Page 28 of The Greek Tycoon's Baby Bargain

His smile was grim, but the fire of battle was heating his blood. ‘Then you would be opening the floodgates for me to mount a legal challenge for custody of the boys.’

‘You wouldn’t!’

‘Oh, I would, Rebecca—believe me, I would.’

‘You won’t get it!’ she breathed. ‘You know you won’t!’

‘Maybe not sole custody,’ he conceded, ‘since the courts still tend to favour the mother. But there is no reason why I shouldn’t be awarded joint custody. And how would you feel then, Rebecca—if I started taking Andreas and Alexius to New York every other week?’

To her horror, she saw a new light appear in his black eyes—as if this was an option he hadn’t previously considered, one which she had illuminated by challenging him. And he could do it, she recognised painfully. He could forge a life with the twins which might gradually exclude her—because what little boy wouldn’t leap to have the kind of father who could provide the kind of upbringing that Xandros could? What could she offer which could compare?

Fiercely, she dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands. She could offer them something which they could never get from anyone else—a mother’s love!

Her mind was spinning. She had managed to back herself into a corner—she knew it, and she was pretty sure that he knew it, too. So act calm. Don’t let him know how frightened you are. Put on a brave face and stand up to him—if not for your sake, then for the sake of your boys.

‘Very well,’ she said slowly. ‘If moving in with us is your condition for providing our sons with the space and the comfort they deserve—then so be it.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘But I think you had better hear mine, Xandros.’

‘Ne, I am fascinated to hear what that will be, agape,’ he mocked, tilting his dark head to one side. ‘Or shall I guess? Mmm? Are you going to say that you don’t want me to kiss you as I did just now? Or to touch you or to bring you any number of the countless pleasures we both know could be yours in an instant? Am I right, Rebecca? Yes, I can see that I am—for your face flames just as I have seen it flame so many times when you have cried out in my arms.’

Despite the sensual provocation of his words, Rebecca forced herself not to react to them. ‘That’s right,’ she said calmly. ‘If we live under the same roof, then it must be separately.’

‘Separately,’ he echoed thoughtfully, but his smile was that of the unashamed predator. Did she really think that would satisfy a man of his sexual appetite? And what about her own, come to that? Hadn’t she just demonstrated how much she still wanted him? ‘We’ll see how long you are content to live like that, agape mou,’ he finished softly.

CHAPTER NINE

XANDROS bought a house in Holland Park—an upmarket area of London which Rebecca had only ever passed through on a bus. It was a large four-storey building in a deceptively quiet tree-lined road—with plenty of young families living around.

The sort of house you could easily fall in love with, thought Rebecca wistfully. His house, she reminded herself as they each carried a baby into the oak-lined hallway, where stained glass from the front door spilled bright colours onto the black and white tiled floor.

Within hours of their arriving, a glamorous blonde neighbour named Caroline had arrived, bearing an expensive bottle of champagne, a plate of smoked-salmon sandwiches and an invitation to a drinks party she was having.

‘You will come, won’t you?’ she asked Rebecca, but her eyes and her smile kept flicking to the tall and silent Greek who was leaning on the door-jamb.

Rebecca didn’t really know how to reply. She was aware of Xandros’s dark, brooding face—probably keen to establish that, although they might look like a conventional family, they were anything but. And maybe socialising with the neighbours would require too much in the way of acting skills.

‘We’ll see how we’re fixed,’ said Rebecca diplomatically, recognising that an outright refusal might lead to pressure from their attractive new neighbour—if the determined light in her eyes was anything to go by.

But the house itself was out of this world. It was the kind of place she could never have imagined living in—with its tall, spacious rooms and its sweeping staircase—yet her transition from poky little apartment to turn-of-the-century splendour had been frighteningly effortless.

Xandros had overseen everything—arranging for a designer to fill the house with carefully chosen pieces of furniture, and exquisite drapes to be hung at the floor-to-ceiling windows. There was a wonderful nursery for Alexius and Andreas—with her own bedroom and bathroom next door.

Xandros had put in a whole suite for himself on the top floor—including a big, airy studio with fabulous views overlooking the park. From there he could work, he told her—since these days an architect could work from anywhere. It made her wonder what his plans were—and just how long-term the arrangement was supposed to be.

But the time for asking was not now and she doubted he would tell her even if she did. And what was the point in worrying over something which she couldn’t control? She was too busy counting her blessings and realising just how cramped it had been at her little apartment—and how unfair it would have been on the twins to allow that state to continue. Here was the space she had been promised and for the time being it eclipsed all the potential problems of sharing a house with a man as dangerously attractive as Xandros.

She felt her spirits lighten as she stared out at her beautiful new garden, with its curved flower-beds and tall trees—imagining two rapidly growing little boys toddling around in it. She would make them a sandpit, she decided. And get them a little plastic slide. She thought of them asleep and fed upstairs in their cream and azure haven of a bedroom and she gave a secret smile of pleasure.

Xandros was watching her—registering the slow curving of her lips, which reminded him why her particular beauty had first so transfixed him, along with those blue-violet eyes and hair like molten honey. How long since he had buried his mouth in that hair? How long since he had kissed those lips? He felt the impatient stir of frustration. If he walked up to her and took her into his arms, he had not a single doubt that he could have her responding to him in an instant.

Yet for the moment something stopped him and maybe it was the strange new air of composure and serenity which had settled on her, like a mantle. He had noticed it earlier—when she had been sitting in a chair by the window in the nursery, feeding Alexius, his twin brother asleep in a Moses basket by her feet. Like a subtle spotlight, the pale sunlight had illuminated them and given the scene an unexpected radiance—turning the honey of her hair into spun-gold. And in that moment, she had never looked more beautiful.

Was that yet another example of the random lottery of life? he wondered abstractedly. That some women should take to motherhood as if they had been born for it—while others…

‘Rebecca?’

Rebecca turned around from the window, bracing herself against his physical impact, because no matter how many times she looked at him she could do nothing to stop herself from melting.

He was sitting on one of the two sofas—his long legs spread out in front of him in unconsciously elegant pose, beautifully cut dark trousers encasing muscular thighs, and she had to swallow against the sudden dryness in her throat.

---