The Greek Billionaire's Love-Child (5 page)

An hour later Nikos reappeared and pronounced her well enough to be discharged.

‘Thanks so much for everything.’ Amanda held Poppy against her shoulder with one hand, while Tamsin tugged at the other. ‘You’ve been so great. Thank you.’

Nikos was writing up the notes as Tamsin dropped her mother’s hand and held out her arms to Ella.

‘Play.’

‘No more playing today. You’re going home, Tamsin.’ Ella dropped into a crouch and smiled at her new friend. ‘And you’re going to have a lovely holiday.’

‘You come.’ Tamsin grabbed Ella’s hand and gave her a tug.

Ella laughed and stood up. ‘Now, that’s a tempting invitation.’ The way she felt at the moment she’d do anything to escape from the prospect of working with Nikos. ‘Unfortunately, I can’t come home with you.’

‘I wish you could,’ Amanda breathed. ‘You’re a miracle with the children. You have a real way about you.’

Ella saw Nikos’s pen still and wondered what he was thinking.

Did he feel regret that they could never be a proper family?

Guilt that his child would grow up without a father?

Pushing that thought aside, she guided Amanda and the children out of the department and then reluctantly returned to the cubicle.

Fortunately there was no sign of Nikos and Ella felt a rush of relief as she cleared and restocked the room ready for the next patient.

The tension had formed a knot inside her stomach and she reminded herself that he wasn’t going to say anything while they were at work.

Having used that fact to calm herself, she turned to leave the room only to find Nikos blocking her exit, his legs spread apart in a confrontational stance, the look in his black eyes dark and dangerous.

This time there was no evidence of gentleness or kindness. This wasn’t a man who would be pulling a mermaid out of his pocket.

Anger surrounded him like a forcefield.

Closing the door firmly behind him, he strolled forward until his body was brushing against hers. ‘It’s time you and I had a conversation,
agape mou
.’

‘I
DON’T
have anything to say to you, Nikos.’ Heart racing, desperately flustered, Ella pushed at his shoulders but he didn’t budge.

This wasn’t a man about to apologise for anything. Mouth grim, he backed her against the wall and planted an arm either side of her shoulders, imprisoning her and blocking her escape. Through the fabric of his shirt she could feel the heat and power of his body and the immediate response of hers, and it appalled her that she could still feel like this after the casual, careless way he’d treated her.

He didn’t care and yet still she couldn’t switch off the screaming need inside her.

Her body was no judge of character, she thought bitterly, turning her eyes away from his in the hope of reducing temptation. He was everything male, from the top of his glossy dark head, down six feet four inches of supremely fit body, to the arrogant way he stood in front of her, as if he owned the world.

Which apparently he did
, she thought, biting back a hysterical laugh as she remembered all the things she’d learned about him during that one, awful afternoon four months ago.

‘You don’t have anything to say to me? You are pregnant
with my child and you don’t think you have anything to say to me?’ His voice shook with emotion, his eyes narrowed to dangerous slits as he focused on her face. ‘Answer me one question—were you going to tell me? If your friend Helen hadn’t written that letter,
would you have told me
?’

‘Why would you even care?’

The hiss of his breath was the only sound in the room. ‘You are seriously asking me that question?’

She pushed at his chest, the enormity of the issue closing in on her like huge brick walls. ‘We can’t talk about this here. It’s going to have to wait until we’ve finished work.’

He laughed, but the sound was bitter and contemptuous. ‘I’m not letting you out of my sight,
agape mou
. And this is as good a place to talk as any. At the moment we have no patients. And I repeat—were you going to tell me?’

‘I don’t know!’ Shaking now, Ella lifted her hands to her cheeks. ‘You want an honest answer?
I don’t know.
It was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make.’

His mouth tightened into a grim line. ‘I fail to see what is hard about telling a man that he is going to be a father.’

‘It’s hard when that man is already married!’ Her passionate outburst was greeted by frozen silence.

It was as if she’d shot him at close range.

Nikos’s sinfully handsome face grew several shades paler and his breathing became decidedly unsteady. ‘What possible grounds do you have for making a statement like that?’ His voice was hoarse and she shook her head, wondering why she suddenly felt guilty when it was his behaviour that had driven her away.

‘I found out everything, Nikos.’ It was hard to get the
words past the lump in her throat. ‘Everything that you were hiding from me.’

His sudden stillness was marked. ‘What,’ he demanded in a thickened tone, ‘was I supposed to be hiding?’

‘Your secret life—the fact that you’re a billionaire, with a wife waiting for you back in Greece.’

The silence that greeted her statement was like the strike of a blade through her heart. For months she’d nurtured a secret hope that she’d got it all wrong. She’d wanted desperately to be wrong, even though the evidence was damning. Even now, she was hoping for a denial.

But no denial was forthcoming.

Before that moment she hadn’t realised that a silence could say so much.

He looked down at her, the shimmer of his eyes a warning of danger. ‘This is the reason you didn’t tell me about the baby? Because of some rumour you heard?’

‘It wasn’t a rumour.’

‘Did you hear it from me? Did you hear from my lips that I have a wife?’

‘You know I didn’t.’

‘And you didn’t think it was worth asking me about this “secret life” of mine before you decided to deprive me of my child?’

‘You walked out on me, Nikos! How could I ask you?’

‘I did
not
know you were pregnant.’

The temperature between them was rising, the atmosphere so highly charged that Ella half expected the smoke detectors to be activated at any moment.

‘What difference would it have made? You’re married.’ Reminding herself of that fact, Ella pushed at his chest and then wished she hadn’t because touching him was
sweet torture. She let her hands drop. ‘I understand why you left me.’

‘You understand nothing.’ His voice held a harsh, brutal note. ‘Nothing.’

She lifted her chin. Looked at him. Faced her mistake. ‘I know that you lied to me. Maybe you’re miserable together—I don’t know—but that’s no excuse. Whatever the state of your marriage, I can’t be with a man I don’t trust. That’s the end of it for me.’

‘Trust?’ His laugh had a cynical edge to it. ‘You dare talk to me about trust when you would have hidden your pregnancy from me?’

Feeling the fury in him, Ella felt a burst of frustration because the conversation was focused on him.
His
feelings.
His
ego.

He was thinking only of himself.

Had he once asked how she felt? Had he asked what had happened to her after he’d left? Did he care? No. He just cared that she hadn’t told him she was pregnant.

Somehow he was twisting this whole thing to make it seem like her fault. She’d been expecting some sort of apology. Instead he was attacking her as if she’d committed a crime. ‘The baby isn’t the issue here, Nikos.’

‘Why? Isn’t it mine?’ His tone was harsh and Ella gave a soft gasp of shock and lifted her hand.

The sound of the slap echoed around the room, the pain in her heart as great as the sting in her palm. ‘How
dare
you? How dare you say that to me?’

‘Theos mou…’
Nikos lifted a hand to his cheek, incredulous dark eyes sweeping her face. ‘It was a reasonable question.’

‘It was not a reasonable question! It was a
totally of
fensive question
!’ She almost choked on the words. ‘Especially coming from you. You lay in my bed night after night and made love to me and all the time you were married. What’s your excuse? Your rampant sex drive? You have no idea how much I wish this wasn’t your baby, Nikos! I would give anything for this not to be your baby.’ Her hand still stung from the blow and part of her was embarrassed at her loss of control. It was to his credit that he hadn’t returned the blow, she thought grudgingly, hating herself for not being able to maintain a front of cool indifference. ‘No, I didn’t tell you about the baby. I didn’t want to do that to your wife!’ Ella lifted her chin, pride giving her wobbly limbs the strength they needed, and her eyes clashed with his. ‘And I didn’t want to do that to my baby.’

‘Our baby,’ he corrected her in a driven tone, so angry that he was literally pulsing with it. She saw the flicker in his hard jaw and the flex of muscle in his wide, powerful shoulders. ‘It’s
our
baby.’

‘A moment ago you were debating whether it was yours.’ Sarcasm tasted bitter in her mouth. ‘There is no “our”, Nikos. Go back to your wife. Fix your marriage. We’re finished.’ Suddenly she felt drained and exhausted, the spirit sapped from her by the explosive force of the confrontation.

‘Finished?’ His tone was thickened, his dark eyes glittering with anger, a red streak on his cheek where she’d slapped him. ‘We haven’t even started. But you’re right—we can’t do this here. The way I feel at the moment, I’m not safe to be alone with you. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to finish the conversation.’

Watching him stride away from her, Ella felt as though her heart was going to stop beating. Even though she knew it was
foolish, a tiny part of her had desperately hoped he might just drag her into his arms and tell her that it was all a terrible mistake—that he loved her. That his wife didn’t exist.

That she’d got it all wrong.

But that sort of thing didn’t happen in real life, did it?

Humans were flawed, she reminded herself, restocking the resuscitation room on automatic. Endings weren’t happy. Fairy-tales were for innocent children.

And true love was a myth.

Her emotions in pieces, Ella stumbled through the next few hours of her shift. Upset and distracted, her hands were shaking and she was unusually clumsy.

‘That will have to be thrown away.’ Nikos frowned impatiently as Ella dropped another instrument on the floor. ‘What is the matter with you?’

You’re the matter with me
, Ella wanted to shriek, but instead she quietly disposed of the instrument, washed her hands and opened a fresh suture pack.

Her cheeks burned hot with humiliation.

The emergency department was the one area of her life where she considered herself confident, and now she was even messing that up.

She’d lost it.

In contrast, the crackling tension between them didn’t appear to have affected the quality of Nikos’s work in any way. As usual, he was ice cool, suturing the child’s wound with hands that were entirely steady, maintaining a steady flow of conversation that involved fairies, palaces and magic kingdoms.

As if only hours earlier he hadn’t been ready to remove Ella’s head.

Envying his ability to detach himself from his problems, Ella tried not to mind that he obviously wasn’t finding it remotely awkward working alongside her.

And that said everything about their relationship, didn’t it?

He just didn’t care enough. It wasn’t hard for him whereas for her it was agony.

Not only had she been heartbroken by the end of their relationship, she now had the threat of further confrontation hovering over her like a stormcloud. He’d said that he couldn’t talk about it yet.

Well, when? And where?

Trying to divert her mind, she kept her eyes fixed on either the patient or the instruments. But she was a nervous wreck. At one point Nikos made an exasperated sound and actually put his hand over hers to steady it. Ella immediately dropped what she was holding.

‘Theos mou!’

‘Sorry. I’m sorry,’ she muttered, rapidly coming to the conclusion that the hospital wasn’t going to be able to afford to keep her on at this rate.

Nikos dragged his impatient gaze from her flushed face and deftly tied the final stitch with fingers that were sickeningly steady.

‘Those stitches can come out in ten days. I’m done here—well done,
koritsi mou
, you were amazing.’ Smiling at the little girl, Nikos dropped the remains of the suture on the dressing trolley, stripped off his gloves and left the room without once glancing at Ella.

Feeling like a student nurse in her first week of training, Ella discharged the child, tidied the room and made a decision.

She couldn’t do this.

She couldn’t concentrate on her work while she was consumed with anxiety about their next confrontation.

So far she’d done less than six hours of her shift and already she was a basket case. His words were going round and round in her head and the injustice of it all was building up inside her.

How
dared
he turn this situation into something that was her fault when he was the one who had lied?

What right did he have to be angry with her?

Heart thumping, she went to look for him and found him in his office, talking in clipped, decisive tones to someone who was clearly giving him a battery of excuses for the deplorable staffing levels.

‘Take another look at your budget,’ Nikos advised in a silky tone, his gaze resting on Ella as she hovered in the doorway. ‘Yes, I can prepare you a case if you need me to.’ His jaw tightened. ‘No, I can’t come at four o’clock. At four o’clock I will be working, staffing this department that has murals and toys, but insufficient staff. Call the meeting for nine o’clock—well, if most of them have already left by then, they’re luckier than the rest of us. Perhaps the timing will help reinforce the point I’m trying to make.’ He replaced the phone and raised an eyebrow in her direction. ‘Is this business or personal? Because if it’s personal, I don’t have time.’

‘Then make time.’ Suddenly she almost felt sorry for the hospital’s management board. She knew only too well that his kind, approachable side only extended to his young patients. When it came to adults who didn’t follow his way of thinking, Nikos was a hard, ruthless adversary. ‘I need to talk to you
now
.’ With a decisive push of her hand she closed the door firmly behind her
and came straight to the point. ‘You have no right to be angry with me, because
you
are the one at fault here. It isn’t just the fact that you broke up with me or that you’re married. You lied to me. You weren’t who you said you were.’

‘You think I’m faking being a doctor?’

‘That isn’t what I mean and you know it. Don’t play word games with me!’ She stabbed her finger towards him, a sudden rush of emotion almost choking her. ‘You’re a billionaire with loads of houses and yachts and—and—you own super de luxe hotels around the world and—
I had a right to know those things about you.’

‘Why?’ Arrogantly male, he held her gaze, displaying not a hint of regret or remorse. ‘What difference does it make?’

‘It makes a huge difference. How do you think I felt when I found out that you’re a billionaire?’

The derisory lift of his brows indicated that the issue wasn’t one that interested him. ‘Like you’d missed out, I should imagine.’

If she hadn’t already slapped him she would have considered doing it now.

‘It isn’t about the money! I wish you didn’t have money because then that would be once less thing you lied about! I felt betrayed, Nikos! That’s how I felt.’ Ella felt a rush of despair that he didn’t seem to understand why she might have been upset. ‘You lied about who you were and you lied about your wife! Pictures of your wedding were plastered all over the magazine I picked up in the doctor’s surgery. How
could
you? How
could
you have sex with me when you’re married? Don’t you have a conscience?’ Immediately after she’d asked the question she regretted it because she could feel her voice start to wobble. ‘What was I, Nikos?
An easy lay while you were in London?’ Oh God, that was another question she shouldn’t have asked.