She made her way up in the elevator and again saw that she had beaten Bridgette to it.
Yet she was not the first here.
Or the second.
Her desk had been moved. And it was not arranged the way she usually left it.
There was a laptop on it that wasn’t hers and when she went behind it there was a bag on the floor that felt like finding the wrong shoes by the bed.
She had spent the night fighting not just whether or not to tell him but, if she did, how.
He had, she realised, removed the opportunity to do so.
‘Cecelia.’
She turned to the low, familiar sound of his voice and the clipped tones at Luka’s unfamiliar correct usage of her name.
‘I have hired your replacement.’
‘So I see.’
‘There is no need for you to stay on.’
‘What about...?’ Her mind darted to the million and one things she needed to pass on. ‘There’s the Athens—’
‘Sorted,’ Luka interrupted. ‘Of course, you shall be paid while not serving your notice.’
‘And this is because I didn’t return from lunch?’
‘No, this is because of your attitude.’
‘Am I back at school?’ Cecelia flared.
‘Did you have an attitude problem then?’ Luka smoothly responded.
No, she hadn’t had an attitude problem at school.
She’d been diligent and hard-working and had toed the line, determined that her life would be different from her mother’s.
And neither had she had an attitude at home, for she’d been trying so hard not to get in her aunt and uncle’s way.
Her attitude only changed when she was with him.
Luka brought out both the best and the worst in her.
And he was the worst.
She knew that, and it was proved when Sabine came out.
She had the grace to offer a somewhat awkward smile in Cecelia’s direction.
Her black hair was a little messy, like she had a case of bedhead... It appeared they had worked through the night.
Or otherwise.
Cecelia didn’t trust Luka enough not to consider otherwise.
And Cecelia knew then the answer to the problem she had wrestled with since the doctor had delivered the baby bombshell to her.
No way would she tell him.
She did not want her child subjected to the life he led.
Cecelia knew from experience the damage that could cause.
And if he could snuff her out of his life overnight, if he could so calmly watch as Sabine handed her a package with all her things and escorted her out, then he could easily do the same to his child.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE DECISION ABOUT whether to tell him was not, of course, as clear cut as that.
For the first couple of months a generous dash of anger fired Cecelia’s spirit, for she certainly hadn’t deserved that.
How dared he have Sabine walk her out of the office? How dared he question her attitude, when he was the most arrogant person on earth?
Her anger, combined with a healthy dose of denial as to the truth of her predicament, got Cecelia through the first trimester of her pregnancy.
Cecelia did consider a termination, but in the end could not see herself going through with it.
Her father had wanted her mother to abort her, and she was also rather certain that Luka would suggest the same.
So she hid the news from the world and worked hard in her new job.
As long as she didn’t show, she could work hard and pretend that nothing had changed.
At first she enjoyed the life where sixteen or more hours of her day were not devoted to Luka’s exhausting schedule, and eight hours of night time were not spent rejecting the hunger of her body for him.
Except she lied, for now she had experienced him, it was not fantasy that peppered her thoughts and dreams but intoxicating memories.
Unlike Luka, her new diplomat boss was so stunningly politically correct that he made no mention of her expanding waistline. But as Christmas approached, Cecelia formally told him that she would not be renewing her contract at the end of her term.
Cecelia had always been sensible with money and had some savings, but she was starting to glimpse how impossible it would be to combine her regular work with motherhood.
Anxiety about the future woke Cecelia up in the middle of the night, and of course there were times that she considered telling Luka.
But not like this, Cecelia thought as she nervously headed to her aunt and uncle’s house to tell them the news. Not when her heart was fluttering in fear and she was constantly on the edge of tears.
On the Tube she checked her hair and make-up and could see the anxiety in her own eyes in the mirror as she tried to fathom how they would take it.
‘Cecelia.’ Her aunt frowned when she opened the front door to her niece. ‘You didn’t call to say you were dropping by.’
Should she have to? Cecelia thought, but as usual said nothing.
And neither did she remove her coat.
She sat in the drawing room as tea was served and felt as uncomfortable as she had on the day she had first arrived here.
It was a very austere house and Cecelia could remember sitting on this very seat as her grandfather had spoken with his son about boarding school for her.
‘How’s work?’ her aunt asked.
‘It’s going well.’ Cecelia nodded. ‘The hours are much better than in my previous job. However, I’ve told him that I shan’t be renewing my contract.’
‘Have you found something else?’ her aunt asked.
Cecelia took a sip of tea and then replaced the cup in the saucer and made herself say it. ‘No, I shan’t be working for a few months because I’ve found out that I’m expecting.’ When her aunt said nothing, Cecelia made things a touch clearer. ‘A baby.’
‘I wasn’t aware you’d been dating since the break-up.’
‘Gordon and I finished more than a year ago,’ Cecelia attempted, but she felt her face flush, because what had happened that night with Luka couldn’t even be described as a date, let alone a relationship.
They weren’t a couple.
Quite simply, it had been the most impulsive night of her life.
And as for the morning...
Cecelia forced herself not to dwell on that. Right now she had to get through telling her aunt.
‘My contract expires a couple of months before the baby is due and I can afford to take a few months off.’
‘So what does the father have to say on the matter?’
‘I haven’t told him,’ Cecelia admitted. ‘Yet.’
Deep down Cecelia knew she had to tell Luka, but for now she was trying to get used to the idea herself. Certainly she did not want to be teary and hysterical when she told him the news, which was frankly how she felt most of the time.
Not that Cecelia showed it. As always, she appeared outwardly calm.
Yes, it might be a difficult conversation to have with her aunt but Cecelia hoped that she would soon come round.
And then hope died.
She watched as her aunt added another spoon of sugar to her tea and stirred, and then placed the spoon on the saucer.
The silence had been a long one and Cecelia did not attempt to fill it. Instead, she stayed quiet to allow her aunt to process the news. When she did, her eyes met Cecelia’s.
‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it? Well, I raised your mother’s mistake,’ she said. ‘You need to know Cecelia that I shan’t be doing it again for you.’
Cecelia felt a shiver run the length of her spine as she met her aunt’s eyes, and in that moment the past twenty years or so made a little more sense.
She had never felt welcome here and now she knew why.
A mistake.
That was what her aunt had just called her.
Deep down, Cecelia had known it, for she had done all that she cou
ld not to make any trouble for her aunt and uncle and not to live up to her mother’s reputation.
It would seem in her aunt’s eyes she just had.
‘I should go,’ Cecelia said, polite to the very end. ‘Please, give my love to my uncle.’
Instead of going home, Cecelia headed for her old workplace and sat in a café nearby, looking up at the towering high-rise that housed Kargas Holdings and wondering what to do.
A mistake.
Over and over it played in her mind.
They were the same words her father had used the one time she had seen him.
She tried to fathom Luka’s reaction—she pictured his beautiful features marred by anger, and she imagined them locked in a bitter row, and right there in the café Cecelia started to cry.
She simply wasn’t ready to reveal the pregnancy to him, Cecelia decided, if she was breaking down just imagining it.
No, she would tell Luka about the pregnancy when she felt calmer and when she could do it without being reduced to tears.
In the end, it was an uneventful but terribly lonely pregnancy.
Her six months working for the diplomat were soon up, and of course her contract was not renewed.
She was barely speaking to her aunt and uncle, and the few friends she had were somewhat aghast that she had gone ahead with the pregnancy.
Worse, though, she missed him.
Luka.
Not as the father of the baby she carried.
More, Cecelia missed the many different colours he had once added to her day.
She could feel the kicks of her baby, only it wasn’t just duty that had her call Luka, it was the ache to hear his voice.
His private number must have been changed, for an automated voice told her to check the number and try again.
So she called the front desk and braced herself to speak with Bridgette or Sabine and to ask to be put through to Luka.
Instead it was an unfamiliar female voice she met with.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Kargas isn’t taking any unscheduled calls.’
‘I used to work for him,’ Cecelia explained. ‘I was his PA and I—’
‘As I said, Mr Kargas isn’t taking any unscheduled calls.’
The voice was as brusque and efficient as Cecelia herself had once been when dealing with yet another slightly desperate female on the line.
‘I have to speak with him,’ Cecelia said. ‘Can you let him know that I called?’
‘Of course,’ came the terse response. ‘Can you spell your first name, please...’
He did not return the call.
It really was a terribly lonely time.
And now that Cecelia did not have work to occupy her, she caved under her broken heart for the first time.
She should have walked away at the outset.
Or she should never have turned to the huskiness of his voice that night.
Yet, even heavily pregnant, just the thought of the frantic sex that had taken place hit so low in her belly that she almost sank to her knees at the memory she could never erase.
But it hadn’t even been that.
No, it was the morning after she would correct if she could.
She would peel away from his kiss and reach for a condom.
She would turn from his embrace and do things more sensibly.
Yet she could not see how, for she had been lost, they had been lost, and so deep into each other that even with the benefit of hindsight she could not play it another way, for she wanted him even now.
* * *
Spring came, and three weeks from her due date Cecelia tried to call him one more time.
‘Mr Kargas isn’t taking any unscheduled calls.’
‘You sound like a broken record,’ Cecelia snapped, and ended the call as she realised her pride had waned. Labour kind of did that to you, and perhaps mid-contraction wasn’t the best time to tell him that she was having his child.
So she called for a taxi instead.
‘Good luck, my dear,’ Mrs Dawson called as Cecelia headed out.
‘Thank you.’
Oh, it was lonely indeed.
And painful.
Cecelia wanted her old life back.
The ordered one.
The one she’d had prior to meeting Luka Kargas.
She did not want to be a mother, and certainly not a single one, so she sobbed through the pain and rued her mistakes.
But then, at ten minutes past six on a spring morning, for the second time in her life, Cecelia fell in love.
The first time had been with Luka.
There had never been anyone else in her life she had felt that way about, no one who came close.
But second-time love was the absolute shock of her life, for as she pulled the infant from her stomach into her arms, the world, in an instant, was put to right.
She had a daughter.
A tiny daughter who was very pink with a shock of dark hair and her cry was lusty and loud.
Oh!
Cecelia had told herself during the pregnancy that even if she felt little now, love would one day grow.
Her baby would never feel as unloved as her mother had been, even if she had to fake it for a while.
Yet there was never a love less fake, for Cecelia utterly adored her baby girl on sight.
‘Have you thought of names?’ the midwife asked as Cecelia gazed at her child.
‘I liked Emily,’ Cecelia said.
That had been before she had met her, though.
That was before she had locked eyes with a tiny, dark-haired, dark-eyed girl.
Her secret.
A secret she must one day reveal, Cecelia knew that.
But not yet.
She did not want the beauty of this tiny life marred just yet, she did not want the rows and accusations that would surely follow such a revelation.
The DNA tests, the lawyers, the disdain.
Cecelia could envisage it.
And that was at best.
She had nothing in her past to predict otherwise, and so she was in no rush to reveal to the billionaire playboy that she had birthed his child.
And she knew now her daughter’s name.
It was, Cecelia knew, absolutely the perfect name for her and as she first said it she kissed her baby’s soft cheek.
‘Pandora.’
CHAPTER NINE
SUMMER HAD RETURNED.
Luka had by far preferred the previous one.
But it was good to be home.
Yes, he thought of London as such.
Xanero was beautiful, and of course family was there, but it was London that was his true home.
Luka glanced up from the letter he was reading and looked out through tinted windows as his driver inched the car along the busy street.
He had been in London on occasion, but it been a hellish year on the private front, and the city had not been his base.
Amber, his ultra-efficient PA, had handed him a pile of personal correspondence and he wanted it dealt with before he turned his mind to work.
There was a pile of sympathy cards and letters that spoke of a hard-working family man that Luka did not recognise as his father.
‘How was the funeral?’ Amber asked.
‘It went well,’ Luka nodded.
Yesterday his father had been buried.
This time last year he had thought it would be his mother’s funeral he would attend first, yet after months of intensive treatment and care, Sophie Kargas was doing well.
Luka had flown with her to Athens and after each treatment he would check them into the luxurious hotel he had there. Sophie had enjoyed the Princess Suite and had been treated exactly as that for the first time in her life.
‘You could have this every day,’ Luka had said. ‘Say the word and I will take care of you and you will never have to deal with him.’
‘I shall never do that, Luka,’ his mother would reply.
Yet she was so much happier and lighter wi
thout him, and her decision to stay was something he would never quite understand.
And then, after each treatment, when her strength had returned they would go back to Xanero, where the new manager that Luka had hired would report directly to him.
Theo had reluctantly behaved, for he had been given no choice but to do so.
Luka had, quite literally, bought his mother a year of peace to focus on getting well.
There had been little peace for Luka, though—spending more time in Xanero had meant he’d been forced to face his demons.
No, he was not particularly proud of his start and he was tired too of the life he led.
And he regretted how he and Cece had parted.
Her decision to leave had been something he had not understood, in much the same way as his mother’s decision to stay, and so he had hastened it. He had made sure she would not work out her notice and had her removed from his life in his usual style.
Yet he still thought about her each day.
And just when he had decided it was time to return to London, just when his life could get back on track and he was considering looking her up, completely out of the blue his father had died.
The funeral had been hell for Luka.
He had delivered the eulogy, and for his mother’s sake he had spoken of the family man, his humble beginnings and the restaurant Theo had started. It had been a further rewriting of the past.
It was over with now.
‘Is there anything—?’ Amber started to ask.
But Luka cut in. ‘Everything has been taken care of.’
His family life remained out of bounds to his PA.
Sabine had proved to be a nightmare.
He should have paid more attention when Cecelia had said there was something about her that she didn’t like.
He had arrogantly assumed it was that Sabine was beautiful and had perhaps hoped that his hiring her would rouse a response in Cecelia.
Instead, his new PA had been the jealous one.
Sabine could not accept that he did not flirt and had no real interest in her, and when he had found her going through his private emails, he had fired her on the spot.
Amber had taken her place and, while she didn’t speak Greek, he had no complaints. She was diligent and efficient and had no interest in sleeping her way to the top.
Yes, while there was nothing to complain about on the work front, he missed Cecelia.
Claiming His Hidden Heir Page 9