His voice was a taunt, both sensual and cruel as he took her back to that night. ‘That is how I know,’ he said, and then the thick, rich voice stopped and he pulled back and looked at her face, flushed in the porch light, confusion darting in her eyes.
He confused her, he excited her and made her want to sink to her knees and run, all at the same time.
But then he made things abundantly clear.
‘We were so hot, Cecelia, and we could have been good, but you chose to walk away. You left. And then you denied me the knowledge of my child and I hate you for that.’ And then, when she’d already got the dark message, he gave it a second coat and painted it black. ‘I absolutely hate you.’
‘No mixed messages, then?’ She somehow managed a quip but there was nothing that could lighten this moment.
‘Not one. Let me make things very clear. I am not taking you to Greece to get to know you better, or to see if there is any chance for us, because there isn’t. I want no further part of you. The fact is, you are my daughter’s mother and she is too young to be apart from you. That won’t be the case in the near future.’
‘How near?’
Fear licked the sides of her heart.
‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘I know nothing about babies, save what I have found out today. But I learn fast,’ he said, ‘and I will employ only the best so very soon, during my access times, Pandora and I will do just fine without you.’
‘Luka, please...’ She could not stand the thought of being away from Pandora and she was spinning at the thought of taking her daughter to Greece, but Luka was done.
‘I’m going, Cecelia,’ Luka said. ‘I have nothing left to say to you.’
That wasn’t quite true, for he had one question.
‘Did you know you were pregnant when you left?’ Luka asked.
‘I had an idea...’
‘The truth, Cecelia.’
And she ached now for the days when he had been less on guard and had called her Cece, even though it had grated so much at the time.
And now it was time to be honest and admit she had known she was pregnant when she had left. ‘Yes.’
‘But,’ Luka pointed out, ‘given we hadn’t slept together then, your resignation had nothing to do with the pregnancy.’
That was another part that stung, Luka thought as his driver opened the door to his car—she’d been leaving already.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SILENCE WAS CRUEL.
Where once there would have been conversation...where once he had annoyed her by shortening her name...now that delicious voice was no longer aimed at her.
As promised, a car arrived at nine but, rather than Luka, it was his latest PA who got out. She introduced herself as Amber and gave Cecelia a very efficient smile when she raised a question and assured her that of course there was a baby seat in the car.
The driver dealt with her bags but Luka barely looked up when she strapped in Pandora.
He was wearing khaki linen pants and a black T-shirt—more casually dressed than she had ever seen him—yet he certainly cut a dash. He was wearing shades and looked very sullen, and only when Pandora was safely strapped in did he acknowledge them.
Cecelia got a brief nod.
For Pandora, he took off his shades and she got the benefit of his full smile, a kiss on the forehead and the warmth of his voice.
Cecelia watched as Pandora smiled and cooed up at him and seemed to know him already.
He looked tired, Cecelia noted.
Beautiful, but very tired and she thought of the past few days he must have had, with his father dying and finding out that he had a daughter. Yet he turned on the smiles for Pandora. She had never thought this side to Luka existed, but then again she too had fallen in love with Pandora at first sight.
As they were driven to the embassy, the incredibly efficient Amber addressed Cecelia.
‘The accommodation has all been arranged but anything that you or Pandora need, please just make me aware.’
Cecelia gave a curt nod.
That used to be her world, Cecelia thought—taking care of Luka’s ex-lovers and all the ensuing dramas their trysts had created.
Admittedly, she hadn’t been in Amber’s situation, sorting out the sudden news that her boss had a baby, but Amber was handling the situation as if it happened every day.
Oh, please let him not have slept with her, Cecelia thought as Amber carried on with her questions. ‘The chef has asked if there are any food issues or allergies?’
‘No.’ Cecelia shook her head, then tried to soften her terse response. ‘I can eat anything...’
But that wasn’t what Amber had been asking—‘I meant are there any allergies or issues with Pandora?’
She glanced over at Luka, who was staring out of the window. She saw the ghost of a smile on his lips as she was put in her place.
This wasn’t about the mother!
‘Pandora drinks formula,’ Cecelia tartly responded. ‘I hardly need a gourmet chef to prepare her bottles.’
‘Well, I do,’ Luka said, and turned to look right at her. ‘So, please answer the questions correctly. From this day forward I need to know such things.’
Cecelia briefly closed her eyes. ‘No,’ she answered. ‘Pandora has no allergies that I know of.’
‘Good,’ he said, and then got back to looking out of the window.
The embassy was efficient.
The flight was, for Cecelia, an emotional hell.
There was seemingly no strained atmosphere on his part, for he simply carried on as if she were not there.
His jet was luxurious and Cecelia knew it well, though it felt very different today. Instead of joining Luka at the table for a meal and talking work, once Pandora had been fed and settled, her meal was served in an area to the rear of the lounge.
The food was no doubt sublime, but Cecelia, who had earlier said she’d eat anything, just pushed it around her plate. She felt awkward as she dined alone while Luka and Amber sat at the table and went through the sudden changes to his schedule.
That used to be me, Cecelia thought.
Her old life seemed a very long way off right now. So much was different, but how she felt about Luka remained.
All she had put on hold by leaving, all she had attempted to erase by distance, had come flooding back.
Quite simply, Luka Kargas was as devastatingly stunning to Cecelia as he had been the day they had met.
Motherhood had changed an awful lot of things, but it seemed it hadn’t changed that one thing in the slightest.
With the meals cleared away, Cecelia dozed, one ear trained to listen out for Pandora.
Amber was busy on the computer and, though tired, Luka knew he was too wired to sleep.
He walked over to the bassinet and looked at the daughter he had met just yesterday.
Pandora was perfection.
Her tiny nails were trim and neat as her fingers closed around his. And she wore a little white cotton baby suit dotted with daisies.
And then he looked over at her mother and this time his face did not harden.
Cecelia wore a grey linen dress that was rather crumpled, and he noticed her once immaculate hair needed a cut. There were grey smudges beneath her eyes and even her lips were too pale.
It was as if all Cece’s colour, all her energy had drained into Pandora and the anger in him dimmed a notch when he thought of all she must have been through.
And then she must have felt him watching her, for Cecelia opened her eyes and met his.
‘Why don’t you go and lie down?’ Luka suggested.
‘Pandora’s due to wake soon.’
‘I’ll be here.’
She felt dismissed as she was shown to a cabin, though it was utter bliss to lie down after a night spent frantically packing for Xanero.
* * *
A light touch to her arm jolted Cecelia awake. She got up from the bed and headed to the main cabin for the final descent i
nto Xanero.
Thanks to rather too many searches on the Internet as she’d attempted to put together the mystery of him, Cecelia actually recognised the island from the air. She saw white Orthodox churches with their round domes, and the sprawling whitewashed buildings that gleamed against the backdrop of an azure Mediterranean.
They landed behind the sprawling complex and were driven in air-conditioned comfort to the villa that would be her home for the next week.
Luka got out and it was he who held Pandora as he pushed open a large cobalt-blue door and stood back as Cecelia stepped in.
It was stunning, with mosaic-tiled floors, huge couches and an endless view of the ocean, but she could not take it all in with Luka there.
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘I want to check you have everything you need for Pandora.’
There was everything she could possibly need and a whole lot more should she possibly want it. She even had her own pool, Cecelia noticed as she looked out. Then she thought of Luka and his start in life and there was both jealousy and anger combined as she thought of him chatting up women.
Of course she said nothing, just remained quiet as he showed her around, until they came to what was clearly a nursery.
There was a room with white organza fluttering in the windows and a heavy dark wooden crib made up in white bedlinen. There was a little intercom on a table, and it was a long way off from the main suite.
‘Pandora sleeps in with me.’
‘I have had an identical room made up in my villa,’ Luka said. ‘The nanny suggested that it might help for her surroundings to be familiar when Pandora is with me.’
Yes, it made perfect sense, but she felt with her heart, not her head. ‘I would like her crib moved through to my room.’
‘As you wish,’ Luka said.
‘And she’s too young to be away from me overnight.’
‘You’re not breastfeeding,’ he pointed out.
‘Another black mark...’
‘Oh, grow up,’ he retorted.
‘Luka, I don’t want her waking up in the night and me not being there.’ She was starting to panic, and that was something she did not want Luka to see, but she could remember waking up and calling out for her mother in the night and she would not put Pandora through the same. ‘I am not having her apart from me.’
‘You worry about a night spent away from your daughter, yet your silence sentenced me to three months without her. You denied me the chance to plan for her, or see my child when she was born...so don’t start complaining about one night. Cecelia, it is time to get used to the fact that I am her father and I’m not going anywhere.’
He saw her throat tighten as she swallowed and caught her rapid blink and then watched as Cecelia sat down.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m just warm...’
He frowned because it was shady and cool in here and the journey had certainly been a comfortable one.
‘I was up all night, packing, trying to make sure I had everything...’
‘I told you that I would take care of all that.’
‘Well, I’m not very used to...’
Cecelia stopped.
She was rather too used to having to take care of everything and could not quite get her head around the fact there was now someone else.
It both unsettled her and comforted her.
The decisions regarding Pandora felt so huge at times. Even giving up the breast for a bottle had been angst-ridden.
Never had she imagined that had Luka known about Pandora she might have been able to discuss it with him.
It wasn’t the heat that had unsettled her, or exhaustion.
His words had hit like shrapnel buried deep and she sat there as he poured some iced water and then handed it to her.
Yet she could not think about how his words had effected her now.
‘I guessed you wouldn’t have time for shopping so Amber is sorting you out a wardrobe...’
‘I can dress myself, Luka.’
‘Well, there’s not much call for navy suits here...’
It was a dig at her staid wardrobe.
‘You don’t know me out of work.’
‘Oh, but I can guess.’
He was right.
Cecelia had sat on her bedroom floor with her suitcase last night and known that the truth was she had nothing to pack for a holiday.
Not really.
But then he surprised her.
‘I apologise,’ Luka said suddenly. ‘That was uncalled-for. How you dress is your concern.’
It was a rather backhanded apology and she gave a small mirthless laugh.
‘I’ve lost weight since last year,’ Cecelia said. ‘And finding a capsule wardrobe so I can swan off to Greece at a moment’s notice hasn’t exactly been high on my list of priorities.’
‘Then it’s lucky that it’s being taken care of,’ he said, and she nodded. ‘Is there anything else you need?’
‘No.’
‘There is a spa and a salon. You don’t need an appointment. I have told them to accommodate you whenever you so choose. And there is the restaurant and a table reserved solely for you for the duration of your stay. Naturally, if you would prefer to dine here, just say.’
Cecelia nodded.
‘When she wakes up, if you call the number by the phone you will be put through to the nanny, who will come and fetch Pandora.’
‘How can you have arranged a nanny so quickly? Luka, I’m not just handing her over to someone you’ve hired in a rush...’
‘There are several nannies at this resort and, given the clientele, we hire only the best. The best of the best shall be caring for my daughter. Her name is Roula and she has worked here for more than five years and was once the private nanny to royalty. You didn’t check with me before you left her with a neighbour, and I did not question that choice either. I assume you want the best for her. Please afford me the same courtesy and never again suggest that I don’t have my daughter’s interests at heart.’
He gave the sleeping Pandora a light kiss and handed her over before striding off. Cecelia sat there, holding her daughter, his words playing over and over in her head.
‘I’m not going anywhere.’
They were words she had never expected to hear, and she was scared to believe them.
Fair enough, he was angry now about being kept in the dark, but when that anger had faded, when Pandora was teething and screaming deep in the night...
Yes, it felt like shrapnel was making its way to the surface as she recalled the fear of waking up in a house with no one there.
Pushing open her mother’s bedroom door and seeing the empty bed.
Creeping downstairs, ears straining for the sound of chatter and laughter and bracing herself to be scolded for disturbing the grown-ups.
But no one had been there.
She had never known when her mother would be back, and then one day she hadn’t been. Cecelia held her daughter tight and swore she would never know the same.
Cecelia jumped as the sound of a soft bell reverberated through the villa.
At the door stood Amber and two porters, along with another woman who was sultry looking and wore a sarong.
‘Luka said you wouldn’t have time to pack,’ Amber said as she breezed in with the porters, who carried a whole lot of designer bags. ‘They won’t be long...’
She was mildly grateful to Luka for the excuse he had given Amber.
‘And this is Roula.’ Amber introduced them. ‘The nanny.’
Oh, my!
When Luka had said she’d been a nanny for royalty, somehow Cecelia had imagined a crisp white dress and big black rubber shoes.
Instead, the nanny was barefoot and stunning.
‘Luka suggested that I come over and meet you,’ Roula said. ‘You can tell me your daughter’s ways and anything I need to know and hopefully meeting me will make things easier on you.’
It would be easier if she wasn
’t so stunning.
Pandora woke up and smiled when Roula first met her and didn’t cry when she was held.
‘Sophie—Luka’s mother—is so excited to meet her,’ Roula said. ‘After such a sad loss there is sunshine again.’
There was no more putting it off, and all too soon she watched as the gorgeous Roula headed off with her daughter.
And it hurt.
Not just that they were apart, more that there was a grandmother excited to meet Pandora, a family gathering taking place from which she was excluded.
After they had gone, she opened the huge dark wooden dresser to see what clothes had been chosen for her and glimpsed an array of terribly sexy one-piece swimming suits cut high in the leg with plunging backs.
She did not belong in this world.
There was a rose-gold bikini that Cecelia held for a moment, though could never imagine putting on, and she realised that there was colour now lining her wardrobe.
There was a rose-gold silk dress too, in the same fabric as the bikini, a sensual throw-on for when you dined by the pool, Cecelia guessed.
And there were fragrances and oils by the bath.
Heaven knew, she needed them.
Her habits had long since slipped by the wayside. First to go had been her routine foils and so now her hair was back to its original strawberry blonde, with some rather long dry ends.
And she had long since stopped straightening it.
So much for looking sleek and together when she faced him and told him about Pandora.
Instead he had found out on his own.
And now, here in Xanero, she faced his wrath.
CHAPTER TWELVE
PARADISE WAS LONELY without him.
She called for lunch and ate in the villa and then, after a doze, she put on the most modest of the swimming costumes, took a book outside and read by the pool.
The book didn’t pull her in, though.
All too often Cecelia found herself looking up and thinking of Luka and his misspent youth.
And so she gave in, tied on a sarong and went for a walk along Luka’s private beach.
The Mediterranean shimmered like an endless sapphire and the white sand was pristine, but there was no solace there either.
For Luka’s yacht was moored in the distance and she thought of the morning he had invited her to join him.
Claiming His Hidden Heir Page 12