by Lynne Graham
Subjected to one sensual flash of his bold, dark golden gaze, Maribel went rigid. She was aghast at the languorous warmth spreading through her and at the swollen feel of her breasts within the confinement of her bra. As her tender nipples tightened she folded her arms in a jerky movement. ‘So, if you’ve thought seriously…’
‘I still want answers. At least, be realistic.’ His brilliant eyes now screened to a discreet glimmer below lush black lashes, his drawl was as smooth as silk. ‘What man would not, in this situation?’
Maribel didn’t want to be realistic. She just wanted him to go away again and stop threatening the peace of mind that she had worked so hard to achieve. ‘What do I have to do to make you understand?’
‘See both sides of the equation. Be the logical woman I know you to be. To ask me to walk away without even knowing whether or not the child is mine is absurd.’ The complete calm and quiet of his voice had an almost hypnotic effect on her.
‘Yes, but…’ Maribel pinned her lips closed on the temptation to speak hasty words ‘…it’s not that simple.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Leonidas countered. ‘Clearly you believe that Elias is my son. If you didn’t believe that, you would have swiftly disabused me of the idea.’
Maribel stiffened, her eyes reflecting her indecision. ‘Leonidas…’
‘Every child has the right to know who his father is. Until I was seven years old, I believed my father was my mother’s first husband. But, after the divorce, it emerged that someone else was the culprit. I know what I’m talking about. Are you planning to lie to Elias?’
‘Yes…no! Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Maribel gasped, raking her chestnut hair off her troubled brow with an anxious hand, as his candour had disarmed her. ‘I will do whatever is best for Elias.’
‘One day Elias will be an adult, and you will lose him if you lie to him about his parentage.’ Leonidas dealt her a cool dark appraisal. ‘You hadn’t thought of that aspect, had you? Or about the fact that Elias has rights, too.’
Maribel blenched at that unwelcome reminder.
‘And what if something happens to you while he is still a child? Who will take care of him then?’
‘That’s dealt with in my will.’
Any pretence of relaxation abandoned at that admission, Leonidas was as still as a panther about to spring. ‘Do I figure in it?’
Tense as a bow string, Maribel slowly shook her head.
The silence folded in as thick and heavy as a fog.
With reluctance, Maribel looked back at him. Leonidas was studying her with a chilling condemnation that cut her to the bone. It was obvious that he had already reached his own conclusions as to her son’s parentage. Her heart sank, since she had no way of convincing him otherwise, no magical method of turning back time and ensuring that he did not find out what she had believed he would have been perfectly happy not to know. ‘All right,’ she said gruffly, her slim shoulders slumping, for she felt as battered as if she had gone ten rounds with a heavyweight boxer. ‘You got me pregnant.’
Leonidas was startled by the strong sense of satisfaction that gripped him and relieved that he had not had to exert pressure. As he had anticipated, Maribel had listened to her conscience. So, the boy was his. The boy was a Pallis: the next generation of the family. His ancient trio of great-aunts would be overjoyed at the continuation of the Pallis bloodline, while his more avaricious relatives would be heartbroken at being cut out in the inheritance stakes. Although Leonidas had long since decided that he would neither marry nor reproduce, it had not until that moment occurred to him that he might father a son and heir with so little personal inconvenience.
‘I knew that you wouldn’t lie to me,’ he intoned with approval.
But Maribel felt very much as though she had failed. She knew that decent standards were a weakness in his vicinity. She knew his flaws. Yet she was still ensnared by the stunning gold of his eyes glinting below the dense black fringe of his lashes. He could still take her breath away with one scorching glance.
In a lithe movement Leonidas abandoned his misleadingly casual stance against the desk and straightened his lean, powerful body to his full imposing height. He reached for her taut, clenched fingers, straightening them out with confidence to draw her closer. ‘You’ve done the right thing,’ he murmured lazily. ‘I respect you for telling me the truth.’
‘That’s good, because I think that telling you the truth was one of the most pointless things I’ve ever done.’ Her slender fingers trembled in the hold of his as she fought the insidious force of his sensual charisma. Once bitten, for ever shy, she reminded herself frantically. He had almost destroyed her self-esteem more than two years earlier. Imogen and a whole host of other women had somehow managed to do casual with Leonidas, but Maribel had felt as though her heart were being ripped out slowly while she was still alive. And the horror of it had lasted for weeks, months, afterwards.
‘How so?’ Leonidas could feel the trepidation she was struggling to hide and marvelled at it, for he could think of no reason for her continuing apprehension. His thumb massaging her narrow wrist in a soothing motion, he gazed down at her, his attention lingering on the ripe pink fullness of her mouth. As the rich tide of sexual arousal grasped him he made no attempt to quell it. In fact he was enjoying the astonishing strength of his reaction to her. Seducing Maribel, he was recalling, had been unexpectedly sweet, and it would certainly take care of all the arguments now. ‘I’m not angry with you.’
‘Not at the moment…no,’ Maribel agreed, dry-mouthed, in response to the perceptible change in the atmosphere. Her heart was thumping as fast as a car being revved up on a race track. It was as if time had slowed down, while her every physical sense went on hyper-alert. Her breath catching in her throat, she fought to stay in control.
‘We were careless,’ Leonidas commented in a husky undertone, wondering if he should lock the door and take full advantage of the moment.
‘I wasn’t…you were,’ Maribel muttered, unable even with her brain in a state of sensual freefall to let him get away with making such an unfair claim.
‘I left my wallet in the limo and you wouldn’t let me phone for it to be brought in, so I had no contraception—’
‘I didn’t want your chauffeur and your wretched security team to know what you were doing!’ Maribel protested, her cheeks burning at the memory of her embarrassment.
Leonidas gave her a smile of unholy amusement. ‘I stayed the night with you. So what?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ Maribel recognised the treacherous intimacy of the discussion. Fighting the wicked draw of his dark animal magnetism, she turned her head away.
He lifted a lean brown hand up to flick a straying strand of amber-coloured hair back from her pale brow. Incredibly aware of his proximity, Maribel quivered. She could feel her whole body leaning towards him. It was as if he had pressed a button and her spine had crumbled. There was a craving in her that overpowered common sense. There was a wild longing for the forbidden and, try as she might, she could not stamp it out.
‘You make this complicated,’ Leonidas muttered thickly, a big hand splaying to the feminine curve of her hip to ease her up against him before she could step out of reach. ‘But for me it’s simple.’
She knew it was not simple, she knew it was complicated. She even knew that it was a hideous mistake and that she was going to hate herself later. But when he bent his handsome dark head, she still found herself stretching up on tiptoe so that she wouldn’t have to wait a split-second longer than necessary to make physical contact. And whatever else Leonidas was, he was an overpoweringly physical male. His lips claimed hers with a red-hot hunger and demand that she felt right down to her toes. His tongue tasted her and she shivered. He pushed against her, banding her closer with strong hands, unashamedly letting her feel the hard thrust of his erection. Answering heat flared low in her belly and she gasped beneath his marauding mouth. Her fingers dug into his broad shoulders. With no
recollection of how they had got there, she yanked her hands guiltily off him again. Forcing herself to break free of his arms hurt as much as losing a layer of skin.
Violet-blue eyes blazing with resentment at his nerve, Maribel launched herself clumsily back out of reach. Her shoulders and hips met the filing cabinet behind her and provided merciful support, because her legs felt as sturdy as quaking jelly. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ she snapped at him in furious condemnation, angry over her weakness and the hateful inevitability of his having taken advantage of it. ‘Is this because I showed you the door at my home yesterday? Did I insult your ego? You have just found out that you’re the father of my son! And what do you do? You make a pass at me!’
‘Why not?’ Having followed his natural inclinations and met with a very encouraging response, Leonidas was in no mood to apologise, particularly not when he was stifling a staggeringly powerful desire to simply haul her back into his arms. ‘I think I’m behaving very well. I’m willing to accept responsibility—’
‘You’ve never accepted responsibility for a woman in your life!’ Maribel launched at him with a bitterness she could not conceal.
‘I’m willing to accept responsibility for Elias.’
‘But you’re so busy being a player that you’ve just shown me all over again why I can’t stand the thought of you in my son’s life!’ Maribel slung at him, the raw force of her emotions ringing from her voice. Her entire body was tingling with almost painful sensitivity and a stark sense of what could only be described as deprivation. Shame over her loss of control threatened to choke her.
‘You’ll have to learn to stand it and me, because I have no intention of staying out of my child’s life.’ Hard dark-as-midnight eyes sliced back at her like gleaming rapier blades of warning challenge. ‘Elias is a Pallis.’
‘No matter what it takes, I swear that I will prevent you from gaining access to him,’ Maribel threw back at him with clenched fists.
Leonidas released his breath in a slow, derisive hiss. ‘Give me one good reason why you should behave that way.’
‘Just look at what being born a Pallis did to you!’ Maribel sent him a furious appraisal, because the brazen self-assurance he exuded only reminded her of the dignity she had surrendered in his arms. ‘You’re irresponsible. You have no respect for women. You’re a commitment-phobe—’
Derision engulfed by incredulous indignation, Leonidas growled. ‘That is outrageous.’
‘It’s the truth. Right now, Elias would be a novelty to you like a new toy. You only take business seriously. You have no concept of family life or of a child’s need for stability. How could you after the way you were raised? I’m not blaming you for your deficiencies,’ Maribel told him in a driven undertone. ‘But I won’t apologise for my need to protect Elias from the damage that you could do.’
Leonidas was pale with fury, his bronzed skin stretched taut over his superb bone structure. ‘What do you mean—deficiencies?’
‘Elias is very precious. What have you got to give him but money? He needs an adult who’s willing to put him first, to look after him, but what you cherish most is your freedom. The freedom to do whatever you like when you like would be the first thing you would lose as a father and you wouldn’t stick the course for five minutes—’
‘Try me!’ Leonidas shot back at her in wrathful challenge. ‘Who are you to judge me? You have never lived outside your little academic soap-bubble! By what right do you call me irresponsible?’
Although she was drawn and tense, Maribel lifted her head high. ‘I’ve got more right than anyone else I know. You never once called to ask if I was okay after that night we spent together!’
‘Why would I have?’ Leonidas growled like a bear.
Maribel almost flinched. She refused to allow herself to react in a more personal way and she tucked the hurt of that cruelly casual dismissal away for future reference. ‘Because it would have been the responsible thing to do when you knew there was a risk of a pregnancy,’ she informed him in a wooden tone.
Leonidas swore in vehement Greek at that retaliation and shot her a censorious glance. ‘You walked out on me,’ he ground out.
Maribel thought of what had really happened that morning and inwardly squirmed. Walking out would have been the sensible, dignified option, but it was not actually what she had done. He didn’t know that, though, and she felt that that fact was none of his business so long after the event. She did not have much pride to conserve over the episode, but what she did have she planned to hang onto.
‘It was for you to contact me when you learned that you had conceived,’ Leonidas delivered in harsh addition.
‘You didn’t deserve that amount of consideration,’ Maribel told him without hesitation.
Lethal scorn hardened his darkly handsome features. ‘I didn’t phone—is that what this is all about? So you try to punish me by refusing me contact with my son?’
Maribel looked steadily back at him, her violet blue eyes defiant in the face of that put-down. ‘Don’t you dare try to twist what I said. Be honest with yourself. Do you really want the hassle of a child in your life?’
Only forty-eight hours earlier, Leonidas would have responded with an unqualified negative to that question. Now a whole new dimension had to be considered. He could not get the image of the smiling little boy in the photograph out of his mind. But his other responses were much more aggressive, because when he looked back at Maribel he could never recall feeling more angry or alienated from her. She had judged him and found him wanting and nobody had ever dared to do that before.
The office door sprang open without warning. ‘Why on earth is there a crowd of people hanging around outside?’ demanded the older woman with whom Maribel shared the office. ‘Oh—sorry. I didn’t realise that you had someone with you. Am I interrupting?’
‘Not at all,’ Leonidas murmured impassively. ‘I was about to leave.’
Gripped by a giant wave of frustration, Maribel watched Leonidas depart. She could not understand why she should feel bereft when he walked away. Her office was no place for emotional discussions. He needed to think about what she had said, as well. Her hand crept up to her lower lip, which was still swollen from the erotic heat of his. It was so typical of Leonidas to try and blur serious issues with sex. He could handle sex. He could handle it beautifully. It was the emotional stuff he couldn’t and wouldn’t deal with.
Wide-eyed, her colleague hurried back to the doorway. ‘Good heavens, was that who I think it is? Was that actually Leonidas Pallis?’
A mass of speculative faces peered in at Maribel, as though she were a rare animal on display in a zoo for the first time…
CHAPTER FOUR
MARIBEL could not sleep that night, or indeed during the night that followed.
How long was it since she had fallen in love with Leonidas Pallis? Almost seven years. It sounded like a prison term and had often felt like one, while she’d struggled to feel something—anything—for a more suitable man. Her heart might as well have been locked away in a cell, for neither intelligence nor practicality had exercised the smallest influence over what she felt. She had done her utmost to get over him. She knew his every flaw and failing. She did not respect him as a person. Yet helpless sympathy for a male so divorced from his emotions that he did not even recognise grief had led to her lowering her guard after her cousin’s funeral. And, to the conception of the son she adored.
Who are you to judge me? She was still pondering that question at dawn on the second day after his latest visit. As she had not expected to see Leonidas again, it had not occurred to her that he would ever find out about Elias. Now that he had, everything had changed and she had been too slow to recognise that truth. Suddenly she was being forced to justify the decisions she had made and she was no longer confident that she had the right to deny Elias all contact with his father. Accustomed as she was to keeping her own counsel, she felt that she was too emotionally involved and that it mi
ght be wise to ask for a second opinion from someone she could trust to be discreet.
Later that morning, Maribel went over to see Ginny Bell and finally told the older woman who had fathered her son.
For the space of an entire minute, the older woman simply stared back at her with rounded eyes of shock and disbelief. ‘Leonidas Pallis? The Greek billionaire who’s always plastered all over the celebrity magazines? Imogen’s ex?’
Red as a beetroot, Maribel nodded affirmation.
‘My goodness. You do put new meaning into that saying about being a dark horse!’ Ginny exclaimed. ‘Leonidas Pallis is really Elias’ father?’
‘Yes.’
‘I never liked to ask who he was, when you didn’t seem to want to talk about it.’ Ginny shook her head in wonderment over what she had just been told. ‘I must be frank. I’m gobsmacked. What prompted you to suddenly tell me about this now?’
‘Leonidas has just found out about Elias and he wants to see him.’ Maribel compressed her lips. ‘I’ve been saying no.’
Ginny grimaced. ‘Surely that’s not a good idea, Maribel. Is it wise to get on the wrong side of a man that powerful?’
‘He is very annoyed about my attitude,’ Maribel conceded unhappily.
‘If someone told you that you couldn’t see your child, wouldn’t you be angry?’ the older woman prompted wryly. ‘Try to put yourself in his shoes and be fair.’
‘That’s not easy,’ Maribel confided chokily.
‘But why run the risk of turning Leonidas into an enemy? Wouldn’t that be more dangerous? I’ve heard some heart-rending stories about children being snatched away by disaffected foreign fathers.’
Ginny could have said nothing more guaranteed to make Maribel’s blood run cold in her veins. ‘Don’t scare me, Ginny.’