Nine Months To Tame The Tycoon by Chantelle Shaw, Annie West
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TAKISSTAYEDBECAUSEhe could not bring himself to leave her. This woman who confounded him and amazed him more with every day that he learned something new about her. His wife was wise, Takis discovered. She understood there was a darkness inside him, and bit by bit he started to open up to her.
They lived at the villa, but not separately like when they had lived in the house in Athens before they’d married. Takis shared his bed with Lissa, ate his meals with her and spent all his time with her. They talked and laughed and made love endlessly, but he still could not get enough of her. Most days he worked in his study for a few hours and Lissa went into her design studio and made plans for the Aphrodite hotel.
Occasionally Takis had reason to go to his office in Athens, but he always returned in the evening, and when he climbed out of the helicopter and watched Lissa hurry across the garden to meet him it was like the first time he had ever seen her. That kick in his gut and the feeling that his life would never be the same again. Which, of course, it wouldn’t.
Soon Lissa was in the third trimester of her pregnancy and before long Takis would have a son. He did not know how he felt about that. He still avoided thinking about his imminent fatherhood or what kind of father he would be.
‘Life is about choices,’ Lissa told him. ‘I don’t believe we are born with our destiny mapped out in advance. We control our own destinies, as you did when you chose not to be a goat herder in a poor village and instead built a business empire. Just because your father was a brute, it doesn’t mean that you will be like him.’
Takis wanted to believe her, but sometimes in the middle of the night, when he lay in bed with Lissa curled up asleep beside him and felt his baby kick, he saw Giannis’s face and heard the little boy’s sobs. ‘Don’t leave me!’ It occurred to Takis that if he maintained a distance from his son when he was born, the child would not love him as Giannis had loved him, and so would not be devastated if his father failed him.
Takis set his complicated thoughts aside as he walked into the villa. This evening he and Lissa were to host a party to celebrate the completion of the refurbished Aphrodite hotel. His wife was very talented and she had done an amazing job. As he’d known she would. And Takis had shamelessly used his contacts to make sure everyone else knew it too. The guest list read like a who’s who of Europe’s social elite.
His meeting in Athens had overrun so he’d changed into a tuxedo before the helicopter had brought him back to Santorini.
Lissa was in their bedroom. Takis halted in the doorway, transfixed when she turned towards him. ‘You look...’ Words failed him.
‘Like a whale?’ she said drily, but Takis heard uncertainty in her voice and something inside him cracked.
‘Beautiful,’ he growled. She looked like a goddess in a gold floor-length gown. The off-the-shoulder bodice framed her ripe, round breasts. Her dress was made of some sort of shimmery material that skimmed over the big mound of her stomach.
Takis had noticed that she often touched her baby bump, and now she placed her hands on her belly in a protective gesture that made him want to fall to his knees and worship her. His child’s mother would never abandon her son like Takis’s mother had abandoned him. Like he had abandoned his brother. His son would always be loved.
He was aware of a host of emotions that he did not want to define. Because he was afraid, whispered a voice inside his head.
‘You look incredible,’ he told her as he walked over to her and drew her into his arms. ‘I ómorfi gynaíka mou. My beautiful wife.’
Fireworks exploded inside Lissa when Takis slanted his mouth over hers and kissed her. There was passion in his kiss but also a beguiling tenderness that dismantled the defences she tried to maintain around her heart to protect it from her husband. To protect herself from falling in love with him. She suspected that she was not doing very well on that score.
He groaned and pulled her against his whipcord body, as close as her swollen belly would allow. But Lissa jolted back to reality and regretfully broke the kiss.
‘We can’t,’ she gasped, snatching air into her lungs. Takis’s eyes gleamed like molten steel as he stared down at her. ‘We can’t be late for the party,’ she reminded him. ‘It is an important night for you, the opening of the tenth hotel in the Perseus chain.’
His chest heaved as he released a ragged breath. ‘Tonight is your night to shine when your designs are unveiled. As badly as I want to make love to you, and I do, desperately, I will make myself wait for a few hours. You deserve your time in the spotlight and the accolades for your work that I know you will receive.’
He reached inside his jacket and withdrew a narrow box, which he opened to reveal an exquisite necklace and drop earrings made of rose gold and set with white diamonds.
Lissa’s eyes widened when he held the box out to her. ‘I can’t accept...’
‘Please. I had them made for you.’
Swallowing hard, she turned towards the mirror and attached the earrings to her lobes while Takis stood behind her and fastened the necklace around her throat.
‘They’re dazzling,’ she whispered, tracing her finger over the diamonds sparkling on her décolletage. The jewellery was beautiful, but it was the expression in Takis’s eyes, a softness that had not been there before, that made Lissa’s heart turn over.
‘You will dazzle our guests,’ he said thickly. ‘While we are at the party I will be imagining you wearing the diamonds and nothing else, which is exactly what will happen later tonight.’ He slid his arms around her waist and placed his hands on her stomach just as the baby gave a hard kick.
His expression shifted and for a moment there was a look of such intense pain on his face that Lissa caught her breath. Takis had appointed one of the top obstetricians in the country to oversee her pregnancy, and he paid for Dr Papoulis to fly to Santorini every week for the antenatal appointments. But she still did not really know how he felt about becoming a father, or how he felt about her, for that matter.
They had grown closer since he’d moved into the villa and their marriage was working out better than Lissa had dared hope. But something was missing. Love was missing. She tried to convince herself that what she had with Takis, friendship, mutual respect and their physical compatibility, was enough. But it did not feel enough.
Sometimes she wondered if she was destined to spend her life longing to be loved, and it hurt because she had so much love inside her to give. She wondered what would happen if she were brave enough to tell Takis of her feelings for him. But if she did, and he did not feel the same way about her, it would drive him away.
Takis stepped away from her and picked up her wrap from the bed. ‘We should go,’ he murmured as he handed it to her, ‘or we will be late.’
He drove them along the winding coast road to the hotel. Butterflies leapt in Lissa’s stomach when she stood with Takis in the Aphrodite’s opulent lobby to greet the guests. She had hoped that her dramatic designs would make an impact when people entered the hotel, and the favourable comments that she overheard seemed to indicate that she’d pulled it off.
‘I am proud of my hotel and incredibly proud of you,’ Takis told her later in the evening when he found her in the wedding room. ‘You did not need to feel nervous. Everyone is blown away by your creation of a unique venue that has an ambiance that is both welcoming and unashamedly luxurious.’
‘How did you know I was nervous?’ she asked.
‘I know you, koúkla mou,’ he said softly. ‘There is an English expression, you wear your heart on your sleeve.’
Lissa hoped he could not really tell everything that she was thinking and feeling. For the first time ever, she was glad to be interrupted by a journalist, who came into the room and asked for an interview. It helped that the journalist was not a member of the paparazzi and worked for a prestigious interior design magazine.
‘What was your inspiration for the wedding room and the stunning terrace where open-air weddings can take place?’ the journalist asked.
‘Since I was a little girl, I imagined getting married in a beautiful, romantic setting, and I wanted to create a fairy-tale venue where brides and grooms can have a truly magical wedding of their dreams.’
‘You must have wished that the Aphrodite had been finished in time for your own wedding,’ the journalist commented.
Lissa felt Takis’s gaze on her and wondered if he was remembering the functional room in the civic hall where they had married purely because she had conceived his child. She needed to remember the reason why he had married her. ‘A wedding is special wherever it takes place,’ she said to the journalist, hoping she sounded convincing.
Those butterflies inside her started fluttering again when Takis drove the car away from the hotel at the end of the evening. Although he told her she was beautiful, she felt insecure about her pregnant body. When they walked into the villa he swept her into his arms and carried her up the stairs to the bedroom, ignoring her pleas to put her down because she weighed a ton.
‘Do you not see how beautiful you are?’ he murmured as he freed her from the bodice of her dress and made a feral sound in his throat as he cradled her bare breasts in his hands. He tugged her dress down over her stomach so that it slid to the floor, leaving her in her tiny, lace knickers and the diamond necklace sparkling at her throat.
She stared at their reflections in the mirror. His tanned hands cupped her pale breasts, and streaks of dull colour ran along his cheekbones. He rubbed his thumb pads over her nipples until they were pebble-hard and rosy pink.
‘You are a goddess. My goddess,’ Takis told her in an unsteady voice that clutched at her heart. He stripped off his clothes with an urgency that thrilled her, and then he sat her on the edge of the bed and sank to his knees in front of her. He pushed her thighs apart and worshipped her with his tongue and his clever fingers until she sobbed his name.
‘Lissa mou.’ He murmured her name like a prayer as he slowly eased his swollen length inside her. She gasped as he filled her, and he hesitated and withdrew a little way.
‘Am I hurting you?’ His gentle concern curled around her heart.
‘Only when you stop,’ she muttered as she wrapped her legs around his hips to bring her pelvis flush with his.
He laughed softly. ‘I have no intention of stopping until you scream my name, koúkla mou.’
It was the sweetest threat Lissa had ever heard and she gloried in his fierce possession as he thrust deep, over and over again. She could deny him nothing. She was conscious only of Takis driving into her, taking her higher, and then holding her there at the edge for timeless seconds. He slipped his hand between their bodies and gave a clever twist of his fingers, and his name left her lips on a sharp cry as she shattered.
He hadn’t finished with her and built her up again with his skilful caresses so that she climaxed twice more. Only then, when she was flushed with ecstasy and utterly replete, did he take his own pleasure with a hard thrust that tore a groan from his throat.
Afterwards he lifted himself off her and cradled her against his chest. Lissa loved the warm afterglow as much as she loved the amazing sex, but as she hovered on the edge of sleep a thought niggled in her mind. Takis had seemed to enjoy their lovemaking, but he had been different tonight, more controlled. They had just shared the most intimate moments that two people could experience, but despite their physical closeness he was still unreachable.
The baby was due in eight weeks, and Takis was concerned about Lissa flying in the helicopter and insisted on them returning to Athens to be closer to the private maternity hospital where she was booked to give birth. He had bought the house that he’d previously leased, and Lissa spent happy hours designing and overseeing the decoration of the nursery. She had been worried that Takis might spend hours in his study, as he had done in the past, but the close relationship that had developed between them in Santorini continued to flourish.
He had encouraged Lissa to set up her own interior design business. ‘There is no need for you to work and I know you want to be a full-time mother for a while, but you are amazingly talented, and you could take on design contracts when the baby is a bit older, if you want to.’
Lissa had glowed with pride at Takis’s praise. For a long time she had believed her grandfather when he had told her that she would never be good at anything, even after his death. But she had proved to herself that she was not worthless. She was no longer the person who had hidden her insecurity behind a party girl image that had never been the real her. She was a woman growing in self-confidence, a wife, and soon to be a mother.
The next step on her journey to what she hoped would be her very own happy-ever-after was to be honest with Takis about how she felt about him. Once, she would have been too afraid of rejection to contemplate such a daring step. But she had a good reason to overcome her fear, Lissa thought when her son kicked so hard against her ribcage that she caught her breath. Even if Takis did not love her, she had to know if he would love their baby. If he could love their baby.
All these thoughts came to her early one morning when the new dawn made the world seem full of possibilities. And because she had become brave, and before her nerve failed her, she rolled on to her side in the bed, which was no easy task when her big belly was cumbersome, and her eyes met Takis’s sleepy gaze.
‘Kaliméra, koúkla mou.’His sexy smile almost stole her the words she was about to speak.
‘I need to tell you something. I’m falling in love with you.’
Takis froze and his gut twisted into a knot of fear. Love had ripped his heart out and left a void in his chest ever since he had thrown a handful of earth on to Giannis’s coffin. He didn’t have any love to give. How had he let this happen, let things get this far?
‘Take my advice and don’t,’ he told Lissa curtly.
She dropped her hand from his chest, and he hated the look of hurt on her face, hated that he was the cause of it.
‘Why complicate things?’ He made his voice softer, realising that he needed to reassure her of his commitment. ‘We have become good friends as well as good lovers. I respect you and I admire your talent. I’m hoping that when the baby is older, you will accept a position with my Perseus hotel chain as an interior design consultant.’
He lifted his hand to smooth her long fringe off her face and felt the knot inside him tighten when she turned her head away, but not before he’d glimpsed the disappointment in her eyes. Disappointment with him. She shifted across to her side of the bed. It was a very big bed, and the chasm that he sensed had opened up between him and Lissa was widening by the second. But what was he to do? Takis asked himself. He had not asked her to fall in love with him. The idea of it appalled him. Lissa deserved better. He was dead inside, and he couldn’t change. Maybe he did not want to change, suggested a snide little voice inside him. Maybe he was too much of a coward to try.
‘We will create a family for our son like the happy family you once had,’ he sought to reassure her. Takis had no experience of a happy family, but he knew family was important to Lissa and he was prepared to promise anything to see that light in her eyes again. ‘It is my responsibility to make a success of our marriage and I will not fail to do the best for our son and for you.’
Lissa nodded as she got up out of the bed, but she did not look at him. He wondered if that could be enough for her.
Over the next two weeks Takis did his best to prove that he was committed to their marriage, even if he could not give Lissa the romantic dream she hoped for. Thankfully, she had not said anything more about her feelings for him. That morning, when she’d dropped a boulder into the still pool of their relationship, he had handled it badly, he acknowledged. She had locked herself in the bathroom for a worryingly long time, eventually emerging with flushed cheeks—from having had a bath, she’d told him—and suspiciously bright eyes that neither of them mentioned.
They both tried to carry on as if nothing had happened, but he felt edgy and he sensed that Lissa had withdrawn from him. One Saturday, Takis suggested a trip to the Acropolis Museum. They spent a few hours wandering around the exhibition halls before climbing the steep path and steps up to the top of the Acropolis hill to wander around the breathtaking Parthenon, built as a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena.
‘What an incredible view,’ Lissa murmured as they stood and looked at the city spread out before them. She rubbed her lower back and Takis frowned when he saw her wince.
‘Are you in pain?’ He led her over to a bench. ‘Sit for a while. We shouldn’t have spent so long in the museum. Too much standing is not good for you.’
‘A bit of backache is normal at this stage of my pregnancy.’ She took a sharp breath. ‘I’ve been having some of the practice contractions that the obstetrician said might happen.’
‘Theós! Why did you not tell me before we climbed to the top of the hill?’ Fear greater than he had ever felt before made Takis’s heart clench.
‘I’m fine.’ Lissa focused on her breathing, like the midwife at the antenatal classes had told her. She’d woken with mild backache that morning but hadn’t paid much attention to what had been no more than a niggle. When Takis had suggested visiting the museum her foolish heart had leapt at the chance to spend time with him away from the house, which had felt claustrophobic since she’d mentioned the L word.
His horrified expression would have almost been funny if it hadn’t made her want to weep. Pride had got her into the bathroom before she’d let her tears fall, and pride had made her stick a plaster over her wounded heart and carry on as if she did not feel utterly broken by his rejection.
‘We must go home,’ Takis said now in a tense voice. She couldn’t work out if he was annoyed or concerned. She let him help her to her feet and was glad of his hand beneath her elbow when a pain shot across her stomach. By the time they had walked back down the hill and climbed into the car, the tightening sensations were happening with alarming regularity. Her labour could not have started six weeks early, Lissa tried to reassure herself. But the next contraction was so intense that she gave a cry.
‘Takis...’ She hesitated. ‘I think the baby is coming.’
He swore and pulled out his phone to call the maternity hospital. ‘They know we are on our way,’ he told her after he’d instructed the chauffeur to drive faster.
‘It might be a false alarm.’ Lissa gritted her teeth as another sharp pain tore through her.
‘Mr Papoulis and his obstetrics team are preparing for you to give birth.’
Takis had never seemed so remote but for once Lissa wasn’t thinking about him. ‘I’m scared,’ she said on a sob. ‘It’s too early for the baby to be born.’
Their son didn’t think so. She needed an emergency Caesarean. Lissa’s blood pressure was soaring, and the baby was in distress, so she was rushed into Theatre and given an epidural anaesthetic. Everything became a frightening blur of bright lights and urgent voices from medical staff dressed in green operating gowns.
But then Takis appeared beside the trolley where she was lying. His eyes locked with hers as he clasped her hand in his strong fingers, and she clung to him as if he were a lifeline. She could not see over the screen that had been put across her stomach, but Takis suddenly gripped her hand tighter. ‘He’s here. The baby has been born.’
‘Is he all right?’ Lissa asked fearfully. The silence seemed to last for an eternity before she heard a shrill cry as the baby took his first breath. Tears streamed down her face when a nurse placed the tiny infant on her chest for a few moments, but then he was wrapped up in blanket ready to be whisked away to the neonatal unit.
‘His name is Elias,’ Lissa told her nurse, who was writing the labels to go around the baby’s fragile wrist and ankle. She understood that her baby would need special care, but her arms ached to hold him, and her heart ached for love that she hoped her son would feel for her. Love that her husband could not or would not give her.
Takis stared at his baby son lying in the incubator with wires and tubes attached to his tiny body. It was impossible to believe that this scrap of humanity would survive. He blamed himself for Elias’s premature birth. Lissa should have been resting, not traipsing around a museum. It was he who had not been able to give her the love she deserved. Who had suggested they leave the confines of their home to escape the emotions left unspoken, but which hung in the air. He was sure that was the reason she had gone into early labour.
His heart clenched. The baby had a mass of dark hair and reminded him of Giannis. Theos! Takis had not wanted a child, but his son was here, fragile and terrifyingly vulnerable. He had promised that he would protect his son and provide for him, and he would gladly do both. But more than that? He remembered how Lissa had looked at him and said fiercely, ‘You have to love our child.’
Love, that most unstable of emotions that risked pain and heartbreak. He did not want to take the risk and feel the pain of loss. He dared not love his little son.
‘What kind of father will you be?’ Lissa had asked him. Now he had the answer. Elias’s father was a coward, and if Lissa knew the truth, no doubt the light in her eyes that shone so brightly when she looked at him, that light that made him want to be a better man, would dim.