Modern Romance August 2018 Books 5-8 Collection. Julia James

we decided at Stefanos’s party that there was no reason for you to return to the UK immediately.’

      ‘You decided. You didn’t ask me what I wanted.’ She glared at him. ‘It sounds familiar, doesn’t it?’

      What the hell had happened to have brought about a dramatic change in Ava’s attitude? Giannis searched his mind for clues that might explain why she was speaking to him in a cool voice that echoed the wintry expression in her grey eyes. Before they had gone to meet Stefanos she had responded to him with an eagerness that made his heart pound. But he noticed how she stiffened when he walked towards her.

      She had acted oddly, almost secretively, when she’d shot out of the car and hurried into the pharmacy earlier, he remembered. Maybe her edginess was because it was a certain time in her monthly cycle. Relieved that he had found a likely explanation, he relaxed and murmured, ‘I have a suggestion. You are not due to begin your new job in London for nearly another month. Why not stay in Greece until then? And when you return to England we could still meet up. I visit London fairly regularly for business, and I could rent an apartment for us.’

      ‘Are you asking me to be your mistress?’

      Giannis hid his irritation. Had she been hoping for more? For him to suggest that they make their fake engagement real, perhaps? Women were all the same, always wanting more than he was prepared to give. With a jolt of surprise he realised that he was not completely opposed to the idea of having a conventional relationship with Ava.

      He shrugged. ‘Mistress, lover—what does it matter?’ He stretched out his hand to stroke her hair and his jaw hardened when she shrank from him. They could play games all day, he thought grimly. He had a sudden sense that he was standing on the edge of a precipice and his gut clenched with something like fear as he prepared to leap into the unknown. ‘What matters is that I don’t want this...us...to end—yet. I need to know what you want, Ava.’

      He thought she hesitated, but maybe he imagined it. She picked up her suitcase and said in a fierce voice that stung Giannis as hard if she had slapped him, ‘I want to go home.’

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      A BLAST OF bitingly cold January air followed Giannis through the door when he strode into TGE UK’s plush office building in Bond Street. He disliked winter and London seemed particularly gloomy now that the party season was over. Even the festive lights along Oxford Street had lost some of their sparkle.

      He had spent a miserable Christmas with his mother, swamped by guilt, as he was every year, because he knew he was the cause of her unhappiness. For New Year he had stayed at an exclusive ski resort in Aspen. But as the clock had struck midnight he’d made an excuse to the sultry brunette who had hung on his arm all evening and returned to his hotel room alone.

      Maybe he was coming down with the flu virus that was going around, he brooded. He was rarely ill, but it might explain his loss of appetite, inability to sleep and a worrying indifference to work, friends and sex. Especially sex.

      When Ava had handed him the pink sapphire heart ring before she’d walked out of his apartment in Athens without a backward glance, Giannis had assumed that he would have no trouble forgetting her. He’d thought he had been successful when he’d danced at the New Year’s Eve party with the brunette whose name eluded him. But when Dana?—Donna?—had offered to perform a private striptease for him he had thought of Ava’s long honey-blonde hair spilling over her breasts, her cool grey eyes and her fiery passion and he had finally admitted to himself that he missed her.

      There were a few unopened letters on his desk and he frowned as he flicked through them. His secretary at the UK office had been rushed into hospital with appendicitis shortly before Christmas. The temp who had replaced Phyllis should have opened his private mail and forwarded anything of importance to him. It was obvious that some of the envelopes contained Christmas cards, but as it was now the second week in January he was tempted to throw them in the bin. Exhaling heavily, he opened a card, glanced at the picture of an improbably red-breasted robin and turned it over to read the note inside.

      The handwriting was difficult to decipher and he was surprised to see the name ‘Sam McKay’ scrawled at the bottom of the card. Giannis remembered that Ava had said her brother had struggled at school because he was dyslexic.

       Dear Mr Gekas

       I wanted to say thanks for letting me off about the damage done to your boat. It was desent of you. Sorry about you and Ava not getting married. Its a shame it didnt work out and about the baby.

       Happy christmas

       Sam McKay

      Baby! Giannis reread the note twice more and tried to make sense of it. Whose baby? He looked at the date stamp on the card’s envelope and swore when he saw that Sam had posted it on the fifteenth of December—more than three weeks ago.

      He could hear his heartbeat thudding in his ears as a shocking idea formed in his brain. Could Ava be pregnant with his baby? If so, then why hadn’t she told him? The blood in his veins turned to ice. What the hell had Sam meant in his badly written note when he’d said that it was a shame about the baby? Had Ava suffered a miscarriage? Or had she...?

      Giannis swallowed the bile that rose up in his throat. The memory of when Caroline had told him that she was no longer pregnant still haunted him. He had felt as if his heart had been ripped out, but Caroline had regarded her pregnancy as an inconvenience.

      He stared at Sam’s unsatisfactory note and sucked in a sharp breath when he thought back to the day three months ago at the apartment in Athens when Ava had acted so strangely. Had she known that she was pregnant but had decided that a baby would not fit in with her career?

      Theos, he was terrified that history was repeating itself. First Caroline, and now Ava. Something cold and hard settled in the pit of his stomach. He had lost one child, but if Ava was expecting his baby he would move heaven and earth to have a second chance at fatherhood.

      Giannis picked up the phone on the desk and noticed that his hand was shaking as he put a call through to his secretary’s office. The temp answered immediately. ‘Cancel all my meetings,’ he told her brusquely. ‘I’ll be out for the rest of the day.’

      * * *

      There was a ‘sold’ sign outside the terraced house in East London where, four months ago, Giannis had taken Ava to collect her passport before they had flown to Paris. If she had already moved away he would find her, he vowed grimly as he walked up the front path and hammered his fist on the door. If she was pregnant and hoped to keep his child from him, she would discover that there was nowhere on earth she could hide.

      The front door opened and Ava’s eyes widened when she saw him. She quickly tried to close the door but Giannis put his foot out to prevent her.

      ‘What do you want?’ she demanded, but beneath her sharp tone he sensed her fear. Of him? He ignored the peculiar pang his heart gave and used his shoulder to push the door wider open so that he could step into the narrow hallway.

      ‘I want the truth.’ He handed her the Christmas card he’d received from her brother. Looking puzzled, she read the note inside the card and flushed.

      ‘I haven’t explained to Sam that I pretended to be your fiancée so you would drop the charges against him,’ she said stiffly. ‘I suppose he thinks I’m upset that our engagement is over—which I’m not, of course.’

      ‘Only one part of your brother’s note interests me,’ Giannis told her coldly. ‘Is the baby that Sam refers to my baby?’ He watched the colour drain from Ava’s face and felt dangerously out of control.

      ‘I don’t have to tell you anything. And you have no right to force your way into my house.’ She backed up along the hallway as he walked towards her.

      ‘Were you pregnant when you left Athens?’