Bought: The Greek’s Baby

by Jennie Lucas

  “He told you, didn’t he?” she whispered.

  His voice was low, almost grim. “Yes.”

  “Are you happy?” Her voice trembled. “About the news?”

  She held her breath as his darkly handsome face stared down at her. When he finally spoke, his voice was charged with some emotion she didn’t recognize.

  “I was surprised.”

  She searched his gaze. “So the baby wasn’t something we planned?”

  His hands tightened, twisting the blanket in his grip. He glanced down at it, then looked at her.

  “I’ve never seen you like this,” he said in a low voice. His black gaze hungrily caressed her face. With his fingertips, he brushed some dark tendrils from her cheek. “No makeup. Bare.”

  She tried to pull away. “I’m sure I look terrible.”

  But he drew her closer. His eyes were dark as he looked down at her, making her shiver from deep within.

  “Are you happy about the baby?” she said softly.

  He put his arms around her. “I’m going to take good care of you.”

  Why wouldn’t he answer? She swallowed, then lifted her head to give him a weak smile. “Don’t worry, I’m not an invalid. I hope the amnesia will disappear in a day or two. Dr. Bartlett said something about a specialist—”

  His arms tightened around her, cradling her against his hard chest.

  “You don’t need another doctor,” he said roughly. “You just need to come home with me.”

  She could feel the beat of his heart against her cheek through his black button-down shirt. She was enveloped in his masculine scent, sandalwood and amber, exotic and woodsy. Against her will, she closed her eyes. She breathed in his smell, heard the beat of his heart, felt his warmth.

  Everything else faded. The private hospital room, the nurses and doctor visible through the window of the door, the sound of one of Talos’s men speaking urgently into his cell phone in some language she didn’t recognize, the antiseptic smell, the beeps of the machines…it all faded.

  There was only this.

  Only him.

  Held securely in his strong arms, for the first time since her accident she felt safe and loved. She felt as if she had a place in the world. With him.

  He kissed her hair softly. She felt the warmth of his breath, the hot caress of his lips, and a tremble went over her. Fear? Longing?

  Did he love her?

  She reached upward, cupping his rough jawline with her hands. Though his clothes were sharply pressed, the dark shadow on his chin suggested he’d changed clothes on the plane without bothering to shave. He’d rushed here from Australia. He’d flown all night.

  Did that mean love?

  “Why didn’t you come to London with me for my stepfather’s funeral?” she said slowly.

  He paused. When he spoke, he seemed to choose his words with care.

  “I was busy in Sydney acquiring a new company. Believe me,” he said, “I never wanted to be away from you for this long.”

  Eve felt there was something he wasn’t telling her. Or was that just her own confusion playing tricks on her? She couldn’t trust anything in this hazy, empty world, not even her own mind! “But why—”

  “You are so beautiful, Eve,” he said, cupping her face. He exhaled in a rush. “I almost feared I’d never see your face again.”

  “When you heard about the accident, you mean? You were worried about me?” she said in a small voice. When he didn’t answer, she licked her lips. With a deep breath, she asked the question that had been burning through her. “Because we love each other?”

  His jaw clenched as he took a deep breath.

  “You were a virgin when I seduced you, Eve,” he said in a low voice. “You’d never been with any man before I took you to my bed three months ago.”

  She’d been a virgin?

  A wave of relief washed over her. Learning she was pregnant by a boyfriend she couldn’t remember had been a tremendous shock. She’d wondered why they weren’t married—wondered all sorts of things. But if Talos had been her one and only lover, if she’d been a virgin at twenty-five, surely that said something about her character?

  But did it also mean love?

  She looked up into his handsome face, opening her mouth to ask again, Do I love you? Do you love me?

  Then she stopped.

  There was something beneath his darkly penetrating eyes. Something he wasn’t saying. Something hidden beneath his words.

  But before she could understand what her intuition was telling her, Talos placed his broad hands over hers. The warmth of his fingers burned her, intertwined with her own. Trapping her, but not against her will. Her heart pounded faster.

  “Get ready to leave.” He lowered his head to kiss her on the temple, running his hands up and down her bare forearms. “I want to take you home.”

  Her breathing became short and shallow as he touched her skin. Little prickles of sensation sped up her arms, down her back, making her hair stand on end. The tingle swirled across her earlobes, down her neck, making her naked breasts beneath her thin hospital gown suddenly feel tight and full. She tried to remember the question she’d been asking, but it had already swept from her mind.

  “All right,” she breathed, looking up into his handsome face.

  Gallantly, he helped her from the bed, lifting her gently to her feet. She was more aware than ever of how much taller he was, how much more powerful. He was at least six inches taller, with an extra hundred pounds of pure muscle. Looking up at him, she forgot everything but her own longing and fascinated desire for the man towering over her like a dark angel.

  “I’m sorry it took so long for me to reach you, Eve,” he said in a low voice. “But I’m here now.” He kissed her head softly, his arms tightening around her as he pulled her into an embrace. “And I’m never going to let you go.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  BENEATH heavily lidded eyes, Talos watched Eve as he led her to the black Rolls-Royce purring on the street in front of the hospital.

  She wasn’t faking her amnesia. In spite of his initial incredulity, he now had no doubt. She had no idea of who he was or what she’d done.

  And now she was pregnant with his child.

  That changed everything.

  He gently helped her to the car. She had no luggage. One of his men had taken her smashed Aston-Martin to the garage, while the other had gone to make quiet amends for the smashed postbox. She wore the black silk dress and carried the black clutch purse from her stepfather’s funeral yesterday.

  The black dress clung to her breasts and hips when she walked, the silk shimmering and sliding against her hips and breasts. Her dark, glossy hair had been brushed into a fresh ponytail.

  She wore no makeup. It made her look different. Talos had never known her to go out without lipstick before—although God knew, with her lustrous skin, full pink lips and sparkling blue eyes, she didn’t need it to cause every man she met, from the elderly hospital porter to the teenaged boy walking past them on the sidewalk, to stop and catch his breath.

  And as she turned back to face him on the sidewalk with a sweetly innocent smile, Talos was grimly aware that he was far from immune to her charm.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, crinkling her forehead. “You never said.”

  “Home,” he replied, guiding her into the backseat of the limousine. He closed the door behind her.

  His body’s reaction to her was irritating—and troubling. He didn’t like it. Because he hated her.

  When he’d first seen Eve in the hospital, she’d been curled up on the single bed beneath a thick blanket. She’d looked pale and wan, nothing like the vivacious, tempestuous vixen he remembered. Sleeping, she’d looked innocent, far younger than her twenty-five years.

  She’d looked small. Fragile.

  Talos had come to London specifically to destroy her. For the last three months, he’d been dreaming of it.

  But how could he take his revenge if she not
only had no memory of her crimes, but she was pregnant with his baby?

  Tightening his hands into fists, he stalked to the other side of the car. Though it was only September, summer had abruptly fled London. A steady drizzle was falling from low gray clouds.

  He climbed in beside her and she turned to him without missing a beat. “Where is our home?”

  “My home—” he closed his door with a bang “—is Athens.”

  She gaped at him. “Athens?”

  “It’s where I live, and I must take care of you.” He gave her a brief, tight smile. “Doctor’s orders.”

  “So I live there with you?”

  “No.”

  “We don’t live together?”

  “You like to travel,” he said ironically.

  “So where are my clothes?” she said in a small voice. “And my passport?”

  “Likely at your stepfather’s estate. My staff will collect your things and meet us at the airport.”

  “But…” She looked out the window, then turned back to face him and said in a rush, lifting her chin, “I want to see my home. My childhood home. Where is it?”

  He gave her an assessing glance. “Your stepfather’s estate is in Buckinghamshire, I believe. But visiting there won’t help you. You spent one night there before the funeral. It hasn’t been your home for a long time.”

  “Please, Talos.” Her sapphire eyes gleamed. “I want to see my home.”

  His brow furrowed as he looked down at her pleading face.

  Eve really had changed, he thought. His mistress had never begged him for anything. She’d never even said please.

  Except…

  Except for the first night he’d taken her to his bed, when all her defenses had been briefly stripped away and he’d discovered the most desired woman in the world was, against all expectations, a virgin. As he’d pushed himself inside her, she’d looked up at him in a breathless hush with those violet-blue eyes, and he’d thought…he’d almost thought…

  He cut off the memory savagely.

  He wouldn’t think about how it had once been with her. He wouldn’t think how she had nearly made him lose everything, including his mind.

  Eve Craig was a fatal habit that he’d finally broken—and he intended to keep it that way.

  “Very well,” he ground out, turning back to face her. “I will take you home—but just to collect your things. We cannot stay.”

  Her lovely face brightened. She looked so young without makeup, with her hair in the casual ponytail. She looked barely old enough to be in college, far younger than his own thirty-eight years.

  “Thank you,” she said warmly.

  Thank you. Another phrase he’d never heard from her before.

  He turned away, leaning back in the beige leather seat as his chauffeur drove smoothly through the city, turning right from Marylebone to the Edgware Road. As the car merged onto the M1 heading north, Talos stared out at the passing rain, then closed his eyes, tense and weary from jet lag and the whiplash of the past two days.

  Eve, pregnant.

  He was still reeling.

  No wonder she’d crashed her car, he thought dully. Just the thought of losing her figure and not fitting into all her designer clothes must have made her crazy. All those months of not being able to drink champagne and dance till dawn with all of her rich, beautiful, shallow friends? Eve must have been more than shocked—she must have been furious.

  Eve, pregnant.

  He would not trust her to take care of a house plant, much less a child. She was not even slightly maternal. She wouldn’t love a baby. She was the least loving person Talos had ever met.

  Slowly, he opened his eyes.

  He hadn’t even known about the baby an hour ago, but now he was absolutely sure of one thing.

  He had to protect his child.

  “So I don’t live in England,” he heard her say. Steeling his expression, he turned to face her. Her face looked bewildered, almost sad as she added hesitantly, “I don’t have a home?”

  Home. Against his will, he had the sudden image of Eve in his bedroom at Mithridos, spread across his large bed, with the curtains twisting from the sea breeze coming off the sparkling Aegean. That had never happened, and it never would!

  “You live in hotels,” he answered coldly. “I told you. You travel constantly.”

  “So how do I hold down a job?” she said in disbelief.

  “You don’t. You spend your days shopping and attending parties around the world. You’re an heiress. A famous beauty.”

  She gaped at him. “You’re joking.”

  “No.” He left it at that. He could hardly explain how she and her dissolute friends traveled in packs like parasites, sucking a luxury hotel dry before moving on to the next. If he told her that, she might hear the scorn in his voice and question the true nature of his feelings.

  Malakas, how was it possible that he’d been so caught by her? What madness had possessed him to be so enslaved?

  How could he make sure that his child never was neglected, hurt or abandoned by her after she regained her memory?

  A new thought suddenly occurred to him.

  If she could not remember him, if she could not remember who she was or what she’d done, it meant she would have no idea of what was about to hit her. She would have no defenses.

  A slow smile curved his lips as he built his new plan. He could take everything from her, including their baby. And she would never see it coming.

  “So I was here for my stepfather’s funeral,” she said softly. “But I’m not British.”

  “Your mother was, I believe. You both returned to England some years ago.”

  She brightened. “My mother!”

  “Dead,” he informed her brutally.

  She froze, her face crumpling. Watching the swift movement of scenery on the outskirts of London through the window behind her, he remembered that her mother’s death was fresh news to her. And that he was supposed to be in love with her. He had to make her believe that if he wanted his plan to succeed.

  “I’m sorry, Eve,” he said abruptly. “But as far as I know, you have no family.”

  “Oh,” she said in a small voice.

  Pulling her into his arms, he held her close against his chest, kissing the top of her head. Her hair, messy and unwashed, still managed to smell like vanilla and sugar, the scents he associated with her. The scent that immediately made his body go hard and taut with longing, with the immediate temptation of a long-desired vice.

  Thee mou. Why couldn’t he stop wanting her? After everything she’d done, the way she’d nearly ruined him, how was it possible that his body still longed for her like a dying man thirsting for water? Was he really such a suicidal fool? Did he have no honor, no pride?

  He had pride, he thought, clenching his jaw. It was her. Even now, acting so sweetly demure, her innocence attracted him like a flame. He remembered the fire of passion inside her. And how he was the only man who’d ever tasted it.

  He felt himself tighten.

  Stop! he ordered himself. He wouldn’t think about her in bed. He wouldn’t want her. He did have some control over his own body, damn it!

  She clenched her fingers against his sleeve, her face pressed into his crisply tailored shirt.

  “So I have no one.” Her voice was small, almost a whisper. “No parents. No brothers or sisters. No one.”

  He looked down at her, tipping her chin upwards so he could see the tears sparkling in her beautiful violet-blue eyes. “You have me.”

  She swallowed, searching his face as if trying to read the emotion behind his expression. He schooled his features into concern and admiration and the closest attempt at love he could manage, never having actually felt it.

  A sigh came from her lips as she exhaled. A soft smile traced her lips. “And our baby.”

  He gave a single grim nod. Their baby was the reason he had to make sure his control over Eve was absolute. The reason he had to make her believ
e he cared about her.

  It was no different, he thought sardonically, than she’d once done to him. He would lull her into believing she could trust him. Make her willingly marry him.

  Then—oh, then…

  The instant their marriage was final, his life’s goal would be to make her remember the truth. He would be with her when she finally remembered. He would see her face as it fell.

  And he would crush her. The thought of revenge made his heart glad.

  Not revenge, he told himself. Justice.

  Leaning forward, he held her closer in the backseat of the Rolls-Royce.

  “Eve.” He cupped her face in his large hands. “I want you to marry me.”

  Marry him?

  Yes, Eve thought in a daze, looking up into his handsome face. Feeling his strong, rough hands against the softness of her skin, the warmth of his touch seared her, tracing down her neck to her breasts and lower still.

  How could any man be so masculine, so beautiful, so powerful all at once? Talos was everything her tattered, empty, frightened soul had desired. He would protect her. Love her. He would complete her life.

  Yes, yes, yes.

  But even as the words rose to her lips, something stopped her. Something she couldn’t understand made her pull her face away from his touch.

  “Marry you?” she whispered. She searched his dark eyes, her heartbeat quickening in her chest. “I don’t even know you.”

  He blinked. She saw that he was surprised. Then his eyebrows lowered into a frown.

  “You knew me well enough to conceive my child.”

  She swallowed. “But I can’t remember you,” she said. “It wouldn’t be fair to take you as my husband. It wouldn’t be right.”

  “I was raised without a father. I do not intend my child to endure that. I will give our baby a name. Do not deny me,” he said urgently.

  Deny him? How could any woman deny anything to a man like Talos Xenakis?

  But it didn’t feel right.

  With a deep breath, she turned away, glancing out at the passing scenery. It had changed since they’d left the outskirts of London, become soft and green beyond the rain-splattered windows. Trees had started to turn orange and yellow, rich autumnal colors between the green.