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‘I’m really not.’
‘There may not be much of you, but what you have is in great proportion. Your hair is an amazing colour, and though your nose may turn up like an elf’s it suits your face. I like your eyes, and your mouth, a hell of a lot,’ Alexandros breathed, pitching his shirt off and disposing of what remained of his clothing with a haste that was possibly more flattering than his honest appraisal of her looks.
‘Anything else?’ Katie was not too chuffed about the elf crack, but his enthusiasm was undeniable.
‘You’re so natural…’ His slumberous gaze devoured her with earthy boldness. He drew her back to his hotly aroused length, curved long fingers to her pouting breast with distinct satisfaction. ‘There’s nothing false, nothing surgically enhanced. Half the time you don’t even wear make-up.’
‘Everything’s so physical with you,’ Katie muttered shakily.
‘You’ll get used to it, and learn to like it that way.’ Alexandros tugged gently on a swollen pink nipple and wrenched a responsive gasp from her. She quivered like a vibrating piano wire against him. He smiled with approval and let his carnal mouth nuzzle the tender skin of her throat, while he continued to caress her wildly sensitive flesh.
‘But there could be so much—’
‘No…’ Alexandros leant over her, all domineering male, reproof in every powerful line of his lean, gorgeous face. ‘This time we do it my way. Simple, straight, nothing messy…’
Moisture prickled at the back of her eyes. She refused to believe that his relationship with Ianthe had been based on straightforward sex. He had loved his wife. He would never, ever love her in the same way. How many times did he have to spell that out to her? When she had told him she loved him in Ireland he had ditched her faster than the speed of light, because her confession had filled him with distaste.
Alexandros could feel her tensing, trying to impose some space between them, and he didn’t like that. He kissed her and held her fast, employing every erotic skill in his considerable repertoire to keep her close.
He made love to her again, and then again, until she was so drowsy that she could hardly keep her eyes open. It was as if he couldn’t get enough of her. In spite of the ache of hurt at the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but be thrilled by the sheer strength of his desire.
She was half asleep when she realised that he was no longer beside her. Black hair still gleaming from the shower, Alexandros was fixing his silk tie and fully dressed.
‘You’re leaving?’ she whispered in surprise.
‘A rescheduled meeting to replace the one I skipped earlier. I have to be in Rome tomorrow, and I go from there to Hong Kong,’ he admitted, watching her sexily tousled reflection in the mirror like a hawk.
Consternation filled Katie and she sat up, feeling horrendously forsaken and forlorn. ‘When will you be back?’
Alexandros breathed in deep, questioning why her obvious disquiet at his departure from the country should act on him like a shot of adrenalin. She didn’t want him to leave and she couldn’t hide it. Clingy, needy behaviour usually repelled him, left him cold as ice. But when Katie looked stricken at the prospect of having to get by without him it lit a blazing fire of burning satisfaction inside him. In fact it made him feel happy. He wondered why that was, then acknowledged how fortunate it was for the stability of their children that he did feel that way.
Not an atom of that rare instance of self-examination showed on his lean, bronzed face. ‘I’m not sure. I’ll call…’
Katie nodded like a marionette.
‘Doesn’t this feel good?’ Alexandros gave her a brilliant bracing smile, mentally willing her to follow his lead and act more upbeat. ‘No stress, no strain. This is how I always wanted it to be between us, thespinis mou.’
Katie listened to the thud of the front door on his exit. He was gone and the apartment was silent. Her throat thickened. How he’d always wanted it to be: loads of sex, without love, ties or demands. He was much happier than he had been when he was proposing marriage. And why was that? She had agreed to his terms and, without quite realising how it had come about, it registered that she appeared to have fallen into the role of his mistress. Her eyes watered. She willed the stupid tears back and strove to work out how the heck that had happened, and what on earth she was planning to do about it…
CHAPTER EIGHT
A RARE smile on his wide, passionate mouth, a laden gift box clutched below one powerful arm, Alexandros stepped into the lift in Katie’s apartment block. Although he loathed surprises, he knew that she loved them—and he couldn’t wait to see her face when she realised that he was back in London thirty-six hours sooner than he had forecast. He had worked impossibly long hours to manage that feat.
During his eight days abroad he had spent an entire evening shopping—and he hated shopping. He had enjoyed the toy stores, though, he conceded, wishing that Katie was as easy to please in the gift stakes as their sons. His level ebony brows pleating, he wondered tautly if he had got it right this time. It was ironic that he knew exactly what Katie liked. Long after he had parted from her he had often found himself seeing something and thinking that Katie would have loved it, whether it was a view, a piece of music, an item of clothing or a joke. He had no idea why he had always understood her tastes so well. Perhaps he listened better than most men, and he had a very retentive memory. Or perhaps it was down to the fact that he was highly observant. But when he had been with Katie in Ireland he had really enjoyed buying her presents, and watching a look of wonder and delight blossom in her hugely expressive eyes.
Before he’d met her, his staff had bought the gifts he gave to women, and they had always been very expensive and impersonal. This time around he had been very careful about what he bought for Katie. He had walked right past a half-dozen items that he had known she would adore. He had purchased no cute cards, no flowers, no favourite anythings that might risk giving her that fatal romantic message and lead to further accusations of deception. So he’d opted for Chantilly lace lingerie with a top designer label. After all, there was nothing wrong with selfishness. He was also hoping that the platinum and diamond pendant carrying the initial ‘K’ that he had bought from the world’s most expensive jeweller would magically exorcise his current infuriating and spooky habit of doodling that same letter every time he got a pen in his hand.
Unlocking the door of the apartment with his key, he was surprised by the noisy thump of music, playing loud enough to shake the rafters. He hadn’t realised that Katie was a rock fan, but he was pleased that she was evidently at home. He went straight into the sitting room. She wasn’t there, but evidence in the shape of the empty bottle of champagne lying on its side suggested that she was entertaining. Where?
A garment lay on the limestone floor of the corridor that led to the rest of the apartment. His brows descending over frowning dark golden eyes, Alexandros bent and hooked a finger into the item. It was a man’s purple shirt, and it was not one of his. In the same second he made that deduction, it was as if the entire world went into a crazy time-warp. He broke into a sweat, every muscle in his big powerful frame locking into rigidity. The incessant driving beat of the music seemed to swell like the roaring riptide of emotion surging through him. Through the door to the left he could hear a wailing sound that went beyond the level of the music. It was Toby and Connor, crying…
Although instinct urged him to check on them, his savage, glittering gaze was locked to the door ahead, which stood wide open on Katie’s bedroom. He strode on to the threshold and saw the naked couple on the mattress. He recognised Damon Bourikas first, and he was about to haul him off the bed and kill him when he registered that the woman in Katie’s bed was definitely not Katie. It was Maribel the nanny, an over-endowed blonde, engaged in an act that Katie was still not sophisticated enough to know about. Disgust and relief combined with such force inside Alexandros that he felt momentarily light-headed. When he hit the off button on the entertainment centre to silence the thundering rock chorus, he noticed the scattering of fine white powder and the rolled-up note on the dressing table. He went white with rage and repugnance.
‘The party’s over. Get out before I call my security team up to throw you out the way you are!’
Damon attempted to make a laughing apology in a flood of Greek.
Alexandros cut in to tell him that it if they weren’t gone in minutes he would be calling the police. He strode into the nursery, where one glance at Toby and Connor’s red and swollen faces was sufficient to tell him that his sons must have been crying for attention for a good deal longer than a few minutes. His hands clenched into furious fists. Shorn of their usual bouncy confidence, the babies looked pathetic, and pitifully grateful to see him. The sight of their helplessness kicked his heart wide open.
In truth he felt distinctly weird, he conceded, raking long fingers through his cropped black hair and registering in astonishment that his hand was trembling. For some inexplicable reason he could not stop reliving that sick instant when he had actually believed that Katie might be in bed with another guy. Having sex with someone else, betraying him, cheating on him. Perspiration dampened his skin, and it was but a prelude to the startling rolling tide of nausea that took sudden hold of him. He made it into the en suite bathroom in the nick of time. Theos mou, what was the matter with him? He was never ill. Had he picked up an infection?
Only ten minutes ago he had been riding high, after a phenomenally successful trip and the awed approbation of all his staff. He had travelled straight from the airport to see Katie and the children. The whole sordid scene he had interrupted had outraged his every principle: drug abuse in a property he owned, a sleazeball like Bourikas daring to desecrate Katie’s fluffy girlie bedroom, the nanny neglecting their children. But would that have made him physically sick? Made him feel as though a brick wall had suddenly fallen on him?
One of the twins sobbed, shooting him back out of his bemused introspection. Katie hadn’t been in bed with anyone, he reminded himself with fierce exasperation. Later she would be very much in bed with him, in his bed at Dove Hall. That was not negotiable. He had been too patient. But now he would take charge of the situation the way he should have done from the start.
Having washed, he contemplated his sons. He was down a nanny. Where was Katie? He could phone her, or call in reinforcements. Or he could look after them himself for a while. He lifted the little boys out of their cots. They were damp and needed to be changed. When had they last eaten? He thought about reinforcements again, but conscience won out: it would be cruel to let strangers handle them straight after what they had suffered. After removing his suit jacket, tie, and his diamond cufflinks, he found clean clothes for the twins and got down to work. Two hours later he called Cyrus to come and give him a hand to get the children down to the limo.
‘Don’t ask,’ Alexandros warned his head of security when the older man was presented with Toby, clad only in a nappy and a chocolate-smeared blanket. His brother was in a similar state. But it was Alexandros who had fared worst of all: bathwater, chocolate stains, biscuit crumbs, spilt milk and juice had destroyed his usual elegance. His black hair sat up in little clumps where it had been clutched by sticky fingers.
When the children were secure in their car seats he took a deep breath and relaxed for the first time in two hours. He fell asleep. The limo was well on the way to Dove Hall before he lifted the phone to call the twins’ mother.
‘You’re a kind girl.’ Calliope Christakis gave Katie’s hand an affectionate squeeze. ‘I hope you get that job.’
‘Even though Alexandros will go mad?’ That morning Katie had had an interview for a receptionist’s position with an upmarket property agency. After it she had met up with Calliope and accompanied the older woman to a dental appointment that she had been dreading. Lunch and a shopping trip had followed.
‘A little of what he doesn’t like does him good,’ his grandmother told her cheerfully. ‘Imagine him telling you that it is his duty to marry you! All that education and he says that. Of course you said no. He’s a Christakis and a banker. He’ll come up with a better offer.’
‘We’ll see…’ Katie wished that she had managed to hold firm against Calliope’s gentle interrogation technique of questions and seemingly casual comments. When Calliope had hinted that she thought less of her grandson for not offering Katie a more stable relationship, Katie had just had to speak up on Alexandros’s behalf. Now, kissing his grandmother’s cheek, she promised to come for lunch soon with Toby and Connor, and took her leave.
When Alexandros phoned her she was letting herself back into her apartment. Frowning, she murmured, ‘What do you mean…the twins aren’t here?’
In a few graphic sentences, Alexandros outlined the scene he had interrupted. Her heart sank like a stone. She was horrified, for she had been out all day. ‘Maribel seemed so nice…’ she mumbled in a daze.
‘Sadly, that doesn’t mean she was also a responsible person. With hindsight, perhaps she was too young.’
Having assured Katie that Toby and Connor were fine, Alexandros suggested that she pack whatever she and the children would require for a weekend at Dove Hall.
‘Are you blaming me for this?’ she whispered.
‘No. But I won’t let it happen again, yineka mou.’
While she packed, Katie wondered what he had meant by that closing comment. Hadn’t she chosen Maribel for the job? As she was about to leave the apartment she found the bag he had discarded in the hall and unwrapped his gifts. Tears sparkled in her eyes as she attached the diamond pendant round her throat. She studied the lingerie with hot cheeks and stuffed it surreptitiously into her weekend bag, next to the toys he had bought for the boys.
Desperate to be reunited with her sons, Katie raced into the country house and straight up to the nursery. Toby and Connor were fast asleep in their cots, and she breathed again, feeling a little foolish for her concerns. Even so, she was painfully aware that something much more serious might have happened to her children.
Alexandros was in the library, on the phone. Lounging back against his desk, he indicated that she wait, and she wandered over to the huge windows that overlooked the lush green grassy slopes which ran all the way down to the edge of the classic lake. While Alexandros talked in Greek her eyes ate him up, in a series of avid stolen glances that were too nervous to linger.
He was so beautiful, she thought painfully. When he had been abroad she had told herself that she had gained control of her feelings for him. She had thought that her love was at a reasonable rather than obsessional level. And now one glimpse of him had exploded that foolish illusion. There he was, his classic bronzed profile silhouetted against the daylight, turning back towards her, black hair gleaming, inky spiky lashes long enough to cast a shadow on his superb high cheekbones, tawny eyes with that stunning golden impact. He still made her feel as giddy and breathless as a teenager.
‘Toby and Connor look quite untouched by all the excitement,’ she confided.
‘That’s not what you’d have said if you’d seen them when we arrived here,’ Alexandros admitted wryly. ‘I took care of them for a couple of hours at the apartment and I got them in a mess.’
‘Why didn’t you ring me? I would have come straight home.’
‘For some reason I assumed you’d be back soon, and…I am their father.’ Alexandros shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘I thought I should be capable of looking after them on my own for an hour or so. Pride comes before a fall. I’m not capable.’
Katie was amazed and touched that he had even made the attempt. ‘What happened?’
After the nightmare ordeal of bathing the twins, he had found it impossible to get clothes on to their squirming and uncooperative little bodies. When he had tried to feed them, everything he had offered had been rejected in favour of the chocolate biscuits he had been eating himself. Unable to get the biscuits back again, he had surrendered to the screams and thrown in the towel.
‘At least you tried,’ Katie pointed out bracingly, lifting a hand to touch the glittering pendant at her throat, her green eyes warm with appreciation. ‘And I love this…it’s beautiful. I wish I’d been at home when you arrived.’
Studying her, Alexandros savoured her pleasure and her appearance. He liked the way she was dressed. In a grey pencil skirt, teamed with a white slash-necked top, her feet adorned with strappy high heels, she looked enchantingly small and feminine and ravishingly pretty. He thought it a shame that he was about to spoil the ambience.
‘Right now we have something more imperative to consider,’ Alexandros drawled levelly. ‘I have tried to deal with this relationship on your terms and it’s not working.’
‘You are blaming me! Don’t you think I feel bad enough on my own account? You warned me about Damon and I didn’t listen…and he had already told me that he was after Maribel—’
‘You knew that? I thought that it was you he was interested in.’
Saving face on that score was no longer an option, Katie registered painfully, and she went pink with discomfiture. ‘No.’
That small point cleared up, Alexandros looked grave. ‘I’ll be frank. I want my children living with me where there are adequate staff to ensure that what happened today never happens again.’
‘But that’s not possible,’ Katie protested ruefully.
‘It is if you marry me. And I’m not asking this time. I’m telling you. Either you marry me or I fight you for custody.’
Shock reverberated through Katie and she stared back at him. She could not immediately credit that he was serious. The last time she had been with Alexandros he had treated her like a lover, and now that warmth, trust and intimacy were gone, as though they had never been. ‘I can’t believe that you’re threatening me.’
‘Toby and Connor deserve better than what we’re giving them. If I can give up my freedom, so can you.’
