Greek Mavericks: Seduced Into The Greek's World. Julia James

he found himself dropping down to his knees, his heart pounding so hard he could scarcely breathe. He looked at the little girl, sleeping there in the car seat. So tiny, so perfectly formed. Abandoned by the only parent she knew, brought to stay forever with the man who had signed her away as though she was an unwanted object he didn’t want cluttering up his home.

      “I am sorry,” he said, his voice raw, strange. “I am sorry for the man I was. But I will not abandon you. Not now. I will fix this. I will be the father you deserve. I will be the man that both of you deserve.”

      He didn’t know how long he stayed like that, sitting on the floor in front of her, simply staring. But eventually, she began to stir, a plaintive, high-pitched wail on her lips as she came fully awake. Her eyes open, bright blue, not at all what he expected, glaring at him as though he was her enemy. Then the tears started to fall down her angry red face and panic flooded through him.

      He picked up the car seat, wincing as pain from his ribs shot through him.

      He had to find someone. Anyone. He did not want to pick her up. He was afraid he would break her. He had no memory of how to hold a child. Perhaps he had never known how.

      “Rose!” He made his way out of the office and through the halls. “Rose, I need you.”

      Rose emerged from the library, her face pale, her eyes red.

      “What is it?”

      “The baby is crying.”

      “Yes,” Rose said, crossing her arms, “she is.”

      “I do not know what to do.”

      Rose stayed right where she was, her feet planted firmly on the floor. “I’m not sure what you want me to do about it.”

      “Help me.”

      She still didn’t move. Then finally, as Isabella’s cries continued to fill the air, Rose’s expression softened. “I’m not going to help you. But I will help her.” She crossed the space between them, stopping in front of him. “Put her seat down.”

      He complied, and then Rose knelt down, beginning to work the harness that kept the baby strapped in.

      She undid the seat belt and plucked the baby up from the seat, cradling her tiny body close to her chest. It made something inside Leon’s own chest tighten. Made it almost impossible for him to breathe. There was something about all of this that was familiar and foreign at the same time. Something that filled him with a terrible sense of dread that made it feel as though his insides were slowly turning to ice.

      He found himself completely rooted to the place he was standing. He couldn’t move forward. He couldn’t turn away.

      “She might be hungry.” A tear slipped down Rose’s cheek and he despised himself. The two women in his life were here in front of him, weeping, and he could do nothing to stop any of it. He didn’t know how. He didn’t know how to comfort a baby, and he found himself somewhat terrified by the sight of her. He didn’t feel he deserved to try to offer comfort to Rose. Whom he had betrayed.

      “Are you all right?” It was the wrong thing to ask. He knew the moment he spoke the words. And it was confirmed by the way her mouth flattened. By the way her eyes cooled.

      “I don’t know how to take care of a baby. I don’t know what to do. This isn’t what I want,” she said, her voice breaking.

      There was no response for that. It didn’t exist inside of him. He wondered what he would have said if he was in possession of his memories. He wondered how he would respond to this. How he would respond to her.

      “First I will send out some of the staff to buy supplies,” he said. He didn’t know what would come next. He realized the way he had begun that sentence implied that he had a list of actions to take. But he could barely wrap his mind around the one.

      “That would be good,” she said, her tone stiff. “Please just...take her.” She took a step forward, thrusting the baby into his arms. He took her, cradling her close. He could do nothing but stare down at her, marveling at the intense shot of fear that gripped him. As though she were a man-eating tiger and not a small girl.

      When he looked up, Rose was gone.

      And Leon was left alone with his daughter.

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      ROSE FELT LIKE she was made of pain. She’d spent the entire day curled up in her bed, a lump of misery that could not be moved. She was assuming that Leon had seen to taking care of Isabella’s needs. She felt guilty for the assumption. But not quite enough to move from her position in her bed.

      It wasn’t as though she had any experience with babies. None of her friends had them yet. She was an only child, and she had never done babysitting or anything like that when she was growing up.

      She couldn’t offer him any help. The house was full of staff. He would figure something out.

      She ignored the crushing weight that thought brought. She didn’t know how she was supposed to sort through this. She didn’t know how she was supposed to forgive this.

      But she had shared herself with him. As much as she had loved him before he’d touched her, she had only fallen deeper since they’d started sleeping together. Since she’d started to hope again.

      The door to her bedroom opened and she sat up, clutching her blanket to her chest, in spite of the fact that she was fully clothed. “What do you want, Leon?” she asked, not bothering to moderate her tone as Leon walked into her room, slamming the door behind him.

      “Are you going to stay angry with me?”

      “Probably,” she said.

      “There is nothing that I can do about this. There is nothing I can do to turn back time.”

      “And there’s nothing I can do to erase how horrible this feels. I just don’t understand. I don’t understand how you could do something like this.”

      He exploded then. Every bit of the rage she imagined had been simmering inside of him since his accident, since his memories had been ripped from him, pouring from him. “I don’t know why I would do something like this, either, Rose. I have no memory of any of it. No memory of what reasoning there could have possibly been. Why was I not in your bed? Why did I turn my own child away? I don’t know the answer to these questions. Everything is gone. It’s a black hole inside me. I can never reach the bottom of it. I can’t seem to see anything around me. These are the consequences of my actions, and I understand that. I understand that I’m not innocent because I don’t have answers. But it doesn’t make this any easier.”

      She gritted her teeth. Fighting against sympathy. Fighting against any kind of understanding. She held on to her anger like it was a lifeline, and she refused to release her hold. “It doesn’t make it easier for me, too. It simply means that I can’t even rail against you the way I want to. All it means is that I can’t get an answer out of you. No matter how hard I try. Though I doubt you would give me one even if you could remember. That’s just how you are. You have been kind to me in the past. But I’ve been clinging to those memories like they have anything to do with the man you became.”

      “And who is that?”

      “A bored, cynical playboy with a drinking problem. A man who has been given everything, and seems to feel nothing.” She took a deep, shaking breath. “You’re a brilliant businessman, but you’re a terrible husband. You don’t love anyone but yourself, Leon. And it has been like that for a very long time.”

      He seemed stunned by her outburst. Stunned by her words. Well, that made two of them. But it was true. It was everything that she had buried down deep inside herself. Even deeper than the love she felt for him. When she had talked herself into divorcing him, she hadn’t used anger to make the decision.

      She