Page 16 of The Greek Tycoon's Baby Bargain

That was quite a difficult one to answer. ‘I need to see you.’

Need? A pause. ‘But I’m in New York.’

‘Yes, I know. So am I.’

This time the pause was so long that Rebecca actually thought he might have hung up on her. To her surprise he didn’t demand to know just what she was doing in New York—but maybe that shouldn’t have surprised her. He was many things, but never predictable.

‘Where exactly are you?’ he questioned.

She read out the address from the top of the laminated room-service menu which was lying on the bedside table. ‘Do you know it?’

Did he know it? Ah, the exquisite irony of life! Briefly, Xandros closed his eyes. He remembered staying in that self-same area when he’d first arrived in the city—presumably for the same cost-cutting reasons as her—and thinking how the fabled streets of New York were certainly not paved with gold. He had seen homeless people, and hungry ones, too. He recalled his sense of shock—and his determination, too—that one day he should conquer this great city. Within weeks, he had found himself a job to help support him through college—and had never been back there since. ‘Can you come here?’ he questioned silkily.

‘Where?

‘I’m in the office.’

Rebecca stifled her instinctive sigh of relief. At least he wasn’t cosying up to whoever must have replaced her by now. ‘That’s late,’ she commented.

His mouth hardened. He wanted to tell her that the hours he worked were none of her damned business. Why the hell was she here? Deliberately, he injected his voice with steel. ‘I will send a car for you,’ he said.

And the cool note in his voice reminded Rebecca of another stark reality of the situation. They were ex-lovers. There was no fondness for her in Xandros’s heart. And even less when he discovers what you are about to tell him. ‘No, I’ll take the subway—’

‘Don’t be so ridiculous, Rebecca,’ he cut in, with an impatient click of his tongue. ‘It’s late and I’ve said I’ll send a car. The driver will ring you when he’s outside.’

Rebecca recognised that there was no sense in arguing with him—and that to do so would be fairly stupid, under the circumstances. Why turn down his offer of safe transport in a strange city at night?

‘Thanks,’ she said, and put the phone down quickly.

And, besides, she was beginning to feel rather peculiar and she couldn’t quite work out whether that was because she was pregnant or slightly jet-lagged or because she hadn’t eaten since early on in the flight.

So eat something!

Her burgeoning body craved food and she had no desire to faint in front of him. Raiding the mini-bar like a guilty teenager, she ate chocolate, some pretzels and a glass of juice and worried how much they would charge her for the pleasure of eating junk. And then her phone began to ring and she felt a little like someone going to face their own trial.

A dark limousine was waiting outside with a uniformed driver holding open the door for her. She sat back on soft leather as the powerful car negotiated the streets—so new to her and yet strangely familiar from years of having seen them on TV programmes—but Rebecca wasn’t really paying attention to them. She was too wrapped up in choosing her words as carefully as possible.

But how did you tell someone who was so definitely in your past that you were carrying part of his future?

The car stopped outside a vast, towering building lit mutedly save for the very top of it, which shone as brightly as a planet. A young woman stood waiting by the entrance, her tumble of dark curls and striking scarlet dress suddenly making Rebecca feel very pale and unexciting. Who was she? she wondered—hating herself for still caring as the brunette opened the car door.

‘Hi. I’m Miriam.’ The woman smiled, her teeth gleaming like a dentistry advertisement. ‘Xandros asked me to come and meet you. He’s upstairs in his office.’

‘Thanks,’ said Rebecca, feeling more than uptight now as a glass lift sped upwards. He hadn’t come to fetch her himself, had he? And how, she wondered, had Xandros explained her sudden appearance to this woman Miriam? Was this his girlfriend—sent down to fetch her so that there could be no possible misunderstandings? Or was she a powerful man’s gatekeeper—would she expect to sit in on what was probably going to be the most difficult conversation of Rebecca’s entire life?

Well, she was going to have to assert herself. She was not going to have an audience while she stumbled to tell him. If he wanted he could tell Miriam later, once Rebecca had gone.

She was taken into a large and very beautiful office, dominated by a giant desk on which lay a few large sheets of drawings in various stages of development, and a pot full of pens and pencils. Apart from that, the room was completely bare of adornment—with no pictures on the walls or trinkets on his desk. At first, Rebecca didn’t see Xandros, but then she sensed rather than heard him behind her and she turned to find him at the far end of the long room, watching her—and she could not help the instinctive shiver of awareness that felt midway between fear and desire.

‘That will be all, Miriam,’ he said.

Well, she didn’t sound like a girlfriend. ‘Is that your secretary?’ asked Rebecca hopefully when the other woman had closed the door behind her.

‘She’s another architect, actually,’ drawled Xandros, noticing her flinch at the unmistakably caustic note in his voice—but what did she expect? He had no idea why she was here today—whether it was all part of some sophisticated game-plan. Was that why she had jumped in and ended the relationship before he’d had a chance to do so? As a kind of emotional one-upmanship—a clumsy effort to try to make him commit to her? But if so, it had backfired spectacularly—and she was just about to find that out.

She had made him feel…what? Trapped and irritated by her g

rowing neediness and her desire to want to read all the secrets of his heart? Yet along with that he had felt oddly out of control, too. Hadn’t it been a relief to be free of her strange, sensual power—even if he had found himself sometimes missing the passion of her embrace? Hadn’t he terminated his contract with the airline because he had no wish for repeated contact with her or the temptation of her continuing allure? Those violet eyes and the silky hair like dark honey, which had trickled through his fingers so sweetly.

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