One Night to Risk it All

“You know there are like...a thousand wedding guests coming? A hundred reporters?”

“You have two options, Rachel,” he said, the adrenaline that was spiking through him making his mind run quickly. “You leave with me, now, don’t speak to anyone. Or you go forward with the wedding. But mark my words, if you do that, I will stop the ceremony and I will tell everyone that you are pregnant with my child. That I seduced you in Corfu and that you gave it up to me in record time. Even without a paternity test, your precious Ajax will know. Because I’m the only man that’s had you. And a due date with that big of a gap from your wedding night won’t lie.”

“The press...”

“The press is here, and they’ll hear and report every word I say. But the decision is yours.”

“It’s not mine,” she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. She was still wearing nothing more than her underwear. “I’m in an impossible situation here. I can’t go back. I can’t fix this. I can’t...” she paused. “I could get a...” She looked away from him. “I could make it go away.”

His stomach clenched. “No.”

She shook her head, her blue eyes filling with tears. “You’re right. I can’t. I just... I can’t.”

“Come with me.”

“And what?”

“Marry me.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“YOU’RE INSANE,” RACHEL SAID, aiming the air-conditioning vent at her face as Alex’s red sports car peeled out of the driveway of the family estate.

Holy crap. She’d done it. She was running away from her wedding. She had...almost nothing. A few clothes, her favorite shoes. Her computer, her phone, her books.

But when he’d told her about the options, it was like seeing ahead, straight and clear. She could go out there, dressed all in white, the virginal bride, and promise herself to Ajax, knowing she was carrying another man’s baby. Knowing the press would slaughter all involved if Alex strode down the aisle after her and told everyone in attendance what she’d done.

That was something she’d known she couldn’t do even before she’d confirmed the pregnancy.

She knew the position she was in. She’d been made so fully aware of it that day in her father’s office when he’d told her he would no longer shield her from the scandal she was exposing herself to.

She’d managed to stay perfect in the eyes of the public and because of that the media had placed her on a pedestal. That meant that any whiff of scandal would send a mob of reporters out to knock her straight off it.

Nobody liked a paragon, not really. They only kept her around for the chance to see her fall. She’d been spared that fate. Her father had protected her from the consequences of her actions, and after seeing the extent to which she could have ruined things for herself she’d decided that she would be playing the part of dutiful daughter, and wife, for the rest of her life.

And all she’d done was delay the inevitable—she saw that now.

It would be vicious when they found out about this, and no matter how she played this, she would come out the villain. She knew it for certain. But she didn’t have the strength to have it happen in front of an audience. To let Alex say his piece like that, in front of all those guests and reporters, without any control for what was said or how.

The thought of it... It felt like her whole life, the life she’d taken such great pains to build from the time she was seventeen, was slipping through her fingers. She had become The Holt Heiress. Rachel Holt, style icon and media sweetheart. Eternal hostess, role model and...and what else she didn’t know.

That night with Alex had brought something out in her she hadn’t known had existed, and she was paying for it dearly now.

Stepping off that straight and narrow path had proven to have some pretty permanent consequences. And right now, she was taking a temporary leave of absence from those consequences. Because this way, she didn’t have to look at Ajax’s face when he found out. Or her father’s.

Or Leah’s.

She took her phone out. “I have to text Leah at least.” She thought of her sister, who was all set to be maid of honor in the wedding. Her lovely, sweet sister who’d always gotten such crap from the press, but who was one of the best people Rachel had ever known.

It made her sick to think how Leah would worry.

How her father would worry.

And Ajax...

She had ruined everything. She was going to panic. She was officially on the verge of a panic attack.

“Don’t text them until our plane is about to leave. And why am I insane?”

“Because everything is insane!” She exploded. “And you want me to marry you. I am not marrying you. I don’t know you. I don’t like you, either.”

“How can you dislike me if you don’t know me?”

“Fine. I don’t know you very well, and what I do know about you, I don’t like.”

“You like my body.”

“And if you were only a body, maybe that would matter. But there is, unfortunately, a personality beneath those hard muscles and it freaking blows.”

“Does it?”

“You’re a liar. You’re hell-bent on ruining my fiancé’s life, and I don’t even know why, and you used me to get revenge on him.”

“And then didn’t do anything about it.”

“You came today.”

“Yeah, so I might have done something. But I wasn’t going to come to the wedding so I wasn’t planning on doing anything anymore. It’s just...it’s just that then I ended up coming. And it was a good thing I did.”

“It was not.”

“You would have married him then?”

“No.”

“I thought not.”

“Why do you hate him, incidentally? It seems like this might be really important to my future.” She looked down at her hands and noticed they were shaking.

“As I told you, Ajax Kouros is a created name. A created identity. Hell, mine is, too, for the most part. Christofides is anyway. I was never called by a last name at all.”

“How is that possible?”

“I was the son of a woman who couldn’t remember her real name. Or if she did, she chose never to use it. ‘Meli’ was all she ever called herself. Honey. I think it was a double entendre of some kind. We lived in Ajax’s father’s compound. The infamous Nikola Kouklakis.”

“What?”

“I suppose you’ve heard of him.”