Kate Hewitt - Secret Heirs - Baby Scandal

The two weeks they’d spent together on Santorini came back to him. Nothing else had mattered. He’d lived those two weeks only for each moment, for each smile from her adorable lips, each kiss which had set light to him, and each gentle and alluringly innocent touch.

It had been like looking in on the life he could have had—but they would never find that again. No, those two weeks now meant he was to be a father.

The thought filled him with wonder and dread.

* * *

As the sun grew higher in the sky Serena looked weary. She still smiled, still wanted to know all he could tell her about the ancient temple, but she was looking hot and tired. Concern for her and for the baby filled him.

‘We should go now.’ He looked at his watch, surprised that they had been out so long. The appointment he’d arranged with a doctor before leaving Santorini was in just an hour. ‘The doctor is calling later.’

‘Doctor?’ She blinked in confusion and fixed him with those green eyes. ‘On a Saturday? I don’t need to see a doctor that urgently.’

‘Maybe not, but you will. It has all been arranged.’

He took her hand, but sensed her hesitation as they began to walk back through the mass of tourists. At least they would have some time alone at the apartment. His body heated at the memory of their last hours alone together.

‘Do you still doubt you are the father?’

He turned to her instantly, to see that she was looking at the ground, as if concentrating on every step instead of meeting his gaze.

‘In the past two days you have flown across Europe alone and then travelled here to Athens. You admitted you were ill for the first months of your pregnancy. You will see a doctor. I do not want my child being put at risk.’

She stopped and looked at him. Hostility and disbelief were burning in her eyes, but she didn’t say anything. Before he could rein in his frustration at knowing she’d spent those months alone and ill, unable to tell anyone, she began walking again—but this time with purposeful strides which clearly displayed her annoyance.

* * *

Serena answered all the questions the Greek doctor put to her, aware of Nikos’s brooding presence behind her. He didn’t trust her. That much was evident. But was it because he didn’t believe the child was his or because he genuinely cared about it?

As the doctor spoke in Greek over her, ignoring her, her temper simmered. Nikos didn’t care—not about her. All he cared about was making sure the baby was his. How had she been so stupid as to think that the hours they’d spent making love last night would make him see her differently?

She couldn’t sit here and allow them to talk about her like this. It was, after all, her baby they were talking about.

‘What is he saying?’ she asked a little too firmly, her irritation directed at Nikos, not the older man.

‘That you need to rest and must take things easy.’ He looked at her, his eyes glittering like the sea had done on that day they’d first met, as if sprinkled with diamonds.

‘Yes—rest,’ added the doctor in heavily accented English as he made his way towards the door. ‘The nausea will subside and you will feel well again soon.’

She smiled her thanks at him, wondering how she could ever ‘feel well again’, knowing the man she loved would never love her.

‘Thank you. Sorry to have troubled you.’

‘Nothing is too much trouble for Nikos. He was like a son to my cousin and he made him very happy.’

She frowned at his words as Nikos shut the door after the doctor and returned to the living room. ‘Who is his cousin?’

‘His cousin was the man I worked for when I first came to Athens—the man I looked up to and the man who was more of a father to me than my own.’

‘Do you ever see your father and mother?’

As he looked at her she saw his eyes dim, as if a shutter had been drawn down over them.

‘My father died when I was a teenager, but I hadn’t really known him since my mother left. It destroyed him, changed him. I went to live with my grandparents.’

Serena’s heart went out to him as she imagined what he must have felt. Her parents had constantly squabbled, and her home had sometimes felt unsettled as divorce threats were bandied about like a ball on the tennis court, but they had always been in her life.

‘What about your grandmother? Do you see her?’ she asked, remembering the woman he’d said lived in the small white house, perched on the hillside overlooking the sea.

‘She took me in and raised me—gave me everything she could,’ he said gruffly. ‘I returned that care when my grandfather died and at her insistence I kept his small fleet of fishing boats.’

‘That is why you were helping with the fishing when we met? When you couldn’t tell me the truth?’

Things were starting to fit together now, but it still didn’t explain his need to strike such a deal with her.

He nodded and walked to the balcony, but she wasn’t going to be knocked off course so easily.

‘Will your grandmother approve?’

Serena wondered about what the old lady would think of him taking an English bride—and a pregnant one at that. What would she think of the terms of their marriage?

‘She is a very wise lady.’ He looked down at her where she sat. ‘She would also tell you to rest, to look after yourself and the baby.’

Serena placed her hand over her stomach and looked into Nikos’s eyes, her heart somersaulting at the swirling desire she saw in them once more, and found herself longing for this evening. Would he take her to his bed again? Make love to her gently and yet so passionately? She knew she shouldn’t want that, but she did. She couldn’t just switch her love off—or her hope that one day he might love her.

‘Does she know about the baby?’

He shook his head and she couldn’t help voicing her concern.

‘Because you doubt the baby is yours?’

There—she’d said the words aloud, cast them out like a fisherman’s net, giving him the chance to agree, to call a halt to everything.

He didn’t. He merely looked at her. A long, cold stare that made her want to shiver, as if winter winds were suddenly being blown in off the sea.

‘I have never doubted the baby is mine, Serena,’ he said as he sat down next to her. ‘But I do doubt that you are looking after yourself. You should not have flown all the way here alone. You should have called me from London—as soon as you knew. As I asked you to.’

‘What could you have done—or what could the man I thought you were have done? He wouldn’t have been able to arrange for a private plane to fly him to England.’ Hurt smarted inside her as she remembered his deceit, but maybe after their brief talk today the reason was a little clearer.

He stepped closer, leaned down and kissed her softly on the lips, his dark mood thawing as passion took over the blue of his eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter who you thought I was when we were together. I’ve told you—I didn’t want to spoil our time with each other, a time that was special. Different.’

She searched his face and placed her palm against his cheek, feeling a fresh growth of stubble, but she knew that the special time they’d shared during the summer was over. Reality had impinged on it.

‘You could have told me the truth.’

His answer was to pull her into his arms and kiss her, engulfing them both in a desire that would have only one outcome. She kissed him back, hoping the love she had for him, a love he would never want, would be enough—for her and their marriage.

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