The Greek's Acquisition (13 page)

‘Y
OU
look incredible,’ Dimitri murmured later that evening, when he strolled out of his bathroom and caught sight of Louise wearing the blue silk cocktail dress.

‘It’s a beautiful dress.’ Louise studied her reflection in the mirror and felt a little thrill of feminine pleasure as she acknowledged that she did look good. ‘Thank you for buying it for me.’

She had agreed to wear the dress on the understanding that he would not give her any more presents. She believed him when he insisted he did not think she was like her mother, but the memory of Tina wearing expensive clothes and jewellery that had been gifts from her lovers strengthened Louise’s determination not to accept anything from Dimitri. That way there could be no misunderstandings.

‘My grandmother’s diamond
fleur-de-lis
would have been the perfect accessory.’ She voiced her thoughts unthinkingly.

Dimitri frowned. ‘The pendant belonged to your grandmother?’

‘Yes. My grandfather gave it to her as a wedding present. When she died she left it to me. I loved it because it reminded me of her.’

He had misjudged Louise badly, Dimitri thought guiltily.
He had been quick to label her a gold-digger, but the truth was that she was nothing like her mother.

‘You speak as if you no longer have it.’

There was a brief, awkward silence before Louise said quickly, ‘It’s at the jeweller’s. The clasp was loose. Actually, that’s where I went after I left your hotel in Paris.’

It was not a lie. The jeweller
had
told her that the clasp which secured the pendant to the gold chain was faulty and that he would have to repair it before he could sell the necklace.

Dimitri studied her intently, as if he guessed she was keeping something from him. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said finally. ‘You don’t need any adornment. The colour of the dress matches the blue of your eyes just as I thought it would. If you would allow me to I would love to fill your wardrobe with beautiful clothes.’

‘You said you like me best wearing nothing at all,’ she reminded him with a wicked smile that set his pulse racing.

‘That is true, and I will demonstrate my appreciation for your naked body later,
glikia mou
.’ He laughed softly when she blushed. ‘Anyone would think you were an innocent virgin,’ he murmured, running his finger lightly down her pink cheek. ‘But we both know that’s not true.’

His kiss held tenderness as well as desire, and Louise melted into it, parting her lips beneath his so that his tongue could probe the moist interior or her mouth.

‘I knew I should have cancelled dinner,’ Dimitri growled, wondering how the hell he was going to get through the evening with a rock-solid erection straining against his zip.

Dimitri’s dinner guests were personal friends rather than business associates. Louise sensed their surprise when they learned that she was staying with him, and was puzzled because she’d assumed that he often invited his mistresses to his home.

She did not like to think of herself as his mistress. Having seen her mother flit from one affair to the next, she had vowed that she would never give up her career and her independence for any man. Tina had treated the men she’d had affairs with like gods—but when they had tired of her they had treated her like dirt.

When her affair with Dimitri was over she would go back to Paris and the job she loved, and she would do her best to forget about him, Louise told herself, trying to ignore the way her heart lurched when he strode across the room towards her.

‘My sister has just phoned to say she’s running a little late,’ he explained. Dimitri introduced the man with him. ‘Louise, this is a good friend of mine—Takis Varsos. Takis is a curator at the National Art Gallery in Athens.’

‘It is a pleasure to meet you,’ Takis murmured.

He was a few years old than Dimitri, Louise guessed, pleasant-faced, with greying hair and brilliant black eyes behind heavy spectacles.

‘I understand you work at the Louvre? I have many questions I’d like to ask you—and perhaps I can tell you about Greece’s national art collection?’

Dimitri laughed. ‘I’ll leave the two of you to talk while I go and check that Halia is okay to delay dinner until Ianthe arrives.’

Fifteen minutes later Louise had finished a fascinating conversation with Takis when Dimitri rejoined her, accompanied by a dark-haired woman whose facial features bore a striking resemblance to his. She felt suddenly nervous, wondering if his sister resented her because of her mother’s affair with Kostas Kalakos, but Ianthe greeted her warmly.

‘Louise, I’m so pleased to meet you again. It’s many years since we met on Eirenne, and there wasn’t time for us to get to know one another,’ she said without a hint
of bitterness. ‘How amazing that you and Dimitri met by chance in Paris.’

Louise flushed as she caught Dimitri’s eye. ‘Yes, it’s a small world,’ she murmured dryly.

‘I’ll get you some champagne,
agapiti
,’ he told his sister, and strolled away.

‘He’s wonderful, isn’t he?’ Ianthe glanced after him. ‘I was badly injured a few years ago, and he looked after me for months after I left hospital.’ She looked curiously at Louise. ‘I understand you are selling Eirenne to Dimitri? It will be nice to go back to the island. We loved it when we were children, and I would like to take Ana there for holidays when she’s older.’

She turned towards the man who had come to stand beside her. ‘This is my husband, Lykaios.’

Louise returned Lykaios’s greeting, but her eyes were drawn to the tiny bundle wrapped in a shawl that Ianthe now carefully lifted out of her husband’s arms.

‘And this is our daughter,’ Ianthe announced with fierce maternal pride. ‘Ana Maria—which was my mother’s name. I fed her before we left, so hopefully she’ll stay settled during dinner. Would you like to hold her?’

She could hardly refuse. Louise hoped that if anyone noticed her sudden tension they would think she was simply nervous about holding a newborn baby.

Ianthe placed the precious bundle in her arms and she stared in wonder at the little face peeping from the folds of the shawl. Ana was beautiful, with a mass of black hair and petal-soft pink cheeks, her long eyelashes fringing huge dark eyes.

The pain in Louise’s chest was so intense that she drew a sharp breath. It shouldn’t hurt so much after all this time, she thought bleakly, but the loss of her baby was something she would never forget. A lump formed in her throat. If
things had been different years ago she would have held her own baby in her arms, breathed in the evocative scent of her own newborn son or daughter. Dimitri would have been a father. But he was not even aware that she had conceived his child.

She wished now that she had told him—wished they could have shared the pain of losing their child. But perhaps he would not have cared. Perhaps he would have been relieved that her unplanned pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage.

The other guests had crowded round to admire Ianthe’s baby and there was some good-natured teasing going on among the men about who was next in line for fatherhood.

‘Dimitri’s way behind,’ Lykaios commented. ‘He’s not even married yet. You’ll have to get a move on,’ he told his brother-in-law. ‘It’s up to you to produce an heir to take over running Kalakos Shipping.’

‘I don’t think a child should be brought into the world to fill a pre-determined role.’ Dimitri’s tone became serious as lifted his niece from Louise’s arms. ‘A baby should be conceived from love, and if I ever have children I would encourage them to follow their dreams and live their life how they choose.’

Louise shot him a startled look. It was a bittersweet irony that his views on parenthood were exactly the same as hers. She’d felt instinctively that he would be a good father, and the tender expression on his face as he cradled Ana against his chest intensified the ache inside her.

She would
love
to have his child.

The thought stole into her head and refused to leave. It was stupid to think things like that, she reminded herself. After her first pregnancy had failed she had been warned that she might have difficulty conceiving again. And more pertinently, she must not forget that Dimitri had brought
her to Athens so that she could fulfil her side of the deal they had made. She was his temporary mistress, and two weeks from now she would return to Paris and never see him again.

The guests had departed and the staff had returned to their own homes for the night. As Dimitri walked through the ground-floor rooms switching off the lights his thoughts were focused on Louise. She had seemed to enjoy the dinner with his friends, but beneath her smile he had sensed an air of sadness about her. He had even leaned close to her at the dinner table and asked if anything was wrong, and although she had assured him she was fine he had glimpsed a haunted expression in her eyes that bothered him.

The patio doors in the sitting room were open, the voile curtains billowing in the soft breeze. Louise was standing on the terrace and appeared to be absorbed in her own thoughts. She glanced up as Dimitri reached her and dashed her hand across her face—but not before he caught the glimmer of tears on her cheeks.

‘
Glikia
, what’s wrong?’

Louise shook her head, unable to explain the ache in her heart. If only she could turn back time … if only she hadn’t listened to her mother and believed the worst of Dimitri … if only she hadn’t lost their baby.

Regrets were pointless, but knowing it did not stop her wishing that things had been different.

Dimitri caught a tear clinging to her lashes on his thumb-pad and felt a strange sensation, as if a hand was squeezing his heart.
‘Pedhaki? ’

‘I was just looking at the stars and thinking how small and insignificant we are.’ She laughed self-consciously. ‘I think I must have had too much champagne.’

He knew she had only had one glass, but he said nothing
and stared up at the black sky, pinpricked with millions of tiny diamonds.

‘You see that bright star up there?’ He pointed. ‘That’s the North Star.’

Louise stared at the heavens. ‘Have you studied astronomy?’

‘Not in great detail, but I used to go sailing with my father when I was a boy and he taught me a little of how to navigate using the stars. Of course GPS systems mean there’s no need to look at the night sky now, but it was fun.’ He sighed. ‘I often wish I could turn the clock back.’

It was uncanny that they had both been thinking the same thing—almost as if their minds were connected, Louise thought.

‘Why do you wish that?’ she whispered.

‘I regret that I was never reconciled with my father. Both of us said things that would have been better left unsaid, and I never got the chance to tell him that I was sorry, that I loved him. No one could have predicted his heart attack,’ Dimitri said heavily. ‘I was on the other side of the world when it happened and by the time I arrived back in Athens I was too late. He died an hour before I reached the hospital.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Louise heard the raw pain in his voice and her heart ached for him. Dimitri had been estranged from his father because of Kostas’s relationship with her mother, and although he did not mention it the spectre of the affair that had ripped his family apart hovered between them.

‘It’s not your fault,’ he said gently, as if he had read her mind. ‘None of it was your fault. I blame myself and my pigheadedness. I was young and arrogant. I saw everything in terms of black and white and forgot that life doesn’t last for ever.’

Louise stared up at the stars. Sometimes life was over before it had even begun, she thought painfully.

‘Dimitri—if what we had on Eirenne meant something to you, why didn’t you try to contact me again later?’ She tilted her head and studied his handsome face, felt the familiar dip of her stomach. His eyes were shadowed and she had no idea what he was thinking, but she had to ask the question that had been eating away at her. ‘I know you couldn’t at first, while Ianthe was in hospital, but after she had recovered why didn’t you call?’

‘I didn’t for several reasons,’ he said after a long silence. ‘My damnable pride was one of them.’ Louise had rejected him and it had hurt—although he had refused to admit it. He raked a hand through his hair. ‘I wasn’t in a position to contemplate any sort of relationship with you. My father had disinherited me and I thought—what the hell? I was angry and determined to prove to him that I didn’t need him. I established my company, Fine Living, and worked obsessively to make it a success. I guess I needed to prove to myself as well as my father that I could make it on my own. My social life took second place to my ambition, and the women I dated were …’

‘Were what?’ Louise queried when he hesitated.

He shrugged. ‘Women who knew how to play the game—who understood that all I wanted was an affair without emotional attachment. When my father died and I discovered that he had named me as his successor to head Kalakos Shipping after all I felt I needed to prove that I was worthy of the role.’

The long hours he’d put in at the office had left him with little time for anything else, Dimitri brooded. He had focused on work as a way of dealing with his grief at the death of his father. He stared at Louise. The moonlight had
turned her to silver, and she looked ethereal and so very lovely that his heart clenched.

‘My life was organised and under control until you stormed back into it.’ He sounded almost angry. ‘I thought I knew what you were—a common gold-digger who would sell your body for hard cash. I couldn’t even blame you. How could you know any different when your mother had behaved that way? I told myself.’

He lifted his hand and wound a honey-blond curl around his finger. ‘But you have proved my opinion of you to be wrong.
Thee mou
, we practically had a fight when I tried to give you this dress,’ he muttered as he slid one strap down her arm and brushed his lips over her bare shoulder.

Louise could not restrain the little tremor that ran through her when he trailed a line of kisses along her collarbone. ‘I’m sorry I reacted badly about the dress,’ she whispered. ‘And I’m sorry if I’ve disrupted your life.’