The Drakon Baby Bargain

by Tara Pammi

  And now, because she couldn’t keep her mouth shut, because she couldn’t bear to be ignored by Gabriel again, Angelina would lose the only adult she’d come to trust.

  The hair on her nape stood in prickles as the room emptied around her.

  Vibrating with a tension she couldn’t dispel, she straightened from the table. Gabriel Marquez stood at the corner of the room, a silent specter studying her with hair-raising intensity. “You’re full of neat little tricks, Princesa.”

  Eleni stiffened. “I have nothing to say to you.”

  He made his way across the room with soft strides for such a big man. Like a jungle cat. “I would say it was the opposite, judging by the looks you sent my way. I would say you were raring to rip into me.”

  Eleni tilted her head back, struggling to keep her gaze away from the hard contours of his mouth. His lips had been so soft and demanding against hers. So full of passion and tender warmth. For days afterward, she’d marveled at the paradox of the man’s kiss, which matched the man himself—one moment warm and inviting, and the next cold and ruthless.

  “Even the board members now know that you were dying to set me down about Angelina.”

  Heat rushed into her cheeks and she struggled to keep her thoughts and her gaze from straying. “I...was trying to defuse the situation without further breaking her—” she flinched as his gaze became chilly “—heart. Even you must agree that Angelina’s feelings are the most important in that scene.”

  “Even I?” His taunt was voiced in such a low tone that Eleni had to tilt closer to understand. Instantly, she was suffused in his male scent. Tendrils of warmth settled low in her belly as he reached her. “Explain.”

  Any mortification she felt at her body’s alarming reaction to his nearness died at his curt tone. “Don’t bark commands at me.”

  His gray eyes were cold and bleak, like a winter sky. “Maybe you think I’m one of the staff you order around with such brisk efficiency, Princesa. It would be in your best interests to remember who I am.”

  She tried for a laugh, awareness flooding through her. His hands had traced her hips as if she were a precious treasure. His body had been a fortress of warmth. She couldn’t stop that rush of sensation so she held herself rigid instead. “Like you let anyone forget. This is ridiculous, Mr. Marquez. If you want to say something, then say it.”

  He breathed out in a harsh exhale, tension wreathing his features. “Angelina and you have formed a bond.”

  “Is there a question in that?” she taunted, ignoring the rational voice that said she was pulling the tail of a tiger.

  He hesitated and Eleni saw something in those cold eyes that made her hesitate, rethink her opinion of him. Or at least not to condemn him so easily. “How? When?”

  “When what?”

  “When did you become close? How did you...have so much access to her?” His frown deepened as he searched her face. “It’s not like you sit around playing the charming socialite in the palace.”

  Was he complimenting her or setting her down? Infuriating man! “I... I... The task of setting up quarters and such for the string of nannies you employed for her fell to me. When you disappeared on your long and frequent business trips, the task of making sure they did their job fell to me. I think it was the second one. Or the third. The poor woman couldn’t find Angelina one day for hours and raised an alarm.

  “You were in... Sydney, I think. Since you brought her to Drakon,” she couldn’t resist adding, “I noticed that Angelina always drifts toward the stables. I found her there that afternoon, hiding in my mare’s stall. Angelina loves horses—did you know that? I invited her to spend some time during the day with me at the stables. And we...we got close,” she finished, her face a swath of color.

  Somehow, spending time with Angelina had become the high point of her day. Had filled the gaping hole in her life after her father’s death and Andreas’s uncharacteristic departure.

  “But what did you do? And why? I want to know what you did to get so close to her, Ms. Drakos.”

  He looked so befuddled that Eleni bit back her temper and sighed. “I didn’t do it for some nefarious purpose.”

  He ran his hands through his hair, tight grooves etching around his mouth. “I’m not accusing you,” he said, though his tone did just that. “I’m curious as to what you did, what techniques you employed, what...incentives you offered to get close to Angelina.”

  “She’s not a business deal you’re trying to close,” she burst out, remembering her own confusion at that age.

  “I have never lost a business deal in my life.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.” She exhaled roughly and willed herself to be patient. For that twelve-year-old, if not for the arrogant Spaniard in front of her.

  For three months, she’d tried to pretend that the kiss hadn’t happened. That it hadn’t been the most glorious moment of her life, even when he’d pushed her away with such apparent disgust. That her heart didn’t speed up every time she laid eyes on him.

  That she didn’t hope in the farthest corners of her heart that he would look at her with that passion in his eyes again, that he would see her as a woman and not as a part of the palace machinery. That he would kiss her again, just one more time.

  But no.

  Five layers of makeup, a dress that displayed every curve and a sign around her neck that said she was willing and wanton. And of course, her identity hidden behind a mask.

  That was the only way he would want her apparently.

  She swallowed away the disappointment as she always did, tired of her own pathetic longing. There were years of his company’s work still to be done in Drakon. Was she going to spend the next decade mooning over one kiss that meant nothing to him, like she had mourned the last decade over Spiros and his vows of undying devotion, even after he’d disappeared like mist?

  “Angelina, for all that she’s been forced to grow up in the past few months, is a little girl. With feelings and emotions. She lost the one person who loved her unconditionally. She’s been thrust into an unfamiliar world with a man—”

  “It has been eight months since her mother died.”

  “Eight months is an entire lifetime for her. You can’t just...buy her things and expect everything to be all right. You can’t just slot into her life and expect her to love you like she did her mother. Not by leaving her with a string of nannies. Not by engaging her in a battle of wills. And definitely not by demanding her affection and love.”

  “Those nannies came highly recommended with years of experience in dealing with kids.”

  “But not a single one of them tried to understand her. It was all just schedules and milestones and you can’t just ignore...” She swallowed the lump that rose in her throat.

  He tucked a finger under her chin and tilted it up. “I can’t just ignore what?”

  She wished she could hide the expression in her eyes. Erase the hurt from that corner of her heart that never seemed to heal. “You can’t fix the loss of her mom by throwing her into the deep end. She’s among strangers in a foreign country and she barely sees you. She...she told me last week that she wanted to run away because of what that ghastly girlfriend of yours told her.”

  If he wasn’t holding her chin in his hands, she would have missed his flinch. “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s an ex. She...said she had experience with kids...that she could help me connect with Angelina.”

  Now she understood the lineup of exes and “girlfriends” that had been appearing outside his office in the last few weeks. It had taken every ounce of her willpower not to march in there and demand that he send them away. For Angelina’s sake.

  “Could you not see that they were just using Angelina like some stepping stone toward you?”

  She saw it sink in. His jaw tightened. “And you, Princesa? You do not have any purpose?”

  His gaze promptly fell to her mouth, a languid stroke against her senses. “I told you—I have no designs on y
ou.”

  “You knew who I was and yet you still kissed me.”

  “Because my requirements for that night were to kiss a man. You fit the bill. If you hadn’t ripped my mask off, I’d have been on my way and no one—”

  “If I hadn’t ripped the mask off—” his harsh breath purred over her cheeks “—I would have been inside you, right on that balcony, with your brother and half the world watching.”

  Gravelly and low, his words rippled over her skin. Places she shouldn’t be thinking of throbbed with need. “Ripping off the mask was the only sensible thing that happened that night.”

  “I would have—” she licked her lips as if that could stave off the heat pouring through her “—stopped you. It wouldn’t have gone that far.”

  His gaze held hers, amusement and something else glittering there. “Either you’re very naive about men or you just like to lie to yourself.” A rough exhale left his mouth. “And now I find you, of all the people in my life, bonded with my daughter.”

  Eleni pushed away from him, needing respite from that overwhelming masculinity. Respite from her own reactions. “Even your conceit can’t be that great to think I befriended Angelina with some...underhanded intentions. Sitting in the stables by herself, she reminded me of myself.”

  “A Princess of Drakon, daughter to King Theos and sister to powerful Andreas and Nikandros—and I’m to believe you understand how Angelina feels? That you have to hide beneath a mask to find a man to kiss you?”

  She shrugged, the gleam of interest in his eyes making her heart thud faster. If not for Angelina, he wouldn’t have spared her a single glance again, much less a conversation.

  “I don’t care what you believe about me. Angelina needs to feel like she’s important to someone, like there’s some constant in her life that won’t desert her. She’s a sweet girl underneath all that bluster.”

  “She’s sweet with you,” he bit out, a vein vibrating in his forehead. “The first time I saw my daughter was at her mother’s funeral. It took her a week to understand that I was indeed her father and not some terrifying stranger who was ripping her away from everything familiar. I learned after my ex was in an accident that she had named me as Angelina’s father.

  “In three months, she hasn’t stopped looking at me as if I...were the culprit.

  “My own daughter looks at me as if I...” He swallowed hard and looked away. “I’ve tried to be gentle with her... I’ve tried gifts. I’ve tried everything under the sun but not a damn thing works.”

  Eleni hoped for the little girl’s sake that he would learn to express that concern. To show that he cared. But she’d been around too many thickheaded men, and Gabriel Marquez had proved that night that he was the king of arrogant ruthlessness and wouldn’t recognize tender emotion if it hit him in that all too gorgeous face.

  He’d connected with her that night when he’d thought her a stranger. But as soon as he’d learned her identity, as soon as he’d learned that she knew him, he had shut down. Had closed himself off so fast that for days after she’d wondered if she’d imagined their exchange.

  She wanted nothing to do with such a hard man, a man who thought showing his emotions was a weakness.

  But for Angelina’s sake, she wanted to help. She remembered all too well how alone and frightened she had been growing up in the palace. It was only when her father had married Camille, Nikandros’s mother that Eleni had realized that not everyone in the palace resented the illegitimate child that the King had adopted in a fit of uncharacteristic generosity.

  Camille had been so busy with Nik’s frail health, and yet she’d always had a kind word for Eleni.

  “Never let him see a weakness, ma chérie,” when Eleni had cowered in the face of her father’s rages. “Never let them make you dispensable,” when Eleni had, in her innocent ignorance, complained that the Crown Prince Andreas, the older brother she loved so much, didn’t care about her either.

  So Eleni had taken Camille’s advice to heart and made herself indispensable to her father and brothers. She had never imagined becoming the buffer between the three of them.

  As she’d observed this father and daughter over the last three months, she’d assumed Gabriel was the same as her own father: controlling, bloated with arrogance, treating his offspring like pawns in his own personal game.

  The glittering frustration in Gabriel’s eyes gave her hope for Angelina.

  “She feels that you’ve taken her on as a last resort. With me, she knows I love spending time with her. That I don’t expect anything in return, that it is not a duty.”

  Gabriel’s gaze moved over her, searching without seeing her. She’d seen that look on her older brother Andreas’s face—when he saw people only as a means to an end. When he decided on a course and set upon it, no matter what the cost to others. Her heart thumped in her chest.

  “Then you’ll teach me how to get through to her,” he added softly, utter resolve in his tone, “and you’ll help the both of us connect.”

  “It’s not something I can transfer from my head to yours.”

  “I do not care what you call it, Princesa, but you’ll teach me how to connect with my daughter.” Stubborn resolve made his features look harsher than ever. “And you will do it before it’s too late.”

  “What you’re suggesting is...not that simple.”

  “I will speak to Nikandros about releasing you from all your many unofficial duties. From now on, you’ll spend your entire time with Angelina. And me, whenever I’m available.” His brow cleared, everything falling into place in his world. Even her soft gasp didn’t divert his attention. “I’ll try to clear my schedule for a couple of evenings every week and we will dine together. After a month or so, the three of us can take a trip together. I want to find a good school for her and you can accompany us.”

  The man’s nerve! “I’m not your servant to be ordered about. I will not drop everything in my life just for your benefit. I will not...” She couldn’t even get the words out at his arrogance. “You insult me with one breath, and then order me around on the next.”

  Spending months in his company, wishing he would take notice of her, comparing herself to his parade of girlfriends—it would be her personal torture device. “What makes you think I would willingly sign up for anything that concerns you?”

  “Because you do not have anything going on in your life. I’ve been watching you, Princesa.”

  Eleni jerked back, her heart thumping against her rib cage. “Watching me? For what purpose?”

  He shrugged, just like she’d done before. And if Eleni hadn’t spent an hour with him on a moonlit terrace sharing the depths of her soul, she wouldn’t have seen the carefully manufactured gesture. She’d have missed that utterly male gleam in his gaze.

  “To figure you out.”

  “And what have you figured out?”

  “You’re illegitimate, so you don’t rank that high with the traditionalists of the country. You have no boyfriend or lover and no options on the horizon, unless you ask your brothers to set you up. And they are smart enough to keep you around because of course you’re sensible and reliable.

  “I’ve seen you with your brothers and the staff. You’re a very maternal sort of woman. You know every staff member by name, and you ask after their families. You give hours of your time to children’s charities instead of just throwing money at them. And your reckless actions that night prove how desperate you are for your life to change. For it to be more than it is.”

  Shock robbed Eleni of speech as she stared at him. He’d so efficiently reduced her life to a cold, hard summary, a truthful one. “First I was deceiving, now I’m reckless?”

  “Imagine if it had been anyone but me. Imagine if it had been one of the media or a man who could have harmed you in some way. You don’t walk around parties advertising you’re available, not when you’re the bloody Princess of Drakon.”

  Eleni stared stupefied, the unease in his eyes far too real for he
r to scoff at. “I... I wouldn’t have just walked off with any man.”

  He raised that arrogant brow and she flushed and looked away.

  They both knew she’d have done whatever he wanted of her that night. And that awareness stood between them, taunting her.

  “Allowing that you truly care for Angelina, what I suggest would not be a hardship at all. All I ask you is that you spend your time in the lap of luxury with Angelina and me.”

  “For how long?” she whispered, unable to resist. Unable to walk away from him.

  “Until such time as I feel you’re not needed anymore.”

  “So you’re offering me a job?”

  “Call it whatever you want, Princess. Money, jewels, stocks...you can have whatever you want in return.”

  A job description with a tenure and conditions. Just another man demanding his due without giving anything back. Just another role for her to play for a limited time. Like she’d always done, filled with the nauseating hope that it would last.

  The reliable, responsible daughter to her father.

  The buffer between her brothers.

  The woman that the man she’d loved had easily and thoroughly forgotten.

  The illegitimate but adopted child of the House of Drakos.

  All temporary. All meaningless, in the end.

  If she accepted his “offer,” she would lose a bit of her heart to that little girl, and when she’d served her purpose, Gabriel would calmly remove her from his life. And yet, she wanted to do it. She wanted to spend time with him and Angelina, wanted to help them bridge that gap before it came irreparable.

  She wanted to see more of the man she’d talked to that night. Heart thudding dangerously, she admitted that she wanted a chance for him to notice that she was a woman, to remember that he’d kissed her with such abandon.

  She jerked in place when he cupped her jaw and tilted her face up to meet his gaze. Slumbering heat glittered there, reminding her of what had happened the last time he’d touched her. Tempting her. Her hesitation was ammunition as he cornered her with a predatory gleam. “Admit it, Princess.” Eleni shivered when his hot breath caressed the rim of her ear. “You’re tempted.”