Читать книгу The Love Islands Collection - Jane Porter - Страница 15
ОглавлениеNIKOS WALKED SWIFTLY down the hall, his right hand squeezed into a fist. He couldn’t get away from Georgia’s rooms fast enough.
He knew why he’d told her those things about himself. It had meant to be a warning, to ensure she kept her distance, but his words hadn’t scared her.
If anything, the warning had the opposite effect. She’d looked at him with her wide, thoughtful eyes, her expression intrigued.
But she shouldn’t be intrigued. She needed to know who she was dealing with...what she was dealing with...
He’d scarred Elsa—broken her—and he didn’t want to ever hurt another woman in the same way. He’d sworn off women. Sworn off love and passion. But he was determined to be a father, determined to break the curse, if there really was a curse...
Maybe then the wounds would heal.
Maybe there would be more. A future. New life.
Three and a half months until his son was here. Three and a half months until he could close the door on the past. And Elsa.
Once the baby was here, there would be no Elsa and no grief. There would be hope. And yet it hadn’t been easy getting to this point. There had been so many dark moments and endless nights.
He might be the devil incarnate, but apparently even the devil could be a father. And he’d wanted to be a father since he was a boy. He’d wanted a family, maybe because he’d been so lonely as a boy. He’d married Elsa certain there would be children, but it hadn’t worked out that way.
* * *
Nikos kept his distance the next day, aware that she had her studies to occupy her attention and he had his business.
But late in the afternoon he sent word to her room that he’d see her at five on the terrace for drinks and a lite bite, and then dinner would be at ten.
She was already on the terrace when he arrived, dressed in peach-and-gray cashmere. Her long hair had been braided into a simple side plait, with a couple of long golden strands loose to frame her face. He glanced down at her feet. Gray ankle boots. Small one-inch heel.
If he’d told Elsa no heels, she would have never worn anything but flats for the rest of their marriage. Clearly Georgia was no Elsa.
He nearly smiled, not sure why he was amused. Maybe it was just the relief that Georgia wasn’t Elsa.
But before he could greet Georgia or offer her a drink, she lifted her laptop from the couch and approached him with it. “I haven’t been able to figure out how to get on the internet,” she said. “I am hoping you know the trick, or maybe it’s password-protected.”
“There isn’t a trick,” he said. “I don’t really have reliable internet. It’s satellite based, so imagine old-fashioned dial-up speeds and endless dropped file downloads, coupled with information darkness that lasts for hours, or worse, days.”
He saw her jaw drop and eyes widen. “How do you go online?”
“I don’t.”
“At all?”
“Rarely.”
“How can that be? I live on the internet. I use it for everything.”
He shrugged. “When you don’t have access to it, you learn to live without it.”
“But in Athens you must have it.”
“Yes.”
“But why not here?”
“Greece has over six thousand islands and islets, and only two hundred and twenty-seven are populated. And where we are, in the Cyclades, there are very few people living. The Greek government can’t afford to put in the cables and fiber optics needed for reliable and fast internet, and I’m certainly not going to pay for it, either.”
“So how do you manage your business from Kamari without the internet?”
“I have a phone for meetings and emergencies, and once a week mail arrives—more frequently if something is urgent—and I’m quite happy with that.”
Clearly she wasn’t happy with the news. Her brows flattened, and she pursed her lips and studied him as if he were a dinosaur...or worse.
“I thought Mr. Laurent warned you,” he said. “I asked him to prepare you. You were to have brought textbooks and whatever you could download onto your computer’s hard drive—”
“I did do that.”
“So you can study.”
“Yes, but so many resources are online.”
He shrugged again. “I guess you will have to do it the old-school way.”
Her blue eyes blazed. “This isn’t a game. This is serious.”
“I’m not mocking you. I’m stating a reality. There is no internet. You need to rely on hard copies of everything.”
She turned away from him, eyes closing for a moment, and then she drew a slow breath, as if trying to compose herself. “I also noticed you don’t have TV or radio,” she said quietly. “Is that true, or did I just miss seeing where you’d stashed them?”
“You are correct. I do not have TV or radio here.”
Georgia walked to the white slipcovered couch and sat down, cradling her laptop against her. “You have nothing here for diversion.”
She looked so stricken that he almost felt sorry for her. “I don’t need it,” he answered. “I like my thoughts. I read. I work.”
“You’re a hermit.”
“I like the quiet, yes.”
Georgia hugged the laptop closer to her. “It’s rather frightening how isolated you are.”
“It’s not frightening, and you know I have a satellite phone when I need it.”
He went to the tray with the pitchers of water and juice. “Want something?”
“Yes. A ticket to Athens, please.”
His brow quirked. “Is that a name of an American cocktail?”
She gave him a long look. “You know it’s not.”
“What can I pour for you?”
“I’m not thirsty.”
“You’ll feel better if you stay hydrated, and this one is really good.” He filled a tall glass and carried it to her. “Pomegranate juice and something else.”
She took the glass from him and set it on the table next to her without drinking. “And you really never leave here?”
“Haven’t in a year.”
“What about when you...did your part...to make the baby?”
“The medical team came here.”
“And what about when I need a checkup? In Atlanta, I saw the obstetrician once a month, just to make sure the baby was doing well. Will I really have that here, or are you just placating me?”
“Not placating you. The doctor will come here every four weeks to check on you, and the baby.”
“You can afford to fly your doctor in, but you can’t afford internet?”
“Laying fiber optics can cost millions to billions of dollars. Having a doctor make a house call is a lot less.” He studied her a long minute. “Is it really so tragic not having access to the internet? Does it feel like a punishment to be so far removed from society?”
She was silent even longer, and then she reached for her juice glass and took a sip, and then another. “This is good,” she said. “And unlike most American girls, I grew up without internet and TV and radio. We were lucky just to have electricity sometimes. There aren’t many bells and whistles when you’re the daughter of missionaries.”
“So you can survive here without.”
“Of course I can. The lack of internet will not break me. It’s more of an issue of do I want to be without the internet? And the answer is no.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“Just like people get used to jail.”
It was his turn to look at her hard. She blinked at him, wide-eyed innocence, and then smiled.
And her smile was not at all innocent.
* * *
It had been quite the day. Georgia practically drooped as she ate dinner. She wasn’t hungry. She was too exhausted and numb to be hungry. But she couldn’t call it a night until she’d exacted a promise from Nikos.
She wanted the lock put back on her door.
Was she afraid that Nikos would attack her in the night?
No.
But she wasn’t yet comfortable in the old villa and she would feel better with a door that locked. It’d give her a sense of security here, as well as a feeling of control.
She’d given up her world to come to Greece. How could he not make this concession for her? And Georgia didn’t know if it was a birth-order thing, or just a survivor thing, but control was important to her. It was why she’d agreed to be a donor... She felt as if she was the one with control.
The surrogacy was another matter.
In hindsight it was a terrible mistake, but she was too tired tonight to go there and think about that. The only way she’d get through this last trimester was by just living one day at a time.
* * *
Nikos watched Georgia from across the dinner table, taking in the way the flickering candlelight illuminated her face, creating arcs of gold light as well as mysterious shadows and hollows.
It had been a tense cocktail hour, but dinner ended up being surprisingly relaxed. There wasn’t a great deal of conversation during the meal, but Nikos didn’t think Georgia minded the quiet. She didn’t strike him as a woman who needed to constantly be chattering. He wasn’t sure if that was because of the way she was raised or her own personality, but either way, he was grateful. He wasn’t one who needed endless talk and conversation.
Early in his marriage, Elsa had somehow interpreted his silence to mean he was angry or upset. It created tremendous friction between them, and he’d tried to explain that he’d been a loner since he was a young boy, an only child in a small, strict family.
Unlike traditional Greek families, with lots of cousins and aunts and uncles, it was just his parents and him, and a grandfather even less inclined to talk than his father, forcing him to learn how to entertain himself, teaching him how to be his own friend. By the time he was a teenager, he was comfortable with his thoughts. The quiet gave him a chance to sort out problems—like how to help save the family business. His father wasn’t a born leader, nor a savvy businessman, and when Nikos was still young, his father took bad advice from the wrong people and made a series of horrible decisions.
Those horrible decisions resulted in Nikos’s father overextending the company, investing in the wrong things and threatening to bankrupt them all when the entire country’s economy crumbled.
If it hadn’t been for Nikos’s aggressive plan, Panos Enterprise would have been carved up and sold off to the highest bidder, leaving the family embarrassed and broke.
Nikos was twenty-four when he took over at Panos. Twenty-six when he married Elsa, and a widower at twenty-eight.
After Elsa’s death he’d retreated here to Kamari, and he’d been living in virtual isolation for the past five years. He hadn’t attended a wedding or a social occasion since Elsa’s death.
He’d stopped traveling, too, as his burns drew attention and he didn’t want to be stared at, didn’t want to hear the whispers that would accompany his appearance somewhere. Once a year he forced himself to show up at the Panos headquarters in Athens, but the rest of the time, he flew his management in for meetings on Kamari.
There were no women in the upper management of his company, and that was deliberate, too, as he never wanted to be accused of forcing himself on women, nor did he want women whispering about his face.
He knew he was scarred.
He knew what people said about him.
Beast. Monster. Animal.
Werewolf. Lykánthropos.
Georgia’s words came back to haunt him. He swallowed quickly and glanced past her, looking to the dining room window with the view of the moonlight reflecting off the sea.
Lykánthropos. That was a new one. He’d have to remember it and one day share a good laugh with his son.
“Nikos.”
Hearing his name, he turned his attention back to Georgia. She was leaning toward him, her silken hair spilling over her shoulders, gleaming in the candlelight.
“Yes?” he said, sensing that all the calm was about to change.
“I want a lock for my door, Nikos.” Her voice was quiet and steady but at the same time determined. She wasn’t asking a question. She wasn’t pleading. She was making a statement. A demand.
He tensed, his ease vanishing. So there was going to be drama after all.
He groaned inwardly, wishing Mr. Laurent had been more honest with him. The Atlanta attorney had made Georgia out to be a paragon of female intelligence and beauty, a combination of Athena and Aphrodite. Mr. Laurent had it wrong. Maybe he didn’t know his goddesses, because Georgia was more like Artemis than Athena or Aphrodite. Artemis was the most independent spirit, and was known as the goddess of the hunt, nature and birth.
“We discussed this yesterday,” he said, rolling the heavy silver napkin ring between his palm and the table. “You know why I don’t want you to have a locked door.”
“And I need you to understand why I want a lock on my door. I know it doesn’t make sense to you—most men don’t understand—but I won’t sleep if I don’t feel safe. And I don’t feel safe—”
“Even though there is nothing here that can hurt you?”
“Surely you have irrational fears. Surely you understand that it’s not about reality but about perception. Having a lock on my door gives me a sense of control, and that sense of control allows me to feel safer.”
“I am not belittling your fears. You know why I removed the lock. I must be able to reach you if there’s an emergency.”
“You managed to kick the door down last time.” Her lips curved, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “And I’m sure if there was a real emergency, you could do it again.”
“I was lucky that first day.”
She reached across the table and touched his hand. “Please.”
He flinched at the shock of her skin against his. Sparks shot through him, and his groin tightened. His gaze dropped to her hand resting on his. Her hand was pale against his skin, her fingers slender and narrow. He pictured stripping her tunic off, pictured the pale honey of her skin as she lay stretched naked in his bed.
He ground his teeth together, his molars clamped tight.
Georgia made him want things...made him want to do things...fierce, hard, hot. All the things that Elsa hadn’t wanted. All the things sweet, gentle Elsa had been afraid of. Sex. Passion. Skin.
Carefully he disengaged, drawing his hand free of Georgia’s. He struggled to organize his thoughts. She’d caught him completely off guard. And it wasn’t just the touch, but her fearlessness.
Artemis.
He ached from head to foot, throbbing with sensation, his body hot with desire, the desire so new after so many years of feeling nothing, feeling dead.
Maybe a locked door would be a good thing.
“You could have a key,” she added quietly. “In case of an emergency.”
He looked up at her, and she was watching him intently, her blue gaze unblinking. “But only you,” she added. “No one else. I trust no one else.”
He almost laughed. “You trust me?”
“You’re the father of my b—” She broke off, swallowed. “This baby. I have to trust you. Don’t I?”
* * *
The lock was installed that very night.
It was past midnight when Georgia finally went to bed, but she slept well. There were no bad dreams. There were no dreams at all, thank God.
But Nikos couldn’t sleep.
He spent hours castigating himself. He shouldn’t have brought her here. He should have waited until the very end of the pregnancy, and then arranged for Georgia to give birth in Athens. That would have been the way to go. That might still be the way to go. Have his plane come pick her up and send her to live at his house in Athens. His staff would care for her, and she’d be comfortable there—probably far more comfortable than here. She could shop and relax, attend the theater and eat good meals out.
But he wouldn’t be there, and he wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on her.
He wouldn’t be able to protect her if things went wrong.
Which was why he’d brought her to Kamari.
What he needed to do was smash the desire. He had to control the attraction, and he could, if he just kept Elsa in his mind.
He’d crushed Elsa. He couldn’t do that to Georgia.
* * *
The next morning when Georgia woke, she was grateful she’d slept well, but she couldn’t quite smash the little anxious voice inside her, the one that kept reminding her of what she’d almost said last night at dinner.
My baby.
She’d caught herself in time, and didn’t think Nikos had noticed the slip, or her swift substitution, but she had, and it was eating at her.
This was a problem.
Why had she even thought the words? My baby...?
Where had that possessive pronoun come from? It had never been her baby... It wasn’t ever going to be her baby. She didn’t even like referring to the child as a he, preferring the impersonal “it” as a way of keeping distance...remaining detached.
Now she worried she wasn’t quite as detached as she’d imagined.
Determined to silence the nagging voice, Georgia pushed the button that alerted the staff that she was awake. When one of the housemaids appeared at her door, Georgia asked for a light breakfast so she could start studying.
A tray arrived fifteen minutes later filled with bowls and dishes—thick, creamy yogurt, sliced fruit, warm pastries and an impressive silver pot of coffee.
Georgia ate at the little table in her living room, and then she set the tray aside and grabbed her books. She studied at the table all morning, and then at noon took a break to go to the pool to swim. She had swum yesterday and had managed thirty laps. Today she wanted to see if she could do forty, hoping the extra exercise would quiet her anxiety. She was right to have been worried about being here on Kamari for the third trimester. It wasn’t going to be easy. She didn’t feel calm or secure.
Hoping it was just hormones, she retrieved her goggles and kickboard from the pool house and began her swim.
She was halfway through her laps and paused at the wall to catch her breath. As she lifted her swim goggles, she spotted Nikos diving in the other end of the pool.
She caught only a glimpse of his body before he disappeared into the water, but he was in amazing shape—well built and tan, with hard, cut muscles everywhere.
He swam underwater halfway down the pool to finally surface on his back. Nikos did a couple of easy strokes, showing impressive form, before flipping over onto his stomach to continue down the pool, toward her.
Georgia felt a flutter of nerves and quickly pulled her goggles into place and set off down her lane. It was a big pool, and the white lane line divided the length into sides. He wasn’t in her side, he’d taken the empty lane, but that didn’t calm her down. Even though there was plenty of room for both of them, she felt increasingly self-conscious, especially when she could see him pass on the other side, his big bronze body slicing through the water.
He was a very good swimmer, a very strong swimmer. Gradually Georgia found herself watching him instead of continuing with her own laps.
He’d only just gotten in but he’d already swum six laps, making quick progress with his dark head down, his stroke smooth and steady. He had that kind of kick that was powerful without creating lots of splashing.
Each time he reached the wall, he did a neat flip turn, pushing off the tiles to glide beneath the water, before surfacing midway down the pool to continue swimming to the end.
She was impressed. He had to have once been a competitive swimmer.
Intrigued, Georgia grabbed her kickboard and began kicking her way down the pool, keeping her chin tucked in the water to try to hide the fact that she was watching Nikos.
She liked that he wasn’t paying her any attention. She enjoyed just looking at him, studying his muscles and the way they bunched and tightened as he sliced through the water. From his tanned skin it was obvious he swam often, and he kept swimming for the next thirty minutes.
Georgia gave up, though. She found it too distracting to have him there. She was heading for the steps when Nikos suddenly appeared at her side.
“All done?” he asked.
She sat down quickly on the middle step, the warm water lapping at her shoulders, hiding her figure. She wasn’t usually prudish, but she felt almost naked in the suit, which was difficult when your body no longer felt like your body. Her breasts were so much fuller. Her belly was rounded. Every inch of her skin prickled, sensitive. “Yes.” She was nervous, and she didn’t even know why. “Do you swim daily?” she added, trying to fill the silence.
“I try to. I like that it’s something I can do year-round.”
“You’re good.”
“I’m calmer after a swim. I find it’s good to work off aggression and tension.”
She studied his profile. She was beginning to realize that he was always careful to present her with the side of his face that wasn’t scarred. That made her feel a pang of sorrow. He was so aware of how he looked to others, so aware that his scars must be unpleasant to others.
“Were you always...aggressive?” she asked, using his word, not sure if it was truly the right word for him. The more she got to know of him, the less aggressive she found him. He struck her as a man who was protective and prideful, but what man wasn’t?
“No.” He flashed white teeth. “I was quite shy as a boy. Painfully introverted.”
“What changed you?”
He opened his mouth to answer and then changed his mind, giving her a shrug instead.
“Something must have happened,” she persisted.
“I grew up. Became a man.”
She wanted to reach out and turn his face. She wanted to see the pink scars, see where they disappeared into his hairline, and how they changed the hairline, and how they curved over his ear. She suspected he wore his hair loose and long to hide as much of the scars as he could.
“If your son inherits your good looks, he will be very lucky,” she said with a smile.
Nikos frowned and looked at her quickly, his expression shuttered. “Is that a joke?”
She blinked in surprise. “No. You’re very, very good-looking, Nikos—”
“You are pulling my leg.”
“I’m not.”
“I know what I am.” His dark gaze met hers. “I know what you called me. Lykánthropos.” The edge of his mouth curled up. “That was a first, but it fits.”
“I don’t know what you just said.”
“Werewolf.” He was still smiling, but the smile hurt her. It was so hard and fierce and yet behind the smile she sensed a world of pain.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she whispered, feeling a pang of guilt and shame. “It had nothing to do with your scars.”
“It’s okay. As I said, it fits.”
“That’s not why I said it.”
“I’ve heard worse—”
“Nikos.” She could barely say his name. Her heart hurt. “It wasn’t your face. It’s not the scars. It’s the way you were hanging on my door, filling the space up. Your energy was just so big, so physical. You are so physical...” Her voice faded as she could see he wasn’t even listening to her. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Now you know why I swim. I have a lot of energy. I’ve been told that I come across as very physical, and it’s unpleasant for others. I don’t want to be unpleasant for others. I wasn’t raised to make women uncomfortable.”
For a moment she couldn’t speak or breathe. Her eyes stung, hot and gritty. Her heart felt impossibly tender. Somehow everything had changed between them. Somehow she felt as though she were the aggressor and she was hunting him, chasing him with a pitchfork...
“I have a feeling you’ve been labeled unfairly,” she said when she was sure she could speak. “I don’t know that you are as aggressive as you think you are. In fact, I would say you are more protective than aggressive.”
“That’s because you don’t know me well.”
“What do you do that is so aggressive?”
“I have a forceful personality.”
“This is true. But what specifically do you do that warrants the label? Do you yell...hit...punch...shake? Do you threaten women—”
“No! None of that. That is terrible.”
“So what do you do? Are you hostile towards people? Antagonistic?”
“I try to avoid most people. That’s why I live here. Works out better for everyone.”
“And yet even here, you have to swim to manage your aggression and tension?”
“Maybe I should have said that swimming helps me burn off excess energy.”
“That does sound better than aggressive.” The wind blew across the pool and Georgia slid lower under the water to stay warm. “You and I have clashed, and I don’t agree with some of your rules, including recommended footwear, but I wouldn’t describe you as a hostile person. I’d say you’re assertive.”
“But in English, are they not the same things—aggressive and assertive?”
“For me, they are different. Assertive means being direct and strong, and, yes, forceful, but in a commanding sort of way, whereas I view aggressive to be far more negative. Aggressive can imply a lack of control, as well as unpleasantly hostile.”
His mouth quirked. “Based on your definition, I would prefer to be assertive instead of aggressive.”
She was thinking hard now on the word, and the various ways it could be used in the English language, and aggressive wasn’t always negative. In fact, in medicine, an aggressive treatment was often the best treatment. “You know, aggressive can mean dynamic. In battle, you want to be aggressive. When dealing with cancer, you need an aggressive plan of attack.”
“Sounds as if you are giving me permission to be aggressive.”
She pushed at the water, creating small waves. “If it’s for the right reason.” She gave another push at the water, sending more ripples across the pool. “In business, I would think you’d have to be aggressive. Successful businesses are rarely complacent. I’m quite sure successful people are the same.”
He ran a hand over his inky-black hair, muscles bunching and rippling in his bicep and shoulder. “You keep surprising me.” His voice was rough, deep. “You’re not what I expected. You are more.” His head turned, and she glimpsed the scars he always tried so hard to hide. “My son is lucky to have had you as his...mother.”
Georgia felt a lance of pain, her chest squeezing, air bottling. She struggled to smile, hiding the hurt as well as the wash of panic.
Mother...his mother...
Why did Nikos say that? Why would he say that? Something buried deep inside her wanted to scream, punch, lash out.
She wasn’t this child’s mother. She wasn’t his mother. She wasn’t. She’d signed those rights away forever, and it was the right thing to do. She wasn’t prepared to be a mother, and certainly not a single mother who was only halfway through medical school.
Georgia rose and climbed from the pool. It was chilly out and shivering; she grabbed her towel and thick terry-cloth robe. The entire time she blotted herself dry she fought for calm and control.
She was someone who liked control, needed control, and yet she’d agreed to a contract that gave her no control...and was starting to turn her heart inside out.
Dropping the towel, Georgia quickly slid her arms into the robe, tying the sash around her waist, determined to get a grip. She couldn’t panic. It wouldn’t help to panic.
“I’ll see you later tonight,” she said to Nikos before rushing away. She dropped the damp towel in the laundry hamper at the pool house and then continued up to her room.
Her teeth chattered as she walked. She was scared. She didn’t like this feeling. The pregnancy had changed everything, including her.
Her senses of taste and smell were different. Her emotions were more intense, and her moods were more volatile.
And now she was here, on a private island, in the middle of the Aegean Sea, with no phone and no internet and no way to distract herself from what was happening. And what was happening was beginning to rattle her.
She was having a baby, and then she was giving the baby away, before going away herself.
Good God. What had she done?
And why had she thought this was something she could actually do?
