Читать книгу The Marakaios Baby - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 11

CHAPTER FOUR

A BABY. HE WAS going to be a father... If the child was truly his. Leo knocked back his third whisky and stared grimly out at the starless night. It had been eight hours since Margo had confronted him in his office, and he was still reeling.

He hadn’t seen her in all that time. Elena had taken her to the house, and then his personal staff had seen to her comforts. He’d called his housekeeper Maria to check on her, and she’d told him that Margo had gone to her room and slept for most of the afternoon. He’d requested that a dinner tray be taken up to her, but Maria had told him it hadn’t been touched.

Anxiety touched with anger gnawed at his gut. If the child was his, he wanted to make sure Margo was staying healthy. Hell, even if the child wasn’t his, he had a responsibility towards any person under his roof. And he hadn’t liked how pale and ill Margo had looked, as if the very life force had been sucked right out of her.

Restlessly Leo rose from the leather club chair where he’d been sitting in the study that had once been his father’s, and then his brother Antonios’s. And now it was his. Six months into his leadership of Marakaios Enterprises and he still burned with the determination to take the company to a new level, to wield the power his father and brother had denied him for so long.

A lifetime of being pushed to the sidelines, being kept in the dark, had taken its toll. He didn’t trust anyone—and especially not Margo. But if the child was his...then why not the cold marriage of convenience she’d suggested? It was what he’d determined he’d wanted after she’d turned him down. No messy emotion, no desperate searching for love. He just hadn’t expected Margo to be his convenient bride.

Grimly Leo turned back to the whisky bottle. What she’d suggested made sense, and yet everything in him resisted it. To live with a woman who had been unfaithful, who had rejected him, and who was now viewing their marriage as the altar upon which she’d sacrifice herself, her hopes and dreams... It was a bitter pill to swallow—and yet what was the alternative? To come to some unsatisfactory custody arrangement and not be nearly as involved in his child’s life as he wanted?

If the child was his.

If it was then Leo knew he had to be involved. He wanted to be the kind of father his own father hadn’t been to him. Loving, interested, open. And he wanted a family—a child, a wife. Why not Margo? He could control his feelings for her. He had no interest in loving her any more.

He could make this marriage work.

* * *

Margo had thought she wouldn’t be able to sleep, but she was so tired that she’d fallen into a deep and thankfully dreamless sleep the moment her head had hit the pillow, after Leo’s housekeeper had shown her to her room.

When she awoke it was dark and the room was chilly, the curtains open to the night sky. Margo rolled over in bed, feeling disorientated and muzzy-headed, as if she were suffering from jet lag or a hangover, or both. She heard a knock on the door, an urgent rat-a-tat-tat that made her think it was not the first knock.

She rose from the bed, pushing her hair out of her face, and went to answer the door.

The housekeeper Maria stood there, with a tray of food. The salad, bread, and lentil soup looked and smelled delicious, but Margo’s stomach roiled all the same. She didn’t think she could manage a mouthful.

‘Efharisto,’ she murmured, and reached out to take the tray.

But Maria would have none of it. She shook her head and bustled into the room, setting the tray on a table in the corner. Bemused, Margo watched as she drew the curtains across the windows and remade the bed, plumping the pillows. She turned on a few table lamps that were scattered about the room and then looked around, seemingly satisfied with how cosy she’d made it in just a few minutes.

‘Efharisto,’ Margo said again, and Maria nodded towards the food.

‘Fae,’ she commanded, and while Margo didn’t recognise the word she could guess what it meant. Eat.

She gave the housekeeper a weak smile and with another nod Maria left the room.

Margo walked over to the tray and took a spoonful of soup, but, warm and nourishing as it was, her stomach roiled again and she left it.

Now that the cobwebs were clearing from her brain she remembered every excruciating detail of her conversation with Leo. His disbelief and his contempt, his suspicion and anger. And now she was stuck here, waiting to see if he would marry her.

Shaking her head at her own stubborn folly, she crawled back into the bed and pulled the covers over herself. She wouldn’t back out of her offer. She cared too much about this child inside her—this child she’d never expected to have, never dared want.

This child she would sacrifice anything for to ensure it had a better childhood, a better life, than she had had. To keep her, or him, safe.

She slept again and when she woke it was dawn, with the first grey light of morning creeping through a crack in the closed curtains. She dozed for a little while longer and then finally got up and went to shower, to prepare herself to meet with Leo and hear his answer—whatever it was.

At eight o’clock Maria knocked on the door and brought in a breakfast tray. Margo didn’t know whether to feel like a pampered princess or a prisoner. At some point, she realised, Maria must have removed the untouched tray from the night before. She must have been sleeping at the time.

‘Efharisto,’ she said again, and Maria gave her a stern look.

‘Fae.’

‘Yes—I mean, ne.’ Margo smiled apologetically. ‘I can’t keep much down, I’m afraid.’

Maria clucked at that, but Margo didn’t think the older woman understood her. She bustled about a bit more, pouring coffee and juice, taking the lids off jam and butter dishes. Finally she left and Margo gazed in dismay at the lavish breakfast Maria had left. The smell of the coffee made her stomach lurch.

For the housekeeper’s sake she tried to eat some yogurt with honey, but after two spoonsful she left it aside and then paced the room, wondering if she should go in search of Leo or wait for him to summon her.

She’d paced for several minutes, restless and anxious, until she realised she was being ridiculous. Had she lost all her spirit since coming here? She might be tired and unwell, and afraid of Leo’s response, but she’d faced far worse obstacles than this and survived. Her strength in the face of adversity was something she clung to and prided herself on.

Determinedly she strode to the door and flung it open—only to stop in her tracks when she saw Leo standing there, looking devastatingly handsome in a crisp white shirt and grey trousers, his ink-dark hair still damp and spiky from a shower. He also looked decidedly nonplussed.

‘Going somewhere?’ he enquired.

‘Looking for you, actually,’ she replied crisply. ‘I’d like your answer, Leo, because I need to get back to Paris. My flight is at two o’clock this afternoon.’

‘Cancel it,’ he returned. ‘You won’t be returning to Paris. Not right now, at any rate.’

She stared at him, as nonplussed as he’d been. ‘Excuse me?’

His eyes flashed and his mouth thinned. ‘Which part of what I said didn’t you understand?’

Margo gritted her teeth. Yesterday she might have donned a hair shirt and beaten her chest in grief and repentance, but clearly that hadn’t been enough for Leo. She didn’t think she could endure a lifetime of snide remarks, all for a crime she hadn’t even committed.

Except you told him you did.

‘Perhaps,’ she suggested, with only a hint of sharpness, ‘we could discuss our future plans in a bit more detail?’

‘Fine. I was coming to get you, anyway. We can go down to my study.’

‘Fine.’

Silently she followed him down the terracotta-tiled corridor to the sweeping double staircase that led to the villa’s soaring entrance hall. Yesterday she’d been too overwhelmed and exhausted to take in any of her surroundings, but today she was keenly aware that this grand place was, in all likelihood, her new home. It seemed, based on what Leo had said about cancelling her flight, that he was going to agree to marry her.

And from the plunging sensation in her stomach she knew she wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

He led her to a wood-panelled study overlooking the villa’s extensive gardens. This late in November they were stark and bare, but Margo could imagine how lush and lovely they would be come spring. Would she walk with her baby out there? Bring a blanket and lie on the grass, look up at the clouds while the baby gurgled and grabbed its feet?

‘Let me cut to the chase,’ Leo said, and Margo was jolted out of her pleasant daydream to the current cold reality.

He stood behind a huge desk of carved mahogany, his hands braced on the back of a chair, his expression implacable.

In the two years they’d been together she’d seen his lazy, knowing smiles, his hooded sleepy gazes. She’d seen him light and laughing, and dangerously, sensually intent. But she hadn’t seen him like this—looking at her as if she were a difficult business client.

Well, if he could be businesslike, then so could she. She straightened and gave him a brisk nod. ‘Please do.’

‘I will marry you—but only on certain conditions.’

Margo took a deep breath and let it out evenly. ‘Which are?’

‘First, we drive to Athens this afternoon and you undergo a paternity test.’

It was no more than she’d expected, although the fact that he believed the baby might not be his still stung. This, at least, was easy to comply with. ‘Very well.’

‘Second, you resign from your job immediately and come and live with me here in Greece.’

So he wanted complete control of her and their child? She couldn’t say she was really surprised. ‘Fine.’

‘Third, you agree to have a local doctor of my choosing provide you with medical care.’

Her temper finally started to fray. ‘I think I’m capable of finding my own doctor, Leo.’

‘Are you?’ He arched an eyebrow, coldly sceptical. ‘Because you came here looking dreadful.’

‘Thanks very much, but my looks have nothing to do with my medical care or lack of it,’ Margo snapped.

How much of this was she supposed to take? Maybe, she thought with a surge of reckless fury, the answer was none of it. She’d come to Leo as a supplicant, truly believing that their child should know his or her father. Trusting that she was making the right decision in seeking to provide the kind of stable home life she’d never had...no matter what the sacrifice to her.