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He was, of course, going to insist on the paternity test, and yet Leo felt in his gut that the baby was his. Margo wouldn’t have agreed to everything so readily if she’d had any doubt. Which made him wonder how she could be so certain.
He hadn’t given much thought to the other man in Margo’s life; he’d simply shut the door on the whole idea and tried not to think of her—or him—at all. Now, however, he wondered—and he realised they needed to address it.
‘This other man,’ he said abruptly. ‘Are you still with him?’
She turned to him, the ghost of a sad smile curving her lips. ‘Do you think I’d be here if I was?’
‘I have no idea.’
She let out a small sigh. ‘No, Leo. We’re not together.’
‘When did you break it off?’
She didn’t answer and his hands clenched harder on the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white.
‘Well, Margo? It’s not that hard a question. I need to know if this guy is going to resurface in our lives, because I assure you—’
‘Oh, this is ridiculous,’ she said, and closed her eyes. ‘Leo, there is no other man. There never was.’
He turned sharply to stare at her. Her eyes were still closed; she was leaning her head back against the seat. ‘You expect me to believe that?’
‘Not really, but it’s the truth.’
‘Why did you lie to me before, then?’ he demanded.
Again she didn’t answer, and he wondered if she were scrambling for some plausible excuse.
‘Because,’ she finally said softly, her eyes still closed, ‘I knew it was the one thing that would send you away for good.’
Leo blinked, stung by this almost as much as he’d been by her alleged infidelity. ‘You mean my proposal of marriage was so abhorrent to you that you needed to lie to get rid of me?’
‘You’re putting it in the worst possible light, but, yes, I suppose that’s true.’
The sheer rejection of it, as brutal as his father’s had been, left him speechless.
He stared straight ahead, flexing his hands on the steering wheel. ‘And yet here we are, about to get married.’
She opened her eyes and gazed at him bleakly. ‘Yes. Here we are.’
‘I don’t understand you, Margo.’
‘I know.’
‘If, four months ago, the idea of marrying me was so disagreeable, why did you come back? Plenty of children live with single or divorced parents. You could have managed. I wouldn’t have forced you to marry me. We could have come to a custody arrangement.’ He hesitated, and then continued. ‘We still could.’
‘Is that what you want?’
‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head, thoughts whirling through his mind like leaves in an autumn wind. Margo’s rejection of him hurt more than he wanted to admit. And yet...she’d come back. She’d chosen to be here. They could still find a way ahead, for the sake of their child.
And the truth is, you still want her.
Underneath his anger the old desire burned just as bright, just as fierce.
‘Leo...there’s no reason we can’t be amicable with each other, is there?’
She laid her hand on his arm, her fingers long and slender, the touch as light as a butterfly and yet still seeming to reach right inside him and clench a fist around his heart.
‘We can be friends,’ she continued. ‘A convenient marriage doesn’t have to be a cold one.’
Friends—when she’d either cheated on him or lied in the worst possible way in order to avoid marrying him? Friends—when she clearly viewed marriage to him as a sacrifice? The desire he’d felt was no more than that: desire. Lust.
He pulled his arm away. ‘I don’t think so,’ he answered coolly. ‘I think it’s best if we keep this businesslike.’
She turned her head towards the window. ‘And will we be “businesslike” in bed?’
‘We’ve never had a problem with that aspect of our relationship,’ Leo answered. He’d keep his physical feelings for Margo separate from any potential emotional complications. ‘And we won’t once we’re married.’
They were on the outskirts of Athens now, with the raised mount of the Acropolis visible on the horizon. They didn’t speak until they’d reached Leo’s apartment in Kolonaki.
* * *
Margo had never been to Leo’s city home before. Now she walked around the elegant rooms that took up the top floor of a nineteenth-century townhouse. The living room and dining room had been knocked together to create a large open space scattered with black and white leather sofas and tables of chrome and glass.
