Wed for His Secret Heir

by Chantelle Shaw

  ‘You’re leaving? Am I not important enough for you to want to stay and discuss a major issue with our relationship? Clearly I’m not,’ she said dully when he picked up his briefcase and strode across the hall.

  He paused in the doorway and turned to look at her. ‘I realise that we need to talk, and we will as soon as I have dealt with a...problem at the office.’ His voice sounded oddly strained. ‘To tell you the truth I had forgotten about the paternity test. And it could not have been carried out without your consent.’

  ‘The truth is that you don’t care about me and I was stupid to hope that you would ever fall in love with me, as I...’ She broke off and stared at his granite-hard features.

  ‘As you...what?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said wearily. ‘You’re in too much of a hurry to talk to me, remember?’

  Giannis looked as though he was about to speak, but he shook his head. ‘Something arrived for you while you were out. Look in the bedroom,’ he told her before he walked out of the villa.

  A few minutes later, Ava heard the helicopter take off while she was climbing the stairs up to the second floor. She pushed open the door of the master bedroom and stopped dead, the tears that she had held back until then filling her eyes. On her dressing table was the biggest bouquet of red roses she had ever seen. At least three dozen perfect scarlet blooms arranged in a crystal vase and exuding a heavenly fragrance that filled the room. Propped up against the vase was a card and she recognised Giannis’s bold handwriting.

  For my beautiful wife. You are everything I could ever want or hope for. Giannis

  There was no mention of love, but surely the roses were a statement that he felt something for her? Ava’s fingers trembled as she touched the velvety rose petals. She sank down onto the edge of the bed and gave a shaky sigh. If the roses had been delivered before she had gone to her antenatal appointment and discovered that Giannis had asked for a paternity test on their baby she would have taken his romantic gesture as a sign that he loved her and she would have told him how she felt about him.

  Now that she had calmed down, she could understand why he had requested the test. They had been strangers when they had slept together for the first time. Not only had she believed Stefanos’s nephew’s lies about Giannis, but she had kept it secret that her father was a criminal. They had both hidden things from each other, but if their marriage was going to work—and the roses were an indication that Giannis wanted her to be his wife—then they must be honest about their feelings.

  He had promised that they would talk when he returned home. But the prospect of waiting for him at the villa did not appeal to Ava, and she picked up the phone and asked Thomas to take her to Athens on the speedboat that Giannis kept moored at Villa Delphine’s private jetty.

  By the time she reached TGE’s offices in the city it was lunchtime and most of the staff were away from their desks. Giannis’s PA, Sofia, greeted Ava with a smile. ‘He’s still in a meeting. I’m just off to lunch but I’ll let him know that you are here.’

  ‘No, don’t disturb him,’ Ava said quickly. ‘I’ll wait until he has finished.’ It would give her a chance to prepare what she wanted to say to him. How hard could it be to say the three little words I love you?

  But as the minutes ticked by while she waited in his secretary’s office, she felt increasingly nervous. Maybe he had given her the red roses simply because he knew that she liked flowers, and wishful thinking had made her read more into his gift?

  From inside Giannis’s office, Ava could hear voices. She stiffened when one voice suddenly became louder and distinctly aggressive. ‘I’m warning you, Gekas. Give me one million pounds or I’ll go public with the story that you spent a year in prison for killing your father when you were drunk. I can’t imagine that TGE’s shareholders will be so keen to support Greece’s golden boy when they hear that you are an ex-convict,’ the voice sneered.

  * * *

  ‘And I’m warning you that I will not tolerate your blackmail attempt,’ Giannis snarled. His eyes narrowed on the lowlife journalist who had called him that morning and demanded to see him. Demetrios Kofidis was the reason he’d had to leave Ava and come to Athens, and he was impatient to deal with the scumbag so that he could hurry back to Spetses and reassure his wife that he trusted her implicitly.

  He cursed himself for ever thinking of having a paternity test when he knew in his heart that the baby was his. It was a pity he had not listened to his heart, he thought grimly. He could only hope that he hadn’t left it too late to tell Ava in words what he had tried to say with the roses.

  ‘You paid me to keep quiet about your past five years ago,’ the journalist said. ‘Pay up again, Gekas, or I’ll sell the story to every tabloid in Europe and beyond.’

  Giannis pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘You think you’re clever, Kofidis, but I recorded our conversation and before you arrived I alerted the police about you. If you publish anything about me you will be arrested for attempted blackmail quicker than you can blink. Now get out of my sight.’

  He kept his gaze fixed on the journalist when he heard the faint click of the office door opening. ‘I told you that I don’t want to be disturbed, Sofia.’

  ‘Giannis.’ Ava’s voice was a whisper, but it sliced through Giannis’s heart like a knife as he jerked his eyes across the room and saw her standing in the doorway. One hand rested protectively on the burgeoning swell of her stomach. Her honey-blonde hair was loose, tumbling around her shoulders, and she was so beautiful that his breath became trapped in his throat.

  ‘What are you doing here, glykiá mou?’ he began, trying to sound normal, trying to hide the fear that churned in his gut as he wondered how much she had heard of his conversation with the journalist. ‘Sweetheart...’

  ‘You went to prison, and you didn’t tell me.’

  ‘I can explain. It was an accident... I drove my father home from a restaurant and...’

  ‘You didn’t tell me,’ she repeated slowly. ‘I thought there were no more secrets between us, but all this time you held something back from me—because you don’t trust me.’

  ‘I do trust you.’ Giannis crashed his hip bone against the corner of the desk in his hurry to reach Ava, but as he strode across the room she stepped back into the outer office.

  ‘There have been too many secrets and lies between us—and that is the biggest lie of all,’ she choked, before she spun round and ran over to the door.

  ‘Ava, wait.’ Giannis cursed as he followed her into the lobby. His offices were on the ground floor and the lobby was bustling with staff returning from their lunch break. He apologised when he knocked into someone. Ahead of him Ava had reached the front entrance. The glass doors slid open and she walked out. Moments later he followed her outside.

  ‘Ava.’

  She was hurrying down the flight of concrete steps in front of the building and glanced over her shoulder at him. In that instant she stumbled, and Giannis watched in horror as she lost her footing and fell down the remaining steps. It seemed to happen in slow motion and, just as when he had taken a bend in the road too fast sixteen years earlier, he felt shock, disbelief and a sense of terror that made him gag.

  He was still at the top of the steps and there was nothing he could do to save Ava. She gave a startled cry and landed on the pavement with a sickening thud. And then she was silent. Motionless.

  Giannis heard a rushing noise in his ears and a voice shouting, ‘No! No!’ Much later he realised that it had been his voice shouting, pleading. No! He couldn’t lose Ava and his baby.

  He raced down the steps and dropped onto his knees beside her, carefully rolling her onto her back. Her eyes were closed and her face was deathly pale. A purple bruise was already darkening on her brow.

  ‘Ava mou, wake up.’ He felt for her pulse and detected a faint beat. Glancing up, he saw a crowd of people had g
athered. ‘Call an ambulance,’ he shouted. ‘Quickly.’

  Someone must have already done so, and he heard the wail of a siren. But Ava did not open her eyes, and when Giannis looked down her body he saw blood seeping through her dress.

  His heart stopped. Theos, if she lost the baby she would never forgive him and he would never forgive himself. If he lost both of them... A constriction in his throat prevented him from swallowing. He brushed his hand over his wet eyes. He could not contemplate his life without Ava. It would be a joyless, pointless existence, and nothing more than he deserved, he thought bleakly.

  From then on everything became a blur when the ambulance arrived and the paramedics took charge and carefully lifted Ava onto a stretcher. As the ambulance raced to the hospital her eyelids fluttered on her cheeks, but she slipped in and out of consciousness and her dress was soaked with blood.

  ‘My wife will be all right, won’t she?’ Giannis asked hoarsely.

  ‘We will soon be at the hospital,’ the paramedic replied evasively. ‘The doctors will do everything they can to save her life and the child’s.’

  The last time Giannis had cried had been at his father’s funeral, but his throat burned and his eyes ached with tears as he lifted Ava’s cold, limp hand to his lips. ‘Don’t leave me, agápi mou,’ he begged. ‘I should have told you about my father, and I wish I had told you that I love you, my angel. I’m sorry that I didn’t, and I promise I will tell you how much you mean to me every day for the rest of our lives, if only you will stay with me.’

  He thought he might have imagined that he felt her fingers move in his hand. And he needed every ounce of hope when they arrived at the hospital and Ava was rushed into Theatre. ‘A condition called placental abruption occurred as a result of your wife’s fall,’ the doctor explained to Giannis. ‘It means that the placenta has become detached from the wall of the uterus and she has lost a lot of blood. The baby must be delivered as soon as possible to save the lives of both the child and the mother.’

  For the second time in his life he had maybe left it too late to say what was in his heart, Giannis thought when a nurse showed him into a waiting room. Pain ripped through him as he remembered how he had stood at his father’s graveside and wished he had told his patera how much he loved and respected him, and how one day he hoped to be as good a father to his own child.

  Now his baby’s and Ava’s lives were in the balance. They were both so precious to him but he was unable to help them. All he could do was pace up and down the waiting room and pray.

  * * *

  Ava opened her eyes, and for the first time in three days her head did not feel as if a pneumatic drill was driving into her skull. In fact the concussion she’d suffered after falling down the steps had been unimportant compared to nearly losing her baby. Of course she had no memory of the emergency Caesarean section she’d undergone or, sadly, of the moment her son had been born.

  When she’d come round from the anaesthetic Giannis had told her that, despite the baby’s abrupt entry into the world six weeks early, he weighed a healthy five pounds. They had settled on the name Andreas during her pregnancy and, although she had still felt woozy when she had been taken in a wheelchair to the special care baby unit, she had been able to hold her tiny dark haired son in her arms and she’d wept tears of joy and relief that he was safe and well.

  Now, seventy-two hours after the shocking events that had preceded the baby’s early arrival, she looked across the room and her heart skipped a beat when she saw Giannis sitting in a chair, cradling Andreas against his shoulder. The tender look on his face as he held the baby was something Ava would never forget, and the unguarded expression in Giannis’s eyes as he looked over at her filled her with hope and longing.

  ‘You’re still here,’ she murmured. ‘I thought you might go back to the apartment for a few hours. The nurses will look after Andreas in the nursery now that he has been moved from the special care ward.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere until the two of you are ready to be discharged from hospital.’ His gentle smile stole Ava’s breath. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Much better.’ She’d had a blood transfusion, stitches and she was pumped full of drugs to fight infection and relieve pain, but her son was worth everything she’d been through. She sat up carefully and held out her arms to take the baby. ‘He’s so perfect,’ she said softly. Her heart ached with love as she studied Andreas’s silky-soft black hair and his eyes that were as dark as his daddy’s eyes.

  ‘He is a miracle. You both are.’ Giannis’s voice thickened. ‘Theos, when I saw you fall down those steps and I feared I had lost both of you...’ His jaw clenched. ‘I didn’t know what I would do without you,’ he said rawly.

  It was the first time that either of them had mentioned what had happened, and the deep grooves on either side of Giannis’s mouth were an indication of what he must have felt, believing he might lose the baby he had been so desperate for. Ava handed Andreas to him. ‘He’s fallen asleep. Will you put him in the crib?’

  She rested her head against the pillows and thought how gorgeous Giannis looked in faded jeans and a casual cream cotton shirt. She was glad that a nurse had helped her into the shower earlier and she had managed to wash her hair.

  He came back and sat down on the chair next to her bed. Suddenly she felt stupidly shy and afraid, and a whole host of other emotions that made her pleat the sheet between her fingers rather than meet his gaze. ‘What happened to your father?’ she asked in a low tone.

  Giannis exhaled slowly. ‘I was nineteen and had just set up TGE with my father. We’d gone to a restaurant for dinner and during the meal I drank a glass of wine. I certainly did not feel drunk, but even a small amount of alcohol can impair your judgement. Driving home, I took a steep bend in the road too fast and the car overturned. I escaped with a few cuts and bruises, but my father sustained serious injuries.’

  His eyes darkened with pain. ‘I held him in my arms while we waited for the ambulance, and he made it to the hospital but died soon afterwards. I have never touched alcohol since that night, even though I’ve often wished that I could numb my grief and guilt.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Ava could not disguise her hurt. ‘It wasn’t overhearing what you had done that upset me, but realising that you had kept such a huge secret from me. I trusted you when I told you about my father being a criminal, but you only ever shut me out, Giannis.’

  ‘I was afraid to admit what I had done,’ he said heavily. ‘A few years ago I fell in love.’

  Jealousy stabbed Ava through her heart. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Caroline fell pregnant. Her father was an American senator who was campaigning in the Presidential elections, and when I admitted that I had served a prison sentence Caroline refused to marry me because—in her words—having an ex-convict as a son-in-law might have damaged her father’s political ambitions. She told me she had suffered a miscarriage, but I’m fairly certain that she chose not to go ahead with the pregnancy. I overheard her on the phone telling a friend that she had dealt with the pregnancy problem,’ he answered Ava’s unspoken question.

  ‘So when you found out that I had conceived your baby, you were worried that I might do the same as your ex-girlfriend?’

  He grimaced. ‘I was determined to have my child, and I treated you unforgivably when I forced you to marry me.’

  She stared at his handsome face and her heart turned over when she saw that his eyelashes were wet. This was a different Giannis—a broken Giannis, she thought painfully. His vulnerability hurt her more than anything else. ‘You didn’t force me,’ she said huskily. ‘I chose to marry you, knowing that you had asked me to be your wife because you wanted your son.’

  ‘No, Ava mou. That was not the reason I proposed marriage.’

  She dared not believe the expression in his eyes, the softening of his hard features as he sta
red at her intently. ‘I need to tell you something,’ she said shakily. ‘I heard the things you said in the ambulance. At least, I think I heard you, but maybe I dreamed it...’ She broke off and bit her lip, aware of her heart thudding in her chest. ‘Why did you ask me to marry you?’

  ‘I love you.’

  The three little words hovered in the air, but were they a tantalising dream? Ava wondered. Did she have the courage to give her absolute trust to Giannis?

  ‘Don’t!’ Her voice shook and tears trembled on her eyelashes. ‘Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.’

  ‘But I do mean it, agápi mou,’ he said gently. ‘I love you with all my heart and soul.’ Suddenly his restraint left him and he leapt to his feet, sending his chair clattering onto the floor. He sat on the edge of the bed and captured her hands in his.

  ‘I adore you, Ava. I never knew I could feel like this, to love so utterly and completely that I cannot contemplate my life without you.’ He stroked her hair back from her face with a trembling hand. ‘When you left Athens I couldn’t understand why I was so miserable until my head accepted what my heart had been telling me. I missed you, and I decided to ask you if we could start again. But then I read the Christmas card from your brother and discovered you were pregnant with my child.’

  ‘And you were angry,’ Ava said quietly.

  ‘I was scared. I don’t deserve you or our son.’ He swallowed convulsively. ‘I destroyed my family with my reckless behaviour, and I’m terrified that I might somehow hurt you and Andreas. Theos...’ His face twisted in pain. ‘It is my fault that you fell down those damned steps and you and the baby could have died. I should have been honest with you about what happened to my father. And of course I don’t want a paternity test. I know Andreas is mine. But I’ve made so many mistakes and I have to let you and my son go. If you want to take Andreas to live in England I won’t stop you. All I ask is that you allow me to be part of his life.’