by Trish Morey
She crossed her arms over her chest. He made it sound as if she’d deceived him, as if she were the one in the wrong. As if she were the one who had to make amends. ‘I won’t live with you.’
‘Sit down, Athena.’
‘Why should I? Why should I have to sit there and be bullied into what you want? What about what I want?’
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘What about what you want?’
‘What?’ she said, so surprised that she did sit down.
‘If I sweetened the deal... If I gave you something that you wanted...’ He left the words hanging as he leaned back in his chair, almost a sprawl, emphasising his broad shoulders and long limbs and taking possession of the space. Owning it.
As he no doubt thought he could own her. Bastard. ‘I don’t see how.’
‘You never did get the fund established, did you—the one for your friend, what was his name? Loukas?’
She swallowed, the bitterness of her foiled plans still a deep, constant ache. ‘You saw to that.’
‘Maybe I can help. I can put the millions up. You will get your precious wing dedicated in his name. I will even make you the benefactor so I take none of the credit.’ He paused. ‘How does that sound?’
‘It sounds lousy. You stole that money from me.’
‘I stole nothing. You signed your fortune over to me.’
‘You tricked me!’
He shrugged. ‘The result is the same, I will concede as much. But my offer would give you the means to fulfil your wishes to honour your friend.’
She shook her head, thinking about all those nights she’d lain awake aching for his touch. Missing him. Pointless, futile, wasted nights. ‘I didn’t think you could go any lower, Alexios, but now you are really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Now you resort to blackmail to get me to agree to move in with you.’
‘I prefer to think of it as an inducement.’
‘Semantics.’
‘There’s no need to quibble.’ He raised his hands palm up, a set of scales. ‘What’s it to be, Athena? Do you want that wing to honour your friend that you were so excited about before? Or are you happy to live with the disappointment of knowing you could have made it happen, if only you’d swallowed your pride?’
He made it sound so damn easy, as if it wouldn’t be all kinds of hell to have to share the same house as him, to breathe the same air and for how many months. And afterwards...
‘So what happens after the baby is born? What then?’
‘That all depends on you, don’t you think? If you wanted to be reasonable, I’m sure we could work something out.’
Work something out? Yeah, she’d just bet he could.
She wanted to tell him where he could shove his inducement. Wanted to tell him he could take a running jump into somewhere rank and septic, somewhere like the swamp he’d no doubt crawled out of.
But she also wanted what Alexios had stolen from her before—she wanted to honour her friend and mentor the way she had planned, the way that could never happen without a massive injection of private funds.
And her modest apartment was going to be a squeeze once she’d bought all the baby gear. But move in with Alexios?
She licked her lips. Because if she agreed, it wasn’t just her pride she’d have to swallow. She’d have to live in close proximity with Alexios. A man she hated for the way he’d treated her, and yet a man who could still stir her senses with just one glance. She’d sensed his eyes on her naked abdomen while she’d been on the examination table. Felt the laser heat as they’d traversed her skin, that discomfiting prickling, the cursed awareness of the heat in his eyes, stirring red-hot memories of an earlier time.
When their lovemaking had spun her world around.
When she’d fallen in love with Alexios.
Oh, no, it wasn’t her pride she was worried about.
‘I won’t sleep with you,’ she whispered, having to struggle to get out the words, but they had to be said, if only for her benefit.
He cocked an eyebrow as he leaned forward, his lips curling at the corners. ‘Is that a yes?’
She sniffed. Thought of Loukas. Thought about the work he’d done all his life for little reward or recognition and how surprised and honoured he would be when the new wing was announced.
Her throat was dry, her mouth ashen. She looked up at the man opposite through watery eyes, knowing she had no choice at all. ‘It’s a yes.’
CHAPTER TEN
GIVEN MOST OF her furniture was only suitable for donation to charity, Athena didn’t have a lot to move. Infuriatingly, Alexios made it even easier—all she had to do was give a nod or shake of her head and an item was packed or dispensed with in the next moment. Before she knew it, Athena was saying goodbye to her small apartment and finding herself installed in Alexios’s luxury penthouse with its minimalist designer furniture and maximalist three-hundred-and-sixty-degree views over the city of Athens. Even her clothes and personal possessions had been unpacked for her, and now it was too late in the day to go to work, so she had nothing to do.
Nothing to do but rattle around his sprawling apartment.
In the quiet before the time she knew he would be home, Athena wandered from window to window, room to room. She had her own suite. A large bedroom, huge walk-in wardrobe and marble bathroom with a sprawling bath. A whirlpool bath, she realised, trailing a finger over the smooth surface of the stone. All to herself.
She returned to the windows in the living room and looked out over the busy streets below. There was a wide deck that ran along three sides of the penthouse, a lap pool along the fourth. It should have felt like luxury. She should have felt pampered and special. Instead it felt like a five-star prison. She wandered through the spacious rooms feeling—awkward. Out of place.
This wasn’t her home. She didn’t belong. Even her few favourite things—a brightly coloured Turkish kilim she’d bought on a trip to Istanbul, and a set of fragile glass tear vases from Chania in Greece—looked odd against the penthouse’s super modern decor.
Put simply, she just didn’t want to be here. And even though Alexios had made it plain that she was to make herself comfortable and feel free to investigate the cupboards and the kitchen and make herself feel at home, no amount of exploration was going to make any difference to how she felt.
She was only here because of the baby that grew inside her.
She curled her hand over the slight curve of her stomach. She was beginning to sense the changes now, subtle though they still were. The slight thickening of her waist, the heaviness of her breasts, and this growing bump.
In a few months there would be a child born. Would she still be here, in Alexios’s home? And if she were, what kind of family would they be?
She laughed out loud at that, but it was a harsh, mocking sound that echoed around the hollow space. What kind of family could they possibly be after all that had happened?
But then, did she know what a real family felt like? For so many years it had just been Athena and her mother, and then her mother had died, and she’d been thrust back into her father’s world, but always an uncomfortable part of it, on the fringe, as if they had never really belonged together.
As it was with Alexios now.
She sighed. And to think she’d once thought...
‘How are you settling in?’
She jumped and wheeled around. She hadn’t heard him arrive. ‘Fine,’ she said. Just dandy.
‘Are you hungry?’
‘No.’
‘Would you like to go out for dinner later?’
The question took her by surprise. Not because it was an unusual question in itself, but because of what it implied. ‘Um...look, Alexios. This me-living-in-your-house thing. It’s not like we’re actually shacking up together. We don’t have to synchronise our watches and do everything toget
her, do we?’
He frowned. ‘Of course not. I just thought, we both have to eat.’
She shook her head. ‘I think I’ll go to my room. I’ve got some reading to do.’
‘Athena,’ she heard him say behind her.
She didn’t turn around. She didn’t want to look at him any more than she had to. It was way, way too hard to look at him and remember what he’d once meant to her. ‘What?’
‘I know this isn’t what you wanted, but we can do it the hard way or the easy way. Your choice.’
She tossed her hair back, kicking up her chin as she turned to face him. Because she had to face him this time. ‘That shows what you know. Because there is no easy way. And now, if you’ll excuse me?’
* * *
What was her problem? Alexios tugged at his tie as he looked heavenwards. She couldn’t expect to raise their child in that dingy postage stamp she’d called an apartment. And it wasn’t just because she’d hidden her pregnancy from him that she was here—although it was more than enough reason to want to set her straight and make sure she didn’t pull a stunt like that again.
She must see that she was better off here. There was space and comfort and a driver on hand any time she needed to go out, and the neighbourhood was a huge improvement on the dead-end street where she’d lived.
Besides, she’d agreed to his terms, hadn’t she? He’d signed off on the transfer today. Whatever funds it took would be made available, with planning work to commence immediately. He’d signed off on his end of the bargain.
So what the hell was her problem?
The sky offered no answers, but the weak wintering sun winked on the surface of the lap pool, beckoning to him. He reefed off his tie. Yeah, physical exercise. That was exactly what he needed.
* * *
Something Athena was finding about pregnancy was that she could go from not caring about food to being ravenously hungry in the space of a dot. Embarrassing when she’d told Alexios she didn’t care for dinner. She headed for the kitchen to find some of the fruit she’d brought with her, hoping Alexios had gone out without her.
It was a false hope. There was turbulence in the pool, muscled arms windmilling. Alexios, she realised, swimming up a storm, powering through the water lap after lap. There was something mesmerising about the motion. Dark hair spearing through the waters, powerful broad shoulders and back muscles rippling, feet kicking as they propelled him along.
He stopped at the end of the pool, rested for a moment before launching himself out of the pool with a whoosh, his foot landing on the tiled edge before he stood in one fluid movement. Droplets rained down from the vee of his body when he sleeked the water from his hair. Athena was spellbound for a moment, before she blinked and turned away towards the kitchen. It had been like watching a god emerge from the sea, all powerful limbs and muscled magnificence.
It had been like ripping a plaster off a wound.
And he thought there was an easy way of doing this? Not a chance.
She’d known exactly how difficult it would be. If she couldn’t stop thinking about him—wanting him—in the two months they’d been separated, how was she supposed to stop wanting him when she was right here, in his house, witness to his near-naked body and hostage to her own recalcitrant hormones?
But he’d held out a way to see her dream to honour Loukas fulfilled, and she’d hoped she’d be able to harness her anger and find a way through.
This was day one and she knew she’d been mistaken. Because the memories would never fade while she was here with him in this house, when she so needed them to fade. She needed to keep her hatred for what he had done pure and undiluted, and unsullied by memories of how it had been. Memories of his body next to hers. Memories of him inside her. Memories that hurt like a physical ache for what she missed.
And it hurt so much that the pain of losing him, and having him so close now, sometimes seemed to hurt more than the pain of what he’d done to her. How did that work?
Hormones, she told herself, selecting an apple from the fruit bowl and sinking her teeth into it.
It had to be pregnancy hormones. She couldn’t afford to believe it was anything else.
* * *
She was dressed and preparing for work when Alexios appeared in the kitchen the next morning. He paused when he saw her, and looked her over, taking in her stretch skirt, sweater and boots, doing a double take of her eyes. ‘Kalimera,’ he said, pushing buttons on the coffee machine. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ she lied. Because it wasn’t the plush bed’s fault that she’d lain awake half the night. For two months she’d slept alone and she’d come to accept that Alexios no longer had a place in her bed. For two months she’d told herself she liked having her bed all to herself again and that she didn’t miss him and that she’d better get used to the fact she’d be sleeping alone from now on. But that wasn’t when he was lying asleep and no doubt naked in the very next room. And even though they were very big rooms, there wasn’t enough distance between them. Her body knew he was there, and it was enough to make her long for what was lost. Pointless longing, when the only reason she was here was this baby. Pointless, when he’d only ever wanted her for her fortune. Never for her. Not then. Not now.
Nothing had changed but this damned—cursed—proximity.
The machine hissed and spat as he leaned his hip against the stone bench and watched what she was doing, watched her put a pot of yoghurt and some grapes in the lunch box on the bench before her. It was unsettling. Unnerving. ‘Maybe you should take the day off.’
‘I had yesterday off. I have work to do.’
‘You look tired. Moving was too much. You should be resting.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You don’t need to work now.’
She turned to him, wishing he didn’t look so just-showered-fresh, the ends of his thick hair still beaded with moisture, his crisp white shirt just that tiny bit translucent, so just like that first day she could see, if she looked, the dark shadows... No.
‘Yes, I actually do need to work. It’s my job, Alexios. It’s what I do.’
‘But is it wise? Should you be working, in your condition?’
She closed the lid on her lunch box hard, but the resulting snap was nowhere near as therapeutic or emphatic as she’d hoped. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m having a baby. I’m not sick.’
‘You’re having my baby.’
‘And mine!’
‘But—’
‘Giving up work was never part of our deal, Alexios, and it’s not happening,’ she said, not letting him set the agenda. ‘I might be pregnant, but women are designed to have babies and get on with their lives in the process. So what that I’m pregnant? It’s not going to change who I am and what I do. I’m not going to let it and I’m certainly not about to let somebody else tell me what to do.’
He shook his head, looking at her as if she were a recalcitrant child. ‘Surely resting would be better for the baby?’
‘What, and stay cooped up in this gilded prison all day?’ She snorted. ‘I’d go mad.’
He sighed and put his coffee down, rubbing his brow with his hand. ‘Why do you have to make this so difficult?’
She picked up her lunch box. ‘I’m not. I’m simply trying to make it work. Have a nice day.’
The heels of her boots clip-clopped as they carried her across the tiled floor. How many more mornings, how many more conversations like this would she have to bear? She might just go mad anyway.
‘Athena,’ he called.
She turned, expecting more instructions. A reminder to look right and left before crossing the road. An instruction to make sure she ate everything in her lunch box. As if she didn’t know how to take care of this baby. ‘Yes?’
‘I was going to tell you last night over dinner, but that didn�
�t happen—the funding for Loukas’s wing has been formalised. I’ve arranged a meeting at the ministry tomorrow to talk to the officials and get the wheels in motion. I thought you might like to come, to explain the significance of the finds.’
‘Oh.’ She blinked. ‘You’ve done all that already?’
‘It was my end of the deal.’
‘Of course.’ She nodded, and felt a tiny kernel of hope that something good might come out of this arrangement after all. ‘Yes. I’d very much like to be there, thank you.’
* * *
He stayed parked against the bench while the sound of her heels on the tiles receded. He heard the front door snick shut and the whirr of the elevator motor.
He hadn’t expected to ever see her again, but here she was, living in his house.
The mother of his child.
Pricklier than he remembered, more aloof, and with more backbone than he would have given her credit for. But still as beautiful. Her curves, her lush body, now growing more curvy with his child.
He’d expected he’d never see her again, but he had her now. He had her back.
‘I won’t sleep with you,’ she’d told him.
He smiled. At the time, he hadn’t cared. All he’d cared about was that she hadn’t told him she was carrying his child. All he’d cared about was making sure she didn’t pull a stunt like that again and keeping his baby safe.
But now he had her again. And being around her, watching her silken movements, smelling her all too familiar scent as she passed by, made him realise just how much he had missed her.
After all, she wasn’t going anywhere...
* * *
It was so good to be away from Alexios’s apartment and back in her office again, surrounded by her favourite research books and photographs of her at different historical sites and digs. After the modern minimalist decor of the apartment, it was comforting, like coming home and putting on a comfy pair of slippers. She shrugged off her coat and breathed in air that smelt like hope, discovery and the mysteries of millennia, and smiled. So good.