The Greek Billionaire's Love-Child (9 page)

It would have been so easy to say yes. A huge part of her wanted to say yes. Yes to marriage, yes to sex, yes to a life with this man.

But how could she say yes when not only had he kept secrets from her but he didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong in that?

To gain herself thinking time, she made two cups of coffee and took hers out on the tiny deck at the prow of the boat, instantly calmed by the early morning peace of the canal. The sun played on the surface of the water, casting shadows and light. Nettles and reeds stood guard along the river bank and rhododendrons crowded over the water, as if admiring their own reflections. A swan glided past, watchful of her three cygnets, and Ella felt a pang of kinship for this mother, protecting her young.

Suddenly feeling a huge burden of responsibility, Ella put her hand on the curve of her abdomen, still intrigued by her new shape.

‘You need to move off this boat.’ Ducking his glossy dark head to avoid the low door, Nikos joined her on the polished wooden deck. He’d pulled on his trousers but nothing else. Curling dark hairs shadowed the muscular contours of his bare chest and his bronzed shoulders gleamed in the morning sunlight. ‘It isn’t safe.’

Feeling the immediate stirring of her body, Ella sat down as far away from him as possible. ‘I like it. It’s beautiful here.’

‘It’s a totally unsuitable place for a woman to live alone.’ His tone smooth, he cast her a glance that sent her insides spinning in a whirlpool of highly charged sexual awareness. ‘Especially a pregnant woman.’

He’d zipped up his trousers with a casual hand and they rode slightly low on his hips, exposing an unfair amount of bronzed, muscular abdomen.

Why was it
, she wondered,
that just a glimpse of those taut abdominals was enough for her to be able to picture him naked?

Her mouth as dry as a ditch in summer, Ella instinctively pulled her T-shirt lower over her thighs, wishing she’d stopped long enough to find her jeans. ‘Who is going to bother me here? There’s no one around.’

‘Precisely.’ Those dark eyes with those long, long lashes shifted to the silent, overgrown towpath. ‘It’s deserted.’

‘I wanted space.’

‘Well, you’ve certainly got that.’ His tone ironic, he looked around him with a faint smile. ‘It
is
beautiful,’ he conceded grimly, ‘but there must be safer ways of achieving country living.’

‘Not on my budget.’ She instantly regretted the words. ‘And I don’t want your money, Nikos,’ she blurted out quickly, ‘just in case you think I was dropping a hint.’

He studied her for a long moment. ‘Where we live is my responsibility. There is no need to be defensive.’

‘I’m not living with you, Nikos.’

He sat down on the seat opposite. The bows of the boat were as narrow as the rest of the craft. With his superior height, their knees were almost touching. ‘All right—let’s deal with this. You are trying to push me away,’ he said harshly, ‘but it isn’t going to work. That is my baby you are carrying and my ring you’re wearing on your finger.’

Heart pounding, Ella twisted the ring round and round her finger. ‘I would have thrown it back at you,’ she
muttered, ‘but I thought it would knock you unconscious. You don’t do subtle, do you? The ring tells the whole world that you’re filthy rich.’

‘No,
agape mou
. The ring tells everyone that you are mine.’ His eyes stayed on hers. ‘I want there to be no misunderstandings.’

She wondered what lay behind that comment but knew that there was no point in asking. He didn’t confide in her, did he? There was so much he hadn’t told her about himself. ‘I am
not
yours, Nikos.’

‘Why do you insist on fighting with me?’

‘I don’t know.’ Her tone was flippant. ‘Perhaps because you’re unbelievably insensitive?’

‘Then we must be experiencing a severe cultural clash. No matter how hard I try I cannot see how proposing marriage to the woman carrying my child could be classed as insensitive.’

‘Because marriage isn’t about reproduction.’

‘It is in Greece,’ Nikos said dryly, stretching his long legs out as far as he could in the confined space and placing his coffee on the seat. ‘In Greece you marry, you have babies.’

‘Exactly.’ Ella tucked her own legs under her on the seat. ‘Marriage first, babies second. We’ve done it the wrong way round, but that isn’t why I’m not going to marry you. I’m refusing to marry you because I don’t really know you. The man I was involved with wasn’t a billionaire with a tragedy in his past. It’s as if you are someone completely different.’

He nursed his coffee, his gaze disturbingly intense. ‘I am the same man you gave yourself to every night for six months.’

‘No. You keep everything to yourself, Nikos! I can’t marry someone like that.’

‘The money makes no difference to our relationship.’

‘Then why didn’t you tell me about it? Did you think I was some greedy gold-digger?’

‘Money has an unpredictable effect on people.’ He rose to his feet, his voice harsh. ‘You’ve read stories about people who win the lottery and then their lives fall apart. Money changes people. Believe me, I know.’

‘Women chase you for your money?’ She looked away to hide what she was feeling.
Of course they did.
A man like him would have been chased by women all his life. And not only because of his wealth. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Every night you stayed in my tiny room in the nurses’ home. We spent six months wrapped round each other in a single bed. At the time I assumed it was just about convenience, but now I’m guessing it was because you didn’t want me to see your home.’

He didn’t answer immediately. ‘What we shared was beautifully uncomplicated. I liked that.’

‘It was dishonest.’

‘No.’ He turned then, his mouth a grim line in his handsome face. ‘On the contrary, what I shared with you is probably the only totally honest relationship I’ve ever had in my life. It was just the two of us. Man and woman.’

Ella found it was hard to breathe.

She didn’t want to remember how close they’d been.

‘So why didn’t you tell me about your past, Nikos?’ She watched the ripple of tension spread across his bare shoulders, all the more visible because he was naked from the waist up.

‘Because the past isn’t relevant.’

‘Of course it is. But you didn’t trust me enough to talk to me about it, and that’s why I can’t marry you. By all
means be scarily detached in the resuscitation room—I understand that, I really do. But don’t do the same thing in a relationship.’ She uncurled her legs and tried to stand up, but his hand curled over her shoulder.

‘
Theos mou
, you
will
hear me out.’ His tone was civilised and restrained, but his eyes glinted hard. ‘You can either sit there and listen or I’ll carry you back to that space laughingly called a bedroom and find other ways to make you pay attention. Your choice.’

‘Why don’t you try it?’ She placed her hands flat on the wooden seat. ‘With luck you might bang that arrogant head of yours.’

He gave a slow smile, impossibly sure of himself. ‘I like the passionate side of you. It’s the passionate side of your nature that makes our relationship so exciting.’

Ella bit her lip. ‘Were you happily married?’

He drained his coffee and took his time answering. ‘What difference does it make?’

‘I don’t know.’ She spread her hands helplessly, wondering how to get through to him. ‘I suppose I’m just trying to understand something about you.’

‘We were both too young,’ he said finally, and she sighed.

‘What’s that supposed to mean? Crazy in love “too young”, or stupid “too young”?’

‘I was far too idealistic. I wanted to be a doctor, she thought she was marrying a tycoon who would take over the Mariakos family empire.’

‘What does the empire consist of? The headline in the magazine mentioned hotels.’

‘Hotels, leisure, tourism…’ He shrugged. ‘Mariakos Industries has diversified over the decades. It is the secret to staying successful in a turbulent economic climate.’

‘And you didn’t want to be part of that? You didn’t want to be involved?’

‘It was impossible to grow up in my family and not be involved. As children we were all involved. We virtually lived at the Mariakos Athens and our summers were spent on our island, off the mainland. By the time I was eighteen I knew how to run a hotel and read a balance sheet.’

‘But that wasn’t what you wanted?’

‘I wanted to be a doctor.’

Ella thought of the future that must have stretched in front of him and what a loss it would have been to medicine if he’d taken that path. ‘Why?’

He was unnaturally still. ‘I was more interested in medicine than hotels.’

Sensing that there was so much more that he wasn’t disclosing, Ella suppressed a sigh of frustration. ‘Your parents must be proud of you.’

‘Now? Yes, they’re proud. But back then…’ His laugh lacked humour. ‘My father was horrified that I wasn’t going to take over the business. They thought it was a whim. A teenage rebellion against the life I’d always known. And maybe it was. I don’t know.’ He shrugged his shoulders dismissively. ‘My wife died. I left Greece. I did my training. I started in paediatrics.’

He hadn’t mentioned his daughter and something about the hard lines of his jaw stopped Ella from bringing it up, either.

‘And you never had another serious relationship?’

‘I had relationships, Ella.’ There was an ironic glint in his eyes. ‘I’m not claiming to have lived the life of a monk.’

But he’d never allowed himself to be close to another woman.

Ella swallowed, remembering Helen’s words. ‘So was not telling me about the money some sort of test?’

He frowned. ‘No. Not a test.’

‘I suppose you didn’t need to test me because you had no intention of staying with me.’

He didn’t deny it. ‘I liked the fact that you knew nothing about me. That we had no baggage.’

‘Everyone has baggage. We both had baggage, Nikos.’ She gave a weak smile. ‘It’s just that yours was diamond encrusted and mine was cheap plastic.’

He didn’t laugh. ‘When you discovered that you were pregnant, didn’t it occur to you to contact me?’

‘I received the news about my pregnancy on the same day I received your email telling me that our relationship was over.’ The memory chilled her. ‘What was I supposed to do, Nikos? If a relationship is over, it’s over. A baby doesn’t change that.’

He inhaled deeply and squared his shoulders. ‘That’s where we disagree.’

‘You concealed this huge, huge part of yourself. You thought it didn’t matter that I didn’t know. What about next time, Nikos? What about next time something happens in your life that you don’t think I need to be part of?’

She just couldn’t trust him to tell her the truth.

Her imagination raced forward and suddenly she was tortured by an uncomfortably clear image of what the future could hold for her.

Agonising confessions, shock, hardship, devastation and bone-deep loneliness.

She’d seen it all before and she was never going to put herself in that position.

Yes, she loved him. Yes, there was pain. But nothing like
the pain she and the baby would experience if he let them down a few years down the line.

That realisation gave her the final boost she needed to do the most difficult thing she’d ever done in her life.

Ella dragged the ring off her finger. The stone flirted with the sunlight—twinkled and sparkled, trying to seduce her. She stood up and pushed it into his hand. ‘I’m very, very sorry about your wife, but I still can’t marry you.’

And she ducked through the door and into the boat before he could stop her, discovering that the hardest thing in the world was walking away from something that you really, really wanted.

N
EVER
,
if he lived to be a hundred, would he understand women.

Nikos swung his sleek car into his parking space directly outside the paediatric emergency department.

He’d offered her marriage.

He’d put a diamond the size of New York on her finger.

And she’d given it back.

Theos mou
, what was going on in her head?

How many women had longed for him to make exactly that gesture?

Was she trying to impress him?

He sprang from the car like a tiger released from captivity and a passing nurse cast a nervous look at his face as he slammed the door and glared at nothing in particular.

He stood there for a moment, thinking. Applying the same analytical skills he used when diagnosing his patients, he examined the facts. He recalled her body language throughout the encounter, remembering her shaking hands and her pale face.

No, she wasn’t trying to impress him.

Her refusal had been genuine.

And yet she still wanted him, he knew that.

So why hadn’t she just said yes?

Was it about the money?

Or was it to do with the fact he hadn’t told her about his wife?

Realising that he didn’t have answers to any of the questions made him realise how little he knew about her.

What, in all honesty, had they shared in the six passionate months they’d spent together?
Sex
, he acknowledged ruefully. They’d lived in a small intimate bubble that had involved their work at the hospital and the two of them. Nothing had intruded.

And that had been the way he’d wanted it.

No emotions complicating their relationship.

Only she was a woman, wasn’t she?

And women responded better to emotion than logic. Which meant that he needed to alter his approach.

Locking his car, Nikos strode purposefully towards the entrance of the paediatric emergency department, his naturally competitive nature roused by the obstruction she’d placed in the path of their relationship.

She was carrying his baby.

She
would
marry him, he vowed silently. It was just a matter of understanding why she was saying no. Once he understood that, he would turn her no to a yes.

‘I’m really, really sorry to be a nuisance,’ the woman apologised, ‘but I’m just so worried about him.’ Her eyes filled and suddenly she burst into tears. ‘Twice I’ve been back to the GP and he just says it’s a virus of some sort, but Harry’s been crying and crying with the pain in his tummy and—Oh, I don’t know, you probably think I’m a stupid time waster…’

‘I don’t think that, Carol.’ Ella slipped an arm around the woman’s shoulders and gave her a hug. ‘I think you’re a very caring mum. A worried, caring mum. And we’ll take a good look at little Harry, I promise. Here—have a tissue.’ She reached for the box and offered it to Carol. Then she dropped into a crouch so that she could build a relationship with the little boy seated on his mother’s lap.

He didn’t seem distressed. In fact, he seemed very quiet.

Ella frowned.

Too quiet for a little boy who should have been diving straight into the colourful, tempting box of toys near his feet.

‘Hello, Harry. How are you doing?’ She was expecting a reaction of some sort, but got nothing.

The child just looked at her.

Back in control, Carol blew her nose. ‘Sorry. Gosh, this is so embarrassing. I’m not usually like this, only it’s been going on for two days and nights and I haven’t had any sleep and I’m just exhausted and so worried because no one is taking me seriously and—’

‘You have nothing to apologise for. I’m appalling if I don’t get my sleep. And we are taking you seriously, Carol.’ Ella pulled a toy car out of a nearby box and placed it on the child’s lap. ‘Look at this, Harry. It’s
so
cool. The doors open and the steering-wheel moves—and if you press this switch the lights come on. Do you want a turn?’ But Harry showed no interest. He just sat there listlessly and then the next moment he gave a tiny gasp, screwed up his face and clutched his stomach, whimpering in pain.

‘You see?’ The mother bit her lip. ‘He’s been doing this for two days. It lasts a few minutes at the most and then it
stops. Our doctor just told me to give him paracetamol, but it honestly doesn’t make any difference. Oh, for goodness’ sake—why am I here? It’s probably nothing.’

But Ella wasn’t thinking that. Something about the child worried her.

Nothing she could immediately identify. Just an instinct.

Reminding herself that instinct was important when it came to children, she rose to her feet. ‘I’m going to ask our consultant to take a look at him.’

She wasn’t even sure if Nikos was in the department. After she’d returned his ring, he’d barely said a word to her and she’d had no idea what he was thinking. He’d driven her back to the harbour and waited without saying a word while she’d collected her bike.

Then he’d sped off in a different direction, presumably to his own home to shower and change.

What had he been thinking?

She didn’t even know where he was living, she realised as she hurried out of the cubicle and started searching for him.

Somewhere fit for a billionaire, no doubt. An enormous mansion or a glossy penthouse with a view of the sea.

The sort of place designed to showcase a thoroughbred woman dressed in designer silk, sipping her drink while she awaited the Greek Tycoon’s pleasure.

Ella chewed her lip anxiously.
Not
the sort of place for a penniless nurse wearing a dress she’d found in a charity shop. And the Greek Tycoon’s pleasure wasn’t going to be cheese on toast.

Since the death of his wife he’d avoided commitment, and she couldn’t risk being with a man like that, could she?

She’d made the right decision.
For both of them.

The waiting room was crowded with children, a baby was crying and a toddler was using the chairs as a climbing frame.

Kelly, one of the staff nurses from the main emergency department, was standing at the reception desk, looking stressed.

She glanced up with relief as Ella approached. ‘I don’t know how you do this,’ she muttered. ‘I mean, the patients are all too young to tell you what’s going on. It’s all guesswork. And the noise—’

‘Have you seen Nikos?’ Ella interrupted her swiftly, and the other nurse shook her head.

‘He’s up with the general manager, thrashing out some problem or other.’

Ella didn’t hesitate. ‘I need you to call him, Kelly. Tell him there’s a patient he needs to see immediately.’

Kelly laughed nervously. ‘You’re kidding, right? You want me to interrupt a meeting between the chief executive and the Greek god?’

‘Don’t call him that.’ Uncharacteristically irritable, Ella reached for the phone. ‘I’ll do it myself.’ She dialled the switchboard and was instantly put through to the chief executive’s office, where she was told he couldn’t be disturbed for the next ten minutes.

Ella glanced at the clock on the wall and thought of Harry, listless and quiet on his mother’s lap.

It wasn’t natural for a two-year-old boy to be listless and quiet.

What if ten minutes was too long?

‘I need to speak to Professor Mariakos now,’ she said firmly. ‘Not in ten minutes.’ Ignoring Kelly’s awed look, she waited in suspense and then finally Nikos’s deep male tones came down the phone.

‘Mariakos.’

‘Nikos, I need you to see a child,’ she said quickly, feeling the colour pour into her face. What if he snapped at her for disturbing him?

But he didn’t.

He simply said ‘I’ll be right there,’ and replaced the phone before she could respond.

‘You’re brave,’ Kelly muttered. ‘Girlfriend’s prerogative, I suppose.’

‘I’m not his girlfriend.’ What was she? She didn’t know. She was having his baby and soon everyone would know that, but…

Ella pushed the problem out of her mind. ‘Send him to me when he arrives. I have a toddler with abdominal pain that I’m worried about.’

She returned to the cubicle to find the mother reading quietly to Harry.

Ella checked the child’s temperature again. ‘I’ve spoken to the consultant. He’s on his way.’

‘Will he yell at me?’ Carol was looking anxious. ‘I wish I hadn’t come now. Harry hasn’t cried or anything since you left the room. He looks fine, which is great, obviously but now I’m feeling like a fraud.’

‘Why would you feel like a fraud?’ Nikos strode into the room and Ella felt her heart flip as it always did whenever she saw him.

What had he done with the diamond ring?

His brief searing glance told her that they had unfinished business and her insides were suddenly caught in a turbulence that left her breathless.

‘Sorry to disturb your meeting. This is Harry,’ she said quickly, relieved that they had something else to focus on
other than their relationship. ‘He’s been suffering from abdominal pain for two days, and Carol feels like a fraud because she has already seen the GP.’

Nikos washed his hands. ‘And his diagnosis was…?’

Carol flushed. ‘Tummy bug. He said only time would help. He also told me that I had to relax a bit about parenting and that I was overreacting. And maybe I am, but—’

‘What is it about Harry that is making you uneasy?’ Nikos’s tone was gentle as he squatted down so that he was the same level as the child. ‘Is it anything specific or just a feeling?’

‘He’s been having these screaming fits that last a few minutes and then…’ Carol shrugged helplessly. ‘The GP said they were probably just tantrums, but he looks as though he’s in pain to me. He just isn’t himself. Normally he’s cheeky, lively and into everything. Now it’s as if he just doesn’t have the energy.’

‘Give me details, from the beginning.’

‘Well, he had a bit of a cold—I didn’t really think anything of it to be honest, and then he started holding his stomach and moaning that it hurt. It seemed to only last a few minutes and then it would go and he carried on as if nothing had happened.’

Nikos questioned her about the child, and about the consultation she’d had with her own doctor.

‘Did he examine Harry’s stomach?’

‘No. He said it was just a virus and that I should have waited until after the weekend to bring him back.’ Carol’s eyes filled again. ‘So I took Harry home, but he looked so awful and all morning he’s been getting worse. I didn’t know what to do so I just thought I’d bring him here. I know you probably want to yell at me too…’

As if on cue, another toddler in the waiting room started to cry and Nikos winced.

‘As you can hear, it’s the children that do the yelling in this department.’ His tone dry, he rose to his feet and closed the door of the cubicle. ‘I want to examine Harry properly, Carol. Can you lift him onto the trolley for me? Ella, do we have any toys? Something to distract him?’ His smile was disarming. ‘Normally I have toys, but I have just come from a meeting with the hospital manager and I have never yet persuaded them to take play seriously.’

Ella fished a different car out of the box and then tried a puppet, but in the end no distraction was needed because Harry lay quietly on the trolley while Nikos gently examined his stomach. Watching his skilled, confident hands move gently over the toddler’s tiny body, Ella felt some of the tension leave her. She had no doubt whatsoever that he’d be able to identify the problem.

He was a brilliant doctor.

Had he dismissed Carol? No. He’d taken her concerns really seriously.

‘Temperature?’

‘His temperature is normal.’ Ella wondered if he was finding it as hard to concentrate as she was. ‘Do you think it’s a virus?’

He didn’t answer for a moment, his expression thoughtful as he felt the toddler’s abdomen with gentle fingers. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘I don’t. The signs aren’t classic, but…’ his eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he studied the pale, listless child. ‘I wonder…? Ella, ring Ed Green for me. Ask him to come down.’

Ed Green was the paediatric surgeon and Ella hurried
to the phone and made the call, wondering what was going through Nikos’s mind.

Nikos was talking to Carol. ‘You were right to bring him,’ he said quietly, ‘and to trust your instincts.’

Carol looked at him anxiously. ‘It isn’t a tummy bug?’

‘No. Harry has something called intussusception.’ He reached for a pen and a piece of paper and quickly drew a diagram. ‘This is the bowel, yes? Sometimes one segment of the bowel can telescope into the next part—this is what we call intussusception.’

‘And Harry is showing signs of that?’

‘Actually no,’ Nikos conceded, returning the pen to his pocket. ‘He isn’t showing any of the classic signs.’

‘Then how do you know what it is?’

‘I just know.’ Nikos gave a ghost of a smile. ‘You have maternal instincts that told you something was wrong, and I have instincts also. Doctor instincts. A gut feeling, I think you call it.’

‘Is it something serious?’

‘It can be,’ Nikos said carefully, ‘but in this case I think we have caught it early, thanks to those instincts of yours. My colleague is on his way now, and—’

‘Nikos?’ Ed, the paediatric surgeon, strode through the door, a slight man with glasses and sandy-coloured hair. ‘What can I do for you?’

Nikos briefly outlined the history and Ed walked to the side of the trolley.

‘Intussusception?’ He checked the observation chart that Ella had completed.

‘Harry is displaying none of the classic signs,’ Nikos said in a cool tone. ‘No temperature, a small amount of
diarrhoea yesterday, but nothing since, one episode of vomiting and no abdominal mass.’

‘So you’re making an educated guess.’ Ed examined the child’s abdomen himself. ‘Could be appendicitis.’

Nikos shook his head, confident and sure of himself. ‘It’s intussusception. And it’s not a guess.’

Ed lifted an eyebrow, his gaze challenging. ‘You can’t be sure, Mariakos.’

Nikos met his gaze full on. ‘I’m sure. As he’s showing no signs of perforation, a barium enema is probably the most appropriate choice.’ He walked away from the trolley and took Carol to one side. ‘Mr Green is going to sort out the problem. And I will phone your GP.’