Bound to the Greek (5 page)

She’d just slipped on her comfort pyjamas?soft, nubby fleece—when her doorbell rang. Eleanor stilled. She lived on the thirtieth floor in a building with two security personnel at the front door at all times, so no one made it to her door without her being alerted. The only option, she supposed, was a neighbour, although she’d never really got to know her neighbours. It wasn’t that kind of building, and she didn’t have that kind of life.

Cautiously Eleanor went to the door. She peered through the eyehole and felt her heart stop for a second before beginning a new, frenetic beating. Jace stood there.

‘Eleanor?’

He sounded impatient, and it was no wonder. Eleanor realised she was hesitating for far too long. Resolutely she drew a breath and opened the door.

‘What are you doing here, Jace?’

‘I need to talk to you.’

She folded her arms and didn’t move. She didn’t feel angry now so much as resigned. ‘I told you in your office I had nothing to say.’

‘You may not, but I do.’ He arched an eyebrow. ‘Are you going to let me in?’

‘How did you get my address?’

‘Your boss gave it to me.’

Eleanor gave an exasperated sigh.
Of course.
Lily would do just about anything for a client, especially a rich one like Jace. ‘How did you get past security?’

‘I sweet-talked him.’

Eleanor snorted. ‘You?’

‘Andreas is manning the door tonight. He has six grandchildren back in Greece.’ Jace smiled thinly. ‘He showed me pictures.’

Eleanor slowly shook her head. She’d been on the end of Jace’s charm once; she knew how forceful it was. And how false.

Sighing in defeat, she turned away from the door. ‘Fine. Come in.’

He entered, shutting the door carefully behind him. Eleanor moved to the window, her arms creeping around her body despite her effort to maintain a cool, composed air. She felt vulnerable, exposed somehow, as if from the stark modernity of her apartment Jace could somehow guess at the emotional barrenness of her life.

Stop.
She couldn’t think like that. She had a job, friends, a life—

She just didn’t have what mattered.

Love.

Stop.

‘What do you want?’

Jace stood in the centre of her living room, seeming too big, too
much
for the space. He glanced around, and Eleanor saw him take in all the telltale signs of a single life. No jumble of shoes or coats, no piles of magazines or books. Just a single pair of heels discarded by the door. In the galley kitchen she saw her lone coffee cup from this morning rinsed and set by the sink. ‘You live here alone?’

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug that couldn’t help but seem defensive. ‘Yes.’

He shook his head slowly. ‘What about—the baby?’ He spoke awkwardly, the words sounding stilted. They felt stilted to Eleanor. She didn’t want him to ask. She didn’t want him to know.

She didn’t want to tell.

‘What about the baby?’ she asked evenly.

‘He—or she, rather—doesn’t live with you?’

‘No.’

‘The father retained custody?’

She gave a short, abrupt laugh. The weariness was fading away and the anger was coming back. Along with the hurt. She was tired of feeling so much, so suddenly, after ten years of being comfortably numb. She dropped her arms to her sides. ‘What do you really want to talk about, Jace?’

‘You said you were the one who couldn’t forgive or forget. And I want to know why.’ He spoke flatly, yet she saw
something in his eyes she hadn’t seen in ten years, something that hadn’t been there yesterday or this morning. Need.

Hunger.

Why did he want to know? Why did he care?

‘Because you may have felt you had just cause, but the fact that you abandoned me the very day I told you I was pregnant was a hard thing to get over.’ She smiled thinly. ‘Surprisingly, it seems.’

Jace shook his head, the movement one of instinctive denial. ‘Ellie, you know that baby isn’t?wasn’t?mine.’

Anger, white-hot, lanced through her. ‘I know?’ she repeated, her voice rising in incredulity. ‘I know? I’ll tell you what I know, Jace, and that is that the only bastard I’ve ever met is you. First-class, A-plus, for thinking that.’

He took a step towards her in an action both menacing and urgent, his features twisted with what looked like pain. ‘Are you telling me,’ he demanded in a low voice, ‘that the baby was mine? Is that what you’re actually saying, Ellie?’

She lifted her chin. ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying, Jace. And the very fact that you could think for a moment—’

‘Don’t.’ He held up one hand, and Eleanor saw to her shock that it trembled. ‘Don’t,’ he repeated rawly, ‘lie to me. Not now. Not again. Not about this.’

For a second Eleanor’s anger gave way to another powerful emotion: curiosity. Jace faced her, his expression open and hungry. She’d never see him look so… desperate. There was more going on here than she understood.

‘I’m not lying,’ she said quietly. ‘What makes you think I ever was?’

Jace didn’t speak for a moment. His gaze held hers, searching for a truth he seemed hell-bent on disbelieving. ‘Because,’ he finally said, his voice little more than a ragged whisper, ‘I can’t have children. I’ve known it since I was fifteen years old.’ He let out a long, slow breath before stating flatly, ‘I’m infertile. Sterile.’

Eleanor stared.
I can’t have children.
Such a stark and sorrowful phrase; she knew just how much. And yet coming
from
Jace… the
words didn’t make sense. They couldn’t. Then in a sudden flash of remembrance she recalled the moment she’d told Jace she was pregnant, and how he’d stared at her so blankly, his jaw slackening, his eyes turning flat and then hard. She’d thought he’d been surprised; she’d had no idea just how stunned he must have been. Infertile.
Impossible.
It had to be. ‘You must be mistaken.’

‘I assure you I’m not.’

Eleanor shook her head, speechless, disbelieving. ‘Well, neither am I,’ she finally said. ‘Mistaken, that is. I was a virgin when we got together, Jace, and I didn’t sleep with another man for—a long while.’ She swallowed. Years, in fact, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. ‘You were the only candidate.’

Jace smiled, the curving of his mouth utterly without humour. ‘The facts don’t add up, Ellie. Someone’s lying.’

‘I’ve told you not to call me that.’ She turned away from him and stared blindly out at the Hudson River, its murky black surface just visible under the city lights. ‘Why does someone have to be lying, Jace? What if you’re mistaken?’ She turned around. ‘Did you ever—even once—think of that?’

‘I’m not!’ The words came out in a roar, and she stilled, surprised by the savagery.

‘How can you be—?’

‘Trust me,’ he cut her off, the two words flat and brutal. ‘I am. And if I can’t have children, there must be another—’ he paused, his mouth curving in an unpleasant smile ‘—candidate.’

Eleanor cocked her head, curiosity and anger warring within her. ‘Is it easier for you to believe that?’

‘What the hell do you mean?’

She shrugged, a little unnerved by Jace’s anger but still refusing to be cowed. ‘You prefer believing I was unfaithful to you rather than the idea that you could be wrong, that it’s a mistake—’

‘It’s not a mistake!’ Jace leaned forward, lowered his voice to a savage whisper. ‘It’s
impossible!

Eleanor blinked, discomfited by his intensity. ‘How did you find out you were infertile at such a young age?’ she asked slowly. ‘Most men don’t find out until they’re married and run into trouble with conceiving, don’t they—’

‘I had mumps. A lingering infection, and it made me sterile.’

‘And you were tested—?’

‘Yes.’ He bit off the word, his lips pressed together in a hard line.

‘But…’ Eleanor shook her head, genuinely bewildered. ‘Why? Why would you be tested at such a young age?’

Jace turned away from her. He drove his hands into his pockets, his shoulders hunched, the position one of defensive misery. ‘My father wanted to know,’ he said gruffly, his back still to her. ‘I’m an only son, as was he. The male line dies out with me.’

Eleanor didn’t reply. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say, for suddenly everything was making horrible sense. No wonder Jace was so sure he couldn’t be the father. No wonder he’d been so hurt. No wonder the whole idea of a pregnancy?a baby—that wasn’t his would be an affront, an abomination.

The male line dies out with me.

For a boy from a traditional Greek family, that had to be very hard indeed.

Regret replaced anger, and it hurt far more. She swallowed past the tightness in her throat. ‘Well, perhaps you should get yourself tested again. Because I assure you, Jace, the baby was yours. Why would I lie now? What point would there be?’

Jace was silent for a long, tense moment. ‘I don’t know,’ he finally said. ‘God help me, I don’t know.’ Eleanor stared at him, his back to her, his head bowed, and she wondered what he must be feeling now. Could he accept he wasn’t
infertile, that he’d been living with an incorrect diagnosis for his entire adult life?

Would
he?

It would be hope and tragedy mixed together, for what was lost, for what now could be—

But not for her. Eleanor swallowed past the tightness in her throat, closing her eyes as if that could blot out the pain. The memory. Never for her.

Jace drew in a ragged, desperate breath, his head still bowed, his back to Eleanor. He felt the rage course through him, consume him, and he didn’t trust himself to speak.

The baby was his.
Could
be his. Except in his gut—perhaps even in his heart—Jace knew the truth. He saw it in Eleanor’s eyes, dark with remembered pain. The baby was his.

He wasn’t infertile.

And all he could feel was anger. All he could think of was the waste. His life, his family, his father. Everything had pointed to his failure as a son, as a man. He’d lived with it, let it cripple him, let it guide and restrain his choices, and for what?

For a lie? A
mistake!

The realisation made him want to shout to the remorseless heavens, to hit something, to hurt something. Someone.
It wasn’t fair.
The cry of a child, and yet it bellowed up inside him, the need so great he clamped his lips together and drew another shuddering breath.

Eleanor, he knew, would never understand. How could he explain how utterly sure he’d been of his own infertility, so that he’d been able to walk away without once considering that she’d been telling the truth? He’d always been so certain that even now he wondered. Doubted.

It can’t be.

And yet if it was…

Too many repercussions, too many unspoken—un-thought?hopes and fears crowded his mind, his heart. He
pushed them down, unable to deal with them now, to consider what they meant, what changes to both the present and future—and, God help him, the past—they would require.

The baby was his.

The baby was his.

He had a child.

Jace whirled around again, the movement so sudden and savage that Eleanor gasped aloud and took a step towards the window.

He crossed the room in three long strides and grabbed her by the shoulders, his face thrust near hers. ‘Where is the baby? If it
is
my child—’

Eleanor closed her eyes. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want Jace here, stirring up memories, regrets,
pain,
and for what? Yet she knew he had a right to know. She swallowed again. Her throat was so very tight. ‘Was,’ she whispered. ‘It was.’

‘What—what are you talking??’

‘It
was
your child,’ she explained very quietly, and the fierce light that had ignited in Jace’s eyes winked out, leaving them the colour of cold ash.

‘You mean…’ his hands tightened on her shoulders ‘… you had an abortion.’

‘No!’ She jerked out of his grasp, glaring at him. ‘Why don’t you just leap to yet another offensive assumption, Jace? You’re good at that.’

He folded his arms, his expression still hard. ‘What are you saying, then?’

‘I had a… a miscarriage.’ A bland, official-sounding word for such a heart-rending, life-changing event. She turned away from him so he wouldn’t see the naked pain on her face. She felt the thickness of tears in her throat. ‘I lost the baby.’ She swallowed.
My little girl,
she thought,
my precious little girl.

Jace was silent for a long moment. Eleanor stared blindly out of the window, trying not to remember. The screen, the
silence, the emptiness within. ‘I’m sorry,’ he finally said, and she just shrugged. The silence ticked on, heavy, oppressive. ‘I’m sorry,’ Jace said again, the word raw, and Eleanor felt again the thickening of tears in her throat. She swallowed it down, reluctant to let Jace enter her sorrow. She didn’t want to rake it up again; she didn’t even want him sharing it. She was still angry. Still hurt.

‘I’ll still have to be tested,’ he continued, ‘to make sure—’

‘That the baby was yours?’ Eleanor filled in. ‘You still don’t believe me?’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘Just when would I have had this other affair, Jace? I spent every waking—and sleeping—moment with you for six
months.’

‘You don’t understand—’ Jace began in a low voice, but Eleanor didn’t want to hear.

‘No, I don’t. I don’t understand how you could think for a moment that I was unfaithful to you. But even if you did, because I suppose you must have had some kind of
trust
issue, I don’t understand how you could walk away without a word.’ Her voice shook; so did her body. ‘Without a single
word.’

‘Eleanor—’

‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to hear your explanations now. They don’t matter.’ She took a deep, shuddering breath and forced herself to sound calm. To feel it. ‘It’s ten years ago, Jace. Ten years. It really is time we both moved on.’

He was silent, and when she looked at him she saw how drawn and tired and
sad
he looked. Well, too bad. She hardened her heart, because she didn’t want to feel sorry for him. She didn’t want to feel anything; it hurt too much. ‘If only I’d known,’ he murmured, and she shook her head.