One Night...Nine-Month Scandal

With no desire to climb aboard that train of thought, Alekos dragged his mind back to the present.

‘Boys!’ Her voice was melting chocolate with hints of cinnamon—smooth with a hint of spice. ‘Don’t climb the fence! You know it’s dangerous.’

Alekos felt the thud of raw emotion in his gut. Four years ago she would have hurled herself across the playground with the enthusiasm of a puppy and thrown herself into his arms.

The fact that she was now looking at him as if he’d escaped from a tiger reserve added an extra boost to his rocketing tension-levels.

Alekos looked at the boy nearest to him, the need for information unlocking his tongue. ‘Is she your teacher?’

‘Yes, she’s our teacher.’ Despite the warning, the boy jammed the toe of his shoe in the wire fence and tried to climb up. ‘She doesn’t look strict, but if you do something wrong—pow!’ He slammed his fist into his palm and Alekos felt a stab of shock.

‘She hits you?’

‘Are you kidding?’ The boy collapsed with laughter at the thought. ‘She won’t even squash a spider. She catches them in a glass and lifts them out of the classroom. She never even shouts.’

‘You said “pow”.’

‘Miss Jenkins has a way of squashing you with a look. Pow!’ The boy shrugged. ‘She makes you feel bad if you’ve done something wrong. Like you’ve let her down. But she’d never hurt anyone. She’s non-violent.’

Non-violent. Miss Jenkins.

Alekos inhaled sharply; so, she wasn’t married. She didn’t yet have the four children she wanted.

Only now that the question was answered did he acknowledge that the possibility had been playing on his mind.

She crossed the playground towards him as if she were being dragged by an invisible rope. It was obvious that, given the chance, she would have run in the opposite direction. ‘Freddie, Kyle, Colin.’ She addressed the three boys in a firm tone that left no doubt about her abilities to manage a group of high-spirited children, ‘Come away from the fence.’

There was a clamour of conversation and he noticed that she answered their questions, instead of hushing them impatiently as so many adults did. And the children clearly adored her.

‘Have you seen the car, Miss Jenkins? It’s soo cool. I’ve only ever seen one in a picture.’

‘It’s just a car. Four wheels and an engine. Colin, I’m not telling you again.’ Turning her head, she looked at Alekos, her smile completely false. ‘How can I help you?’

She’d always been hopeless at hiding her feelings, and he read her as easily now as he had four years ago.

She was horrified to see him, and Alekos felt his temper burn like a jet engine.

‘Feeling guilty, agape mou?’

‘Guilty?’

‘You don’t seem pleased to see me,’ he said silkily. ‘I wonder why.’

Two bright spots of colour appeared on her cheeks and her eyes were suddenly suspiciously bright. ‘I have nothing to say to you.’

He should have greeted that ingenuous remark with the appropriate degree of contempt, but the ring had somehow faded in his mind, and now he was thinking something else entirely. Something hot, dangerous and primitive that only ever came into his head when he was with her.

Their eyes locked and he knew she was thinking the same thing. The moment held them both captive, and then she looked away, her cheeks as fiercely pink as they had been white a few moments earlier. She was treating him as if she didn’t know why he was here. As if they hadn’t once been intimately acquainted. As if there wasn’t a single part of her body that he didn’t know.

A tiny voice piped up. ‘Is he your boyfriend, miss?’

‘Freddie Harrison, that is an extremely personal question!’ Flustered, she urged the children away from the fence with a movement of her hand. ‘This is Alekos Zagorakis, and he is not my boyfriend. He is just someone I knew a long time ago.’

‘A friend, miss?’

‘Um, yes, a friend.’ The word was dragged from her and the children looked suddenly excited.

‘Miss Jenkins has a boyfriend, Miss Jenkins has a boyfriend…’ the chant increased the tension in her eyes.

‘Friend is not the same as boyfriend, Freddie.’

‘Of course it’s not the same thing.’ One of the boys snorted. ‘If it’s a boyfriend, you have sex, stupid.’

‘Miss, he said the sex word and he called me stupid. You said no one was to call anyone stupid!’

She dealt with the quarrel skilfully and dispatched the children to play before turning back to Alekos. Glancing quickly over her shoulder to check that she couldn’t be overheard, she stepped closer to the fence. ‘I cannot believe you had the nerve to come here after four years.’ Every part of her was shaking, her hands, her knees, her voice. ‘How could you be so horribly, hideously insensitive? If it weren’t for the fact the children are watching, I’d punch you—which is probably why you came here instead of somewhere private. You’re scared I’d hurt you. What are you doing here?’

‘You know why I’m here. And you’ve never punched anyone in your life, Kelly.’ It was one of the things that had drawn him to her. Her gentleness had been an antidote to the ruthless, cut-throat business-world he inhabited.

‘There’s always a first time, and this might well be it.’ She lifted her hand to her chest and pressed it there, as if she were checking that her heart was still beating. ‘Just get it over with, will you? Say what you have to say and go.’

Distracted by the press of her breasts against her plain white shirt, Alekos frowned. It was virtually buttoned to the throat; it was perfectly decent. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, about what she was wearing that could explain the volcanic response of his libido.

Infuriated with both himself and her, his tone was sharper than usual. ‘Don’t play games with me, because we both know who will win. I’ll eat you for breakfast.’ It was the wrong analogy. The moment the words left his mouth, he had an uncomfortably clear memory of her lying naked on his bed, the remains of breakfast scattered over the sheets as he took his pleasure in an entirely different way.

The hot colour in her cheeks told him that she was remembering exactly the same incident.

‘You don’t eat breakfast,’ she said hoarsely. ‘You just drink that vile, thick Greek coffee. And I don’t want to play anything with you. You don’t play by the same rules as anyone else. You—you’re a snake!’

Struggling with his physical reaction to her, Alekos stared down into her wide eyes and realised in a blinding flash that she genuinely didn’t know he was the one who had bought the ring.

With a cynical laugh at his own expense, he dragged his hand through his hair and swore softly to himself in Greek.

That was what happened, he reminded himself grimly, when he forgot that Kelly didn’t think like other people. His skill at thinking ahead, at second guessing people, was one of the reasons for his phenomenal business success, but with Kelly it was a skill that had failed him. She didn’t think the way other women thought. She’d surprised him, over and over again. And she was surprising him now. Seeing the sheen of tears in her eyes, he sucked in a breath, realising with a blinding flash of intuition that she hadn’t sold the ring to send him a message. She’d sold the ring because he’d hurt her.

In that single moment, Alekos knew that he’d made a grave error of judgement. He should not have come here in person. It wasn’t easy on him, and it wasn’t fair on her. ‘You have four-million dollars of my money in your bank account,’ he said calmly, resolving to get this finished as quickly as possible for both their sakes. He watched as shock turned her eyes a darker shade of blue. ‘I’ve come for my ring.’

Chapter Two

KELLY stood in the classroom, gulping in air.

Alekos had bought the ring?

No, no, no! That wasn’t possible. Was it? Thumping her fist to her forehead, she tried to think straight, wondering why it hadn’t occurred to her that it could be him.

Because billionaires didn’t trawl eBay, that was why. If she’d thought for a moment that he would find out about it, she would never have sold it.

As the full consequences of her actions hit her, Kelly gave a low moan.