Reluctant Mistress, Blackmailed Wife

Katie darted a surprised glance at him above her fingers and slowly, carefully, lowered her hands back down on to her lap. ‘Yes.’

‘So you decided to approach me for…help. That’s okay.’ Alexandros resolved to offer assistance in every way he could. ‘Where are you living at present?’

Unsure where this dialogue could be heading, Katie blinked. ‘In a bed and breakfast hotel…I had to leave the bedsit I was in.’

Alexandros had not a clue what a bed and breakfast hotel was. But he knew a bedsit was one room, which he found shocking enough in the accommodation stakes. He surveyed her, wondering if she had lost weight because she wasn’t getting enough to eat. He was sincerely shaken by that thought. ‘Are you hungry?’

Slowly, she nodded, for it was hours since she had eaten, but his questions were bewildering her. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me about the baby?’

The repetition of that unfortunate word ‘baby’ had the same effect on Alexandros as a bucket of cold water. His lean, strong face hardened. ‘I thought we had moved on from that improbable tale. It’s not winning you any points with me.’

Katie flushed a deep painful pink. ‘Why are you so convinced that I’m lying? Do I have to go through a solicitor for you to take me seriously?’

Almost imperceptibly Alexandros tensed; that reference to legal counsel did not fit the conclusions he had reached.

‘You just don’t want to know, do you?’ Katie shook her head in pained and angry embarrassment. ‘But I’m bringing up your children!’

‘My…children?’ Alexandros repeated in blunt disbelief. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘I had twins…Have you any idea how hard this is for me?’ Katie demanded chokily. ‘How do you think it feels for me to have to ask you for a hand-out?’

Twins! That single word hit Alexandros harder than any other. It was a fact known to few that he was a twin, whose sibling had been stillborn. ‘You’re telling me that you have given birth to twins?’

‘What do you care?’ she gasped. ‘Look, stop the car and let me out…I’ve had enough of this!’

‘Give me your address.’

While Alexandros opened the shutter between them and the chauffeur and communicated in Greek, she clasped her hands tightly together to conceal the fact that she couldn’t hold them steady.

Alexandros focussed bleak dark golden eyes on her. ‘What age are the twins?’

It dawned on her that he was finally listening to her. ‘Nearly ten months old.’

The improbable began to look ever more possible to Alexandros. Yet on another level he could not believe that he could find himself in such a situation. On every instinctive level he resisted that belief. ‘And you are saying that your children are mine?’

There was no mistaking how appalled Alexandros Christakis was by the idea that she might just be telling him the truth after all, Katie registered with a sinking heart. His vibrant skin tone had paled, and the stunned light in his gorgeous dark eyes spoke for him. ‘What else do you think I’m doing here? Oh, right—you’re still hoping it’s a sting. Sorry, I’m not a con-artist. The twins are yours and there’s no mistake about that.’

‘I will insist on DNA tests,’ Alexandros asserted.

Katie veiled her eyes, angrily reeling from that further insult as though he had struck her. How dared he? He was the only lover she had ever had, even if he had chosen not to acknowledge the fact. The harsh bite of hurt and rejection lurked behind her annoyance, but she stubbornly refused to acknowledge it. Never once since he’d walked away from her had she allowed herself to wallow in the pain of that loss.

Yet what more had she expected from Alexandros Christakis today? she asked herself unhappily. Had she dreamt of a welcome mat and immediate acceptance of her announcement? From a guy who had ditched her while carefully retaining his anonymity? A guy who had patently never thought about her again since then? Of course he wasn’t pleased, and he would never be pleased. Of course he was still hoping that there was some mistake or that she was a lying schemer.

After all, Alexandros Christakis had no feelings for her. She had been a casual sexual amusement when he’d been bored and at a loose end. Turning up again now as she had, looking scruffy and down on her luck, she was nothing but a source of embarrassment to a male of his sophistication and wealth. Add in her announcement about the twins, and she became the stuff of most single guys’ nightmares, she reflected painfully. He didn’t love her and he didn’t want to be with her, so what could fatherhood mean to him? Men only wanted a family with women they cared about. Alexandros wouldn’t want her children. Well, that was all right, she told herself doggedly. All she wanted and needed from him was financial help.

The limo came to a halt. In an abrupt movement that revealed his stress level, Alexandros broke free of his shield of reserve and closed a lean brown hand over hers. ‘If they are my children, I swear that I will support you in every way possible,’ he breathed in a driven undertone. ‘Give me your mobile number.’

‘I don’t have a phone.’

He dug a card out of his pocket, printed a number on it and extended it to her. ‘It’s my personal number.’

His personal number. Her eyes prickled and stung like mad. She wanted to scrunch the card up and throw it at him, because he had been so careful not to give her that number eighteen months earlier. Her throat was so thick with tears that she could hardly breathe, much less hurl the tart comment she wanted to fling. She had loved him so much. It had been a savage hurt when he’d rejected her, and to be forced back into his radius and made to feel as undesirable as the plague was salt in that wound.

Alexandros watched her cross the busy pavement. She moved with the sinuous grace and light step of a dancer. He tore his attention from her, refusing to acknowledge that reflection, and the door closed, leaving him alone with his bleak thoughts. If a man could be said to have ditched a woman with good intentions, he was that man. Now it seemed that although he owned the race in the cut-throat world of high finance, his private life was destined to be a disaster area. Once again he had screwed up. Once again he would have to pay the price. As she had paid it. Just what he needed, he reflected with a bitterness he could not suppress: a guilt trip that would last the rest of his life.

How likely was it that her children were his? He remembered Katie’s indiscreet, straight-from-the heart forthrightness. He had found her honesty such a novelty. There had been no half-truths and no evasions. Very refreshing—until she’d said those fatal words he could not stand to hear on another woman’s lips. I love you—that little phrase that Ianthe had made so much her own.

Why had he let Katie get out of the limo? Chances were she was telling the truth and he was the father of her twins. He suppressed a shudder. He knew exactly what was required of him. He knew he had absolutely no business thinking about himself or about how he felt. He had dug his own grave. He recalled that Katie didn’t even have a phone. He swore long and low under his breath. Perhaps she needed food more.

‘You have appointments, boss,’ Cyrus remarked in an apologetic tone.

Alexandros ignored that reminder. Acting purely on impulse, he went to Harrods and bought an enormous hamper, and the latest mobile phone in Katie’s favourite colour. His own out-of-character behaviour seriously spooked him. He called his lawyer. His lawyer called for legal reinforcements and urged crisis talks, DNA specialists and extreme prudence. Alexandros might still have acted on his gut instincts, had it not been for the timely reminder of the potential for a huge scandal. Personal visits and gifts, it was pointed out, would only reinforce any claims made against him, and add to the risk of sordid publicity.

‘Your grandparents…’

The reminder was sufficient to halt Alexandros in his tracks. Pelias and Calliope Christakis would be very distressed if an unsavoury scandal engulfed their grandson. The older couple were not of an age where their continuing good health could be taken for granted either. In the short term, Alexandros grudgingly accepted that a discreet and cautious course would be wisest.

Katie was intercepted before she could climb the stairs to her room.

‘Miss Fletcher?’

It was the same thin fair man she had seen watching her in the foyer of CTK bank. ‘Yes?’

He handed her his card as an introduction. ‘I’m Trev. I work for the Daily Globe. Mind me asking what your connection to Alexandros Christakis is?’

Taken aback, Katie muttered, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—’

‘But you do. You just got out of the bloke’s limo!’

‘You saw me? Did you follow me all the way from the bank? And to my friend’s as well?’ Katie was unnerved by that awareness, and turned towards the stairs again.

The reporter was in her way. ‘I hear you have a couple of kids…’

‘What’s that got to do with you?’

‘Christakis is a very interesting guy. If you have anything to tell us about him it could be well worth your while,’ he told her with a meaningful look. ‘People don’t talk about him. He lives in a world most of us can only envy. So anything of an exciting personal nature would have a very high cash value.’

Katie hesitated, distaste filling her. She wanted to tell him to get lost and leave her alone. If only Alexandros had given her a more concrete promise of support than a phone number! Leanne had said that she should be prepared to do anything to give Toby and Connor a better start in life. But talking to a newspaper in return for money struck her as sleazy, and she wanted to think that she was above doing that sort of thing. And yet she was also painfully aware that it was her job to provide her children with a decent home, and achieving that would require cold hard cash.

‘We’re on your trail now, so if there’s any dirt to dig we’ll find it anyway.’ Threat and warning were linked in Trev’s hopeful appraisal. ‘So why don’t you make it easier for us and turn a profit too?’

‘I’m not interested.’ Even as she spoke, Katie did not know whether or not she was making the right decision.

An hour later she went back to Leanne’s, to pick up Toby and Connor. While her friend saw her mother out of the flat, Katie scooped up her sons, one at a time out of the buggy, and hugged them tight. After a busy morning of occupation, Toby gave her a huge sunny smile, and Connor laughed.

‘So, tell…’ Leanne urged impatiently. ‘What happened? Did you get to see Alexandros?’

Katie explained, while her friend listened with avid interest and made her describe the limo in detail.