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An hour ago her life had been normal. Now Leon Andreakos had stormed back into her life, demanding her body. And her child. She had given him the former…but could she do the latter?
Leon rested dark, implacable eyes on her as she sat at the kitchen table, her coffee cooling in front of her.
"But I do. I will raise my brother's son as my own." His expression changed. "Why this show of reluctance? I am granting you what you dreamed of — I’m making you my wife."
"That dream ended a long time ago when I realized what a fool I'd been."
His mouth tightened. "A fool to think you could trap me into marriage. So that you could spend even more of my money." His hand slashed through the air. "But enough! As my wife, as my nephew's mother, you will be treated accordingly. And at least —" his eyes filled with an expression she knew well, one that made the breath catch in her throat, her limbs quicken "— I know that in bed we shall be as good as we always were…."
She got to her feet, sharply pushing her chair back.
"No, I'm not marrying you. Never!"
He leaned back in his chair — he seemed unconcerned.
"Then you will face a custody battle that will make you wish you had never been born."
She swayed.
"No court will take him from his mother!" Her voice came out high pitched with fear.
His face hardened. "Do you think your past makes for edifying reading? You were my pampered mistress for six months! You lapped up everything I gave you — greedy for more. You were prepared to conceive a child purely to force me to marry you. And when I called your bluff, you eloped with my twenty-two-year-old brother to try the same trick on him. You knew full well he'd already had years of psychiatric treatment, but all you cared about was persuading him to marry you and get you pregnant. And within a month — a month — of marrying him he found you with another man! A man so depraved he drew a knife on Nikos and used it."
"He died, too," she whispered, her voice a thread. "They died together, falling down the stairs as they struggled…."
Sickness was washing over her, wave after wave, as the nightmare vision returned and she witnessed again in her head that hideous, terrifying struggle at the top of the long flight of stone stairs in Nikos's house in Athens. Heard her voice, screaming, screaming…
"I should never have married him…." Guilt crushed her. "That's why I gave his money away…. Nikos died because of me. I had no right to his money."
She turned away.
Hands came over her shoulders, heavy, yet not hard.
"Did bearing his child make you realize what you had done? Did it finally put some shred of morality into you? Some fragment of remorse?"
There was that same strange note in Leon's voice as when she had shown him the letter from the children's hospital.
He turned her around, lifting her chin to look at him. His face was somber.
"You cannot deprive Nikos's son of his birthright because of your guilt. He has a right to the life he would have had, had Nikos lived. And Nicky — Nicky has a right to a father, Alanna. I will be a father to him. Your guilt has made you run, hide. But it has to stop now. You must see that."
His words had drained the color from her face, the breath from her body. His dark eyed bored into hers as if he would see into the heart of her.
She felt immobile, as if too much had happened too soon. Too many emotions, too much feeling — emotions that Leon couldn't, mustn't discover — draining from her all present capacity for feeling more right now.
He spoke, measuring each word.
"I do not offer you forgiveness; I cannot be that generous, but you should know that I understand why you sought sex with another man."
She stilled, tensing all through her body.
"You do?" She dared not ask, but breathed the question at him.
He nodded. The self-mocking look was back in his eye, as if he almost hated himself.
"I taught you passion in my arms — you did not find it in my brother's. He was, I know…inept…with women. After what we shared you would not have found him…satisfying."
A shadow passed in her eye, and she looked away.
