Baby of Shame (10 page)

Rhianna
swallowed. The lump in her throat was worse.

‘He was very ill. It was expected.’

‘How long had he been ill?’

What the hell was this?
she
thought.
The Spanish Inquisition?

‘Years.’

‘Years?
What was he suffering from?’

A broken heart.
It was true. Losing Davies Yacht Design had broken her father’s heart. Living people were nothing compared to his yachts.

‘He’d had heart problems for years. Heart attacks, strokes.
That sort of stuff.’

She could feel Alexis’s eyes boring down at her. She wanted him to drop dead. Go away. Disappear. But he wouldn’t. He just kept on at her.

‘Increasingly common,’ he observed, as though to say something—anything. He seemed to pause a moment. ‘I did not know of your loss. Or that it was so recent.’ There was
a certain
stiffness in the way he spoke.

‘It was more of a release than anything. The end was…difficult.’ She stared down at her lap.

‘It always is.’

There was
a terseness
in the way he spoke that made her glance up suddenly. She saw a bleakness about him that made her start.

Then Nicky was trotting back out on the terrace.

‘Come on, Mummy!’

He rushed off down to the beach.

Before she
realised
what was happening
Rhianna
felt an arm scoop around her back and under her knees. She was lifted up effortlessly, as if she were
swansdown
.

Shock transfixed her. Then, frantically, she started to try and free herself.

‘Put me down! Please!’

Alexis stared down at her, motionless suddenly. There was hysteria in her voice.

‘Let me go.’

Slowly, he lowered her to the ground.

‘What—?’

She shrank away from him, backing up against the balustrade.

‘Don’t
touch
me!’ she whispered.

She made her own way down on to the beach, across the sand, resolutely refusing to take the arm Alexis silently proffered. It was slow progress, but she did it, and she sank gratefully down on to the sand, where Nicky had started to dig.

Alexis hunkered down beside the small figure and set to. Like Nicky, he was in shorts and T-shirt.

Rhianna
watched them. Gradually her raised heart-rate was slowing, her breathing easing. The sand was warm and soft under her bare shins. She slid out of her sandals and let the fine sand drift between her toes. The warm sun beat down from the blue sky—not hot, but with gentle heat.

Alexis Petrakis was digging as industriously as her son. Two sable heads were bent to their task, delving deep into the damp sand at the bottom of a large hole, chucking the sand aside.

As she watched something strange seemed to be happening to her. The two sable heads were so alike. So was the air of concentration. Her gaze slipped to Alexis Petrakis.

Nicky’s father.

But I don’t want him to be. I don’t
want
him to be Nicky’s father!
she
thought desperately.

But she could want all she liked and it would not make it less true. Alexis Petrakis was Nicky’s father. His genes were in Nicky—their shared
colouring
was testimony to that. And as she studied their industrious faces she felt her breath catch. It was more than the dark hair that made them look similar. There was something in the eyes, the shape of the mouth, the contours of the
cheeks, that
echoed each other. Words drifted back to her—Alexis Petrakis telling her that he had
recognised
Nicky instantly from his resemblance to himself when young.

Her mouth thinned. Alexis Petrakis could never have been young. He could never have been as Nicky was now, a loving, affectionate, vulnerable child…

Yet he looked different now from the way he usually looked.

He looked younger, she thought suddenly, even though he was nearly five years older than when she’d first seen him. Maybe it was just because he was wearing casual beach clothes, not the sophisticated tuxedo he’d been wearing when—

No. Don’t think about that. Don’t remember it.

But memories stole back. Not the hideous, ghastly morning after, but to the evening before.

He’d just been so incredibly
attractive,
she hadn’t been able to drag her eyes from him for a moment. And she still couldn’t.

Her eyes flickered over his face. He was in three-quarter profile and she could see the cut of his cheekbones, the strong slash of his nose, the arc of his brows, the set of his mouth. She wanted to go on staring.
Just staring.

Something stirred deep within her.
Something that had been dormant for a long, long time.
For five long, bitter, grinding years.

She didn’t want to feel it.
Didn’t want it stirring.
Waking.

But it did all the same. Like a flickering heat somewhere deep, deep within her.

She dragged her eyes away from him, back to Nicky.

His son.

Our son.

Oh, God, Nicky was their son—they had created him between them.
Created him on that night that had melted her like wax in his arms.

The night had been magical, wonderful,
incandescent
. She had never known, never dreamt it was possible to feel the way she had.

And yet for him it had never been intended as anything more than a one-night stand—a casual appetite for a woman easily sated.

But if it hadn’t…?

What if that night, five long years ago, had been something quite, quite different?

Her eyes saw them both.
Alexis and Nicky.

Her heart clenched, stopping the blood. A mirage floated in her vision. Alexis, her husband, and Nicky, the son they had created together on the first, wonderful night of many, many nights together. They could have been a family together, warm and loving and happy…

The mirage faded. Her heart started to beat again in dull, heavy slugs.

Alexis Petrakis had used her,
then
thrown her from him the next morning with the harshest, most unjust condemnation. Refusing to let her explain, justify herself.

He wasn’t fit to be her son’s father.

And yet…

She watched them digging, working as a team together, discussing the depth and size of the hole.
Quite easy in each other’s company.

The admission came unwillingly, but it came.

She might loathe Alexis Petrakis, might wish with all her heart that he was not the father of her son, but for all that she could not deny—quite extraordinarily—he was good with Nicky. Nicky was responding to him, she could see. It was nothing overt, nothing emotional. But Nicky had…accepted him.

She felt her heart twist suddenly. Nicky didn’t even know who this man was. Still didn’t know that the man digging a hole in the sand with him was his father.

A new thought came to her.

Maybe Alexis Petrakis wasn’t planning on telling him after all. Maybe he was still thinking about whether to acknowledge him as his son.

Supposing he does and then changes his mind?

Her stomach clenched. Far, far worse than not knowing who your father was would
be knowing
your father had rejected you.

As if you weren’t good enough for him.

As if you’d failed him.

Emotion knifed through her.
Emotion and memory.

Nicky scrambled to his feet.

‘I want to put water in!’ he announced. He seized his bucket and raced to the sea’s edge.

Before she could stop herself
Rhianna
heard
herself
blurting out, as Nicky ran out of earshot.

‘You’re not going to acknowledge him, are you? He’s not going to know you’re his father, is he?’

Alexis’s head
swivelled
to her.

‘Nicky will know I am his father. When I judge the time to be right I will tell him,’ he said grimly.

‘You can’t change your mind once he knows. You know that, don’t you? You can’t decide later that you don’t want to be his father any more.’

There was sharpness in her voice. And fear too.

He looked at her, eyes narrowed.

Assessing.

The way he’d looked at her when he’d come out on the terrace.

‘I have no intention of doing so. Nicky is my son for ever.’ His voice became grim suddenly. ‘Every boy needs a father. Something you callously chose to ignore. His needs are paramount.
Which is why you will stay with Nicky while he needs you—
’

‘He’ll
always
need me. I’m his
mother!’

His jaw tightened. ‘While he needs you, he has you.’ His eyes flashed again, dark fire. ‘I would
never
part a child from its mother—even if she wanted to leave him!’

Rhianna
stared at him incredulously.

‘
No
woman leaves her child!’

There was a sudden night-black tension in his face.

‘Some do. Some women have no maternal instinct. It is a quality absent from their beings.’

Rhianna
bit her lip. ‘Then they don’t have children.’

‘Don’t they?’ The dark of his eyes seemed to be burning with a blackness that was impenetrable. That reached down into the depths.

Something shuddered deep inside her. Then, like the breaking of a tautening wire, Nicky was stumbling towards them with his bucket slopping water, and Alexis turned his attention away from her.

Back to his son.

Nicky was pouring the water into the hole. He watched it a moment, then announced.

‘It’s going away!’

‘It won’t stay, Nicky,’ Alexis told him. ‘It’s draining into the sand.’

‘But I want it to stay!’ Nicky exclaimed indignantly.

‘We can’t always have what he
want
,’ he replied.

His eyes flickered towards the woman who sat, legs curled under her, on the sand. No, you couldn’t always have what you wanted.

He didn’t want
Rhianna
Davies to be Nicky’s mother, but she was.

He watched her a moment. Her face was shuttered and tense, not looking anywhere near him. She was still thin, but she was no longer the death’s head she’d been when he’d first laid eyes on her in hospital.

A frown darkened his eyes.

It hadn’t been drugs that had made her look so ill.

When the nurse had so soundly refuted this, he’d contacted Dr
Paniotis
and he had confirmed this morning that there was no evidence of drug abuse by
Rhianna
Davies. What the social worker had found in her flat had simply been flu powder. And she had, indeed, been suffering from a serious untreated lung infection before she’d been knocked down on a pedestrian crossing by a drunk speeding driver.

Which meant that it had not been her fault she’d ended up in hospital looking like a death’s head.
Which meant—

His mind veered off the path it was leading him down. No, he would not feel compunction. Nor pity for her. He could be glad, yes, for Nicky’s sake, that at least she wasn’t a drug addict, but that in no way exonerated her from the rest of her crimes.

He glanced covertly at her again, seeing the lines around her mouth, her eyes.

Chronic exhaustion, her medical records stated, on top of being ill and injured.

He frowned again. Why had she made no mention of the fact that her father had died so recently? Or that he’d been ill for so long.

He knew how much of a strain it could be when a parent was ill for years. With his father, it had taken two years from his first heart attack to his final fatal one, and the time had stretched endlessly. His father had refused to acknowledge his ‘weakness’, as he’d called it, and insisted on keeping all the reins of power of Petrakis International. Yet his obsessive determination to stay at the helm had inevitably shortened his life. Nor had he let his son take some of the pressure from him.

His son?
Alexis’s mouth twisted suddenly. His father’s final bitter words to him, as he had surfaced, so briefly, from his last massive attack, reverberated in his mind.

Instinctively, his eyes went back to Nicky.

My son, he thought.
My son.

Emotion, fierce and protective, surged through him.

‘G
OODNIGHT
, my darling.’
Rhianna
smoothed her sleeping son’s hair one last time, a huge, unending wave of love and protection pouring from her. Nothing would take him from her again.
Not principalities nor
powers.

And not Alexis Petrakis.

He says he won’t part you, though. He says while Nicky needs you he will have you…

And you trust him? You actually trust a man like that? Who did what he did to you?
Pain stabbed at her, twisting like a knife.

How could he have been so callous to her? How could he have treated her like that?

The answer came cold and clear, the way it always did.

Hurting her more than anything else.

Because you were just a one-night stand.
Casual sex.
No one important…

She got to her feet. Well, now she was his son’s mother.

And Alexis Petrakis was no one important to her.

Except as a man who threatened her and her son.

She straightened her shoulders and walked into her bedroom.

Nurse Thompson was in there.

‘Nicky asleep?
Good. Now, tonight, I understand, you are to eat in the dining room?’

Her voice was bland.
Rhianna
stared. She usually ate her evening meal with Nurse Thompson and Karen, in their sitting room, chatting amicably about anything that had nothing to do with why
Rhianna
was here on a privately owned Greek island with a child who looked like the man who owned it. After eating they watched English-language satellite channels. It was relaxing, easy and familiar.

But maybe, she thought viciously as she headed haltingly for the dining room across the central hallway, Alexis Petrakis didn’t like the idea of her getting
cosy
with those whom he had hired—as he had so scathingly informed her—to supervise her contact with her son. Maybe now she was supposed to eat in isolation, on her own.

Or maybe not.

He was waiting for her, standing by the sideboard and pouring himself a whisky.

Abruptly she turned to go.

‘What are you doing?’ The voice was sharp.

‘Going to my room.’

An exasperated sigh escaped Alexis’s lips.

‘
Stavros
is about to serve dinner.’

‘I don’t want any.’

His voice darkened. ‘We have things to talk about.’

Rhianna
whirled round as fast as her legs would bear.

‘No, we don’t. The only talking I’ll do with you now, after what you’ve said to me, is through a lawyer. Nicky is my son. I have custody of him. And you—as you have already admitted—have no rights in law over him. So don’t even think of using your wealth and power to take him from me!’

Her voice had risen. Adrenaline surged within her. It was the flight-or-fight hormone, but there was only one way she was going to use it. Her son was at stake—she had to fight for him.
Had to.

‘Understand this, and understand it well: Nicky is my
life.
I will keep him safe till my dying day. I will not let you take him from me—part him from me—in any way separate him from me. I will not let you be the cause of a single tear, a single moment of grief or loss, a single moment of fear for him. Because if you are, I will see you burn in hell, Alexis Petrakis! As God is my witness, you will burn in hell!’

Ferocity contorted her face, her breathing heavy and
laboured
with the effort of her vehemence.

But Alexis was just staring at her. As if someone completely new had just stepped out to berate him.

A mother—fighting for her child—tooth and nail and claw—with all her might.

It could just be an act.

The cold, cynical voice spoke inside him. She heard what you said about some women not being maternal, so she’s standing there doing a number to show how devoted she is.

His eyes rested on her, assessing, judgmental. The outburst had seemed
ao
genuine, so passionate.
So absolute.
What was it about this woman that confused his
judgement
, his instincts, so powerfully?

But was it the truth?

Was
Rhianna
Davies a devoted mother? Or had she been hiding Nicky? Biding her time before cashing in on him?

But why—why wait so long, living in poverty, before producing his son?

The words she had hurled at him—that she would never have told him he was Nicky’s father—circled in his brain. Why had she said that?

And why was she living in such poverty? He’d assumed it was because of her drug addiction—yet she wasn’t an addict, never had been. So why live in a council flat on benefits? Her father had owned a company; she’d been wearing a designer dress the evening she’d targeted him for her scheme.

None of it made sense.

He wanted answers.

That was why he was prepared to have dinner with her like this.

She was opening the door, about to walk out on him. Rapidly he strode across the room, shutting the door with the flat of his hand. He laid a restraining hand on her arm. She flung him off jerkily.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she spat.

His mouth tightened, but he let her go. She looked as if she was about to fall over; if she wanted to do so on her own she was welcome.

‘Sit down before you fall down. I have questions to ask you and I want answers.’

Balefully, she sank down on a chair. Yelling at him like that had exhausted her.

He took his place opposite her, moodily taking a mouthful of whisky, then looking grimly at her.

Now what?
she
thought bitterly. What vile accusation can he throw at me this time?

But when he spoke it was the very last thing she had expected.

He set down his whisky glass with a click.

‘It would seem,’ he said, and his voice was very dry, ‘that I have been misinformed about you. Your medical records show you are not, after all,
a drug addict
.’

Rhianna
stared across at him.

‘That was very thorough of you,’ she said. Sarcasm was heavy in her voice, but relief flickered through.

Alexis frowned. ‘Nor,’ he went on, ‘does it seem you behaved recklessly with my son’s life the day of your accident. Moreover, you had apparently been suffering a severe and dangerous chest infection for some time, to which doubtless the strain of your father’s death—something else I was not informed of—contributed.’

He made it sound as if the lack of information was her fault,
Rhianna
thought balefully.

He reached forward to take another mouthful of whisky. Then, with a click, he set back the glass.

‘Tell me, why are you living in a council flat on state benefit?’

Her eyes flashed.

‘Is that a serious question?’ she retorted derisively.

A flicker of annoyance showed in his face.

‘Just answer me.’

‘Because I have no other means of support.’

She didn’t owe him the truth, she didn’t owe him a cent, but he could have the truth and choke on it for all she cared.

‘Why not?
Are you estranged from your family?’

‘There was only my father. He had no means of support either.’

Alexis sat back.

‘He owned a yacht design company. I remember that quite clearly. It was, after all, the reason you came on to me. So there must have been money around.’ It was his turn for sarcasm to be heavy in his voice.

She had gone white. Every bone in her face was standing out as if she were a skeleton.

‘You
bastard!’

It was a hiss as venomous as a snake’s.

‘What?’ His brows had snapped together.

‘My father lost his company and every other possession! He had
nothing.
We lived on my single parent income support in my single parent council accommodation—’

‘Is this the truth?’

Rhianna
erupted.

‘What the hell do you mean, is that the truth?
Of course it’s the truth! He went bankrupt when MML pulled the plug on the
takoever
—at your orders! He had nothing left. Everything was secured against the company’s borrowings, and it all went!
Even his house.
He had to come and live with me. He had nowhere else to go!’

‘Your father lived with you?’

‘No, he lived in Buckingham Palace!’

He ignored her bitter rejoinder. ‘I didn’t know.’

She stopped. Emotions were flowing with memory, and both were
agonising
.

To her relief, the door to the kitchen quarters opened and
Stavros
entered, bearing a tray with soup tureens and a basket of bread. By the time he’d finished serving them
Rhianna’s
composure had painfully returned.

She started to eat. She was hungry, she
realised
. The delicate lemon-scented chicken soup was delicious, and slipped down her tight, taut throat. So did the fish, grilled with herbs and served with fragrant rice.

They did not talk.
Rhianna
could only be grateful. Across from her, Alexis had a closed, shuttered look on his face.

She went on eating.

The last time you shared a meal in Alexis’s company he took you to bed afterwards…

Of their own volition her eyes stole to him. She felt a slow, powerful tremor go through her.

He was having just the same effect on her now as he had had five years ago.

She tried to stop herself looking, but she couldn’t. The sable hair, the strong planes of his face, the straight nose, the sculpted mouth and, oh,
those dark gold-flecked eyes with their long, long lashes
…

How could she have hoped to resist him? For five long years she had coruscated herself for her shaming, shameful weakness that night. To have fallen like a ripe peach into his arms, his bed,
revelling
in what he did to her, burning like a flame in his embrace.

But now, sitting here, seeing him again, she knew exactly how it was she had been so very, very easy for him to seduce.

Yet she still could never, never forgive herself for what she had done. What she had let him do.

All for the sake of a cheap, meaningless one-night stand.

Guilt and shame burned through her.

Well, she thought with bitter satisfaction, she was safe from him now. She didn’t need a mirror to tell her what he saw when he looked at her.

She could see it in his eyes.

Revulsion.

Alexis consumed his fish in silence. His mind was preoccupied.

So Davies Yacht Design had been on the point of total collapse when
Rhianna
Davies had used him. She hadn’t given the impression they were that desperate for investment. But then his business brain clicked in. For her to have done so would have been to weaken her hand. No company wanting a life-saving bail-out would want a potential investor to
realise
just how critical the situation was.

But if MML had been keen to buy Davies Yacht Design it must have had potential, as she’d claimed, for returning on the investment. Had it not been for his standard policy of freezing the investment plans of any company newly acquired by Petrakis International, MML would probably have gone through with the takeover.

‘After the buy-out fell through why didn’t your father line up another white knight—or was the mess worse than you’ve admitted?’

Rhianna’s
head jerked up.

‘Because he had another heart attack the day after I—after you—’
She
stopped, the words cutting off.

‘Another?’ Alexis’s voice was strangely expressionless. He set down his knife and fork.

Rhianna
swallowed. Why was he putting her through this?

‘He’d had a heart attack three days before—’ Again she stopped.

‘Your father had just had a heart attack when you approached me at that dinner?’

She gritted her teeth. ‘Yes. He was in Intensive Care. I had no choice but to try and talk to you like that at the dinner. The banks were going to foreclose the following week unless the takeover got the go-ahead at MML. Your PA let slip that you would be going to that dinner that night—I’d asked if I could have an evening appointment to see you, but she said your schedule was already
finalised
. So—’ she took a harsh breath ‘—I bought a ticket for the dinner, and altered the seating plan on the board at the cocktail reception beforehand so I could make sure I was on your table. It was my last chance. I had nothing to lose.’

She fell silent.

She had been wrong. She had had a lot to lose—and she had lost it all.

Slowly Alexis digested what she had just said.

Her father in Intensive Care with a heart attack.
The banks about to foreclose.

She must have been desperate…

Was that why she had done what she had? Offered him the one thing she had left?
The traditional last coinage of every woman.
Her body.

Then his eyes hardened. However desperate she’d been she should not have tried to take him for a gullible fool she could manipulate with her sexual
favours
!

‘And the idea of simply asking me to consider the takeover on its own merit never occurred to
you,
did it?’

‘I beg your pardon?’
Rhianna’s
voice was hollow.

‘Had you not assumed that you could use your body to persuade me to look
favourably
on the takeover
—’

Rage exploded through her.

‘How dare you make such an accusation? I
never
at any time thought such a thing, intended such a thing, or
did
such a thing! My God, you are a vile, disgusting man!’

A palm slammed down on the table-top.