Vi put her knitting down. ‘Oh, love,’ she said, her voice sorrowful. ‘He’ll always have you. But you can’t stop him from knowing his dad—it wouldn’t be right.’
‘But why does Xander care about Joey? He doesn’t care. That’s the point! Vi—you don’t know him. He’s not a man who can feel for others—I know that. Dear God, I know that. He’s just angry because… Because…’
She felt silent again, her chest painful. Why was he so angry? She didn’t understand—she just didn’t. Xander hadn’t wanted her, had thrown her out like last year’s model, chucked and discarded, paid off with a diamond necklace. So why, why had it angered him that she’d disappeared just as he had wanted her to?
Anger warred with anguish.
Vi sighed. A long, heavy sigh, from one who had seen a lot of sorrows in life and knew there wasn’t always anything that could be done about them.
‘Why not just see what happens, pet?’ she said. ‘You’ll always do what’s best for Joey. You always have, you always will.’
The hard, painful knot in Clare’s breast eased, just a fraction. But she still looked at Vi with fear in her eyes. Her heart was squeezed tight, as if in a vice, painful and crushed. Emotion was inside her like a huge, swelling balloon, filling her up, terrifying her. How, how could it be that a bare twenty-four hours ago her life had been normal…safe? Her stomach churned again—it had been doing that over and over, making her feel sick and disbelieving. Hadn’t it been bad enough setting eyes on Xander again like that last night, having the past leap out of nowhere and slam her into the ground like that?
But that had been nothing to what she had gone through—was still going through—when he had found out about Joey.
The sick feeling intensified. Oh, dear God, what was she going to do?
And even more frightening, more unthinkable, what was Xander Anaketos going to do now that he knew he had a son…?
CHAPTER FOUR
XANDER stood at the window of the reception room in his London apartment, the morning sunshine streaming in. There were no memories of Clare here. He’d moved on since then, and this apartment must be the second or even third he occupied when he was in the UK on business. It was the same with his places in Paris, New York, Rome and Athens. He didn’t keep things long. He changed his cars every year or so, whenever a new model of his favourite marque came out. He changed his watches just as often, whenever a newer and better one was launched. Similarly the yachts he kept at Piraeus and the South of France.
He had no sentimental attachments to things.
Or to women. He changed those just as frequently. He always had. There was, after all, no reason not to…
But a child—a child could not be changed. A child was for ever.
Emotion knifed through him. It had been doing so regularly for the last thirty-six hours. Ever since he’d looked up in the cocktail lounge and seen, for the first time in four years, the woman who had got up from the table at the St John with a low murmur and walked out, vanishing into the night.
He saw again her blank, expressionless eyes as he told her, ‘It’s over.’
Christos—she was already pregnant. She sat there, carrying my son, and then walked out on me without a word. Taking my son with her.
Fury bit savagely. He turned abruptly away from the window and headed for the door. It was time to get this sorted. Time to get his son.
Tension racked through Clare like wire stringing her from the ceiling. She was standing rigid as a board in her bedroom, the upstairs room above Vi’s bedroom, because it was the only place they could be without Joey hearing them from the back sitting room, where he was with Vi, while opposite her Xander stood, his back to the window, silhouetted against the light. It made him look very tall and dark.
Clare felt again that sickening sense of unreality sweep over her.
And something else, too. Something that had nothing to do with the hideous fact that Xander had discovered Joey’s existence and everything to do with the way she was so stupidly, insanely aware of his devastating effect on her.
As she had always been…
No! Dear God, out of everything in this nightmare that was the last, the very last thing she must think about. Once, so fatally, she had been vulnerable to the man who stood looking grimly at her now. But that had been a lifetime ago. Once, so pathetically, she had thought she might mean something to him. But in one callous utterance he had ripped that pathetic hope from her…
He had started to speak, his voice harsh and clipped, his accent even more pronounced than usual. Clare forced herself to listen, however much her stomach was churning.
‘My lawyers are making the necessary arrangements,’ Xander was announcing. ‘There will need to be a prenuptial agreement, and for that reason the ceremony itself must be on a territory where it is legally binding—which is not, so I am informed, the case in the UK. Is, therefore, your passport up to date? And does my son have one of his own? If not, this will need to be expedited. You will also—’
‘What are you talking about?’ Clare’s voice was blank, cutting across his.
‘I am telling you what will need to be done for us to marry—quickly,’ Xander said. His mouth tightened automatically at her interruption—and her question.
‘What?’ Incomprehension, disbelief yawned through her.
His eyes flashed darkly. ‘Did you not realise that I would be prepared to marry you?’
Clare shook her head. ‘No.’
Her voice was hollow.
Xander looked down at her. Had she really not thought he would do so? His gaze narrowed. Was that why she had walked out on him that night four years ago? Had she not realised that he would marry her?
Of course he would have married a woman carrying his child.
Especially—
No. He slammed down the lid on the memory. That was then, this was now.
‘I would have married you four years ago if you had taken the trouble to tell me you were carrying my child,’ he said tersely.
‘Would you?’ Clare replied slowly. ‘Would you really?’
‘Of course.’ His voice was stiff.
For one terrible moment pain ripped through Clare. Oh, God, if she had taken that other road—the one she had refused to take, the one she had had to find all the strength she possessed not to take, not to go back to him, to seek him out, to risk telling him she was pregnant…to risk him rejecting her unborn child.
But she had assumed that he would never in a million years have thought to marry her. She would have been given an allowance, a gagging order so she could not babble to the press about any ‘love-child’ of Xander Anaketos, and then dumped in some expensive villa somewhere where she could raise her son as the unwanted bastard of a discarded mistress…
He would have married me!
Pain ripped again.
Agony.
Because that was what it would have been—just as much as if she had been kept as his discarded mistress bearing his bastard. The agony of being married to him for no reason other than that she had conceived his child. When all along she would have known—as she knew now, so bitterly, had known since that last, lacerating evening with him—just how nothing she was to him.
She looked at him now. Just as he had been able four years ago to stop the breath in her lungs, so he could still do now. The passage of four years had merely matured his features. The breathtaking impact of his masculinity still was as potent as ever.
It would have been torment to have been married to him. And there could still be no greater torment…
‘So,’ he continued, his voice still clipped and harsh, ‘now that you have understood that, perhaps we can finally proceed? If you pack promptly, we can be at my apartment for lunch. Please ensure you have all the legal documents required, such as my son’s birth certificate, and—’
‘I’m not going to marry you!’ Clare’s voice rang out.
‘You will,’ he commanded.
She took a step backwards. She could not be hearing this. She could not be hearing Xander Anaketos calmly announcing that she would marry him. Was he mad?
‘Do not play games over this,’ Xander bit back angrily. ‘Of course we shall marry.’
She shook her head violently. ‘It’s insane to think so!’
Xander’s eyes darkened. ‘If it is the prenuptial agreement you object to—tough. That is not negotiable. You’ve hardly proved trustworthy’
She gave a laugh. It had a note of hysteria in it. It made Xander’s eyes focus on her even more narrowly. She rubbed a hand over her brow.
‘This is insane,’ she said heavily. ‘It’s mad that you should even think of marrying me like this.’ She lifted her eyes to him. ‘I never wanted you to know about Joey. Never!’ She saw his eyes darken malevolently at her words, but ploughed on, ignoring his reaction. ‘I wish you had never found out,’ she said bleakly. ‘I wish I had never set eyes on you again. But it’s too late now. Too late.’ Her voice was heavy. Then she looked at him, her shoulders squaring. ‘I won’t marry you—it’s insane even to think it!’
Something moved in his eyes. Something that made her feel faint. Then there was a caustic etching of lines around his mouth as he replied.