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‘I’m fine,’ she said, and shook off his hand. ‘Just a little dizzy when I stand up, that’s all.’
‘I’ll arrange for someone to show you to the guest suite,’ Leo said.
He was frowning, although over her dizziness or the whole situation she didn’t know. Couldn’t think. He was right: she really wasn’t in a fit state to travel.
She stood, swaying slightly, as Leo made arrangements on his phone. Then he ended the call and gave her one last, hard look.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said, and Margo knew it was a dismissal.
CHAPTER FOUR
A BABY. HE WAS going to be a father... If the child was truly his. Leo knocked back his third whisky and stared grimly out at the starless night. It had been eight hours since Margo had confronted him in his office, and he was still reeling.
He hadn’t seen her in all that time. Elena had taken her to the house, and then his personal staff had seen to her comforts. He’d called his housekeeper Maria to check on her, and she’d told him that Margo had gone to her room and slept for most of the afternoon. He’d requested that a dinner tray be taken up to her, but Maria had told him it hadn’t been touched.
Anxiety touched with anger gnawed at his gut. If the child was his, he wanted to make sure Margo was staying healthy. Hell, even if the child wasn’t his, he had a responsibility towards any person under his roof. And he hadn’t liked how pale and ill Margo had looked, as if the very life force had been sucked right out of her.
Restlessly Leo rose from the leather club chair where he’d been sitting in the study that had once been his father’s, and then his brother Antonios’s. And now it was his. Six months into his leadership of Marakaios Enterprises and he still burned with the determination to take the company to a new level, to wield the power his father and brother had denied him for so long.
A lifetime of being pushed to the sidelines, being kept in the dark, had taken its toll. He didn’t trust anyone—and especially not Margo. But if the child was his...then why not the cold marriage of convenience she’d suggested? It was what he’d determined he’d wanted after she’d turned him down. No messy emotion, no desperate searching for love. He just hadn’t expected Margo to be his convenient bride.
Grimly Leo turned back to the whisky bottle. What she’d suggested made sense, and yet everything in him resisted it. To live with a woman who had been unfaithful, who had rejected him, and who was now viewing their marriage as the altar upon which she’d sacrifice herself, her hopes and dreams... It was a bitter pill to swallow—and yet what was the alternative? To come to some unsatisfactory custody arrangement and not be nearly as involved in his child’s life as he wanted?
If the child was his.
If it was then Leo knew he had to be involved. He wanted to be the kind of father his own father hadn’t been to him. Loving, interested, open. And he wanted a family—a child, a wife. Why not Margo? He could control his feelings for her. He had no interest in loving her any more.
He could make this marriage work.
* * *
Margo had thought she wouldn’t be able to sleep, but she was so tired that she’d fallen into a deep and thankfully dreamless sleep the moment her head had hit the pillow, after Leo’s housekeeper had shown her to her room.
When she awoke it was dark and the room was chilly, the curtains open to the night sky. Margo rolled over in bed, feeling disorientated and muzzy-headed, as if she were suffering from jet lag or a hangover, or both. She heard a knock on the door, an urgent rat-a-tat-tat that made her think it was not the first knock.
She rose from the bed, pushing her hair out of her face, and went to answer the door.
The housekeeper Maria stood there, with a tray of food. The salad, bread, and lentil soup looked and smelled delicious, but Margo’s stomach roiled all the same. She didn’t think she could manage a mouthful.
‘Efharisto,’ she murmured, and reached out to take the tray.
But Maria would have none of it. She shook her head and bustled into the room, setting the tray on a table in the corner. Bemused, Margo watched as she drew the curtains across the windows and remade the bed, plumping the pillows. She turned on a few table lamps that were scattered about the room and then looked around, seemingly satisfied with how cosy she’d made it in just a few minutes.
‘Efharisto,’ Margo said again, and Maria nodded towards the food.
‘Fae,’ she commanded, and while Margo didn’t recognise the word she could guess what it meant. Eat.
She gave the housekeeper a weak smile and with another nod Maria left the room.
Margo walked over to the tray and took a spoonful of soup, but, warm and nourishing as it was, her stomach roiled again and she left it.
