Nine Months To Tame The Tycoon by Chantelle Shaw, Annie West
CHAPTER NINE
‘AREYOUSURE the baby is all right?’ Lissa asked the nurse who was pushing her in a wheelchair along the hospital corridor.
‘Baby is fine. Your pregnancy was constantly monitored while you were in intensive care, but you will feel more reassured when you have an ultrasound scan later today. We’ll get you settled in your room first.’
Lissa glanced around the pretty room they had entered. It was decorated in shades of pink and reminded her of a luxury hotel room. ‘This doesn’t look like a hospital ward.’
‘Mr Samaras arranged for you to have a private room,’ the nurse explained as she helped Lissa on to the bed. ‘Would you like me to put your photographs on the bedside cabinet? Mr Samaras brought them in,’ she said as Lissa looked puzzled when she saw two framed photos of her family that had been on the bureau in her apartment at Francine’s hotel.
She remembered that whenever she had opened her eyes Takis had been sitting next to her hospital bed. But her memory was vague. The doctor had explained that she’d been rushed to the hospital by ambulance and admitted to the intensive care unit after she had collapsed.
‘You experienced a thyroid storm, which is a rare complication of hyperthyroidism. Your thyroid levels were dangerously high, which caused your blood pressure to soar. The condition can be fatal if it is not treated quickly.’ The doctor was confident that Lissa’s pregnancy should continue normally with her thyroid condition controlled with medication. Although there was a risk that that she could go into labour prematurely.
‘How long have I been in hospital?’ she asked the nurse.
‘A week. You were very poorly for a few days. That handsome fiancé of yours has been very worried about you.’
Fiancé?Lissa’s memory was becoming clearer. Takis had demanded that she marry him, but she had never agreed she would. Thankfully, her baby was unharmed by what had happened to her. She wondered if Takis had been worried about the baby, or if he’d hoped that her illness would put an end to her pregnancy. Tears filled her eyes as she lay back on the pillows.
She must have slept because when she awoke, Takis was sitting on a chair beside the bed. Her heart flipped as she studied him. He was as gorgeous as ever, but there were grooves on either side of his mouth that had not been there a week ago.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked. Nothing in his voice or shuttered expression gave a clue to his thoughts.
‘Better,’ Lissa told him. ‘You don’t need to be here. I’m sure you must want to go back to Greece to run your business.’ She bit her lip when his heavy brows drew together.
‘I have stated that you and the child you are carrying are my responsibility.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Theos! It is my fault that you nearly died,’ he said harshly. Lissa had never seen him so unrestrained.
‘How do you work that out?’
‘Your thyroid condition means that pregnancy is a higher risk for you. I should have been more careful when we had sex.’ A dark flush ran along his sharp cheekbones. ‘There was one time in the bath when I was reckless.’
‘There were two of us,’ Lissa said quietly. ‘I was reckless too.’ Takis could not spell it out any clearer that he regretted her pregnancy.
The tense silence was broken by a knock on the door, and a nurse entered the room. ‘I’ve come to take you for your ultrasound scan, Miss Buchanan. Would you like your fiancé to accompany you?’
Lissa glanced at Takis. ‘Well, do you want to see your baby?’
His eyes narrowed at her challenging tone. He seemed to be waging an internal battle with himself. ‘I would like to be at the scan,’ he said in a tense voice.
In the scanning room Lissa had the sense that everything was surreal. She hadn’t had much time to assimilate the news that she was pregnant before she’d been taken ill, and the time she’d spent in intensive care was a blur. A nurse helped her on to a bed and the sonographer smeared gel on to her stomach. When she was lying down her bump was barely discernible.
‘Every pregnant woman carries differently,’ the sonographer assured her. ‘But your baby is definitely in there. This is the heart.’ She pointed to a tiny, flickering speck on the screen. ‘And here we have the head and spine.’
Lissa held her breath. Her eyes were fixed on the image on the screen. It was real. In a few months she was going to have a baby. A little person of her own who she would love, and who would love her. She felt overwhelmed with emotion and fiercely protective of the new life that she would soon bring into the world. A new life she would never let feel like a burden to her.
‘The baby is a bit smaller than I would have expected for your dates, but there is no cause for concern at the moment,’ the sonographer explained. ‘I can tell you the sex if you would like to know.’
Lissa looked at Takis. He had not spoken during the scan and she had no idea what he was thinking. ‘It is your decision,’ he said. There was nothing in his voice to give a clue to how he felt at seeing his unborn child. Perhaps if they knew whether she was expecting a boy or girl, Takis would feel more of a connection to the baby.
‘We would like to know,’ Lissa said to the sonographer.
‘You are expecting a boy. Congratulations.’
Lissa’s heart leapt. A little boy! She wondered what he would be like and imagined a baby with dark hair like his father. She had felt him stiffen when they had been told the baby’s gender. How did Takis feel about having a son? She glanced at him and was startled by an expression of stark pain on his face. She turned her head back towards the screen and the image of their tiny son. When she looked at Takis again, his hard features were once more unreadable. But Lissa could not forget his devastated expression or help but wonder what it had meant. Whether he truly feared fatherhood or if it was something more.
He pushed her wheelchair back to her room and ignored her protest that she did not need his help as he lifted her on to the bed. The brief moments when he held her in his arms evoked a sharp tug of longing in Lissa, and she swept her eyelashes down to hide her expression from his speculative gaze.
‘Thank you for bringing these from home,’ she said, picking up the photographs of her family.
‘I thought you might like to have them. How old were you when the photos were taken?’
‘Ten. The picture of me with my mum and dad was taken at a gymnastics competition. I’d won a medal and they were so proud of me. Mum had been a gymnastics champion and she encouraged me to take up the sport.’
She held up the other photo. ‘This was taken on a family holiday to Ireland before my parents flew to Sri Lanka to celebrate their wedding anniversary. It was the last picture of them before they died.’ Her heart gave a pang as she looked at her parents smiling faces.
‘You had a close relationship with them?’
‘I was the spoiled, youngest child, and my brother and sister probably resented all the attention my parents gave me,’ she said ruefully. ‘But we were a happy family.’ She remembered family events, birthdays and Christmases that her parents had made so magical. They had made her feel safe and secure and loved, and that was what she wanted for her baby.
She looked at Takis. ‘Why did you ask me to marry you?’
He frowned. ‘You know why. You are pregnant with my baby.’
‘Yes, but why insist on marriage—really? I’ve told you that you don’t have to stick around.’
His jaw clenched. ‘I will not abandon my child. He is my heir. It would make no difference if you were expecting a girl,’ he said before Lissa could speak. ‘I am determined to protect my son and provide for him. My business interests have made me wealthy and I can give him a good lifestyle and the best education. Everything that I did not have,’ he added.
Lissa nodded. ‘I’m not so naive as to think that money and the privileges it brings are not important. But it is far more important that our son grows up knowing that he is loved unconditionally.’
Takis did not respond, but perhaps men did not feel the surge of devotion that expectant mothers felt to their unborn children—that she certainly felt—Lissa mused. It would be different when the baby was born and Takis held his son in his arms. She had to believe that. She wanted to believe they would create a family unit that she had craved after her parents had been cruelly snatched from her.
‘I will marry you,’ she told him, trying to ignore the lurch her heart gave, the feeling that she had taken a leap into the unknown. ‘My brush with death, or at least serious illness, has made me see things more clearly. No one can predict what will happen in life. My parents went on holiday and did not return.’
She swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘If we are married and something should happen to me, I’ll have the reassurance of knowing that my son will still have his father, and there will be no question over who should bring him up.’
Takis frowned. ‘Nothing is going to happen to you.’
‘You can’t be certain. I’m not being pessimistic, just realistic.’ She sighed. ‘After my parents died my father’s cousin and his wife offered to have me and my brother and sister. But my grandfather was the next of kin and we were sent to live with him. Pappoús didn’t want Mark and me, and he only took an interest in Eleanor because he groomed her to take over the family’s hotel business.’
Lissa wished Takis would say something. His lack of enthusiasm was a reminder that he believed it was his duty to marry her. She was once again someone’s responsibility. At least that’s clearly the way he felt. It was a far cry from the romantic dreams she’d had when she’d been a little girl of meeting her Prince Charming. But she’d stopped believing in fairy tales as well as Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy when her parents had died. More than anything she wanted security for her son. Which meant she must marry her baby’s enigmatic father.
‘I will make the arrangements for the wedding to take place in Greece,’ Takis told Lissa. His voice was clipped, his emotions tightly controlled. He knew from the slight quiver of her bottom lip that she was hurt by his brusqueness.
Frustration surged through him. He had never wanted to marry or have a child, but fate, or more truthfully, his spectacular lack of control when he’d had sex with Lissa and his hunger for her had run wild, meant that he would soon be a husband and a father.
He was going to have a son. The shock of it ripped through him. If he had not attended Lissa’s scan, he might have been able to distance his emotions from the situation. But she had looked at him with such fierce hope in her eyes that he’d found himself agreeing to go to the scanning room. And in truth he had been curious to see his child.
It had been worse and at the same time more incredible than he could have imagined. The images on the screen of his baby had been surprisingly clear, and the sight of a tiny beating heart had made his own heart clench. Right then, he had made a silent vow that he would give his life to protect his child, as he should have protected his brother years ago.
Memories slid from their lair in his mind. They were always there, waiting for him to drop his guard, and as soon as he did, they tormented him.
‘Where are you going? It’s night-time.’
Giannis’s sleepy voice had come from the mattress on the floor that he’d shared with Takis.
‘Can I come with you?’
‘Not this time, agoraki mou.’ Takis had knelt and pulled his little brother into his arms. ‘I have to go away for a while. Don’t cry. I promise I will come back for you soon.’
He’d felt Giannis’s hot tears on his neck as sobs had shaken the boy’s skinny body. ‘I don’t want you to go, Takis. Stay with me...’
That was the last time Takis had held his brother. He had returned to the village only once, to carry Giannis’s coffin into the church. Even after all this time his grief was still raw. He had betrayed an innocent child’s faith, his word had meant nothing and the memory of Giannis’s tears would haunt him forever.
Lissa was looking at him and he did not understand why he felt such an urge to confide his secret shame to her. There could be no absolution for what he had done. He glanced at the photograph of her with her parents. There had been so much love in her voice when she’d spoken about them.
Something inside him cracked as he thought of the reason why she had agreed to marry him. Marriage would ensure that he was the baby’s legal guardian. Lissa had suffered the devastating loss of her parents, and she was determined to spare her child from rejection, which was how her grandfather had treated her.
‘I give you my word that I will protect our son, always,’ he said gruffly. He would make sure he kept it this time.
Her blue eyes widened. Those beautiful blue eyes, the colour of the summer sky, that had cast a spell on him the instant he’d met her. But he would not allow her to bewitch him with her mix of innocence and sensuality again, Takis assured himself. He could not.
‘And love.’ She stared at him, and he wondered if she had noticed him flinch at the word. ‘You will love our son, I hope. That’s the deal.’
It was not his deal and never would be, but Takis did not tell her that his heart was buried on a mountainside with a little boy he had betrayed.
‘You should rest,’ he said briskly, avoiding Lissa’s gaze. ‘As soon as you are well enough to be discharged from hospital we will fly to Athens so that I can organise the necessary paperwork for us to marry. I would prefer a simple ceremony and a minimum of fuss.’
‘I’d like my sister to be my bridesmaid.’ A pink stain ran along her cheekbones, emphasising her delicate beauty. ‘Our marriage is a practical solution to the situation we find ourselves in. But Eleanor won’t understand. She married Jace for love. I don’t want her to worry about me, especially while she is pregnant. It would be better if we pretend that our marriage is real.’
‘There is no reason why anyone else should know the truth of our relationship,’ Takis agreed. But as he roamed his eyes over Lissa another truth hit him. A strap of her nightgown had slipped down to reveal a slim shoulder and the smooth slope of her breast, and he felt a white-hot flash of desire in his groin.
This was the reason he found himself in a situation that required him to marry, even though he had never wanted a wife, and still did not, Takis thought furiously. This uncontrollable desire that he’d never felt so intensely for any other woman. When he had met Lissa months ago he’d been unable to resist her sensual allure, but he’d limited himself to one night with her. However, their one perfect night had resulted in her conceiving his child and had changed the course of his life.
But he would control his body’s response to her that made his heart rate quicken and his blood thunder through his veins. He was determined that their marriage would be on his terms, but Lissa’s suggestion to allow other people to believe they were marrying for conventional reasons made sense, Takis decided.
‘We will live in Greece,’ he told her. ‘I own a penthouse apartment in Athens, but it is not a suitable place to bring up a child. Do you have any preferences on the kind of house you would like?’
‘So I am to have a choice?’
He narrowed his eyes to hide his irritation at her sarcastic tone. ‘I would like to bring up my son in Greece. I assumed you understood that, but if you object strongly I suppose I can consider moving my business base to England.’
‘I don’t mind living in Greece. But I want us to discuss things. I am an adult, not a child who you can tell what to do,’ Lissa said with some asperity. ‘Marriage is about compromise.’
‘I will try to remember,’ he said evenly. Compromise was not a word in Takis’s vocabulary, but he would put his ring on Lissa’s finger and thereby claim his child before she discovered that fact.