by Jennie Lucas
“Far from it,” he said quietly. “You’re the most intensely desirable woman I’ve ever known.”
Her eyes widened. Then her lips curled in a brief, humorless smile. She clearly didn’t believe a word. “That’s quite the compliment, considering how many you’ve known.”
“None hold a candle to you.” He looked at her across the table. “There’s been no other woman for me, Holly. Not since we were together.”
She blinked, then slowly looked at him. “What?”
“I don’t want anyone else,” he said simply.
For a moment, their eyes locked in the moonlight. He saw yearning in her lovely face. Then, as if on cue, the lights in the villa’s windows behind them went dark, and she seemed to catch herself. Biting her lip, she rose with an awkward laugh. “It’s late. I should go to bed.”
Polishing off his glass of wine, he rose to his feet. “Of course.”
“Should we bring in the plates?”
“It’s not necessary.”
“I don’t want someone else cleaning up my mess.” Picking up her plate and glass, she paused. “What about your father’s plate?”
“Leave it.” He added with irony, “He doesn’t have your same concerns.”
Stavros picked up his own plate and glass, and the bottle of wine. As they walked back across the terrace, he felt the chill of the deepening night. A cool sea breeze blew against his skin. He looked up at the sprawling white villa.
Getting her into bed was going to take longer than he’d thought. And marrying her would be even longer.
But he didn’t know how much more of his past he could share with her. Every small story was like pulling his soul through a meat slicer. He would have far preferred to seduce her.
But he’d seen the change in her. He saw it now, as they took the dishes back to the enormous, modern kitchen. The anger in her eyes when she looked at him had changed to bewilderment, even wistfulness. His plan was working.
So he’d just have to endure it.
Stavros walked her back to their large guest bedroom. Passing her without a word, he quickly grabbed his leather overnight bag. He paused only to look down at his baby, sleeping in the crib. He didn’t touch him, out of fear he might wake.
“Good night, my son,” he whispered.
Freddie yawned, his eyes closed as he continued to sleep, flinging his chubby arms back over his head.
Stavros turned, lifted his bag over his shoulder and started down the hall. Turning back to say good-night, he stopped when he saw Holly standing in the doorway. Her heart-shaped face was haunted.
“Do you really care about Freddie?” she said hoarsely. “You’re not just doing it out of pride, or to hurt me? You really want to be his father?”
“Yes,” he said in a low voice. He dropped the bag to the floor and moved close to her. “And I want you.”
She looked up, her expression stricken. “You...”
“I want you. I want to hold you in my arms. I want you in my bed. I’ve tried to forget that night. I can’t. I’ve thought of it for the last year.”
She trembled, searching his gaze.
“You’re trying to seduce me,” she whispered.
“Yes. I am.” Cupping her face, he lowered his head toward hers. “I want you forever...”
And in the shadowy hall outside the bedroom, he lowered his lips toward hers and kissed her, soft and slow.
For a moment, she froze beneath his embrace, and he thought she’d push him away.
Then slowly, tremblingly, her lips parted. And it was the sweetest, purest kiss Stavros had ever known. It took every ounce of his willpower to finally pull away, when all he wanted to do was take her back into the bedroom and make love to her.
But he didn’t want her for just one night. He wanted her as his wife. And if he’d learned anything from nearly twenty years in mergers and acquisitions, it was to always leave the other side wanting more.
“Good night,” he said huskily, cupping her cheek as he looked deeply into her eyes. And he left her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HOLLY HAD TOSSED and turned all night in the big bed.
She couldn’t stop thinking of Stavros’s voice last night.
Holly, if I’d told you I was dying it would have only bound you to me more. You would have given me everything, all your heart and your life, until I died—and even after. It would have destroyed you.
Put that way, she could almost forgive him for what he’d done. Because he was right. If, last Christmas, he’d taken her in his arms and told her the truth, she would have immediately done anything, given anything, to help him.
You’re the most loving person I’ve ever known.
He’d made it sound like a character flaw.
Maybe it was. She thought of how she’d spent all her adult life caring for others over herself. She didn’t mean Freddie. He was a helpless baby.
But Oliver wasn’t helpless. Neither was her sister. And for years, Holly had sacrificed herself for their needs, for no good reason. She thought of how Nicole had blamed Holly on the phone for their marriage problems.
You should be here taking care of things for him. And for me!
Maybe Stavros was right. Maybe, in some ways, Holly’s need to always put other people first had been wrong. It certainly hadn’t done anything good for Nicole or Oliver, who only seemed more helpless and resentful after her years of sacrifice.
And if Holly had let herself fall in love with Stavros last year, she suddenly knew she would have given him everything, too—whether he wanted it or not.
Instead, when he’d rejected her, she’d been forced to do everything on her own. She’d gained strength, and confidence she’d never had before. Both important qualities for a good mother.
And for a good father?
She shivered. She was starting to believe that Stavros really cared about Freddie, and wanted to be a family. He seemed determined to marry Holly.
Could they actually be happy together?
The idea was growing harder to resist. It would be too easy to love a man like Stavros, when he poured on the charm. She fell a little every time he spoke to her. And when he’d kissed her—
All night afterward, she’d lain awake, wondering what would have happened if she hadn’t insisted on separate bedrooms. If she’d let him share her bed. Wondering, and knowing. And wishing...
Now, as Holly looked at Stavros across the breakfast table, with the morning sun shining gold from the double-story window and the sea outside a brilliant blue, her heart was in her throat.
They barely said a word to each other as they ate breakfast. She was dressed simply, in a T-shirt and jeans, while he was in his usual tailored shirt, jacket and trousers. He’d just looked at her, then kissed her on the cheek. But that had been enough to make her pulse pound.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Stavros said now as his eyes met hers over the table. She broke out in a hot sweat.
“Oh?” she said, praying he didn’t.
He tilted his head. “You’re wondering how long we have to wait. I say we don’t.”
“Really?” she croaked, still filled with images of him naked in her bed.
He gave her a crooked grin. “Honestly, I’m glad my father never showed up last night. I only brought you here because I couldn’t think of any other way to convince you to give me a chance. I knew with your loving heart, you would feel like you had no choice but to let him meet his grandson.”
Her loving heart really was starting to sound ridiculous. As if Holly was determined to see only the best in people, even when her positive image of them was totally untethered to reality. What she’d learned last night about Stavros’s father didn’t make her particularly keen to get to know him better, either.
As Freddie started fussing in her arms, she reached for a
prepared bottle on the table. “You want to leave after breakfast? Without seeing him?”
“It would feel like dodging a bullet.” Leaning forward, he suddenly asked, “Could I hold the baby, Holly?”
His darkly handsome face was vulnerable, his deep voice uncertain, as if he wasn’t just asking her permission, but her opinion.
He still hadn’t held their son yet. Because Holly hadn’t let him.
Suddenly, she hated herself for that. Who did she think she was, keeping Freddie from Stavros—a man who’d made it clear that he only wanted good things for their baby?
“Of course you can,” she said. “You’re his father.”
His dark eyes lit up. “Yes?”
“Definitely.” Gently, she lifted the two-month-old into his father’s strong arms, where Stavros sat on the other side of the breakfast table in the morning room. She handed him a warmed bottle. “You’ll need this.”
“Like this?” he asked, angling the bottle. His boyish uncertainty made her heart twist inside her.
“Tilt your elbow a little more,” she suggested, touching his bare forearm. He looked up at her, and for a moment, electricity crackled between them. She saw him start to rise, as if he intended to take her in his arms.
Then he looked back down at the baby, and didn’t move from his chair. Freddie wrapped his hands around the bottle, drinking with greedy gulps, his black eyes looking up at his father trustingly.
Holly watched them with a lump in her throat. The baby’s sucking noises gradually slowed, then stopped altogether, as his eyes grew drowsy as he drifted off to sleep, held tenderly in his father’s powerful arms.
Stavros looked up with obvious pride, his dark eyes shining.
“Look,” he whispered. “He’s sleeping!”
And something broke inside Holly’s heart.
Stavros seemed so different now—
“So you finally came crawling back.”
Holly looked up to see a wiry, elderly man standing in the doorway with two young women on his arm. The man had brightly colored, youthful clothes that did little to disguise his potbelly and skinny legs. His hair was pitch-black, except for half an inch near the roots that was white. Even from this distance, he reeked of alcohol, cigarettes and expensive cologne.
Stavros’s face turned briefly pale. As if by instinct, he turned his body in the chair, as if protecting the sleeping baby. Then, as if a wall came clanging down, his expression became totally flat.
“Hello, Father.” His bored gaze glanced dismissively at the two young women, both of whom looked younger than Holly, perhaps even younger than her little sister. “Friends of yours?”
“From the club.” He waved toward them airily. “We stopped to change clothes. Or at least—” he gave a sly grin “—take them off.”
Holly looked with dismay at the girls, who both looked, if possible, even more bored than Stavros. They had to be a third of Aristides’s age. One of them was already giving Stavros a frankly flirtatious smile that made Holly, who’d never considered herself prone to violence, want to give her a hard smack across the jaw.
The older man stepped forward, then looked down at the sleeping baby with a sniff. “Is that the baby Eleni was going on about?”
“This is my son, yes,” Stavros said stiffly.
“Looks tiny. Runt of the litter.”
“He’s two months old.”
Aristides winked back at the young women. “I’m sure you girls can hardly believe I’m old enough to be a grandfather.”
“Uh, yeah,” the blonde replied with an American accent, turning so that her friend could see her roll her eyes. “Look, Aristi, if we’re not going out shopping like you promised then we’ve got to go.”
“Things to see, people to do,” her brunette friend agreed, giving Stavros another flirtatious smile.
“No, wait—I have gifts for you girls upstairs. Go up and wait.”
“Where?”
“Up the top of the stairs. The big purple bedroom all the way at the back,” he called jovially, then ran his hands slickly through his hair. After they were gone, he turned on Stavros with a scowl. “So why did you come here?”
“No reason.”
“You want money, right?”
Stavros stiffened. “No.”
Aristides stared at him, then shrugged. “All right, fine, I saw the kid. Now get the hell out of here. You’re nothing to me. I have no desire to be a grandfather.”
Holly could hardly believe it. She tried to imagine a world in which she’d ever ignore family, or tell a son or grandson that he wasn’t wanted. The thought was like an ice pick in her heart.
“Are you serious?” she blurted out. “After we came all this way?”
Aristides’s rheumy, drunken eyes focused on her. “Who are you? The wife?”
“She’s my son’s mother.” Stavros’s voice was low. Holly felt, in her bones, how much he would have liked to claim her as his wife.
“Ha! So not your wife. She had your kid, but you still didn’t marry her?” The man snorted a laugh. “Maybe you learned from my mistakes after all. You’re more like me than I thought, boy.”
“I’m nothing like you,” Stavros growled, his hands tightening around his sleeping baby son.
“No?” His father stroked his chin. “You were so high and mighty when you called me after your mother’s funeral. I was a monster, you said. You’d never whore around like me, you said. Now look at you.”
Stavros looked speechless with rage.
Turning to Holly with a crafty expression, Aristides purred, “You’re smart not to marry him. What did you say your name was?” Without waiting for her to answer, he continued flirtatiously, “A beauty like you can do far better.”
With a sly glance toward his son, Aristides Minos lifted a calculating eyebrow, as if plotting what to say next; for an appalling instant Holly wondered if he was considering inviting her to join the other girls in his bedroom. Suddenly, she couldn’t stand it.
“I didn’t want to have a wedding while I was pregnant. But Stavros and I are getting married soon,” Holly said, meeting the older man’s gaze steadily. “In a few days.”
She felt, rather than heard, Stavros’s intake of breath.
“Your loss,” Aristides said, sounding bored. “All right. Thanks for the visit.” He looked down at his son scornfully. “But don’t think that this means I’ll put you back in my will.”
“Are you kidding?” Holly said, outraged. “Do you actually think he needs your money?”
“Shh, Holly. It doesn’t matter.” Holding his sleeping baby carefully, Stavros rose to his feet. He was taller than his father, and his expression was utterly cold. “Keep your money, you cheap bastard.”
“Cheap!” The older man’s eyes blazed. “Just because I wasn’t willing to hand off my family fortune to some little waitress I met in a bar, who convinced me to marry her when she got pregnant.” He scowled at Stavros. “I’m still not sure you’re even mine.”
“I wish to hell I wasn’t,” he said quietly.
“Gotten full of yourself with that company of yours? Just because you think you’re richer than me now?” His father drew himself up, slicking his hand back through his skunk-striped hair. “You’d never have built that company without me.”
Stavros’s eyes went wide. “You say that, after what you did to Mom—”
“If I hadn’t cut her off without a penny, you’d never have had the drive to make something of yourself. You should thank me.” Aristides tilted his head, in the exact same gesture she’d seen Stavros use. “I should own half your stock, purely as an issue of fairness.”
Stavros’s fists tightened, then he looked at his baby sleeping nestled in the crook of one arm, and he exhaled.
“You’re not worth another minute of my time,” he said, and he t
urned to Holly. “Are you ready?”
“Definitely.”
“Good. Go!” His father’s black eyes narrowed as his voice built in rage. “Get out of my house!”
Holly looked for one last moment at the rich, horrible old man. “Goodbye. Sorry you’ve made such bad choices in life.”
Aristides looked shocked.
Without another word, Holly turned and followed Stavros out of the villa’s morning room.
“I’m sorry, too!” he screamed after her. “Sorry I wasted my time talking to you! You’re not even that pretty!”
She expected Stavros to head upstairs to get their overnight bags, but instead he went straight for the front door, pausing only to talk to Eleni, the housekeeper.
Following him outside, Holly said quietly, “What about our things?”
“We’ll get new ones. I’m done here.”
“I understand.”
“Eleni’s gone to pack. She heard everything and says she can’t work for him anymore.” Stavros lifted a phone to his ear and spoke to his pilot. She saw how his hand trembled as he ended the call. Turning to her, he said quietly, “Did you mean what you said?”
Holly couldn’t pretend not to know what he meant.
“Yes.” She looked down at their precious sleeping baby cradled against his chest. “I want us to be a family.” She lifted her gaze to his and whispered, “I’ll marry you.”
His dark gaze filled with light. “You’ll come to New York?”
With a deep breath, she nodded. He cupped her cheek, running his thumb along her tender bottom lip, causing electricity to pulse through her body.
“You won’t be sorry,” he promised.
Shivering, Holly prayed he was right.
* * *
New York City was a winter wonderland, decorated with fresh snow and all the lights and decorations of Christmas. To Stavros, the city had never looked so beautiful. It was as if all the world had decided to celebrate.
Today was his wedding day.
His wife. Holly was going to be his wife...
Since their arrival from Greece, their wedding plans had been rushed through in only two days. Stavros wished to marry her as quickly as possible, before she had the chance for second thoughts.