by Kim Lawrence
‘Big boys don’t cry, Nicky.’
She froze, the blood draining from her face. It was a voice Georgie would never, could never, forget.
It was a voice she heard in her dreams and her nightmares.
She stood there oblivious to the eggs that had broken when she’d dropped her bags and were now running stickily over the carpet.
This isn’t happening.
Her first instinct was to run as fast and as far away as possible. She subdued her selfish reflex…she couldn’t run and leave Nicky. Anyway, running would have been futile if Angolos wanted her. A shudder slid down her spine. When Angolos wanted something he was totally focused and implacable.
Only Angolos didn’t want her; he had made that perfectly clear.
Her heart was hammering in her chest and her feet felt as though they had lead weights attached as she moved towards the living-room door. Her head was spinning but one question amongst the many that chased one another around in her mind was uppermost.
Why had Angolos turned up now?
‘I’m not a big boy. I’m lit…ul. Go away!’
Georgie heard the childish treble and her shoulders straightened. Leave him alone, she wanted to yell as she rushed impetuously forward.
She might prefer to walk into a lion’s den than voluntarily enter a room that held her husband, but, as she had learnt within two seconds of his birth, for Nicky she would do the unthinkable. Her own needs and desires would always be secondary to her son’s best interests…it was being a mother.
As she stepped through the door she almost collided with Ruth, who had offered to look after Nicky while she caught the last post and picked up some groceries and while her mother was staying with Robert. The woman barely seemed to register her presence.
Georgie’s eyes moved past her and gasped. Having enough volts to light up a county pass through her body could not have felt more shocking than looking at father and son.
‘Oh, my!’ she whispered. His hair still curled on his neck the same way.
She had never denied to herself the startling resemblance between Nicky and his father but now seeing them side by side it was impossible for anyone to ignore. The sight of the long, lean figure balanced on his heels in front of the child wiped every thought from her head… She felt desire clutch low in her belly.
She grimaced in self-disgust. It appalled her and, yes, scared her that, even after all this time and everything he had done to her, she still only had to look at him to be reduced to a screaming mass of hormones.
Georgie took a deep sustaining breath and lifted her chin. ‘Come here, Nicky,’ she said quietly.
She was aware that Angolos’s attention had slewed towards her. The hand she stretched towards her son had a perceptible tremor, but she studiously ignored him and kept her eyes trained on Nicky’s tear-stained face.
It was only a moment before the child responded, but during that moment she had to fight back the impulse that urged her to rush over and physically tear him away from the man whose hands lay on his shoulders. Her clenched hands relaxed as Nicky aimed himself at her like a small but determined heat-seeking missile.
Angolos rose to his feet in time to see Georgie bend forward, her softly waving hair spilling across her face. She pushed the silky hank impatiently behind her ear.
‘What have you been doing, darling?’ Her attention on the child, Georgie didn’t see the spasm of something close to pain that contorted her estranged husband’s dark, autocratic features as he watched them.
‘He had a slight accident. It was my fault…I only left him for a moment,’ Ruth interjected.
‘With Nicky a moment is all it takes,’ Georgie responded as she hugged her son to her. ‘Isn’t it, champ?’ she said, brushing the curly dark hair from his brow as she straightened up with the child’s body pressed close to her own. She saw the bruise and sighed. ‘In the wars, I see.’
She knew that pretending Angolos wasn’t there wasn’t exactly a long-term solution to her present predicament, but it was the only one she could think of. Angolos, all six feet four of him, was there barely a metre away from her, looking even more devastatingly attractive than she remembered… Her brain just refused to deal with the reality of the situation.
The muscles in her face ached as she forced a tense smile. ‘Now, why don’t you go with Auntie Ruth?’ She caught the eye of the older woman, who gave an understanding grimace.
‘I’m really sorry about this, Georgie.’ Her soft apology was accompanied by a sideways look towards the tall man who was silently watching.
‘It’s not your fault,’ Georgie said, handing over her burden. ‘This will only take a minute,’ she promised, staying one step ahead of her rising panic by sheer force of will alone.
A silent sigh of relief passed through her body as they left the room.
‘Do you always reward him for misbehaving?’ Angolos’s eyes were flat and icy as they scanned her face.
Georgie waited until she judged the child was out of earshot before responding and opened her eyes. ‘What would you do—beat him?’
Her sneering suggestion made his face tauten with anger. ‘Children need to know what the boundaries are. It makes them feel secure.’
‘Hearing you throw around terms like security in connection with Nicky…’ She swallowed back the anger that made her want to scream at him and hammer her fists against his chest. Her voice dropped to a low, scornful whisper. ‘You lost any right you might have had to criticise the way I bring up my child when you effectively disowned him.’
Angolos’s head reared as though she had struck him. ‘I would never knowingly disown my son.’ His low, uneven voice throbbed with sincerity. His mesmeric eyes locked onto hers.
‘I stand corrected. You accidentally disowned him, which makes it all right, then.’ She went to the door and yanked it open. ‘You were just passing, I suppose, so feel free to carry on doing just that.’
‘You want me to leave?’
Georgie, her expression stony, fixed her eyes on the wall directly ahead. ‘The only thing I want more is for you to be kidnapped by aliens, but I’m realistic, I’ll settle for the former.’
He dragged his long fingers through his hair. The sheer familiarity of the gesture made her ache.
‘We need to talk.’
She turned her head; he was incredible…really incredible! Did he really think she was going to let him waltz in here and mess up her life for a second time?
‘Did I really ever find your autocratic mannerisms a turn-on?’
She hadn’t realised until he responded in a dry tone that she had voiced her thoughts out loud. ‘I don’t know, did you?’
Subduing a mortified blush, she gave an indifferent shrug. ‘I don’t need to talk,’ she told him stonily.
‘Then listen.’
Georgie closed her eyes and stuffed her fingers in her ears. Through clenched teeth she began to hum loudly and tunelessly.
‘You still haven’t grown up, then.’
Georgie’s blazing eyes lifted to the contemptuous face of the man who had captured her wrists. ‘Me? I’m not the one who throws away a relationship as casually as a spoilt brat throws away a toy that he’s got tired of.’
His breath whistled in a startled gasp through his clenched teeth. ‘What did you say?’
‘It roughly translates as get the hell out of here and my life… I hate and despise you!’ She twisted her hands angrily, but instead of releasing her Angolos jerked her towards him.
The breath whooshed out of her lungs as her body collided with a body that had no give. For one shocked moment she stood there feeling the strong, steady thud of his heart, then she began to struggle. She fought the rising tide of sensual inertia so powerful that it threatened to swamp her as much as the strong hands that imprisoned her. She fought because deep down there was a secret part of her that didn’t want to escape, a part of her that wanted to melt into him.
‘Let me go… How dare…?’
>
Suddenly she was free.
The brief skirmish had only lasted a matter of seconds, but Georgie was fighting for breath as though she’d just gone five rounds with a contender for the title.
Rubbing one wrist, she glared at him. Angolos had always been lean and hard in a tensile steel sort of way, he still didn’t carry an ounce of spare flesh, but that brief contact had revealed that he had bulked out muscle-wise. The treacherous burst of heat low in her belly filled her with intense shame.
‘I’d like you to leave,’ she told him huskily.
‘When I’ve said what I came to say.’
Georgie gave a frustrated little grunt… Well, that much hadn’t changed; Angolos was still as stubborn and incapable of compromise as ever. ‘Get your lawyer to write mine a letter,’ she suggested. ‘Isn’t that the way it usually works?’
‘You don’t have a lawyer…’
‘And you don’t have a chance in hell of getting me to listen to you.’
He studied her set, stubborn face and stony eyes for a moment before dragging a hand through his already disordered thick dark hair.
‘I need a drink.’
‘There’s a pub around the corner. They’re not fussy about who they serve.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘The Kemp household still represents the best of British hospitality, I see.’
Georgie hardly heard him; the muscle that clenched and unclenched in his cheek was having a strongly hypnotic effect on her. Dressed all in black, he looked sleek and dangerous and off-the-scale sexy!
‘The house and town are the same, but you,’ he added, allowing his frowning gaze to move over her slender figure, ‘look different…’
Careful not to reveal by so much of a flicker of an eyelash what the critical brush of his eyes did to her, Georgie shrugged and stuck her hands in the pockets of her jeans. She was oblivious to the fact the action stretched the material, lovingly revealing the feminine curve of her slim thighs.
‘Designer clothes, you mean?’ She gave a contemptuous smile. ‘They don’t suit my lifestyle and actually they’re not me. They never were.’
When Angolos lifted his eyes to her face his natural warm colouring was a shade deeper. ‘Actually I meant you look harder.’ Despite this grim assertion, it was her softness that was occupying his thoughts.
You carry on believing that, thought Georgie, pushing her hands deeper into her pockets to disguise the fact they were seriously trembling.
‘There was a time when I actually cared what you thought of me…’ The memory of her anxiety to please him made her shake her head in pained distaste.
The irony was, the harder she tried to be what he wanted, the farther apart they seemed to drift. All the expensive clothes in the world had not made her fit in with the wealthy, snooty Constantine clan.
From day one his family, or more specifically his mother, Olympia Constantine, had made no attempt to hide her disapproval…at least not from Georgie. Around Angolos his mother had been more circumspect. Olympia had saved her sly digs and outright hostility for when Angolos hadn’t been around, which had been most of the time. She had never made any secret of the fact she’d wanted Georgie out of their lives.
And in the end they had got what they’d wanted. Georgie released her breath in a long, shuddering sigh and lifted her chin.
‘I’m not the pushover I once was, certainly.’ She was faintly amazed to hear her voice emerge steady and even. ‘I don’t know why you’re here, Angolos, and I don’t want to know.’ She stood to one side and gestured to the open door.
Angolos didn’t move. A muscle along his strong jaw spasmed as he picked up a toy car from the floor. She watched warily as he pushed the toy back and forth along across his palm. ‘He’s my son.’
Georgie’s slender shoulders lifted. ‘So…?’
He dropped the toy into an overflowing toy box and lifted a hand to his forehead, rubbing the groove between his dark brows. He continued to look uncharacteristically distracted. ‘I have a son.’
‘You say it as if it’s news, Angolos,’ she mocked. ‘You’ve had a son for the past three years and I didn’t notice you breaking any speed records to see him. Not even ab…birthday card.’ She lowered her eyes quickly as she felt the warmth of the unshed tears that filled them.
‘I thought my lawyers made it clear that if the money I deposited wasn’t sufficient I would—’
Georgie’s head came up, her luminous, liquid golden eyes levelled contemptuously with his. ‘Do you really think I’d touch a penny of your money…?’
Angolos’s lip curled. ‘You expect me to believe that you haven’t touched the money.’
‘I never wanted your money!’ she flared. ‘I wanted…’ She stopped dead, dark colour suffusing her pale cheeks. ‘If I gave a damn what you believe I’d get out the bank statement.’ She had given a damn once, though, and it had hurt her more than she wanted to remember.
‘If you haven’t used the money, how have you supported yourself?’ he demanded suspiciously. ‘Or should I ask who has been supporting you?’
She sucked in an outraged breath through flared nostrils and watched the toy ball he had aimed a kick at bounce off the wall.
If he thought she had time for a social life, let alone a boyfriend, he really didn’t have the first clue about what it took to bring up a child single-handed while holding down a demanding job! But then maybe that was all to the good—she preferred the idea of him thinking she had a wild private life.
‘I’ve been doing what most people do. I’ve been working.’
His brows shot towards his hairline. ‘Working…you…?’
‘Yes, me, working. I was training to be a teacher when we met, if you remember.’
‘Yes, but it was hardly your vocation; you gave it up without a second thought.’
Georgie’s eyes widened as she scanned his face with incredulous anger. Didn’t he realise that she’d have given up anything for him…that she’d have done anything he suggested without a second thought?
I must have been out of my mind!
‘What choice did I have?’
Angolos looked exasperated. ‘There is always a choice,’ he rebutted.
She swallowed past the emotional congestion in her throat. ‘You’d have been quite happy being married to a student, then?’ she challenged.
‘At no stage did you say your career was so important—’
‘You’re right, there is always a choice,’ she interrupted. ‘And I made the wrong one…I married you.’
The skin across his cheekbones tautened; his eyes meshed with hers. ‘We both made the wrong choice.’
‘Don’t dwell on it; I didn’t.’ If you discounted the endless nights she had cried herself to sleep. ‘I went back to college after Nicky was born.’
‘A baby needs his mother.’
‘That’s what I always liked about you; you were so supportive of me.’
Angolos’s astonished expression gave her a moment’s amusement and for a second she felt like the empowered woman she wanted him to think her.
‘For the record, Nicky has his mother; it’s his father he doesn’t have,’ she retorted, and had the pleasure of seeing a tell-tale wash of colour darken his golden-toned skin.
It would seem that at some level Angolos was aware that he had behaved like a despicable rat.
‘I didn’t reject him,’ she continued. ‘I’m not the one who couldn’t accept my responsibility.’
Angolos’s nostrils flared as his glittering jet eyes locked onto those of his estranged wife.
‘I didn’t reject my son,’ he rebutted thickly.
Georgie arched an ironic brow, outwardly at least oblivious to the waves of strong emotion he was projecting. She might once have turned herself inside out to pander to his moods, but that time was long gone.
‘You and I must have very different interpretations of rejection.’
Angolos closed his eyes. The curse that escaped his clamped lips drew
Georgie’s attention to the sensual curve of his mouth. Her stomach dipped and she tore her eyes away.
‘Sorry, but I don’t understand Greek. Do you mind translating?’
‘You don’t understand my language because you made not the slightest effort to learn it.’
‘No effort!’ she yelped, stung by this unjust accusation. ‘I may not have been very good, but it wasn’t for want of trying. I only stopped going to the wretched lessons when—’
He looked at her in open amazement. ‘Lessons? You did not take lessons.’
‘Well, I had to do something to fill my days other than shopping and having my hair done.’
She had no intention of telling him that she had wanted to surprise him. That she had cherished an unrealistic ambition of casually replying to him in fluent, flawless Greek. Her ambition to make her husband proud of her seemed painfully pathetic in light of what had happened.
‘So you were not content with your life as my wife?’
‘You didn’t want a wife, you wanted a mistress! And I’m not mistress material.’ She watched an expression of astonishment steal across his face and added as a reckless afterthought, ‘I was bored silly.’
CHAPTER SIX
‘BORED…?’
Georgie turned a deaf ear to the dangerous note in Angolos’s voice and nodded. ‘Yes, bored. I got bored with you and Greek lessons.’
There was no way in the world she would ever tell him how his mother and sister had made fun of her attempts to converse. Angolos, they had said, would be embarrassed by her awkward grammar and appalling accent. Like all her attempts to fit in, this one had never stood a chance, not with in-laws who had never lost an opportunity to make her feel inadequate.
‘I had no idea that living with me was such an ordeal.’
‘Neither did I at the time. Now,’ she told him calmly, ‘I can be more objective.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘So now your life is exciting and fulfilling?’
‘I have a career and a child.’
‘How did you take care of a baby and attend college?’
‘I left him in the college crèche. And fortunately the school I work at is happy for him to go to the nursery there.’