For Pleasure...Or Marriage?

Something worked in Leo’s face.

‘Tell me, little cousin, does it ever occur to you that you are mentally deranged?’ Markos’s expression blackened, but Leo ignored it. Not giving him pause to retort, he went on. ‘You know, any minute now I’m expecting to hear you told her that you’d be married once you’d got a positive DNA test on the baby—’

He broke off, and a Greek expletive issued from him.

‘You did, didn’t you? You told her that you wanted to check paternity before you married her!’

‘Of course I damn well did! Do you think I wanted—?’

He fell silent. A bleak look entered his eyes. ‘I just wish to God those tests had been around before I was born. It would have made life a lot—simpler.’

For the first time since he’d walked into his office his cousin lost the hard look in his eyes.

‘What are you going to do, Markos?’

Markos’s gaze slipped away, so that he was staring out into nothing.

‘I can’t force her to marry me. She wants to bring the baby up on her own. Obviously I’ll create a trust fund for it, even if she doesn’t want me to—and I’ll make sure she’s financially secure even though she says she’s got enough to live on.’

‘And what about the child? The courts would grant you access, at the very least. And you could always apply for custody.’

‘No! God Almighty—do you think I’d do that?’ Markos’s eyes whipped back to Leo’s.

Slowly, Leo shook his head.

‘You might well not get custody,’ he said. ‘Vanessa’s nothing like your mother. Not if she’s going to live a quiet, respectable life as a seaside landlady. And you, Markos,’ he added slowly, ‘you are not your father.’

Dark slate eyes looked back at him, bleak as a winter’s day.

‘No?’ he said, and his mouth twisted suddenly, hard and bitter and painful. ‘Yet that was exactly the description Vanessa gave of me before she threw me out.’

It was night. Night and moonless and starless. Night high over the city, over the dark river flowing below. Night everywhere.

Markos stood motionless. He looked out into the night, hands closed over the high railing of his roof terrace.

Somewhere, hundreds of miles away to the south and west, Vanessa must be asleep, with her baby curled inside her.

So very far away.

His hand clenched more tightly over the cold steel edge. It felt like a cage all around him.

Inside him.

He let go abruptly and turned away, striding inside through the wide open terrace windows, stepping inside the long, luxurious lounge. Instinctively his eyes went to the sofa.

But Vanessa was not there.

She wasn’t there, her eyes warm and glad, holding out her arms to him, waiting for him to come to her, for him to take her hand and kiss her soft, tender mouth.

She would never be there again.

Would never gaze up at him with her beautiful, adoring eyes. Never lie in his arms, her hair like a living flame across the pillows, never give he

rself to the ecstasy he could arouse in her. Never again.

I thought her my mistress but she was never that—never! She was always so much more…

A vice crushed his chest with physical pain.