Greek Bachelors: Bound By His Heir: Carrying the Greek's Heir / An Heir to Bind Them / The Greek's Tiny Miracle

A security guard she hadn’t seen until that moment walked over to her.

‘Can I help you, miss?’

Ellie pushed her fringe out of her eyes and forced a smile. ‘I’m just waiting for my...friend.’

‘And your friend’s name is?’

Did she dare? And yet, wasn’t the reality that in her belly was growing a son or daughter who might one day be the boss of this mighty corporation? She sucked in a deep breath, telling herself that she had every right to be here.

‘His name is Alek Sarantos,’ she blurted out, but not before she had seen a wary look entering the guard’s eyes.

To his credit—and Ellie’s surprise—he didn’t offer any judgement or try to move her on, he simply nodded.

‘I’ll let his office know you’re here,’ he said, and started to walk towards the reception desk.

He’s going to tell him, thought Ellie as the reality of her situation hit her. He’s going to ring up to Alek’s office and say that some mad, overheated woman is waiting downstairs for him in Reception. It wasn’t too late to make a run for it. She could be gone by the time Alek got down here. She could go back to the New Forest and carry on working for the owner of Candy’s Cupcakes—who wasn’t called Candy at all—and somehow scrape by, doing the best she could for her baby.

But that wasn’t good enough, was it? She didn’t want to bring up a child who had to make do. She didn’t want to have to shop at thrift stores or learn a hundred ways to be inventive with a packet of lentils. She wanted her child to thrive. To have new shoes whenever he or she needed them and not have to worry about whether there was enough money to pay the rent. Because she knew how miserable that could be.

‘Ellie?’

A deep Greek accent broke into her thoughts and Ellie looked up to see Alek Sarantos directly in front of her with the guard a few protective steps away. There was a note of surprise in the way he said her name, and a distinct note of unfriendliness, too.

She supposed she ought to get to her feet. To do something rather than just sit there, like a sack of potatoes which had been dumped. She licked her lips and tried to smile, but a smile was stubbornly refusing to come. And wasn’t it crazy that she could look at someone who was glaring at her and still want him? Hadn’t her body already betrayed her once, without now shamefully prickling with excited recognition—even though she’d never seen him looking quite so intimidating in an immaculately cut business suit?

Keep calm, she told herself. Act like a grown-up.

‘Hello, Alek,’ she said, even managing what she hoped was a friendly smile.

He didn’t react. His blue eyes were cool. No. Cool was the wrong temperature. Icy would be more accurate.

‘What are you doing here?’ he questioned, almost pleasantly—but it didn’t quite conceal the undertone of steel in his voice and she could see the guard stiffen, as if anticipating that some unpleasantness was about to reveal itself.

She wondered what would happen if she just came out and said it. I’m having your baby.You’re going to be a daddy, Alek! That would certainly wipe that cold look from his face! But something stopped her. Something which felt like self-preservation. And pride. She couldn’t afford to just react—she had to think. Not just for herself, but for her baby. In his eyes she’d already betrayed him to the journalist and that had made him go ballistic. She couldn’t tell him about impending fatherhood when there was a brick-house of a guard standing there, flexing his muscles. She ought to give him the opportunity to hear the news in private. She owed him that much.

She kept her gaze and her voice steady—though that wasn’t particularly easy in the light of that forbidding blue stare. ‘I’d prefer to talk to you in private, if you don’t mind.’

Alek felt a sudden darkness envelop his heart as the expression on her face told him everything. He tried to tell himself that it was the shock of finding her here which had sent his thoughts haywire, but he knew that wasn’t true. Because he’d thought about her. Of course he had. He’d even wondered idly about seeing her again—and why wouldn’t he? Why wouldn’t he want a repeat of what had been the best sex he could remember? If only it had been that straightforward, but life rarely was.

He remembered the way he’d lain there afterwards, with his head cradled on her shoulder as he drifted in and out of a dreamy sleep. And her fingers—her soft fingers—had been stroking his hair. It had felt soothing and strangely intimate. It had kick-started something unknown inside him—something threatening enough to freak him out. He had felt the walls closing in on him—just as they were closing in on him right now.

He tried to tell himself that maybe he was mistaken—that it couldn’t possibly be what he most feared. But what else could it be? No woman in her situation would turn up like this and be so unflappable when challenged—not unless she had a trump card to play. Not when he’d left her without so much as a kiss or a promise to call her again. Somehow he sensed that Ellie had more pride than to come here begging him to see her again. She’d been strong, hadn’t she? An equal in his arms and out of them, despite the disparity of their individual circumstances.

He noted the shadows on her face, which suddenly seemed as grey as her eyes, and thought how drained she looked. His mouth tightened and a flare of anger and self-recrimination flooded through him. He was going to have to listen to her. He needed to hear what she had to say. To find out whether what he dreaded was true.

His mind raced. He thought about taking her to a nearby coffee shop. No. Much too public. Should he take her upstairs to his office? That might be easier. Easier to get rid of her afterwards than if he took her home. And he had no desire to take her home. He just wanted her out of his life. To forget that he’d ever met her. ‘You’d better come up to my office.’

‘Okay,’ she said, her voice sounding brittle.

It felt bizarre to ride up in the elevator in silence but he didn’t want to open any kind of discussion in such a confined space, and she seemed to feel the same. When the doors opened she followed him through the outer office and he looked across at Vasos.

‘Hold all my calls,’ he said—catching the flicker of surprise in his assistant’s eyes.

‘Yes, boss.’

Soon they were in his cool suite of offices, which overlooked the city skyline, and he thought how out of place she looked, with her flower-sprigged cotton dress and pale legs. And yet despite a face which was almost bare of make-up and the fact that her hair was hanging down her back in that thick ponytail—there was still something about her which made his body tense with a primitive recognition he didn’t understand. Even though she looked pasty and had obviously lost weight, part of him still wanted to pin her down against that leather couch, which stood in the corner, and to lose himself deep inside her honeyed softness. His mouth flattened.

‘Sit down,’ he said.

‘There’s no need.’ She hesitated, like a guest who had turned up at the wrong party and wasn’t quite sure how to explain herself to the host. ‘You probably want to know why I’ve turned up like this—’

‘I know exactly why.’ Never had it been more of an ordeal to keep his voice steady, but he knew that psychologically it was better to tell than to be told. To remain in control. His words came out calmly, belying the sudden flare of fear deep in his gut. ‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’

She swayed. She actually swayed—reaching out to grab the edge of his desk. And despite his anger, Alek strode across the office and took hold of her shoulders and he could feel his fingers sinking into her soft flesh as he levered her down onto a chair.

‘Sit down,’ he repeated.

Her voice was wobbly. ‘I don’t want to sit down.’

‘And I don’t want the responsibility of you passing out on the floor of my office,’ he snapped. But he pulled his hands away from her—as if continuing to touch her might risk him behaving like the biggest of all fools for a second time. He didn’t want the responsibility of her, full stop. He wanted her to be nothing but a fast-fading memory of an interlude he’d rather forget—but that wasn’t going to happen. Not now. Raising his voice, he called for his assistant. ‘Vasos!’

Vasos appeared at the door immediately—unable to hide his look of surprise as he saw his boss leaning over the woman who was sitting slumped on a chair.

‘Get me some water.’ Alek spoke in Greek. ‘Quickly.’

The assistant returned seconds later with a glass, his eyes still curious. ‘Will there be anything else, boss?’

‘Nothing else.’ Alek took the water from him. ‘Just leave us. And hold all my calls.’

As Vasos closed the door behind him Alek held the glass to her lips. Her eyes were suspicious and her body tense. She reminded him of a stray kitten he’d once brought into the house as a child. The animal had been a flea-ridden bag of bones and Alek had painstakingly brought it back to full and gleaming health. It had been something he’d felt proud of. Something in that cold mausoleum of a house for him to care about. And then his father had discovered it, and...and...

His throat suddenly felt as if it had nails in it. Why remember something like that now? ‘Drink it,’ he said harshly. ‘It isn’t poison.’

She raised her eyes to his and the suspicion in them had been replaced by a flicker of defiance.

‘But you’d probably like it to be,’ she answered quietly.

He didn’t answer—he didn’t trust himself to. He blocked out the maelstrom of emotions which seemed to be hovering like dark spectres and waited until a little colour had returned to her cheeks. Then he walked over to his desk and put the glass down, before positioning himself in front of the vast expanse of window, his arms crossed.

‘You’d better start explaining,’ he said.

Ellie stared up at him. The water had restored some of her strength, but one glance at the angry sizzle from his blue eyes was enough to remind her that she was here on a mission. She wasn’t trying to win friends or influence people, or because she hoped for a repeat of the passion which had got her into this situation in the first place. So keep emotion out of it, she told herself fiercely. Keep to the plain and brutal facts and then you can deal with them.

‘There isn’t really a lot to explain. I’m having a baby.’

‘We used a condom,’ he iced back. ‘You know we did.’

Stupidly, that made her blush. As if discussing contraception in his place of work was hopelessly inappropriate. But while it might be inappropriate, it was also necessary, she reminded herself grimly. And she was not going to let him intimidate her. It had taken two of them to get into this situation—therefore they both needed to accept responsibility.