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‘There are things I need to tell you.’
‘Don’t tell me. At least, not right now. I’m Greek, remember? I’m trying to be modern, but I have a long way to go.’ With a low growl of frustration he lowered his head towards hers, the gesture an erotic reminder of everything they’d shared. For a moment his mouth hovered and he was obviously deciding whether to kiss her or not and then he lifted his head and stepped back. ‘No. This time we’re not going to let the sex do the talking. You look exhausted. Get some sleep. Just for tonight you can sleep in one of the spare bedrooms but after that you’ll sleep where my wife is supposed to sleep. By my side.’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘DON’T cry. Don’t cry.’ Crying herself, Millie held the baby against her, rocking gently as he gulped and sobbed.
She’d been lying fully dressed and wide awake on top of the bed in one of the rooms just down the corridor from the nursery when she’d heard the baby howling. Instantly she’d sprung from the bed, driven by a deep instinct that she hadn’t felt before.
To begin with she’d stood back and allowed the nannies to comfort him, reminding herself that they were familiar to him, whereas she was a stranger. But after a few minutes she’d realised that they were getting nowhere and she’d taken over and dismissed them.
‘Are you hungry? Is that what’s wrong?’ Wiping away her own tears on her sleeve, Millie lifted the baby out of the cot, feeling his sturdy body beneath her hands as she held him awkwardly. ‘I haven’t done this before so you’ll have to tell me if I’m getting it wrong. Are you missing your mummy?’ Although, from what the clinic had told her, Becca had spent precious little time with her baby.
The baby’s yells increased and Millie settled herself in the chair and tentatively offered him the bottle that the nannies had left. ‘Is this the right angle? I’ve never fed a baby before so you’re going to have to yell a bit louder if I get it wrong.’
But the baby clamped his little mouth round the teat and sucked fiercely, gulping noisily as he greedily devoured the milk.
Millie gave an astonished laugh. ‘You really are starving. You certainly don’t take after your mother. She never ate anything.’ As the baby fed, she stared down at him, examining his features with an agonising pang.
There was no escaping the fact that he had Leandro’s hair. And his beautiful olive skin.
‘Is he your daddy?’ Speaking softly, she adjusted the angle of the bottle. ‘And if he is, how do I live with that? I don’t know. This is like one of those hypothetical dilemmas you talk about with your friends over a coffee. What would you do if your husband has an affair? Except maybe he didn’t—I don’t know. Should I really trust his word—or my sister’s? Am I supposed to just overlook it? Is that what he means about being the wife of a Greek man? I’m supposed to be in the kitchen stirring a casserole while he’s off having fun with his mistress?’ The baby sucked rhythmically, his eyes fixed on her face. ‘There’s no way we can carry on where we left off, even if I wanted to. Everything has changed. Things happened to me—things he doesn’t know about. He’s assuming everything is the same as when I left, and it isn’t.’
The baby sucked happily and Millie gave a watery smile. ‘You’re not giving me much help, are you? I don’t know what to do. If I wasn’t attractive enough to keep him the first time, it’s going to be even worse this time. He doesn’t know what he’s taking on.’ She thought about the last year and gave a despairing laugh. ‘On the other hand, there’s no way I’m leaving you here with him. You’ll be corrupted in a month.’
One of the nannies appeared in the doorway. ‘You persuaded him to take a bottle! We couldn’t get him to feed. I’d really had it with him by the time I went off duty last night.’ She yawned. ‘I even woke Erica because she’s been doing this job for twenty years
and knows every trick in the book. But he wouldn’t take it for her either. He’s the most miserable baby we’ve ever looked after. Probably knows there’s this big row about his parentage. His mum’s dead, apparently. And sexy Leandro Demetrios is supposedly his father. Scandal, scandal, scandal.’ She gave a conspiratorial giggle, and walked across the room. ‘Of course, he won’t say whether the baby is his or not, but he’s taken it in, hasn’t he? So that must say a lot.’
‘It says that he’s a responsible human being,’ Millie said stiffly, concentrating on the baby and hating the thought that everyone was gossiping. ‘Am I giving it to him too fast?’
‘No. He’s fine. He’s not crying, is he? I much prefer toddlers. At least you have the option of sticking them in front of the television when you get fed up with them.’ The nanny frowned. ‘Thank goodness you’ve got the touch. I was expecting to get fired this morning.’
‘Fired?’
The girl gave a fatalistic shrug. ‘Well, Leandro Demetrios isn’t exactly known as someone who accepts failure, is he? Erica and I decided in the night that if we hadn’t got the baby to take the bottle by morning, both of us would be for the chop. Shame. The pay is good and the boss is gorgeous. We’re trying to find excuses to be on his floor of the house in case he sleeps in the nude. So—who are you, exactly? I didn’t know he was hiring anyone else.’
‘I’m his wife.’ The moment she’d said the words, Millie wished they could be unsaid because the girl gaped at her in astonished disbelief.
Then the drive for job security overtook her natural astonishment and she cleared her throat. ‘I had no idea.’ Her eyes slid from Millie’s tumbling hair to her old jeans. ‘God—sorry. I mean—And you’re looking after his—’ Her face turned scarlet but it was obvious from the look in her eyes that she thought Millie was a fool. ‘We didn’t know he was still married.’
‘We’ve been apart for a while.’
‘I see.’ The girl’s expression said, No wonder, and Millie wished she didn’t mind so much. She knew she was an unlikely choice. Why did it still hurt so much to see the surprise in people’s eyes? Why did she have to be so sensitive? Annoyed with herself for caring, she wished she were more like Leandro, who was always coolly indifferent to the opinions of everyone around him. Or failing that, she would have chosen to be more like Becca, who had been born assuming that the whole world adored her.
Would she have been more confident if she hadn’t had Becca as an older sister? Or if she’d been born with Becca’s blonde, perfect looks? Becca had appeared on the covers of all the high-class glossy magazines—her trademark slanting blue eyes and flirtatious expression guaranteeing the publication flew off the shelves.
‘So…’ The nanny looked at her curiously. ‘Are the two of you back together, then?’
Were they?
The question was cheeky, but Millie had been asking herself the same thing all night. Instead of snatching some much-needed sleep, she’d locked herself in one of Leandro’s many spare guest suites and lain on the bed, wondering whether she had the courage to face what was ahead of her if she agreed to his suggestion.
He’d reject her again, of course. Once he knew…
If she’d disappointed him then, how much more disappointed was he going to be this time?
But if she refused, she’d lose access to her sister’s child. Her nephew.
