anyone would have thought I’d asked him for the PIN number for his savings account, from the way he reacted.’ He had stood up then with an ugly look on his face, but the look had been tinged with satisfaction—as if he’d been glad of an excuse to be angry with her. She remembered him knocking against the table and her untouched cappuccino slopping everywhere in a frothy puddle. ‘He told me never to contact him again. And then he left.’
Alek heard the determinedly nonchalant note in her voice and something twisted darkly in his gut. Was it recognition? A realisation that everyone carried their own kind of pain, but that most of it was hidden away? Suddenly her fierce ambition became understandable—an ambition which had been forced into second place by the baby. He felt a pang of guilt as he recalled how cavalier he’d been about her losing her job. Suddenly, he could understand her insistence on marriage—a request which must have been fuelled by the uncertainty of her own formative years. Not because she wanted the cachet of being his wife, but because she wanted to give her own baby the security she’d never had.
But recognising something didn’t change anything. He needed to be clear about the facts and so did she—and the most important fact she needed to realise was that he could never do the normal stuff that women seemed to want. He might be capable of honouring his responsibility to her and the baby—but, emotionally, wasn’t he cut from exactly the same cloth as her father? Hadn’t he walked away from women in the past—blind to their tears and their needs?
Ellie Brooks wasn’t his type, but even if she were he was the last man she needed. She needed his name on a birth certificate and she needed his money, and he could manage that. Neh. A bitter smile curved his lips. He could manage that very well. But if she wanted someone to provide the love and support her father had never given her, then he was the wrong person.
She had pushed the heavy fringe away from her eyebrows. Her face was pale, he thought. And now that she no longer had those generous curves, there was a kind of fragility about her which gave her skin a curious luminosity. And suddenly, all his certainties seemed to fade away. He forgot that it was infinitely more sensible to keep his distance from her as he was overcome by a powerful desire to take her in his arms and offer her comfort.
He swallowed, his feelings confusing him. And angering him. He didn’t want to be in thrall to anyone, but certainly not to her. Because he recognised that Ellie possessed something which no woman before her had ever possessed. A part of him. And didn’t that give her a special kind of power? A power she could so easily abuse if he wasn’t careful.
He walked quickly towards the door, realising that he needed to get the hell out of there. ‘You’d better unpack,’ he said abruptly. ‘And then we need to sit down and discuss the practicalities of you living here.’
WITH A SPEED which left her slightly dazed, Alek took over Ellie’s life. He organised a doctor and a credit card. He filled in all the requisite forms required for their upcoming wedding and booked the register office. But it quickly dawned on Ellie that the most important practicality of living with the Greek tycoon was an ability to be happy with her own company.
‘I work long hours,’ he told her. ‘And I travel. A lot. You’ll need to be able to amuse yourself and not come running to me because you’re bored. Understand?’
Biting back her indignation at being spoken to as if she were some kind of mindless puppet, Ellie told herself that snapping at him was only going to make a difficult situation worse. Bad enough that he prowled around the place looking like a sex god, without taking him to task over his patronising comments. She was trying very hard to give him the benefit of the doubt—telling herself that perhaps he didn’t mean to be quite so insulting. That he was a powerful man who was clearly used to issuing orders which he expected to be obeyed. And at first, she did exactly that.
During those early days in his Knightsbridge penthouse, she was still too disorientated by the speed at which her life had changed to object to his steamrollering approach to life. She was introduced as his fiancée to the confusingly large number of staff who worked for him both in and outside his organisation and she tried to remember everyone’s name.
There were cleaners who moved noiselessly around the vast apartment—like ghosts carrying buckets—and a woman whose job was to keep his fridge and wine cellar stocked. There was the doctor who insisted on visiting her at home—unheard of!—and told her she should take it easy, and these instructions she followed to the letter. She made the most of her free time. She realised it was the first time she’d ever had a prolonged break—or enjoyed a guilt-free session of relaxation—and she concentrated on settling into her new habitat like a cuckoo finding its way round a new and very luxurious nest.
But the baby still felt as if it weren’t happening, even though she was now in possession of a glossy black and white photo showing what looked like a cashew nut, attached to the edge of a dark lake. And when she looked into the icy beauty of Alek’s eyes, it was hard to believe that the tiny life growing inside her was somehow connected with him. Would he love his baby? she found herself wondering. Was he even capable of love?
He’s capable of sex, prompted a whispering voice inside her head—but determinedly she blocked out the thought. She wasn’t going to think of him that way. She just wasn’t.
The friendly concierge in the lobby gave her a street map and she started exploring Kensington and Chelsea, as well as the nearby park, where the leaves on the trees were showing the first hints of gold. She began visiting the capital’s galleries with enough time on her hands to really make the most of them, which she’d never had before.
Each morning, Alek left early for the office and would return late, a pair of dark-rimmed reading glasses giving him a surprisingly sexy, geeky look as he carried in the sheaf of papers he’d been studying in the car. He would disappear into his room to shower and change and then—surprisingly—disappear into the kitchen to cook them both dinner. An extensive repertoire of dishes began to appear each evening—one involving aubergine and cheese, which quickly became Ellie’s favourite. He told her that he’d learnt to cook at sixteen, when he’d been working in a restaurant and the chef had told him that a man who could feed himself was a man who would survive.
His skill in the kitchen wasn’t what she had been expecting and it took some getting used to—sitting and politely discussing the day’s happenings over dinner, like two people on a first date who were on their best behaviour. It was like being in some kind of dream. As if it were all happening to someone else.
It was just unfortunate that Ellie’s body didn’t feel a bit dreamlike, but uncomfortably real. Her reservations about living with him had been realised and she was achingly aware of him. How could she not be? His presence was impossible to ignore. Much as she tried to deny it, he was her every fantasy come to life. Worse still, she’d had a brief taste of what lovemaking could be like in Alek’s arms, and it had left her hungry and wanting more. And daily exposure to him was only reinforcing that hunger.
She saw him first thing when he was newly showered and dressed, with his dark hair slicked back and his skin smelling of lemon. She saw him sitting at the breakfast bar, sliding heavy gold cufflinks through one of his pristine shirts—and her heart would give a powerful contraction of blatant longing. Did he know that? Did he realise that inside she was berating herself for having insisted on a stupid no-sex rule? Had she imagined a hint of amusement dancing in the depths of those sapphire eyes when he looked at her? As if he was enjoying some private joke at her expense—silently taunting her with the knowledge that he could cope with sensual deprivation far better than her.
It was weekends which were hardest, when his failure to leave for the office left a gaping hole in the day ahead, along with the distraction of having him around without a break. This was when breakfast became a more awkward meal than usual. Was she imagining him staring at her intently, or was that just wishful thinking on her part? Had he deliberately left a button of his silk shirt unbuttoned, so that a smooth golden triangle of skin was revealed? Ellie