Bought: The Greek's Baby (10 page)
How would she feel in his place, forced to marry the lover who’d once betrayed her? Her heart ached just to think of it.
“You must hate me,” she said softly.
His jaw tightened.
“No,” he said in a low voice. “You’re not the one I hate.”
“Then—who?”
He turned away. “I thought you would remember Skinner if you saw him. I was sure you’d remember loving him.”
“Him?
No!” She shook her head fiercely. “If you say I betrayed you, then I believe you. But not for that man, no. Never!”
She saw the surprise in his face, the dawn of insecurity. “How can you be so sure?”
“He’s dreadful!”
“Perhaps you didn’t always think so. You’ve changed since the accident, Eve.”
She bit her lip, looking down at her pink cotton tank top and simple beige skirt. She suggested in a small voice, “I was more attractive to you before?”
Unexpectedly, he reached his hand over the table, placing it over hers.
“No,” he said in a low voice. “You were selfish and cold then, only focused on yourself. Now…” He took a deep breath. “You’re different. You care about other people. You’re loving and kind and sexy as hell. I’ve tried not to want you, Eve. Tried not to care. I’ve tried. And failed.”
Her heart was in her throat as she looked up at him, tears in her eyes. She took a deep breath.
“I love you, Talos,” she whispered. “Whatever I felt for you last summer—I’m in love with you now.”
His hand trembled over hers. He started to pull his hand away, but she stopped him, pressing his hand to her cheek.
“And I’m sorry,” she whispered into his skin, pressing her lips against the back of his hand. “Forgive me.”
She felt his hand shake, but instead of pulling away, he suddenly took one of her hands in both his own. Looking up, she was startled to see the weight of emotion shimmering in his eyes.
Clearing his throat, he glanced around at the elegant, empty restaurant. “Let’s go have breakfast somewhere else.”
Looking into his face, she felt her heart leap in her chest. Suddenly, she knew everything was going to be all right.
She now knew the reason he’d treated her so badly—but now he’d finally told her the truth, it could be healed. He could forgive her. She wouldn’t stop trying until he did—and until she remembered why she’d done it. And they could be a family.
Wiping tears from her eyes, she nodded.
Still holding her hand, he threw a large wad of bills on the table, then took her out into the bright sunshine.
The Greek sun was already starting to burn white. But as they crossed the busy street, the morning was fresh and new to Eve. Joy was everywhere.
Talos held her hand tightly as he led her through the traffic, protecting her body with his own. They hurried
past ancient white stone buildings packed between new trinket shops. She saw young mothers playing with their children on balconies draped with clothes hanging out in the sun to dry, wizened grandfathers smoking as they played chess in the sun.
Palm trees waved above them, providing respite from the early heat as they crossed into the Plateía Avissynías, an outdoor bazaar rich with music, the sizzle and smell of souvlaki and loud, boisterous haggling in the market stalls over everything from jewelry to Turkish carpets.
And Eve suddenly knew happiness was waiting for them around every corner.
“I’m sorry I wiped out your fortune,” she said once they reached the square. Talos stared at her in surprise.
Then he pulled her into his arms with a sudden boyish grin. It made him so handsome it took her breath away.
“You
tried
to ruin me,” he pointed out. “But in the end, the press attention only revealed our integrity. My company is worth more now than ever.”
“So really,” she teased, “you should thank me.”
On the sidewalk, he pulled her closer, his body hard against her own. Suddenly all the traffic and other people faded away.
His eyes were dark. Hungry. He pulled her close, stroking her face upward. “Thank you.”
And as he lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her so deeply and purely, she knew she would love him—forever.
And yet everything had changed.
As Talos looked down at her beautiful face in the busy outdoor market, her eyes were still closed. Her lips were swollen and bruised from his kiss.
As he lowered his head to kiss her again, he dimly heard his cell phone ringing from his pocket. He retrieved it and glanced down at it, cursing softly when he saw it was his assistant, no doubt calling about the Sydney deal. “Excuse me,” he said with real regret. “I have to take this call.”
Her beautiful eyes smiled up at him. Accepting him, flaws and all. Asking only that he accept her, as well.
She’d taken blame.
She loved him.
How was it possible?
“That’s all right,” she breathed. “I’ll just—um—look around the market until you’re done.”
“Stay where Kefalas can see you.”
She bit her pink, bruised lip, and he could tell she didn’t like the intrusion of a bodyguard, even from a distance. For a moment Talos was tempted to ignore his assistant’s phone call, forget the billion-dollar deal and offer to be her own private bodyguard. Then she sighed. “All right.”
Talos watched as she wandered toward the market. Even in the loose cotton skirt, he admired her backside. He admired her dark glossy hair, her perfect natural beauty. Her sweetly innocent love for him.
I love you, Talos. Whatever I felt for you last summer—I’m in love with you now.
“The Sydney deal is as good as done,” his first assistant crowed happily. “Their board just voted in favor of the sale.”
“Good,” he said, but he wasn’t really paying attention. He was watching his beautiful wife walk across the market, looking so happy, so interested in the world around her. He was about to hang up.
Then he suddenly paused. “Have Mick Barr investigate Eve.”
His assistant’s voice was too well-trained to register surprise. “Investigate Mrs. Xenakis?”
“Have him find out how her father died. See if there’s any reason it might be tied to me.”
As Talos hung up the phone, his gaze lingered on Eve, so beautiful and natural in the pink tank top and short cotton skirt. Instead of stiletto heels, she was exploring this city—exploring her life—in sandals that were clearly made for walking. Her bright, happy face, once so pale, was starting to tan in the sun.
He’d once thought to use her amnesia against her. He’d never imagined that her innocence and warmth would affect him like this. He felt knocked off-kilter by her tenderness, by her love.
I’m sorry. Forgive me.
He was blown away by her openness and vulnerability. She’d accepted blame for a betrayal she could not even remember. She’d chosen to believe him. To trust
him, when all he’d done was lie to her, trick her, punish her. It was enough to bring any man to his knees.
Talos started to walk toward her, but he’d gone only a few steps before the phone in his hand rang. He saw his lead investigator’s number and answered. “That was fast.”
“I can tell you about your wife’s father right now, Mr. Xenakis.” Barr paused. “Does the name
Dalton Hunter
mean anything to you?”
Talos’s entire body went hot, then turned to ice.
He was only dimly aware of the ebb and flow of people around him as his hand clenched around the phone.
“Dalton Hunter?” he repeated in a strangled voice.
“He died in a car accident when she was fourteen. A few months later, her mother remarried—to a wealthy British aristocrat. He adopted her. She took his name.”
Talos’s heart pounded in his throat. He saw black birds soaring in the blue sky above the city and for a moment he thought he was going mad.
Dalton Hunter—Eve’s father?
“How was I never informed of this?” he bit out.
“We’ve known about this for months, boss, but you said you didn’t want to hear anything about Eve. You just wanted us to find her.”
Clenching his jaw, Talos stared at Eve across the market.
“The mother didn’t live long, either. She died a few months after she moved the kid to England. Something about heart trouble.”
Heart trouble,
he thought.
Dalton’s wife.
And he knew just when Bonnie Hunter’s heart trouble had started.
“Right,” he said. “Thanks for the information.”
He closed the phone.
He stared down at his hands, which had tightened into fists. All these months, he’d thought Eve had pursued him out of a mercenary desire for money—or out of love for Jake Skinner. He’d thought she was shallow and cold.
He’d been wrong.
Eve must have planned this since she was a fourteenyear-old girl. Talos thought suddenly of those books he’d seen in her teenaged bedroom in a newly chilling light.
How to Get Your Man.
Her whole life since her father’s death—the whole meaning of her life—had been to get revenge on the man she thought had destroyed her father, ruined her family.
She must have studied the models and actresses Talos had dated. She’d emulated them. It had all been a carefully constructed facade. She’d done it perfectly, down to the last detail. Except for one thing—unlike his other women, she’d always remained emotionally detached.
Now he knew why.
How she must have hated him.
Now, he looked at her across the crowd, watching the brilliance of her smile as she sifted through a selection of hand-knitted baby booties at a stall.
Dalton would have told his daughter that he was
innocent. He would have insisted he was the injured party, told her Talos had turned on him for his own gain. Dalton was charming and manipulative. It was how he’d swindled his own shareholders of nearly ten million dollars before an inside source had alerted Talos to the theft.
Would Eve believe him if he told her the truth?
Yes, surely she would forgive him.
He started to walk toward her. Then he stopped.
He would have to tell her the truth about parents she idolized, two people who were both dead. It would break her heart.
And would it even matter? If she ever regained her memory, she would still hate him. It wouldn’t matter if he told her the truth. After a lifetime of loving her father, no explanation Talos could give would ever compete with that. And fairly or unfairly, she would hate him for destroying her most cherished memories and beliefs.
If she ever regained her memory, he would lose her.
Completely.
Forever.
It was simple as that.
Talos closed his eyes. The last time he’d seen Dalton Hunter, the man had been drunk when they’d run into each other in a New York hotel. “You’ve ruined me, you bastard,” Dalton had cried out, staggering on his feet. “I taught you everything, saved you from the gutter and this is how you repay me.”
“You were stealing from your stockholders,” Talos had replied coldly. He’d left the man without guilt,
knowing he’d done the right thing. The man had broken the law and now he was getting what he deserved. He hadn’t felt guilty. Not even after Dalton had driven his Mercedes into the Hudson River. He’d cheated—and not just his stockholders.
Talos had believed it to be justice.
He’d never thought of the child Dalton had left behind. He’d never checked up on the man’s brokenhearted widow.
Talos’s first year in America, he’d gone to the Hunters’ Massachusetts estate for Thanksgiving dinner. He remembered Bonnie’s glow as she kissed Dalton, right before serving the turkey she’d lovingly prepared. Their daughter—Evie—had been just a chubby kid then, reading books and eating apples in a sprawling farmhouse outside Boston.
Eve had changed herself completely since then. But now that she was pregnant and her cheekbones had softened to a more gentle, feminine curve, he could for the first time see the resemblance to the girl she’d been.
Christ, he was the one who’d had amnesia—except it had been by choice.
In the scandal that followed Dalton’s death, there must have been no money left. Bonnie Hunter had gone back home to England. Loving Dalton almost to madness, what would it have been like for her to marry John Craig after his death, to get security for her only child?
She died a few months after she moved the kid to England. Something about heart trouble.
Heart trouble?
He looked across the market at Eve. No, they just took revenge.
For ten years, she must have molded her character, changing her appearance, remaking her identity to get close to him—all to repay him in kind. She’d attended the charity ball in Venice on his rival’s arm just to get his attention. She’d purposefully set out to seduce him, so she could stab him in the heart.
It was a kind of hatred he’d never imagined in his whole life.
And now she was pregnant with his child.
No wonder she’d crashed her car when she’d found out she was pregnant. No wonder her traumatized mind had gone blank. It was like a severely injured person falling into a coma. It was for survival.
He watched her now at the outdoor market, laughing and haggling over two pairs of baby shoes, one pink, the other blue. Her face was beautiful and lit up. With the new feminine fullness of her pregnancy weight, he recognized the girl she’d once been. She looked so alive, so bright and innocent.
All this time, he’d thought this version of Eve was an illusion.
He’d been wrong.
This—this—was
the real Eve. This was who she would have been if she’d grown up without grief or
pain. This was the woman she would have become if Talos hadn’t taken everything from her when she was fourteen years old.
Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe. The air stifled him. He felt as if he was choking. He yanked off his tie.