One Night to Risk It All (5 page)

“Are you?”

“No, I never am. I’m actually extremely pleasant, all the time. It’s just that you make me... There really isn’t a word strong enough to express the anger-slash-anxiety I feel when you’re around.”

“Attraction?”

She narrowed her eyes. “That’s not the word.”

“You’re sure?”

“I am
so
sure.”

“Then why did you kiss me earlier?”

She sat down on the couch, suddenly feeling taxed. “You also make me crazy. I do stupid things when you’re around.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

She crossed her arms. “I wouldn’t. Can you at least get me an orange juice?”

“That, I could manage.” He pushed a button on his arm rest and gave the order.

She leaned back and crossed her arms. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“Back to my house. Away from the media firestorm that will no doubt ensue when they realize the bride has failed to show up for the wedding of the century. You’ll have to face the fallout eventually, but why not put it off for a while?”

It really did sound good. To avoid reality for just a bit.

“You can text your sister now.”

Oh, yes, that was a bit of reality she really couldn’t avoid. Otherwise her family would be sending the police after them. For a couple of seconds she entertained the idea of letting them arrest Alex for kidnapping. But that was a news story she didn’t really want her child going back and reading, so she decided against it.

Rachel pulled out her phone, her fingers hovering above the letters on the screen. What did you say when you did something like this?

“Why aren’t you texting Ajax, by the way?”

“Because I’d rather roll around in honey and get thrown into a badger den.”

Short and sweet, Rach. Don’t tell all yet.
She looked across at Alex, who was now sprawled in the armchair like a lazy big cat. Twitching his tail, waiting for his prey to make a false move.

Yes, the less she said about the situation, the better. She knew next to nothing about it except that she couldn’t marry Ajax. And that she had to figure out what she was going to do about Alex.

I’m not coming. I need to be with Alex. I’m sorry. Please tell Jax that I’m sorry.

She took a deep breath, then hit Send on the exhale.

“Done. I told them.”

“What exactly?”

“That I’m not coming. Nothing more. Well, I mentioned you. Your first name.”

“We’ll see how long it takes Ajax to send a hit man.”

“Actually,” she said, as the plane engine started and they began to taxi around the runway, “I’m curious.”

“About?”

“Why didn’t you stop the wedding? Why didn’t you call Ajax and gloat? Why weren’t you hanging your sheet stained with my virgin’s blood out your window like some kind of marauding knight or whatever?”

He cleared his throat. “You kicked me out—I didn’t have time to take the sheet.”

“And that foiled your evil plan?” He said nothing in response. “I’m serious,” she said.

“Did it occur to you that maybe things changed because you were the one who found me?” he asked.

The stewardess came in with a tray of drinks. What looked like a scotch for Alex, the jerk, and an orange juice for her. She thanked the woman and wrapped her fingers around the glass, letting the coldness seep into her skin.

“I... No,” she said. “I hadn’t really thought of it. But...it is true. I am the one who found you.”

“Strange, don’t you think?”

“Maybe.” More than strange. But there was no denying it. There was no way to accuse him of putting himself in her path, either. She’d seen him first. She’d approached him. And unless his ego was even bigger than she imagined, he’d had no way of knowing she would have to go and talk to him when she saw him. That she would be hit with a bolt of attraction so intense it left her stunned and utterly senseless.

“I was there for you,” he said slowly, swirling the contents of his glass before taking a sip. “I won’t lie about that. I was there to find you and seduce you. But I had a plan, you see. You had a fundraiser later in the week.”

“I ended up not going.” She looked down into her juice.

“I know,” he said.

“How?”

“Because I went.”

“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” he bit out. “But I was going to meet you there, at that fundraiser. And seduce you with my wealth and fortune. Seduce you away from my rival, slowly. Publicly. I was going to bring you over to my side of things and make him watch powerlessly as I did so.”

“And then what was supposed to happen to me?”

He shrugged. “That was of no concern to me. But instead, you found me on a dock after I’d just come in to Corfu. What are the odds of that?”

“Heck if I know,” she said.

“I wouldn’t know, either.”

“So what... So that’s why you didn’t tell Ajax? That’s why you didn’t call weeks ago and have the wedding called off?”

“I was as seduced as you were,” he said. “Though I hate to admit it. If I’d had any respect for my own plan I would have followed it. Instead...”

“Instead we met and spent the day together and then we...”

“Spent the night together.”

“And then it all went to hell,” she said.

“When I came to your house today... What I came for... It had nothing to do with revenge. I was there for you.”

Their eyes locked, electricity crackling between them, her heart pounding so hard she thought she might pass out.

Her phone buzzed and she looked down. She had a message from Leah.

Alex who? Anyone I know?

Well, what was the point in lying? It was going to come out. The press would see her with Alex. She would have to explain eventually that she was pregnant. And who the father was.

She might as well let the bomb drop in stages. She typed in a reply.

You don’t know him. Alex Christofides. Unexpected. And I’m sorry.

It was sort of a lie. Leah wouldn’t know him. But Ajax would. And the way she’d phrased it made it sound like she didn’t know who he was. Also a lie.

She was big into self-protection at the moment.

Well, who wasn’t? Except for Alex. That was a strange thought, but when she looked back at their night together...

When she’d confronted him, he’d been honest. About why he’d seduced her. About who he was. It didn’t make a lot of sense, really.

“Why didn’t you defend yourself?” she asked. “Why didn’t you lie?”

“Because I couldn’t think,” he said.

It pained Alex to admit it, but it was the truth. He hadn’t been able to think up a lie with her looking at him as though he’d personally stabbed her in the chest. Because somehow, during the course of their day together, his seduction had been genuine.

He had wanted her. It had been easy to forget just who she was. Who she belonged to. He didn’t look at her and see Ajax Kouros’s fiancée.

He’d looked and seen Rachel. So soft and elegant, with wildness that ran strong beneath.

He’d seen her. And he had wanted her with every piece of himself.

So he’d taken her, and when she’d confronted him, he’d been able to do nothing but speak the truth because he’d deviated so far from his plan he had no idea how to get back to it. He should have lied. Appealed to her. Kept to the original plan.

But he hadn’t, and it was too late to go back now.

He would have let her go if it was what she’d wanted. But things were different now. She was pregnant and that meant he had to keep her.

He ignored the slug to the gut that rebelled at the idea of allowing her to marry Ajax, pregnant or not. Of course, had she wanted to do so, he wouldn’t have stopped it. He could have let her go.

The inability to do so would imply that she was special. That he had feelings for her.

Alex didn’t have time for feelings.

He’d made time in his life for two things: making money and getting revenge. Everything else was an incidental. A distraction he couldn’t afford.

Of course, now that there would be a child he’d have to make room for a third thing.

Because he would be damned if any child of his left to be raised by a stranger. If any child of his wasn’t in his sight at all times.

Alex knew about all the evil in the world, and if there was any way for him to shield his own child from it, he would do so.

As though his own life depended on it.

CHAPTER FIVE

H
IS
ISLAND
WAS
BEAUTIFUL
.
He would never get tired of it. Of the fact that it was his. Of the fact that he now owned a place he possessed total control over.

Back in the compound, everything had been shared. Perhaps
share
was too generous a word. It had been fought over. There had been a serf class in the compound. The women, the security guards. And the security guards had had guns, which put the women square on the bottom rung.

And beneath that...

The children of those women.

Many of them had been given away by their mothers. Sold, Alex now realized, for drugs. He had spent many years feeling astonished, grateful, that his mother hadn’t done so. That she’d put some sort of value on him. That he’d stayed safe.

A miracle, it had seemed.

But then he’d found out the truth. And the truth hadn’t been rainbows and a mother’s love. No. The truth had been poison.

He was the monster he’d always despised. A tool that kept his mother near her favorite addiction. Not heroin, but Nikola Kouklakis himself.

The older man had, of course, kept her there since she was the mother of his son. Since
Alex
was his son. But Alex had discovered the truth and when his mother was no longer useful it had all come crashing down.

And Alex had run. Run away and never looked back.

And when he’d finally stopped, when he’d won enough card games that he had some money—money and this island—met enough people that he’d forged business connections and learned about the stock market, when he’d finally reached the pinnacle of success, that was when he’d looked back for the first time.

He’d looked back at all of the pain, all of the injustice, and then he’d looked at the one man who had risen above it. Clean, pristine and well-respected. Rich as god with a beautiful woman hanging on his arm.

And he’d known that next on his agenda was making sure that Ajax Kouros knew helplessness. That he knew fear. That he knew what it was to lose the things he loved.

And while he hadn’t destroyed the other man’s business yet, not for lack of trying, he did have Ajax’s fiancée.

And though he wasn’t actively using Rachel as revenge at the moment, that thought almost made him cheerful.

“Where are we?” Rachel asked as the plane touched down, white sand and turquoise sea rushing into view.

“An island near Turkey. I call it...” And he realized that earlier he’d told her his mother’s name. It made him feel exposed, to tell her what he called the island when she would know why. He cursed his moment of sentimentality. Cursed the fact that he still cared so much for a woman who’d never loved him back. Who had ended her life rather than spend her days with him. “I call it Meli’s Hideaway,” he said. “And before you ask, no, my mother never saw it. She...died just before I left the Kouklakis compound. But if she hadn’t...this is where I would have taken her. So she could have a rest, finally. Though she’s resting now, I suppose.” If she had given him a chance. If she had trusted in him at all. If the idea of being with him hadn’t been a torture she couldn’t bear.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice muted. “My mother passed away, too. It’s hard. Really hard.”

“Life is hard,’ he said, lifting one shoulder in a casual gesture.

“What? That’s it?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Life is hard and then you die. Is that better?”

She shook her head. “Not really. You’re not exactly enjoying the journey, are you?”

He stood up as the plane came to a stop. “Enjoying the journey is for another sort of person, from another sort of life. Someone like you,
agape.
”

“Well, I won’t deny that I have a great family. That I’ve been blessed to have a lot of nice things. Yes, I do enjoy the journey.” She was lying, though. He could sense it. Strange because when he’d met her in Corfu, she had exuded light. Joy. But he didn’t see those things in press photos of her.

It was like she was hiding that light most of the time.

“Were you going to enjoy spending the rest of your journey with Ajax?”

She nodded, her posture stiff. “Of course I would have. I care about him deeply.”

“But you don’t love him.”

“Oh, bah. Why are you people so fixated on love?” Alana had tried to talk her out of the wedding at the eleventh hour. Citing love as the primary reason. “I like him. I love him in a way. Sure it’s not an all-consuming kind of love, but—”

“But you aren’t crying your eyes out just at this moment, either,” he said.

“I have a lot on my plate here,” she said. “I just found out I’m pregnant.” She paused and swore. “Pregnant. Oh...I can’t
even.
I can’t even take all of this in. And I just ran out on my wedding. And I’m in Turkey. With you.”

“We’re not in Turkey. We’re on my island.”

“Yeah, big effing difference to me just at the moment.”

“If it’s any consolation, I feel similarly...run over. Is that how you feel?”

“Run over by a train, yes.”

“This doesn’t have to be difficult,” he said. He was about to propose marriage again. Yes, she’d brushed his mention of marriage off the first time, but she’d been shocked. She would come around, he was certain of it.

One thing he knew for sure, and that was that he refused to be a shadowy figure in the background of his child’s life. He would not be that man. He would be as different from his own father as humanly possible. As different from everyone in his family as humanly possible.

If you can be.

No. He wasn’t the same. He would love his child. He wouldn’t want to own his child, wouldn’t keep that child around simply to keep a link between himself and the person he was...obsessed with.

He would never be either of his parents.

“How is it going to be easy?” she asked as the door to the plane opened and a rush of thick, warm air filled the cabin.

“Perhaps it will fall somewhere between easy and difficult?”

“Perhaps,” she said, walking toward the exit.

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I’m not.” She descended the stairs and he followed, his eyes on her curves, the way her white capris cupped her expertly. He was still a man, after all, regardless of how intense the day had been.

And she was still a temptation. It had nothing to do with how provocative her clothing was. It wasn’t, in truth. She exuded class. A kind of untouchable, crisp elegance that a man like him had rarely been exposed to.

Rachel Holt had come by her style and poise due to a lifetime of being immersed in wealth and culture, of being aware of cameras watching her every move.

Nothing like the way he’d grown up.

It was part of what he found so enticing. That prim little exoskeleton of hers. Perfect hair and makeup, even just after finding out she was pregnant and running out on her wedding. But he’d cracked all that open. Had seen her skin flushed pinker than that top she was wearing. Had seen her hair in disarray, her skin glistening with sweat...

He’d had those expertly polished nails dug deep into his shoulders, and that was something he couldn’t forget.

He shifted and tried to ease the pressure caused by his growing arousal. Nothing helped. Not when he had the back of Rachel Holt as his view. The rest of the island just didn’t seem to matter. And neither did anything else.

“And why is that?” he asked.

“Because I...don’t think I like you.” She looked up and around at the cypress trees that spread around them to create a canopy of green, and at the white sand beaches beyond them.

“There are some incredible ruins on this island. Colonial and Ottoman.”

“I was just in Greece. Ruins, we have them.”

“I am aware,” he said. “I was trying to make conversation.”

“Do you live in a ruin? Or do you have an actual house?”

“I have a house, but some people would argue I live in ruin.”

She snorted. “At this point, some people would argue that I do, too.”

“You are giving off a bit of a fallen-woman vibe,” he said dryly.

“Am I?” She sniffed her wrist. “I don’t feel any different.”

He turned and looked at her. “Not at all?”

Her cheeks flushed a deep rose. “No.”

“Interesting. Would you like to walk to the house or drive?”

“You’re in a tux,” she said. “You’re hardly dressed to walk.”

He looked down. “Indeed not. I’m a little disoriented. Could be because in New York it’s early morning. Which means I’ve technically been up all night.”

“You came from New York?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He looked at her, at those cheeks, still flushed from the sun and from...from whatever memories had come into her mind when he’d looked at her. “I came for you.”

“That simple?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you come for me?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and it was the honest truth. “Because I don’t want him to have you. Because I want you for myself. Because I think you’re beautiful and as of now you’re the only woman I can imagine having in my bed, and considering I would like to have sex sometime soon that’s very inconvenient, and even more so if you were to marry another man.”

She blinked. “That’s almost flattering.”

“Almost. A walk, I should think.” He took his jacket off and cast it onto the sand, then rolled his shirt sleeves up. “It might do something to shake off the time change.”

“Lead the way then.”

He started down a path that took them down near the beach and could have sworn at the absurdity of getting sand in his custom-made shoes. Shoes he’d bought with his own money and not the money earned by other people’s suffering. There, a reminder that he had transcended his blood in some way.

“So what do you do in New York?” she asked.

“I gamble with other people’s money.”

“What?”

“I deal in investments,” he said. “And I’m very good at it.”

“Isn’t that a bit unstable?”

“Sure. Can be. But I’ve made enough of a profit that I’m sitting on stable assets of my own, and I’ve made some wise purchases and investments myself.”

“Including an island.”

“I won this,” he said.

“You won it?”

“In a card game. It was one of the more interesting gambling experiences of my life. Yes, I was a literal gambler there for a while. At first with other people’s money.”

“How?”

“Card counting is a particularly useful skill. I happen to have the gift. I was a kid living on the streets doing card tricks for tourists and a rich guy picked me up, offered to kit me out to play in the casinos with his money, for a cut. I said ‘of course,’ naturally.”

“Naturally,” she said.

“I won a lot of money. And I got to keep part of it. Rented myself an apartment, started offering up an underground service. Until I had enough money to go gamble for myself at least once a week.”

“And?”

“I ended up in a high rollers’ game. There were things in that pot by the end that you wouldn’t believe, including a night with a man’s wife, which I turned down, by the way. But the island... I took the island.”

She looked hard at him, blue eyes glittering. “You’re really twenty-six, Alex?”

“Yes. And I was eighteen when I was doing that. From there, I figured I better decide what to do with the money I’d earned. So I walked away from the casino and started looking into investing. And I proved to have a knack for that so I thought...why not do it for other people? An extension of where I came from.”

“A self-made man,” she said.

He laughed. “None of us are really self-made, Rachel. We’re made with the aid or misfortune of other people. In my case, people had to lose money so I could gain it. Now, the people I make money for are aided by me, as I am by them. You are made by your father, by the media, and you were to be finished by Ajax, am I right?”

“Finished?”

“It’s how you were going to spend the rest of your life in comfort. You found a man who would close the loop neatly on everything you’ve built.”

“I don’t think of it that way.”

“No?”

“No.” She wobbled in the sand and he reached over and caught her arm, holding her steady. She froze for a moment, her eyes falling to his lips. She swallowed hard. “I don’t think of it...of him...that way. It’s not how it is.”

“Then how is it?”

“I don’t know. He’s a friend. And...maybe like a brother, almost, which I can see right at this moment is so ridiculous it’s... I don’t know why I thought I could marry him. I don’t know why at all. I thought caring could be enough. I thought it was enough.”

“Only because you’d never had passion.” He’d been the one to show that to her.

“Don’t be so smug—it’s nasty. Truly, I wouldn’t crow about it if I were you. Is there an easier conquest than a woman who’s still a virgin at my age? ‘Hard up’ doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

“That’s not what it was though. I myself was not particularly hard up, as you call it, and I still felt the electricity between us.”

She stopped short, arched one eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

“Yes,” he said. “Don’t deny that you felt it.”

“No, I mean, ‘oh, really, you weren’t hard up?’ What does that mean? When was the last time you were with someone else?”

“Jealousy, Rachel? I didn’t think you liked me.”

“I’m not jealous. I’m curious.”

“And if I tell you, you won’t be angry?”

“I’ve been angry at you for a solid month, Alexios. I’m not making you any guarantees on that score. You could breathe funny and make me angry at this point.”

“Don’t be dramatic. It had been a couple weeks by the time I met you.”

She sniffed loudly as she’d done at the airport, a sign of her pique, he was realizing. “It had been twenty-eight years when I met you, but whatever.”

“Are you saying I’m special, Rachel?”

“Heck. No. I am not saying that. I am not saying that even a little bit. I’m just saying—some of us don’t run around with our pants around our ankles all the time.”

“And you’re sure that Ajax was celibate the whole time you were together?”

“I...I just... I... Yes.”