‘I’d hate to shock you,’ she said flippantly.
His voice was dry. ‘Believe me, I am not easily shocked.’
She watched as the filmy drapes moved in a cloud-like blur at the edges of the giant windows. ‘My father was a businessman—quite a successful one by all accounts—and my mother worked as his secretary, but she was also his...’ She shrugged as she met his quizzical expression. ‘It sounds so old-fashioned now, but she was his mistress.’
‘Ah,’ he said, in the tone of a man addressing a subject on which he was already an expert. ‘His mistress.’
‘That’s right. It was the usual thing. He set her up in a flat. He bought her clothes and in particular—underwear. They used to go out for what was euphemistically known as “lunch,” which I gather didn’t make her very popular back at the office. Sometimes he even managed to get away for part of a weekend with her, though of course she was always on her own at Christmas and during vacations. She told me all this one night when she’d been drinking.’
‘So what happened?’ he questioned, diplomatically ignoring the sudden tremble in her voice. ‘How come you came along?’
Caught up in a tale she hadn’t thought about in a long time, Ellie sat down heavily on the bed. The Egyptian cotton felt soft as she rested her palms against it and met the cool curiosity in Alek’s eyes. ‘She wanted him to divorce his wife, but he wouldn’t. He kept telling her that he’d have to wait for his children to leave home—again, the usual story. So she thought she’d give him a little encouragement.’
‘And she got pregnant?’
‘She got pregnant,’ she repeated and saw the look on his face. ‘And before you say anything—I did not set out to repeat history. Believe me, the last thing I wanted was to recreate my own childhood. What happened between us was—’
‘An accident,’ he said, almost roughly. ‘Yes, I know that. Go on.’
She’d lost the thread of what she’d been saying and it took her a couple of seconds to pick it up again. ‘I think she mistakenly thought that he’d get used to having a baby. That he might even be pleased...evidence of his virility...that kind of thing. But he wasn’t. He already had three children he was putting through school and a wife with an expensive jewellery habit. He told her...’
Ellie’s voice tailed off. She remembered that awful night of her birthday when her mother had seen off the best part of a bottle of gin and started blubbing—telling her stuff which no child should ever hear. She had buried it deep in the recesses of her own mind, but now it swam to the surface—like dark scum which had been submerged too long.
‘He told her to get rid of it. Or rather...to get rid of me,’ she said, her bright, pointless smile fading as her mother’s words reverberated round her head. And I should have listened to him! If I’d known what lay ahead, I damned well would have listened to him! ‘I think she thought he’d change his mind, but he didn’t. He stopped paying the rent on my mother’s apartment and told his wife about the affair—thus effectively curtailing any thoughts of blackmail. Then they moved to another part of the country and that was the end of that.’
‘He didn’t keep in contact?’
‘Nope. It was different in those days, before social media really took off—it’s easy to lose touch with someone. There was no maintenance—and my mother was too proud to take him to court. She said she’d already lost so much that she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her begging. She said we would manage just fine, but of course—it’s never that simple.’
‘But you said you saw him? When you were eighteen?’
Ellie didn’t answer for a moment, because this territory was not only forbidden—it was unmarked. She wondered whether she should tell him—but how could she not? She hadn’t talked about it with anyone before because she didn’t want to look as if she was drowning in self-pity, but maybe Alek had a right to know.
‘I did see him,’ she said slowly. ‘After my mother died, I tracked him down and wrote to him. Said I’d like to meet him. I was slightly surprised when he agreed.’ And slightly scared, too, because she’d built him up in her head to be some kind of hero. Maybe she’d been longing for the closeness she’d never had with her mother. Perhaps she had been as guilty as the next person of wanting a fairy tale which didn’t exist. The big reunion which was going to make everything in her life better.
‘What happened?’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘You really want to know?’
‘I do. You tell a good story,’ he said, surprisingly.
She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t a story, but when she stopped to think about it—maybe it was. Life was a never-ending story—wasn’t that how the old cliché went? She cleared her throat. ‘There was no psychic connection between us. No sense that here was the person whose genes I shared. We didn’t even look alike. He sat on the other side of a noisy table in a café at Waterloo station and told me that my mother was a conniving bitch who had almost ruined his life.’
‘And that was it?’ he asked after a long moment.
‘Pretty much. I tried asking about my half-sister and half-brothers and anyone would have thought I’d asked him for the PIN number for his savings account, from the way he reacted.’ He had stood up then with an ugly look on his face, but the look had been tinged with satisfaction—as if he’d been glad of an excuse to be angry with her. She remembered him knocking against the table and her untouched cappuccino slopping everywhere in a frothy puddle. ‘He told me never to contact him again. And then he left.’
Alek heard the determinedly nonchalant note in her voice and something twisted darkly in his gut. Was it recognition? A realisation that everyone carried their own kind of pain, but that most of it was hidden away? Suddenly her fierce ambition became understandable—an ambition which had been forced into second place by the baby. He felt a pang of guilt as he recalled how cavalier he’d been about her losing her job. Suddenly, he could understand her insistence on marriage—a request which must have been fuelled by the uncertainty of her own formative years. Not because she wanted the cachet of being his wife, but because she wanted to give her own baby the security she’d never had.
But recognising something didn’t change anything. He needed to be clear about the facts and so did she—and the most important fact she needed to realise was that he could never do the normal stuff that women seemed to want. He might be capable of honouring his responsibility to her and the baby—but, emotionally, wasn’t he cut from exactly the same cloth as her father? Hadn’t he walked away from women in the past—blind to their tears and their needs?
Ellie Brooks wasn’t his type, but even if she were he was the last man she needed. She needed his name on a birth certificate and she needed his money, and he could manage that. Neh. A bitter smile curved his lips. He could manage that very well. But if she wanted someone to provide the love and support her father had never given her, then he was the wrong person.
She had pushed the heavy fringe away from her eyebrows. Her face was pale, he thought. And now that she no longer had those generous curves, there was a kind of fragility about her which gave her skin a curious luminosity. And suddenly, all his certainties seemed to fade away. He forgot that it was infinitely more sensible to keep his distance from her as he was overcome by a powerful desire to take her in his arms and offer her comfort.
He swallowed, his feelings confusing him. And angering him. He didn’t want to be in thrall to anyone, but certainly not to her. Because he recognised that Ellie possessed something which no woman before her had ever possessed. A part of him. And didn’t that give her a special kind of power? A power she could so easily abuse if he wasn’t careful.
He walked quickly towards the door, realising that he needed to get the hell out of there. ‘You’d better unpack,’ he said abruptly. ‘And then we need to sit down and discuss the practicalities of you livi
ng here.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
WITH A SPEED which left her slightly dazed, Alek took over Ellie’s life. He organised a doctor and a credit card. He filled in all the requisite forms required for their upcoming wedding and booked the register office. But it quickly dawned on Ellie that the most important practicality of living with the Greek tycoon was an ability to be happy with her own company.
‘I work long hours,’ he told her. ‘And I travel. A lot. You’ll need to be able to amuse yourself and not come running to me because you’re bored. Understand?’
Biting back her indignation at being spoken to as if she were some kind of mindless puppet, Ellie told herself that snapping at him was only going to make a difficult situation worse. Bad enough that he prowled around the place looking like a sex god, without taking him to task over his patronising comments. She was trying very hard to give him the benefit of the doubt—telling herself that perhaps he didn’t mean to be quite so insulting. That he was a powerful man who was clearly used to issuing orders which he expected to be obeyed. And at first, she did exactly that.
During those early days in his Knightsbridge penthouse, she was still too disorientated by the speed at which her life had changed to object to his steamrollering approach to life. She was introduced as his fiancée to the confusingly large number of staff who worked for him both in and outside his organisation and she tried to remember everyone’s name.
There were cleaners who moved noiselessly around the vast apartment—like ghosts carrying buckets—and a woman whose job was to keep his fridge and wine cellar stocked. There was the doctor who insisted on visiting her at home—unheard of!—and told her she should take it easy, and these instructions she followed to the letter. She made the most of her free time. She realised it was the first time she’d ever had a prolonged break—or enjoyed a guilt-free session of relaxation—and she concentrated on settling into her new habitat like a cuckoo finding its way round a new and very luxurious nest.
But the baby still felt as if it weren’t happening, even though she was now in possession of a glossy black and white photo showing what looked like a cashew nut, attached to the edge of a dark lake. And when she looked into the icy beauty of Alek’s eyes, it was hard to believe that the tiny life growing inside her was somehow connected with him. Would he love his baby? she found herself wondering. Was he even capable of love?
He’s capable of sex, prompted a whispering voice inside her head—but determinedly she blocked out the thought. She wasn’t going to think of him that way. She just wasn’t.
The friendly concierge in the lobby gave her a street map and she started exploring Kensington and Chelsea, as well as the nearby park, where the leaves on the trees were showing the first hints of gold. She began visiting the capital’s galleries with enough time on her hands to really make the most of them, which she’d never had before.
Each morning, Alek left early for the office and would return late, a pair of dark-rimmed reading glasses giving him a surprisingly sexy, geeky look as he carried in the sheaf of papers he’d been studying in the car. He would disappear into his room to shower and change and then—surprisingly—disappear into the kitchen to cook them both dinner. An extensive repertoire of dishes began to appear each evening—one involving aubergine and cheese, which quickly became Ellie’s favourite. He told her that he’d learnt to cook at sixteen, when he’d been working in a restaurant and the chef had told him that a man who could feed himself was a man who would survive.
His skill in the kitchen wasn’t what she had been expecting and it took some getting used to—sitting and politely discussing the day’s happenings over dinner, like two people on a first date who were on their best behaviour. It was like being in some kind of dream. As if it were all happening to someone else.
It was just unfortunate that Ellie’s body didn’t feel a bit dreamlike, but uncomfortably real. Her reservations about living with him had been realised and she was achingly aware of him. How could she not be? His presence was impossible to ignore. Much as she tried to deny it, he was her every fantasy come to life. Worse still, she’d had a brief taste of what lovemaking could be like in Alek’s arms, and it had left her hungry and wanting more. And daily exposure to him was only reinforcing that hunger.
She saw him first thing when he was newly showered and dressed, with his dark hair slicked back and his skin smelling of lemon. She saw him sitting at the breakfast bar, sliding heavy gold cufflinks through one of his pristine shirts—and her heart would give a powerful contraction of blatant longing. Did he know that? Did he realise that inside she was berating herself for having insisted on a stupid no-sex rule? Had she imagined a hint of amusement dancing in the depths of those sapphire eyes when he looked at her? As if he was enjoying some private joke at her expense—silently taunting her with the knowledge that he could cope with sensual deprivation far better than her.
It was weekends which were hardest, when his failure to leave for the office left a gaping hole in the day ahead, along with the distraction of having him around without a break. This was when breakfast became a more awkward meal than usual. Was she imagining him staring at her intently, or was that just wishful thinking on her part? Had he deliberately left a button of his silk shirt unbuttoned, so that a smooth golden triangle of skin was revealed? Ellie would feel her breasts tingling with a hateful kind of hunger as he slid a jar of marmalade across the table towards her. She remembered what he’d said about faking affection for the wedding photos. No. She definitely wasn’t going to have a problem with that.
On the third weekend, she was as edgy as an exam candidate and glad to get out of the apartment for Alek’s suggested trip to the Victoria and Albert. It was a museum she’d longed to visit again, even though this time the statues were wasted on her. She kept looking at the carved and stony features of various kings and dignitaries and comparing them unfavourably with the beautiful features of the man by her side. Afterwards, they walked to an open-air restaurant for a late lunch and she had to fight to quash her stupid desire to have him touch her again. She thought about their wedding and their wedding night, and wondered how she was going to cope with that.
This time next month I’ll be his wife, she thought. Even though both of us seem determined not to talk about it.
The sun was dipping lower in the sky as they walked back across the park, but when she got back to the apartment she found herself unable to get comfortable. Her feet were aching and she was wriggling around restlessly on the sofa.
She didn’t know what she was expecting when Alek walked across the room and sat down next to her, lifting her bare feet into his lap and beginning to massage each one in turn. It was the first time he’d touched her in a long time and, despite her thoughts of earlier, her instinctive reaction was to freeze, even though her heart had started hammering. Could he hear its wild beat or maybe even see it, beneath her thin T-shirt? Was that why he gave that slow half-smile?
But her initial tension dissolved the instant the warm pad of his thumb started caressing her insole and once she realised that this wasn’t a seduction but simply a foot massage, she just lay back and enjoyed it. It felt like bliss and she found herself thinking how ironic it was that all his money couldn’t buy something as good as this. Did he realise how much she loved the thoughtful gesture, even though she’d done her best to conceal her squirming pleasure from him? Was he aware that small kindnesses like these were the dangerous blocks which made her start building impossible dreams?
The following Monday, she was drinking ginger tea at the kitchen table when he glanced up from his newspaper and narrowed his eyes.
‘About these new clothes you’re supposed to be buying,’ he said.
‘Maternity clothes?’
‘Not quite yet. I meant pretty clothes,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that what we agreed? Something to make you look the part of a Sarantos bride. Not
long to go now.’
‘I know that.’
‘You haven’t shown very much interest in your wedding so far.’
‘It’s difficult to get enthusiastic about a ceremony which feels fake.’
He didn’t rise to the taunt. ‘I thought you’d be itching to get your hands on my chequebook.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ she said in a hollow voice, thinking about the foot massage. Didn’t he realise that something that simple and intimate was worth far more to her than his money? Of course he didn’t. It suited him much more to imagine her salivating over his credit card.
He put his newspaper down. ‘Well, there’s no point in putting it off any longer. I can arrange for Alannah to take you shopping and you can choose your wedding dress at the same time, if you like. You’ll find she has a superb eye.’
‘You mean I don’t?’
He frowned. ‘That wasn’t what I said.’
‘But that’s what you implied, isn’t it? Poor little Ellie—snatched up from rural Hampshire with no idea how to shop for clothes which might make her believable as the wife of the powerful Greek!’ She stood up quickly—too quickly—and had to steady herself. ‘Well, I’m perfectly capable of buying my own clothes—and my own wedding dress. So why don’t you give me your precious credit card and I’ll see if I can do it justice? I’ll go out this morning and just spend, spend, spend like the stereotypical gold-digger you’re so fond of portraying!’
‘Ellie—’
She stalked off into her room and slammed the door very noisily, but when she came out again sometime later it was to find him still sitting there—the pile of newspapers almost completely read.
‘I thought you were going into the office this morning,’ she said.
‘Not any more,’ he said. ‘I’m taking you shopping.’
‘I don’t want you to...’ Her voice faltered, because when his blue eyes softened like that, he was making her feel stuff she didn’t want to feel.
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