She texted Sofia, who informed her that Xander had discovered the use of his hands while they’d been away and had been trying to grab the soft toys attached to the sides of his cot.
Lucy texted back.
Sounds very advanced for a seven-weeker! Can’t wait to see you both tomorrow. X
And it was true. She couldn’t. Funny how you could bond with a tiny baby, even when you didn’t realise it was happening. Even when it wasn’t your baby. Couldn’t they become a real family, she wondered hungrily, even if it was a somewhat unconventional family?
She glanced up as Drakon returned, his expression slightly preoccupied as he walked into the room. ‘Is everything okay?’ she questioned.
‘Mmm?’ He glanced across the room at her as if he had only just noticed she was there. ‘I’m going to have to deal with a conference call a little later.’
‘Oh? Must you?’
‘Yes, I must,’ he said smoothly. ‘I’m afraid it can’t be helped.’
It was disappointing. Of course it was—and part of her wanted to ask him to put whatever or whoever it was on hold, so they could enjoy every last second on the island. But Lucy was made of stronger stuff than that. She might have sometimes resented the military life in which she’d grown up, but being an army brat had taught her how to be strong and resilient. She needed to remind herself why Drakon had married her. Mostly because he wanted a mother substitute, but hand in hand with that went his own need for a supportive wife. She had to look on anything else as a bonus, rather than with any sense of entitlement.
‘That’s okay,’ she said. ‘I might do some packing so we aren’t rushing in the morning.’
And that was how Lucy spent the last evening of her honeymoon. She took a long bath and washed all the sea water out of her hair. Then she packed her case and started reading a previously unopened novel she’d brought with her.
And though it was difficult to empathise with a woman who found herself marooned in a snowy cottage on Christmas Eve with a brooding stranger—why on earth had she set out for the cottage when the weather forecast had been so atrocious?—Lucy gave it her best shot.
At least Drakon made it down in time for dinner but he ate more perfunctorily than with any obvious signs of enjoyment and refused Spiro’s home-made baklava, which made the chef go into a slight sulk. Only at bedtime did things settle into an agreeably familiar pattern, when her new husband took her to bed. He pulled the duvet over them like a private snowy tent and began to kiss her, and all the faint frustrations of the evening were forgotten. He made love to her very quickly, as if he were seeking some sort of release—but Lucy wasn’t going to analyse that either. She just revelled in the elation which pulsed through her veins afterwards. Because this was bliss. Being in Drakon’s arms was like finding her own tiny piece of heaven. Through heavy-lidded eyes she studied his profile, his skin silvered by the moonlight which flooded in from the windows, his indifferent expression giving nothing away.
‘Did you sort all your business out?’ she questioned.
He frowned. ‘Are you really interested in talking about that right now?’
Was that censure which underpinned the hint of mockery in his voice? ‘I thought you might want me to show some interest,’ she said, a little defensively.
‘Well, I don’t. At least, not in that. Only in this.’
Lucy’s head fell back against the pillow as he gave a featherlight flick of his tongue against her nipple and she squirmed when he licked some more and his hand crept down between her thighs. And although warm desire flooded through her, it was followed by a feeling of frustration which had nothing to do with the physical. Because this was a familiar pattern with Drakon, she recognised. He used his physicality to distract her from subjects he had no desire to pursue. And it worked. Every time. That was the magical yet ultimately infuriating thing about her husband. That he had the power to manipulate her. To use sex to quieten or console her—and there didn’t seem to be a thing she could do about it.
They left the island at noon the following day and arrived in London just as dusk was falling and the Christmas lights in the city were starting to glow in the fading light. Inside the lobby of the luxury apartment block shone a glittering tree she’d barely noticed before the wedding—and this evening it seemed to symbolise a faded air of festivity which echoed her own increasingly flat mood. In the elevator she badly wanted Drakon to kiss her but he was busy looking at his phone and Lucy knew she needed to ruthlessly prune any romantic fantasies instead of allowing them to grow. They’d had a great honeymoon. So what? That didn’t change anything, did it? That didn’t mean he’d suddenly started to care for her, did it? Yet she had started to care for him even more than she’d done before. That was the truth of it.
Be careful, Lucy, she thought. Be very careful.
The elevator doors slid open and she walked straight into the apartment, where a smiling Sofia was waiting with Xander in her arms. The baby was dressed in a green sleepsuit covered with red-nosed reindeers and Lucy felt a welling up of something hard in her chest which took her breath away as she cradled the infant. He was so tiny and helpless and...she’d missed him, she realised with a wrench. Had Drakon missed him too? she wondered, turning her head to speak to her husband.
‘Drakon? Look. See how he’s...’ But Lucy realised she was talking to an empty space. That Drakon had slipped from the room without a word and, from the fading sound of his conversation, it appeared he was already on the phone to somebody.
She tried not to let it bother her as she played with the baby. She bathed him and fed him and sang a crooning little song she remembered from those long hours of night duty when she’d worked in the neonatal unit at St Jude’s hospital. She gave Sofia the evening off and, once Xander was asleep, Lucy changed into a dress she’d never worn before. Before she’d met Drakon, she would never have dared. Silky scarlet jersey clung to her hips and the slashing V neckline gave an uncharacteristic glimpse of shadowed cleavage. Spiky-heeled black shoes with scarlet soles completed the outfit and she styled her hair into a fashionably messy topknot which the Granchester hairdresser had showed her how to do.
Zena had prepared a meal which she’d left for them and Lucy was just lighting tall candles in the dining room, when Drakon walked into the room. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone and she could see the faint darkness of chest hair, which arrowed downward in a beguiling path. He hadn’t changed since they’d arrived back from Prasinisos, she realised, narrowing her eyes. He must have been on the phone all this time. He was looking around the room, taking in the holly-strewn centrepiece with tall silver candles which adorned the table and the bottle of champagne which protruded from an ice bucket.
‘This all looks very...festive,’ he observed, with the air of a man who had just been told that his dentist was about to make an unscheduled visit.
‘Doesn’t it?’ Lucy said brightly. ‘Zena must have gone to a lot of trouble and it’s still...well, it’s still Christmas.’
He turned his attention to her outfit. ‘Is that why you’re dressed like the personification of seasonal sex in your Santa-red dress?’ he questioned huskily. ‘Because you want me to unwrap you?’
Lucy swallowed as her nipples tightened in time to his slow scrutiny. ‘I don’t see why not,’ she whispered. ‘We might no longer be on honeymoon, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still make love after dinner every night, if you want to, which I’m rather hoping you do.’
‘Who knows what either of us will want? This is still all very new—to both of us.’ He picked up the champagne bottle and began to tear the foil from its neck. ‘Let’s just take it one day at a time, shall we, Lucy?’
His voice was soft but entirely devoid of emotion, and as she looked into the unfathomable darkness of his eyes Lucy wondered whether he intended his words to sound more like a threat than a promise.
CHAPTER NIN
E
DRAKON SAT BACK in his chair and twisted the stem of his wine glass between his fingers as he studied his wife who was sitting opposite him in the large dining room of his Mayfair apartment. Candlelight flickered over the polished table and over the dark, coiled gloss of her hair. ‘Did I mention that I need to go to Singapore tomorrow?’ he questioned.
Lucy looked up from her bowl of Greek lemon chicken soup, her spoon suspended in mid-air. ‘No, you didn’t.’ A frown criss-crossed her brow. ‘Tomorrow? Just like that? Without any kind of warning?’
‘That’s business, Lucy.’
‘It seems to be a very demanding business.’ She hesitated. ‘When you always seem to be working.’
He shrugged. ‘Billion-dollar empires don’t just happen without someone putting in the legwork.’
‘It would be nice...’ her voice trailed off and, once again, she seemed to be picking her words carefully ‘...if you could spend a little more time with your son.’
Drakon felt a flicker of irritation because that felt almost like a criticism, and it was not in her remit to criticise him. But why not placate her when he was going away tomorrow, by wiping that look of uncertainty from her face? ‘That will happen,’ he said. ‘When things are a little quieter.’
She looked unconvinced and maybe he couldn’t blame her for that because, in truth, his heart was not engaged in fatherhood. He could see her hesitating, worrying her teeth into her bottom lip as if she was trying not to say something, but she said it all the same.
‘Do you have to go, Drakon?’
She tried to keep the question casual but in this she failed because it was a refrain he’d heard from women countless times over the years and Drakon tensed—because didn’t her words almost justify his intended trip? Didn’t they reinforce what he suspected was her growing emotional dependence on him and make him aware of the subtle ways she was trying to steer him away from his work? But she had to understand that no way was he going to take his eye off the ball, because he’d seen what could happen if you did. He was still his own boss and a man who answered to nobody—not to his adopted baby and certainly not to his wife—and the sooner she realised that, the better.
Steeling his heart against the reproach in her eyes, he shrugged. ‘I’m afraid I do,’ he answered coolly. ‘I don’t know if I mentioned that we’re trying to extend our oil refinery—’
Her voice sounded stiff. ‘No, I don’t believe you did. You don’t exactly encourage me to keep up with what’s going on in your empire, do you?’
Ignoring the underlying complaint in her question, he picked up a piece of home-made pitta bread. ‘Amy hasn’t been able to get anywhere with the government. She keeps coming up against opposition—she suspects it’s because she’s a woman—and I really do need to be there.’
‘Of course you do.’ But Lucy put her soup spoon back down on the plate, her appetite suddenly deserting her. Was that because, although Drakon was going through the motions of sounding apologetic, the anticipation in his voice suggested he really wanted to go off on a last-minute trip to the Far East? And wasn’t the truth of it that he probably felt trapped in a marriage he’d never really wanted?
Because the honeymoon was over. At least, that was how it seemed to her. Within twenty-four hours of returning to London from Prasinisos, life had picked up a new routine and Lucy realised just how much time she was expected to spend on her own. Drakon had resumed what she was to discover were his habitual twelve-hour days at the office, leaving her at home with Xander, Sofia and the rest of his large contingent of staff.
She took to rising deliberately early in order to eat breakfast with her husband before he left for the office, knowing he wouldn’t return until dinner time. Because what was the point of being married if you never got to see the man you’d married? At least when she was pouring strong coffee and offering him a croissant—which he would invariably refuse—she felt as if she was going through the motions of being a married woman. But only at night did she feel like a real wife, when Drakon undressed her and took her into his arms. When he made her cry out with disbelieving pleasure as his lips and fingers and tongue opened up her senses. Her breasts would grow full and aching—her nipples pebbling into tight little bullets as he grazed at them hungrily with his teeth. She opened her legs and took him deep into her body, his hard heat filling her and making her feel, well... complete. Was it crazy to admit that was the effect he had on her? Suddenly she could understand all those things she’d read about successful sex—as if some kind of transformational magic had taken place between two people.
Afterwards she would lie in his arms, her ear pressed close to his chest, listening to the dying thunder of his heart. Their legs would still be entwined and she could feel the sticky trickle of his seed on her thigh as she longed for him to say something—anything—which would make her understand just how he really felt about her. But there was nothing—which made her conclude that he felt nothing. Inevitably, he would fall asleep straight away, leaving Lucy lying there, her eyes adjusting to the mysterious shadows which seemed to be lurking in the corners of the vast room. Was this how it was going to be from now on, or was there a possibility that their incredible physical closeness might eventually lead to some kind of emotional bond?
The signs weren’t promising. At times, she still felt like something he had acquired—in the way he might acquire a new yacht. One morning he presented her with a credit card—a shiny platinum affair which glowed against the starched white linen tablecloth, as he slid it across the table towards her.
‘What’s this?’ she questioned blankly.
‘Surely you can work that out for yourself, Lucy.’
‘A credit card?’
‘I thought you’d be pleased. You need your own money,’ he added, in response to her blank stare.
‘But how can it possibly be my money when I haven’t earned it?’
It was a naïve question and maybe she deserved the answering elevation of his brows.
‘You could work a million hours a week and never earn a fraction of what I do,’ he said, his gentle tone not quite taking the sting out of his words. ‘You shouldn’t have to come to me every time you want to buy something. What if you want to get yourself a new car? Or redecorate the apartment? Put your own stamp on it. That kind of thing.’
Her own stamp. Lucy gritted an automatic smile as she poured him a cup of the strong black coffee he seemed unable to function without. His statement would have been funny if it hadn’t been so sad. Because how could she possibly make her presence felt when her brilliant billionaire husband dominated everything and everyone around him? She had no desire to change a beautifully decorated home just for the sake of it—because that would be a terrible waste of money and that wasn’t the way she had been brought up. But she was certainly going to have to find something to do with her days, other than help Sofia look after Xander.
Xander.
A lump rose in her throat. The child she was loving more with every day which passed. Was it knowing that he was going to be her only child which made her feelings for him so fierce and fundamental? Sometimes when Drakon was at the office she found herself staring down at the infant lying sleeping in his crib. The infant still largely ignored by his adoptive father—unless you counted the perfunctory kiss Drakon sometimes planted on his head if ever his return from the office managed to coincide with Xander being awake, which wasn’t often.
Sometimes Lucy found herself wondering if he timed his arrival home deliberately, to make it so. If he was determined to keep his distance. Why, even on Sundays—Sofia’s and the rest of the staff’s day off—the workaholic tycoon didn’t go out of his way to bond with his baby son, did he? He still managed to absent himself for long periods of time, going out for a sprint around Hyde Park and returning covered in spatters of mud with his black hair clinging in damp tendrils to his neck. Or holing himself up
in his home office to read through long contracts with horribly small print.
True to his word, Drakon went to Singapore the very next day and was gone for two weeks. Two whole weeks with phone calls his only method of communication. He blamed their sporadic nature on the time difference between London and Singapore and maybe that was true. But to Lucy it felt as if they were a million miles apart, rather than six and a half thousand. All he seemed to want to talk about was how brilliantly the talks about extending the oil refinery were going. He even sent a photograph of him and Amy sitting in some plush restaurant in the famous Botanic Gardens of the city, having dinner with a load of government ministers. Lucy felt as if he were standing on the deck of a ship which was moving further and further away from her. And all she could wonder was whether this was how it was going to be from now on.
‘So, when are you coming back?’ she asked.
‘Tomorrow lunchtime. I’ve asked for the plane to be ready at midnight.’
Lucy spent the day trying to contain her state of excited expectation, but at the appointed hour she heard her phone ringing, rather than the welcome click of Drakon’s key in the lock.
‘Where are you?’ she said as his name flashed up on the screen.
‘Agape, forgive me.’ He paused. ‘A last-minute meeting was scheduled with the trade and industry minister.’
‘And you had to be there?’
‘Yes, of course I did,’ he said coolly. ‘Do you have a problem with that?’
Too right she did, but Lucy held back from saying so because the sensible side of her knew she was being unreasonable, while instinct told her she was only going to make matters worse if she turned this into a battle. Yet Drakon was worth fighting for, wasn’t he? For Xander’s sake mostly, but for hers too.
His Contract Christmas Bride Page 12
