“I try to avoid most people. That’s why I live here. Works out better for everyone.”
“And yet even here, you have to swim to manage your aggression and tension?”
“Maybe I should have said that swimming helps me burn off excess energy.”
“That does sound better than aggressive.” The wind blew across the pool and Georgia slid lower under the water to stay warm. “You and I have clashed, and I don’t agree with some of your rules, including recommended footwear, but I wouldn’t describe you as a hostile person. I’d say you’re assertive.”
“But in English, are they not the same things—aggressive and assertive?”
“For me, they are different. Assertive means being direct and strong, and, yes, forceful, but in a commanding sort of way, whereas I view aggressive to be far more negative. Aggressive can imply a lack of control, as well as unpleasantly hostile.”
His mouth quirked. “Based on your definition, I would prefer to be assertive instead of aggressive.”
She was thinking hard now on the word, and the various ways it could be used in the English language, and aggressive wasn’t always negative. In fact, in medicine, an aggressive treatment was often the best treatment. “You know, aggressive can mean dynamic. In battle, you want to be aggressive. When dealing with cancer, you need an aggressive plan of attack.”
“Sounds as if you are giving me permission to be aggressive.”
She pushed at the water, creating small waves. “If it’s for the right reason.” She gave another push at the water, sending more ripples across the pool. “In business, I would think you’d have to be aggressive. Successful businesses are rarely complacent. I’m quite sure successful people are the same.”
He ran a hand over his inky-black hair, muscles bunching and rippling in his bicep and shoulder. “You keep surprising me.” His voice was rough, deep. “You’re not what I expected. You are more.” His head turned, and she glimpsed the scars he always tried so hard to hide. “My son is lucky to have had you as his...mother.”
Georgia felt a lance of pain, her chest squeezing, air bottling. She struggled to smile, hiding the hurt as well as the wash of panic.
Mother...his mother...
Why did Nikos say that? Why would he say that? Something buried deep inside her wanted to scream, punch, lash out.
She wasn’t this child’s mother. She wasn’t his mother. She wasn’t. She’d signed those rights away forever, and it was the right thing to do. She wasn’t prepared to be a mother, and certainly not a single mother who was only halfway through medical school.
Georgia rose and climbed from the pool. It was chilly out and shivering; she grabbed her towel and thick terry-cloth robe. The entire time she blotted herself dry she fought for calm and control.
She was someone who liked control, needed control, and yet she’d agreed to a contract that gave her no control...and was starting to turn her heart inside out.
Dropping the towel, Georgia quickly slid her arms into the robe, tying the sash around her waist, determined to get a grip. She couldn’t panic. It wouldn’t help to panic.
“I’ll see you later tonight,” she said to Nikos before rushing away. She dropped the damp towel in the laundry hamper at the pool house and then continued up to her room.
Her teeth chattered as she walked. She was scared. She didn’t like this feeling. The pregnancy had changed everything, including her.
Her senses of taste and smell were different. Her emotions were more intense, and her moods were more volatile.
And now she was here, on a private island, in the middle of the Aegean Sea, with no phone and no internet and no way to distract herself from what was happening. And what was happening was beginning to rattle her.
She was having a baby, and then she was giving the baby away, before going away herself.
Good God. What had she done?
And why had she thought this was something she could actually do?
CHAPTER SIX
IT HAD BECOME custom to meet at sunset for drinks on the terrace. Quite often it was their first time seeing each other each day. Today had been different. They’d met at the pool during her swim and now they were together again, outside on the terrace on the third floor, taking in the sunset, making pleasant but inane conversation. She hoped the meaningless words would keep her from thinking, or feeling, because she was scared.
It was too late to have regrets. Too late to wish she’d never agreed to be a surrogate. An egg donor was one thing, but to carry the child, and then fly halfway across the world to deliver him in a foreign country?
And then leave him behind with a billionaire father who was both reclusive and eccentric?
It was a lot to digest, even for her.
Disruptive little thoughts had needled her all afternoon.
Her parents would be heartbroken if they knew what she was doing. And then there was Savannah, who’d been convinced from the outset that this would end badly. Savannah hadn’t been as concerned about Georgia being an egg donor since a number of female medical students considered it an opportunity to do something good while improving their situation financially, but surrogacy was another matter.
And now Georgia was worried she’d completely lost sight of the big picture.
She’d agreed to this arrangement because it would provide a future for her and Savannah, but the future was becoming cloudy. Georgia felt emotional and confused. It wasn’t a good combination. She had to get hold of her thoughts now. She needed to exert some control. It would be foolish, not to mention dangerous, to let the pregnancy hormones do her in. She had to remember her goals, focus on the objectives. There was a lot to come: the exam this summer, the rest of medical school, the right residency at the right hospital.
“More juice?” Nikos asked, interrupting her circular thoughts.
She lifted the special juice cocktail the cook had prepared for her—blood orange juice and sparkling water—and saw it was nearly gone. Beyond her glass, the sky burned, glowing with fiery orange and burnished gold.
“I’m fine, thank you,” she said, gaze riveted now to the horizon, transfixed by the sun dropping into the sea. “What an incredible sunset. Every night it’s different, too.”
“That’s why I come up here every night. It’s why I live here. I’m surrounded by beauty without all the madness.”
She turned to look at him, seeing already such a different man than the one she’d met four days ago. “What is the madness?”
“Cities. Noise. People.” He hesitated. “Gossip.”
Her brows pulled. “I don’t understand.”
Nikos’s expression turned mocking. But she sensed he wasn’t mocking her as much as himself. “You’re better off not knowing,” he said. “And there is no reason to know. You’ll be leaving here in a couple months. It’s not your problem.”
Her frown deepened. Nikos was baffling. She was just beginning to realize he might be as scarred on the inside as he was on the outside, which raised the question—was he mentally and emotionally healthy enough to raise a child on his own?
Would he be a fit parent?
One more question she didn’t have an answer for, but a question she knew she couldn’t ignore. She did worry about him raising the child alone here. She worried that maybe he was a little too antisocial, worried that he was more isolated than was good for him.
She might not be able to change the terms of her agreement,
but maybe she could change...him.
Or at the very least, help him prepare to become a father so that he’d be the best father possible. But to do that, it would mean spending more time with him, not less.
It would mean focusing on who he really was, and getting him to drop his guard...that rough mask...and seeing if he couldn’t open up...become more emotionally available.
She had a little over three months until the baby was born. Couldn’t she use this time to study and help him?
She just needed to formulate a treatment plan. She’d do the same thing here that she did in school: learn everything she could, soak up every bit of information, memorize every fact, every detail, and then review her case at the end of each day to monitor progress and make sure she hadn’t overlooked anything.
Perhaps helping Nikos prepare for the birth would comfort her in June when it was time for her to go. Perhaps she’d feel more at ease with her decision.
Perhaps this was the missing piece.
Perhaps.
* * *
Georgia didn’t sleep well. She woke when it was still dark, her room icy cold, but she was so hot she couldn’t breathe. She kicked the covers back from her legs, her nightgown sticking to her damp skin. She shivered, chilled and pulled the covers back.
She’d had the old dream, although dream was an inaccurate description. It was more of a nightmare. Losing her family. Chasing through the trees for Savannah, trying to save her sister from the rebels, certain any minute she’d be killed, too. She was crying as she ran and then someone was there with a huge machete and she was begging for her life because she was pregnant...
That was when she woke up.
She was having the old dreams again, but this time she was pregnant.
Maybe because she was pregnant.
Lying in bed, Georgia drew great gulps of air, feeling overwhelmed and suffocated by grief and despair.
This was not going how it was supposed to go. She was beginning to panic, and it was too late for that. She’d signed contracts and agreements and beyond the contracts and agreements, she was in med school, studying to become a doctor.
She didn’t want to become a mother. She couldn’t become a mother.