When he had returned to the village he had been overwhelmed with grief at the sight of the blackened shell of the house, and at the mortuary three coffins. He’d walked straight past the largest coffin, hesitated next to the wooden box that held Marina’s body and crumpled to his knees beside the smallest coffin.
It had been so pathetically small. That’s what had struck him the hardest. Giannis had been just five years old. Imagining his little brother’s terror when he’d woken in the night and found he was trapped by the flames had fuelled Takis’s nightmares ever since.
He prowled around the room and stopped in front of the bureau where several framed photographs were displayed. The little girl with pale blonde hair was unmistakably Lissa, and he guessed that the attractive couple on either side of her were her parents. They looked a happy family, but family was something Takis had no concept of. He had grown up with a violent father and a stepmother who had tried to seduce him.
How did his upbringing equip him to be a successful parent? The truth was that it did not, which was why he had decided that he would not have children. But he remembered the words Lissa had thrown at him: he was going to be a father, whether he liked it or not.
Perhaps Lissa’s pregnancy was a chance for him to atone for his past mistakes, Takis brooded. If he was honest, the responsibility of becoming a father terrified him. But he would not abandon his child like he had abandoned his brother. He must claim his baby.
* * *
Fragments of a dream flitted through Lissa’s mind. Takis arriving unexpectedly at the hotel, his furious reaction when she’d told him about the baby. Her eyes flew open and she could feel her heart pounding. It hadn’t been a dream. Light was filtering through the curtains into her bedroom. She checked the time and was horrified to see that it was ten o’clock before she remembered that the deputy manager would be on duty.
She had been dead on her feet at the end of the dinner-dance. Takis had brought her to the apartment, and he must have removed her dress and put her to bed. Her stomach rumbled, and she knew she should eat for the baby’s sake. She wondered if Takis had spent the night in the hotel or whether he had driven back to London. He’d made it clear that he did not want the baby, and there really was nothing for them to talk about. She certainly did not want a maintenance payment from him. She and her baby would be fine on their own, Lissa told herself.
She pulled on her dressing gown and headed for the kitchen but stopped dead when she looked into the sitting room and saw Takis sprawled on the sofa, where he had obviously slept. His shirt was creased and the dark stubble on his jaw was thicker, but his rumpled appearance did not detract from his dangerous sex appeal. Lissa felt her nipples harden, and even though her dressing gown was made of thick towelling she folded her arms over her chest as Takis raked his gaze over her.
‘Why didn’t you use a room in the hotel?’ she asked him. ‘Two of the suites were empty.’
‘I stayed in your apartment to be close to you in case you needed anything during the night. There was also the possibility that you might try to disappear,’ he said drily.
Her legs felt wobbly and she sank down on to the sofa. ‘I don’t have anywhere to go.’ The reality of her situation was sinking in. She would soon be without a job or a home. She supposed she could go and stay with her sister in Greece while she tried to organise her life, but the future was frighteningly uncertain.
Takis shifted along the sofa towards her. ‘You are still very pale.’ He picked up her wrist. ‘Your pulse is going crazy. Is a fast heartbeat normal in pregnancy?’
‘I’m not sure.’ She did not tell him that his close proximity as he rubbed his thumb lightly over her wrist might be why her pulse was racing. ‘My thyroid condition can cause problems during pregnancy and I’ll have to have extra check-ups to make sure the baby is developing okay.’
He stood up and grimaced when he ran his hand over his rough jaw. ‘I need a shower and a change of clothes, and then we will talk.’
Lissa noticed his holdall, which he must have brought from his car last night. She directed him to the guest bathroom and went to the kitchen to make tea and toast. She reminded herself that they were adults, and without the heightened emotions of the previous night it was surely not beyond them to have a cordial discussion. She would not prevent Takis from seeing his child if he wanted to.
As she carried the tray into the sitting room, it occurred to her that she did not even know if he drank tea. They had created a new life together, but her baby’s father was a stranger.
Takis walked into the room, and Lissa’s heart crashed against her ribs as she made a mental inventory of him. Faded jeans hugged his lean hips and he wore a grey cashmere sweater that clung lovingly to his muscular chest. His hair was damp from the shower. He had trimmed the stubble on his jaw, but he still looked like a pirate. He was devastatingly attractive, Lissa thought with a rueful sigh that he could still affect her so strongly.
‘This is fine, thank you,’ he said when she offered to make him coffee if he preferred it to tea. She’d noticed he winced when she explained that she only had instant coffee.
Lissa forced herself to eat half a piece of toast, but it tasted like cardboard and swallowing became an ordeal as her tension grew. ‘You wanted to talk,’ she reminded him.
He put down his cup, the tea untouched, she noticed.
‘You and the baby are my responsibility.’
His coolness quashed her tiny hope that there could be a happy outcome to their conversation. She remembered when he’d made love to her and his eyes had blazed with heated passion. Now Takis was a remote stranger, and Lissa’s heart sank when she realised that he viewed her pregnancy as a problem that he was determined to solve.
‘I don’t want to be your responsibility,’ she said sharply. ‘I’ve had enough of feeling like a burden. That’s what I was to my grandfather. You don’t have to be involved. I have money of my own and, as I told you, I plan to go back to work after the baby is born.’
‘How do you propose to combine bringing up a child with a career?’
‘I haven’t worked out the details yet. But I will be fine,’ Lissa insisted. ‘I won’t deny you visiting rights if that’s what you want.’
He shook his head. ‘I have a duty to ensure the welfare of the child we have created and your welfare. There is an obvious solution to the situation we find ourselves in.’
She gave a helpless shrug. ‘It’s not obvious to me.’
‘We will marry as soon as it can be arranged,’ Takis said smoothly.
‘Marry?’ Lissa stared at him incredulously. ‘I’m not going to marry you. There’s no need.’
His hard-boned face showed no emotion. ‘You do not think it is important for the baby to be legitimate?’
‘Nobody cares about that these days. Marrying simply to conform to outdated values is a terrible idea.’ Without giving him a chance to speak, she said fiercely, ‘I don’t want to marry you. It’s a crazy idea.’
‘Nevertheless, it will happen.’ He sounded implacable, and Lissa felt a ripple of unease. Takis could not make her marry him, she reminded herself. ‘Marriage will give us equal parental rights,’ he continued. ‘If you refuse, I will seek custody of my child.’
She jumped up from the sofa, breathing hard. ‘You wouldn’t win. Courts rarely separate a baby from its mother unless there are exceptional circumstances.’
‘Would you be prepared to risk a legal battle that could drag on for months or even years? The costs involved with solicitors’ fees and so on are likely to be exorbitant.’
‘I don’t believe this,’ Lissa said shakily. ‘You told me that fatherhood does not appeal to you.’
His jaw clenched. ‘It’s true I would not have chosen to have a child. But neither of us have a choice. You are pregnant and we must both do what is best for the baby.’
Takis was
like a tornado tearing through her life, Lissa thought frantically. She felt agitated and panicky and her heart was beating alarmingly fast. ‘I can’t breathe,’ she gasped. The room was spinning. She flung out a hand to grab hold of the back of the chair.
‘Lissa!’
Takis’s voice came from a long way off. It was the last thing she heard before blackness engulfed her.
CHAPTER NINE
‘ARE YOU SURE the baby is all right?’ Lissa asked the nurse who was pushing her in a wheelchair along the hospital corridor.
‘Baby is fine. Your pregnancy was constantly monitored while you were in intensive care, but you will feel more reassured when you have an ultrasound scan later today. We’ll get you settled in your room first.’
Lissa glanced around the pretty room they had entered. It was decorated in shades of pink and reminded her of a luxury hotel room. ‘This doesn’t look like a hospital ward.’
‘Mr Samaras arranged for you to have a private room,’ the nurse explained as she helped Lissa on to the bed. ‘Would you like me to put your photographs on the bedside cabinet? Mr Samaras brought them in,’ she said as Lissa looked puzzled when she saw two framed photos of her family that had been on the bureau in her apartment at Francine’s hotel.
She remembered that whenever she had opened her eyes Takis had been sitting next to her hospital bed. But her memory was vague. The doctor had explained that she’d been rushed to the hospital by ambulance and admitted to the intensive care unit after she had collapsed.
‘You experienced a thyroid storm, which is a rare complication of hyperthyroidism. Your thyroid levels were dangerously high, which caused your blood pressure to soar. The condition can be fatal if it is not treated quickly.’ The doctor was confident that Lissa’s pregnancy should continue normally with her thyroid condition controlled with medication. Although there was a risk that that she could go into labour prematurely.
‘How long have I been in hospital?’ she asked the nurse.
‘A week. You were very poorly for a few days. That handsome fiancé of yours has been very worried about you.’
Fiancé? Lissa’s memory was becoming clearer. Takis had demanded that she marry him, but she had never agreed she would. Thankfully, her baby was unharmed by what had happened to her. She wondered if Takis had been worried about the baby, or if he’d hoped that her illness would put an end to her pregnancy. Tears filled her eyes as she lay back on the pillows.
She must have slept because when she awoke, Takis was sitting on a chair beside the bed. Her heart flipped as she studied him. He was as gorgeous as ever, but there were grooves on either side of his mouth that had not been there a week ago.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked. Nothing in his voice or shuttered expression gave a clue to his thoughts.
‘Better,’ Lissa told him. ‘You don’t need to be here. I’m sure you must want to go back to Greece to run your business.’ She bit her lip when his heavy brows drew together.
‘I have stated that you and the child you are carrying are my responsibility.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Theos! It is my fault that you nearly died,’ he said harshly. Lissa had never seen him so unrestrained.
‘How do you work that out?’
‘Your thyroid condition means that pregnancy is a higher risk for you. I should have been more careful when we had sex.’ A dark flush ran along his sharp cheekbones. ‘There was one time in the bath when I was reckless.’
‘There were two of us,’ Lissa said quietly. ‘I was reckless too.’ Takis could not spell it out any clearer that he regretted her pregnancy.
The tense silence was broken by a knock on the door, and a nurse entered the room. ‘I’ve come to take you for your ultrasound scan, Miss Buchanan. Would you like your fiancé to accompany you?’
Lissa glanced at Takis. ‘Well, do you want to see your baby?’
His eyes narrowed at her challenging tone. He seemed to be waging an internal battle with himself. ‘I would like to be at the scan,’ he said in a tense voice.
In the scanning room Lissa had the sense that everything was surreal. She hadn’t had much time to assimilate the news that she was pregnant before she’d been taken ill, and the time she’d spent in intensive care was a blur. A nurse helped her on to a bed and the sonographer smeared gel on to her stomach. When she was lying down her bump was barely discernible.
‘Every pregnant woman carries differently,’ the sonographer assured her. ‘But your baby is definitely in there. This is the heart.’ She pointed to a tiny, flickering speck on the screen. ‘And here we have the head and spine.’
Lissa held her breath. Her eyes were fixed on the image on the screen. It was real. In a few months she was going to have a baby. A little person of her own who she would love, and who would love her. She felt overwhelmed with emotion and fiercely protective of the new life that she would soon bring into the world. A new life she would never let feel like a burden to her.
‘The baby is a bit smaller than I would have expected for your dates, but there is no cause for concern at the moment,’ the sonographer explained. ‘I can tell you the sex if you would like to know.’
Lissa looked at Takis. He had not spoken during the scan and she had no idea what he was thinking. ‘It is your decision,’ he said. There was nothing in his voice to give a clue to how he felt at seeing his unborn child. Perhaps if they knew whether she was expecting a boy or girl, Takis would feel more of a connection to the baby.
‘We would like to know,’ Lissa said to the sonographer.
‘You are expecting a boy. Congratulations.’
Lissa’s heart leapt. A little boy! She wondered what he would be like and imagined a baby with dark hair like his father. She had felt him stiffen when they had been told the baby’s gender. How did Takis feel about having a son? She glanced at him and was startled by an expression of stark pain on his face. She turned her head back towards the screen and the image of their tiny son. When she looked at Takis again, his hard features were once more unreadable. But Lissa could not forget his devastated expression or help but wonder what it had meant. Whether he truly feared fatherhood or if it was something more.
He pushed her wheelchair back to her room and ignored her protest that she did not need his help as he lifted her on to the bed. The brief moments when he held her in his arms evoked a sharp tug of longing in Lissa, and she swept her eyelashes down to hide her expression from his speculative gaze.
‘Thank you for bringing these from home,’ she said, picking up the photographs of her family.
‘I thought you might like to have them. How old were you when the photos were taken?’
‘Ten. The picture of me with my mum and dad was taken at a gymnastics competition. I’d won a medal and they were so proud of me. Mum had been a gymnastics champion and she encouraged me to take up the sport.’
She held up the other photo. ‘This was taken on a family holiday to Ireland before my parents flew to Sri Lanka to celebrate their wedding anniversary. It was the last picture of them before they died.’ Her heart gave a pang as she looked at her parents smiling faces.
‘You had a close relationship with them?’
‘I was the spoiled, youngest child, and my brother and sister probably resented all the attention my parents gave me,’ she said ruefully. ‘But we were a happy family.’ She remembered family events, birthdays and Christmases that her parents had made so magical. They had made her feel safe and secure and loved, and that was what she wanted for her baby.
She looked at Takis. ‘Why did you ask me to marry you?’
He frowned. ‘You know why. You are pregnant with my baby.’
‘Yes, but why insist on marriage—really? I’ve told you that you don’t have to stick around.’
His jaw clenched. ‘I will not abandon my child. He is my heir. It would make no difference if you were expecti
ng a girl,’ he said before Lissa could speak. ‘I am determined to protect my son and provide for him. My business interests have made me wealthy and I can give him a good lifestyle and the best education. Everything that I did not have,’ he added.
Lissa nodded. ‘I’m not so naive as to think that money and the privileges it brings are not important. But it is far more important that our son grows up knowing that he is loved unconditionally.’
Takis did not respond, but perhaps men did not feel the surge of devotion that expectant mothers felt to their unborn children—that she certainly felt—Lissa mused. It would be different when the baby was born and Takis held his son in his arms. She had to believe that. She wanted to believe they would create a family unit that she had craved after her parents had been cruelly snatched from her.
‘I will marry you,’ she told him, trying to ignore the lurch her heart gave, the feeling that she had taken a leap into the unknown. ‘My brush with death, or at least serious illness, has made me see things more clearly. No one can predict what will happen in life. My parents went on holiday and did not return.’
She swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘If we are married and something should happen to me, I’ll have the reassurance of knowing that my son will still have his father, and there will be no question over who should bring him up.’
Takis frowned. ‘Nothing is going to happen to you.’
‘You can’t be certain. I’m not being pessimistic, just realistic.’ She sighed. ‘After my parents died my father’s cousin and his wife offered to have me and my brother and sister. But my grandfather was the next of kin and we were sent to live with him. Pappoús didn’t want Mark and me, and he only took an interest in Eleanor because he groomed her to take over the family’s hotel business.’
Lissa wished Takis would say something. His lack of enthusiasm was a reminder that he believed it was his duty to marry her. She was once again someone’s responsibility. At least that’s clearly the way he felt. It was a far cry from the romantic dreams she’d had when she’d been a little girl of meeting her Prince Charming. But she’d stopped believing in fairy tales as well as Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy when her parents had died. More than anything she wanted security for her son. Which meant she must marry her baby’s enigmatic father.
Nine Months to Tame the Tycoon--An Uplifting International Romance Page 9