A moment later his deep voice cut through the silence. ‘If you ever threaten to take my child away from me again, I will sue you for full custody. And I will win.’
His cold words almost knocked the air from her lungs.
Inhaling deeply, she clenched her hands into fists. ‘Don’t treat me and my child like a commodity and I won’t have to make that threat. Oh, and I wasn’t threatening you—I was promising. Take me to court. See how a judge reacts to you throwing your money around to buy a baby.’
She heard his own sharp intake of breath.
When he next spoke, it sounded as if it were coming from between tightly gritted teeth. ‘I was merely trying to think of the best way to proceed—the best way for all our interests.’
‘All your interests, you mean. If I was as shallow and money-grabbing as you keep implying, I would have accepted your offer and you wouldn’t have to face a future explaining to all and sundry that the mother of your child is a chambermaid. You could say the child was conceived by a surrogate.’
His phone suddenly vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw it was Niki.
He sighed and switched it off without answering. His youngest sister was furious with him for abandoning her in Vienna, although there was some debate as to whether ‘abandoning’ was the correct term, considering he’d put her in the best suite of the hotel and sent his plane back to collect her that morning. He was not ready to tell her or any of his family about Tabitha. Not when he was still trying to get to grips with the situation.
It was a situation he knew his family would be delighted about. He also knew what they would expect him to do about it. They would expect him to marry her.
His driver turned onto the long driveway that took them to Giannis’s home. Staring out of the window at the home he loved and had expected to be filled with children long before now, an overwhelming weariness flooded through him, and he bowed his head and rubbed the back of his neck.
‘I’ve appointments in Athens to get to. I’ll be back later this evening. We can discuss the situation more then.’
He reached out to touch the honey-blonde hair splaying down her back and over her seat and pulled his hand back with only inches to spare.
He needed some legal advice because the only future he could see now involved marrying this woman who evoked the stickiest desire he’d ever known and a maelstrom of emotions in him. If marriage was the route they needed to take then he needed to get a grip on it all. And fast.
* * *
With the sun already blazing high in the azure sky, Tabitha rolled her jeans up her calves as far she could and put a black vest on. It was the closest thing to beach wear she could create from her limited wardrobe.
Then she walked down the long pebbled steps that led from Giannis’s clifftop house to his private beach. She’d just reached the bottom of them when Giannis’s housekeeper came tearing after her with a bottle of sunscreen and a large bottle of water.
Touched at the thoughtful gesture, and wishing she could thank the kind woman in her language, she kissed her cheek as a means of conveying her gratitude.
Alone with nothing but the clear Aegean Sea, she sank onto the dark volcanic sand and, for the first time in over four years, spent a day doing nothing. No cleaning. No washing. No scrubbing. No ironing. She just sat on the beach with the sun toasting her skin and got lost in her thoughts.
Slowly her fury at Giannis’s offer to effectively buy their baby from her lessened but threads of agitation grew in its place. He wanted to talk more about the ‘situation’ later.
What would happen to her now? What would happen to her baby? She wished desperately that her father were still alive. Just a warm embrace from him would be enough. He’d been such a good man, always wanting the best for his only child. It would have devastated him to see what had become of her. It would have devastated him to learn the wife he’d chosen with such care for his daughter’s sake had been a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He’d known Tabitha’s relationship with her stepsisters hadn’t been the loving one he’d envisaged but he’d never dreamed the rot went all the way to the top. If he had, he would never have put his second wife down as a trustee to his estate. He would have better protected Tabitha.
Would Giannis only want the best for their child? He’d implied as much but what did his interpretation of ‘best’ even mean? Did it only mean material things? Or did it include love and affection?
His assertion that she had nothing to offer a child had stung but not as much as his cruel question as to how she could inspire their child.
Giannis looked at her and saw an insignificant nobody.
She wished it didn’t make her heart ache so much to know that that was who she’d become.
But now she needed to become someone. She needed to be the mother her child deserved.
* * *
Giannis took a deep breath before knocking on Tabitha’s door.
A long day had been broken up with a quick chat with his lawyer, who’d confirmed marriage was the most sensible route to take if he wanted any rights over his child. The law in Greece gave unmarried mothers sole custody. He would only have rights to his child if Tabitha consented. He could take her to court. With the legal minds he would employ, he could be reasonably certain of winning, but there were no guarantees in life. Marriage cut out any risks. He would be his child’s legal parent in the eyes of the law and seamlessly solve any future problem regarding custody and maintenance.
Marriage protected him. The sooner he tied Tabitha down the better, before she learned for herself that she held three out of the four aces in the pack. Which meant he needed to go on a charm offensive.
The door opened slowly.
When their eyes met he had a moment where all thoughts flew from his brain.
She looked dishevelled in rolled-up jeans and a black vest top, her pretty feet bare, long honey-blonde hair tumbling messily over her shoulders.
She tucked a lock of it behind her ear, colour rising on her rounded cheekbones.
Damn it, even resembling a grubby urchin she was beautiful.
There was a smudge on her left cheek. He rammed his hand into his pocket to stop himself from reaching out to wipe it clean.
His beautiful liar was the greatest temptation he had ever known. That made her more dangerous than she could understand.
But she was here, in his home, under his roof. If he wanted his rights to the child growing beneath the stomach that looked only a little rounder since their night together to be guaranteed, he needed to marry her. To marry her, he needed her consent.
He cleared his throat. ‘Dinner will be served for us on the terrace in twenty minutes.’
There was not the slightest softening on the beautiful stony face before him. ‘You want to eat with me?’
No. He never wanted to be near her again, never have that astounding beauty in his sight, never have her scent dive into his senses, never hear that fake cut-glass but utterly melodious, husky voice, never have his own fingers itch to reach out and touch the soft skin he so vividly remembered the texture and taste of...
Loins thickening uncomfortably, he gave a sharp nod and stepped back. ‘I’ll meet you out there.’
Then he turned and headed straight to his own room at the other end of his home to the room he’d put her in, far out of the reach of temptation.
Standing under the shower, he knew he had to get a grip. If she did consent to marry him then the temptation that was Tabitha would no longer be a temptation. She would be his wife. She would share his bed. Share his life.
Frustrated and furious with himself for his weakness around her, he punched the wall.
Damn it to hell, how had he got so carried away that he’d failed to put the condom on before thrusting inside her?
But that was the wrong question to ask because all it did was make
his already aching loins remember the exquisite pleasure of being bare inside her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHEN GIANNIS ARRIVED at the terrace he found the table set as he’d instructed but no Tabitha.
Pouring himself a large glass of white wine, he took a seat and waited.
She appeared ten minutes later in the same rolled-up jeans and black vest she’d answered her bedroom door in, her hair brushed, her face clean but her cheeks flushed. ‘Sorry. I got lost.’
Awareness stabbed through him so hard that all he could do was raise a brow.
Her nerves came out in her voice. ‘I thought you meant the terrace at the back with the swimming pool. I didn’t know there was one overlooking the beach too. It’s very well hidden.’
‘It’s secluded,’ he agreed. ‘Please, sit. Would you like a drink?’
‘Just water, please.’ Tabitha took the seat she assumed had been set for her—judging by the cutlery setting, they were having a three-course meal—and looked out at the magnificent view so as to avoid meeting his eye again until her heart had slowed to a more manageable beat.
Trying desperately to distract herself, she inhaled the fragrant floral air mingled with the scent of the sea that glimmered before her. This terrace had to be right below her bedroom.
The more she explored Giannis’s home, the more there was to discover, including that the vast majority of it was carved into the cliff itself.
He poured water for her from a jug and indicated the pitta bread and dips already laid on the table.
Being alone with him had killed her appetite quicker than the gory pictures her stepsisters had liked to show her to scare her when she was a child but this was a much different appetite suppressant. This suppressant was because large butterflies had suddenly formed in her stomach, their wings fluttering hard all the way up to her throat.
Although she knew she wouldn’t be able to manage more than a small amount, Tabitha dipped some of the bread into the pink taramasalata and took a tiny bite.
Giannis was the one to break the silence. ‘Forgive me for not asking this sooner, but how are you finding the pregnancy?’
She swallowed her bite-sized morsel and forced herself to look at him. ‘Exciting and frightening.’
‘That is understandable. What about physically? Have you noticed any changes?’
‘I suffer with afternoon morning sickness.’ She managed a small smile to see the furrow in his brow. ‘Every afternoon, without fail, I get nauseous. I’ve learned to only eat plain food for lunch then it’s less severe but, either way, it doesn’t last long—an hour or so. I also get tired easily but that’s it. So far, so good.’
She crossed her legs to stop the jitters.
Why were they pretending? Why was she pretending? Pretending that sharing a meal with Giannis was normal, that she wasn’t suspicious at this change in attitude towards her? She wanted to be thankful for it but she couldn’t. When he’d dropped her back at his home earlier he’d hardly been able to look her in the eye. Now he was pouring her drinks on the terrace of his home, sharing a meal in a setting that could only be considered as romantic.
‘Maybe the sea air here will help with the sickness,’ he observed.
‘Maybe. I was nauseous earlier but I wasn’t sick.’
‘That’s encouraging.’ He dipped a large chunk of pitta into the humus and popped it whole into his mouth.
Unable to take this stilted, fake politeness a moment longer, she wiped her fingers on the cotton napkin and raised her chin. ‘Why are you being nice to me?’
He didn’t pretend not to know what she was talking about. He took hold of his glass but, instead of drinking from it, he swirled the wine within it. ‘I have been harsh with you. For that I apologise. The news about your pregnancy came as a shock but now we have to move forward...’
Before Giannis could finish and tell her he thought they should marry, there came the sound of clacking footsteps followed by his sister Niki bursting through the French doors.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked in Greek, rising from his chair.
‘To tell you off. You left me in Vienna without a word of explanation and have been avoiding all my calls since.’ She cast a beady stare at Tabitha. ‘Is she the reason for...?’
But then Niki cut herself off and stared even harder at her with widening eyes. ‘Tabitha?’
Giannis watched as recognition flickered in the cornflower eyes. ‘Niki?’
‘You two know each other?’ His mind raced. His sister had not spent a great deal of time at his palace hotel but she was a gregarious soul who made friends easily. It would be just like her to befriend a chambermaid.
An enormous smile spread over Niki’s face and, in English, she said, ‘It is you! What are you doing here? How do you know my brother?’
The shock on Tabitha’s face told its own story. ‘Giannis is your brother?’
Niki beamed and nodded, then pulled out a chair to sit, uninvited.
‘How do you two know each other?’ Giannis asked again, his curiosity outweighing his frustration at this rude interruption.
Grabbing Tabitha’s unused wine glass, Niki poured herself a glass. ‘Tabitha was at Beddingdales with Simone, Melina’s cousin. We used to meet up at weekends if we had the same leave.’
Melina was Niki’s best friend. Melina had been the reason Niki had refused to go to Beddingdales herself, begging their parents to send her to the same English boarding school that Melina was being sent to. As Niki could wrap her parents around her little finger, they’d agreed.
But none of this was what Giannis was thinking of.
He stared at Tabitha, met her expressionless gaze and felt the ground shift beneath him.
Then Niki burst into a peel of laughter. ‘I’ve just realised—you’re the woman who took Giannis’s attention for the whole of the masquerade ball! I was sure you were familiar but with your mask on I couldn’t place where I knew you from!’
He whipped his head round to look at his sister.
She’d mentioned his ‘mystery woman’ a couple of times in the days after the ball but not once had she said the woman in question was familiar to her. After he had shut her up about the subject, she had stopped mentioning it.
If he had known Tabitha had rung a bell with Niki he would have made her think hard about who she could be.
He looked again at the woman carrying his child.
How the hell did a girl from one of the world’s most exclusive and expensive all-girls boarding schools grow into a woman so impoverished she’d become a live-in chambermaid?
* * *
The next hour passed with Tabitha in a daze.
Niki was Giannis’s sister? She’d never known her well but had always remembered her, mostly because she was one of the most fun people she’d ever met. A few years older than Tabitha, she’d exuded a glamour Tabitha would have killed to achieve for herself. Whenever she’d come with Melina to visit Simone in the town near their school, Tabitha had been thrilled to be included in the group.
Whether she was oblivious to the tension in the air or whether she just chose to ignore it, only Niki knew, but she stayed, happily helping herself to Tabitha’s leftovers, of which there were many, from all the delicious courses they were served. There were many instances of, ‘Do you remember?’ to which Tabitha would nod and smile but chatterbox Niki didn’t require input from either of them. From the way her merry eyes darted between them, she obviously thought they’d got together at the ball and had been seeing each other in secret since.
When she finally took one of the enormous hints Giannis kept dropping and said her goodbyes—and Giannis insisted on seeing her out, most likely to ensure she actually left—Tabitha got to her feet and stood at the thick white wall that acted as a barrier between the terrace and sheer drop beneath them.
S
he breathed in deeply, inhaling the wonderful night scents, trying hard to compose herself.
Something was about to happen. She could feel it in her bones: an anticipation.
But whether it was an anticipation of dread she couldn’t tell. Whatever it was, she needed to keep herself together. She needed to be strong.
His footsteps were heavy when he joined her back on the terrace.
He poured himself another glass of wine from the second bottle to be opened after Niki had demolished most of the first one and drank half of it before putting the glass on the table and coming over to stand beside her.
The night sky and the romantic lights illuminating the terrace cast his handsome face in shadows that gave him a gothic, piratical look. It made her heart ache, reminding her strongly of how he had looked the night of the ball when she had fallen under his spell.
The heady awareness that lived in her blood for him flickered to life with all the ease of a switch. Without the barrier of the table between them he was close enough to touch.
For a long time he stared at her with a hard curiosity. ‘Who are you?’
She forced herself to maintain eye contact. ‘Are you asking because you saw me as a dirt-poor chambermaid and assumed that’s all I ever was?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I never thought that.’
‘Didn’t you?’ she challenged. ‘I saw the shock in your eyes when Niki said how she knew me. You assumed I lied about Beddingdales, didn’t you? You were so confident it was a lie, you never bothered to ask. You didn’t think a privately educated woman could possibly get her hands dirty working in domestic service. It was easier to assume I was a liar than give me the benefit of the doubt.’
‘If I thought you a liar, it’s because you lied about your identity to get into the ball. You lied about who you were,’ he ground out.
‘The only lie was the name on the invitation I entered the ball with. I told you my real name. I told you I worked in hospitality, which was stretching the truth, I admit, but it was the closest I could get without telling a lie. Everything else was the truth. I was an imposter that night but I’m not a liar, Giannis, whatever you may think of me.’
The Greek's Pregnant Cinderella (Mills & Boon Modern) (Cinderella Seductions, Book 2) Page 8