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Maura had acted as caretaker and occasional housekeeper at a superb contemporary house which overlooked a sea inlet a few miles from their home. Owned by a German industrialist and rarely occupied, the property lay down a long gated track and enjoyed an incredibly private and beautiful setting. Katie had one day prepared the house for the occupation of a single mystery guest. A car accident had put the two domestic staff travelling with Alexandros out of commission and the rental agency, unaware that Katie was doing her mother’s job for her, had recommended her parent as temporary cook and cleaner.
A fax had followed, detailing more exact requirements, and Katie had been staggered by the number of rules she was expected to observe, ranging from meals to be served at rigid hours and a duty on her part to being both invisible and silent. On the other hand, the salary offered had been generous enough to bring a delighted smile to her mother’s anxious face, and the cutting-edge equipment being installed in the office with a sea view and a balcony had suggested that the guest would be much too busy to pay heed to the amateur level of the household help. Of course, accustomed as Alexandros was to perfection in every field, he had refused to settle for less, and Katie, secretly resenting the role of servant, had refused to be suitably humble. That they should clash had been inevitable.
No passage of time could eradicate Katie’s memory of her first glimpse of Alexandros. After he had arrived by helicopter, he had gone straight down to the seashore. From about twenty yards away she had watched him, dumbstruck by his sleek, dark, masculine magnificence. Clad in jeans and a husky grey cashmere sweater, and even with his black hair tousled by the breeze and designer stubble obscuring his stubborn jawline, he had bewitched her. She had never known a man could be that physically beautiful, or seem so alone and isolated. Wanton desire and longing had leapt up in her that very first moment, and she had never been able to overcome it…
Someone rapped at the door and she studied it in dismay, fearing another complaint just when Toby had mercifully subsided to the occasional long-drawn-out whimper of dissatisfaction. Tiptoeing over, she eased the door open a crack, for she was dressed in her pyjamas, and then fell back in complete confusion.
‘May I come in?’ Alexandros asked grimly, his dignity having been severely ruffled by Cyrus’s insistence that it was necessary for his employer to enter the building in a clandestine manner and via an alley full of dustbins. An instant later Alexandros’ irritation had vanished into the ether—a triviality when set next to the cold shock of his surroundings…
CHAPTER THREE
ALEXANDROS was a man of action, and playing a waiting game when Katie had asked for help ran contrary to his masculine code of ethics. Ignoring legal advice and doing what he felt had to be done came much more naturally to his dominant nature.
But Alexandros had never before come into personal contact with the kind of poverty that now confronted him. The room was tiny, cramped and shabby. A clothes airer stacked with damp washing, a pram and a bed were crammed up against a cot from which he swiftly averted his attention. In the single patch of space between the battered wardrobe and a sink stacked with baby bottles stood Katie. His golden gaze arrowed in on her like a laser. Against the riot of copper curls tumbling round her startled face her eyes shimmered green as emeralds, and, that fast, his body responded with a testosterone-charged surge of sexual hunger.
Even as the unreasoning shock of that lust hit, the darker side of him revelled in its resurgence. Instantly memories he had buried so deep he only dreamt about them surfaced. Katie up against the kitchen wall, tumbled in a pile of white linen, in a bubble bath with a ring of candles round her. The candles had been snuffed out by the overflowing water when he had hauled her up into his arms. Time after time he had discovered that he could never get enough of her, and that lack of control so foreign to his temperament had gone very much against the grain.
‘I wasn’t expecting you…’ Katie could feel the tension in the air leaping and crackling round her like mini-lightning bolts, and she could not dredge her attention from him. He had always had that effect on her. He walked into room and owned it and the occupants until he chose to release them from the power of his potent presence and forceful personality.
‘If I hadn’t had a dinner engagement I would have called earlier.’ Belatedly registering the brief camisole and shorts she wore, Alexandros was striving not to notice the milky pale swell of her round breasts above and below the worn fabric. His even white teeth gritted while he tried to work out why she should have such a dramatic effect on his libido.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ Katie admitted, feeling that her faith in him had been justified. She was pleased and proud that he had not lived down to Leanne’s low expectations.
A little snuffling whimper drifted from the cot. Alexandros went rigid. A tiny hand curled round a bar in the cot and a small face appeared behind the bars. Gripped by the most excruciating curiosity, in spite of his resistance to the very idea of parenthood, Alexandros slowly moved closer. Katie’s acquiescence to the demand for DNA testing without a single objection had convinced him that she was very probably telling him the truth.
‘Boys?’ Alexandros almost whispered, looking down at the two curly dark heads.
‘Yes.’
‘But not identical.’ The cynosure of two pairs of curious dark brown eyes, Alexandros was frozen to the spot. They were his. One observant glance was sufficient to persuade him of that reality. For both small faces bore compelling evidence of their Christakis lineage: straight brows that were a light baby version of his own, an early hint of the family cleft chin that even his grandfather carried, skin and eyes a little paler than his, but hair as blue-black. The curls were their mother’s, and the only proof that he could see of her input into their gene pool. His level regard was being returned by the babies without fear. He was a father, he registered in shock, whether he liked it or not.
‘No,’ she agreed in a taut rush, for she was desperate to know what he was thinking. ‘But well-spotted! At first glance most people do think the twins are identical.’
Unaffected by that hint of a compliment, Alexandros continued to survey the two little boys with brooding force. There they were, sharing the same cot, like orphans in some squalid children’s home. His sons, his responsibility. Life as he knew it was over, he conceded bleakly. His freedom had just been imprisoned and was awaiting sentence to be hung drawn and quartered. There would be no escape from the agonies ahead. He would have to offer her marriage. It was his own fault. He had brought this punishment on himself. What a mess. What a bloody mess!
One of the babies cried, and she bent over the side of the cot to lift the child, treating Alexandros to a provocative view of her apple-shaped derriere. Tiny and slight she might be, but she was still one hundred per cent woman in the places that mattered, he found himself thinking—until he cracked down on that inappropriate reflection.
‘I think you should get some clothes on,’ Alexandros told her, with the censorious air of a Puritan being tempted by a loose woman.
Only then registering that she was hardly dressed for visitors, Katie straightened, clutching Connor, her face pink with embarrassment. ‘For goodness’ sake, I’m wearing my pyjamas.’
‘It’s barely nine-thirty in the evening—’
‘So? I sleep whenever I get the chance!’ She stuffed her son into Alexandros’s arms without even thinking about what she was doing, and turned away in a hurry to snatch up her dressing gown. Her cheeks were burning. Had he told her to cover up because he believed she was trying to tempt him with her body? Did she look that desperate? Perhaps she did, she thought painfully.
As Katie thrust Connor into his arms, Alexandros turned to stone. Connor also froze. The little boy then reacted to his father’s extreme tension by opening his mouth and howling like a burglar alarm. Aghast, Alexandros studied the screaming child and put him straight down on the carpet. ‘No more,’ he told his son in reproving Greek, as if he was a misbehaving seven-year-old.
As Connor’s ear-splitting cry mounted to a shriek, Katie scooped him up and hugged his squirming little body protectively close. ‘How could you just put him down like that? Don’t you think he has feelings?’
Alexandros winced as Toby loosed a first warning squeal from the cot. ‘I’m a stranger to him. I thought I had frightened him. I have never held a child before.’
‘Neither had I when the twins were born. But I had no choice but to learn!’
‘I don’t need to learn,’ Alexandros drawled, sardonic in tone and equally dry. ‘I can afford a nanny.’
‘I’m thrilled for you.’
Backing off to the door, Alexandros watched her efforts to placate the babies. With two little screeching horrors to look after, it was little wonder that she looked exhausted. He held at bay the knowledge that he had helped to create those screeching horrors now dogging her daily existence, and imposed a strict mental block on the noise of their cries while he watched Katie. He was still fiercely determined to penetrate the mystery of her attraction, since she bore not the smallest resemblance to the women he normally went for. She wasn’t tall, she wasn’t blonde, and she wasn’t ravishingly beautiful.
Tiny and slender though she was, however, there was something about the arrangement of her delicate features and the unexpectedly lush curve of breast and hip that raised her to a seriously appetising level of desirability, Alexandros acknowledged abstractedly. He considered the reality that she had conceived and given birth to his children. All of a sudden that seemed an extraordinarily sexy achievement to him. He imagined sliding his hands under the thin camisole she wore, and the exquisite feel of the silky skin on her narrow ribcage beneath his palms before he curved his fingers up and round…
‘Just what is the matter with you?’ Katie launched at Alexandros in almost sobbing frustration. She could not cope when both the twins cried at once, and was enraged by his supreme detachment from the rising decibel level in the room. ‘Haven’t you got any interest in your own children?’
Unwillingly forced from the realms of erotic fantasy, Alexandros dealt her an enquiring glance from below his luxuriant black lashes, the faintest hint of colour scoring his stunning high cheekbones. ‘I’m here,’ he fielded without expression. ‘That should tell you something.’
‘That you don’t want to be here!’ Katie condemned helplessly, devastated by his failure even to ask the twins’ names. ‘That’s what your attitude is telling me!’
‘How may I help?’ Alexandros ground out, his accent very thick.
‘Lift Toby…’
Alexandros approached the cot, squared his shoulders, reached in and closed his hands round the wriggling baby. He performed that feat with the same enthusiasm with which he might have stuck his hands in a blazing fire. Toby. Alexandros sounded the name under his breath, reading the look of anxious surprise in the child’s brown eyes as he lifted him. He drew Toby awkwardly closer. More able to rate the experience the second time around, he was amazed at how light in weight Toby was—and then transfixed by the big smile that transformed the little boy’s face. That open happy grin reminded Alexandros very much of Pelias, and made Toby feel familiar.
Engaged in soothing Connor, it was a moment or two before Katie registered that peace had fallen again. She glanced up and saw Alexandros smiling at her eldest son. That smile stopped her heart in its tracks, made her chest go all tight, rousing memories so painful that hot tears burned the back of her eyes. Once, and for a very brief period, Alexandros had looked at her like that, and she had wanted to turn somersaults and sing with the sheer joy of living. It had not occurred to her then that losing him would hurt like hell, that the world he had made seem so bright and full of promise could just as swiftly turn grey and threatening. But now, she reminded herself doggedly, she was no longer so naive and trusting. Expecting more from Alexandros Christakis than help with the rent would be asking for trouble.
‘What is his brother called?’ Alexandros enquired.
‘Connor.’
‘We will have to discuss the requirements of this situation.’ Alexandros utilised the business terminology that he was most at ease with.
‘I’m not looking for much from you. I only want us to have somewhere decent to live,’ Katie muttered with low-pitched urgency, as she settled Connor carefully back into the cot and held her arms out for his brother.
Alexandros surrendered Toby. He straightened his broad shoulders, his wide, sensual mouth compressing. Could she really be so clueless? Or was he supposed to be impressed by her pretence of innocence? She could hardly be ignorant of the fact that the simple act of having had his children would turn out to be a highly profitable enterprise.
‘I’ll move you out of here as soon as possible,’ Alexandros responded. ‘Tomorrow, I should think.’
Katie spun back to study him in wide-eyed astonishment. ‘Tomorrow? Are you serious?’
‘I would take you home with me now…’ Dark golden eyes rested on her for a heartbeat, with an intensity that made her mouth run dry and the skin at the nape of her neck prickle. ‘But it would be too unsettling to move the children at this hour.’
An uneasy laugh fell from her lips, for she assumed that that reference to taking her home was a joke—and not one in the best of taste. ‘Luckily for you, I’m not expecting to go home with you. I’ll be more than happy to be placed in a position to afford a small flat for the three of us.’ Her colour heightened, she avoided his gaze and jerked a narrow shoulder in an awkward gesture. ‘My goodness, why is anything involving money so embarrassing to talk about?’
Alexandros, who had never found money a source of embarrassment, and could not imagine ever doing so, was unmoved. ‘Naturally I have no intention of leaving you to raise the twins alone.’
Katie tied the sash on her dressing gown with nervous hands and said nothing. So he was planning to take on some sort of paternal role? A visit once a month? Sandwiched in between business trips and dirty weekends with gorgeous women?
‘I’m not a total bastard,’ Alexandros breathed.
With care, Katie averted her gaze from his. She deemed it wisest not to comment, for she had, after all, spent eighteen months thinking of him in exactly those terms. He had taken her virginity, got her pregnant, dumped her and left her with a dud phone number for emergencies. In addition, the one website she had lingered on after she’d found out about his connection to CTK Bank had described him as a notoriously successful womaniser with a taste for supermodels. In comparison she was nothing and nobody, and she was determined not to let herself forget that demeaning truth. This time around she intended to keep her silly feet on the ground in his radius.
Alexandros, who was as much a stranger to criticism as to female disapprobation, was annoyed by her unresponsive silence. ‘Katie…I have honour.’
She lifted her head, collided with the scorching gold challenge of his potent gaze, and felt the burn of his anger. It had the most disturbing effect on her, for she could not help recalling that he could go from anger to passion in the space of a moment. That icy façade concealed a molten core. Her mind a hopeless blank, she snatched in a stark lungful of air, suddenly maddeningly aware of the little knot of awareness forming in the pit of her stomach. Her breasts felt heavy, the tender peaks pinching taut below her clothing. Heat was pulsing through her. She let her head angle back and slightly to one side, copper curls trailing, lashes lowering over softened green eyes.
‘Alexandros…’ she framed shakily, in the grip of something that had very swiftly got stronger than she was.
As alert to her every signal as a natural-born predator, Alexandros had switched to the same channel of communication without even being aware of it. He was studying the moist pink softness of her generous mouth with strictly dishonourable intentions. If he kissed her, she would stop talking at him, voicing stupid sentiments that could only offend. He was already so hot for her he ached, and he was savouring that fast, fierce arousal, acknowledging how long it had been since he had wanted any woman to such a degree. He closed a hand over her shoulder and tugged her to him, curving strong hands below her hips to lift her up to him.
Katie shut her eyes tight shut at the first intoxicating taste of him, let her head fall back in invitation, her lips open. He took advantage of her offer with the devastating sensuality that had always been her downfall. He did not ask, he demanded, and that raw, unapologetically masculine urgency turned her bones to water below her skin. It was like hitching a ride on a rocket. Her head was in a whirl. She could hardly breathe as her body reacted to the overwhelming surge of excitement with excruciating enthusiasm. On all systems go, she quivered and clung to his broad shoulders, moaning beneath the erotic plunge of his tongue.
It was an unfamiliar sound that stopped Alexandros in the very act of bringing her down on the bed behind her. Stepping back from her with a hoarse exclamation, he focussed on the baby watching them with pronounced interest through the cot bars. He was appalled that he had let control slip that far. He had forgotten about the children. His mind could not encompass how he could possibly have forgotten the presence of the twins he had only just learned were his.
‘I shouldn’t have done that. It was inappropriate,’ he breathed icily.
Katie reeled back from him on weak legs. She was seeing mental stars, and sweet sensation was still shimmying in seductive waves through her newly awakened body. She knew she ought to hate herself for succumbing to that passionate kiss, but in reality she just wanted Alexandros to flatten her to the bed and have his wicked way with her. Shame infiltrated at that mortifying awareness, but even so there was just one question that she needed to ask.
‘Is there someone else…?’ She had to know. Indeed, she tried and failed to stifle that overpowering need to know.
