‘He’s my son. Daniel.’
My son. Her conscience pricked.
Nikos was shaking his head. ‘So you had sex with someone else...? Who?’
The fact that he was trying to deny knowledge that he’d been told about her pregnancy sent her hormones into orbit.
‘Someone else? Would that have been bad thing? When you’ve undoubtedly had sex with a legion of women in the past year? I don’t have time for this—please get out of my way.’
Nikos moved aside without even realising what he was doing. Maggie swept past with the baby on her shoulder. He automatically followed her, in shock.
She’d had a baby. With someone else. She’d slept with someone else right after him—it would have to have been. The baby only looked a few months old.
That realisation curdled in his gut. Along with her accusation that he must have slept with countless women. If only!
The baby’s dark eyes regarded Nikos steadily over Maggie’s shoulder as she strode back in through the kitchens and up the stairs into the main part of the house.
Nikos was barely aware of staff around them. He felt as if he’d been in an explosion and he couldn’t hear properly. Everything was muffled. Distorted.
Suddenly Maggie stopped and turned from the step above him. ‘Why are you following me?’
He heard her perfectly, and for the first time he heard the panic in her voice.
He went still inside. She’d attacked him when he’d asked her about the father.
His gaze moved from her to the back of the baby’s head. Dark hair. Maggie was fair. His mother had been fair, but his father’s darker, stronger genes had won out. He’d had dark hair as a baby. Not that there were many photos of him.
His gaze shifted back to Maggie. She was pale. Something else curdled in his gut now. Suspicion.
‘Who is the father, Maggie?’
‘I’m not having this conversation here.’
She turned and kept on hurrying up the stairs, entering a corridor on the first floor. Nikos followed her. She went through a door. He stopped on the threshold. It was a spacious bedroom with a cot in the corner. For the baby.
She was looking at him, eyes wide. No longer antagonistic. Hunted.
‘Maggie, who is the father?’
‘You know you are—why are you asking me as if you don’t know?’
Nikos looked at her. It was as if he’d heard her words but they were still hanging in the air between them. Not impacting fully.
He frowned. ‘I know I am? What are you talking about?’
The baby’s back stiffened and he made a mewling sound. Maggie looked distracted. ‘I have to feed him. Can you wait outside?’ When Nikos didn’t move she said, ‘Please?’
F
eeling blindsided, Nikos just watched as she came towards him. He stepped back over the threshold and she closed the door in his face. He heard her making comforting sounds as she presumably tended to the baby, baring her breast—the same breast he’d just cupped in a heat haze of lust.
Theos.
He walked away from the door, dazed. He paced down the corridor and back again, one word circling through his mind: father.
His only association with the concept of fatherhood was a toxic and complicated thing. His own father had been many things, but a father in the true sense of the word hadn’t been one of them. He didn’t even know what having a father felt like.
He reeled as the significance of this sank in.