Andrea Laurence - Seduced At Sea

Leo scowled, annoyed with his thoughts and the way she had treated him with polite detachment since she had woken this morning. She hadn’t mentioned what had transpired in his bed last night and he knew that was for the best. Why rehash something he didn’t care to explain, or repeat?

But he couldn’t deny that her indifference rankled. They had stopped briefly at her apartment and, much to her chagrin, he had accompanied her inside. He’d wanted to appease some latent curiosity about who she really was and what her motivation was for wanting to accompany him to Greece. Initially he had wondered if a latent gold-digger hadn’t been hiding beneath her down-to-earth demeanour but, if anything her home only confirmed that she was most likely a nice girl. Soft furnishings, family photos on the mantelpiece in the sitting room, personal knick-knacks carefully placed on well-worn surfaces. The opposite of the various homes he kept around the world, which were always pristine and well ordered. Like his life usually was.

And hell, she hadn’t even known who he was when they’d first met!

He glanced at Ty and cursed Danny’s lack of foresight in sending him a nanny without a passport, knowing as he did that it wasn’t Danny’s fault. None of it was. It was his. And only he could fix things. The key now was to keep Lexi and Ty as far away from him as possible, which shouldn’t be too hard. Yes, they’d be trapped together on his yacht for three days but the thing was as big as two football fields and consisted of eight levels. How hard could it be?

Bracing himself, Leo looked at his son. A boy he didn’t want and a boy who hadn’t asked to be born. Some might call it fate that Amanda had conceived on that one time they had had sex. He knew Lexi Somers thought Ty was suffering from his absence but Leo didn’t want to believe that. He had always believed he was doing the right thing, the honourable thing, in staying out of Ty’s life. In leaving him with his mother. But it seemed he might have been wrong and he couldn’t stomach that. Couldn’t stomach the thought of making a mistake again, of being responsible for another person’s future happiness.

But still Lexi’s words nagged at him. Was she right in suggesting that Ty’s emotional needs were suffering? She was the expert who had cared for him for two years. Why would she say it if it wasn’t true? And why had Amanda’s mother been looking after Ty? He needed to find out more information, that was clear.

‘Do you want to come join us?’ The soft query from the angel—on the floor—brought his attention back to the present. His eyes met hers and he saw a wealth of questions in her guarded expression. She was trying to figure him out and that wasn’t going to happen.

He stood up and pierced her with a warning look that had been known to make grown men quake.

The plane dipped slightly and one of the small cars Ty was playing with rolled towards him. Leo automatically bent to pick it up and then his eyes met his son’s. They were blue, like his. And he could see now how Lexi had made the connection between them so quickly. On top of the eye colour, his son had the slashing eyebrows and strong bone structure that indicated his Cossack ancestry. Leo held his breath as dark images of Sasha at that age rolled into his brain like thunderclouds.

Ty moved towards him, intent on getting his car, and Leo felt the urge to get as far away from him as possible. Then he felt the unmistakable shift of the aircraft as it hit an air pocket, the bottom seeming to fall out of the plane. As if in slow motion, Ty stumbled, his little arms instinctively thrown forward to break his fall, and Leo reacted purely on instinct—reaching down and lifting his son into his arms before bracing himself against the side of the plane. They staggered together and Ty flung his arms around Leo’s neck and for the first time ever Leo breathed in his clean, little boy scent. His eyes closed, his body tensed. Within seconds the turbulence had passed, the plane once again steady.

‘Are you okay?’ Lexi’s worried voice broke his paralysis and he opened his eyes to find her standing in front of him. He released a breath and clenched his jaw. No, he was not okay.

‘Here.’ He thrust Ty at her. ‘Make sure he’s strapped in at all times while the plane is in the air,’ he grated coldly.

‘Mr Aleksandrov …’ He didn’t know what she had been about to say and he didn’t wait around to hear, making his way to his private bedroom for the rest of the journey. He slumped down on the edge of the bed and held his unsteady hands in front of him. Ty had felt so small and fragile. He spread his fingers and turned them back and forth, no longer seeing his own hands but those of his father’s. How had he hit them at such a young age?

Athens was a revelation to Lexi. Hot, dry, crumbly … ancient! She loved it. Loved the busyness of the streets and the organised chaos of locals, tourists and Vespas winging in and out of the traffic.

She pointed things out to Ty as their taxi fought its way through the gridlock to God only knew where. She hadn’t seen Leo after the incident on the plane and again found herself wondering at the type of man he was. She hadn’t missed the pain behind his eyes as he had looked at Ty on the plane. Almost as if he was looking at someone else. A ghost. And did that have anything to do with his nightmare last night?

She knew from reading his biography online that he was an only child to ‘warm and loving parents’ who had died in a tragic accident when he was twenty. From there he had bought a scaffolding company and turned it into a global entity before expanding into hotels and construction. According to Wikipedia he had become the richest man in Russia by his thirtieth birthday, a position he still held five years on.

But if he came from such a loving family, why had he never accepted Ty as his son? What had gone wrong between him and Amanda? She hadn’t been able to find any information about his connection to either one of them online, which was strange for such a high-profile person—which she now realised he was.

Not to mention the most exciting male she had ever set eyes on. Not that she planned to do anything about that. She only wished she wasn’t so physically aware of him.

Like now, with her thigh touching the length of his in the taxi they had been forced to take from the airport. They were supposed to have ridden in Leo’s helicopter, but as soon as Ty had heard the whine of the rotors he’d started to cry and Lexi had been pleasantly surprised when Leo had ordered a taxi instead. Now she was unpleasantly hot pressed against him in the confines of the small car and, from what she could tell by the amount of tapping Leo was doing on his phone, he hadn’t noticed at all.

Finally, they alighted from the taxi and Lexi stretched and looked around. The port of Piraeus was teeming with activity and various large ferries and boats were docked at the tiny, industrious harbour, Athens rising behind her in a tier of mostly grubby, worn, age-old buildings.

‘Look, Ty—’ she pointed up the hill, where a cluster of deep green trees circled below the rocky ledge that housed the Parthenon and other ancient ruins ‘—the Acropolis.’

The little boy looked, but of course showed none of the excitement that she felt.

‘Hurry up, it’s hot,’ Leo demanded grumpily behind her.

She turned and spotted the four casually dressed bodyguards she was still not used to flanking them.

‘Of course it’s hot.’ She smiled, determined not to let his dark mood, or her own awareness of him as a man, colour her enjoyment of her surroundings. He had forced her to come, but it was her natural inclination to try and find the best in every situation. ‘It’s summer in Greece. Have you been to the Acropolis before?’