious glances the cabbie threw her way doing nothing to propel her out.
She took a deep breath and looked out the dirty window. The marina was busy, a few of the yachts moored there highlighted by the setting sun. But even amidst the loud luxury, one yacht stood out, its gleaming white exterior splendid in the setting sun’s light.
She took the bills out of her gold-lined clutch and handed it over. This was it.
