The Greek's Acquisition (16 page)

She gave him a faintly wistful smile. ‘I was thinking that I need to go home. I’ve had almost a month of compassionate leave from work, but it’s time to pick up the threads of my life again. My mother would want me to.’ Her voice caught. ‘She was proud of my career.’

Dimitri was conscious of a peculiar sensation in the pit of his stomach. Ever since they had arrived on the island he had been waiting for the right moment. And this moment, with the sun just rising above the pine trees and the sky streaked with pink and gold clouds that were reflected in the waves curling onto the shore, was the perfect moment.

‘There is a job vacancy at the National Gallery in Athens
which Takis Varsos is very keen for you to accept,’ he murmured.

Louise looked puzzled. ‘At best it’s a three-hour commute from Paris to Athens.’

‘But if you lived in Athens …’ He threaded his fingers through her hair and looked into eyes that were the colour of the sapphire hidden in his pocket.

If he asked her to be his mistress would she have the strength to refuse? Louise wondered. Should she throw away a chance of happiness because she was afraid of how she would feel when their relationship ended?

She was not her mother, she reminded herself. She was strong and independent and she was brave enough to live for the present rather than worry about the future.

‘Commitment was something I had no interest in,’ Dimitri admitted. ‘I never understood how two people could know for certain that they wanted to spend their lives together. But then I met a golden girl who crept into my heart—and she stayed there, even though I didn’t see her again for many years. Without realising it I compared every woman I met to her, but at last I understood and I knew that I wanted to be with her for ever.’

‘Dimitri …?’ Louise whispered. She had told him she trusted him. But she was afraid to trust the expression in his eyes, afraid to believe he could be saying what he seemed to be saying.

‘I love you, Louise. You are my golden girl, the love of my life.’

Dimitri’s hand was shaking as he felt in the pocket of his cut-offs and withdrew a ring—an oval sapphire surrounded by diamonds that sparkled in the brilliant light of the new day. He heard Louise catch her breath, and he captured her hand and lifted it to his lips.

‘Will you marry me and spend the rest of your life
with me? Will you be the mother of my children? When I watched you holding my sister’s baby something clicked inside me, and l imagined us having a child together—Sweetheart, what’s wrong?’

Shock jolted through him as Louise snatched her hand out of his. She looked devastated. That was the only way he could describe her expression. And she was backing away from him, shaking her head.

‘I can’t,’ she said in an anguished voice. ‘I can’t marry you. It wouldn’t be fair.’

‘
Theos!
I thought it was what you wanted—I thought, hoped …’

He must have been mistaken to think she cared about him. The realisation was gutting. For the first time in his life Dimitri was utterly floored. He couldn’t think straight, and he felt a pain in his chest as though a knife had been plunged through his heart.
This
was why he had turned his back on emotions, he thought savagely. He had been perfectly content with his uneventful personal life that was never troubled by trauma and drama. But then Louise had gatecrashed his life and changed everything—changed him. She had made him love her and now he couldn’t stop.

She had run down to the sea. For a moment he thought she was going to keep on running until the waves dragged her under, but she turned slowly to face him and he saw his pain reflected in her eyes.

‘There’s something I haven’t told you. Something I should have told you.’

Fear made his voice harsh. ‘Then for pity’s sake tell me now.’

Louise drew a ragged breath. ‘Seven years ago I fell pregnant with your baby. I was back at university when I found out, and I was shocked and scared, but …’ She bit her lip, as if she could somehow hold back the emotions surging
inside her. ‘But I was excited too. I knew it would be difficult—I mean, it was totally the wrong time for me to have a child—but I wanted the baby …
our
baby. I loved it from the moment I knew it was growing inside me. I phoned you to tell you. I know now, of course, that you were in South America with Ianthe, but I assumed that you didn’t want to have anything more to do with me.’

‘Thee mou,’
Dimitri said in a raw tone. ‘I had no idea. I used protection—but nothing is one hundred percent effective. I should have checked you were okay after you went back to Sheffield, but I was angry that you had left me. And then Ianthe was injured and I was focused on her. But I did return your call eventually. Why didn’t you tell me then? And the child …’ The enormity of what she had revealed was only slowly sinking in. ‘What happened about the baby?’

He watched her wipe her hand across her eyes.

‘I miscarried in the seventh week of my pregnancy. Everything seemed fine, but then I woke up one day in agony. I was bleeding, and I guessed I was losing the baby.’ Louise’s voice shook as memories of that terrible day overwhelmed her. ‘One of my housemates was a medical student. She suspected something was seriously wrong and insisted on driving me to A&E. I owe her my life. I was discovered to have an ectopic pregnancy, where the baby develops in the fallopian tube rather than the womb. The tube had ruptured, causing internal bleeding. Not only did I lose the baby, but the doctors had to remove my damaged tube.’

Intent on telling Dimitri everything, Louise hadn’t noticed him move until she suddenly found him beside her. His expression was tortured and her heart turned over when she was that his eyes were wet.

‘Louise,
pedhaki
—’ His voice cracked. ‘The thought of you going through all that alone, without my support, rips
me apart. If I had known I would have come to you—even if it had meant leaving my sister. You needed me, and I will never forgive myself for not being there, not helping you through the grief of losing our child.’

‘It happened so quickly. I was rushed into surgery and there wasn’t time to contact you. Afterwards I didn’t answer your call. I couldn’t. I was so unhappy I couldn’t bear to speak of what had happened, and it seemed pointless to tell you about a baby that I was no longer carrying.’

She touched his damp face and felt tears slip down her own cheeks.

‘I love you,’ she whispered. ‘I always have. Through all the years that we were apart you lived in my heart and you always will.’ She pressed a finger against his lips when he made to speak. ‘I saw the tender look on your face when you held Ana. You would be a wonderful father, Dimitri. But I might never be able to give you a child. Even if I did fall pregnant there is a strong risk that I could have another ectopic.’

Dimitri brushed away her tears and cupped her face in his hands.

‘I love you,’ he told her fiercely. ‘I will love you if we have children and I will love you if we don’t. No one can predict what the future holds. Perhaps we will be blessed with a family, but if we’re not we’ll deal with it together. What matters is that you love me, my golden girl. And I adore you,
kardia mou.’

He slanted his lips over hers and kissed her, and it was the sweetest, gentlest, most beautiful kiss because it was given with love.

‘I want to fall asleep with you in my arms every night and see your face on the pillow next to mine every morning,’ he said deeply. ‘I want you to be my friend and my
lover and my one true love. Will you be my wife, Louise, and stay with me for ever?’

‘Yes,’ she said simply—because no other words were necessary when her love for him blazed in her eyes. And her tears were tears of joy as he slid the sapphire engagement ring onto her finger.

A
YEAR
later, Louise sat with her sister-in-law on the terrace of the old house on Eirenne and watched Dimitri playing with his niece on the beach.

‘I can’t believe Ana is walking already. She’s growing up so quickly.’ Ianthe sighed.

‘In a few months she’ll have a little brother or sister and you’ll be glad she’s walking.’ Louise studied Ianthe’s bump with interest. ‘I wonder if this baby is a boy or girl.’

‘Lykaios and I don’t mind. But it would be nice for Theo to have a boy cousin—they could play football together.’

Louise laughed and looked down at her son, who was sleeping peacefully in her arms. ‘It’s hard to imagine Theo running around—he’s only eight weeks old.’

She stroked her baby’s downy soft cheek and his shock of dark hair. ‘I can’t get over how perfect he is.’

‘Or how tiny!’ Dimitri had joined them, and crouched down beside his wife and baby boy. ‘Look how small his fingers are. He’s amazing,’ he murmured, still awed by the fact that he was a father.

‘He’s our little miracle,’ Louise said softly. ‘Although he didn’t seem that little when I gave birth to him. The midwife said he was a good weight for a first baby.’

She met her husband’s gaze and her heart gave a familiar flip at his sexy smile. They had married a month after
Dimitri had taken her to Eirenne. The wedding in Athens had been the quiet event they had both wanted, attended only by close family and friends. Benoit Besson had made the bride’s dress and had given her away in a simple but emotional church ceremony. Louise had carried a bouquet of fragrant lilies and had worn her grandmother’s diamond
fleur-de-lis
pendant, which had been a wedding gift from Dimitri.

‘When I realised you had sold it to raise money for your mother’s treatment I scoured every jeweller’s shop in Paris and eventually found it,’ he had explained, when she’d stared tearfully at the necklace sparkling in a black velvet case.

Louise had been delighted to have the memento of her grandmother once more, but something that had made her even happier was Dimitri’s decision to donate the one million pounds she had returned to him to the cancer research project at the Paris hospital where her mother had been a patient. She loved him more and more with each passing day, and knew that he loved her just as deeply.

She turned her head from him to watch Ianthe, who was lifting her daughter into the pushchair.

‘I’ll take Ana back to the villa for her nap. You two must come and see her nursery and the rest of the Villa Aphrodite now that the decorators have finished.’

‘We’ll be over later,’ her brother promised.

When Ianthe had gone, Dimitri took Theo from Louise and settled him in his pram. ‘He should sleep for a while yet, don’t you think?’

‘Probably—he had a good feed. Why? What do you want to do?’ Louise’s pulse-rate quickened when Dimitri swept her up in his arms and laid her on a sun-lounger.

‘What I always want to do and will never tire of doing,’
he murmured as he unclipped her bikini top. ‘I want to love you—with all my heart and soul.’

‘And your body, I hope,’ she whispered against his lips.

The golden flecks in his eyes blazed with love and passion and teasing amusement. ‘If you insist,
glikia mou
.’

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

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First published in Great Britain 2012
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited.
Harlequin (UK) Limited, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road,
Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

© Chantelle Shaw 2012

ISBN: 978-1-408-97443-8