by Lynne Graham
The last drop of hope inside her died when he voiced that passion-killing word, ‘efficient’. ‘If you don’t let me up, I’ll scream.’
Leonidas would much have preferred a scream to the frozen tension of her face and the flatness of her voice. He coiled back from her with extreme reluctance.
Wrapping a screening arm over her bared breasts, tears burning like acid behind her lowered lashes, Maribel slid off the bed, snatched up her discarded clothing and headed straight for the adjoining bathroom. ‘I’d appreciate it if you would wait for me downstairs.’
‘Theos mou…why are you being so bloody unreasonable about this?’ Leonidas demanded, vaulting off the bed in one powerful movement. ‘Anyone would think I’d insulted you!’
Maribel almost lost her head with him at that point. Had there been anything suitable within reach she would have snatched it up and thrown it at him with vicious intent. Mercifully there wasn’t, and she shut the door behind her and simply stared blankly into space. When was she going to learn to keep her distance? Only an idiot would have credited that Leonidas Pallis was offering her a serious live-in relationship. Her eyes burned as she fought back the tears with all her strength. She had almost ended up in bed with him again. Concentrate on the positive, her intelligence told her, not on your mistakes. She could not afford to let go of her emotions. She had to face him again, still had to deal with how two such disparate people—one of whom was a domineering, selfish, spoiled billionaire—could possibly share the upbringing of one little boy.
The instant Maribel entered the drawing room, Leonidas swung round, but before he could say anything she spoke. ‘Let’s just concentrate on Elias—’
‘Theos mou, Maribel—’
‘That’s the only business we have to discuss. We should avoid anything of a more personal nature.’
Leonidas dealt her a fulminating appraisal. ‘Elias is not business.’
‘Elias is the only reason I am still in this house and speaking to you,’ Maribel confided jerkily.
‘Very well.’ His strong jawline clenched. ‘I would like DNA-testing to be done, not because I doubt that Elias is my son, but because there should be no room for any person to doubt that he is a Pallis.’
‘All right,’ Maribel conceded.
‘I would also like your support in having his birth certificate changed to carry my name.’
‘If you feel it’s necessary.’ Although Maribel was feeling totally devastated after what had happened between them, she was doing her utmost to conceal the fact. But it was a challenge to behave normally, when even looking at his lean, strong face actually hurt her. ‘Anything else?’
‘I’m attending a family wedding tomorrow in Athens,’ Leonidas informed her. ‘I would like you and Elias to accompany me as my guests. I plan to introduce him to my relatives.’
Maribel stiffened into the defensive mode she had been striving to hold at bay. ‘We can’t come. Apart from anything else, I’m working tomorrow—’
‘I’ll take Elias and the nanny, then,’ Leonidas traded without hesitation. And she noticed, could really not help noticing, how quickly he was able to dispense with the concept of having her as a companion.
‘He’s too young to leave me and I won’t agree to you taking him out of the country without me. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is for the present,’ Maribel told him, her hands lacing restively together when she saw the grim tension tighten his fantastic bone structure. ‘I will try to be reasonable in other ways, though. But I would ask you to think again about telling people that you have a son.’
‘You have a problem with that, as well?’ Leonidas shot back at her, his anger at that request palpable.
‘I would prefer it to stay a secret for as long as possible. The press attention and public notice that it would generate could make my life with Elias very difficult.’
‘That is precisely why I suggested that you live in one of my properties where your security needs can be met without fuss.’
‘But we won’t have security needs if you let your connection to Elias remain a private one. I would appreciate it if my life could go on the same way it always has—’
‘That’s no longer possible.’
‘You’re not being fair to me,’ she protested.
‘Less than half an hour ago—for the right offer—you were willing to surrender all autonomy over your life, your job and your child.’ Leonidas voiced that reminder with derisive emphasis.
Maribel went white at the biting cruelty of that statement. The misunderstanding had mortified her, and only courage stiffened her backbone. ‘More fool me,’ she muttered with scorn. ‘To believe, for even five minutes, that you would make that much of a commitment to either Elias or me! You don’t even recognise when I’m trying to be generous—’
‘Generous?’ Leonidas threw up lean brown hands in forceful disagreement. ‘When you even object to me taking him to my home in Greece? How is that generous?’
‘You’re lucky I’m still here after that sleazy proposition you put to me!’
‘It was not sleazy. Naturally, I would prefer my son to live in a manner appropriate to his status. I want to take care of both of you.’
‘No, you don’t. You want the ability to play father any time you like at the cost of my freedom—oh, yes, and occasional sex. Was that to keep me happy? Stop me from looking around for long enough to give Elias a stepfather?’ she demanded in disgust. ‘Or was it just a power play or a power lay? You would sleep with me because you could?’
Those twin offensive cracks about stepfathers and power lays sent raw fury roaring through his lean, powerful frame. ‘I’ve offered you more than I have ever offered a woman,’ Leonidas intoned with disdain, outraged by her attack.
‘But not any kind of a promise that might curtail your freedom. And without that it was a rotten, lousy offer. Elias needs caring and commitment. I’m sorry, but there’s no short cut and no quick fix to supplying those. Do you really think that a casual affair with your son’s mother would give him a stable, happy home? It wouldn’t last five minutes, and when it broke down Elias would suffer. You can’t buy access to him through me.’
The coldness of displeasure had hardened the Greek tycoon’s bold bronzed features. His dark, deep-set eyes were like black ice. ‘I asked you once before not to make this a battle, for whatever it takes I will win.’
As no doubt intended, the threat Maribel perceived in that assurance slid like an ice cube down her rigid spine and settled in her belly, sparking nausea. Fear of losing her son sliced through her, and with it came fierce anger that he should dare to subject her to that level of anxiety. ‘And you wonder why I wouldn’t even consider letting you take Elias to Greece? Forget the DNA-testing and any change to his birth certificate!’ she told him vehemently. ‘You have just ensured that I will obstruct any claim you try to make on Elias.’
A white-hot blaze of wrath engulfed Leonidas. He strode forward, the chill in his gaze a formidable warning. ‘I won’t let you keep me apart from my son. It is madness for you to oppose me in this way. I expected much more from you.’
Stubborn as a mule in the face of intimidation, Maribel stood her ground and surveyed him with furious blue eyes. ‘I have to admit that I’m getting more or less what I expected from you. You haven’t changed.’
‘But you still want me, glikia mou,’ Leonidas countered silkily. ‘I should have appreciated that your sexual compliance would have a major price tag attached. How ambitious are you?’
His sheer insolence made her palms tingle with incipient violence. ‘Meaning?’
‘Why not put your cards on the table? Were you hoping that I might eventually ask you to marry me?’
A brittle laugh of disagreement was wrenched from Maribel’s tight throat. ‘No! I don’t live in fantasy land. But I must confess that only a wedding ring would now persuade me that I can trust you with my son.’
Leonidas dealt her a sizzling look of derision.
‘That was a fact, not a suggestion,’ Maribel told him tautly. ‘Right now I’m very conscious that you could use your influence and financial power to put pressure on me, but I won’t be intimidated. I’ll still let you see Elias, but that’s all. I don’t trust you. I won’t give you the chance to take him away from me. I will not let my child out of my sight for five minutes around you, or your employees!’
Leonidas was inflamed by those pledges. He was a responsible adult and Elias was his son. Her attitude incensed him.
A knock on the door interrupted the dialogue. It was Diane, the nanny, with Elias. Sleepy and fretful after waking up in a different room, the little boy held out his arms to his mother. ‘Mouse…Mouse,’ he muttered tearfully, seeking the security of the familiar pet.
‘You’ll see Mouse later,’ Maribel soothed, folding him close.
‘Is Mouse a toy?’ Leonidas demanded.
‘The dog. ‘
‘You should have brought him.’
Maribel said nothing but almost heaved a sigh. Leonidas was a Pallis and from birth he had been accustomed to instant wish-fulfilment. People went to great lengths to please him and satisfy his every desire. That was not the way she wanted Elias to grow up.
‘I’ll show him the stables,’ Leonidas drawled icily. ‘He’ll enjoy seeing the horses.’
Maribel nodded without looking near him. ‘I’d like to go home at six. It’s a long drive back.’
Elias wriggled and squirmed until she lowered him to the rug. He pelted across it to Leonidas and stretched up his arms to be lifted. Hoisted high, he chuckled with pleasure. Even though Maribel knew it was nonsensical, she felt rejected and hurt.
CHAPTER FIVE
LEONIDAS looked down at the old farmhouse as his helicopter flew over the roof to land in the paddock at its side. It was a filthy, wet, windy day and he was in an equally filthy mood. A month had passed since his war of words with Maribel at Heyward Park.
Since then, Leonidas had seen Elias on average twice a week, but it had taken a massive amount of planning to achieve that frequency and he still only managed to see his son for a couple of hours each time at most. Travelling back and forth to Maribel’s isolated country home entailed considerable inconvenience and discomfort. Leonidas had not, however, uttered a single complaint. A saint could not have faulted his unfailing courtesy and consideration.
Yet Maribel avoided him during his visits, which made it impossible for him to achieve a better understanding with her. At the same time, his legal team’s delicate efforts to negotiate more practical access arrangements had run into a wall of refusal. One month on, nothing had changed: he could see his son only at the farmhouse and could not take him out. He brooded on his conviction that Maribel was hoping he would eventually get fed up and go away.
The racket of the helicopter flying overhead drove Maribel naked and dripping from the shower. Wrapping a towel round herself, she raced downstairs and found the telephone answer-machine flashing that a message had been received. She didn’t waste time trying to listen to it. Evidently Leonidas had made a last-minute decision to visit and, of course, it wouldn’t have occurred to him that she might have other plans. Elias, who had already worked out that the sound of a helicopter always signified the arrival of his father, was bouncing up and down as if Santa Claus were about to come down the chimney. She pelted back upstairs and dragged a comb ruthlessly through her wet hair while simultaneously pulling out clothes. She’d only got her panties on before the doorbell went. In feverish haste, she climbed into her jeans. The bell went twice more while she struggled to pull them up to fasten them at her waist. She ran out to the landing and bawled downstairs, ‘Give me a minute!’
Elias was whinging with the same appalling impatience on his side of the front door. She yanked on a T-shirt and raced down barefoot.
‘Thank you,’ Leonidas drawled in a long-suffering tone.
Rattled by his inopportune arrival, Maribel made the very great mistake of allowing herself to look directly at him for the first time in a month of vigilant self-restraint. And that one imprudent glance at him knocked her sideways: he looked amazing. Raindrops glistened on his black hair and classic olive-toned features. His brilliant dark eyes glinted below heavy lashes, his strong masculine jawline and beautifully shaped mouth accentuated by the faint bluish-black shadow where he shaved. Her tummy not only flipped, but performed a series of rapid somersaults.
‘I wasn’t expecting you—I was in the shower,’ she mumbled, fighting a belated defence action with all her might. Stop it, stop right now, her inner voice of sense was warning her. Don’t look at him and don’t respond to him, he’s pure poison and heartache in a very dangerous package.
‘Didn’t my staff contact you?’
‘I only came home ten minutes ago. I haven’t had time to check my messages yet.’
‘Your mobile?’
‘Forgot to charge it.’ As Maribel turned away to close the door his attention was hooked by the distinctly erotic ripple of her voluptuous breasts, which were moulded to perfection by a T-shirt that clung so lovingly to her damp skin that he could see the swell of her pouting nipples. His lean, well-built body reacted with rampant male enthusiasm. He could not shake the deep inner conviction that if he just got her back into bed everything would be perfect.
Maribel watched Elias clawing his way up Leonidas’s trouser-legs like a mini-mountaineer. Elias already adored his father. Helped up to chest level, the little boy wrapped two plump arms round Leonidas and covered his face with enthusiastic kisses. He was a very affectionate child, but Leonidas was unused to such physical demonstrations of warmth and liking. The first time Elias had kissed him, Leonidas had frozen in shock. But now Leonidas was trying to reciprocate with occasional awkward hugs. It hurt Maribel to watch, as she knew that Leonidas didn’t know how to show or return affection because he had not received it as a child. If anyone was capable of teaching Leonidas how to love another human being, it was her son. That was good, that was healthy. Unfortunately, the more signs of attachment Maribel saw developing between father and son, the more fearful she became of what Leonidas might do in the future.
Maribel would not let herself look again at Leonidas because she was fiercely determined to detach herself from feeling any personal response to him. She had a date, she reminded herself furiously; she was going out on a date in just over an hour. Sloan was an attractive, eligible guy, a research assistant, only a couple of years older than she was. Until Leonidas had arrived, she had been looking forward to the prospect of adult company.
Mouse the wolfhound peered out from below the table and whined in excitement. On his belly, he crawled into view with his long tail banging noisily on the floorboards in a show of ingratiating fervour. Once all of his long grey shaggy body had emerged, Leonidas tossed him a dog treat in reward. Mouse guzzled it down and fixed adoring doggie eyes on his new idol. Maribel didn’t think that Leonidas had ever had anything to do with dogs before, either. But once he had registered how important Mouse was to his son, Leonidas had mounted an edible charm offensive to lessen the animal’s terror of strangers. And, in common with most challenges that Leonidas set out to meet, he had achieved his goal with brilliance. Bribery, Maribel reflected grimly, worked even in the canine world.
‘I have to talk to you,’ Leonidas murmured with quiet insistence. ‘I can’t stay long. I have a flight to catch in a couple of hours.’
‘That’s good because I’m going out.’ Maribel managed a stony smile in his general direction, while remaining wildly and insanely conscious of his every tiny movement. He was so graceful he literally drew the eye to him, and that was even before she noticed the faint husk of his breathing and the dark chocolate tones of his deep sexy voice. ‘What do you think we need to talk about?’
Leonidas took up a commanding stance by the fireplace. ‘You have to trust me not to try and take Elias away from you.’
‘How can I?’ Dismay at the directness of that opening salv
o made Maribel fall still. ‘You’ve never shared anything in your life; you’ve never had to. You are number one in all your relationships. It’s the Pallis way.’
‘Naturally I have to share my son with his mother. I am not an idiot,’ Leonidas traded dryly.
‘But I’m not doing what you want me to do. Sooner or later, you might persuade yourself that you’re entitled to all, rather than half, of your son and you could decide to write me out of the picture. You will assure yourself that I have brought that misfortune on myself by my unreasonable behaviour.’
‘Where do you get the idea that you know how I think? Or what I might do?’ Leonidas demanded with freezing disdain.
Yet, if truth were told, Leonidas was disconcerted by her ability to tap into the deep vein of ruthlessness that powered his aggressive instincts. But he was angered by her flat refusal to accept that Elias stood outside the usual parameters his father observed. Why had she yet to notice that he was making a laudable and heroic effort to put Elias’ needs, rather than his own, first?
‘Seven years of watching you operate from close up and from a distance?’ Maribel shot back at him tightly, torn by conflicting impulses, for when she heard that sincere note in his voice, and watched him unbend with Elias and laugh and smile, she found it hard to say no to him and even harder to police his every move. But two weeks earlier she had taken the precaution of seeking legal advice from a very expensive London solicitor. He had pointed out that Leonidas had almost unlimited power and influence and had advised her to watch over Elias at all times; the law would be of little help if her son were to be taken to a country without a reciprocal agreement to respect UK law.
Leonidas settled level dark, deep-set eyes on her. ‘I will give you my word of honour that I will not attempt to remove him from your care.’
Framed by dense black lashes, his eyes had stunning impact, a strong and charismatic key to the level of his sleek, darkly handsome attraction. No matter how hard she tried, her heart was hammering behind her ribcage and her gaze stayed welded to him even as her cheeks burned with colour. ‘I can’t trust you. I’m sorry. I can’t. He means everything in the world to me.’