Claiming His Own

by Olivia Gates

  On the other end of the spectrum was Aristedes’s reaction. After systematically interrogating her and finding out that Maksim had known about Leo from the start and had still left, nothing else had made an impression on him. Not that Maksim was back, or that he was offering her and Leo full access to his assets, name and time. That year she’d struggled alone had been unforgivable in his book. And no matter what Maksim was doing to rectify his desertion now, it would never wipe the slate clean. It was only after threatening to cut him out of her and Leo’s lives that she was able to obtain a promise that Aristedes wouldn’t act on his outrage.

  “Did Maksim tell you he came to see me yesterday?”

  The deep voice roused her from her reverie with a start.

  Aristedes. He was standing right before her.

  She hadn’t even noticed he’d walked into his expansive living room, where she’d come to take a call then stolen a few moments alone before dinner got underway. She replayed what he’d said and her heart clenched with dismay.

  Maksim hadn’t told her.

  Throat suddenly parched, she could only shake her head in negation. What had Maksim done now?

  Aristedes sat down beside her. “He wanted to ‘chat’ before we met for the first time in a family setting.”

  Aristedes and Selene were hosting one of their now-frequent family dinners, and her sister-in-law had insisted Cali invite Maksim. Cali had at first turned down the invitation. It was one thing for them to see him in passing with her. But to have a whole evening to investigate him up close?

  When Selene wouldn’t take no for an answer, Cali had been forced to tell her that Maksim would eventually exit her and Leo’s life, and she preferred that he didn’t become even more involved in it, making that departure even more difficult and unpleasant. Selene had only argued that if Cali indeed wanted Maksim’s withdrawal, what better way to help her achieve that goal than by exposing him to her meddling Greek family? One evening of them encroaching on him would be the best way to convince him to make a hasty exit.

  Just because she’d known Selene would persist until she got her way, Cali had grudgingly accepted. Not that she had any hope whatsoever that Selene’s scenario would come to pass. From the evidence of the past ten weeks, she was convinced Maksim would endure mad dogs shredding him apart to be with her and Leo. What was some obnoxious intrusion compared to that?

  Maybe she should sic Aristedes on him after all.

  Though she doubted even the retribution of her almighty Greek brother would do the trick. Not only was Maksim powerful enough to weather any damage Aristedes might inflict on him, she had a feeling he’d relish submitting to his vengeance. He’d probably consider it a tribute to her and to Leo, a penance for the time he hadn’t been there for them.

  “Aren’t you going to ask what he said?”

  She glowered at Aristedes. “I’m sure you’ll inflict the details on me. Or else you wouldn’t be sitting here beside me. You do nothing arbitrarily.”

  “My opinion of you is confirmed with each passing day.” Though his tone was light, there was a world of emotion in his steel-hued eyes. Fury at the man they were discussing, protectiveness of her, amusement at her glibness and shrewdness as he scanned her soul for the truth he knew she was hiding. “You remain the most open-faced, inscrutable entity I’ve ever known. When you want to hide something, there’s just no guessing it. I’ve known you had a secret for over two years, but even when I investigated, I came up empty-handed. How you hid something the size of Maksim, I’ll never know.”

  “You investigated me?”

  At her incredulous indignation, his nod was wry and unrepentant. “You think I’d leave my kid sister guarding a secret that implacably without worrying?”

  “You mean without interfering.” She scowled at him. “So what were your theories? That I was involved in some criminal activity or a victim to some terrible addiction?”

  “Would that have been far from the truth? Weren’t you involved with a dangerous scoundrel and, from the uncharacteristic behavior and length of your involvement, seriously addicted to him?”

  Aristedes was one astute and blunt pain in the ass.

  But she couldn’t let one thing pass. “Maksim was never a dangerous scoundrel. As for my so-called uncharacteristic behavior with him, just ask any woman and she’d tell you that not being involved with him when I had the chance would have been incomprehensible, not the other way around.”

  Aristedes pursed his lips, clearly not relishing hearing her extol Maksim’s attractions to women, starting with her.

  “However irresistible you thought he was at the time, Maksim Volkov is certainly the last man I would have hoped you’d get involved with. He’s not happily-ever-after material.”

  She snorted. “Isn’t it fortunate then that I’m not, either?”

  “And you still had a child with him.”

  “Something that I certainly didn’t plan, and never considered pretext for a happy ending.”

  He lifted one formidable black brow. “So how do you define your situation right now? Where do you see this going?”

  “Does it have to go anywhere? I would have expected you of all people to have the broadmindedness not to squeeze everything into the frame of reference of social mores. People can share a child without anything more between them.”

  “But that’s not what Maksim thinks. Or wants.”

  God, what had Maksim told him?

  Suddenly, it hit her. Aristedes, that gargantuan rat, was herding her with his elusive comments and taunts to goad her into asking what Maksim had said to him.

  She skewered him with a glare that said she was onto him.

  His storm-colored eyes sparked with that ruthless humor of someone who knew he always got his way.

  “So...does your man like seafood?”

  She blinked at the abrupt change in subject, at his calling Maksim “her man.”

  Then she slapped him on his heavily muscled arm. “I’m starting to think I liked you better when you were a humorless iceberg. Even when you developed a sense of humor, you wield it as a weapon.”

  “You mean he doesn’t like seafood?”

  The blatant mock-innocent pout earned him another whack.

  He huffed a chuckle. “Just this time, I’ll take pity on you, because I’m big that way...” She raised her hand threateningly, and he backed away, hands raised in mock defense. “...and because your deceptively delicate hand has the sting of a jellyfish.” Her heart quivered as he paused. Then he exhaled dramatically. “Nothing. He told me a big, fat load of nada. You coached him well.”

  Her heartbeats frittered with the deflation of tension, with lingering uncertainty. Aristedes could be pulling her leg to make her spill info. She wouldn’t put anything past him in his quest to get to the bottom of her situation with Maksim.

  “He came offering his own version of what you told us,” he added. “Nothing more. He said he wouldn’t make any excuses for leaving, that if I saw fit to punish him for it, he would ‘submit’—his words—to any measures I exacted.” He smiled sardonically, looking as if he relished the thought of taking Maksim up on his offer of a good, old-fashioned duel. “Then he went into great detail about how committed he was to Leo, and that if you agreed, he wanted to give him his name—but even if you didn’t, the two of you have every right to all his assets, in life and death.”

  Her heart felt it had squeezed to the size of crumpled-up wrapper. “That’s plenty more than what I told you.”

  Aristedes shrugged, looking annoyed, evidently disagreeing. “He didn’t give me one drop of info on what happened between you in the past, no comment on what’s going on in the present and zero projections for the future.”

  “What do you find so hard to line up in your head in an acceptable row? We had a...liaison, it re
sulted in a pregnancy then it ended. Now he’s back because he wants to own up to his responsibilities toward his child, and he wants to be on good terms with the mother of his son.”

  Aristedes twisted his lips, his eyes wry. “He wants to be on the most intimate of terms with said mother. And don’t even bother denying that. I’m a man who knows all the symptoms of wanting a woman so much it’s a constant physical ache. I see my symptoms in him.” He exhaled his displeasure with her. “Alas, I’m not as good a reader of women, and of you, I’m hopeless. That said, I still feel your answering attraction. So what’s the problem? Is it your anti-marriage-or-long-term-commitment philosophy?”

  She wanted to grab and kiss him for that way out. “Yes.”

  “Liar.”

  At his ready rebuttal, she shrugged. “You can think whatever you like, Aristedes. Bottom line is, I’m an adult, contrary to your inability to see me as one, and the way things stand between me and Maksim right now is the way I want them to be. When it’s over...”

  “Is this why you’re so averse to letting him close?” he pounced, eyes crackling with danger. “You think he’ll walk out on you again? Like our father? If he does that, I promise you, I’ll skin him alive.”

  “Why, thanks for the lovely mental image, Aristedes. But no thanks. If he walks away, it’s his right. Those were the terms of our liaison from the start. And then if he decides it’s better for him not to be around us anymore, it certainly would be better for us not to have him around. So...give it a rest, will you? Let me conduct my life the way I see fit, and don’t make me sorry I invited him here, or that I told you he’s Leo’s father in the first place.”

  “You didn’t tell me. One glimpse of him all over you, with Leo all over him—his spitting image—outed you. It would have taken an imbecile not to put two and two together.”

  “You’ll be one if you interfere, as I’ll brain you.”

  “Any new reason you’re threatening my husband with lobotomy?” Selene chuckled, striding toward them. “Just asking, since I happen to be very fond of his brain just the way it is.”

  Suddenly, terrible images cascaded in her mind’s eye. Of Maksim, with his head cut open, surgeons exposing his brain...

  “So what did he do now?”

  Cali blinked as the overwhelming whoosh receded enough to let her hear the last snippet of Selene’s question.

  Exhaling her agitation, she grabbed the other woman’s hand. “Your husband’s doing the same thing you’re doing. You both want to observe me and Maksim together—to judge the extent of our relationship and to try to influence its direction. And both of you will stop it right here, or I’ll take Leo and leave and you can examine and probe Maksim on his own all you like. Then you won’t see me again until you promise to behave.”

  Selene’s other hand covered hers soothingly. “Hey, relax. We won’t do a thing.”

  Selene turned gently warning eyes to Aristedes, asking his corroboration. As always, he immediately relented, this vast...adoration setting his steely gaze on tender fire. It was amazing to see this unstoppable force submitting, out of absolute love and trust, to his beloved’s lead like this.

  Maksim had been giving her the same reverent treatment.

  And here he was now, entering the huge room, flooding it with his indomitable vibe and setting her perpetually racing heartbeat hammering. To compound his impact, he wasn’t only laughing with his companions—her closest family and friends—he was holding Leo to his side, as if he was enfolding the heart that existed outside his body.

  Seeing them together was, as always, the most exquisite form of torture.

  Though Leo was his miniature replica, on closer inspection, she was in there, too. Maksim had pondered just yesterday that Leo made them look like each other. Her first reaction had been that this was preposterous, as they were as physically different as could be, but after catching a glimpse of all of them in a shop window, she’d had to admit he was right. Leo was the personification of everything they both were, as if the fates had mixed them up into a whole new being made of both. He did somehow make them look alike.

  Maksim was preceded by his now-biggest fan, Leo’s nanny. In the past ten weeks, Rosa had come to believe, right along with Leo, that the sun rose and set with Maksim and at his command.

  When Cali had whimsically commented that Rosa had been struck by an acute case of hero worship, she’d looked at her disbelievingly and only said, “And you wonder why?”

  Cali watched Maksim murmuring earnestly to Leo, as if agreeing on something confidential. She knew he was convincing their son to let Rosa take him, as he had something to do where no babies were allowed, then he’d be right back with him.

  She didn’t know who was more reluctant to leave the other: Leo, as he rubbed his eyes and grudgingly went into Rosa’s arms, lips drooping petulantly, or Maksim, who looked as if he was relinquishing his heart to her. Rosa swept Leo away as all the nannies were taking the kids to Alex and Sofia’s domain while the adult guests converged in the dining room.

  Maksim turned and snared her in his focus across the distance. It was a good thing she was still sitting or his devouring smile would have knocked her down.

  He prowled toward her like the magnificent golden-eyed wolf that he was, coming to escort her to dinner. She gave him a cold, clammy hand and rose shakily to her legs. He was glowing...for lack of another more accurate description. With vitality and virility.

  In the past ten weeks he’d bounced back from his wraithlike state by the day, as if being with her and Leo had reignited his will to live, as if it infused him with limitless energy and was a direct line to a bottomless source of joie de vivre. He’d transformed back under her aching eyes to a state that even surpassed his previous beauty and vigor.

  As he pulled the chair back for her at the table, she could feel the combined scrutiny of everyone present on her, almost forcing her down under its weight.

  As soon as they all settled into their respective seats, Selene beckoned to the caterer to start serving dinner. There was absolute silence as the first course was served, everyone’s eyes busy studying both Cali and Maksim. Cali pretended to stir the creamy seafood soup, while acutely aware of Maksim as he sat beside her, taking everyone’s examination in total serenity.

  Praying that they’d all start eating or talking—or doing anything other than counting her and Maksim’s breaths—she heaved a sigh of relief when Melina, sister number one, her second-oldest sibling after Aristedes, finally broke the silence.

  “So Maksim...” Melina was looking at him in awe and perplexity, no doubt wondering how her little sister had such a man in her life at all, let alone have him willing to jump through hoops for her and his son. “You’re a steel magnate.”

  Maksim put down his spoon respectfully, inclined his head at Melina. “I work in steel, yes.”

  “How’s that for understatement?” That was Melina’s husband, Christos. He was...crass, mostly with Melina, and that was what Cali called him, instead of Chris. “Volkov Iron and Steel Industries is among the world’s top-five steel producers and is the leader in the Russian steel sector.”

  Maksim turned tranquil eyes to Christos. “Your information is up to date.”

  Christos looked very pleased with himself at Maksim’s approval. “Yeah, I’ve been reading up on you. I’m very impressed with the dynamic growth you’ve achieved through the past decade that stemmed from continuing modernization of your production assets and adoption of state-of-the-art technology, not to mention integration into the global economy. And with the economic and marketplace difficulties in Russia, that’s even more remarkable.”

  “And that means you’re a multimillionaire, right?” That was Phaidra, sister number two.

  Christos snorted. “Multibillionaire, Phai, like our Aristedes here. Maybe even a bigger one, too.”

/>   “You mean you don’t know our exact net worth already, Christos, to decide who’s...bigger?” Aristedes mocked.

  Christos grinned at him, clearly still flabbergasted that he was in the presence of such men as his brother-in-law, and now his sister-in-law’s “man,” as Aristedes had called Maksim. “It’s hard to tell when you two megatycoons keep exchanging your places on the list.”

  “But we’re talking an obscene amount of money in either of your cases.” That was Thea, sister number three, the youngest of her older sisters. “But all talk of mind-boggling wealth aside, are you going to give Leo your name?”

  And Cali found her voice at last. “Oh, shut up, all of you. Can’t you control your meddling Greek genes and try to keep your noses out of other people’s business, at least to their faces?”

  “You mean it’s okay if we gossip about you behind your backs?” Thea grinned at her.

  Cali rolled her eyes. “As long as I don’t hear about it, knock yourselves out.”

  “If only you gave us straight answers,” Phaidra said, “we wouldn’t have to resort to any of this.”

  Melina nodded. “Yeah, do yourselves a favor and just surrender the info we want and you can go in peace.”

  Cali let her spoon clang into her bowl. “Okay, enough. I didn’t invite Maksim here so you can dissect him and...”

  “I don’t mind.”

  His calm assertion aborted her tirade and had her mouth dropping open as she turned to him.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered. “Don’t encourage them or they’ll have you for dinner instead.”

  “It’s all right, Cali. Let them satisfy their...appetite. I’m used to this. Russian people aren’t any less outspoken or passionate in their curiosity to find out the minute details of everyone around them, whether relatives or strangers. I feel quite at home.”

  “You mean they’re as meddlesome and obnoxious? God, what kind of genes have we passed down to Leo?”