Baby of Shame

BABY OF SHAME
Julia James

‘M
R PETRAKIS
.’ His UK PA’s voice was hesitant. ‘Please excuse me for interrupting you, but—’

Dark, displeased eyes flashed up at her from the man seated behind the imposing mahogany desk. Maureen Carter quailed.

‘I said
no
interruptions,
Mrs
Carter—for any reason whatsoever.’ The deep, accented voice was brusque. For a fraction of a section the forbidding gaze admonished her,
then
simply cut her out of existence, returning to the papers spread out on the leather-topped surface of the desk.

In the doorway, Maureen Carter hesitated, then, visibly steeling herself, spoke again.

‘I understand, sir. But…but she said the call was urgent—’

Alexis Petrakis sat slowly back in his large chair and lifted his eyes to her.

‘
Mrs
Carter,’ he said, and his voice, with its slight Greek accent, was soft—so soft it raised the hairs on his PA’s neck. ‘You may inform
Natalia
Ferucia
I have no interest in her affairs.
With me or with anyone else.’

He rested his killing gaze on her, his mouth whipped to a tight, hard line, and then once again he returned to the papers on his desk.

His PA swallowed and cleared her throat. ‘
Mr
Petrakis—’ she attempted a third time ‘—it isn’t Ms
Ferucia
on the line. It’s a
Mrs
Walters, from
Sarmouth
Social Services Department. She says it’s very important to speak to you,’ she added quickly, as Alexis Petrakis stilled and lifted his head again. His dark eyes
levelled
on her.

‘It’s in connection, she says, with
Rhianna
Davies.’

For one long second the gaze
levelled
on her went completely blank, as though the name she had just given him was as unknown to him as it was to her. And then a mask closed over his powerful, planed face.

‘Tell this
Mrs
Walters, whoever she is,’ he enunciated, cutting each word out of the air as if he were vivisecting it with a scalpel, ‘that I have no interest whatsoever in
Rhianna
Davies.’

He picked up his gold pen and returned to his papers.

‘But,
Mr
Petrakis,’ Maureen Carter said, with a final desperate urgency, ‘
Mrs
Walters says it’s about your son!’

And this time, finally, she got a reaction.

Alexis Petrakis froze.

R
HIANNA
was stepping out on to the zebra crossing. It was pouring with rain, the wind battering the rain hood on Nicky’s buggy. She’d checked both ways before starting to cross, but as she pushed forward, eyes stinging with rain, her head bowed into the wind, weak and exhausted but with desperate urgency, it came again, the way it always did.

A screech of
tyres
, an engine roaring, and then a blow so violent it lifted her up and threw her sideways as the black and white painted tarmac slammed up to meet her.
And then the sickening thud of her body impacting—and then the darkness.
Total darkness.

She jerked as her brain relived, yet again, the moment when the speeding car had run her down on a pedestrian crossing. The jerking caused pain, shooting through her, but following the pain came worse—much worse.

A voice screaming—screaming inside her head.
Distraught.
Demented.

Nicky! Nicky! Nicky!

Over and over again.
Drowning her with terror and fear and horror.
Over and over again—

A hand was on her shoulder. Her eyes flew open. One of the nurses was speaking.

‘Your little boy is safe—I’ve told you that. He’s safe. He wasn’t injured.’

Rhianna
stared up into the face looking down at her, her eyes pools of anguish. ‘Nicky,’ she whispered again, her voice husky, fearful. ‘Nicky—where are you? Where are you?’

The nurse spoke again, her voice calm and reassuring. ‘He’s being looked after until you get better. Now, you just relax and get some sleep. That’s what you need now. Would you like something to help you sleep?’

Rhianna
pressed her lips together and tried to shake her head. But any movement when she was awake was agony. Even breathing was an agony, her infected lungs raw and painful.

‘I can’t sleep—I mustn’t! I’ve got to find Nicky…they’ve got him. They won’t give him back. I know they won’t—I know it, I know it!’

Her voice was rising again, fear gulping in her throat, and she could hardly get the air out of her.

‘Of course you’ll get him back,’ the nurse said bracingly. ‘He’s only been taken into care while you’re here. As soon as you come out they’ll hand him over—’

But terror flared in
Rhianna’s
eyes.

‘No—she’s taken him.
That social worker.
She said I couldn’t look after him, that he’d be better off in care.’ Her hand clawed at the nurse’s fingers, eyes distending. ‘I’ve got to get him back. He’s my son!’

‘I’ll get you a sedative,’ the nurse said, and went off. Dread and anguish filled
Rhianna
. Nicky was gone.
Taken into care.
Just like the social worker had said he would be.

‘You clearly can’t cope with looking after a child.’
Rhianna
heard the condemning tone ringing in her memory. ‘Your son is
at risk.’

Oh, God—why? Why?
thought
Rhianna
. Why had the woman had to turn up just then? She’d felt so
ill,
and it had only been a few days after her father’s funeral. She’d taken a double dose of flu powder and it had knocked her out, so that when the social worker had arrived it had been Nicky—still in his
pyjamas
, patiently watching toddler TV in the living room, with a bowl of spilt cereal on the floor—who’d opened the door to the woman while his mother lay collapsed in bed, breathing
sterterously
and all but unconscious…

The woman had taken against her,
Rhianna
knew, the first time she’d ever come to the rundown council flat to assess whether
Rhianna’s
plea for home help for her father was valid or not. The woman had told
Rhianna
bluntly that her father needed
hospitalisation
until the end came, that a dying man should not be anywhere near a small child, and that if
Rhianna
insisted on refusing to name her child’s father she had no business expecting the state to pay for his upbringing instead of his father. Nicky should be in nursery and she should go back to work, because that was government policy.

At the end of her tether,
Rhianna
had lost her temper and yelled at the woman, not registering that she was still holding the vegetable knife she’d been chopping carrots with in the kitchen before the social worker had come in to harangue her. Seeing the knife blade, the woman’s eyes had flared, and she told
told
Rhianna
she was dangerously violent and brandishing a weapon threateningly.

After that everything had gone increasingly downhill. Her father’s life had drawn to its tormented close, and she’d eventually had to call an ambulance to take him to hospital, where a final stroke had brought the end at last. Her exhaustion, her illness, her desperate need to shelter Nicky from what was happening all around him, had laid her lower than she had ever been in the five bleak years since her world had collapsed around her.

And when the social worker had arrived that fateful morning, to find Nicky unsupervised and
Rhianna
passed out, it had been the final straw.

‘I’m having a Care Order issued,’ the woman had told her grimly. ‘Before any harm comes to him either from your violent tendencies or your complete lack of responsibility.’ She’d dipped her finger in the trace of flu powder on the bedside table and sniffed it suspiciously, glaring down at the barely conscious
Rhianna
. ‘I’ll take this for analysis, so don’t even bother to try and hide whatever other drugs you’ve been using.’

She’d left the room, and
Rhianna
had somehow found the strength to get out of bed and stagger after her—only to crash into the doorframe as if she were, indeed, under the influence of drugs instead of being so ill with a chest infection she could hardly breathe.

When the woman had gone, informing her she would be returning shortly with the necessary documentation to remove Nicky,
Rhianna
, out of her mind with terror, had dragged clothes on and set off for the doctor’s surgery, desperate to get some antibiotics as well as her doctor’s avowal that she was not a drug user and was not violent—anything she could use to fight off the Care Order. But before she’d been able to get to the surgery she’d been knocked down by a speeding car on a pedestrian crossing.

When she’d surfaced back to consciousness it had been to find herself in a hospital ward, her body in agony, her limbs and torso strapped up, a drip in her arm and her lungs on fire.

And Nicky gone.

Nicky—her only reason for living, the only light in the black pall that crushed her, the only joy in her life.

Nicky—she had to get him back! She would die without him. And he—oh, God—she could not bear to think of his distress, his confusion. Taken into care with no familiar face around him, no mother to keep him safe the way she had kept him safe all his little life. Despite all the strain and pressure, the hardship and the relentless, punishing difficulties of nursing her difficult, cantankerous father, despite coping with no money, coping with her father’s depression and his slow decline into both physical and mental incapacity, with no one to help, no one to turn to, and only the bare subsistence of the state to keep them going.

Nicky!
The silent, anguished cry came again and again as she drifted in an out of consciousness, reliving over and over the moment when the car had crashed into her and she’d thought it was Nicky who’d been killed…

But he wasn’t dead! Dear God she’d been spared that. He was alive, but gone, and she was terrified that she would never get him back.
Never.
He’d be put up for adoption, spirited away, locked away…taken from her…

The nurses had tried to help.

‘Is there no one who could look after him for you?
Friends,
neighbours
, relatives?’

Rhianna’s
hands had clawed on the bedclothes.
‘No one.’

She had no relatives—not since burying her father. No friends left.
All gone.
And
neighbours
—she’d never befriended anyone in the council flats, too caught up in her own overwhelming problems to have time, or any spare energy, to notice anyone else—too horrified, if she faced up to it, that her life had sunk to these sorry straits.

One of the nurses had spoken again.
Very carefully.

‘What about your little boy’s father?’

Rhianna’s
eyes had hardened automatically, irrevocably.

‘He has no father.’

Tactfully, the nurse had said nothing more, but as she’d bustled off
Rhianna’s
own words seared in her mind.

He has no father….

An image leapt in her mind like a burning brand.

Burning through her skin, her flesh.

Her memory…

R
HIANNA
had been desperate. Filled with a sick, agitated desperation that had made her do what she had done.

But she had had no choice.

Now, somewhere close to the hospital, she could hear the chilling wail of an ambulance siren. It echoed in her memory—the wailing siren of the ambulance, five long years ago, carrying her stricken father to hospital. A heart attack, and it had been her fault—her fault for telling him what she had just heard from Maunder Marine Limited. That they had themselves been acquired, and so their own corporate investment
programme
would have to go on hold until their new owners, Petrakis International, had given it their approval. That could take months, she’d been warned.

Months during which Davies Yacht Design would have no idea whether or not the life-saving takeover by MML would ever go ahead.

And without that assurance her father’s company would go under—succumb to its debts as its creditors foreclosed. It would be the end of the company—and the end for her father. He lived for his company—lived for designing yachts.
A vocation.
An obsession.
Taking over his whole life, giving it the only meaning it had.

And she, his daughter, would be no comfort to him.

Unless she could save his company.

She had left the intensive care ward, left her father wired up to monitors, the nursing staff looking grave, and gone back to her father’s office.

And picked up the phone.

There
had
to be a way to get the go-ahead for the takeover by MML. She had been the one to approach them in the first place, convincing the larger company that Davies Yacht Design was a profitable acquisition prospect. Forward order books were full, and the company’s technical reputation was outstanding, but the chronic under-
capitalisation
and growing debt-interest burden, combined with a major client
cancelling
his already completed order and another one changing his mind halfway through, had pushed Davies Yacht Design to the brink. Her father’s complete lack of interest in the mundane details of keeping a company financially healthy had meant the banks had lost confidence in him and they wanted an exit. If it wasn’t going to come from a white knight like MML, then they would foreclose.

She
had
to get MML to go through with the acquisition!

But it had looked as if it was not on their say-so any more. It was Petrakis International who would have to agree to it.

And there was no reason why they should not,
Rhianna
had thought desperately. Investing in Davies Yacht Design would pay off handsomely—if she could just convince them as she had convinced MML.

But she’d hit a stone wall. It was standard corporate policy, Petrakis International had informed her, to stall all its acquired companies’ major investments until they’d been checked out. She’d gone as high up the company as she could reach, and the answer had always been the same.

So she’d aimed for the top, as a last desperate throw.

Alexis Petrakis—head of Petrakis International.

Fifteen minutes. That would be all she’d need. Fifteen minutes to run through the figures, to show what a shrewd investment it would be for MML to buy Davies Yacht Design.

But his PA had shot down her hopes. Yes,
Mr
Petrakis was currently in London, but his diary was full, including the evenings, and he was flying back to Greece in three days’ time. Perhaps next month…

But next month would be too late.

There had been only one thin sliver of hope left to
Rhianna
. The PA had mentioned that on his last evening in the UK Alexis Petrakis would be attending a business dinner at one of the top West End hotels.

It had been her last, last chance…

She closed her eyes, lying in her hospital bed, feeling memory pour over her like a sheet of acid, burning into her skin. Feeling again the claws, like pincers in her stomach, as they had that fateful evening as she’d sat worried sick, at the table in the thronged banqueting hall.

Because it had seemed Alexis Petrakis wasn’t going to show! It had all been in vain. She’d come up to London, forked out a fortune for a ticket to the dinner, splashed out on a new dress and a session at the hairdresser and beauty
parlour
—all money she could ill afford, given the parlous state of the finances at Davies Yacht Design—all for nothing. She’d even altered the seating plan posted in the cocktail reception area for the dinner, so that she would be sitting next to Alexis Petrakis. But though she’d managed to take her seat without anyone else challenging her—the seat next to her, with Alexis
Petrakis’s
nameplate—remained empty.

Her heart had sunk, heavy as lead.

If Alexis Petrakis were not there she might as well give up and take the next train home, to return to the hospital waiting room and wait for any sign that they would move her father out of intensive care.

Worry had closed over her.

A waiter had approached their table, deftly placing a starter course in front of each guest. As she’d murmured her desultory thanks another, taller figure, in a black jacket, not white, had suddenly also been standing there momentarily. Then he’d been taking his seat—right beside her.

‘Do please excuse me—I’ve been delayed,’ he
apologised
briefly to the table, his English fluent but accented. He nodded at several of the guests, acknowledging them by name, and then turned to his right.

‘Alexis Petrakis,’ he said, holding out his hand.

But
Rhianna
wasn’t capable of responding. She was simply staring.

This
couldn’t
be Alexis Petrakis. Alexis Petrakis—chairman of an international company—should be middle-aged and corpulent, like three-quarters of the male guests here tonight.

But the man who’d just joined the table was…
devastating.

The word thudded in her brain.

He couldn’t be much more than thirty, surely, with a whipcord leanness to him that was accentuated by the superb cut of his tuxedo—just as the dark tan of his face, his sable hair, were accentuated by the brilliant white of his dress shirt.

She gazed helplessly.

The planed contours of his face, the high, strong cheekbones, the straight nose, sharply defined
jawline
…And his mouth…

Sculpted, mobile, sensual.

She dragged her eyes upwards.

Straight into his.

Dark—obsidian-dark—but flecked very deep within with gold.

And looking at her—looking at her with total, absolute focus.

She felt weak, breathless.

Something flickered in those gold-flecked eyes.

‘And you are…?’

The questioning voice was deep, with an accent that was making her toes curl in their narrow high-heeled shoes. There was faint speculation in the voice. She could hear it, and it quivered through her.

‘
Rhianna
Davies,’ she breathed helplessly, her eyes still speared by his.

She couldn’t drag them away, just couldn’t.

Numbly she placed her hand into his waiting one.

It was warm, with slight calluses on the pads below the finger joints.

He must work out, she thought, the words floating, dissociated through her.

The pressure of his grip was firm, but as he slid his hand away there seemed to her to be the slightest, the very slightest, reluctance to do so.

Her insides were simply churning like a concrete mixer.

Then one of the other guests at the table addressed a remark to him.

For one last, brief moment his eyes held hers, and then they moved.

Rhianna’s
heart seemed to be pounding in her chest, thumping against her ribcage. Her blood seemed to be pulsing more strongly—which was weird, because she felt as weak as a kitten.

Alexis Petrakis.
That’s
Alexis Petrakis….

She wanted to stare and stare…

Jerkily she forced herself to start eating. Fortunately the conversation at the table was between the other guests, and Alexis Petrakis was still addressing himself to the man who had spoken to him.
Rhianna
hadn’t the faintest idea what they were talking about. The results of some company she’d never heard of—she caught snatches of words like ‘interims’ and ‘EBITDA’. She ignored them. All she wanted to do—all she was capable of doing—was to go on gazing at Alexis Petrakis.

She had
never,
never
set eyes on anyone so breathtakingly gorgeous.

She had seen her share of handsome men.
Gone out with quite a few of them.
She was lucky, she knew—very, very lucky—to have been blessed with a blonde beauty that had always drawn male eyes ever since she was an adolescent.

But her mother had kept her close, frightened she might, as she herself had done, fall disastrously for the first wrong man that came by. So for the most part
Rhianna
had contented herself with casual dating, keeping her admirers at bay. And since her mother’s death in a car crash eighteen months ago she’d been in no frame of mind to look for romance.

Then there had been all the trauma of seeking out her estranged father and discovering the disastrous situation at his company to keep her from thinking about men.

So it was totally immaterial that Alexis Petrakis was the most stunning-looking male she’d ever set eyes on. Her only task was to persuade him to give the green light to
MML’s
takeover. But that wasn’t a subject she could broach in the middle of a formal business dinner. She’d always anticipated that she would have to use the dinner to give her an opportunity to request a private word with him after it was all over, and then go into her pitch.

In which case—she reached for her champagne flute—there couldn’t be any harm in going on gazing at him, could there?
While he talked to his business acquaintances…

She took a mouthful of champagne. It tasted warm. It had been poured out too long ago.

‘Allow me—’

Alexis Petrakis had stopped his conversation. He was helping himself to the bottle of white wine left in its chiller by the wine waiter. As he took it out he glanced
assessingly
at the label, as if to check it was up to standard, and then filled
Rhianna’s
white wine glass.

‘
Th
-thank you,’ she managed.

‘My pleasure,’ said Alexis Petrakis.

His long-lashed, gold-flecked eyes swept over her.

And
Rhianna
felt her stomach plummet all over again.

‘
Rhianna
Davies,’ the deep, accented voice murmured, as if searching private files inside his head. His eyes were still on her, and suddenly she felt a wash of liquid warmth go through her. With every inch of her consciousness she became aware of herself. Her silver gown, with the softly draped bodice and shoestring straps, her long pale hair flowing down her bare back, the wings of her hair caught with a silver clip at her nape, the silver necklace around her throat and the matching earrings she was wearing.

‘You don’t know me,’ she got out,

‘Not yet,’ he murmured in reply, his eyes doing that weak-making wash over her again.

For a moment time seemed to stop. She just sat there, with this extraordinarily magnetic man looking at her, and let herself be looked over.

While she looked back.

Deep, deep into his eyes.

Something flowed inside her.
Something so powerful and overwhelming that her breath was ripped from her.

The rest of the meal was a blur. She must have made polite, general conversation, picked at her food, drunk her wine, but she couldn’t remember a thing. The only thing she was aware of was the man sitting next to her. He talked to her sometimes, as the conversation meandered, but whenever he did she found herself almost completely tongue-tied.

The meal seemed to take for ever—and yet no time at all.

But as the after-dinner speaker finally stepped down,
signalling
the end of the formal proceedings, and conversation struck up again across the banqueting hall,
Rhianna
felt the pincers go to work in her stomach again. And this time it was because she knew that Alexis was the man—the only man—who could save her father’s company.

And it was up to her to get him to do it.

Tonight.

Their table was breaking up. People were getting to their feet, taking their leave, either to leave the dinner completely or to mingle with guests at other tables. She mustn’t let Alexis Petrakis leave! She had to keep him there. She had to do something.
But how?
She couldn’t just blurt out
Please let MML buy my father’s company!

Then, just as she felt sick apprehension pool in her stomach, he spoke.

‘May I offer you some port?’

Her head turned. Alexis Petrakis was reaching out to the port decanter. She watched him fill both their glasses.

She picked up her glass and sipped. The warm, rich liquid was like velvet in her throat.

Alexis Petrakis leant back in his chair. The gesture made the fine material of his dress shirt tauten across his chest, broadening his shoulders.

He had beautiful hands, she found herself thinking. Nails white against the olive tan of his skin.
Long fingers.

She gave a hesitant smile. Her nerves were jittering. Any minute now he might glance at his watch, and murmur politely that he must go, or someone from another table might come up and start talking to him, cutting her out…She had to ask him now. And for her father’s sake she had to get this right.

‘
Mr
Petrakis—’

Her voice sounded high pitched. Where it had come from, she did not know.

She forced herself to go on. She had to.

‘
Mr
Petrakis, I wonder—I wonder if I might have a word with you?’