“So what was your scenario? That I was here to extort you and once you gave me a mind-blowing send-off, I’d walk away?”

“What else could I think? You can’t be considering taking Dora for real,” Naomi cried. “For God’s sake, Andreas, you know you don’t want a baby and won’t be able to give her the home and family life she needs and deserves.”

He shrugged. “Probably. That’s why I don’t intend to take Dorothea from you.”

Her heart detonated with brutal hope. “Y-you don’t?”

Leaning one knee down, he dipped the mattress, tumbling her toward him, and murmured, “I don’t.”

Before she collapsed back with relief, his hand dove beneath the sheets and cupped her breast, giving it a delicious squeeze. “I do intend to take you, though.”

* * *

The Sarantos Baby Bargain is part of the No.1 bestselling series from Mills & Boon® Desire™—Billionaires & Babies: Powerful men … wrapped around their babies’ little fingers.

The Sarantos

Baby Bargain

Olivia Gates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

OLIVIA GATES has always pursued creative passions such as singing and handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career—writing.

She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heart-wrenching heartache and hope, their every heart-pounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.

When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding Angora cat. Visit Olivia at www.oliviagates.com.

To all my readers. Thanks so much for all your support and enthusiasm. It’s for you that I keep writing.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Extract

One

Naomi Sinclair stared at the face filling the TV screen in her partner’s office, an avalanche of memories swamping her. Memories of a time when she’d known exactly how the Titanic had felt.

She’d crashed into her own iceberg, after all. A colossal one by the name of Andreas Sarantos. The one whose ice now reached out from the screen to freeze her marrow...and simultaneously spill lava into her bloodstream.

Despite all the cautionary tales of what befell those who approached him, she’d steamed ahead on an intercept course. When she’d collided with him, it hadn’t been for a catastrophic but brief encounter. Oh, no. She’d smashed herself against his frozen annihilation for two tumultuous years. Total wreckage had been the only possible outcome.

Now her whole being quivered at seeing Andreas again, after four long years. With the sound off, and with him looking right at her so fiercely, she could imagine him saying what he’d said that first day she’d pursued him.

You don’t want to get mixed up with me, Ms. Sinclair. Walk away. While you still can.

She could still hear his voice, dark and pulsing with sensual menace, that slight Greek accent making it more compelling. Could still feel his eyes burning her with their inimitable brand of aloof yet searing lust.

She hadn’t heeded his warning. Not before she’d had a protracted demonstration of how right he’d been. His words had not been a cautioning, but a promise. Of destruction. One he’d carried out. And she’d had no one to blame but herself.

“What do you know! He’s back in town.”

The comment, laced with surprise and not a little excitement, pulled Naomi back to reality with a thud.

Tearing her gaze from the gorgeous yet forbidding face still filling the screen, she blinked at her partner.

Malcolm Ulrich’s comment made her realize where Andreas was. In front of his Fifth Avenue headquarters. He was “back in town.” Where he hadn’t been for four years.

Though she knew he could be in the next room and make no effort to see her, her heart hammered at the realization.

Malcolm turned his gaze to her, his green eyes eager. “I’d just about given up on doing business with him, since he deals only in person, and only when he’s here.” Her partner looked at the TV again. “But here he is.”

She unwillingly followed suit, found Andreas’s eyes drilling into hers as he glowered at the camera with all the tolerance of a wolf regarding a rabbit.

Malcolm sighed. “I still can’t believe I didn’t manage to pin him down to something when he pulled our fat out of the fire back in Crete, then came here personally to discuss how he resolved our problem with Stephanides. But it’s never too late, and that guy is bigger than ever. This time I’ll do whatever it takes to nail down his elusive hide long enough for him to give our expansion plans serious consideration.”

A scoff almost escaped her. She hadn’t gotten “serious consideration” from Andreas when she’d been in his bed every night. Not even mind-blowing sex had swayed him to get involved in something he hadn’t considered “financially feasible.” He’d said their sustainable development methods posed too many logistical problems and promised too little profit for him to bother with. That had been the sum total of the business talk they’d had during their...liaison.

But she doubted telling Malcolm that would dissuade him from continuing his pursuit of Andreas. And it might make him suspect there’d been more between her and Andreas than he, and the world, knew. Only Nadine, her only sister, and Petros, his only friend, had known the truth. To the world, she and Andreas had been two professionals who’d crossed paths sporadically, he as the Greek multibillionaire venture capitalist whose magic touch every business in the world craved, and she as a partner in a real estate development company struggling to make its mark in an increasingly competitive field.

When it had been over, she’d been endlessly grateful for that fact. No one knew of her folly, making it possible for her to pretend the ordeal had never happened. And she wanted to keep it that way. As much as it pained her, she had to let Malcolm butt his head against the wall that was Andreas Sarantos.

But it wasn’t as if Malcolm didn’t know it was probably futile, anyway. He’d been after Andreas’s transformative financing even before they’d become partners seven years ago. It was when Andreas finally answered one of Malcolm’s persistent invitations that she’d first met him, a year after she, Malcolm and Ken had set up Sinclair, Ulrich & Newman, or SUN Developments.

Andreas had come to inspect one of their first projects, with Malcolm hoping to tempt him to finance their ambitious offshore expansion plans.

From photos, Naomi had already thought him the most incredible looking man she’d ever seen. But it had taken that face-to-face encounter to turn her inside out.

His gaze and handshake had been cool, detached, yet an all-out invasion at the same time. Throughout his fifteen-minute presence, he’d fascinated and intimidated her as no one had ever done. He’d made few comments, but those had been so ruthlessly denuding, they’d uncovered weaknesses neither she nor her partners had realized had been inherent in their system. Then he’d abruptly taken his leave, giving no indication if he’d been interested or not in their business plan—or in her.

That hadn’t stopped her from thinking of him to distraction afterward....

The images on the screen changed, interrupting her reminiscing. Her gaze clung to his figure as he strode away to his limo. Even from the back, he looked every inch the indifferent raider who conquered without trying, devastated without effort and cared nothing about the damage he left in his wake. The reporter, a woman evidently unnerved by her close encounter with the Greek god, regretted that she hadn’t been able to get enough from Mr. Sarantos.

Enough from, or of? a voice inside Naomi scoffed.

But if she could have given the woman a word of advice, she would have told her that no one got a thing from Andreas Sarantos. Nothing but hurt, heartache and humiliation.

Malcolm reached for his cell phone. “I’d better call him right away, reserve the first free hour he has while he’s here, before the whole city starts hounding him.”

Feeling as if she’d run a mile, Naomi rose unsteadily to her feet. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“Hey...” Malcolm stood, too, his expression dismayed. “We haven’t even started our meeting.”

“There’s always tomorrow.” Naomi stopped at the door, mainly to lean on it until she regained her balance. “And I’d probably be useless to you, worrying about Dora, anyway.”

Which was, incidentally, true. Leaving Dora with a slight fever had made her unable to focus on anything all day. She’d spent most of it checking back with Hannah obsessively, though her nanny kept insisting everything was fine. Now Andreas’s unexpected return—even when Naomi was certain that the news spot would be her only exposure to him—had finished off any possibility for coherent thinking today. Might as well head home early.

She attempted a smile. “Just as well you found a more important thing to pursue today.”

“Nothing is more important than you!”

Naomi’s smile remained unchanged at his protest, and she made no response as she closed his office door behind her.

Malcolm had always made such gallant statements, but lately she’d been detecting something more in his courteous remarks. Something she hoped she was wrong about. She’d hate it if anything spoiled their friction-free working relationship and friendship. She’d started the partnership with him and Ken in the first place because both men had been happily married. But after Malcolm’s wife died from cancer three years ago, she’d started picking up different vibes from him. They’d become more noticeable since Nadine’s and Petros’s deaths three months ago. Naomi dreaded thinking Malcolm might be rebooting his program with her as the object of his monogamy.

Her mind was overflowing with this disturbing possibility and with Andreas’s out-of-the-blue return when she entered her apartment in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

She’d thrown her purse on the foyer table and was hastily hanging up her coat when she heard footsteps rushing toward her. She swung around to find Hannah, once her nanny and now Dora’s, looking anxious.

The heart that had been thudding all the way here now pounded with alarm. “Is Dora’s fever up again? Why didn’t you call me? I would have come back at once, taken her to the doctor!”

Hannah looked momentarily taken aback before waving her hand. “Oh, I told you countless times today that her temperature went down after you gave her medicine, and hasn’t come up again. We had a wonderful day and she went down for the night a couple of hours early.”

Naomi leaned against the wall as tension deflated abruptly. She exhaled. “When you came rushing like that—God, my mind’s been all over the place, more than usual today.”

Sympathy overflowed in Hannah’s shrewd hazel eyes. “After what you’ve been through, it’s natural for you to be jumpy. It’s amazing you’ve held up this well. But you don’t have to worry about Dora. Robust little tykes like her can weather far more than a temperature. After raising four kids of my own, and you and Nadine, with Dora my seventh baby, I should know.”

“While I feel I know nothing,” Naomi lamented. “Next week Dora will be ten months old and I still feel like a total novice. I keep worrying every minute she’s out of my sight. Accidents do happen....” Like the accident that had taken Nadine’s and Petros’s lives.

The words clogged in her throat, the wound that had never stopped bleeding for the past three months opening yet again.

Hannah reached for her, gave her one of those hugs that, as far back as she could remember, had always made things better even at the worst of times. “Being paranoid is part of being a parent, sweetie. And you have more reason than usual for your anxieties. But we won’t let anything happen to our Dora, ever, and she’ll grow up safe and loved, and become a beautiful, exceptional woman like her mom and aunt.”

Agony swelled all over again as her sister’s exuberant face filled Naomi’s mind. Before tears flowed, she nodded into Hannah’s ample shoulder, letting her touch and scent soothe her. Hannah had always been an integral part of her life, filling the void her mother had left behind when she’d died when Naomi was only thirteen.

Sniffling and attempting a smile, she pulled away. “So why did you come rushing to the door like that? Did you think I was an intruder or something, since I’m a bit early? Shouldn’t you have come armed?” Her smile wobbled as another alarm sent her hair-trigger nerves into an uproar again. “If you ever suspect anything of the sort, lock yourself in a room with Dora and call the police—”

Hannah raised both hands. “You really are extra jumpy today. This apartment building is intruder-proof, and you’ve certainly padlocked all entrances against an invading army. Anyone who comes in here has to be invited.” She stopped, hesitated, unease creeping over her genial face again. “Which brings me to the reason I rushed out to intercept you.”

“Intercept me...before what?”

“Before you walked into your family room and found me.”

Naomi lurched, a spear of shock lodging in her heart.

That voice. The voice that had never stopped whispering its insidious spell inside her mind.

Andreas.

A bolt of stupefaction wrenched her around.

And there he was, filling the archway of her foyer.

Andreas Sarantos. The man she’d barely escaped four years ago, with her soul and psyche in tatters.

It was impossible, preposterous for him to be here. In her apartment, where he’d never even dropped her off, let alone set foot inside, during the years they’d been together...though not really together.

But there he was. His presence reached out and enveloped her, drowned her. Elemental, primal. Bigger than she remembered, broader, more ominous. He stared at her across the dozen feet of barely breathable air that was all that stood between them. Then he started obliterating them.

He approached like advancing darkness, and his aura eclipsed her, made her insides quiver with a mess of reactions she’d never thought she’d experience again. If anything, time had faded her memories of his impact. Or had he grown more overwhelming?

But he can’t be here, her mind screamed, as her heartbeats spiraled into the danger zone.

The chips of steel he had for eyes captured hers, freezing her to the spot. Then they swept her from head to toe, engulfing her in simmering ice.

Her gaze careered down his body in return. From sun-gilded hair, to skin the texture and color of polished teak, to the slashes and planes and hollows of a face assembled with ruthless perfection. His body was shrouded in a suit that looked molded on him. She knew from extensive experience that the flesh beneath had been carved by a divine hand. But all that physical flawlessness would have never affected her if it hadn’t been imbued with a charisma and character that bent masses to his merest whim. This man, this force of darkness, commanded thousands, his every decision and action impacting millions. And he’d once had her completely in his power, to do with as he pleased. As she’d once begged him to.

She’d also once begged him to let her go. Because even then she’d feared she wouldn’t have the strength to walk away. What he’d done next, to spite her, to torment her, had had her swearing never again.

But she’d believed she had nothing to worry about. That he’d disappeared from her life forever. After his latest and most terrible transgression, she’d been certain she would never lay eyes on him again.

But there he was. Why? Why?

“What the hell are you doing here?”

She barely recognized the alien rasp that hissed out of her. Then she heard Hannah’s agitated voice.

“When I found him at the door, I assumed you instructed the concierge to send him up. And since you do know him, I let him in.” Even Hannah thought the extent of Naomi’s acquaintance with Andreas had merely been a few encounters when her sister had married his friend. “He led me to believe you did invite him, said he had to arrive early, but insisted I didn’t disturb you at work, and that he’d wait for you.”

Naomi turned to Hannah, barely processing her apologetic account, only one thing registering within the mass of shock her brain had become. Fury.

Before she could assure her the fault had all been Andreas’s, he spoke again, addressing the older woman. “Thank you for being the perfect hostess, Mrs. McCarthy. Tea was lovely. But now that Naomi is here, you can tend to your other business.”

He was dismissing her!

And Hannah, one of the strongest characters Naomi had ever known, was already obeying him without hesitation, not even pausing to catch her eye to check if that was okay with her.

This tipped her still reverberating shock over the edge into pure outrage.

She ground her teeth as she turned to him, pulling herself to her full height, even though it still left her almost a foot shorter than his six foot five. “Now that I am here, you can go.”

Andreas waited until Hannah disappeared, no doubt to the farthest recess of the apartment, then cocked his head at Naomi. “I will go...back to your family room. Or would you prefer we conduct this meeting in some other room?”

Some other room.

His words dripped with nuance. Not that he necessarily meant the bedroom. He’d once turned every square foot of wherever they’d met into a setting for intimacy. The sexual variety only, of course.

That he could imply any such thing now added another layer of blackness to his already dark-as-sin character.

“The only place you’ll go is out,” she gritted. “Whatever you’re here for, it’s way too late. Everything—everyone—is long dead and buried.”

The Andreas she once knew would have met her rebuke with nothing but blankness in his eyes. The one actual reaction she’d seen, apart from incinerating passion, had been the last time they’d been together. He’d shocked her with his anger then. It had infuriated him that she’d mustered the will to end whatever it was between them. She’d been his handy outlet and it had enraged him that she’d been the one to end it all, probably only before he’d been ready with a replacement.

But now she could read some response in his gaze. Within the unfathomable steel-gray of his eyes, there was the stirring of surprise, of calculation, of...amusement?

He found death and burials amusing? Probably. He must also be marveling at the puny human who dared defy the god that he was. If so, she’d give him some serious entertainment.

Turning on her heel, only rage holding her together, Naomi reached for her purse and phone. She punched three numbers.

With a finger hovering over the call button, she turned to him. “Get out right now, or I’m contacting the police and reporting that you conned your way in here, and are staying against my will.”

Looking totally unconcerned by her threat, he calmly said, “Once you hear why I’m here, you’ll beg me to stay.”

“I’d sooner beg a shark to devour me.”

Those lethal lips twisted so offhandedly that frustration expanded inside her. “Speaking of devouring... The last time I ate was that horrid meal on my flight here.”

“Whatever happened? Have you now joined mere mortals in suffering commercial flights?”

He gave a shrug of dismissal, since of course multibillionaire Andreas Sarantos had his own fleet of jets.

“Even food on private jets can be bad. At least it seemed that way as I sat for the past thirty minutes being tormented by Mrs. McCarthy’s mouthwatering cooking aromas. I bet she made enough to accommodate my presence. Let’s honor her efforts and have this conversation over dinner.”

Naomi shook her head, as if that might make this nightmare fade away. But it was really happening. He truly was here, disregarding her anger and threats, and inviting himself to dinner. It was so atrociously arrogant, it numbed her.

She shook her head again. “I know you believe everyone is a chess piece in the game you perpetually play. But if you think you can still move me around, you’ve progressed from being detached from humanity to detached from reality.”

He met her low-voiced tirade with a cool-eyed stare. She snapped her fingers in front of his face. “See this? I really exist and I’m done playing my role in an act where you have the only lines. Now for the last time—get out.”

She could almost see her wrath shattering against the indifference he wore like impenetrable armor. If a fallen angel did exist, he had to look and feel exactly like Andreas. Terribly beautiful, sinister and sublime at once, impossible to withstand or to look away from.

He tilted his head, causing his now collar-length hair to sift to the side with a sigh. She suppressed a shudder at the sound, her hands fisting at the memory of threading through those layers of silk.

Then he tsked in mock reproach. “After four years of separation, is this any way to talk to your beloved husband?”

Two

Husband.

The word—the lie—detonated inside Naomi’s head.

“Ex-husband!”

Her barked qualification had no impact on him whatsoever.

He only shrugged. “Technicality.”

His nonchalance as he reduced some of her life’s worst times to nothing exacerbated her fury.

“That ‘technicality’ is called divorce.”

And it hadn’t been the easy, quick one she’d believed it would be when she’d demanded it. He’d put her through hell before he’d allowed her to conclude the “technicality” that had ended the empty charade they’d called a marriage.

He gave another shrug, even more careless, more provocative. “Why all the drama? Anyone hearing you would think you’re a woman scorned, when in fact you were the one who left me.”

“This self-centered affliction of yours has reached its terminal stages, hasn’t it? You really are incapable of considering anything but your own concerns or anyone but yourself.”

“Is there a point you’re getting at, or did you just have a bad day and are in need of some venting?”

Her mouth opened, closed. Being a normal human with regular emotions had always caused her severe frustration and disappointment in the face of his total detachment. But this was beyond anything he’d exposed her to. He had reached the nirvana of indifference.

He went on. “If you’ve nurtured some imaginary grievances against me in the years we’ve been apart, I wouldn’t mind standing here until you have your fill of verbal abuse.”

“It’s only abuse if it isn’t true. And I don’t have vocabulary enough to describe the awfulness of your truth.”

“I don’t have any experience with the practice, but I hear some people find bashing others very cathartic.”

She finally realized how “some people” had apoplectic fits. “That’s it. I won’t tolerate your presence a minute longer.”

“You mean that up till now that was you being tolerant?”

“Get. Out. Andreas.”

He leveled those arctic eyes on hers for fraught moments, until she felt he’d given her a cold burn. Then he turned on his heel...and headed inside.

She stared at his receding figure until he disappeared. Then she was flying after him, with nothing left in her but the need to stop him from invading her life again.

Her fingers turned into talons as they sank into his arm. It was so thick, so hard she had to grab it with both hands and wrench with her full strength. That still didn’t make him turn around. She bet he finally stopped of his own accord. He was showing her how she had no effect on him and no say in his actions or decisions. As if she didn’t already know that.

Another wave of fury crashed within her when he turned in utmost tranquility. That snapped her last viable nerve.

She hit him. With both fists. Pounded on his formidable chest with all the bitterness that had long been bottled up inside her. Struck him again and again.

He just stood there, bearing her aggression without a change of expression, letting her “vent,” watching her intently, as if documenting the reactions of a strange and unstable entity. His lack of reaction cracked her open, had every loss and grief she’d ever suffered spewing out, swamping her in agony now that the leash of control had snapped.

Then suddenly, both hands were behind her back, held in the shackle of one of his, and she was pressed between the cold wall and his hot body. Before she could snatch in another ragged breath, one of his knees drove between her legs, splaying them, his other hand at her nape, tangling in her hair, securing her head, completing her imprisonment.

After one last glance into her eyes, a declaration of intent that had her choking on déjà vu, he bore down on her and crushed his lips to hers. And poisonous memories flooded her, plunging her into the past.

It had been exactly like this, when she’d gone to his hotel suite that first time, demanding he take her up on her insistent offer of herself. She’d instinctively known the edge of roughness was integral to his nature. But she’d felt he’d pushed the envelope, trying to scare her away. When that didn’t work, sending her wild with desire instead, he’d pushed some more, testing how much she would allow.

She’d allowed him everything, had reveled in the unbridled power of his passion. From that first night, he’d given her physical pleasure beyond imagining. He’d mined her body for responses and ecstasies she hadn’t known it capable of. With every encounter, he’d escalated the wildness of his possession and the ferocity of her satisfaction. But without the development of any emotional response on his part, even intense sexual gratification had started leaving her feeling drained, used up, like an addict who experienced indescribable highs, followed by crashes to dismal depths.

His conquering rumbles filled her now as he angled his hard lips against hers for a deeper invasion. He plucked at her trembling flesh with his teeth, plunged into her recesses, his tongue a slide of sex and silk against hers, inundating her in sensations, each acutely remembered and longed for.

Her surrender, even if it was with shock, not willingness as it had been before, made him take his sensual assault to the next level. His hand twisted in a fistful of her hair, sending a thousand arrows of pleasure to her core. Then he ground his arousal into her quivering belly, making that core spasm, then melt.

But it was his growl of enjoyment that caused her legs to buckle. “You taste even more intoxicating than I remember.”

And you taste exactly as I remember. Overwhelming...indispensable...

No. She’d already fallen into that abyss. Twice.

Never again.

Feeling as if she was being dragged under, drowning, she tried to squirm out of his hold, fighting not only his hunger, but hers, too. She only managed to grind herself harder into his potency. Her only hope of escape would be if he decided to let her go.

He only eased his grip by degrees, dragged his lips from her gasping mouth and across her cheek, nipping her earlobe on the way to her throat. For heart-thundering moments he sucked at her pulse point, as if he wanted to draw her heartbeats out of her. Then with a final groan, he set her hands free and raised his head.

He didn’t step away, kept their bodies fused. She remained still, not even breathing as that only pressed her closer to him. Not that she could move. It was all she could do to contain the tremors that threatened to shake her apart. It was his body’s support that kept her upright. And it was he who finally backed away from her, with such care, as if his flesh had melded to hers and sudden separation would tear off a layer of their skin.

It wasn’t far from the truth. Every inch he’d imprinted felt raw, every nerve he’d strummed exposed. His scent and feel still pounded in her core, his brooding eyes leaving her no place to hide, no chance to regain her composure.

Finally he stepped back, putting just a foot of charged space between them. She drew in a tremulous breath, hoping oxygen would kick-start her volition.

“I won’t apologize for hitting you,” she murmured. “I bet it’s the response you were after, so you’d have an excuse to do what you just did. You manipulated me into doing exactly what you want, as you always did. Good for you. Now leave. Or it won’t be your chest my next blows target.”

His eyes narrowed to steel slits, the flames of lust still flickering in their depths. “I like this new fire. You were always too...accommodating before.”

“You mean submissive.”

His gaze grew contemplative as he pursed lips fuller in the aftermath of the devouring he’d subjected her to. “Is that how you saw yourself?”

“It was how I was.”

“Not from my point of view. But then you made it clear you think I invent my own convenient, totally inaccurate version of reality. But for what it’s worth, I thought you were...pliant, yet never truly submissive.” His hand suddenly rose to her face, then he lowered it oh so slowly, running the back of his forefinger down her temple, cheek, neck and collarbone before pausing at the top of her cleavage. His voice dipped an octave into the darkest reaches of hypnosis. “You not only found pleasure in submitting to my demands and desires, but you demanded and took what you wanted as well.”

Heat surged in her loins with every recollection of those countless times she’d demanded and taken, when he’d let her feast on him until she’d lost herself in the delight.

She shrank back from his touch, which felt as if it had burned a hole right through her. That wouldn’t have been enough to sever the contact if he hadn’t dropped his hand.

She hated him for being the only one who’d ever been able to toy with her so effortlessly, hated herself more for allowing him to, for being so susceptible to him still.

She forced out a thick whisper. “I don’t think you’re here to discuss our defunct liaison....”

His slanting eyebrow arched at the word.

“You’re right,” she continued. “If I could find a word that’s more trivial and impersonal than liaison, I would have used it. Anyway, I’m not interested in dredging up a past I’ve left behind, with a person I should have never gotten mixed up with, as you so kindly pointed out to me at the beginning.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, drawing her gaze to his daunting and unabated arousal. It had just been pressed against her flesh, reminding her of all the times it had invaded her, driven her beyond all sense of self and self-preservation with urgency and ecstasy.

She snatched her gaze up, found him watching her with that cool assessment that made her want to scream.

No doubt satisfied that he’d again provoked her, in every way, he half turned. “I am going to sit down. Coming?”

Without waiting, he continued to her family room, as if those explosive minutes that had thrown the precarious stability of her world back into chaos hadn’t occurred.

This time she managed not to pursue and attack him. Not because her anger had lessened, but because she knew he’d respond the same way. She couldn’t withstand another assault on her senses. Knowing him, he might even take it further, press on until he made her beg him not to stop. Even now she feared he’d make her do whatever he wanted her to.

Feeling as if her legs had turned to soggy sandbags, she followed him into her family room.

She’d not only childproofed recently, but also redecorated the space, to make it cheery for Dora and to counter the melancholy that permeated her and the place since Nadine’s and Petros’s deaths. Now Andreas walked into it and his presence made the room darken and shrink, as he’d always done to her whole world.

He headed to the high-backed red armchair beside the gleefully floral L-shaped couch, which he must have occupied as he’d waited for her. The tea tray on the coffee table and the briefcase on the floor affirmed her deduction.

After he’d resumed sitting, he swept back the hair that had fallen over his forehead during their tussle, drawing her aching gaze again to its luxuriousness. If anything, the longer tresses made him appear even more masculine, made every slash and hollow of his face more rugged. Each change in him did. His every line and feature had been honed to a fiercer virility. And she’d thought he’d already been the epitome of manhood.

Damn him.

But that was only a facade. He was as monstrous on the inside as he was divine on the outside.

He cocked his head at her when she remained standing several feet away. “Your reaction to seeing me wasn’t spur-of-the-moment. Seems your animosity has been brewing for a long time.”

Those statements made her scoff incredulously. “If I didn’t know you have a family somewhere, I’d have thought you were grown in a lab, an experiment in producing a frighteningly efficient humanoid devoid of feelings or scruples.”

His expression showed no offense, no amusement, no challenge. Nothing at all, as usual. “If this is how you see me, it’s your prerogative. But don’t you think the impervious entity you describe wouldn’t have tried to keep you from leaving him?”

“I think you would do nothing else, to assert your dominance. You were being a dog in the manger when you refused to finalize the divorce. You never really married me, just signed a bunch of papers to stop me from ending our ill-advised affair, only to continue it under the false label of marriage, on the same barren grounds.”

“And I tried to stop you from leaving me, twice, just to ‘assert my dominance’? Don’t you think it was too much trouble for just that?”

“Not at all. I believe you’d go to any lengths to maintain your record.”

That eyebrow arched again. “What record is that?”

“Your perfect one of having everyone at your disposal and everything done according to your rules and at your command.”

“Interesting.” He scratched the stubble she still felt burning her cheeks, looking as if he was considering a new perspective, before leveling his gaze on her. “That is me to a tee, but none of that was among my motives at the time. I was only trying to wait out your tantrum until you came back to me.”

“Tantrum? Is this how you saw it? And if so, what made you decide to let go of the tug-of-war? Did you wake up one day and say to yourself, ‘To hell with it, who needs a brat?’ It wasn’t as if you could have gotten fed up, after all. You weren’t even involved in plaguing and pestering me. You just sicced your lawyer on me and went about your business, not once appearing in the picture.”

“You must have a theory why I finally let go.”

“Probably because even such hassle-free vindictiveness eventually got old.”

He made no corroboration of her explanation, nor did he provide his own of why after six months he’d suddenly decided to sign the divorce papers.

Not that she would have accepted any reason he gave. Her analysis made the most sense. He’d gotten bored. Or he’d found a satisfactory replacement. Or many.

“You were right.” That made her blink. He was admitting it? But he went on, “I’m not here to recycle past conflicts. But though you claim to have no desire to do that, it seems you’re pretty hung up on them.”

“My disgust with you has nothing to do with our past.”

“What then?”

“You really have no clue, huh?”

“None. Enlighten me.”

“Petros called you on his deathbed.” The words seethed through gritted teeth. “You didn’t bother coming back. You let him die without making the effort to see him one last time. You didn’t even attend his funeral.”

All the response she got was a slow blink. Then those lasers he had for eyes resumed regarding her with the same steady appraisal, waiting for her to continue.

The emotional bile backed up in her system poured out, swerving from outrage on Petros’s behalf to hers. “Everyone came. Even business rivals, even enemies. Everyone knew Nadine was my world. And that Petros had become the brother I never had. Everyone put everything aside and came or at least called to console me. You didn’t.”

Another slow blink allowed her bitterness to gain momentum, as she finally understood why his absence had hurt so much. “Somehow your disregard made everything that happened between us even worse. I was always ashamed I threw myself at you, blamed myself for everything that happened afterward, but that day I despised myself for it, for pursuing, then staying with someone so...warped. When you didn’t answer your only friend’s dying plea, and didn’t grant me even a few empty words of sympathy, I finally realized the magnitude of the crime I’d committed against myself. I never hated anyone in my life. I never hated you even after all you put me through. But when you proved you were worse than a stranger, worse than an enemy...I finally hated you that day.”

His lashes lowered again, giving the momentary impression of him being moved, disturbed.

Then he raised his eyes, and they were their usual unfathomable chips of steel. “I didn’t realize you’d appreciate seeing or hearing from me at the time.”

Her jaw dropped. “Are you pretending you didn’t come or call, in deference to my feelings? Play another one.”

“I’m stating what I believed. But that wasn’t why I didn’t come or call.”

She waited for him to tell her the reason. A heartbeat later she realized she’d fallen into the trap of expectation all over again. He wouldn’t be giving her anything to quench her curiosity or indignation, would never justify his actions or seek understanding or even tolerance for them.

At least she could always count on him for that. No excuses. Everyone invariably lied, or pulled their punches to observe decorum or butter others up, or at least spare their feelings. Not Andreas.

And it would continue to sink in. The magnitude of what she’d risked when she’d thrown herself, body and soul, into his void. Even now he realized she’d been in need of support from any familiar face at the time—he still didn’t bother to say he was sorry.

It seemed disappointment and disillusion had no end with Andreas.

Suddenly, she was tired. So very tired. She’d been struggling to act strong, to appear intact, for so long now. First for her mother, then for Nadine, then for Dora and Hannah. But she could no longer pretend she was on Andreas’s level, when no one was, and when she was at her most brittle. He was a disturbance she couldn’t afford, a battle she couldn’t fight. She needed whatever strength she had left for Dora.

All fight gone out of her, she walked to him, no longer minding if he saw how fragile she was, how she was no match for him. “Whatever your reasons for not coming to the funeral, it was for the best, Andreas. Your presence would have only made me feel worse. It’s the worst thing you could have done, coming back now. Whatever brought you here, it doesn’t matter. Just go. Please.”

In response, his hand reached for hers, cradled it in its warmth. Then, with an effortless tug, he had her spilling into his lap, sinking in his power and heat.

Before another neuron fired, a buzz went through her. Seconds stretched out before she realized what it was. His phone.

That galvanized her to push out of his arms. He only tightened them and groaned, “Don’t, omorfiá mou.”

She shivered at the way his magnificent voice vibrated as he called her “my beauty,” just as she always had when a Greek endearment flowed from those spectacular lips.

Keeping her wrapped in one arm, he got his phone out, evidently to silence it, then groaned again when he saw the caller’s name.

He dragged in a harsh breath. “I have to take this.” He clasped her closer as she squirmed again, immobilizing her with his mesmerizing gaze. “I’m picking up right where I left off afterward.”

She somehow managed to rise from his embrace, making it to the couch opposite before collapsing on it. “No, you won’t.”

His eyes smoldered, running over her with his intention to do just as he’d promised. Then he answered the call, and the name he said...Stephanides. Could it be...?

Next moment he said Christos. So it was him. The man who’d once threatened to smash her kneecaps...and worse.

It was how everything had started between her and Andreas, six years ago. She’d been in Crete with Malcolm to set up a branch of their company. They’d been about to close a deal when one day, thugs had accosted them, delivering a threat from Christos Stephanides, the local real estate development tycoon. The message had been succinct. Either they took their business elsewhere or they wouldn’t leave Crete in one piece.

But before the thugs could give them a taste of what awaited them if they didn’t comply, Andreas had materialized out of nowhere and spoken one word: “Leave.” The ruffians had almost vanished into thin air in their rush to do just that.

In his usual concise way, Andreas had said he’d deal with the thugs’ boss, and had advised them to leave Crete until he told them it was safe to come back. They’d done so, unquestioningly.

Once home, though still shaken, Naomi had been more disappointed. That the one man she’d ever been interested in remained the only man who hadn’t tried to approach her.

Nadine had thought his appearance at the moment they’d needed him had to mean something. She’d insisted that next time they met, if he didn’t make a move, Naomi should take matters into her own hands.

Having no faith in her sister’s romantic notions, Naomi had been surprised and delighted when she’d found Andreas in Malcolm’s office days later. He’d seared her in his focus again, but had made no move. And she’d ended up taking Nadine’s advice, inviting him to dinner. It was then that Andreas had issued his famous warning, turning her down.

Mortified at his rejection, she’d told Nadine that her advice had backfired. Her sister had still insisted that maybe he’d truly believed it wasn’t good for her to know him. Maybe he was being kind, letting her down easy. What had Naomi known about Andreas anyway?

But she’d known what should have been enough. Everybody said he was an iceberg, a man with no feelings, relationships or friendships, who lived only to accumulate more success and money. The presence of females in his life had consisted of abundant one-nights stands.

Not that any of that had discouraged her in the least. She’d still wanted nothing more than to be with him, to appease the unstoppable hunger she’d felt for him, come what may. So she’d approached him again.

This time, Andreas had agreed to her invitation. But as if to test her limits, he’d insisted she come to his hotel suite. Certain that he’d posed no danger beyond the emotional—and she’d had no intention of getting emotionally involved—she’d gone to him.

Bluntly, he’d told her he’d never wanted anything the way he wanted her. But he’d left her alone, knowing she wouldn’t be able to withstand him. His ominous words had been blatant with the implication of his insatiability, as well as what she’d realized only later. His total disregard and insensitivity.

But she couldn’t blame him for any of that. He’d made his terms brutally clear. If she stayed, he would devour her. But he was nothing she might want in a man. Beyond passion and pleasure, he had nothing to offer her.

Drunk with desire and recklessness, she’d told him that was exactly what she wanted, too. Since her mother had died, she’d taken care of her four-years-younger sister, becoming an adult prematurely. Naomi hadn’t made one step since before taking every possible ramification into consideration. Even her professional life was steeped in feasibility studies and risk calculations. But she’d wanted Andreas as she’d never wanted anything else. She couldn’t approach that desire with caution.

And starting that night, she’d let him sweep her like a tornado into a tempestuously passionate affair that had been beyond anything she’d dreamed of. Sex between them had been, even according to him, unparalleled, the pleasure escalating and the lust unquenchable.

But soon she’d found her emotions becoming involved—or they had been all along, and she’d lied to herself so that she’d accept his noninvolvement terms. Apart from his inability to feel, Andreas had been everything she could have admired and loved in a man. Brilliant, driven, disciplined, enterprising and a hundred other things that appealed to everything in her. Being a phenomenal lover had ended any hope that her emotions would remain unscathed for long. As he’d made love to her, it had been impossible not to delude herself that his ferocious passion, his meticulous catering to her needs, hadn’t been signs of caring. That was, until he’d stepped out of bed and reverted to iceberg mode.

It had taken only four months for the lack of an emotional dimension to make her confess she’d been wrong to think she could handle the terms of their involvement. She couldn’t wait for things to deteriorate between them, and it was best to part when they had only the fantastic memories.

In answer, he’d only brooded as she’d walked away, not trying to stop her....

“Christos sends his regards.”

Her heart fired as his calm voice yanked her from the past, landing her in the present with a thud.

Her glower was equally for him and for the hoodlum who paraded as a businessman and dared pretend they were on a cordial footing. Though it surprised her Andreas had told him he was with her. He’d never acknowledged her before.

“Tell him I’m sending them back as undeliverable. And when he gets them, he knows where to put them.”

Andreas’s eyebrows rose slightly, his closest expression to amusement. “He will be shocked a lady like you could be so...harsh. Especially since he’s taken such a shine to you.”

Yeah, and he had tried to “acquire” her “golden beauty” as if she were part of their business deal. “The feeling is certainly not mutual.”

“That would only make you even more enticing in his eyes. Mere men expect the goddess that you are wouldn’t reciprocate their interest, expect you to be haughty and out of reach.”

Was he speaking as a fellow god who knew how he affected mere women? Not that she could accuse him of exaggerating when he called her a goddess. He’d always lavished praise on her that had surpassed poetry. It had been what had kept her with him for two years through the alienation on all other fronts. That and the sheer perfection of their chemistry.

He put his phone away. “I now understand the source of your current antipathy toward me. But why is Christos still in the bull’s-eye of your wrath? Your conflict has long been resolved.”

Strange that he wasn’t taking credit for that, when it had been he who’d gotten Stephanides to relent and then to even do business with her company. They’d done a couple of very lucrative projects together before things had fallen through again, if amicably this time. Not that she was about to thank Andreas for that right now, or for anything else.

Gathering what felt like her last spark of energy, she sat forward. “Listen, I’m sure you didn’t come here to chat about your money-and image-laundering business buddies, or to exercise your irresistible sexual prowess on me—”

“I didn’t intend to touch you...not during this meeting. But it seems nothing has changed. It remains impossible for us to be around each other and not ignite.”

His quiet response shuddered through her. That he claimed she affected him as he did her tipped her beyond endurance.

“Enough, Andreas,” she groaned. “Whatever you came here for, just spit it out.”

He gazed at her in silence until she felt her every cell begin to crackle.

Then, in absolute tranquility, he inclined his head. “As you wish. I’m here to claim Dorothea.”

Three

Naomi found herself on her feet, looking down at Andreas. He only tipped his head back as he met her flabbergasted stare, his gaze steady and earnest.

And she exploded. “What kind of sick joke is this?”

He rose with the utmost economy and composure, was towering over her before she could take a breath or a step back.

“It isn’t a joke. When Petros called me—”

“You didn’t come back.”

“I didn’t need to. He was calling me to—”

“I don’t give a damn why he called you, or about anything you’re going to say. Dora is mine.”

“Dorothea is Petros’s.”

Naomi’s heart pounded until it felt like a wrecking ball inside her chest. “And my sister’s.”

But she’d lost Nadine so recently, the loss so overwhelming and fresh, she hadn’t yet started Dora’s adoption process. But she’d been sure there was no rush, that her claim to Dora was uncontestable.

She said so. “With Petros being an only child, and with his parents dead, Dora has no other family but me. That makes her mine.”

“Petros wanted her to be mine.”

Naomi shook her head, trying to stop the world that was suddenly spinning, feeling as if he’d punched her square in the face. “God...every time I think I know what depths you can sink to, I discover there’s no limit to your callousness. But this...this is a new depth, even for you. This is...evil.”

He moved past her, giving her a sideways glance that froze her blood and started it boiling all at once. “As I said, what you think of me is your prerogative. That doesn’t change the fact that Petros, Dora’s father, wished me to have her.”

Afraid she’d keel over if she moved too fast, Naomi turned to face him, found him across the coffee table, both hands back in his pockets, staring at her broodingly.

He wasn’t joking. He meant it. This was real.

A hysterical giggle burst out of her.

He only inclined his head in what looked like a nod. “I can understand your shock. I’d hoped I could introduce the subject in a better way, at least gradually. But we couldn’t even establish any semblance of a conversation, with you being so hostile and uncooperative.”

“Sure, I’m to blame for that. I’m the one who tormented you for six months for laughs, before granting you your freedom. I’m the one who disregarded my dying friend’s plea for me to be there for him in his last hours. I’m the one who’s standing right there pretending I’m willing to take on a baby, when I made it cuttingly clear I never wanted a child.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want anymore.”

“But it matters what you can or can’t do. And I’d sooner believe you’d give birth to a baby rather than take one on.”

He had the temerity to huff in what sounded like amusement.

But even if all she wanted was to scratch his eyes out, she had to summon all her diplomacy and end this. This was too...huge for her to let it go any further.

“Listen, Andreas, if you’re suffering from belated guilt, for not being there for Petros when he needed you, and you think you should do something for his daughter when you never did a thing for him, don’t bother. Petros is dead and gone, and nothing you do or don’t do can hurt or help him anymore. If some anomalous sense of duty regarding Dora has been roused inside you, just steer it away until it dies down, as I’m sure it will as soon as this misguided mission is over and you walk out of here. Dora doesn’t need your guardianship and is perfectly safe and happy and provided for with me.”

“I have no doubt you are an exemplary aunt—”

“I am more than Dora’s aunt. I gave birth to her!”

At her cry, it was as if all the air was sucked out of the room. Something fierce reverberated from him in shock waves.

He didn’t know?

She rushed to explain. “Nadine and Petros wanted a baby so much, but it was impossible for her to get pregnant or to carry her own baby to term. So I became their surrogate for the baby they made together.” She’d wanted to help them, and also thought it would be the only way she’d ever have a baby. “Dora is my flesh and blood in every way.”

“I know.”

His quiet words lurched through her.

So what had caused that fierce reaction? Or had she imagined it? Probably. Andreas experienced no such reactions.

He went on. “Not that it makes a difference what you are to her. It’s what Petros wanted me to be to her that’s the issue here.”

Hanging on to control with all she had, she asked, “When did he even make that so-called last wish? Over the phone? In that call you now claim wasn’t to ask you to come back before he died?”

“That’s what I tried to say when you interrupted me. He didn’t ask me to come back for him, but for Dorothea.”

“Wow, this keeps getting better. He asked you that three months ago, and you just got around to it now? If Dora had you to count on, she would have been lost somewhere in the system by the time you deemed it convenient to come for her.”

“I knew she was safe with you.”

“So there was no rush, huh? And there will never be one, so you can return to wherever you’ve disappeared for the past four years, and just never come back again.”

“I can’t and won’t do that.”

“Don’t posture. It was just something Petros said.”

“It was something he wrote. In his will.”

That felt like a resounding slap across her face.

A minute passed before she stammered, “I—I can’t believe Petros wrote such a will. If he did, he must have been panicking after the accident, when he suspected from everyone’s evasions that Nadine was dead, and realized he’d die, too.” Naomi shook her head. “And it still doesn’t make sense he’d think you’d make Dora a better guardian than me.”

“He didn’t ask for me to be her guardian. He wanted me to give her my name.”

She gaped at him. He looked deadly serious. And she found herself staggering back and collapsing on the armchair he’d just vacated.

Then denial surged, pitching her forward. “This is preposterous. I know Petros loved me, but he loved you way more—God only knows why, or how he could love you at all. But how could he think that Dora would be better off with you rather than with me, who’s been her other mother all along? How could he believe you’d make a better parent for her? I could have understood it if he wanted you to be her guardian, financially, though he also knew I’d need no help in that area.”

She gulped down the agitation that threatened to suffocate her. “Though he never cared about money beyond being comfortable, maybe it was different when it came to his daughter. Maybe he wanted you to secure her future beyond anything I could afford. But to ask you to be her father? You of all people? Who never nurtured a living thing, not even a pet or a plant? You, who hates children?”

“I don’t hate children. I never said I did. I said I would never have any. If it had been my choice, I wouldn’t have. But this is no longer a matter of choice. Petros was specific in his will in what he needed me to be to Dorothea. And I will fulfill the terms of his will to the letter.”

“And I say again, don’t bother. I will have his will overturned. He was on death’s door and not of sound mind when he had it written.”

“He drew up his will seven months before the accident. As soon as Dorothea was born, in fact.”

Naomi slumped back, the world collapsing around her like a burning building. “I don’t believe you! If there is such a will at all, his attorney should have informed me of it, should have let me know of your alleged claim, since it directly clashes with mine.”

“Petros used my attorney to draw up the will, and had it delivered directly to me. He told me not to inform you of it until it was possible for me to come do it in person.”

Andreas approached her as he spoke, and she felt as if she was waiting for a tidal wave to crash on top of her and crush her.

Once in front of her, he bent smoothly. She lurched backward, unable to bear his physical closeness now, feeling she’d lose all control if he touched her.

He didn’t. He just reached for the briefcase at her feet. Straightening, he opened it, produced a file. Bending once more, he placed it, opened, on her lap.

She tore her gaze from his, dragged it to what felt like a slab of ice on her legs, freezing every spark of warmth and life. Her vision blurred on the lines, as if to escape registering the evidence of his claims.

Then her focus sharpened, and every word she read struck her to her marrow with horror.

It was true. Every word he’d said. Apart from the framework of legalese, this was a letter from Petros, in his inimitable voice. Dated two days after Dora’s birth. Signed unequivocally by him.

Suddenly, she felt she’d been stabbed through the heart. That Petros would bypass her in favor of Andreas, giving him Dora...Dora...her baby.

She closed the file with a trembling hand, shoved it to the table as if it burned her, and looked up at him, red-hot needles prickling at the back of her eyes.

Andreas was watching her intently, analyzing her reaction, documenting its every nuance. Didn’t he already know how hard this blow would hit her?

He finally exhaled. “You’re welcome to verify the will’s authenticity.”

“You mean if you wanted to fake a document, I’d have a prayer of proving it was a forgery?”

His head tilted, as if he was accepting praise. “I know for a fact no one would.”

“Spoken like an expert counterfeiter. Forge anything major lately?”

“Not lately, no.”

How blasé he was as he admitted to past and no doubt frequent fraud. But then, why not, when he was certain there was no possibility of exposure?

“But there’s no forgery this time,” he said. “This is authentic.”

She gritted her teeth. “Why should I believe you?”

“What reason do I have for doing this, if it wasn’t?”

“How should I know? No one in this world has any idea what goes on inside your mind, what drives you. For all I know you might be doing this to spite me.”

“Contrary to what you seem to believe, I never wished to spite you. If anything, I only ever wished to do the opposite. I have clearly failed.”

“Gee, I wonder why? Just how did Petros not only love and trust you, but will his daughter to you?”

“So you believe this is his will.”

“I’d give anything for it not to be, but yes, I believe it.” She dropped her head in her hands, feeling it would snap off her neck if she didn’t. “The only reason I can think why Petros might have done this is that he thought it a precaution that would never come into play. He was your age, had every reason to think he’d live another fifty years.”

“Actually, Petros discovered he had an inoperable heart condition two years after he married Nadine.”

Naomi jerked her head up. “What?”

“Once he was diagnosed, he believed his father and grandfather had it, and it was why they died at around forty. Fearing the condition ran in his father’s family, afflicting males only, when he and Nadine decided to resort to IVF through surrogacy, they ensured the gender of the baby to avoid the possibility of passing on the problem. He actually didn’t want to have a child at all after he discovered his condition, hating to think he’d die and leave Nadine and his baby prematurely. But she wanted one so much, he had to do everything in his power to give her one. You know how impossible it was not to give Nadine what she wanted.”

“But...but he never told her of his condition. If he did, she might have never persisted in having a baby.”

“He did tell her. She just didn’t tell you. She insisted that his condition might never threaten his life, and she wasn’t letting it stop them from living their shared life to the fullest. She turned out to be right. It wasn’t his condition that ended up killing him, but a drunk driver.”

Naomi found herself on her feet again, mortification at being left in the dark tightening her every muscle until she felt they’d snap. “I can’t believe she kept this from me!”

Andreas took a step closer. “Don’t feel bad that the kid sister you believed shared everything with you kept something of this magnitude from you. I believe she made the right choice. By not telling you, she was refusing to acknowledge the whole thing, refusing to let it poison their daily lives. She felt she’d imposed on you enough to solve their conception problems, didn’t want to burden you with a dread she’d decided to ignore. And she was right again. By pretending his condition didn’t exist, she managed to give them that full life they craved together. While they lived.”

Naomi stared at him, feeling as if she were plummeting into an alternate universe. She’d never heard Andreas talk so much. That was a week’s worth of words in his book.

But it was the words themselves that bewildered her. And that there was an actual expression on his face, in his voice, as he’d said them. As if he was concerned, was trying to ameliorate her shock. Which was the most improbable thing in this whole situation.

“Is there more?” she finally whispered. “I’d rather you hit me over the head with it all at once and get it done with, rather than prolong the ordeal.”

His shrug said he had nothing more to relate. She didn’t believe that. There was more, and he knew it all, but would tell her only what suited him.

But even in what he’d deemed to tell her, there were too many question marks. “So Petros believed he might not live long enough to be Dora’s father, but there was no reason he’d fear for Nadine’s life, too. How could he think of willing you to be Dora’s father when her mother was around?”

“He wanted Dorothea to have more than just her mother. He wanted her to have a family.”

“He didn’t consider me family?”

“He thought it would be too much for you, being all the family Nadine and Dorothea had.”

“I was always all the family Nadine had. And she was all my family, too, as Dora is now. How could he have thought I’d find it too much? What the hell did he think he was doing, deciding what I’m capable of, and making decisions for me?”

Andreas’s gaze grew more serene, as if to counteract her rising agitation, and she wanted to hit him over the head with something. That file, preferably.

“Petros knew his wife, knew how dependent she was on you all your lives, the dependence she only partially transferred to him when they got married. He feared if he died, Nadine would be too destroyed to care for Dorothea properly. He believed she couldn’t bring up a baby alone and would lean on you completely. He also knew you would have let her, would have supported her and Dorothea fully, at the expense of your own life. He didn’t think it fair to you.”

“Did he tell you all that?”

“Yes.”

Naomi pressed trembling hands to her eyes as her voice quavered. “And he considered you the one qualified to carry Nadine’s and Dora’s burden? He thought you were equipped to deal with a bereaved woman and a fatherless baby? That you can become the first’s pillar of strength and the second’s stand-in father? Are you sure it was his heart that had something wrong with it and not his brain?”

“I didn’t argue with him about my eligibility for the role he wanted me to play in the event of his death. I always did, and will always do, whatever he wanted, no questions asked.”

“Are you out of your mind then, thinking you can do what he asked you to do? You’re not equipped to feel anything for anyone, let alone a baby, and a girl at that. And wait a minute! He wanted you to be her father, so she would have a family? How are you supposed to provide her with that?”

“As you pointed out earlier, I wasn’t grown in a lab. I do have a family. A big one.”

“A family you have nothing to do with, and have never been a part of. A family in name, but never in reality. A family you didn’t even inform that you got married and divorced.”

“For Petros’s sake, for his daughter’s, I’m willing to change that.”

Feeling his calm, ready answers singeing her insides with oppression and frustration, she raised both hands, needing to abort this conversation and its possible catastrophic outcomes. “You don’t have to go to the trouble of establishing a relationship with your family to give Dora one. Dora already has a family. Me, Hannah, Hannah’s family, my friends and colleagues. She will grow up surrounded by people who love her, and she certainly doesn’t need someone like you in her life, someone who knows nothing about emotions, nor cares anything about other people, let alone children.”

As her last words rang in the room, he exhaled. “Are you done? I can stand here and listen to you enumerating my fatal flaws as long as you wish.”

“How kind of you. Your every word is just another display of the depth of your insensitivity. But I’m done. And you’re gone. Take that will with you and forget that Petros ever wrote it. Forget all about us.”

“I can’t. And I won’t. Petros was my only friend, and his wishes are sacred to me. I will carry out his last will and testament, Naomi. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

“Don’t be too sure about that. I don’t care if that will is authentic. I will contest it. I will contest Petros’s mental state at the time he made it. He thought he would die, and the validity of his decisions while under that conviction is questionable. And you can bet I will contest you. Any court would take one look at you and realize you’re not father material. No judge would give you custody of Dora over me.”

“Then you have no idea how family courts work. I am far richer and more powerful than you, than almost anyone. There’s no contest. Any court would give me custody.”

“We’ll just have to see if they’ll consider money and status over the proof of existing emotional bonds and stability and previous healthy relationships.”

“If it comes down to comparing pros and cons, I have what would tip the scale in my favor. Dorothea’s father’s direct endorsement. Do you have any such thing from your sister?”

That had Naomi’s heart stopping for a terrible beat, before it detonated with a gush of dread. They’d never even thought of any provisions for a situation like this.

Even after Nadine was gone in the blink of an eye, Naomi had never thought her claim to Dora would ever be contested, let alone in jeopardy. And for the rival claim to be Andreas’s! It was so preposterous she could almost believe this whole visit was a vivid nightmare.

But she would fight him to her last breath. Not because he would be snatching away the one thing she had to live for, but for Dora herself.

She told him so. “You might be able to trump my claim to Dora, but did you think what you’ll do once she’s yours? You, the ultimate example of emotional dysfunction? Dora would be better off in an orphanage than with you.”

In answer, he bent, swept the file off the table, and calmly put it back into the briefcase. “Again, Naomi, your opinion of me is irrelevant. As far as I am concerned, Dorothea is a Sarantos already. The rest is just formalities. Ones we can conclude with minimum conflict, for Dorothea’s sake. Though she’s very young, I’m sure she’d sense the discord if you turn this into a needless struggle.”

Pivoting, he walked away now that it suited him, leaving destruction in his wake, as he always did.

Before he disappeared from the room that now felt like a battlefield, he drove icicles into her heart. “If you choose to do it the hard way, I’m ready for as long and as costly a battle as it would take. One you’ll end up losing, anyway.”

Four

“There’s no doubt, Ms. Sinclair.”

Naomi stared at the immaculate man, the regret on his face and in his voice making her heart give another painful thud against her ribs, before spiraling into her gut.

“Are you absolutely certain, Mr. Davidson?”

“Positive. Mr. Sarantos’s claim is far stronger. He has a bona fide will from Dorothea’s father, and you have nothing of equal strength in your favor. With his being who he is, no matter what you cite as your superior qualification as a parent or that you are her surrogate mother, his claim will have precedence. The one thing we could do is petition for you to remain a regular presence in the child’s life, but that would also be at Mr. Sarantos’s and the judge’s discretion. Though I have no doubt we would get you generous visitation rights, as I don’t see why Mr. Sarantos would contest them, since there’s no dispute as there would be in a custody case after a divorce.”

A scoff almost escaped Naomi. If only Mr. Davidson knew that with Andreas, anything was a dispute. He shredded his opponents on principle, even if he had nothing to gain by it. She had their divorce as solid proof of how vicious he could be, just because he could.

But her attorney had no idea, because he hadn’t handled her divorce battle with Andreas. His daughter, Amara, had. Amara had been a good friend before becoming an attorney, and Naomi had trusted her to keep the divorce proceedings a total secret. As Andreas’s own attorney had, since there hadn’t been a word about their marriage or its dissolution in any media outlet. Not that she was about to enlighten Mr. Davidson now. At this point she felt any more information might be fuel that would burn any bridges to having Dora in her life at all.

She let out a shaky exhalation. “So in a fight, I don’t stand a chance of keeping Dora?”

“As only her aunt, and with the will you describe, and with Mr. Sarantos’s enormous influence, regretfully, no.”

She’d already more than half known that, was here hoping against hope. Hearing the words still felt like a burning coal sliding down her throat.

Feeling she was pushing the lump of agony back out, she whispered, “Any advice?”

“Just this. Keep this out of court if you possibly can. Your best hope is not to antagonize Mr. Sarantos, but to appeal to him. His goodwill is all you can count on.”

* * *

In an hour’s time, she was staring in the mirror in her building’s elevator.

Her reflection looked worse than what had looked back at her after she’d left Andreas four years ago. Or even after Nadine’s death. Her complexion was mottled, the blue of her eyes was muddy, even the luster in her blond hair was gone. Two people who’d met her on the way from her attorney had been so alarmed they’d both thought she was ill. One had tried to convince her to let him take her to the emergency room.

The ping announcing her floor lurched through her, had her stumbling out of the elevator. At her apartment door, she stopped, her hand clenching the keys until it ached.

The delightful baby sounds coming from inside, which always lifted her heart even at its most leaden, only sank talons of misery in it now. It was unimaginable, unbearable, unsurvivable—the thought of losing Dora. A life without her constantly there, hers to love, to take care of and to worry about, wasn’t worth living.

Leaning her clammy forehead on the cool wood, Naomi drew in a ragged breath, trying to suppress the tears that threatened to pour. She had to get her act together, couldn’t walk in looking as if her world had ended. It had disturbed Dora when Naomi had been unable to control her anguish after Nadine’s death, and she’d been only seven months old then. Now she was much more aware, and supremely sensitive to moods. Whenever a wave of desolation swept Naomi, it got to Dora bad. She couldn’t expose her baby to her current condition.

God, this was all her fault. Everything had snowballed from the moment she’d allowed her desire for Andreas to overrule her logic and self-respect. And again, when she hadn’t escaped with minimum damage that first time she’d walked away.

But when he’d eventually come after her and offered what she’d thought impossible with him, marriage, she’d fallen back into his arms.

Unable to break her addiction to him, she’d accepted his stunted proposal. She’d convinced herself it had been as close to a confession of involvement as she could expect from him, and consented to his abnormal terms. She hadn’t even contested it when he’d stipulated their marriage would be a secret known only to them and Nadine and Petros, so his complicated business life wouldn’t invade his private one. Their so-called wedding day had consisted of signing a few papers, then a meal with her sister and his friend, which Andreas hadn’t even attended, having to leave before it started. Naomi hadn’t let herself mind, especially when the wedding night had dragged her back into the depths of delirium.

Afterward, he’d remained insatiable, but true to his terms. He’d kept their marriage a secret he guarded to the point of obsession. Rationalizing his behavior had become the basis of her thinking, believing that it was natural for him to protect his private life at all costs. But that would have made sense if said life actually included her. And it hadn’t.

Just like when they’d been only lovers, he hadn’t let her enter his inner world. He’d never taken her to his home. She’d never even found out if he’d had a place he called home. They’d met in hotels or rentals, he’d never joined her in her personal places or endeavors, and they’d never even gone out together. He’d kept her strictly out of everything he’d done, personal or professional, told her nothing of his past and never mentioned the future.

The sum total of mentioning his family had been to admit that the Aristedes Sarantos was his brother. It had been how she’d found out—from Aristedes’s scarce online info—that Andreas had a large family that included four sisters, with an assortment of nephews and nieces. He’d closed the subject of his family forever by claiming he had no relations with them whatsoever. While that seemed plausible, he might have said that just to end any possibility of her asking to meet them. Whatever the truth had been, she’d been certain of one thing. His family hadn’t known she existed. She’d been right.

But while she and Andreas had continued leading separate lives, except during the constant sex sessions he’d seemed as addicted to as she’d been, Nadine and Petros had become inseparable and had soon gotten married.

It had been the up-close example of their true intimacy and intense emotional bond that had broken the trance Naomi had placed herself in so she’d accept the conditions of her non-marriage to Andreas. Not that she’d given in easily. Whenever the need to share with Andreas something approaching what Nadine and Petros shared became unbearable, she’d reminded herself how different she and her sister were, how Andreas and Petros were opposites, and that their relationships were bound to be as dissimilar.

Then one day Nadine had told her of her and Petros’s failed efforts to conceive, and that they’d seek professional help. Later that night, Naomi had mentioned that to Andreas. She would never forget his reaction. He’d turned to her, colder than she’d ever seen him and said that if she thought relating that to imply it was time they had a baby, she could forget it. He was never having children.

His icy declaration had finally forced her to face the pathetic emptiness of their relationship. He’d underscored the fact that if she remained with him, she’d have nothing to look forward to but more of the same nothingness. And it had been her fault yet again. She should have known she wouldn’t be able to withstand that unnatural arrangement with the emotionally aberrant man that he was for long, let alone forever. Not only hadn’t there been any hope for anything more between them, they’d never had anything to start with. She’d never felt like his wife, and he’d certainly been no husband to her. Apart from being his “sexual habit,” she hadn’t existed to him.

Next day she’d asked him for a divorce. Thinking he’d be as nonreactive as he’d been the first time she’d tried to end their liaison, she’d been shocked by his fury. He’d seethed, saying that he wouldn’t be coerced into giving her what she wanted. Her anger had risen to match his. What had he thought she wanted? A real marriage, God forbid? He’d retorted that she’d known exactly what to expect, and she’d agreed. She wouldn’t make him the villain.

Heart breaking, she’d asked for one thing, the first and last thing she’d ever ask from him. A quick and hassle-free divorce, to end what they should never have started.

When he’d again watched her leave in silence, she’d been certain he wouldn’t come after her this time. And he hadn’t. He’d just sent his legal hound to snap at her feet and drag her through six months of struggle and anxiety before he’d deigned to let her go.

If it weren’t for her pursuing Andreas in the first place, then going back for more when she should have run, Nadine wouldn’t have met Petros. None of the chain reaction of catastrophes ending in the current one would have occurred.

But then, Dora wouldn’t have come into existence, either. And for her alone, Naomi would never wish anything different.

Now she had to figure out how to keep her from Andreas’s cold grasp.

Straightening, she filled her lungs with air. The plunge into the past, as mortifying and self-condemning as it had been, had had a good side effect. It had driven away her desperation, dried her eyes and steadied her nerves.

After another bracing breath, she walked into her apartment.

Entering the family room where Andreas’s echoes still lingered, she found Dora sitting on the floor by her playpen, playing catch-whatever-I-throw-to-you with Hannah. Loki and Thor, their mink and flame point Ragdoll cats, were curled up on the couch, watching them.

Though Naomi’s feet made no sound on the plush carpeting she’d installed throughout the apartment in time for Dora’s very active crawling phase, the baby turned around as soon as she walked in. And Naomi’s lungs emptied once again.

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