‘Chantelle.’
Maggie would never forget her fake smile and patronising tone. She’d looked pointedly at Maggie’s distended belly and told her, ‘Oh, no, Mr Marchetti is far too busy to meet with you today, but I’ll be sure to pass on your note to him.’
Maggie said, ‘I wrote you a note.’ Like you left me a note. ‘She said she’d pass it on.’
‘Well, she didn’t.’
Maggie frowned. ‘But I saw you with her—I waited for a while outside your offices, hoping I might catch you leaving—’
She stopped there, recalling how it had felt to see Nikos emerge with the tall, blonde woman who had been everything Maggie hadn’t in that moment: slim, elegant, beautiful. Coiffed. They’d disappeared into the back of a sleek car before Maggie had been able to move towards them.
Nikos was shaking his head. ‘She didn’t give it to me.’
‘But...’ Maggie absorbed this. She sat down on the small two-seater couch behind her. ‘She told me she’d pass it on.’
Nikos unfolded his arms and paced back and forth. He stopped, funnelled a hand through his hair, clearly agitated. ‘I fired her around that time.’
‘Why?’
‘Inappropriate behaviour. She was sending me naked pictures of herself. It doesn’t surprise me that she might have suspected we’d had a relationship and gone out of her way to disrupt it.’
‘If you can call one night a “relationship,”’ Maggie muttered.
Nikos either didn’t hear her or chose to ignore her comment. ‘What did your note say?’
‘It said that I was pregnant with your baby and we needed to talk.’
Nikos paced back and forth again. He muttered something that sounded suspiciously rude. Then he stopped and faced her again. ‘I used protection that night.’
Maggie’s face grew hot. ‘I know. It must have failed.’
Nikos was struggling to contain the sheer magnitude of this news and what it potentially meant. ‘You could have tried again...once the baby was born.’
‘It’s all been a bit of a blur since the birth, to be honest.’
Nikos hated to admit it but he could see the faintly purple shadows under her eyes now. And when he thought of how she’d felt in his arms just now... In spite of those curves he could tell she’d lost weight.
But if anything she was more beautiful. It was as if she’d grown into herself in order to embody something earthy and impossibly sensual.
Everything in him resisted her pull on him in the midst of this bombshell. Rejected this news. He did not want a child. Not now—not ever.
Maggie continued, oblivious to Nikos’s inner turmoil.
‘I didn’t try again because I believed that you’d got my note and weren’t interested. But I don’t regret what happened. I don’t regret having Daniel for a second, even though I know it’s not what you want.’
The fact that she was echoing his thoughts wasn’t welcome. ‘First I need to confirm that he is my son—then I will decide how to proceed.’
Maggie looked hunted. For the first time in his cynical life Nikos had to acknowledge that he suspected Maggie was telling the truth. Not that he should trust her word alone, of course.
And in spite of all of this he was still burningly aware of her. This bombshell hadn’t diminished his desire for her one iota. He was afraid he might give in to the impulse to haul her into his arms and kiss her into relaxing the rigid line of her spine...kiss her into apologising for turning his life upside down in the space of a couple of hours.
He needed to leave now. His emotions were too volatile, mixed with an even more volatile desire. He needed to leave before he could do something he would regret.
He said, ‘I’ll arrange to have a DNA test done as soon as possible. You’ll be hearing from me.’
CHAPTER FIVE
NIKOS WAS GONE before Maggie could say another word. She let out a shuddery breath. The sounds of the party were a faint hum in the distance. She wondered if he had gone back to the party. Why wouldn’t he? He was a playboy after all. But he hadn’t looked like a playboy just now—he’d looked shell-shocked.