He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and clenched his fingers so tightly that his nails bit into his palms. ‘You said that you were pregnant,’ he said stiltedly, fighting to hold back the volcanic mass of his emotions from spewing out. ‘Does it mean that either by accident or design there is no longer a baby?’
Now she stared back at him and her eyes were as dark as storm clouds. ‘Accident or design? I don’t think I understand.’
‘Your brother said in the Christmas card that it was a shame about the baby. And before you left Athens you told me you wanted to focus on your career. Did you terminate the pregnancy?’
She reeled backwards and knocked over a box of Christmas decorations, sending gaudy baubles rolling across the carpet. ‘No, I did not.’
Giannis snatched a breath. He needed her to spell it out for him. ‘So you are carrying my child?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was a whisper of sound, as if she was reluctant to confirm the news that blew him away. ‘Sam thought it was a shame that we had broken up when I am expecting your baby,’ she muttered.
Euphoria swept through Giannis but it was swiftly replaced with anger. ‘Why the hell did you try to keep it a secret from me? I had a right to know that I am to be a father.’
‘Don’t take that moral tone with me. You have no rights to this baby, Giannis.’ Colour flared on Ava’s pale cheeks and her eyes flashed with temper. ‘I know what you are. I’ve heard the rumour that you are involved with the Greek mafia.’
‘What?’ Shock ricocheted through Giannis. He wondered if Ava was joking, even if the joke was in very poor taste. But as they faced each other across the room full of packing boxes and spilt shiny baubles he realised that she was serious.
‘No doubt you will deny it. But I didn’t tell you about my pregnancy because I won’t take the risk of my baby having a criminal for a father.’ She crossed her arms defensively in front of her and glared at him.
He kept his hands in his pockets in case he was tempted to shake some sense into her. Not that he would ever lay a finger on a woman in anger, and certainly not the mother of his child. Giannis’s heart lurched as the astounding reality sank in that Ava was expecting his baby.
Five years ago he had lost his unborn child, but by a miracle he had been given another chance to be a father. A chance perhaps of redemption. He wanted to be a good father, as his own father had been, and he would love his child as deeply as his father had loved him. Emotions that he had buried for the last fifteen years threatened to overwhelm him. But he had to deal with Ava’s shocking accusation and somehow defuse the volatile situation.
‘Of course I deny that I belong to a criminal organisation because it’s not true. Who told you the rumour about me?’
‘I’m not prepared to say.’
‘It must have been at Stefanos’s party.’ Giannis knew he had guessed correctly when Ava dropped her gaze. He remembered that her attitude towards him had changed when they had spent the night on Gaia. She had left the party early, saying she had a headache. When she had been sick the next morning she had blamed it on a migraine, but she must have known then that she was pregnant.
Fury swirled, black and bitter, inside him at the realisation that Ava had tried to hide his child from him because she had believed an unfounded rumour. A memory flashed into his mind.
‘I saw you talking to Petros Spyriou at the party while I was with Stefanos. Did he tell you the ridiculous story that I am a criminal?’
‘I don’t know the name of the man who spoke to me.’
‘So you believed the words of a stranger without question and without giving me a chance to refute his slanderous allegations?’ When she bit her lip but said nothing, Giannis continued, ‘We had been lovers for a month before we went to Gaia, yet what we shared clearly meant nothing to you.’
‘What did we share, Giannis, other than sex and lies? You blackmailed me to be your fake fiancée so that you could trick Stefanos to sell his company to you.’ Her voice faltered. ‘When I heard a rumour that you use TGE as a cover for your criminal activities I didn’t know what to believe.’
‘So you ran away,’ he said scathingly. The savage satisfaction he felt when colour flared on her face did not lessen his unexpected sense of betrayal, of hurt, damn it, that she had so little faith in him.
When they had stayed on Spetses he had spent more time with her than he’d done with any other woman. Even when he had dated Caroline for nearly a year, their relationship had amounted to meeting for dinner a couple of times a week and occasional weekends together when their work schedules had aligned.
‘Petros Spyriou is Stefanos’s nephew,’ he told Ava. ‘Petros believes that his uncle should have put him in charge of Markou Shipping instead of selling the company to me. He is jealous of me, which is why he made up disgusting lies about me.’ Giannis gave a grim laugh. ‘Petros succeeded in scaring you away but he’ll find himself in court facing charges of slander and defamation of character.’
‘He said that a few years ago a journalist tried to investigate you but was dissuaded from publishing information that he’d discovered about you.’
Inside his coat pockets, Giannis curled his hands into fists and wished that Stefanos’s weasel of a nephew was standing in front of him. His criminal record had been expunged ten years after he’d served his prison sentence, which was standard procedure in Greek law. But somehow a journalist had found out about it and demanded money to keep quiet. Giannis had been loath to give in to blackmail, but coming soon after he’d broken up with Caroline, and the loss of his first child, his emotions had been raw and he’d been desperate to keep the details of his father’s death out of the media spotlight.
He had no idea how Stefanos’s nephew had found out about the journalist, and he guessed that Petros did not know what information the journalist had discovered. But the suggestion that there were secrets Giannis wanted to keep hidden must have been useful to Petros when he’d told Ava lies about him being involved with the Greek mafia. The story was so crazy it was laughable—yet Ava had believed Petros and as a result she had hidden her pregnancy, Giannis thought bitterly.
His jaw clenched as he remembered that while they had lived together at Villa Delphine he had been tempted to confess to Ava that he had been responsible for his father’s untimely death. Thank God he had not bared his soul to her. He certainly would not tell her the truth now. He could imagine her horrified reaction and he dared not risk her disappearing again with his baby.
‘Everything Petros told you was pure fabrication.’ He shrugged. ‘Believe me, or don’t believe me. I don’t give a damn. But you won’t keep my child from me. If you attempt to, I will seek custody and I will win because I have money and power and you have neither.’
‘No court ruling would allow a baby to be separated from its mother,’ Ava snapped, but she had paled.
Giannis flicked his eyes over her, his emotions once more under control. ‘Are you willing to take the risk?’
* * *
His black gaze was so cold. Ava gave a shiver. It seemed impossible that Giannis’s eyes had ever gleamed with warmth and laughter. Or that they had once been friends as well as lovers. But their wild passion had resulted in the baby that was growing bigger in her belly every day. Giannis’s child. It was strange how emotive those two words were, and even stranger that when she had seen him standing on the doorstep her body had quivered in response to his potent masculinity.
She must be the weakest woman in the world, she thought bleakly. He had barged his way into her home and threatened to try to take her baby from her, yet her heart ached as she roamed her eyes over his silky hair and the sculpted perfection of his features. She had thought about him constantly for the last three months but, standing in the chaotic sitting room, he was taller than she remembered and his shoulders were so broad beneath the black wool coat he wore.
He was like a dark avenging angel, but was his anger justified? Had she been too ready to believe the rumour that he was a criminal because of her father’s criminality? Ava wondered. Supposing Stefanos’s jealous nephew had lied? If she hadn’t had that devastating conversation with Petros, she would have told Giannis as soon as she’d done the test that she was pregnant, and perhaps he would not be looking down his nose at her as if she were something unpleasant that he had scraped off the bottom of his shoe.
A loud knock on the front door broke the tense silence in the sitting room. She glanced towards the window and saw a lorry parked outside the house. ‘We’ll have to continue this conversation another time,’ she told Giannis. ‘The removals firm are here to take my mother’s furniture into storage now that she has sold the house.’
He frowned. ‘I thought this house belonged to you, and you had sold it because you planned to move away so that I couldn’t find you.’
‘I lived here with my family before we moved to Cyprus. My father had registered the deeds of the house in my mother’s name. After my dad...’ she hesitated ‘...after my parents divorced, Mum, Sam and I came back to live here, although I went away to university. My mother and her new partner have bought a bed and breakfast business in the Peak District.’
‘So where will you live? I assume you will need to stay in the East End to be near to your work. At least while you are able to continue working until the baby is born,’ Giannis said, the groove between his brows deepening.
She looked away from him. ‘I was made redundant from my job when the victim support charity I worked for couldn’t continue to fund my role. I’ve arranged to rent a room in a friend’s house, but I’m thinking of moving back to Scotland where property is cheaper and I will be nearer to Sam and Mum.’
She would need help from her family after she became a single mother, Ava thought as she hurried down the hallway to open the front door. The removals team trooped in and it quickly became clear that she and Giannis were in the way, when the men started to carry furniture and boxes out to the van.
‘You had better go,’ she told him. ‘My friend Becky, who I am going to stay with, offered to come over later to collect my things as I don’t have a car.’
‘I’ll put whatever you want to take with you in my car and drive you to her house.’ Giannis’s crisp tone brooked no argument. ‘Which boxes are yours?’
She pointed to two packing boxes by the window and when his brows rose she said defensively, ‘I don’t like clutter, or see the point in having too many clothes.’
‘Is that why you left the dresses that I’d bought for you during our engagement back at the apartment in Athens?’
‘I left the clothes and the engagement ring behind because you did not buy me, Giannis.’ The idea that he had paid for the designer dresses and the beautiful pink sapphire ring with money he might have made illegally was repugnant to Ava, and a painful reminder of her privileged childhood which she’d later discovered had been funded by her father’s crimes.
Giannis’s eyes narrowed but he said nothing as he picked up one of the boxes which contained her worldly possessions. But when Ava bent down to pick up the second box he said sharply, ‘Put it down. You should not be lifting heavy things in your condition.’
‘Who do you think packed all the boxes and lugged them down the stairs?’ she said drily. ‘Mum is busy getting her new house ready and I have spent weeks clearing this place, ready for the new owners to move in.’
‘From now on you will not do any strenuous activity that could harm my baby,’ Giannis growled. His accent was suddenly thicker and he sounded very Greek and very possessive. Ava supposed she should feel furious that he was being so bossy, but her stupid heart softened at his concern for his child. Since she’d left Athens she had debated endlessly with herself about whether she should tell him she was pregnant. One reason for not doing so was that she had assumed he would be angry at having fatherhood foisted on him. She was surprised by his determination to be involved with the baby.
She had already given the house keys to the estate agent and when she walked down the front path for the last time Ava realised that she was severing the final link with her father. Number fifty-one Arthur Close was where Terry McKay had plotted his armed robberies and controlled his turf. He had been a ruthless gangland boss, but to Ava he had been a fun person who had built her a treehouse in the garden. She had been utterly taken in by her father’s charming manner but finding out the truth about him had left her deeply untrusting.
After the bitterly cold wind whipping down Arthur Close, the interior of Giannis’s car was a warm and luxurious haven. Ava sank deep into the leather upholstery and gave him the postcode of Becky’s house.
‘Put your seat belt on,’ he reminded her. But, before she could reach for it, he leaned across her and she breathed in the spicy scent of his aftershave. He smelled divine, and for a moment his face was close to hers and she hated herself for wanting to press her lips to the dark stubble that shaded his jaw.
He secured her seat belt and she released a shaky breath when he moved away from her and put the car into gear. Did her body respond to Giannis because it instinctively recognised that he was the father of her child? How could she still desire him when she did not know if she could trust him? she wondered despairingly. The sight of his tanned hands on the steering wheel evoked memories of how he had pleasured her with his wickedly inventive fingers. Stop it, she told herself, and closed her eyes so that she was not tempted to look at him.
He switched the radio onto a station playing easy listening music, and the smooth motion of the car had a soporific effect on Ava. She’d been lucky that she’d had few pregnancy symptoms and the sickness she had experienced in the first weeks had gone. But the bone-deep tiredness she felt these days was quite normal, the midwife had told her at her check-up. It was nature’s way of making her rest so that the baby could grow.
When she opened her eyes she wondered for a moment where she was, before she remembered that Giannis had offered to take her across town to Becky’s house. So why were they driving along the motorway? The clock on the dashboard showed that she had been asleep for nearly an hour.
She jerked her gaze to Giannis. ‘This isn’t the way to Fulham. Where are you taking me?’ Panic flared and she unconsciously placed her hand on her stomach to protect the fragile new life inside her.
‘We are going to my house in St Albans. We’ll be there in about ten minutes.’ He glanced at her. ‘We need to talk.’
‘I don’t want to talk to you.’ She reached for the door handle and Giannis swore.
‘It’s locked. Are you really crazy enough to want to throw yourself out of the car travelling at seventy miles an hour?’
His words brought her to her senses. ‘I have nothing to say to you. You...threatened to take my baby from me.’ Her voice shook and she sensed that he sent her another glance.
‘I was angry,’ he said roughly.
‘That doesn’t make it okay to speak to me the way you did.’
‘I know.’ He exhaled heavily. ‘I don’t want to fight with you, Ava. But I want what is best for the baby, and I do not believe that being brought up in a bedsit and being dumped in a nursery for hours every day while you go to work is anywhere near the best start in life that we can give to our child.’ He paused for a heartbeat and said quietly, ‘Do you?’
Unable to think of an answer, she turned her head to look out of the window so that he would not see the tears that had filled her eyes when he’d said our child. For the first time since she had stared in disbelief at the positive sign on the pregnancy test, she felt that she wasn’t alone. It made her realise how scared she had been at the prospect of having a baby on her own, with no one to share the worry and responsibility with. Her mother was busy with her new life and partner, and her brother thankfully seemed to be sorting himself and enjoyed working on t
heir aunt and uncle’s farm. There was no one she could rely on apart from Giannis. But, despite his assurance that he wasn’t a criminal, she did not know if she believed him.
They left the motorway and drove through a small village before Giannis turned the car through some wrought iron gates which bore a sign saying ‘Milton Grange’. At the end of the winding driveway stood a charming Georgian house built on four storeys, with mullioned windows and ivy growing over the walls.
Snow had been falling lightly for the last half an hour and the bay trees in front of the house were dusted with white frosting. But, although the snow looked pretty, Ava was glad to step into the warm hallway where they were greeted by Giannis’s housekeeper.
‘The fire is lit in the drawing room and lunch will be in half an hour,’ the woman, whom Giannis introduced as Joan, said when she had taken their coats.
‘What a beautiful house,’ Ava murmured as she looked around the comfortably furnished drawing room, decorated in soft neutral shades so that the effect was calming and homely.
‘I bought it as an investment,’ Giannis told her. ‘But it’s too big, especially as I do not live here permanently. I arranged for a charity which provides help to parents and families of disabled children to use the top two floors as a respite centre. Builders reconfigured the upper floors and in effect turned one large house into two separate properties.’
Ava sat down in an armchair close to the fire and furthest away from the sofa where Giannis took a seat. He gave her a sardonic look but said evenly, ‘Would you like tea or coffee?’ A tray on the low table in front of him held a cafetière and a teapot.
‘Tea, please. I should only drink decaffeinated coffee, but actually I’ve gone off coffee completely since I’ve been pregnant. Just the smell of it made me sick at first.’
He frowned. ‘Do you suffer very badly with morning sickness? It can’t be good for the baby if you are unable to keep food down. Are you eating well?’
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