He’d arrived in Mexico within five hours, and less than a half hour after his arrival, he’d had her out of jail and all charges dropped.
She didn’t ask him how much money her release had cost. To a man who could buy the world, the price was irrelevant. He had what he wanted—her. With her passport and things quickly in hand, they’d soon stepped onto the Pappas private jet and headed back the United States.
She’d been in America’s largest city three days and hadn’t liked any of them yet. Not only had her arrest been a disturbing lesson in the persuasive power of Pappas money, but Alex had retreated immediately into the world of business. They hadn’t spoken for more than a cumulative thirty minutes.
Her only consolation was that after she’d told him she’d been set up, he’d dropped the subject and left the room. Not that she wanted to talk to him, she’d told herself. But the silence had been akin to torture.
All that had been missing had been the appearance of Theo Pappas. For once Lauren had been grateful for Fate’s small favors.
“I haven’t told anyone but my mother that you’re here,” Alex had told her that morning.
He’d stood, briefcase in hand, in the living area, fashionably decorated to reflect urban sophistication with oriental influences.
“I’ll be at the office for most of the day, but when I return tonight, we’ll have dinner and discuss some important matters. We have to find a permanent place to live and make arrangements for the marriage ceremony. I also know you haven’t gotten out much. To remedy that, my secretary will be coming by today about noon to take you shopping. I’ve left you some spending money on the table.”
And then he’d left.
Lauren glanced at the ornate clock some designer had placed so it was one of the room’s focal points. The whole 1,785 square foot suite was indeed beautiful and grand, but even the twelve foot ceilings still stifled.
With hardwood floors, crystal chandeliers, intricate millwork, and three non-functional marble fireplaces, the suite was certainly lovely, but when it came right down to it, it was nothing more than a cold and impersonal hotel room.
She’d liked his apartment better. His family had always complained two thousand square feet was too small for a man of Alex’s stature, but with her potted plants and the mismatched dishtowels she’d bought, she’d made the apartment feel like home. Three minutes until noon. The doorbell buzzed.
Lauren walked quickly across the marble floor of the foyer and, without even peering through the peephole, tossed the door open. A petite fifty-something woman appeared to bounce into the room.
“Hello! You must be Lauren! I’m Clarice. Sorry not to have them phone my arrival, but everyone downstairs knows me so I came right up. I do have a key, but I didn’t want to startle you by using it. Are you ready to shop?”
Was she? Lauren simply stood there. “I thought Susan was Alex’s secretary?”
Clarice’s chin bobbed. “Oh, she retired seven and a half months ago and took off for the south of France. I worked for Alex’s father, and now I work for him. Anyway, I’ve commandeered the company limo for the entire afternoon and that means you and I are going to have some fun. I know all the best stores. I hear baby things and some new maternity clothes are exactly what we need.”
“Yes.” Lauren retrieved the wad of bills Alex had left for her.
Clarice waved dismissively. “Oh, put that away, dear. I know how generous Alex is, but there’s still no way he gave you enough cash for everything you need. I have three grandchildren and trust me, my daughters were on a budget and it was still horrible. I brought his charge cards. Shall we?”
Five hours later, Lauren had to have assistance getting all the bags and boxes into the suite. As she tipped the bellman, Alex strode out of the suite’s study, a brandy snifter in his hand.
He surveyed the scene and arched an eyebrow. “I see you’ve been successful.”
“Very.” Lauren drew herself up. “Your secretary is quite the whirlwind and talks nonstop about how wonderful you are.”
Alex actually smiled, the movement lighting up his face and making him seem, for at least that moment, much more human. “She’s able to handle more tasks at one time than I am. I’m always afraid someone will steal her away. I’m lucky she liked my father enough to take me on.”
“What happened to Susan?”
The smile vanished. “She retired.”
“Rather sudden, wasn’t it?”
“Some things are,” Alex replied. The words were curt and quick, indicating Alex’s wish to avoid discussing the matter. He took a long sip of the brandy. “Did you buy anything to wear to dinner?”
“No. My clothes are fine I’m not going to be wearing them much longer, anyway.”
Well, her outfits weren’t appropriate for fitting into Alex’s moneyed social circle, but her current wardrobe would have to do.
“Besides, I didn’t know you would be here. I planned on ordering room service.”
He frowned for a brief moment before his features relaxed. “I told you this morning we would have dinner together. However, we don’t need to go out. Room service will be fine. I’ll have them set the meal on the dining room table so we can eat together.”
He strode over to the phone, and a few minutes later, after consulting her as to her food preferences, had dinner ordered.
Lauren suddenly felt awkward. How long had it been since she’d had dinner with Alex? The last time had been the night she’d conceived. Wine had flowed and he’d fed grapes into her mouth one by one until the two of them had succumbed to their rising passion. Hours later they’d eaten the gourmet dinner cold for having it reheated or having new food sent up would have delayed their subsequent return to bed. Had she even slept that night?
Alex peered over at her. “Is everything okay? You look hot.”
Pregnant women always felt hot because of the extra weight they carried, but that wasn’t the reason for her flushed face and the simmering heat traveling through her. She turned her back on Alex and grabbed her purse.
“I have your money. Let me get it. Clarice charged everything. And you need to let me know when the bills come in. I have some money from my IBF separation agreement and can reimburse you.”
Alex’s face clouded. He set the brandy on a nearby sideboard. “You do not owe me a thing.”
Lauren shook her head. Here in the air-conditioned suite, the strands freely escaped her bun and fell into her face. “Perhaps not in your mind, but in my mind I do. I will not be beholden to your money.”
“You are going to be my wife.”
“In name only,” Lauren replied, the bitter irony panging her heart.
Alex’s poker facade had returned. “You would have married Christopher.”
Pain stabbed Lauren. Would she have married Christopher? Given both of their mutual circumstances, they’d discussed it once after she’d arrived in Central Mexico.
For Lauren, marriage to Christopher would have protected her child. For Christopher, marriage to Lauren would have provided the façade he needed to continue his relationship with underclass ethnic people his family strongly disapproved of. Both had pushed the matter of marriage off for another day, a day that had never arrived.
“It doesn’t matter now.” The words burst savagely from Alex’s mouth. He reached for the snifter and took a deep swallow. When he spoke his voice was measured, controlled. “Christopher is dead. We have to think of the future, the baby’s future and ours. I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you that a judge friend of mine has agreed to marry us this Friday afternoon in his office.”
Her knees wobbled and she went to sit on the sofa. “So soon?”
“I see no reason to delay the inevitable.” His laugh sounded hollow. “Who knows? Perhaps as the years go by, we will find ourselves actually liking our fate.”
“I doubt it,” Lauren replied.
He shrugged as if he’d rolled her barb off his back. “Once you would have died not
to be with me, kouklamou. Once I was your entire world, something you could not bear to be without.”
“That world was a lie.”
Alex’s eyes hardened to black coal. “Don’t talk to me about lies. You return to me, live in my house for five days and on the sixth, run from my bed to my brother’s? I found you there, Lauren! All those precious declarations of love? All your promises and endearments that you swore to me? Lies, Lauren. Savage lies to play me like a fool, to take my heart and dangle it over a precipice for all to see.”
His words stung worse than a physical slap. She and Christopher had no chemistry; they were friends.
Unsettled, Lauren launched the first defensive attack that entered her struggling mind. “You don’t know what love is, Alex Pappas!”
He fingered the empty brandy glass. “If what you did to me is love, then no, I don’t have any idea what that particular four letter word means. But obviously my brother fit your trite definition. You ran to him fast enough, leaving here and following him to Central Mexico.”
She had. When Christopher had called the IBF, he’d wrangled her a spot with him. She’d only meant to escape temporarily, but then she’d discovered she was pregnant. She’d been shocked, lost and confused.
“Can you deny that you went with him?” Alex ground out.
“Of course I can’t. But don’t tell me how deprived you were. You were out with that actress the next weekend. It was all over the gossip rags. Don’t even begin to tell me you really cared about me.”
Her chest heaved. “My actions barely stung you personally, Alex. All that mattered was how your family viewed you as being less of a man. I can imagine the whispers and the scandal and how that must have bothered you. But losing me? No. All you cared about was your pride and how I’d made you look like a fool.”
His handsome face contorted. “You are the fool if you believe that.”
Lauren flexed her fingers and struggled for calm. How had this conversation gotten so far out of control? Hormones raged as anger consumed her. She gave in. “You know, I probably am a fool. I’ll admit it, I am! I’m having to spend the rest of my life with you!”
His laugh was bitter. “And I with you, a lying cheat, a woman who proved to me that she was not at all the perfection I believed. Perhaps that irony might have been easier to tolerate if your infidelity had been some other man, any other man, but to betray me with my younger brother? Christopher, the brother I loved?”
“I—” Lauren stopped. How could she deny it? To do so destroyed her cover, and with Christopher’s voice forever silenced, there was now no way she would ever be able to prove to Alex that she spoke the truth.
She clung to the fact that her reasons had been just. They still were. Even Christopher had agreed. Theo was a loose cannon, and Alex would never see that.
But now, viewing the anguish in Alex’s face, she felt small. She’d never expected to see him again. Certainly she never expected to live with him, to see on a daily basis, the man her soul had once loved and craved, and to daily be reminded that he now believed her guilty of the most terrible sin. The pain ripping through her was nearly unbearable.
Somehow she found her poise. One of the rules of the field was to never let the enemy see weakness if weakness would not bring gain. She opted for tactical retreat.
“This conversation is serving no purpose. I think I’ll have dinner in my room. Please let me know when it arrives.” She took a step towards her bedroom door.
His voice stopped her cold. “We fill out the application for our marriage license tomorrow at three. I’ll have a car sent for you.”
“As you wish, Alex,” she said without turning around. She couldn’t face him again without faltering. Somehow she made her legs move. “It will be as you wish.”
#
Alex watched her walk away until she shut her bedroom door. Being pregnant had brought out Lauren’s fire and temper. Definitely unlike when she’d first become his mistress eighteen months ago. Then Lauren had been submissive, eager to please. Not that she’d been a doormat or anything close to that. But now, now she stood firm as her own woman. She challenged him head on.
He had to admit, the changes in her excited him. Oh, not that she hadn’t excited him before, but this new Lauren begged to be tamed. He wanted to see her spread out underneath him, her blond locks loosened from the infernal bun she now wore every minute.
He wanted to see her hair loose around her face and teasing across the tops of her breasts. He wanted to see her framed against the crisp white of his sheets.
He wanted to see her naked—even in her current condition, her body called to his and excited. Now though, her breasts were fuller, demanding a more gentle touch. He wanted to place both breasts in his hands, center his mouth on her nipples and kiss until she cried out in ecstasy.
The passion flowing in her now doubled what had been there in the past, and Alex had no doubt that coming together with her again would be cataclysmal.
His loins tightened in painful awareness. Even after her betrayal, her beauty and her verve called to him on the most primitive of levels and his body demanded to bury itself deep inside her passionate fire.
No other woman had ever made him feel the way she did. When he was inside Lauren, he felt the heavens move. He felt the true power of Zeus, and she was the only woman who could take him to that level.
Oh yes, he still wanted her.
Weakness or not, he would have her again.
After all, on Friday she would become his wife and he would not go through the rest of his life celibate. Seven and a half months had been enough.
But lust and physical attraction for her would be all he would ever allow. Unlike before, when he’d foolishly thought he’d been falling in love with her and had dreamed of marrying her and making her his wife.
Those five days after her return had been heaven—he’d had her back in his arms after a three-month absence that had been nothing short of hell. But his joy had been smashed, for she’d betrayed him, just as his cousin Theo had always predicted she would. Theo had warned Alex that Lauren didn’t understand Greek men. He’d told Alex not to trust Lauren, and that she would cheat. Alex just hadn’t thought it would be with his brother.
The phone rang and Alex picked it up, and the caller announced that dinner was on its way. As Alex returned the handset to the cradle, the fax machine in the study began to whir. He went over and removed the single sheet. Anger punched him as he read the contents. Would the family business never cease being endless crisis after crisis?
Ever since his father entered into a nursing home, all Alex had done was put out fire after fire. Just how many problems would he have to resolve? It was beyond the point of ridiculousness. His dinner and trying to breach the gap with Lauren would have to wait.
Long strides carried him to Lauren’s bedroom. He knocked. “Lauren.”
“Yes?” She opened the door, and for a moment Alex wondered if she’d been crying. Were those telltale puffy traces of tears around her eyes? For what seemed the hundredth time since he’d traveled to Mexico, he asked, “Are you okay?”
She gave him the same words she always did. “I’m fine.”
“Good.” Alex didn’t believe her, and he made a mental promise to dig deeper into Lauren’s secrets when he returned. For now, time was unfortunately of the essence. Pappas Foods had gone public a year ago, and someone was buying up the stock in what appeared to be the start of a hostile takeover.
“Dinner is on its way, but I need to go to the office. It’s an emergency.”
“Of course it is,” Lauren said. He searched her face for sarcasm, but only pure tiredness remained. Whereas she’d once worn her emotions on her sleeve, this new Lauren was often difficult to read.
But he had to try. Despite all their tumultuous history, they had a long future ahead of them. They had to find some mutual understanding, if only for the baby’s sake. “I’d like to talk to you later if you’re still up.”
He felt as awkward as a teenager on his first date. The doorbell sounded. Finding common ground would have to wait. “That’ll be dinner. I’ll see you tomorrow. How about we go to an early dinner after the marriage application? I’ll have Clarice make reservations. The car will be here at three.”
“Fine.” Lauren followed Alex out into the living area. She watched him tip the waiter and then both men left at the same time.
Lauren lifted the metal lids of the various dishes. Alex had ordered chicken piccata, steak Diane, an appetizer of crab cakes and shrimp cocktail. He’d even ordered a two slices of cheesecake. Everything looked delicious but as a morbid thought consumed her, suddenly she wasn’t hungry.
Did Alex have a mistress? Theo had once insinuated as much, that Greek men had Greek wives. Greeks marry Greeks, Theo had said. Of course, he’d continued, they can have mistresses and most men do. Theo had then indicated that Lauren, being non-Greek, would always be the latter.
“Don’t set your sights high,” Theo had advised. “It might be better if you take the check I’m offering and make yourself scarce. Alex will never marry you.”
But now she was about to be Alex’s wife. And it was a marriage of convenience, designed only to keep the Pappas baby from being born illegitimate.
So did Alex really have business to attend to, or did their fight send him to his mistress? Given their circumstances, she had no right to ask. Of course, he said he’d be faithful to her, but she didn’t trust him enough to believe. There was no way a man of Alex’s virility could have been celibate for the past seven and a half months. He’d also been pictured….
She had to stop caring.
Lauren replaced the lid on a wonderful looking chicken piccata. Perhaps she’d have some appetite later. With her head pounding and her back aching, all she wanted was sleep.
#
Friday dawned clear and sunny, a perfect June day. Even the city of New York seemed a bit less hurried, as if people were slowing down to prolong their enjoyment of the warm sunshine before they had to disappear back indoors.
The Greek Billionaire's Secret Baby (Contemporary Romance) Page 5
