Читать книгу The Greek Tycoon's Ultimatum - Люси Монро, Lucy Monroe, Люси Монро - Страница 9

SAVANNAH carried a sleeping Nyssa toward customs, following Leiandros’s personal flight attendant who led an equally worn-out, but barely awake, Eva by the hand. Exhaustion dragged at Savannah and she looked forward to a shower with almost religious fervor.

She could have taken one on the plane, but had not wanted to wake Eva and Nyssa any sooner than she had to. Wound up by the excitement of flying in an airplane, they had not made proper use of the plane’s bedroom until an hour before landing.

When they reached customs, she was given VIP treatment and rushed through, an example of Leiandros’s power and far reaching influence. It increased the sense of a trap closing around her she’d had since stepping onto his private jet.

As she stepped into the main terminal, she forced her weary eyes to focus on the scene around her. The new airport was all modern glass and streamlined walkways, but still incredibly crowded. She sighed and shifted her grip on Nyssa. Her arms felt like two strands of pasta cooked al dente.

Even as her gaze swept the crowded terminal, she felt the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Turning her head slightly to the right, she met the dark, inscrutable gaze of Leiandros Kiriakis himself and she stopped. Not voluntarily. Her legs simply quit working.

She hadn’t expected to see him until the next day.

The flight attendant paused beside her, forcing the stream of air passengers to break and flow around them. “Mrs. Kiriakis? Is something wrong?”

Savannah could not make her lips form words. Her entire being was caught up in this first sight of Leiandros Kiriakis in a year. His black hair had been cut to lie close to the sculpted lines of his head. His sensual lips set in a grim line, his eyes betrayed nothing. He made no move to come toward them, but seemed content to wait, towering with unconscious arrogance above the sea of humanity that welled around him.

Taking a tighter hold on her sleeping daughter, she stepped forward only to bump into another passenger. “Excuse me. I’m sorry.”

The woman she’d bumped ignored Savannah and scurried away toward the luggage carousel.

A large man who looked like a Greek Sumo wrestler barreled into her from behind. Stumbling, she feared she would lose her hold on Nyssa when two strong hands gripped her upper arms and steadied her. How had he gotten to her so quickly?

“You’re dead on your feet, Savannah. Let me take the child.” Leiandros moved one hand from her arm to Nyssa’s back.

Without conscious volition, Savannah yanked herself and her daughter out of touching distance from Leiandros. “No. I can carry her, but thank you,” she tacked on belatedly.

His eyes narrowed.

“Mama…” Eva’s tentative interruption saved Savannah from whatever Leiandros had planned to say.

Savannah turned her attention gratefully to her daughter. “Yes, sweet pea?”

“I’m tired. May I go to bed now?”

“It will be a little while before we reach your bed, but you can sleep in the car. The seats are big enough for a little girl like you to treat them like a bed,” Leiandros said.

“I’m five,” Eva announced.

His mouth quirked. “If you are five, you must be Eva. I am Leiandros Kiriakis.”

Eva’s head tipped back and she measured him with a drowsy but direct look. “Kiriakis is my name, too.”

He squatted down until his face was almost level with that of Savannah’s serious little daughter. He matched Eva’s grave expression. His mouth curved into a devastating smile. “So it is. That is because we are family.”

Eva tugged her hand away from the flight attendant’s and sidled next to Savannah, taking a grip on the loose fabric of her crushed silk trousers. “Is he my family, Mama?”

Leiandros’s eyes blasted Savannah with sulfuric fury briefly as he straightened to stand at his full impressive six feet four inches. He seemed to be daring her to deny the link to her daughter, which she had no intention of doing.

She hadn’t been the one to deny her daughters’ family ties. “Yes, darling, your father was his cousin.”

“Does he look like my father?” Eva asked.

Leiandros speared Savannah with another look of censure.

“You’ve seen pictures, what do you think?” Savannah replied, letting her daughter draw her own conclusions.

She felt Eva’s head shift against her thigh as the little girl nodded her head. “But maybe he’s bigger.”

Eva put her hand on Nyssa’s small leg dangling over Savannah’s arm. “This is Nyssa. She’s four.”

He acknowledged the introduction with a devastating smile.

“Now that we are acquainted, it is time we left. Felix will take care of the luggage,” he said, indicating a short, stocky man standing several paces away near another very muscular man, only a couple of inches shorter than Leiandros.

Leiandros led them outside and Savannah blessed the lightweight nature of her crushed silk pantsuit when the hot Greek air blasted her as they stepped out of the air-conditioned environs of the recently completed airport. While the heat wasn’t so very different from Georgia, the sun’s impact felt stronger.

As they approached a black limousine with darkly tinted windows, the chauffeur opened the back door while another man stood sentry on the driver’s side. He and the man with Felix were no doubt part of Leiandros’s security team.

Savannah motioned Eva to climb in first. She did, taking Leiandros at his word and making herself comfortable for sleep on the far side of the seat, leaving enough space for Savannah to lay Nyssa’s dozing form down as well. Another wave of exhaustion rolled over her and Savannah wished she could join Nyssa in her peaceful slumber. Within fifteen minutes of leaving the airport, Eva had done so.

“Sleep if you wish. I will not be offended,” Leiandros offered. “The trip is a long one from the airport.”

Savannah swallowed a yawn. “I didn’t think it was that far from the city.”

“It is not, but there is road construction.” He shrugged. “It will take us at least two hours to reach the villa.”

She’d been relaxing against the seat, preparing to take him up on his advice to pass the time sleeping when he made that comment. She sat straight up and twisted her body until she could look him full in the face.

“What villa? I thought we were staying at a hotel.”

“You are family. You will stay with family.”

There was that word again, but Savannah had had enough experience her first time around in Greece with the dutiful ties of the Kiriakis family not to trust them.

“You promised me the girls would not have to see their grandparents until we discussed it,” she accused him in a fierce whisper, not wanting to wake her daughters to hear this particular argument. “I insist you take us to a hotel.”

“No.”

“No? No! How dare you do this? You promised.” She settled back against the seat with her arms crossed. “I knew I couldn’t trust a Kiriakis.”

That seemed to get him, because his hands curled into fists at his side and his face looked hewn from rock.

“You will not be staying with Helena and Sandros.”

“You said we’d be staying with family, at the villa.” As the words left her lips, an awful thought occurred to her. “You want us to stay at your villa on Evia Island? With you?”

His brows rose in sardonic challenge. “My mother is also staying at the villa. She will be sufficient chaperone.”

“Chaperone? I don’t need a chaperone. I need privacy. I need to stay in a hotel.”

“Relax, Savannah. There is no reason to shout about it. With two active children, you will find the villa much more comfortable than a hotel, I promise you.”

In that respect, she had no doubt he was right, but it wasn’t her daughters she was worried about at the moment. It was herself. She shuddered inwardly at the prospect of sharing living space with Leiandros.

“I suppose you still keep an apartment in Athens and spend most of your time there,” she said hopefully.

“Yes.”

She couldn’t quite stifle her sigh of relief.

“Of course, I’ve arranged to work from the villa for the next few days so I can spend time with my family.”

Savannah’s throat went tight in reaction to the threat in his voice, despite the innocence of the sentiments expressed.

“How long did you plan our visit to last?” It was something he’d refused to discuss on the phone.

If she’d been in her right mind, instead of riddled with worry over her aunt, Savannah would have forced the issue.

Leiandros looked at her as if trying to read her mind. “We’ll discuss that tomorrow.”

“I’d rather discuss it now.” She kept her expression purposefully blank.

“Very well.” He shrugged again, his face wearing a strangely watchful air. “Permanently.”

“Permanently?”

The grim line of his mouth went even more taut. “Yes. You’ve spent enough time running from your family. It’s time you came home, Savannah.”

Home? She wanted to shriek at him and pound her fists, but even with rage coursing through her veins like molten lava, she held onto her temper. She’d learned that lesson much too well to forget it, even with the current provocation.

She’d lost her control once with a Kiriakis male and opened herself to physical reprisal from her husband. She still had nightmares about her last meeting with Dion, the feeling of bruising male fists landing against her unprotected flesh.

“America is my home,” she said, spacing the words evenly, keeping her voice flat.

“It was your home before you married a Kiriakis, yes. But now Greece is your home, specifically my villa.”

“Your villa? You expect me to live in your villa permanently?” She was in a waking nightmare.

He reached out and opened the minifridge, pulling out a bottle of water, handing it to her before taking one for himself. “Yes.”

She stared at the cold plastic bottle in her hand, wondering for a second how it had gotten there. “I can’t.”

He didn’t bother to argue with her. In fact, he didn’t answer her at all. Instead, he pulled a buzzing cell phone from his pocket and answered it.

Savannah slowly regained consciousness, uncertain what had wakened her, and shifted in the cocooned warmth of her make shift bed. She burrowed her face into the pillow, which felt strangely hard against her cheek. Unsated exhaustion tugged at her, tempting her back into an unconscious state.

Her bed moved and the blanket pressed against her back in a soft caress. “Wake up pethi mou, we have almost arrived.”

Her eyes flew open. For the space of several seconds she couldn’t even breathe. The blanket caressing her back was in fact a large, male hand and her firm pillow, a muscular chest. Frozen into immobility by shock, she further discovered that her arms were wrapped tightly around his torso.

The subtle fragrance of fresh, clean male and expensive aftershave teased her senses. Familiar and yet unknown. She blinked, trying to focus, but her vision was clouded by crisp white silk and her mind could not quite come to grips with the first intimacy shared with a man in well over four years.

And not just any man.

She was wrapped up like an early Christmas present in the arms of Leiandros Kiriakis.

Reality so closely matched the dreams that had tormented her subconscious for seven long years that she spent several precious seconds trying to determine if she were still asleep.

“Eva, how come Mama is hugging that man?” Nyssa’s voice unlocked Savannah’s frozen limbs.

She was definitely awake. Her daughters had never played a role in the dreams she had had about Leiandros. Yanking her arms from their snug nest in his suit coat, she launched herself from Leiandros with such a violent movement she bounced against the opposite door and nearly fell off the seat.

He reached out to steady her and she recoiled violently from the possible touch. “I’m fine,” she all but snarled, her usual polite reserve a forgotten ideal.

“He’s our family,” Eva said, as if that explained everything. She had that much in common with her uncle.

Savannah couldn’t help but wonder if he had thought the familial claim justified the intimacy of their position as well.

“Mama?” Nyssa asked, her brown Kiriakis eyes wide with curiosity.

Savannah settled herself more firmly on the large limousine seat. Not caring what Leiandros thought of the action, she scooted as close to the door as she could get without sitting on the armrest. “Yes, sugar?”

“Why did you hug the big man?”

“I wasn’t hugging him.” She turned and glared at Leiandros. This situation was all his fault. “I was asleep.”

“Oh.” Nyssa turned her interested gaze to Leiandros and stared at him in silence for several seconds before turning back to her mother. “Were you sitting in his lap to sleep?”

The heat of embarrassment crawled over Savannah’s skin like ants on a picnic blanket. She couldn’t look at Leiandros. She had no idea how she’d ended up sleeping with her body plastered against his and feared finding out she had been the instigator.

The last thing she remembered was letting her head rest against the back of the seat. She’d closed her eyes in weariness as she tired of waiting for him to finish the latest of his numerous business calls on the cell.

She’d obviously fallen asleep. That she could understand. She’d been nearly comatose from exhaustion before the plane had landed. The last two weeks had been peppered with sleepless nights and emotionally draining days visiting her aunt.

Even so, she found it difficult to believe she’d allowed herself to get that close to a man, asleep or not. Her subconscious mind might crave Leiandros Kiriakis, but her conscious mind rejected even the hint of intimacy with any man.

The evidence, however, was irrefutable. Her skin still tingled from where she had touched him.

Before she got a chance to form a reply to Nyssa’s question that wouldn’t betray the rawness of her nerves, her daughter smiled at Leiandros. “Sometimes I sit on my mama’s lap for sleeping, but she says I’m getting too heavy. Isn’t she too big for your lap?”

Savannah wanted to groan out loud at her daughter’s logic. Nyssa’s nap had clearly been long enough to rejuvenate her mind as well as her spirits. Savannah wished she had been so lucky. Her mind felt too sluggish to deal with the current situation. Unbelievably, her traitorous body craved return to the warm, muscular resting place of Leiandros’s chest.

“I’d say she’s just right.” His low, sensual tone caressed Savannah’s insides, making them tighten and interrupting her chaotic thoughts.

Awareness of his masculinity bombarded her. Along with something else, something elemental that left her feeling hot and strangely edgy. Impossible. She had spent the last four years believing she would never again experience sexual desire and here she was as jittery as a mare being bred for the first time. Wanting it, but terrified at the same time.

“Where are we?” she asked in a desperate bid to change the direction her thoughts were taking.

“Very near Villa Kalosorisma. We have just crossed the bridge to Evia Island.” His eyes told her he knew exactly why she’d asked the question and found the knowledge amusing.

The car slid to a halt and seconds later, the door next to Savannah opened. The chauffeur helped first Eva, then Nyssa from the car. By the time Savannah swung her legs around to climb out, Leiandros had exited from the other side and come around to take her hand in his.

He pulled her from the sleek chauffeured car, the heat of his hand branding her as intimately as if he’d kissed her. She tried to ignore the sensation and swiftly stepped away from him.

The girls stood a few yards away, staring at the villa’s front with identical expressions of surprised awe. Savannah identified with the feeling.

She had never been to Villa Kalosorisma. Dion had kept her separated from the rest of his family as much as possible, even his parents and sister. He’d told her at the time it was his way of protecting her from their disapproval until they came to accept the marriage. She now knew differently. He’d been afraid of having his ugly lies about her morality revealed. She still cringed at what a gullible idiot she had been then.

The pristine whiteness of the villa’s stucco exterior dazzled her eyes, contrasting beautifully with the red tile roof. Three levels of terraces outlined by arches fronted the mansion. Surrounded by immaculate gardens and green trees, through which she could see glimpses of sparkling blue sea, Villa Kalosorisma simply took her breath away.

“It’s a real pretty hotel,” Nyssa announced.

“It’s not a hotel,” Savannah felt impelled to say.

“This is my home.” Leiandros had come to stand behind Savannah without her realizing it.

She once again stepped away, impatient to put distance between herself and his disturbing presence. She’d almost grown accustomed to the anxiety a man’s nearness caused in her, but that anxiety mixed with unmistakable sexual awareness was a cocktail mix guaranteed to corrupt her sanity.

“I thought we were staying in a hotel, Mama.” Eva said.

“In Greece family is everything. It would be considered a grave insult were I not to offer my home to you all and equally offensive if your mama refused to accept it.” Leiandros’s words seemed laced with warning and Savannah turned her head to see him more clearly.

Was he trying to intimidate her and if so, why? She’d already agreed to stay at his villa and in fact felt a small measure of gratitude that she hadn’t been forced to play this scene with Helena and Sandros. She would have refused any invitation extended by them regardless of the offense taken.

The very thought of being forced to accept her in-law’s hospitality was enough to make her feel slightly nauseous.

“Our house is lots smaller because we’ve just got a mommy and me and Eva. You must have an awful lot of kids. You’re house is like Cinderella’s castle.” Typically, Nyssa had spoken again while Eva silently watched the adults, letting her serious green gaze flicker between them and the big white villa.

Bitterness and pain reflected briefly in his dark chocolate eyes. “I have no children.”

“Oh. Don’t you like kids?” Nyssa asked before Savannah thought to caution her daughter to silence.

This time the pain was more pronounced and even slipped into his voice as he answered. “I like children very much.”

Had he and Petra planned to have them right away? It must have been a horrible shock to lose her so soon after marriage. Leiandros and Petra had only been married about a year when Dion crashed his car with Petra in it, killing them both instantly. Knowing it was ridiculous, Savannah still felt guilty by association. It had been her estranged husband responsible for the crash.

Eva stepped forward and laid her little hand on Leiandros’s forearm. “It’s okay. Someday, you’ll have some. Mama says you’ve got to believe in your dreams for them to come true.”

He squatted down in front of Eva and reached out to brush her cheek. “Thank you, pethi mou. You and your sister staying at the villa will be like having children of my own.”

In a wholly uncharacteristic move, Eva let her small fingers trail down Leiandros’s face to his chin, her green eyes full of both compassion and a wistfulness that surprised Savannah. “I’ll play checkers with you if you like. Daddies do that with their little girls sometimes.”

“You can help Mom tuck us in at night, too,” Nyssa added, not willing to be outdone by her sister.

Savannah watched the entire scene with a sense of unreality intensified by her tiredness. Her daughters had spent very little time around men, which usually made even the more gregarious Nyssa timid with them. And yet, here was Savannah’s extremely cautious eldest daughter reaching out to touch Leiandros.

Even more shocking than her daughter’s response to Leiandros were his words. Did he truly want her and the girls to move to Greece to fill a void that had opened in his life since his young wife’s death?

She’d never considered Leiandros Kiriakis vulnerable in any way. The man spent his time running a multibillion dollar corporation. He couldn’t seriously need the company of two small girls to complete his life.

Savannah curled her hands around the oversized woven bag she carried. It felt like a link to sanity, its casual American styling a reminder of the life she’d made for herself and her daughters. A life far removed from that of privileged wealth exemplified by Villa Kalosorisma.

A life she and her daughters would return to.