She lifted her gaze from the child, withdrew her stroking finger from his cheek and straightened. Then she shot him a glance that was all defiance and fire. ‘It was a look that said we’re in this thing together, no matter what. And, before you accuse me of soft feelings as if they’re flaws I should be ashamed of, I really don’t care what you think.’
Since it was exactly what he’d intended to say, he far from appreciated having the rug pulled from beneath his feet.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked when they reached the ground floor and she turned away from the main entrance.
‘To my car. Where else?’
He examined the contraption his son reclined in. ‘Is this one of those carriers that converts into a car seat?’
She nodded warily.
‘Then we don’t need to travel separately. I will have you delivered back here when we’re done.’
His driver pulled up the moment they stepped outside. And if the older man was astonished by the novel sight of his boss escorting a woman and child to his car, he hid it skilfully, as he was paid handsomely to do, briskly picking up the skeleton of the buggy Vayle had collapsed while she expertly secured the portable seat in the spacious car.
‘No Andreas tagging along?’ she asked airily once she’d slid into the seat and secured her seatbelt, but he noted the tight edge framing the enquiry.
‘We’re not joined at the hip, surprisingly.’
‘No? You could’ve fooled me,’ she shot back.
Nelios inspected her expression, something tightening inside him. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ His best friend was assertive but he wouldn’t overstep in any way that would put their relationship in jeopardy. He knew that as surely as he knew the lines dissecting his palm.
She shook her head. ‘Nothing important,’ she said, completely undermining her words.
He prudently chose to ignore it—for now. His eyes slid to the car seat. ‘What is his name?’ he asked, that roughness he couldn’t clear away back in his voice.
She held in her response for a few long seconds. ‘Evangelos Nelios Petralis. But I call him Angelos.’
Every atom of his being seemed to clench into stillness except his heart, which raced with an unfettered kind of recklessness he’d never felt before. Not even when he’d feared he was close to death in that alley the night his life had taken yet another course.
Theos. ‘You named him after me?’ A son she’d never meant to tell him about? He wasn’t sure whether he should be furious or floored. Or, damn it, both!
‘I’m not the kind of woman who believes a child should be punished for who or what their father turns out to be. He’s yours. And mine. So I chose his name accordingly.’
The boy turned at his mother’s voice, as if he recognised his name even this young. Then he gave a demanding cry.
‘He’s hungry. I need to feed him. How far away are we from wherever we’re going?’ she asked, offering the baby one finger to distract him. Which helped—temporarily, he suspected.
‘Five minutes. Perhaps less,’ he replied, then plunged into the first subject that niggled. ‘We used protection.’
She shot him another of those fiery glares. ‘Evidently not even the world’s most powerful and influential man is safeguarded from faulty condoms.’
And it really was as irrefutable as that.
They arrived at Nelios VIII, and were whisked to his private residence within minutes. He watched her make a beeline for the living room sofa as soon as they entered, taking not a single interest in her luxurious surroundings.
Realising that she meant to breastfeed his son, Nelios was struck anew by the impending experience. Then by all the ones he’d missed up to now. Trailing behind them, he knew propriety dictated he should look away, give her privacy. But, hell, theirs had never been a remotely proper connection. She had literally dropped at his feet at their second meeting and things had gone increasingly insane from there. Why relabel it something else now? And, since she didn’t seem remotely self-conscious about performing a very natural act…
His brain short-circuited when she loosened the belt of her wraparound dress, unclipped her nursing bra and positioned Angelos at her breast. His eager, hungry son wriggled, then latched on the moment he was able. Nelios realised his breath was locked in his throat with wonder, with a prowling kind of possessiveness. Then with a growing certainty that this would be the last time he missed a single thing about this boy.His son.So he eased back in his seat and propped his ankle on his knee, patient now that he’d allowed the reforming landscape to unfold. To show him what he already knew in his blood.
‘What did you want to talk about?’ she asked a little hesitantly, perhaps sensing the change in the air. The change in her very destiny.
‘I had intended to talk about a great many things. But I’ve come to accept that, while what has come before matters, it isn’t as vital as what comes next.’
A pulse visibly leapt in her throat then started to race in earnest. He curled his hand over his ankle when a different need struck: the need to reacquaint himself with the silky skin overlaying that pulse. To drift his tongue over that evidence of her life force and hear that throaty gasp he’d heard far too often in his dreams.
Nelios accepted that, all these months later, a peculiar kind of longing for her still remained. That perhaps he’d left that Buenos Aires bedroom too quickly. That Andreas musing as to Nelios’s affinity for dating a certain type of woman since that night who were all poor carbon copies of the one sitting in front of him—women who were inevitably packed off before they even saw the inside of his bedroom—meant something important. Unfinished business that needed dealing with.
