by Abby Green
Maggie saw the hosts in the distance—Luc Barbier and his wife Nessa, who had been a champion jockey until she’d had children. A rush of emotion caught Maggie unawares. They had been so good to her, offering her a job, and then, when she’d—
Her thoughts scattered as she saw a new guest arrive, walking down the steps to be greeted by Luc and Nessa. He was tall and dark. Almost as tall and dark as Luc. Familiar. Ice prickled over her skin.
It couldn’t be.
She stopped walking so suddenly that another waiter almost crashed into her.
‘Maggie, watch it, will you?’
She didn’t even notice someone helping themselves to a canapé. She had to be imagining it—him. Her all too frequent dreams had turned into a hallucination. She blinked. Opened her eyes. He was still there, head thrown back now as he laughed at something Luc Barbier was saying.
Women were turning and looking. Whispering. Openly admiring. Lustful. And no wonder. The two men were tall, dark and easily the most gorgeous men in the vicinity—but all Maggie could see was one man. Nikos Marchetti. And all she could remember were those cataclysmic hours when he had transformed her from inexperienced naive virgin into a woman. More than a woman.
Her hands tightened on the tray so much that it shook.
There was a voice near her ear, soft and concerned. ‘Maggie? Are you okay? Here, let me take that for you.’
The tray was taken from her hands and Maggie tore her gaze from the man who had moved closer and was now just a few feet away. Nessa Barbier was putting the tray down on a nearby table. Maggie hadn’t even noticed her approach.
Nessa’s hand was on her arm. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost—are you okay?’
Maggie tried to speak, but nothing would come out. This was too huge. Too potentially devastating.
Nessa frowned. ‘Maggie, what is it?’
‘I... I have to go inside. I need to...’ She was babbling, making no sense.
But before she could leave, eyeing up her escape route by skirting around the edge of the crowd, an incredulous voice called her name.
‘Maggie?’
Dread pooled in her belly—along with a very belated spark of emotion. Anger. She turned around and came face to face with the man she’d tried her best to forget—because he sure as hell hadn’t been interested in remembering her.
She should have known what to expect. She of all people. But she forced a smile. ‘Mr Marchetti. Fancy seeing you here.’
She barely noticed that he looked as shocked as she felt.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I work here.’
‘You two know each other?’ Nessa sounded intrigued. ‘I thought you said he’d never been to Kildare House?’
Maggie winced inwardly. She hadn’t actually said that, but she’d been deliberately vague about Nikos’s visit last year.
Nikos said, ‘I visited the house last year...briefly.’
Yet he’d left a lasting impression—very lasting.
Maggie went cold again as the full significance of Nikos’s presence sank in.
Nessa was saying, ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell us, Nikos...’
Maggie backed away, needing to escape. ‘If you’ll excuse me...?’
She turned and almost ran towards the house, not even caring what Nessa must be thinking. Because that wasn’t important. What was important—
Maggie’s hand was caught by another, much bigger hand. ‘Hey, wait a second.’
She stopped, felt her heart palpitating. For a big man he moved quickly and quietly.
She pulled her hand free and looked up. She’d forgotten how tall Nikos was. Tall enough to tower over her own not inconsiderable height.
They were near the kitchen entrance of the house and it was dark in this part of the garden. The staff were using another entrance to ferry drinks and canapés from house to garden. Maggie cursed herself for leading him here. It was too quiet...intimate.
Nikos was shaking his head. ‘I can’t believe you’re here.’
Maggie’s insides were somersaulting all over the place. Had he always been so broad? Why was she still so aware of him? She needed to remember—not let him distract her.
‘Well, I am here. Was there something you wanted, Mr Marchetti?’
Electricity crackled between them. The air seemed to grow even heavier, as if there was no oxygen.
His mouth tightened. ‘Mr Marchetti? Really? After—’
‘Look,’ Maggie cut in, desperate not to have him say it out loud. ‘I’m working. I really should get back and—’
‘Do you really think they’ll miss one waitress for a few minutes? Why did you hand in your notice? Was it because of what happened?’
Maggie swallowed. After two weeks of mooning around the house like a lovestruck calf, in spite of her best intentions, she’d realised that Nikos Marchetti had really meant what he’d said. Contact my team.
She’d had a sudden vision of him arriving back at the house at some point in the future with a woman and she’d felt sick. So she’d handed in her notice that day.
She tipped up her chin. ‘I was never meant to be your housekeeper. I just took over after my mother died—it was never going to be a long-term thing. It’s not as if I had ambitions to be a rich man’s housekeeper.’
Nikos’s eyes flashed at that. Maggie could see the glint of green and gold in the dim light and it sent fires racing all over her skin.
‘So moving down the road to serve finger food at the Barbiers’ summer party is a step up?’
Anger sizzled in Maggie’s belly and she welcomed it as an antidote to the awful crazy urge she had to plaster herself against this man and beg him to kiss her.
‘I’m doing a lot more than just serving canapés. I’m actually making them.’
Nikos took a step closer.
Maggie refused to move back.
‘You could have stayed at Kildare House. You didn’t have to leave.’
Maggie shook her head. ‘No, staying was never an option.’
Why was she suddenly breathless? As if she’d been running.
He tipped his head slightly to one side. ‘Actually maybe it is better that you left.’
Maggie’s brain wouldn’t function properly. She couldn’t take her eyes off Nikos’s firmly sculpted mouth. ‘Why?
‘Because now there are no issues around me being your boss.’
She dragged her gaze up. ‘Why would there be issues?’
‘For when we do this...’
He was so close now she could see those hazel glints in his eyes, slightly more gold than green. His hair was a little shorter than last year. There was a day’s worth of stubble on his jaw. She had an urge to reach up and feel the prickle against her palm. She curled her hand into a fist.
He reached out and caught a lock of her hair which had escaped the rough bun she’d put it into earlier. She hadn’t had her hair cut in...months. It was seriously untamed. Unstyled.
He said, almost to himself, ‘I can’t believe you’re here, right in front of me. You’ve been a thorn in my side for a year, Maggie Taggart.’
She shook her head, feeling as if she was in a dream. This couldn’t be real.
‘How...? Why?’
He put his hands on her arms and tugged her towards him gently. ‘You’ve haunted me, mind and body, and I can’t exorcise you until I have you again.’
‘Have...have me?’ She was stuttering now, the meaning of what he was saying too huge to compute.
He nodded. ‘Not one other woman has made me want her the way you did from the moment I saw you. The way you still do. We have unfinished business...’
Maggie was stunned into silence. This was the man who had left her sleeping in his bed a year ago with only a note telling her she should have ‘no
regrets’ and to contact him through his team if she needed anything.
A million things bombarded her—chiefly indignation. But as his scent wrapped around her she was hurtled back in time and there was a beat thrumming through her blood, drowning out those concerns.
Nikos’s head came closer, and then his mouth was covering hers, and as the reality of him flooded her senses Maggie couldn’t deny that he’d haunted her too—even though she’d die before admitting it.
His mouth moved over hers as expertly as she remembered, all-consuming. Heat and madness entered her head and body. Need. His tongue swept in and sought hers, demanding a response that came willingly, rushing up through her body before she could stop it.
Her hands clutched at his jacket, either to pull him closer or steady her legs—she wasn’t sure which. All she knew was that she never wanted the kiss to end. The hunger she felt was greedy, desperate.
But a sense of anger added an edge to her desire. The anger that had been bubbling under the surface at the way he’d left her a year ago, because it had hurt her when it shouldn’t have.
Their bodies cleaved together—when had they even moved that close?—chest to chest, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. She felt unbearably soft—liquid next to his steely strength. She was reminded of how small and delicate he made her feel.
He surrounded her, and when he shifted his hips subtly, so she could feel the press of his arousal against her, her lower body clenched in reaction and a spasm of pleasure caught her off guard. It was as if she’d been primed for the last year for exactly this moment, and now it was here and she was ravenous.
How had she survived without this?
What had she been doing?
Nikos’s hand was moving from her hip, caressing her waist, then cupping the solid weight of her breast in his hand. Maggie moaned into his mouth as he squeezed gently. Her flesh was aching. Sensitive. And it was sensitive because—
Maggie pulled back abruptly. Reality and the present moment eclipsed the lure of the past.
‘What are you doing?’ Her voice was husky.
‘You mean what are we doing?’
The full impact of the fact that he was here, and that within about a nanosecond she had been in his arms again, combusting all over, was not welcome. She saw the stamp of very male satisfaction on his face and it incensed her.
She pushed free of Nikos’s arms. ‘Oh, my God—you’re so arrogant you really thought you could just pick up where we left off a year ago? Is this some kind of fetish you have for menial staff—?’
‘Stop that.’ His voice was like the lash of a whip.
Maggie’s skin was hot and tight, her heart hammering. Between her legs she was slick and hot. Her breasts were aching.
But suddenly she remembered and she turned around. ‘I have to go. I don’t have time to stand here and be mauled by a rich playboy who gets his kicks from—’
‘Now, wait just a sec—’
‘Maggie, there you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.’
Maggie came to a standstill. There was a young woman standing in the doorway leading into the kitchen, holding a baby in her arms. He had dark hair and dark eyes and his legs and arms were windmilling frantically.
Immediately everything else was forgotten and Maggie instinctively reached for him, cradling him in her arms, checking him over. ‘Is he okay?’
‘He’s fine—I think he’s just hungry. We ran out of your expressed milk.’
Maggie looked at Sara. She was from Merkazad, the country in the Middle East where Nessa’s sister lived with her family.
‘Okay—thanks, Sara, I’ll feed him and put him down. Can you do me a huge favour and let Nessa know I won’t be back to the party this evening?’
‘Sure. No problem.’
Maggie saw the girl’s eyes go behind her and widen as she took in Nikos Marchetti. Damn.
Sara left and Maggie slowly turned around. Much as she would have preferred to keep going in the other direction she knew she couldn’t.
Her breasts were tingling again, but for entirely different reasons now. If she hadn’t been so distracted by this man she would have noticed the signs and gone to her son before he’d had to be brought to her.
Nikos was looking at the baby with a mixture of shock, incomprehension and horror. His bowtie was askew. Hair mussed.
Had she done that?
Mortification sent a hot wave of shame through her body. She had so much to say to this man, and yet when the moment had come she’d said nothing. Just climbed all over him like a lust-crazed monkey.
She lifted her son and put him over her shoulder, patting his back with an unsteady hand. ‘I need to go. I have to feed him.’
She turned, but of course she didn’t get far.
‘Wait just a minute.’
His accent was thicker, and somehow that made Maggie’s heart race again. What was wrong with her? She was in a moment of real crisis and her feverish brain was stuck in a lust loop.
Nikos came and stood in front of her. ‘What the hell, Maggie...? Who is this?’
‘He’s my son. Daniel.’
My son. Her conscience pricked.
Nikos was shaking his head. ‘So you had sex with someone else...? Who?’
The fact that he was trying to deny knowledge that he’d been told about her pregnancy sent her hormones into orbit.
‘Someone else? Would that have been bad thing? When you’ve undoubtedly had sex with a legion of women in the past year? I don’t have time for this—please get out of my way.’
Nikos moved aside without even realising what he was doing. Maggie swept past with the baby on her shoulder. He automatically followed her, in shock.
She’d had a baby. With someone else. She’d slept with someone else right after him—it would have to have been. The baby only looked a few months old.
That realisation curdled in his gut. Along with her accusation that he must have slept with countless women. If only!
The baby’s dark eyes regarded Nikos steadily over Maggie’s shoulder as she strode back in through the kitchens and up the stairs into the main part of the house.
Nikos was barely aware of staff around them. He felt as if he’d been in an explosion and he couldn’t hear properly. Everything was muffled. Distorted.
Suddenly Maggie stopped and turned from the step above him. ‘Why are you following me?’
He heard her perfectly, and for the first time he heard the panic in her voice.
He went still inside. She’d attacked him when he’d asked her about the father.
His gaze moved from her to the back of the baby’s head. Dark hair. Maggie was fair. His mother had been fair, but his father’s darker, stronger genes had won out. He’d had dark hair as a baby. Not that there were many photos of him.
His gaze shifted back to Maggie. She was pale. Something else curdled in his gut now. Suspicion.
‘Who is the father, Maggie?’
‘I’m not having this conversation here.’
She turned and kept on hurrying up the stairs, entering a corridor on the first floor. Nikos followed her. She went through a door. He stopped on the threshold. It was a spacious bedroom with a cot in the corner. For the baby.
She was looking at him, eyes wide. No longer antagonistic. Hunted.
‘Maggie, who is the father?’
‘You know you are—why are you asking me as if you don’t know?’
Nikos looked at her. It was as if he’d heard her words but they were still hanging in the air between them. Not impacting fully.
He frowned. ‘I know I am? What are you talking about?’
The baby’s back stiffened and he made a mewling sound. Maggie looked distracted. ‘I have to feed him. Can you wait outside?’ When Nikos didn’t move she said, ‘Please?’
F
eeling blindsided, Nikos just watched as she came towards him. He stepped back over the threshold and she closed the door in his face. He heard her making comforting sounds as she presumably tended to the baby, baring her breast—the same breast he’d just cupped in a heat haze of lust.
Theos.
He walked away from the door, dazed. He paced down the corridor and back again, one word circling through his mind: father.
His only association with the concept of fatherhood was a toxic and complicated thing. His own father had been many things, but a father in the true sense of the word hadn’t been one of them. He didn’t even know what having a father felt like.
He reeled as the significance of this sank in.
If it was true.
One minute he’d had his hands full of Maggie, feverish with lust, her curves even more delicious than he remembered, and the next he’d been looking at a baby in her arms.
He was back outside the bedroom door now. He could hear Maggie’s voice, indistinct, making crooning noises.
Nikos looked around. Nothing but an empty corridor and the woman behind this door with a baby who might or might not be his. And what had she said? Something about ‘you know you are’? That made no sense to him at all.
Nikos looked at the end of the corridor, the stairs leading back downstairs. He heard the muted sounds of the party outside—soft jazz playing, laughter, clinking glasses. The soundtrack to so much of his life up till now. Strangely, though, he didn’t feel an urge to escape back to it. He wanted to stay right here and quiz Maggie until what she’d said made sense to him.
Minutes passed and Nikos paced up and down. He felt pressure on his chest. As if someone was sitting on it. Constricting him. He went to loosen his tie but it was already loose.
How long did it take to feed a baby?
When his frustration was about to boil over, Nikos stood outside the door, hand raised, ready to knock. Suddenly it opened and Maggie stood there. Pale. No baby. He looked behind her and could see the shape of the baby in the cot. She’d dimmed the lighting.
She stood back. ‘You’d better come in.’
