The Maid's Best Kept Secret (The Marchetti Dynasty 1)

He stood with legs apart, every inch the bristling Alpha male. A million miles from the teasing seductive playboy who’d turned her world upside down in one night.

Maggie swallowed. ‘It’s okay. I’m comfortable standing.’

He folded his arms. ‘So, when would you have told me about Daniel? Would you have waited until he was walking and talking before you got around to it?’

No beating around the bush. Now he knew for sure, and he was angry. A muscle pulsed in his jaw. She was surprised at the emotion—she hadn’t expected it. She hadn’t expected a lot about this man, though, and he consistently surprised her.

She had to be honest. ‘I don’t know. I believed you knew but weren’t interested. I guess I might have tried again when Daniel was a bit older.’

He paced back and forth, energy crackling. He stopped and faced her. ‘I know it’s not entirely your fault, but while your low opinion of me is refreshing, when I’m usually surrounded by sycophants, I can’t believe that if I hadn’t turned up at the Barbier party I might easily have missed out on a year of my son’s life? Two years? More? As it is I have missed the birth of my own son. His first few months.’

Anger spiked at his accusatory tone. ‘All you left me a year ago was a note—not even a personal number. You couldn’t have made it clearer to me that you weren’t interested in anything beyond that one night. And now you expect me to believe that you would have been interested in the minutiae of the birth of a baby you didn’t believe was yours? You really don’t have to pretend to be interested now. It’s just us here. I know how this goes. My father—’

Nikos’s voice was like a whip. ‘Your father? What’s he got to do with this?’

Maggie cursed her runaway mouth again. But it was too late. ‘My father was rich—very rich. He had an affair with my mother and when she fell pregnant he denied all knowledge. Threatened her into staying away. He had no desire to be a father or to share any of his fortune.’

Nikos arched a brow. He’d never looked more imperious. ‘And that pertains to me how? Because I’m rich too?’

‘That and the fact that you told me specifically that you’re not into relationships or families.’

His brow lowered. ‘Well, that was before I had a son.’

A shiver went through her—a sense that once again Nikos was going to do the opposite of what she expected.

On impulse, she asked, ‘Why didn’t you want a relationship or children? Was it because you lost your mother?’

Nikos was so full of conflicting emotions and so full of desire for the woman in front of him that it was hard to think straight. Even though she was dressed like a hippy. Wearing worn dungarees and a singlet vest. Sandals. Hair up in an untidy knot.

She looked as if she’d just come from serving up lunch at an ashram. And yet he’d never seen anything sexier. It incensed him. He needed his wits about him, and all he wanted to do was carry her into the bedroom and spread her on the bed for his delectation.

Desire was a heavy, hot knot inside him, but he forced himself to focus. He debated giving Maggie some platitude, but for some reason he felt the urge to be brutally honest.

‘I never intended to have children because I didn’t want any child of mine to go through what I did.’

‘What did you go through?’

His skin prickled. He would never entertain such questions from anyone else—much less a woman he had slept with—but this situation demanded a different response. She deserved to know what she was getting into.

‘My mother killed herself when I was two—driven to it by my father, who had married her only for her inheritance. She believed he loved her. Soon after she died he married again, and his new wife had no interest in taking on his dead wife’s son, so I was sent to live with my grandparents in Greece. They never forgave me for my mother’s sins—for running off with her Italian lover and giving him her fortune. When I was old enough to be of some use my father took me away from Greece and sent me to boarding school in England. I was moved around like a pawn. A poor little rich boy who rebelled as a means of getting his father’s attention. To no avail.’

Maggie’s eyes had widened and were now full of something that Nikos had never seen before. Genuine emotion. It impacted on him in a way that made him feel on edge.

She said, ‘I’m sorry you went through that.’

‘Don’t be. It did me a favour. I learned early on that the only person you can count on is yourself.’

Nikos saw the shimmer of moisture in Maggie’s eyes and reacted instinctively, needing to take that emotion out of her. ‘Don’t do that—don’t look at me like that.’

‘Like what?’ asked Maggie.

What he’d just told her had torn down some vital defence, leaving her exposed, vulnerable. She’d also learnt not to trust anyone outside of herself and her mother from an early age. Her father, who should have been one of the most important people in her life, had also let her down badly.

Nikos said now, ‘I’m not a very nice person, Maggie. Don’t look at me like you care. Do you know what’s on my mind right now? How much I want you.’

Maggie’s thoughts skittered to a halt. He wanted her. She felt breathless. Tight inside.

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