Chapter Fifteen


DAY ELEVEN: THURSDAY MORNING

It was just after midnight.

Susie saw her babysitter out. Her eyes were burning in her head but the tears refused to come. When Leos's guest had begun leaving, she had sneaked out and caught a cab home.
"I'm very sorry that I misjudged you," she had said woodenly to Leos.

"Is that it? Is that all you've got to say?" Leos had demanded.

She had been far too upset to say the right things. Fourteen months ago, it had been so easy for her to believe he had betrayed her. She had just been waiting for it to happen. Being madly in love with a man who never mentioned love and never made a date more than two days ahead had just been too much for her to handle in the wake of losing her mother.

That Leos should have preferred a beautiful blonde to her sad-and-sorry self had made perfect sense. She had believed Leos was a louse, a two-timing louse. Only he wasn't. Now she was the one in the wrong, very much in the wrong.

The doorbell buzzed. She knew it was Leos. That was when her eyes finally filled with scorching tears. She loved him so much. How had everything gone so wrong?

White dress-shirt half unbuttoned to show a bronzed slice of muscular chest, his black hair ruffled and his hard jawline roughened by stubble, Leos looked like a very sexy pirate.

Susie said, "I don't know what to say to you —"

Leos dropped the package he was carrying and caught her into his arms, scanning her damp eyes with frowning censure. And then, without any warning at all, he was kissing her with explosive passion, crushing her soft mouth under his over and over again, until she was clinging to him in shivering excitement, senses singing, her heart racing, mind a total wasteland. Raising his proud dark head, Leos gave her a wolfish grin and lifted her.

But he didn't carry her in search of a bedroom. He settled her on the sofa, and reappeared with the package that he tossed on to her lap.

"What... what's this?"

"It's for Ben —"

"B-Ben?"

"I saw him in the daycare yesterday." Dark blood scoring his fabulous cheekbones, Leos shrugged. "He gave me this big smile... he looked little and helpless... I'm not going to say he's the cutest baby I ever saw. He's probably the first baby I ever really looked at."

Trembling, Susie tugged a blue velvet rabbit from the packaging and her throat convulsed once more with tears.

"I had something similar as a baby... " Leos shared.

Shame and guilt engulfed Susie, making her feel the lowest of the low. "Leos... Ben well, er...Ben is six months old."

Leos continued to survey her steadily.

"Ben is your son," Susie framed shakily. "There wasn't any other man. I fell pregnant in Paris by you."

Heart sinking, she watched comprehension grow in his eyes. Then disbelief, shock, and acceptance, followed by a look of searing condemnation.

"What you have just told me," Leos breathed harshly, "is beyond all forgiveness."

Agonized, Susie watched Leos walk out on her and listened to the slam of her front door

Chapter Sixteen

DAY ELEVEN: THURSDAY AFTERNOON

Within minutes of Leos's arrival that afternoon at Devlin Systems, Susie was called to his office.

Leos raked chilling dark eyes over her. "Why did you come in today? Are you insane?"

Insane? In the automatic way that most people clung to routine in times of crisis, it had not occurred to Susie to stay home. "I — I —"

"Did you think I would want to meet my son for the first time in the workplace nursery?" His darkly handsome features were lit by the hostility of his gaze. "You go downstairs and you take my son out of there. Then you climb into the car waiting and you take Ben to my home."

Distressed by his bitter antagonism, Susie nodded. It should have dawned on her that Leos would wish to meet Ben. But only when Leos had presented her with the velvet rabbit, signifying his willingness to accept a child he had believed to have been another man's, had Susie appreciated how strongly Leos might feel about his own child.

"You decided I had slept with another woman and you took your revenge by denying me the right to know my son," Leos condemned.

"We broke up long before I knew I was pregnant, " Susie protested. "Do you remember talking about that friend of yours who you said was 'trapped' by a pregnant woman on the make?"

"Don't try to justify yourself on that basis. That woman's child might have been fathered by any one of a half-dozen men! We had something very different... or at least, I thought we did —"

Susie flushed with discomfiture. "But I believed you might accuse me of being on the make because you were rich... I didn't want the same label!"

"You will tender your resignation, " Leos continued as if she hadn't spoken, determined, it seemed, to allow her no defense.

"Sacking me, too?"

"Protecting my son's foolish mother from further damaging her reputation and mine —"

"Only yesterday, you told me you took no heed of such nonsense —"

"You should have told me the minute I entered this building that you had a baby, and that the baby was mine! Then... " Leos vented a humorless laugh, "you should have told me the day you realized you had conceived. I wouldn't leave any woman struggling to raise my child alone —"

"Even if it was my fault it happened in the first place?"

"Surely I'm mature enough to accept that making love can make a baby? And that sometimes that particular creative event is out of our control?"

So she was pond slime. Tried and found guilty. From every angle he made that clear. She had misjudged him, made wrong decisions, assumed the worst, surrendered to her own pessimistic expectations.

Having been assailed by tears since the early hours, Susie's throat ached, but she still had to ask him one question. "So... if I'd come to you a year ago and admitted I was pregnant, what would you have said?"

His stunning eyes cut like golden knives into her. "I would have said it was fate... and I would have married you."

"It's easy to be perfect and self-righteous... after the event. " Susie left, feeling that he had ripped her heart out... .

Chapter Seventeen


DAY ELEVEN: THURSDAY EVENING

Leos would have married her.

No mention of love though. No doubt he would have made her feel dreadful if he had married her, Susie told herself, no doubt they would both have been miserable. He had not loved her then and now even his respect for her was gone.

"He's really bright... ." Leos was watching their six-month-old son chortle and dig under the cushion to find the velvet rabbit his father had tried to conceal from him.

"Hmm... " Seated bolt upright in the drawing room of the town house, Susie studied man and baby, the black hair, golden skin, dark eyes that made them a matching duo.

Ben sat down on the rug. He'd had a nap earlier and Leos had gotten through that hour by asking constant questions about his son. What he liked, what he ate, how he slept, how big he was in comparison with other babies of his age, how clever he was in comparison with other babies of his age, how advanced in comparison with other babies of his age. For a male, who knew nothing about babies, Leos knew it all, including the fact that Ben had been born prematurely.

Why had she had never realized that Leos might be the sort of guy willing to crawl about the floor in a suit that had cost thousands of pounds and happily pretend to be a airplane, or a horse, or a car? Leos was still surveying Ben with a ********************************l-shocked look of pride and pleasure lightening his lean, strong face. From what she could see, discovering he was a father appeared to be a positive source of joy to Leos Kiriakos.

"He's dropping off again," Leos groaned in disappointment, as Ben's lashes drooped and an enormous yawn showed off his baby teeth.

"This is his bedtime."

"Why didn't you say?" Leos reproved.

"One late night won't harm him —"

"But we should stick to his routine, now that he's out of that daycare and he has your full attention —"

"Yes, I'm sorry I worked and neglected him by doing what thousands of other women do to make a living —"

"Don't be facetious. I wasn't blaming you. I was merely pointing out that Ben will much appreciate having you all day —"

"You're planning to keep us, are you?" Susie viewed him with bleak eyes, willing the storm of angry, wounded conflict inside her to stay down, out of sight.

Leos lifted Ben from the rug with excruciatingly gentle hands and laid him down on a sofa, boxing in his sleeping son with a line of cushions. Then he hovered just in case Ben made a sudden attempt to climb over the safety-barrier and fall. "Obviously, we're getting married. I've already been making enquiries about a special license. We'll have the wedding as soon as possible."

In one sense Leos was offering Susie all her past and present secret dreams but at that moment, all that powered her was the terrible hurt he had caused. "I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man alive on earth!"

Chapter Eighteen


"I don't want you doing the decent thing and marrying me... okay?" As Susie talked to Leos on the phone at nine the following morning, she was biting back sobs. "And at this hour of the day I do not want to talk about the stigma I am casting on your son by being an unmarried mother!"

"Why are you acting this way?" Leos demanded, being totally unreasonable.

Susie hung up the phone.

Leaving Ben with the neighbor, who babysat for her on the rare occasions that she went anywhere without him, Susie headed for Devlin Systems. She had to clear her desk. Hopefully, slipping in near lunchtime would attract the least attention.

Leos had been incredulous when she'd refused to marry him. Ben's needs featured in his every argument. Sadly, Susie had not heard one word that she wanted to hear. His angry inability to forgive her for the past and his refusal to see both sides of the situation would inevitably wreck any marriage. It wasn't enough for her to love him.

Susie had just finished clearing her desk when Leos appeared in the doorway. Unusually, he hovered. Nervous tension soaring, her heart skipped a beat. Tall, dark, devastatingly sexy, and stubborn as solid steel.

"You've never listened to my side of the story," Susie said.

"Meaning?"

"What it was like having my one and only affair with someone like you." Susie's gaze clashed with his intense dark golden eyes. "You were romantic and caring but you never let me feel secure with you... you were too cool for that, too clever, even too fair to hint at a commitment you weren't planning to make —"

Lean, powerful face taut, Leos frowned. "Susie —"

"By the time I met Brigitte in your apartment, I was already convinced you were getting bored with me. You gave me no reason to believe that we had a future beyond your next phone call," Susie asserted shakily. "Yet, you still believe I should have come running back with my big announcement that I was pregnant —"

"Don't you think there might have been a gulf then between what I was feeling and what I was showing you I felt?" His lean hands clenched his sides.

"No. Even my Valentine card didn't have that four letter word, love, on it, Mr. Cool." Misery was rising like a tidal wave inside Susie.

"I really do want to marry you —"

"You don't have to marry me to see Ben." Emotion threatening to overwhelm her, Susie walked into the corridor.

"Susie... " Leos breathed raggedly.

Susie kept moving, eyes swimming with tears.

"I love you... "

Faltering, Susie blinked.

"I've always loved you!" Leos proclaimed with roughened force.

Fascinated faces appeared at doorways.

Susie turned in a dizzy circle. Meeting the raw vulnerable intensity of his gaze, reading the strain in his bronzed features, she saw that he meant every word. A wild surge of happiness engulfed her. "I love you too —"

"This public enough for you?" A wolfish grin slanting his mouth at the muted burst of applause from an audience that was afraid to be too enthusiastic, Leos strode toward her and swept her into his arms. "Mr. Cool just took a hike

Chapter Nineteen


DAY TWELVE: FRIDAY AFTERNOON

In the limousine, on the way to pick up Ben, Leos banded both arms around Susie and kept her welded to every line of his hard muscular physique. Having kissed her breathless, he was now frowning with masculine bewilderment. "I assumed you knew how I felt —"

"How? By thought-transference?"

"When we were together last year, I could have told you I loved you the first week but I decided it would be... well — "

"Cooler to keep it quiet?"

"More sensible to go with the flow for a while." His dark tawny-golden eyes scanned her with tender appreciation. "Then you lost your mother and I felt like I lost you —"

"Did you?" That admission shook Susie.

"You shut me out. I didn't know whether to push or stand back... in the end I stood back which was the wrong thing to do —"

Susie groaned. "I though you were getting fed up with me —"

"I was devastated when you dumped me... there, I finally said it! " Leos breathed heavily. "Then I waited a couple of weeks and tried to contact you again but you'd moved —"

"Tell me, why did you just assume that Ben wasn't yours?"

"Ben seemed small to me at first. I thought he was a couple of months younger than he is. I went haywire for a couple of days, I was sick with jealousy," he admitted ruefully.

Something that had been puzzling Susie since Wednesday evening prompted her to change the subject and say, "Stamatis answered the door to me the night of the dinner party. Why didn't he just arrange everything for you?"

At that reference to his manservant, Leos gave her a wicked grin. "Haven't you worked that out yet, yinkeka mou? I had to dream up a job for you!"

"Dream up?"

"Not the promotion... the social secretary angle. If you'd gone straight on to the management team, I would never have had a chance to see you alone. The minute I recovered from the shock of finding you at Devlin Systems, I decided to try and get you back —"

Susie was transfixed by what he was telling her. "But that interview you gave me... you were so impersonal —"

"If I had gotten up close and personal as I am doing now... you'd have taken fright and run!" A teasing light in his lustrous dark eyes, Leos claimed another tender kiss. "I had to convince you that I would treat you like an employee, but I'm afraid that was too much of a challenge —"

"For me too. I just couldn't think of you as my boss —"

"I loved it when you got jealous... then you told me to have a great weekend with Alisha James and I thought you were laughing at me!"

Having long since arrived at its destination, the limo was at a standstill. Emerging from another embrace, Leos and Susie registered that fact about 10 minutes later. They rushed upstairs to Ben and told him what a wonderful baby he was. Secure in his parents' love, Ben yawned and fell asleep, as his parents held hands and dreamed of their future... .