Greek Affairs: Claiming His Child: The Greek's Million-Dollar Baby Bargain / The Greek Millionaire's Secret Child / The Greek's Long-Lost Son

For a moment there was no motion. None at all. Then abruptly, roughly, her body was away from the weight bearing on her. Nikos was striding away, across the huge room, thrusting open the door into the en suite bathroom, and closing it sharply behind him.

For a handful of seconds she could only lie there, still, inert, motionless. Then, forcing her frozen mind to act, she clambered up, urgently scrabbling for her clothes, forcing herself into them with unbearable haste and clumsiness, not bothering with underwear, just winding her top and her skirt around her to cover her nakedness. From the bathroom she could hear the sound of a shower starting. Her eyes flew past the door opposite the French window to the terrace, and she saw the door which surely must lead to the rest of the villa.

She hurried to it, half tripping, heart racing, lungs still choking, and yanked it open, finding herself, to her abject relief, in a service corridor. She didn’t know where she was going but it didn’t matter—she simply hurtled along it, desperately hoping that at this late hour she would encounter no one until she came upon part of the villa she recognised and could navigate to her own guest bedroom from there. Minutes later she was shutting the door and collapsing down on her own bed, shaking like a leaf, her arms wrapped around herself, as if stanching a wound. She started to rock.

Words whipped through her, over and over again, more and more cruel.

What have I done? What have I done?

Nikos stood beneath the pounding water of the shower. Its needles should be knives. Knives to carve into his greedy flesh the punishment he deserved.

How the hell could he have been so stupid? Hadn’t he known—hadn’t he told himself, staring into the mirror above the basin in that very bathroom a handful of days ago, that he was playing with fire? And now what had he gone and done? Knowingly, deliberately fooled himself on the way back to the villa with the kind of self-flattering logic that, had it been a dodgy business proposal, he’d have seen through in an instant. But which, because it was his damn male desire—never thwarted before, never not satiated, whenever and with whoever he wanted—he’d seized on it as if it were legal writ!

His mind sheered away. Sheered away from remembering the moment when he’d realised that not only did he have to take her, right there, right then, but worse—far, far worse—the moment when the world had simply whited out.

It’s never been like that before.

The words formed in his mind as the stinging needles pounded down on him.

Never had the moment of sexual fulfilment been like that—so intense, so overpowering, so consuming that he’d cried out, unable to stop himself.

Until the moment when consciousness had knifed back into him and he’d stared down at her and realised, with harsh, pitiless self-condemnation, that he had just walked over the edge of a cliff.

Angrily his hand fisted, and he thumped it against the wall of the shower stall.

I damn well knew I should have left her alone. I damn well knew it!

But even as the words formed, so did others. Others that made him abruptly cut off the water, grab a towel, and pat himself dry, roughly towelling the moisture out of his hair. Then he cast the towels aside and yanked open the bathroom door.

He knew he should never have touched Ann Turner. He knew he should never have taken her to his bed. Knew he should never have had sex with her.

But he knew something else as well as he strode out of the bathroom.

He wanted her again.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE SUN WAS SCARCELY UP, but Ann was lying in bed, wakeful and tormented. She would have to go. Leave Sospiris. There was no other option. She couldn’t stay here now!

I’ll have to think of something—something to tell Ari, Mrs Theakis. Something—anything!

Except the truth. Even as she lay there she felt a semi-hysterical bubble inside her at the thought of Mrs Theakis knowing …

She shuddered in horror, feeling her skin flush.

How am I going to face her? How can I even have breakfast with her—knowing what I did, where I was?

And yet she was going to have to. Going to have to somehow get through the morning, behave normally, then dream up some plausible reason why she had to go back to England.

A spear stabbed her. Ari! Ari would be so upset, so distressed! Wasn’t it bad enough he was about to lose Tina? Now she was proposing to walk out on him as well.

For ever.

Because unless by some miracle Mrs Theakis invited her here again when Nikos was somewhere else—like Australia, or better still Antarctica!—or perhaps herself come to London some time, then how could she possibly ever see Ari again? She could never go anywhere near Nikos Theakis again—never!

Abruptly, another emotion stabbed into her. One that was shocking, unforgivable—shameless!

Never to see Nikos again—

Instantly, viciously, she slammed down on the emotion, crushing it brutally, punishingly. How could she stoop so low? How could she? And how could a man who thought her the lowest of the low, who had said such cruel, vile things about her sister, a man she had hated for four long years, have possibly made love to her the way he had?

Her face hardened. Made love? Was she stupid or something? Nikos Theakis hadn’t ‘made love’ to her! He’d had sex with her! That was all he’d done—all he’d wanted. Bitter humiliation seared through her. Oh, how could she have fallen into bed with him like that? Just because he looked like a Greek god. Just because she felt weak at the knees because he was so devastating a male that any woman, every woman, would turn and stare at him and yearn for him to look their way …

Anguished, hating herself almost as much as she hated Nikos Theakis, Ann went on staring at the ceiling, counting the hours till she could escape from Sospiris. Escape from Nikos.

But what had seemed imperative as she lay sleepless and tormented on her bed became far, far more difficult when she had to face Mrs Theakis at breakfast.

‘Leave us?’ Sophia Theakis’ eyes widened in surprise. ‘Surely not?’ Her gaze shifted as the doors to the morning room opened. ‘Nikos! Ann is saying that she may have to return to London.’

Ann felt herself freeze. Not for all the power on earth would she turn her head to see Nikos stalk in. But nothing could stop her hearing his deep voiced reply as he took his place. ‘Out of the question. It was agreed that she would stay until after Tina’s wedding so that Ari would be least unsettled. Is that not so, Ann?’

Her head swivelled. And immediately, fight it as she might, she felt colour stain vividly across her cheekbones at the sight of him. He was casually dressed in a pale cream polo shirt with a discreetly expensive logo on it, hair still damp and jaw freshly shaved. At once, vivid and hot, sprang the memory of his roughened skin against her last night as his mouth possessed hers … Her colour deepened.

His eyes were holding hers, challenging them—branding them.

She bit her lip, and saw something flare deep within. ‘I—I—’ she began, then floundered. Rational thought, speech, was impossible. ‘It’s just that—’ she tried again, and failed.

Another expression shot through Nikos’s eyes. She could have sworn it was satisfaction.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then that is settled. You will stay, as agreed, until after Tina’s wedding. And then …’ His eyes flicked to her momentarily, as his hand reached for the jug of freshly squeezed orange juice in front of him. ‘Then we shall see. Who knows, Ann, what will happen after Tina’s wedding, hmm? In the meantime today, with Ari occupied with his playmate from Maxos arriving with Tina later this morning, it is more than time, I think, that I showed you something more of Sospiris than you have already seen.’

Calmly, he started to drink his orange juice. Numbly, Ann turned back to Mrs Theakis, as though she might somehow save her from so dire a fate. But as she turned she caught for a fleeting moment a strange, assessing look in the older woman’s eyes, as they hovered between her guest and her son. Then an instant later it was gone, and Ann could only think—only hope!—she had imagined it.

Sophia Theakis’ expression had changed to a serene smile. ‘That is a lovely idea, Nikos. Sospiris has many hidden beauties, Ann,’ she said benignly, ‘and I’m sure my son will show you all of them.’

With monumental effort, Ann schooled her face into complaisance. Inside, she felt like jelly.

Nikos gunned the Jeep impatiently. Where was she? If she was planning on trying to get out of this, he would simply go and fetch her. But she would come. His mother would see to it.

For a moment his expression wavered. It was not comfortable, being under the eye of his mother in these circumstances. But it was for her sake that he was doing this—even though, of course, she could not know that. But for her to be burdened indefinitely, leached off by the female she thought so well of just because he could not open her eyes to Ann Turner’s true character, was not something he was prepared to tolerate. What he was prepared to tolerate, however, was his own disapproval of the course of action he had decided to pursue—a course of action that he’d already taken a decision on as he’d walked back into the bedroom the night before.

To hell with it! To hell with warnings about playing with fire—it was too damn late for that. He’d not just played with fire—he’d set the bed ablaze! And it, and he, had gone up in a sheet of flame. So any warnings, any regrets, were too little, too late. If there was one thing that was now absolutely clear—had become forcibly even more crystal-clear when he’d seen his empty bed and realised that Ann had run away—it was that he was counting the hours until he could possess her again.

The remainder of his night had been a sleepless one, but not because he had been repining his seduction any more—it had been because his bed was empty, and he very definitely did not want it to be empty. He’d almost gone after her. Why she had done a runner he had no idea—unless it was to see whether he would come chasing after her. Or—a sudden frown had knitted his brow darkly—was she belatedly, seeking to assume a virtue she had just very amply demonstrated she did not have?

He brushed the thought aside. Of course Ann Turner possessed not a shred of virtue! How could she, when she had sold her own flesh and blood for cold hard cash? For a fleeting moment something jarred in his brain. The vivid memory of their union burned again in his mind. Could the woman who had so inflamed him, with whom he had cried out at the searing moment of their fulfilment—a fulfilment deeper and more intense than any he had experienced—really be the same woman whose grasping fingers had greedily closed over the cheques he had so contemptuously handed her?

And yet she was. She was that same woman. However much she inflamed him he must never forget that—not for a moment.