Baby out of the Blue

by Rebecca Winters

  “Nik—”

  “Plan to be up by six. Early morning is the best time to reach the summit.” He thrust the flashlight in her hands before he disappeared inside the tent.

  She bit her knuckle, hating herself for bringing on this impasse. Out of a sense of self-preservation, she’d stopped things before they’d made love. He’d get over this without a problem. Fran wished she could say the same.

  Tonight she’d been shaken by the most overwhelming passion she’d ever known. She’d come close to paying the price to know his possession. It didn’t seem possible that after just a short time she was on the verge of giving him whatever he wanted.

  After pulling herself together she entered the tent, careful not to shine the light near him. He’d climbed in his bag with his long, hard body turned away from her. Once she’d removed her hiking boots, she got inside hers.

  He’d opened the screened window at the top of the tent. She could see the stars he’d promised, but they grew blurry with her tears and she knew nothing more.

  * * *

  “It’s time to get going,” Nik called to her. She let out a groan because it was still dark. “I’ll have breakfast waiting for you when you come out of the tent. We’ll leave everything here and pack it up after our descent.”

  The next two hours proved to be a grueling hike with a taciturn Nik only feeding her vital information when necessary. The trail left the sparse pines and vegetation behind. From there they followed it up a ridgeline all the way to the top. He told her this section was called the Kaki Scala. The narrow path was nothing more than scree and shale, rising straight up.

  They finally stopped to drink water. She was panting, but Nik didn’t seem the least out of breath. He stayed too fit to be winded by a climb like this.

  The peak of Mount Mytikas was still forty-five minutes away. Fran’s muscles were clearly aching so badly, Nik declared they’d opt for Mount Scolio, the second-highest peak. It was only twenty minutes further.

  When they arrived, clouds had started to form, blocking out the view of the Aegean. Maybe the elements were delivering an omen. They took some pictures with their cell phones. When she was back home, she’d have them made up so she could pore over them and feast her eyes.

  “Thank you for bringing me up here, Nik.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He might be civil, but there was no softening him up. Before last night, he would have told her some fascinating tale about the gods who played here and worked their intrigues on each other. She missed that exciting man who’d brought her alive in a way she would never know again. Already she was in mourning for him.

  After they signed their names in the register, he suggested they head back. Now that he’d done his duty, she sensed he was anxious to get down the mountain and fly home.

  She followed him, but the descent was far from easy. Fran had to be careful where to place her feet on the slippery shale. You could twist an ankle if you weren’t careful. She had a feeling that for the next few days, she’d suffer from sore knees more than anything else.

  By the time they reached the tent, it looked so welcoming, she went inside and crashed on top of her bag. He paused in the entry to look down at her. She eyed him warily. “I’m worn out. Can we stay here for a half hour to rest before starting back?”

  His lips thinned. “You do it at your own risk.”

  “Nik—please— I can’t bear for us to have trouble.”

  He stood there and drained his water bottle, staring at her the whole time through narrowed eyes. “Has this morning’s hike worn you down enough that you’re ready to tell me what I want to know?”

  She sat up, circling her knees with her arms. “This is so hard for me,” she whispered.

  “Why?”

  The air crackled with tension. He hunkered down to pull some rolls and dried fruit from his pack. Being the decent man he was, he shared them with her.

  “Because I want things I don’t have and probably never will.”

  Nik squinted at her. “What kinds of things?”

  “You’ll mock me when I tell you.”

  “Try me.”

  “I ache for the one thing that has eluded me. Mainly, a good marriage and children. I need to put myself in a position where I can meet a man who wants the same thing. When you asked me if I’d consider becoming Demi’s permanent nanny, I thought seriously about it before I told you no. Demi is precious and I already love her, but being a nanny would put me out of circulation.”

  “Fran—”

  “I know what I’m talking about,” she interrupted him. “You’d have to be a woman to understand. To be the bridesmaid for the rest of my life is too ghastly to contemplate. I still have some good years ahead of me and—”

  “Just how old are you?” he broke in, sounding upset. A scowl marred his handsome features.

  “Twenty-eight. I know it’s not old, but having been married, I feel much older. And let’s face it, I’m out of the loop. Since you’ve never been married, you wouldn’t know about those feelings, but they’re real, believe me.”

  He handed her some sugared almonds. “Since you’re not an unmarried male, you don’t have any concept of what my life is like either. Everyone sees the bachelor who can sleep with any woman he wants with no strings. My life is constantly portrayed as something it isn’t and no amount of protests on my part will change it. By that blush on your cheeks, I can see you’ve had those same thoughts about me.”

  There was no point in her denying it. “After reading about you in a magazine, I might have entertained certain ideas at first, but no longer.”

  “Even after I came close to ravishing you last night?”

  “Nik—nothing happened that we didn’t both want.”

  “Your honesty continues to confound me.”

  “Why? Have most of the women you’ve known been deceitful?”

  He put the sack of nuts back in the pack before moving closer to her. “No. The fault lies with me for never giving any of them a chance.”

  Fran cocked her head. “Tell me what your life has really been like, the one no one knows about.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  NIK’S eyes wandered over her features. “Like you, I was physically adventurous and logged more than my share of visits to the E.R. for stitches and concussions from water and climbing accidents. My parents drummed it into my head that I had to get top grades or they would forbid me from doing the activities I loved.

  “Since I couldn’t bear the thought of that, I made deals with them. I would study hard and put in my hours at the company, then I’d be given a reward. As a result, when it came time to play, I played harder than my brothers and enjoyed my girlfriends. I went through a phase of wanting to be Greece’s greatest soccer player, then that fantasy faded and I decided I wanted to be a famous race-car driver.”

  “You believed yourself invincible,” she said with a grin.

  “With top grades came other rewards. I’d been saving the money I earned, and I traveled to the States and South America. While I was climbing in the Andes I met a guy who was putting an expedition together to climb Mount Everest. When I got back from my trip, I put in for a permit to go with him. That climb changed my life.”

  “In what way?”

  “We got caught in a blizzard and lost two of the men. When they fell, I was pulled away from the ledge. The rope saved me, but I was flung back against the rock wall and ended up with inte
rnal damage. At first everyone thought I was dead.”

  “Nik—”

  “I was in the hospital for over two months for a series of surgeries. It took me a year to fully recover and I realized I was lucky to be alive. Like you, I did things sometimes without really thinking of the impact on the family. They’d always given me a wide berth because they knew I couldn’t be stopped. It took a force of nature to bring me to my senses.”

  “So that’s the reason you haven’t climbed all the mountains of your country.”

  He winked at her. “It’s one of them. When I saw the toll my accident took on my parents, I decided I’d better get serious about work. The day I joined my brothers in the upper echelons of our company’s business, a lot of my playing ended.

  “Despite the gossip, my experiences with women have been sporadic of necessity. I found I liked the work. The stimulating challenge of increasing profits and cutting costs appealed to me in a brand-new way. I dug in to make up for lost time. No doubt that’s when I developed my Atlas complex.”

  “Ah. Now I’m beginning to understand.”

  “That was five years ago.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “Thirty-four.”

  “And in that short amount of time you surpassed everyone’s expectations to the point that you earned your place at the head of the company. You’re young to have so much responsibility, but you’ve obviously earned it. I’m proud of you and so sorry you lost your sister. The pain must be excruciating.”

  “You’ve known that kind of pain, too.”

  “Yes. But in your case, you have that adorable little Demi who’ll always bring joy to you and your family. She’s so fun to play with. I’d love to see her again.”

  In a lightning move he grasped her hands. Slowly, he kissed her palms, sending erotic sensations through her hands to the other parts of her body. “Whenever you talk about her, I can feel this deep wound inside of you. Maybe if you talked about it, you could eventually get over it.”

  Oh, Nik... She lowered her head, not having counted on his exquisite tenderness.

  “Tell me,” he urged.

  “In my later teens I developed a disease called endometriosis. A lot of women suffer from it. My case was so severe, it prevents me from ever having a child. I’d grown up hoping that one day I’d get married and have a cute little boy like my baby brother, but—”

  “Francesca—”

  Before she knew it, she was lying in his arms. His embrace opened the floodgates. For a few minutes she sobbed quietly against his shoulder, breathing in the wonderful male scent of him. “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “Rob knew about my condition before we married. He told me he was fine with the idea of adoption. I believed him.

  “Yet a year later he said he still wasn’t ready. Eventually I asked him to go to counseling with me because I wanted a baby. In the first session he blurted that he wanted his own flesh and blood or no children at all. I was enough for him. His admission shattered me.”

  “Agape mou,” Nik whispered, covering her face with featherlight kisses. Fran didn’t know what the words meant, but his tone was so piercingly sweet, she nestled deeper in his arms, never wanting to move again.

  * * *

  Nik awakened while Fran was still asleep. Both of them were already emotionally exhausted. The fatigue after their hike had done the rest. They’d slept all afternoon. She was still curled into him with her arm flung across his chest, almost possessively, he thought.

  Much as he didn’t want to leave her for a second, he knew she’d be stirring before long and they needed dinner. Extricating himself carefully from her arms, he left the tent and hurried down to the refuge. The staff fixed him up with some boxed lunches and drinks.

  On the way back, he phoned his helicopter pilot. Nik told him to meet them at the dropoff point at seven the next morning. After hanging up, he checked his phone messages. His father had let him know Demi was doing better.

  That was a great relief. Under the circumstances, there was no reason to call him back. Nik was on vacation. Since Fran had pointed out to him that he did his work and everyone else’s without thinking about it, he knew she was right.

  When he entered the tent, he found Fran on her feet brushing her glorious hair. It flowed around her shoulders. Her smoky-blue eyes lit up when she saw him. “Food—” she cried. “I’m starving. Bless you.”

  Nik put everything down between their sleeping bags. “Let’s eat and then walk over to the stream for a bath.”

  Her eyes rounded. “Is it deep enough?”

  “Probably not for a full submersion.”

  “That’s just as well because I don’t have a bathing suit.”

  They both sat down to eat. “Don’t let that stop you.”

  She sent him an impish smile. “So you’re saying you wouldn’t be scandalized if I waded in without it?”

  His pulse accelerated. “I would be so overjoyed, I’d probably expire on the spot of a massive heart attack.”

  “I love the things you say, Nik.” Ditto. “Do you suppose the gods wore clothes during their picnics up on top?”

  Laughter rumbled out of him. “I never thought about it. I find I’m dazzled by the sight before my eyes right here.” Upon that remark, he tucked into his sandwich.

  “Kellie thinks you look like a Greek god.”

  “Then it’s a good thing she couldn’t see the scars on my midsection when I was holding up the world.”

  Her smile warmed him in all the hidden places. “I’m sure she was talking about the whole picture. American women, and probably all the other women in existence, have a certain penchant for the authentic Greek-god look. Like I told you in the hospital, it’s a good thing Demi inherited her mother’s features. As for everything else, she’s almost too beautiful to be real. Her black hair and olive skin are still a wonder to me.”

  “Just as your northern-European blond locks and violet eyes stop traffic over here.”

  “Just once I’d like to see that happen.”

  She never took him seriously. “It already did on the hike yesterday.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There were two guys watching you all the way to the refuge. At one point they stopped. In my hearing they commented I had it made to be with a goddess like you.”

  “They really called me a goddess?” She laughed in patent disbelief. “Thank you for telling me that. You’ve made my day.” She drank her soda.

  “Leandros confided that Kellie was going to find you a husband while you were here. I must say she knew what she was doing when she asked you to take this trip. My helicopter pilot Keiko wasn’t able to keep his eyes off of you. As for my brothers...”

  “Oh, stop—” She put down her can. “Let’s get serious for a moment. Don’t you think we should break up camp and head down before it gets dark?”

  Without looking at her he said, “Plans have changed. Because we took such a long nap, I phoned my pilot. He’ll be waiting for us at the dropoff point in the morning at seven.”

  He heard her take an extra breath. “In that case I’m going to the stream to take a little sponge bath.”

  “Do you want any help?”

  “I’ll call out if I need it.”

  Nik looked up in time to see the blood flow into her cheeks. She reached for her backpack and stepped outside like a demure maiden who sensed the hunter.

  While she was gone, he cleaned up their tent. W
hen she returned, smelling of scented soap and toothpaste and wearing a new blouse, he grabbed his pack and took off. After following the stream to a pool, he stripped and took a real bath.

  Half an hour later he rejoined her in a clean T-shirt and jeans, and found her inside her bag, reading a book with the flashlight. She’d braided her hair. It lay over her shoulder like a shiny pelt, just begging him to undo it. The woman had no idea what she did to him.

  Darkness had crept over the forest, sealing them inside. All that was left to do was tuck them in for a summer’s night he could wish would go on forever.

  He lay down on top of his bag and turned to her. “What are you reading?”

  “The Memphremegog Massacre. It’s about a gruesome murder that takes place in a monastery. But after a day like today, I can’t seem to get into it.” She put the book down and turned off the light. “You were gone for a while. Any news from home?”

  “Yes. My father left a message.”

  “Problems?” she asked a trifle anxiously

  “No. Demi seems to be doing fine.”

  “Oh, thank goodness. Did you talk to him?”

  “No. I took your advice and didn’t call him back. I’m on vacation with the first woman I’ve ever taken on a trip and want to enjoy it.”

  After a silence, “Are you? Enjoying it I mean?”

  “What if I told you that despite everything, I’ve never been happier?”

  “Nik—”

  “What about you? Are you having a good time?”

  He heard her bag rustle. The next thing he knew she wrapped her arm around his neck and kissed him on the lips. “Despite everything, I’m in heaven.” She kissed him again all over his face, brows, eyes and nose, as if she really meant it. “I’ve decided I’ve been in a dream all this time because no man could be as wonderful as you. Goodnight.”

  “Don’t go to sleep yet,” he begged after she let go of him and moved back to her bag. “I need to talk to you.”