At least she knew where she stood with him, Ava told herself as she dragged her towel around her unsatisfied body to hide the shaming hard peaks of her nipples. He was marrying her to claim his baby. And she had agreed to be his wife because she feared that he would seek custody of their son—not immediately perhaps, but she couldn’t bear to live with the threat hanging over her.
* * *
Why the hell had he come on to Ava like a clumsy adolescent on a first date? Giannis asked himself furiously as he powered through the water. He heard the conservatory door bang, signalling her departure, but he kept on swimming lap after lap, punishing himself for his loss of control.
Since he had seen the grainy scan images of his child he’d felt as if he were on an emotional rollercoaster. Ava’s pregnancy had seemed unreal until the moment the sonographer had pointed out on the screen the baby’s tiny heart beating strongly. In that instant he’d realised that nothing—not money or possessions or power—were important compared to his son.
Back at the house he’d paced restlessly around his study, unable to concentrate on a financial report he was supposed to be reading. Work had always been his favourite mistress, the area of his life where he knew he excelled, but—just as when he had taken Ava to Spetses—he had wanted to be with her instead of sitting at his desk.
Walking into the pool house and seeing her in a tiny bikini had blown him away. Pregnancy had turned her into a goddess and he had been transfixed by her generous curves—her breasts like ripe peaches and the lush swell of her belly where his child lay. He’d wanted to touch her and feel a connection with his baby, and when he’d felt the faint movements of a fragile new life a sense of awed wonder had brought a lump to his throat. Something utterly primal had stirred in his chest. His child. His woman. He would die to protect both of them, he acknowledged.
Had he kissed Ava to stake his claim? With savage self-derision he admitted that he’d felt a basic need to pull her down onto a lounger and possess her in the most fundamental way. Desire had drummed an insistent beat in his blood and in his loins. He had forgotten that she did not trust him—although he should not be surprised by her wariness after he had threatened to take her child, he thought grimly.
He had kissed her for the simple reason that he could not resist her, but when he’d felt her stiffen in rejection he knew he had no one to blame but himself. When he’d persuaded her—or pressurised her, his conscience pricked—to marry him, he had promised himself that he would be patient and wait for her to come to him. Instead he’d behaved like a jerk, and in truth he was shocked that she had got under his skin to the degree that she dominated his thoughts and disturbed his dreams.
It would not happen again, Giannis vowed as he climbed out of the pool. He would control his desire for Ava because too much was at stake. He had discovered that he wanted more from her than sex. He wanted everything—her soft smile and infectious laughter, her cool, incisive intelligence and her fiery passion. And he wanted his child. Even if he failed to win all that he hoped for, he would have his son.
* * *
By the middle of February a thaw had turned the winter wonderland of snow and ice to grey slush, just in time for the wedding which was to take place in the private chapel in the grounds of Milton Grange. Not that Ava cared about the weather when her marriage to Giannis would be as fake as their engagement five months earlier had been.
Since the incident by the pool they had maintained an emotional and physical distance from each other. The closest contact they’d had was when their hands had accidentally brushed as they’d passed each other on the landing, on the way to their separate bedrooms.
She was thankful that the wedding would be a small affair. It had been arranged at short notice, and both her mother and Giannis’s mother were on holiday in the warmer climes of the southern hemisphere and could not attend. Her best friend Becky was coming, and Sam had promised to be there. Ava was looking forward to seeing him—although if her brother had not been partly responsible for damaging Giannis’s boat she would not now be pregnant and about to marry a man who had become so remote that sometimes she wondered if the close bond she had felt between them on Spetses had been in her imagination.
But the problem was not only Giannis, she acknowledged. Her trust issues meant that she found it difficult to lower her guard. And now her father was once more in the forefront of her mind.
It had started with an email she’d received from an author who was writing a book about East End gangs and had discovered that Ava was Terry McKay’s daughter. The author wanted to ask her about her childhood growing up with her notorious gangster father.
She sent a message back saying that she never discussed her father. But Ava knew she could not stop the book being published. People were fascinated by crime, and even though she had changed her name to Sheridan there was always a chance that she would be revealed as Terry McKay’s daughter.
It would be unfair for Giannis to find out about her father in a newspaper article or book review, her conscience nagged. She ought to tell him the truth about her background before she married him. Especially as she had come to believe that Stefanos’s nephew had lied about Giannis having links to a criminal organisation.
But she could not forget Craig’s suggestion that her children might take after her criminal father, and she was fearful of Giannis’s reaction. Would he reject her and his son? Maybe she should just keep quiet and hope that he never discovered her real identity. Tormented by indecision, she withdrew into herself—which did not go unnoticed by Giannis.
‘You’re very pale, and you have barely spoken a word all day,’ he commented during dinner on the evening before their wedding. He frowned. ‘Do you feel unwell? The baby...’
‘I feel fine, and I’ve felt the baby kicking and I’m sure he is fine too,’ she was quick to reassure him. She knew that Giannis’s obsessive concern about her health was because he cared about his child. But how would he feel if he was to learn that his son’s genes came from a very murky pool? She pushed her food around her plate, her appetite non-existent. ‘It’s just pre-wedding nerves.’
He gave her a brooding look from across the table. ‘There is no reason for you to feel nervous. I have told you that I will not make demands on you,’ he said tersely.
If only he would! Ava wished he would whip off the tablecloth, plates and all, and make hot, urgent love to her on the polished mahogany dining table. Sex would at least be some sort of communication between them, rather than the current state of simmering tension and words unspoken.
There had been times over the past weeks when she had caught Giannis looking at her with a hungry gleam in his dark eyes that made her think he still desired her. But then she remembered how he had wrenched his mouth from hers that day by the pool, and her pride would not risk another humiliating rejection if she made the first move.
She went to bed early, giving the excuse that she was tired, and ignored his sardonic expression as he glanced at the clock which showed that it was eight o’clock. Surprisingly she fell asleep, but woke with a start from a dream where she was standing in the church with Giannis and someone in the congregation halted the wedding and denounced her as a gangster’s daughter. The look of disgust on Giannis’s face stayed in her mind after she had opened her eyes and her stomach gave a sickening lurch as she jumped out of bed and, without stopping to pull on her robe, ran down the hall to his room.
‘Ava.’ Giannis was sitting up in bed, leaning against the pillows. The black-rimmed reading glasses he wore only added to his rampant sex appeal and in the soft light from the bedside lamp his bare chest gleamed like bronze, covered with whorls of dark hairs. He dropped the documents that he had been studying onto the sheet and sat bolt upright, concern stamped on his handsome face. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I can’t marry you,’ she blurted out.
CHAPTER TEN
GIANNIS’S BREATH WHISTLED between his teeth. It was not the first time that Ava had made him feel as if he had been punched in his gut. Her accusation that he was involved in criminal activities had made him furious and her lack of faith in him had hurt more than he cared to admit. Did she still believe Petros’s lies, or was there another problem? He racked his brain for something he might have done which had caused her to want to call off the wedding.
‘I have done my best to reassure you I do not expect anything from our marriage that you are not willing to give,’ he said curtly.
The way she bit her lower lip had a predictable effect on his body and he was grateful that the sheet concealed his uncomfortably hard arousal. She looked mouth-wateringly sexy in a peach-coloured silk negligee that showed off the creamy upper slopes of her breasts—so round and firm, separated by the deep vee of her cleavage where he longed to press his face. He forced himself to concentrate when she spoke.
‘I am well aware that you find me sexually unattractive,’ she snapped, but her voice shook a little and Giannis had the crazy idea that she sounded hurt. ‘That isn’t the issue.’
‘What is the issue?’ He was too tempted to pull her down onto the bed and clear up the misunderstanding about his sexual feelings for her to give a damn about an ‘issue’. But Ava was clearly distraught and he resolved to be patient. ‘Come, glykiá mou,’ he murmured. ‘Tell me what is troubling you.’
She stopped pacing up and down the room and swung round to face him. ‘I haven’t been honest with you.’
For one heart-stopping second Giannis wondered if the child she carried was his. She had told him it was likely that she’d conceived the first time they’d had sex, but could she have already been pregnant when he’d met her? If that was so, why would she have hidden her pregnancy from him after she’d left Greece? his mind pointed out.
‘When you asked if I wanted to invite my father to the wedding, I told you that I am not in contact with him,’ Ava said in a low tone. ‘What I failed to say is that my father is serving a fifteen-year prison sentence for armed robbery.’
Giannis released his breath slowly as the tension seeped from him. He felt guilty that he had doubted her. Of course the baby was his. But it occurred to him that there would be no harm in following his lawyer’s advice and arranging for a paternity test when the baby was born.
‘Do you mean you do not want to get married without your father being present?’ It was the only reason he could think of that might explain why she was so upset.
‘I mean that I am the daughter of Terry McKay, who once had the dubious honour of being Britain’s most wanted criminal.’ She buried her face in her hands and gave a sob. ‘I’m so ashamed. My father carried out a string of jewellery raids in Hatton Garden and he was involved in drug smuggling and extortion. We—my mum, Sam and I—knew nothing about his secret life as a criminal until he was arrested and sent to prison.’
Giannis slid out from beneath the sheet and quickly donned a pair of sweatpants before he walked over to Ava and gently pulled her hands down from her face. The sight of tears on her cheeks tugged on his heart. ‘Why do you feel ashamed? You were not responsible for your father’s behaviour,’ he said softly.
‘I loved my dad and trusted him. I had no idea that he was a ruthless gangland boss.’ She gave another sob. ‘The man I thought I knew had fooled me all my life. I find it hard to trust people,’ she admitted. ‘I was desperate to prevent my brother from turning to a life of crime.’
‘I can understand why you were so anxious to save Sam from being sent to a young offenders’ institution. And why you believed Petros’s lies about me,’ Giannis said slowly. He drew Ava into his arms and his heart gave a jolt when she did not resist and sank against him while he lifted his hand and smoothed her hair back from her face. Oddly, he felt as though a weight had been lifted from him now that he knew why she had listened to Stefanos’s nephew.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said huskily. ‘I should have known that you are a million times a better man than Petros tried to convince me when he said you were involved in criminal activities.’
A better man? Giannis rested his chin on the top of her head so that he did not have to look into her eyes. What would Ava say if he told her that he had killed his father? Not deliberately—but his stupidity and arrogance when he was nineteen had led to him making a terrible mistake that he would regret for the rest of his life. His conscience insisted that he should tell her what he had done. But then she might refuse to marry him or allow him to see his child. His jaw hardened. It was a risk he was not prepared to take.
‘I was afraid to tell you about my dad because of how it might make you feel for the baby.’
Puzzled by her words, he eased away from her a fraction and stared at her unhappy face.
‘My ex-boyfriend decided not to marry me in case our children inherited a criminality gene. What if our child—?’ She broke off, choked by tears.
‘Your ex was clearly an idiot.’ Giannis drew her close once more. ‘Children learn from their environment and our son will have the security of being loved and nurtured by his parents. The things we teach him when he is a child will shape the man he’ll grow up to be.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said shakily. Giannis felt her body relax against him as he stroked his hand down the length of her silky golden hair. Hearing that her father was a criminal explained a lot of things and he admired her determination to protect her brother.
He could not pinpoint the exact moment that his desire to comfort her turned to desire of a very different kind. Perhaps she picked up the subtle signals his body sent out—the uneven rise and fall of his chest as his breathing quickened and the hard thud of his heart.
He looked into her eyes and saw her pupils dilate. She licked her tongue over her lips in an unconscious invitation and the ache in his gut became unbearable.
‘I know you want me,’ he said thickly, and watched a flush of heat spread down from her face to her throat and across her breasts. ‘Why did you reject me when we were in the pool house?’
‘It was you who rejected me. You dived into the swimming pool because you couldn’t bear to be near me.’
‘You froze when I put my hands on you, and I assumed that you did not like me touching you.’
Ava’s blush deepened. ‘I liked it too much. But I wasn’t sure if I could trust you.’ She hesitated and said huskily, ‘I’m sorry I listened to Petros.’
‘So, do you like it when I touch you here?’ Giannis murmured as he slid his hand over the swell of her stomach. He felt a fierce pride knowing that his baby was nestled inside her. He moved his hand lower and heard her give a soft gasp when he lifted up the hem of her negligee and stroked his fingers lightly over the silky panel of her panties between her legs.
‘Don’t tease me,’ she whispered. ‘My body has changed from when we first met. I don’t want pity sex.’
He made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan as he pulled off his sweatpants and pressed the hard length of his arousal against her stomach. ‘Does this feel like pity sex, glykiá mou?’
His hands shook when he tugged her nightgown over her head and cupped her bounteous breasts in his palms. ‘It’s true that your body has changed with pregnancy and you are even more beautiful. Have you any idea how gorgeous you are with your erotic curves that I want to explore with my hands and lips? Do you know how it makes me feel when I look at your body, so ripe and full with my child? I feel like I am the king of the world,’ he told her rawly. ‘And I want to make love to you more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.’
‘Then stop talking and make love to me,’ she demanded, her fierce voice making him smile before he claimed her mouth and kissed her as if the world was about to end and this was the last time he would taste her sweet lips. He was so hungry. Never in his life had he felt such an overwhelming need for a woman. Bu
t Ava was not any other woman—she was his, insisted a primal beast inside him, and the possessiveness he felt was shockingly new.
Despite their mutual impatience, Giannis was determined to take the time to savour every delicious dip and curve of Ava’s body. Her breasts, he discovered, were incredibly sensitive, so that when he stroked his hands over the creamy globes and flicked his tongue across one dusky pink nipple and then the other she gave a thin cry that evoked an answering growl deep in his throat.
He lifted her and laid her on the bed, but when she tried to pull him down on top of her he evaded her hands and moved down her body, hooking her legs over his shoulders before he lowered his mouth to her slick feminine heat.
The taste of her almost sent him over the edge, but he ruthlessly controlled his own desire and devoted himself to his self-appointed task of pleasuring her. And he was rewarded when she arched her hips and dug her fingers into his shoulders. Her honey-gold hair was spread across the pillows and Giannis had never seen a more beautiful sight than Ava’s rose-flushed face in the throes of her climax.
Only then, when she was still shuddering, did he spread her legs wide and position himself above her, entering her with exquisite care until he was buried deep within her velvet softness.
‘I won’t break,’ she whispered in his ear, as if she guessed that he was afraid to let go of his iron self-control. She moved with him, matching his rhythm as they climbed to the peak together, and when he shattered, she shattered around him. And beneath his ribs the ice surrounding Giannis’s heart cracked a little.
* * *
The following day, pale sunshine burst through the clouds and danced over the carpet of snowdrops in the churchyard when Ava posed on the chapel steps with Giannis for the wedding photographer. On her finger was the simple gold band he had put there, and next to it the pink sapphire heart ring that had been his unexpected choice when she’d been his fake fiancée, a lifetime ago, it seemed.
Wed for His Secret Heir Page 14