Claiming My Hidden Son (The Notorious Greek Billionaires Book 1) Page 13

  The thick lump wedged in my throat stalled my answer. Because time was the one commodity I might not have.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE LIMO SWEEPING through the gates of his Athens mansion drew from me a breath of relief. But I soon realised I wasn’t going to be set free from Ax’s presence when he trailed me up the stairs to the door of Andreos’s room.

  I hesitated before the doors—partly because I didn’t want to bring charged tension into Andreos’s presence and partly because a tiny part of me wanted space to dissect everything that had happened this evening. But the greater part of me wanted to keep my son all to myself. Just for a little while.

  A sharp cry from within dissipated every thought.

  As Ax held the door open for me I entered the room in time to see Sophia lifting Andreos from his changing mat.

  She stopped and smiled when she saw us. ‘Good evening, Kyria Xenakis. You’re just in time for Andreos’s midnight feed. Would you like me to warm the bottle for you?’

  I waved her away and Ax strode forward to take Andreos from her arms. ‘Go to bed, Sophia. I’ll take care of it.’

  With a smiling nod, the young girl retreated to the adjoining bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

  Ax adjusted his hold on Andreos, his strong hands lifting him aloft so they were face to face. My breath caught and, recalling his words in the car, I watched father and son stare at each other, one expression showing unabashed curiosity while the other probed with raw intensity as Axios absorbed his son’s every expression as if hoarding it for his memory.

  A little ashamed at questioning his motives in the car, I bit my lip as something settled inside me. No matter our personal angst, Axios cared for his son. Perhaps in time he’d love him almost as much as I did.

  In that moment I wanted to tell him he would have years of special moments like this if I didn’t manage to defuse the time bomb ticking inside me, but the words remained locked tight in my throat, the need not to have this time diluted with unwelcome outside influence stilling my tongue as I joined them.

  Sensing another presence, Andreos turned towards me, his chubby arms windmilling as he babbled in delight. Then delight turned into familiar irritation as hunger kicked in and he whimpered his displeasure.

  ‘Someone is impatient for his feed,’ Ax mused, before his gaze dropped pointedly to my chest.

  A fierce blush suffused my face. My breasts had been growing heavier in the last couple of hours. Even without the need to feed him myself I would have needed to express some milk before going to bed.

  Expecting Ax to hand him over, I watched in surprise when he headed to the antique rocking chair I used for feeding Andreos. ‘You’re staying?’

  ‘Unless you have an objection?’ he asked, and I realised it was a genuine query.

  About to say yes, I stunned myself by shaking my head.

  A look flitted across his face faster than I could decipher it before he nodded. Once I was seated in the chair, which I’d discovered had been in his family for generations, Ax handed Andreos over. Then he started to move towards the adjacent sofa.

  ‘Um...’ I said.

  He turned immediately. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Can you help me with my dress?’

  Piercing grey eyes darkened a fraction as they moved to the halter neck of my dress. He gave a brisk nod, and in one deft move freed the fastening.

  I caught the front before I was completely exposed, but there was no hiding from Ax’s focused attention as I positioned Andreos on my lap.

  He latched on with greedy enthusiasm, one fist planted firmly on my breast while both chubby legs jerked up to wrap around the forearm of the hand I’d laid on his plump belly to steady him.

  The familiar action tugged at my heartstrings and drew a smile.

  ‘Does he always do that?’ Ax rasped, his voice gruff with emotion.

  For a precious few seconds I’d forgotten he was there, watching my every move, absorbing his son’s routine. Now my gaze met his and I nodded shakily, strangely overcome to be sharing this little snippet of time with the man who’d helped create my precious son.

  ‘Since he was two and a half months old. I think it’s his way of telling me to stay put. He’ll let me go when he’s satisfied.’

  Ax lounged back in his seat and crossed his legs, a curious, heart-stopping little smile playing at his sensuous lips. ‘He’s a Xenakis. He knows what he wants.’

  That display of unabashed male pride would have been unbecoming from any other man. From Ax it was a solid statement acknowledging his progeny. Progeny that would be completely his if I lost my fight.

  The lance of pain to my heart made my breath catch.

  ‘What is it?’ Ax asked sharply. ‘Does it cause you pain?’

  My gaze flew to his and I had to swallow before I could answer. ‘The breastfeeding? No, it doesn’t.’

  His narrowed gaze moved from Andreos and back to me. ‘Then what is it?’

  I flailed internally as I tried to find a plausible response. ‘I was just remembering our conversation in the car. Perhaps I was...a little harsh.’

  One brow quirked, but it was minus the mockery I’d become used to. ‘Perhaps?’

  ‘Okay, I was. I... I don’t want us to butt heads over Andreos.’

  His hands spread in a manner that suggested a truce. ‘Neither do I, Calypso.’

  As milestones went, this was another sizeable one in an evening filled with small earthquakes of surprise. My breath caught. Andreos whimpered. I looked down to find eyes so much his father’s wide and curious upon me. Reading my every expression just as intently as his father probed beneath my skin.

  ‘Maybe we should discuss this further later?’

  ‘I agree,’ Ax responded, then proceeded to watch me with hawk-like intensity all through the feed.

  When I transferred Andreos to my other breast Ax’s gaze tracked my blush after dropping once to my nipple. But this time my self-consciousness was reduced. The natural act of providing sustenance for my baby was one I realised I didn’t mind sharing with his father.

  Just as abruptly as he’d wrapped his sweet limbs around my arm Andreos dropped his legs and he detached with a loud plop.

  Ax rose and sauntered over, wordlessly securing my dress as I sat Andreos on my lap and rubbed his back. I was rewarded with a loud burp three minutes later.

  With a gentle caress of his son’s head, Ax stepped away. ‘I have a few phone calls to make. I’ll meet you in my suite when you’re done here.’

  The reminder that our suites were interconnecting and the memory of what had happened in his sent a pulse of electricity through me as I watched him walk away.

  His icy indifference had receded. Something had happened on that balcony tonight. The realisation that Ax didn’t tar me with the same brush as my father had eased something in me.

  I was pondering the new path this might lead to as I laid a sleepy Andreos back in his cot and then entered the suite forty-five minutes later.

  Both the living room and bedroom in Ax’s suite were empty. Entering my own suite, I crossed to the dressing room, quickly undressed, then slid on my night slip before throwing a matching silk gown over it.

  I was brushing my hair at my dressing table when Ax walked in, both hands in his pockets.

  He paused in the doorway, his eyes holding a skin-tingling expression and resting on me for a long moment before he prowled forward. He stopped behind me and I waited, my breath locked in my throat as one hand reached out, tugged the brush from me and slowly dragged it through my hair.

  For a full minute he said nothing, and the hypnotic sensation of his movements flooded my system with torrid lust.

  ‘You’ll be pleased to know our strategy worked,’ he drawled eventually. ‘My family and friends believe we are happily reunited. I expect my busin
ess partners to fall in line by morning.’

  Something shook inside me. The easy way he laid his hand on me was a stronger warning that things were shifting. That the conversation on the balcony had indeed sparked much more than a rebellion and the need to answer it in both of us.

  Before I could heed the warning he nudged me to my feet, slid his hand down my arm to link with my fingers. ‘Come with me.’

  Even the imperious tone had altered, become less...autocratic.

  I followed him into his living room.

  There, on a wide screen, he’d set up the video I’d given him. ‘Ax...?’

  ‘I haven’t had a chance to watch this yet. Or perhaps I was putting it off,’ he said, with a hint of vulnerability in his voice that stunned me enough to take the seat next to him when he settled on the plush sofa.

  ‘You want to watch it now?’ I asked.

  His eyes met mine, held me in place. ‘Yes,’ he stated simply.

  With a flick of his finger on the remote the video came to life. The simple but clean walls of the hospital room in Kenya came into view before the camera swung over the machines to rest on my heavily pregnant form.

  My breath strangled into nothing as the uniquely intimate and life-changing event unfolded on the screen, tugging at the very heart of me.

  Beside me Ax caught his breath audibly as he watched a contraction hit me, and the hand that still held mine tightened. This footage had been taken about ten minutes before Andreos’s birth. Ax watched every frame without taking his gaze off the screen, his whole body rapt as Andreos was laid in my arms for the first time. He watched me kiss his wrinkled forehead, heard me murmur, ‘My little miracle,’ as tears of joy spilled down my face.

  His throat moved in a swallow when the video ended, and he immediately hit ‘rewind’ and watched it all over again.

  Then his gaze shifted to me.

  ‘Ax...’

  He shook his head, raised my hand to his mouth, gently kissed the back of it. ‘It was a magnificent birth.’

  Deep inside me something essential melted, pulling me into a dangerous spell I wasn’t entirely certain I wanted to fight. Emotion clogging my throat, I smiled.

  ‘He’s a beautiful boy,’ he rasped, a throb of deep pride in his voice.

  I blinked unbidden tears away. ‘Yes. He is.’

  ‘As beautiful as his mother.’

  As my breath caught all over again, his thumb rubbed across my knuckles.

  ‘Again you have my thanks—especially since you had to go through that alone.’

  ‘I’d do anything for him,’ I replied, and I knew the fervent well of my emotion had registered with him.

  For the longest time he simply stared, then his gaze returned to the screen, his vision going a little hazy. ‘The reality of him—’ He stopped. ‘He may be an unexpected arrival in my life, but I want the chance to do right by him. To do things differently—’

  Again he stopped, prompting questions I couldn’t halt.

  ‘Differently from what? Your father? I noticed your stiff interaction at the wedding, then again at the family mixer, and assumed I was to blame.’

  He shook his head. ‘Our issues go back a little further. I was still a teenager when my grandfather announced that I was to be his successor. In his eyes my father didn’t have what it took to make the tougher decisions.’ A muscle ticked in his jaw as his lips firmed. ‘My father disagreed. He attempted to prove my grandfather wrong.’

  I frowned. ‘How?’

  ‘My grandfather temporarily handed him the reins of the company. Six months later my father suffered a breakdown brought on by extreme stress. He didn’t take the prognosis well.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He believed my grandfather had humiliated him. And when my grandfather made it known that he’d seen me as his successor all along, my father...didn’t take it well. His resentment festered irreparably.’ His lips twisted. ‘Which, in a nutshell, is the story of my whole family.’

  ‘But you all seem so...united—give or take the odd vibe or two.’

  He shrugged cynically. ‘Self-interest, especially where wealth is concerned, has a way of binding even the most dissenting individuals. My father may not like the status quo but he’s had to accept it.’

  ‘Is there no way to repair your relationship?’

  A hint of bleakness came and went in his eyes within a heartbeat. ‘We’ve accepted our strengths and our weaknesses. My father may resent me for seemingly usurping him, but he doesn’t want the role.’

  ‘You offered it to him?’

  His lips thinned. ‘A few years ago I suggested a partnership. He refused.’

  ‘He wanted all or nothing?’

  His lips twisted. ‘Don’t we all?’

  Pain lashed me. ‘Not all of us. Our fathers, maybe.’

  Grey eyes met mine and a moment of affinity lingered between us, threatening to burrow into vulnerable places.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Is that why you’re determined to try with Andreos?’

  He’d said on the balcony that he was attempting to be different. The part of me that wasn’t terrified of what the future held desperately craved to see that difference.

  The question took him aback, and a naked yearning blanketed his features before he mastered it. ‘Is it wrong to wish for a better outcome with my son than that between my father and I?’ he rasped.

  Again, a deep, sacred sensation pulled at me. Harder. Stronger. Making it impossible to breathe.

  Despite the danger of falling under the silken spell he was weaving, I laid my hand on his arm. ‘No, it’s not.’

  His gaze dropped to my hand. Silence charged with electricity filled the room as something flashed in his eyes. Primal and fierce. The video and our conversation had done something to him. Shifted the dynamic.

  I was tempted to run. To hide from it. But I was just as determined not to regress.

  ‘So...where do we go from here? After tonight, I mean?’

  His eyes dropped to my lips, then moved back up to seize mine.

  ‘Now we consolidate on what we’ve started,’ he murmured huskily.

  I wanted to ask for clarity. Wanted to ask whether he meant us or the larger world. But his fingers wound tighter around mine, his free hand rising to slide into my hair, dragging over my scalp in a wickedly evocative move that snatched the air from my lungs and hardened my nipples into aroused peaks.

  Those penetrating eyes tracked my every reaction, his nostrils flaring when he caught the visible signs of my agitated state.

  ‘And how do you propose to do that?’ I asked.

  ‘By making things real both inside and outside of the marriage bed,’ he stated, his voice deep and sure.

  Lightning-hot excitement charged through me, the need to experience this altered Axios overwhelming me. Would the change he wanted with his son manifest itself with me too, even in the short time I might have?

  Only one way to find out.

  I tugged myself free and stood to my feet.

  Mutiny flashed in his eyes.

  When he started to reach for me, I held up a hand. ‘If you want me to change my mind convince me that you’re worth it,’ I said.

  Then I fled.

  * * *

  I went after her like a beast possessed.

  She was mine.

  My wife.

  All evening I’d caught tantalising glimpses of her. The way she moved, the thoughtful way she responded to strangers’ rabid curiosity, even accommodating Stavros...

  I’d run the gamut from telling myself I didn’t care about all the facets of herself she was revealing to feeling a determination to pin her down and extract every last secret from her.

  But that video...

  Her father was in possession of a hundred million euros
. My name could have commanded an entire wing in a plush private hospital. And yet Calypso had chosen to deliver our son in a state-run hospital in Kenya with third-rate equipment. And, not only that, she’d done all that with an inner strength that shone through the footage, surrounded by people who had clearly held her in high regard.

  She’d spent some of the past year volunteering. I couldn’t name a single member of my family who would devote their time to charity unless it came with a tax write-off or a star-studded gala where they could show off their diamonds.

  And besides the awe-inspiring act of giving birth, the most striking thing about Calypso Xenakis was the determination I’d seen on her face in that video.

  It had sparked something inside me. A need for...more.

  That intoxicating little incident on the sofa this afternoon, compounded by the kiss on the balcony this evening and watching her nurse our son, was what had finally fully awakened the primitive beast inside me. The video was evidence of her strength and resilience, despite my less than stellar behaviour last year.

  Even confessing the true relationship between myself and my father—a subject I’d never discussed with another living soul—had felt...liberating. That we were both products of our circumstances had triggered an affinity in us that had in turn laid out a different way to approach what had been thrust on us.

  Perhaps it didn’t need to be finite.

  That admission to do things differently this time had surprisingly settled deep inside me.

  The Calypso I’d married had possessed a banked fire.

  The woman who’d returned from her mysterious absence was flame and grit.

  Heat I was unashamedly drawn to. Grit I wanted to explore.

  Both characteristics drove me after her.

  I arrived in the suite just as she was entering her own bedroom. I stopped her with the simple act of capturing her delicate wrist. The electricity of contact simply reaffirmed my decision.

  She waited, one eyebrow elevated.

  Theos mou, did she know how alluring she was, with her blue eyes daring me even as her agitated breathing announced that she wasn’t unaffected by this insane chemistry?