The Greek Billionaire's Love-Child (17 page)

She lay limp against him, her head cradled against the protective strength of his body. ‘I’m not the little girl in the photo,’ she croaked. ‘But I wanted to be. That’s my dad and his wife. And the child is his daughter. His other daughter. She’s the same age as me. They lived in this house.’

Nikos didn’t loosen his hold. ‘Your father remarried after your parents separated?’

‘No. My father already had a family when he met my mother, but he didn’t tell her. They had an affair. Mum became pregnant with me. For eight years he managed to run two families within ten miles of each other and no one ever suspected.’ She sniffed and rubbed her palm over her wet cheeks. ‘Do you have a tissue?’

He shifted slightly, yanked one from the box by the bed and wiped her face carefully. ‘But he couldn’t marry her because he was already married.

‘I don’t think he ever had any intention of marrying her. It was just an affair that went wrong. When he dis
covered Mum was pregnant, he set her up in a flat. He spent about half the week with us—the rest of the time Mum thought he was working. She trusted him. She didn’t have any reason to doubt him. She thought he was wary of marriage. It didn’t occur to her that he was already married.’

‘He was spending the other half of the week with his wife?’

Ella took the tissue from him and blew her nose. ‘I think that was what upset Mum the most when it all came out was that he couldn’t even pretend that his marriage was empty and loveless. His daughter was exactly the same age as me. Draw your own conclusions.’

Nikos let out a slow breath. ‘So how and when did you eventually find out the truth?’

‘The cruellest way possible.’ Ella scrunched the tissue into a ball and stared up at the ceiling. ‘I was eight years old and playing in a netball match against another school. Suddenly, there was my Dad, watching. Only he wasn’t watching
me
. He was watching a girl playing for the other side. He wouldn’t have known I was going to be there because our school only stepped in at the last minute to replace the team that they’d been scheduled to play. I saw him standing there and then I heard the girl say, “That’s my daddy,” and at half-time she went bounding over to him and hugged him. I remember staring at them and then I ran over and said, “Why are you hugging my daddy?” and after that it’s all a bit of a blur. I was…hysterical. They called my mum and it all unravelled from there.’

‘And your father?’

‘Well, he couldn’t avoid it any longer so the whole sordid story came out. Lies, lies and more lies. Lies to both
families. But his wife was willing to forgive him, providing he chose her. So that’s what he did.’ Ella gave a painful smile. ‘He came into my room that night and said he wouldn’t be seeing me any more but that he’d always love me. And that was it. He went.’

‘He never saw you again?’ Nikos sounded shocked and she shook her head.

‘His wife threatened to end the marriage if he had any contact, and in the end they moved to Australia. But for a few months they still lived here, in this house. And I used to come here sometimes, just to see if I could catch a glimpse of him. I thought that if he saw me, he’d come back. I honestly couldn’t believe he’d just leave me like that. You have to understand that I went from having a Dad who read to me at night and called me Princess, to this stranger who abandoned us.’

Nikos murmured something in Greek, scooped her into his arms and lifted her onto his lap. For a long time he just held her.

Ella sniffed. ‘So now I suppose you’re really angry that I didn’t tell you.’

‘I think you have one rule for me and one rule for yourself,’ Nikos said dryly, ‘but you’re a woman, so that doesn’t surprise me.’

She gave a choked laugh. ‘The crazy thing is, part of me wanted to see this house. I always wondered what it was like inside. I thought seeing it might make me feel better.’

‘Obviously it didn’t. So now I am beginning to understand why you have been so reluctant to wear my ring. I brought you somewhere where all your fears were intensified. You are afraid of what I might be hiding, no? You are afraid that I will do the same thing to you that your
father did to your mother.’ His arms tightened around her and she buried her face in his shirt, breathing in his tantalising male smell.

‘You had a whole secret life. You still do. There’s so much you haven’t told me. I suppose I learned at an early age that relationships are not always what they seem.’

‘And sometimes they are exactly what they seem,’ Nikos said firmly, tipping her off his lap and onto the bed so that he could pull his BlackBerry out of his pocket.

‘Nikos?’ Bemused, she stared at him as he keyed in a number. ‘Who are you phoning?’

‘My PA. The first thing to do is get you out of this house. I need her to make some arrangements so that I can concentrate on more important things.’ He switched to Greek as the call was answered and Ella realised that up until that point she hadn’t even known he had a PA.

As he dropped the phone back into his pocket, she stared at him. ‘You have a full-time personal assistant? That’s another thing I don’t know about you.’

‘I have two full-time personal assistants. They filter the majority of my corporate responsibility, leaving me free to practise medicine.’ He pulled her gently to her feet. ‘How are you feeling? Wobbly? Can you walk?’

‘Of course I can walk. But where are we going? Nikos, it’s dark. You can’t find somewhere else to stay tonight. It’s too late. Everywhere will be booked.’

As if to prove her wrong, his phone rang and he answered it with a grim sense of purpose.

Less than an hour later she was curled up in a deep, soft sofa in the penthouse suite of a boutique hotel along the coast. ‘This is unbelievable. It’s lucky that this room was vacant.’

Nikos shot her a curious look, seemed about to say something and then gave a brief shake of his head. ‘We are lucky,’ he agreed smoothly, ‘that’s true. Now—you are no longer in that place, I want to finish the conversation.’ He poured her a drink of water and handed it to her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about the house on the first day I took you there? You could have just said that you didn’t want to live there.’

‘No, I couldn’t.’ Ella curled her legs underneath her, feeling oddly vulnerable. ‘I’m not a billionaire, Nikos! I can’t just say to someone, “I don’t want to live here, find somewhere else.”’ And, anyway, if I’d told you I didn’t want to stay there, you would have wanted to know the reason. And I didn’t want to talk about the reason.’

‘If you had, we might have avoided a great deal of emotional trauma on both sides,’ he drawled softly. ‘Do me a favour from now on. Act like a typical woman and think aloud.’

‘This is one thing I just don’t talk about. I never have.’ Ella leaned down and put her glass on the floor. ‘It doesn’t do a lot for your confidence, having your father walk out on you. You have to understand that my family was nothing like your family.’

Nikos ran his hand over the back of his neck. ‘This is why you’ve been so reluctant to marry me?’

‘I suppose it’s all linked. You hid so much from me, Nikos—it just felt too much like something my father would have done. All those secrets. When I found out all those things about you it was a massive shock.’

‘Ella—’

‘And then when I found out that your wife and…about the accident…’ She swallowed, struggling to put her
feelings into words. ‘I don’t even want to bring the subject up because I know you don’t want to talk about it with me. You don’t share what you’re feeling. You’ve switched yourself off, emotionally, and I understand that. You don’t love me, so why would you talk to me?’

His dark brows met in a sharp frown. ‘That is female logic. The fact that I don’t spill my guts has nothing to do with my feelings for you. I don’t choose to talk about the past, that’s true. And clearly you are the same,
agape mou
, or we wouldn’t be in this position now.’

‘It really doesn’t matter.’ Ella focused on the picture hanging across from her. It was a modern seascape, painted in blues and whites. ‘Feelings can’t be forced.’

‘You think I’m not capable of feeling?’

‘I know you’re capable of feeling,’ she said softly, turning her head and looking at him. ‘I just don’t think you’re capable of feeling the right way about me.’

For a moment their eyes held and then he sat down on the sofa next to her and took her hand in his.

‘And it is my fault that you think that,’ he said gruffly, ‘because I have never given you reason to think differently.’

‘I don’t expect you to apologise for the way you feel—’

‘You know
nothing
about the way I feel.’ His voice was fierce and his hand tightened on hers. ‘Nothing.’

Ella sat still, afraid to move. Afraid to speak—
unnerved by the depth of emotion she saw in his eyes.

‘I was eighteen when I met my wife. We had a wild, crazy affair. I thought I was in love with her—I thought she was in love with me.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘I was so arrogant back then, so sure of myself—of everything. I didn’t think to question her motives. I married her against the advice of my parents but with the full blessing of hers.
They were delighted that their daughter had hit the jackpot. She didn’t even wait for the ink to dry on the marriage certificate before she filed for divorce.’

Ella didn’t know what to say so she just squeezed his hand gently in a gesture of sympathy.

‘I would have given her a divorce,’ Nikos muttered, ‘because I knew by then it was a mistake. But I found out that she was pregnant. She’d tried to hide it from me—’ He broke off and Ella slid her arms round him, suddenly understanding why he’d been so angry that she’d hidden the news of her own pregnancy.

‘She was afraid you wouldn’t give her a divorce?’

‘Yes. And she was right.’ His tone was harsh. ‘I did refuse. We owed it to the child to try and make it work. So that’s what I did. Unfortunately she didn’t feel the same way. She was only interested in living a single life, backed up by the financial security of my money. I kept her with me until my daughter was six months old and then we had a terrible row. Awful. We were outside at the front of the house and she had Katerina strapped in the car, ready to take her to see her parents. She issued an ultimatum. I was to give her a divorce or she’d take the baby. It was the worst possible threat because we both knew she had no interest in the child.’

Ella sat still, horrified by what she was hearing and knowing that there was worse to come. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, but it seemed as though he didn’t even hear her.

‘She was in a vicious mood,’ he said thickly, ‘and she drove away before I could stop her, with Katerina in the car. I followed her in my car, intending to take the child and let her go, but she wasn’t concentrating and she lost control on a bend. They were both killed instantly. There
was nothing I could do. I had all that money, but it was worth nothing when it came to saving my daughter.’

Ella’s face was wet with tears. ‘Nikos, I’m sorry…’ Choked, she wrapped her arms around him tightly. ‘I’m sorry you couldn’t help her. You’ve saved so many lives, you’ve saved hundreds and hundreds of children—’

‘I never want another parent to go through what I went through if it’s within my power to prevent it,’ he said bleakly, but his hand came up and rubbed the tears from her cheek. ‘Don’t cry. It was a long time ago.’

‘But it’s still with you.’

‘Something like that is always with you. It shapes your behaviour. I learned not to fall in love with women. Love makes you blind. Love makes you see things you want to see.’

Ella swallowed. She knew all about that, didn’t she?

‘Well—I think I understand why you didn’t tell me about the money.’

‘You were different.’ He spoke softly, his fingers still stroking her cheek gently. ‘I always knew you were different. You were fantastic with the children at work. You were kind, generous—you were living on a shoestring budget but you always did the shopping and the cooking and you were always buying me little gifts.’

Ella blushed. ‘Very embarrassing memory,’ she muttered, ‘given how wealthy you are.’

‘I still have everything you ever gave me. A gift’s value is not its price, but the sentiment with which it is given.’

‘I’m glad you didn’t apply that rule when you chose my diamond,’ Ella joked weakly, relieved to see him smile.

‘Which brings us back to the original subject. Our relationship.’ His smile faded and he studied her face for a long, disturbing moment. ‘So far we have stumbled along
and made many mistakes. If I had known about your father, I would have understood why you were so anxious about marrying me.’

Ella gave a faltering smile. ‘And if I’d known about your wife, I would have understood why you were so emotionally detached. So—where do we go from here?’

He lowered his head and kissed her gently. ‘I still have to prove to you that our relationship is not about the baby,’ he murmured against her lips. ‘Ella, I would want to marry you even if there were no baby.’

She stilled, her eyes holding his. ‘That isn’t true,’ she whispered, ‘and I don’t want there to be any lies between us.’

‘It isn’t a lie.’

‘You ended our relationship.’

‘Because I was afraid of what I was feeling for you.’ His voice was low and urgent. ‘Feelings that strong sometimes distort perception—I thought you loved me but I’d made that mistake before.’

‘You left because you loved me?’

‘Our relationship was becoming too intense.’

‘You ended it by email.’

‘You and I can’t be in the same room and not make love, Ella,’ he said dryly. ‘If I’d ended it face to face, there would have been no ending. I needed to make you hate me.’

‘I didn’t hate you. I could never hate you. I guessed there was a lot going on under the surface but at the time I didn’t know about the death of your wife.’

‘The death of my wife is a constant reminder to me that emotions are not to be played with lightly.’

‘When Helen wrote to you about the baby—’

‘I was furious, but I was also relieved because it not only gave me an excuse to see you again, it gave me an
excuse never to let you go.’ He gave a shrug. ‘I just hadn’t banked on you refusing me. You are not good for my ego,
agape mou
.’