by Julia James
Chapter Six
As Nicky's plaintive cry came again, Alanna galvanized into action. She hurried from the room, intent only on reaching Nicky. Her yelling must have woken him. Panic started to engulf her. She had to get Leon out of the flat. Had to get rid of him totally. She'd been an idiot to throw that letter at him from the hospital thanking her for so magnificent a donation — but something had snapped inside her as he'd rained down such vile insults on her head. But Nicky calling out was an even worse disaster.
Nicky was sitting up in bed, half distressed at being woken, still half sleepy. She sat down on the bed and cuddled him up to her, sheltering him from view.
"It's all right, darling, just lie down and go to sleep again. It was just something noisy on the telly, that's all."
But Nicky was craning his neck to try to stare over her shoulder.
She heard something in Greek behind her and froze. Then heavy tread across the shabby carpet.
"You have a child?"
She didn't let go of Nicky and kept her back to Leon.
"Yes." Her teeth were gritted, stomach hollowing with fear. "I met…someone else. My — my son is three. Just turned three."
Her voice was strained. Would Leon believe her?
Nicky was squirming in her arms, defying her attempt to lay him back down again.
"Who's that man?" he demanded.
"Just someone visiting Mummy. Lie down, poppet." Desperately she urged him back down on the pillow, but he struggled upright.
"I'm not a poppet," he said distinctly, "I'm Nicky. And I'm not three, Mummy. I'm four!"
There was a rasp, a sharp intake of breath behind her, and then the room flooded with light. She blinked, blinded by the brightness. Footsteps, rapid, urgent, a hand on her shoulder, pulling her away from her son so that his face was visible.
His face — with his dark, Andreakos eyes, his black hair, his Mediterranean skin tone. Only the shape of his face was hers.
"Thee mou —"
Leon's voice shook. His brother's eyes looked up at him out of his nephew's face.
* * *
Alanna stirred the coffee in her mug round and round with the teaspoon. She wanted to drink it, was desperate for the caffeine — desperate for anything that might act upon her savaged nerves — but it was too hot. On the far side of the kitchen table, palms square on the surface, leaning menacingly toward her, Leon loomed like an unholy presence.
Alanna hunched into her chair.
"Give me one good reason why you hid him! One!"
His voice cut at her, and the teaspoon jerked in her grip.
One good reason? She could give him a dozen!
"I'd have thought it was obvious," she said tightly. She lifted her eyes, like dead weights, to Leon's.
He was glaring down at her. There was anger in his face — but more, much more. She could not tell what it was. She had never seen such emotions in him before. She was used to only three emotions: amusement, enjoying her naïveté as he had at the beginning of their relationship when she'd been so impressed by him and the world he lived in; alternating with desire, when his eyes had taken on an expression she learned to know well, sending tremors through her, liquefying her.
And then, at the end, anger. Nothing but anger.
Anger that had slain her.
It was slaying her again…but this time she had an answer. The only one she could give.
"Do you think," she said leadenly, "that it would have been good news? Knowing that I left Greece pregnant? Do you?"
Something flashed in his eyes. Then it was gone.
"It would have been consolation to my parents —"
She gave a harsh, ugly laugh.
"Fine consolation! With me as their grandson's mother?"
"They'll accept you. For their grandson's sake."
Her mouth fell open as the import of what he had just said hit her.
"What do you mean — they will accept me?"
His lips pressed together.
"We shall be flying to Greece without delay."
Alanna stared.
"Are you mad?" Her voice was hollow.
"Are you mad," he echoed harshly, "to imagine I will leave my nephew here, to be raised in this dump?"
"There's nothing wrong with this flat! It's clean and in a quiet part of town! It's all I could afford once I'd —"
Her voice broke off.
Another emotion worked in Leon's face. He stood up.
"Why did you do it, Alanna?" There was something strange about his voice.
She shut her eyes, then opened them again. She looked at Leon but did not see him. Saw only the tormented face of his brother — her husband. Who had married her to save her — and himself.
And doomed them both.
"How could I keep it?" she answered brokenly, staring down into her coffee, unable to keep looking at Leon.
A sound like a rasp came from his throat.
"How? Very easily I imagine! It's what you married him for — his money!"
Her fingers tightened on the teaspoon. She lifted her head.
"For financial security — and I kept enough to ensure that!"
His mouth tightened, and he glanced involuntarily around the little kitchen at the old fashioned appliances, which she was not able to afford to replace, and the worn vinyl flooring.
She met his eyes. "I'd been poor before, Leon," she said quietly. "It wasn't so hard to go back to being poor. And Nicky is having a good childhood — I don't have to work; I can be with him all the time. This is a decent suburb; he's having a normal life. I know it's not normal by your standards, but for most of the population this is perfectly adequate. When he goes to school I'll start working, and that will bring in more money as Nicky grows older."
"And when he asks for his father?"
The question was harsh — her answer strained.
"Many children now have no fathers. There's no stigma."
His brows drew together. He looked formidable suddenly, and she felt a tremor go through her.
"Stigma? Why should there be a stigma in being the son of my brother — and his wife?"
Her fingers clenched. "I — I meant…" Her voice trailed off.
Leon's eyes rested on her like weights.
"The point is irrelevant. All that is relevant is that the child needs a father — and he will have one."
Her gaze stretched, uncomprehendingly.
"He will have me," said Leon. "As his stepfather I will adopt him, and he will grow up as my son. And you —" a sardonic note entered his voice "— you will attain the very goal you once longed for. You will be my wife after all!"
As he spoke, every last shred of color drained from her face.
The dream she had once had so long ago had just turned into a nightmare.
Chapter Seven
"You don't mean that — you can't." Alanna's voice was faint.
Shock was starting to take over — shock upon shock. She couldn't cope, not with what had happened in the space of less than an hour….
An hour ago her life had been normal. Now Leon Andreakos had stormed back into her life, demanding her body. And her child. She had given him the former…but could she do the latter?
Leon rested dark, implacable eyes on her as she sat at the kitchen table, her coffee cooling in front of her.
"But I do. I will raise my brother's son as my own." His expression changed. "Why this show of reluctance? I am granting you what you dreamed of — I’m making you my wife."
"That dream ended a long time ago when I realized what a fool I'd been."
His mouth tightened. "A fool to think you could trap me into marriage. So that you could spend even more of my money." His hand slashed through the air. "But enough! As my wife, as my nephew's mother, you will be treated accordingly. And at least —" his eyes filled with an expression she knew well, one that made the breath catch in her throat, her limbs quicken "— I know that in bed we shall be as good as we always were…."
She got to her feet, sharply pushing her chair back.
"No, I'm not marrying you. Never!"
He leaned back in his chair — he seemed unconcerned.
"Then you will face a custody battle that will make you wish you had never been born."
She swayed.
"No court will take him from his mother!" Her voice came out high pitched with fear.
His face hardened. "Do you think your past makes for edifying reading? You were my pampered mistress for six months! You lapped up everything I gave you — greedy for more. You were prepared to conceive a child purely to force me to marry you. And when I called your bluff, you eloped with my twenty-two-year-old brother to try the same trick on him. You knew full well he'd already had years of psychiatric treatment, but all you cared about was persuading him to marry you and get you pregnant. And within a month — a month — of marrying him he found you with another man! A man so depraved he drew a knife on Nikos and used it."
"He died, too," she whispered, her voice a thread. "They died together, falling down the stairs as they struggled…."
Sickness was washing over her, wave after wave, as the nightmare vision returned and she witnessed again in her head that hideous, terrifying struggle at the top of the long flight of stone stairs in Nikos's house in Athens. Heard her voice, screaming, screaming…
"I should never have married him…." Guilt crushed her. "That's why I gave his money away…. Nikos died because of me. I had no right to his money."
She turned away.
Hands came over her shoulders, heavy, yet not hard.
"Did bearing his child make you realize what you had done? Did it finally put some shred of morality into you? Some fragment of remorse?"
There was that same strange note in Leon's voice as when she had shown him the letter from the children's hospital.
He turned her around, lifting her chin to look at him. His face was somber.
"You cannot deprive Nikos's son of his birthright because of your guilt. He has a right to the life he would have had, had Nikos lived. And Nicky — Nicky has a right to a father, Alanna. I will be a father to him. Your guilt has made you run, hide. But it has to stop now. You must see that."
His words had drained the color from her face, the breath from her body. His dark eyed bored into hers as if he would see into the heart of her.
She felt immobile, as if too much had happened too soon. Too many emotions, too much feeling — emotions that Leon couldn't, mustn't discover — draining from her all present capacity for feeling more right now.
He spoke, measuring each word.
"I do not offer you forgiveness; I cannot be that generous, but you should know that I understand why you sought sex with another man."
She stilled, tensing all through her body.
"You do?" She dared not ask, but breathed the question at him.
He nodded. The self-mocking look was back in his eye, as if he almost hated himself.
"I taught you passion in my arms — you did not find it in my brother's. He was, I know…inept…with women. After what we shared you would not have found him…satisfying."
A shadow passed in her eye, and she looked away.
"Do you deny it?" he demanded. He turned her face back toward him. "Then you lie — to me, to yourself." Long fingers stroked her cheek, and she felt her heart give a crazy lurch. "Five years since I last possessed you," he said in a low voice, "and the flame burns as strongly as ever it did. And now —" his mouth lowered, grazing over her lips, and she felt her spine dissolve "— it can keep burning. Marriage," he breathed, as his mouth moved on hers again, "is the perfect answer. Nicky gets a father, you get the wealth you always craved and I —" he opened her mouth, deepening his kiss, folding her against his body "— I get you."
* * *
"In you go!"
Nicky squealed with glee as Leon settled him in beside him in the miniature train. His uncle pulled down the safety bar and put his arm around his shoulder.
"We're off!" he exclaimed as the ride began.
Alanna stood behind the railing, watching the little train moving slowly at first, then gathering speed as it raced up the incline through the "mountain" to twist and turn and loop back round and round.
Spring sunshine bathed the theme park in fresh light, the newly budded leaves on the trees and bushes telling of winter's end and the summer to come. Warm days. An end to chill and loneliness.
She felt strange, unreal. Welling with an emotion that threatened to overspill, flood right through her life. Three days had passed since Leon had arrived at her door — but it might have been three months or three years.
He had stayed the night, taking her back to bed, caressing away every last shred of resistance until she was melting honey in his arms. And he had slept with her afterward, holding her tight against him as if he feared she might run away in the night, taking Nicky with her….
But she had not run. Had watched, heart full, as Nicky had come into the bedroom in the morning, demanding to know why "that man" was still there. And Leon had sat up and had made Alanna sit up, too, with his arm around her shoulder and had invited Nicky — and the teddy bear he was clutching — to sit on the bed beside them because he had something to tell him.
And she had watched, wide-eyed, emotions keyed up so tight that she could hardly breathe, as Leon had told him he was his father's brother, and he would like to marry his mother and take them both to Greece to meet his grandparents and stay in a house with a swimming pool….
Nicky had listened, dark eyes huge.
"A swimming pool?" he had breathed, unable to believe such good fortune.
Leon had nodded.
"Are we going today?" Nicky had asked, eager to be off on such an amazing adventure.
"Today we are going to London. I am going to buy a ring for your mother, so we can be married soon, and get a passport for you, so you can come to Greece." He had turned to Alanna. "I take it he needs a passport? Alanna?"
His voice had changed. She had been sitting there against the pillows, staring at them, emotion working in her eyes.
He had touched her cheek. "It will be all right," he had murmured.
The softness in his voice had nearly undone her.
Then Nicky had recalled his attention. "Are you going to eat breakfast with us?" he had asked. "I eat toast for breakfast. Made with brown bread," he’d added virtuously.
Leon had grinned at him.
"You will grow up strong and healthy!"
Nicky had grinned back, well pleased with such a notion.
Now Alanna watched the pair of them twist and turn on the ride, Nicky shouting with laughter and Leon, too.
Something clutched at her heart.
I have to do this, she thought. I did not ask for it. It came to me, unasked. I will suffer — but it does not matter. Only Nicky matters.
The bond between Nicky and Leon had been instant. Instinctive. There had been no shyness, no reticence. Nicky had simply enfolded Leon into his life — and let Leon enfold him into his.
As she watched them bonding so instantly, her heart had crushed and had known a rightness, a relief that told her there could be no other way. Nicky needed Leon — deserved him.
And she knew, with a kind of overwhelming inevitability, that there was one more secret she would have to tell him.
Whatever it cost her.
She prayed for strength. Strength to endure the love she still felt for Leon Andreakos, would feel till the end of her days — a man who did not love her. Who never had. Who never could.
But who must love Nicky….
Chapter Eight
Alanna stared at the pearls in their velvet case as she sat in the wide leather seat of the executive jet winging toward Athens.
"Let me put them on you." There was a husk in Leon's voice.
"No — no, there's no need. They're exquisite, I can see." Her voice was strained.
"What's wrong, Alanna? You use
d to love my giving you jewelry."
The husk had gone. There was only sharpness now. And questioning.
She lifted her head to look at him.
"Perhaps I've outgrown my greed at last," she answered.
He stilled. "And perhaps," he answered back slowly, "you were never as greedy as I thought you. Perhaps I never realized how deprived a life you'd led. Never realized —" his expression changed "— how unreal my wealth was to you."
"I was like a kid in a candy store," she said, and her eyes slipped away from him, looking out over the cloudscape, remembering, "being handed the most fabulous sweets in the shop by Prince Charming himself. I didn't — I didn't mean to be greedy…but I was. I took everything you gave me and reveled in it."
She swallowed, a hard knot in her throat, and looked back at him, straight in the eye. "But I won't be greedy any more. So please…please don't give me jewels. I'm only your wife for Nicky's sake; I know that. I…won't — won't…presume, Leon. I learned that lesson a long time ago."
She felt her emotions swell and stood up.
"I — I just want to check on Nicky. Make sure he's all right."
She hurried off to the sleeping cabin at the rear of the plane where an exhausted Nicky slept after the excitement of his mother's wedding to his wonderful new Uncle Leon. Alanna's throat tightened.
I've got to tell Leon, she thought. I've got to tell him about Nicky. The truth…
As soon as the ordeal of meeting Leon's parents is over…
* * *
Leon stared after her. He felt his heart scrape. He had married for Nicky's sake, but not just for him, he knew.
Alanna — so soft in his arms, glowing with passion. Hungry for him. Starving…
It was like it had been at the beginning, but it was more. She felt remorse, he knew — had given away Nikos's money, raising Nicky on a pittance.
She'd had the guts, the courage to do that….
And even now, as his bride, she only wanted him to spend his money on Nicky.
His heart squeezed. Nicky — the child of his heart, even if not of his loins. He was drawn to him by a love that had been instant, all consuming.
And Alanna came with him, the little boy he loved already….