by Abby Green
He said, ‘It means exactly what I said: if he’s mine, rest assured that I will not shirk my responsibility.’
Three days later
Maggie walked into the plush Dublin city centre hotel. One of the city’s oldest, and situated on St Stephen’s Green, it oozed timeless elegance and sophistication. She’d been delivered here in a chauffeur-driven SUV—summoned by Nikos Marchetti.
The spurt of rebellion she’d felt earlier, when preparing to come and meet Nikos, had galvanised her to dress down for the occasion. But now that felt like teenage theatrics. She’d be surprised if she wasn’t thrown out on her ear before she even reached the reception desk.
But no one stopped her. In fact a suited manager approached her and said, ‘Miss Taggart?’
How did they know?
Maggie nodded. He smiled. ‘Please...let me show you to Mr Marchetti’s suite.’
Maggie dutifully followed him into a rococo decorated lift and her stomach dropped as they ascended. She really wasn’t prepared for whatever was going to come next. But she couldn’t go back now.
The manager led her out of the lift, down a luxuriously carpeted corridor to a room at the end. A light rap on the door and it opened almost immediately.
Nikos looked serious. Shirtsleeves rolled up, hair mussed. Dark trousers. His dark gaze swept her up and down.
‘Maggie.’
‘Nikos.’
The air was charged. Thick with sudden tension and filled with an awareness that she did not welcome because it was one-sided.
The manager cleared his throat. ‘Can I send some refreshments up?’
Nikos didn’t take his eyes off Maggie. ‘Just some tea and coffee.’
Maggie looked at the manager. ‘Thank you.’
He left and Nikos stood back, holding the door open. Maggie tried not to breathe in his scent as she passed him, but it filtered through anyway, precipitating dangerous memories.
She went straight over to one of the windows overlooking the green park. The suite was vast. She caught a glimpse of a bedroom...rumpled sheets. She felt hot.
‘Where’s Daniel?’
Maggie’s heart hitched. Daniel. He knew he was his son now.
She turned around. ‘The Barbiers’ nanny, Sara, is minding him. I expressed some milk.’
She didn’t know why she felt defensive. But it was as if now that he had confirmation of Daniel’s parentage Nikos thought he had a right to ask her questions about him. About her. About her mothering. Would Nikos even know what expressing milk was?
He gestured to a couch. ‘Please, sit down.’
He stood with legs apart, every inch the bristling Alpha male. A million miles from the teasing seductive playboy who’d turned her world upside down in one night.
Maggie swallowed. ‘It’s okay. I’m comfortable standing.’
He folded his arms. ‘So, when would you have told me about Daniel? Would you have waited until he was walking and talking before you got around to it?’
No beating around the bush. Now he knew for sure, and he was angry. A muscle pulsed in his jaw. She was surprised at the emotion—she hadn’t expected it. She hadn’t expected a lot about this man, though, and he consistently surprised her.
She had to be honest. ‘I don’t know. I believed you knew but weren’t interested. I guess I might have tried again when Daniel was a bit older.’
He paced back and forth, energy crackling. He stopped and faced her. ‘I know it’s not entirely your fault, but while your low opinion of me is refreshing, when I’m usually surrounded by sycophants, I can’t believe that if I hadn’t turned up at the Barbier party I might easily have missed out on a year of my son’s life? Two years? More? As it is I have missed the birth of my own son. His first few months.’
Anger spiked at his accusatory tone. ‘All you left me a year ago was a note—not even a personal number. You couldn’t have made it clearer to me that you weren’t interested in anything beyond that one night. And now you expect me to believe that you would have been interested in the minutiae of the birth of a baby you didn’t believe was yours? You really don’t have to pretend to be interested now. It’s just us here. I know how this goes. My father—’
Nikos’s voice was like a whip. ‘Your father? What’s he got to do with this?’
Maggie cursed her runaway mouth again. But it was too late. ‘My father was rich—very rich. He had an affair with my mother and when she fell pregnant he denied all knowledge. Threatened her into staying away. He had no desire to be a father or to share any of his fortune.’
Nikos arched a brow. He’d never looked more imperious. ‘And that pertains to me how? Because I’m rich too?’
‘That and the fact that you told me specifically that you’re not into relationships or families.’
His brow lowered. ‘Well, that was before I had a son.’
A shiver went through her—a sense that once again Nikos was going to do the opposite of what she expected.
On impulse, she asked, ‘Why didn’t you want a relationship or children? Was it because you lost your mother?’
Nikos was so full of conflicting emotions and so full of desire for the woman in front of him that it was hard to think straight. Even though she was dressed like a hippy. Wearing worn dungarees and a singlet vest. Sandals. Hair up in an untidy knot.
She looked as if she’d just come from serving up lunch at an ashram. And yet he’d never seen anything sexier. It incensed him. He needed his wits about him, and all he wanted to do was carry her into the bedroom and spread her on the bed for his delectation.
Desire was a heavy, hot knot inside him, but he forced himself to focus. He debated giving Maggie some platitude, but for some reason he felt the urge to be brutally honest.
‘I never intended to have children because I didn’t want any child of mine to go through what I did.’
‘What did you go through?’
His skin prickled. He would never entertain such questions from anyone else—much less a woman he had slept with—but this situation demanded a different response. She deserved to know what she was getting into.
‘My mother killed herself when I was two—driven to it by my father, who had married her only for her inheritance. She believed he loved her. Soon after she died he married again, and his new wife had no interest in taking on his dead wife’s son, so I was sent to live with my grandparents in Greece. They never forgave me for my mother’s sins—for running off with her Italian lover and giving him her fortune. When I was old enough to be of some use my father took me away from Greece and sent me to boarding school in England. I was moved around like a pawn. A poor little rich boy who rebelled as a means of getting his father’s attention. To no avail.’
Maggie’s eyes had widened and were now full of something that Nikos had never seen before. Genuine emotion. It impacted on him in a way that made him feel on edge.
She said, ‘I’m sorry you went through that.’
‘Don’t be. It did me a favour. I learned early on that the only person you can count on is yourself.’
Nikos saw the shimmer of moisture in Maggie’s eyes and reacted instinctively, needing to take that emotion out of her. ‘Don’t do that—don’t look at me like that.’
‘Like what?’ asked Maggie.
What he’d just told her had torn down some vital defence, leaving her exposed, vulnerable. She’d also learnt not to trust anyone outside of herself and her mother from an early age. Her father, who should have been one of the most important people in her life, had also let her down badly.
Nikos said now, ‘I’m not a very nice person, Maggie. Don’t look at me like you care. Do you know what’s on my mind right now? How much I want you.’
Maggie’s thoughts skittered to a halt. He wanted her. She felt breathless. Tight inside.
‘You...? Even n
ow, with the baby...?’
He nodded. ‘I’ve wanted you for a year. Only you. I told you—you haunted me.’
You haunted me.
Maggie’s mind was melting. She didn’t believe him.
‘You’re just saying that.’
Nikos looked imperious again. ‘Why would I lie?’
He moved closer. The air thickened. Suddenly Maggie couldn’t recall what they’d been talking about. It didn’t seem important...
Nikos reached out and cupped her jaw, moving a thumb across her lower lip. Little fires raced across her skin and an intense longing made her sway closer.
Now he was so close that she could smell him. Their bodies were almost touching. Every pulse point was going crazy, making her head light. She was sensitive all over. He wanted her. The sharp lance of relief should have shamed her, but it didn’t.
‘I need to know that you want this too,’ he said.
Nikos’s blunt demand struck right to her core. Did any woman not want him? Impossible. Could he not see how she hungered for him, even though she wished she didn’t? She couldn’t think straight...she could only say what she felt.
‘Yes.’
She had a moment of déjà vu. Thought back to that first night when he’d asked her if she wanted him. Made sure of it.
The past and the present were meshing. So when he snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her all the way into his body, and she felt her softer curves moulding to his far steelier strength, she had no other thought in her head except, Yes, please.
His mouth touched hers and she fell into his kiss like a starving woman, tongue tangling with his, teeth nipping at the firm contour of his lower lip. He surrounded her with a heat and an intensity that thrilled her to her very core.
That she craved.
That she’d missed.
He pulled back. She was panting, but she didn’t care. His eyes glittered and his cheeks were flushed. His hands were on the straps of her dungarees, undoing them so that the front fell down. Maggie didn’t even have time to think about the fact that she was wearing a breastfeeding bra, because Nikos was pulling up her top and baring her to his hungry gaze.
‘Theos, Maggie, I have dreamt of this...of you.’
He undid her bra at the front and it sprang open. He took her breasts in his hands, thumbs moving back and forth across nipples sensitive enough to make her gasp. All she could see was his broad chest in front of her—still covered up. She needed to see him...to feel the heat of his skin against hers.
She reached for his buttons, undoing them. Volatile emotions swirled inside her, making her feel reckless like he’d made her feel a year ago, helping her justify making love to him.
But this wasn’t last year, this was now. A year later. Not past—present.
Realisation hit and her hands stopped.
Daniel.
She dislodged his hands, dragged her dungarees top back up to cover her breasts. ‘Wait...we shouldn’t be doing this.’
Nikos looked at her, hair ruffled, cheeks lined with colour, eyes glittering. ‘It’s inevitable whenever we’re in close proximity, Maggie.’
His shirt was half open, and even now her hands itched to reach out and touch the part of his chest that was bared.
She shook her head, even though every cell in her body protested at the interruption. ‘The last time we did this I got pregnant.’
Nikos felt dazed, drunk with lust, but her words cut through the fog of desire.
Maggie took another step back and he had to curb the reflex to reach out and tug her back. Christos, what did this woman do to him? He struggled to regain control, cool his blood. But it was hard when her breasts were all but falling out of her clothes and her face was flushed.
‘You’re right—this isn’t the time or place.’
His voice came out harsh and he saw how she winced. His conscience pricked but he turned around and did up his own clothes. This was not him. He was usually in control. Almost detached from proceedings. He never lost it so much that he seduced housekeepers and got them pregnant—
He cursed again.
He turned around when he had done up his shirt and tucked it in. He battled to cool his libido, but it was next to impossible while Maggie stood only a few feet away, clothed again but no less sexy for it.
The urge to throw caution to the wind and haul her back into his arms and finish what they’d started was overwhelming.
He resisted it.
‘I hadn’t intended that. I did intend just to talk.’
Eventually she said, ‘I... Okay.’
He was more sophisticated than this. What was it about this woman that short-circuited his brain and sent it straight to his pants?
He raised his gaze to her flushed face and her wild hair—tumbling around her shoulders now. Her eyes were bright blue and full of things that still made his skin prickle uncomfortably. It was those eyes and the emotion that he’d seen in them that had made him want to turn it into something else.
Passion. Not emotion. He could handle passion.
She was looking at him warily now. He reacted against her silent accusation.
‘What just happened was mutual, Maggie.’
Maggie was struggling to regain a sense of composure but it was hard. Those last few cataclysmic minutes in Nikos’s arms had flayed a layer of skin off her body. The knowledge that he still wanted her thrummed through her body like a drug, giving her an illicit high.
But that wasn’t why she was here.
‘We need to talk about what happens next,’ she said.
Nikos folded his arms across his chest. ‘Yes, we do need to talk. Now I know that Daniel is mine we can move forward.’
‘What does that mean?’
The dark gold and green lights in his eyes glinted. ‘Marriage, Maggie. It means we need to marry.’
CHAPTER SIX
OF ALL THE things Maggie had been expecting, she’d never—
She stared at Nikos, wondering if she’d heard right. ‘Did you really just say marry?’
Nikos nodded, watching her carefully.
Maggie’s legs felt suspiciously rubbery, but she locked them in order to stay standing. ‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. We barely know each other.’
Nikos’s mouth firmed. ‘And yet we’ve shared an intimacy that has resulted in a child. Some would say that constitutes knowing one another just fine. People in other cultures marry for a lot less.’
Maggie felt shaky. Panicky.
Seizing desperately onto anything to try and make him see sense, she asked, ‘Is this what you want? Really? When you’ve told me what happened to you?’
There was a long moment of silence, and then Nikos said tightly, ‘It’s because of what happened to me that I’m determined to be there for my son. My father failed my mother and me—I won’t do that to you or my son.’
Shock reverberated through Maggie as she absorbed this. She wasn’t sure what was worse: a father who didn’t want anything to do with them or a father who would take responsibility out of a sense of duty and nothing more?
‘Do we need to get married, though? Can’t we just come to some agreement?’
‘There’s more at stake than just us.’
She frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The Marchetti Group. Even though some time has passed since my father’s death, people are still watching to see how us three half-brothers will work as a cohesive unit. We’re all single, which makes us inherently less trustworthy to our largely conservative shareholders who are growing more nervous as the years pass. Stability of the brand and its image is everything.’
His mouth twisted.
‘When the press find out about you and Daniel they’ll have a field-day. It won’t come as a huge surprise to many that I’ve
fathered a child, but it will make the shareholders even more nervous.’
Maggie shelved his comment about people not being surprised. ‘So you want us to get married purely to shore up the image of the Marchetti brand?’
‘It won’t just be for that—although that is a big part of it, yes.’
Panic threatened to rise again. Nikos sounded so implacable. Her mind raced, trying to take this in.
‘But I don’t know anything about you...’ The memory of looking him up on the internet made her blush. Quickly she said, ‘I mean, what about your family? You have two brothers? Are you even close?’
Nikos’s face turned to stone. ‘I have two half-brothers—one older, one younger. We all have different mothers. And in a word? No, we’re not especially close. But we’re all committed to the Marchetti Group.’
That sounded so...cold.
In as reasonable a tone as Maggie could muster, she said, ‘I understand why you want to do things differently—so do I—but you of all people know the damage a bad marriage can do. We don’t love each other.’
Nikos’s face became derisive. ‘Love? If anything can destabilise a marriage it’s love. Love is for naive fools.’
‘It’s not naive to believe in love.’ Her hands balled into fists at her sides. ‘I loved my mother and she loved me. She did everything to protect me. It almost killed me when she died. And when Daniel was born...the love I felt for him straight away is like nothing I can describe. All-encompassing. I would do anything for him.’
Nikos heard Maggie’s words, but she might as well have been speaking another language. He had no idea what she was talking about. He didn’t dispute her feelings, but he’d never felt anything like what she was describing.
When his grandparents had died he’d felt nothing. They’d bitterly disapproved of him and had always seen him as evidence of their daughter’s foolishness. They’d let his father take him away when he’d turned twelve without even sparing him a backward glance.