“Not at first. Taking you at your word that you had an emergency at work, I thought about the flights. One to Los Angeles and one to Vancouver. Why would you go to either place when you were working in New York? The private jet to Greece made no sense, either, at least not at first.
“I spent all night wondering. By morning I looked the name up on the computer and discovered Vassalos Maritime Shipping located on the island of Egnassou. I didn’t know if you were a Vassalos from Vassalos Maritime Shipping or an employee. But since you’d told me you worked for an international export company, I thought it was a close enough connection to find out. That’s why I brought the photographs, in case someone recognized you.
“I thought there might be a chance I could find you here. When the man at the shipping office desk recognized your picture, I knew I’d come to the end of my search. That’s when I realized you’d been lying to me the whole time. Undoubtedly, you do that whenever you meet a woman to enjoy for a time before you disappear.”
For a full minute he studied every square inch of her, his expression lethal. “Since you’ve accomplished your objective, let’s go to bed for old time’s sake, one more time, shall we? Then I’ll send you on your way with enough money to have made your trip worthwhile.”
Her body stiffened. “I don’t want your money and have already gotten what I came for, Dev.”
“The name is Nikos, as you damn well know!”
Nikos...
Somehow she’d thought Dev would soften while they were alone, and tell her why he’d lied to her. But the inscrutable man facing her bore little resemblance to her secret Adonis who’d brought her joy every second they’d been together. It hadn’t mattered whether they’d been walking on the beach or finding glorious sights in the aqua depths of the sea.
She decided this man didn’t deserve to know about the baby until it was born. He wouldn’t believe her if she told him now, anyway. In fact, she was beginning to think he’d drummed up this betrayal business on purpose, to get rid of her. He’d probably pulled the same excuse on his other lovers when he was through with them. If that was true, he’d done a stellar job.
Now that she had the main phone number of Vassalos Shipping, she could always leave a message for him next January. If he cared to answer, he’d learn then that he was a new father, not before.
His smile was beautifully cruel. “You’ve been playing me for a reason. Now I want to know what it is.”
Stephanie drew in a fortifying breath. “I’d hoped to get an honest answer out of you, but you’re not Dev Harris. Let’s just say I don’t want to ruin my memory of him. You, sir, are someone I don’t care to know. For all I know you have a wife and children. The thought of committing adultery with you makes me sick.”
She would have reached for her purse to leave, but that’s when she saw a cane resting against the wall at the side of the closet. Stephanie looked up at Dev, noticing he’d lost a little color and was braced against the door to prevent her escape.
When he’d grabbed her earlier on deck, they’d both weaved a little. She’d thought it was because the impact had caught him totally off guard, but now she knew that wasn’t true. He
was
unsteady. Something serious must have happened for a man as fit as he was to need a cane. Why was he being so brutal to her? She couldn’t comprehend it.
“What is it you want, if not money?”
“A little honesty. I—I feel like I’m in the middle of a nightmare.” Her voice faltered.
“You’re part of mine, didn’t you know?” he growled. “Can you still stand there and tell me you found me through Delia’s boyfriend?”
“It’s the truth!”
“Surely you can do better than that.” His tone stung like a whiplash.
“Dev... Nikos... Tell me what I’ve done?” Her cry rang in the cabin’s interior. “Are you truly so devoid of feeling that you can leave me hanging like this without one word of explanation?”
“Isn’t this a case of the pot calling the kettle black?”
Stephanie had taken enough of his abuse. “Let me pass.” She feared she was going to be sick.
His black brows furrowed. “You’re not wanted here, but since you’ve shown up anyway, you’re not going anywhere until I get an honest explanation.”
She shook her head. “Why do you continue to accuse me of something I don’t understand?”
Anger marred his arresting features. “Who told you about me? How did you know I’d be staying at that particular resort? Where did you get your information?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You were obviously lying in wait for me at the resort.”
“You mean like some femme fatale, so I could get you to sleep with me?”
“Were you hoping to get pregnant by a rich man? Is that it? Your latest boyfriend didn’t quite live up to your dreams?”
By this time she was fuming. “Let’s presume for a minute you guessed it and that was my sin. What about
your
sin? You slept with me, too.”
He hunched of his broad shoulders slightly. “So I did.”
“Only it seems just one night was all you wanted before you moved on. Now that I’ve come here, you’re disgusted to see me and obviously regret our interlude.” With her hair caught back in a short ponytail, and her probable lack of color, she realized she must look dreadful to him.
“But not you.” His eyes had become mere slits. “Who told you about me and my family? How did you know about me?”
She couldn’t believe her ears. “No one!”
Only an innocent child who doesn’t have a voice yet.
“I was foolish enough to come looking for you here b-because I couldn’t believe it was over between us,” she stammered. That was the truth, just not all of it.
His expression remained implacable.
Stephanie averted her eyes. “It was wrong of me to sleep with you. I was raised to be wiser than that, a lesson I learned too late. But no, Dev. No matter how much you despise me for coming here uninvited, I could never regret anything so beautiful. Now I’m leaving, but I need to use your bathroom first.” She was going to be sick.
CHAPTER THREE
S
TEPHANIE
SWEPT
PAST
him, causing Nikos to bite down hard so hard he almost cracked a tooth. That week in the Caribbean with her had been beautiful. The most beautiful experience of his life. To think it had been a deliberate setup!
Enflamed to realize she’d used him, Nikos snatched her purse from the chair and dumped the contents on the bed, hoping to learn something. Anything!
Among the contents were three vials of pills, a wallet, a phone, a key card for the Persephone Hotel along the waterfront in Chios, an airline ticket and her passport. He examined it but saw no red flag. Her wallet gave no clues except some pictures. Two of them were of her and Nikos. Another was of her friends and still another of a woman who looked to be her mother. He also found her business card from Crystal River Water Tours.
With a grimace he reached for one of the bottles, which contained vitamins. Nikos opened it and could smell them before emptying the pills on the bed. He examined the second vial, of iron pills. The third held a prescription drug issued from the same pharmacy in Florida. Dr. Verl Sanders. Three a day as necessary for nausea and/or vomiting. The date on all three bottles indicated they’d been issued two days ago.
She was pregnant.
Just as his father had intimated...
He swung his head in her direction. By now she’d come back out and was sitting on the chair. “Please, Dev.” Her blue eyes begged him, out of a face with a slight pallor he hadn’t noticed before. Come to think of it, with that wan complexion, she didn’t look the same. The glow of health that had radiated off her in the Caribbean was missing. “If I could have one of those small greenish pills with some water?”
She still insisted on using his fictitious name. Nikos picked up one of the pills, then grasped her upper arm and led her back into his bathroom. Her firm flesh, warm from walking on the island in the sun, was a potent reminder of what he’d been torn from at the resort, but that golden quality about her had disappeared.
“Use the cup from the dispenser.”
Stephanie took one and put it under the faucet. When he handed her the pill, she swallowed it with half a cup of water. He’d expected resistance, but the eager way she drank and the slight tremor of the hand holding the cup revealed a vulnerability that brought out his protective instincts and caused his mind to reel.
“How far along are you?”
The empty cup fell into the sink. This was no act. She weaved in place, causing him to tighten his grip on her arm so she wouldn’t fall. Her eyes stared at him in the mirror. “You do the math.”
That comment—just when he’d felt himself softening toward her—caught him on the raw. He gripped her other arm to bring her close to him, and gave her a little shake. “Whose baby is it? Rob’s?”
“You can ask me that?” she cried, sounding so wounded it almost got to him.
“Very easily.”
Her head fell back on the slender column of her neck. “Rob? The guy I only had one dinner date with? I was never intimate with him or anyone else! I can’t believe you brought his name up.”
“I used protection, Stephanie.”
“That’s what I told Dr. Sanders. He said no protection was perfect, and informed me I was going to have a baby. I’m three months along.”
She’d already gone through her first trimester? He’d been in absolute hell during that same time period.
“Call him and he’ll confirm it. If you can conceive of my being with another man after what we shared on vacation, then your imagination is greater than mine could ever be. After it’s born and you’re still in doubt, then a simple DNA test will tell you the truth.”
The blood hammered in his ears. He searched her eyes, trying to find any trace of duplicity in her, but could see none. His lips twisted. “So your carefully laid plan had the consequence you’d hoped for, and now you’re ready to turn this to your advantage?”
“What advantage?” she blurted angrily. “When you were through with me, you sent me flowers and couldn’t have made it clearer our interlude was over. But I happen to believe that a man who’s a womanizer still deserves to know he’s going to be a father. That’s the real reason I’m here!”
The
real
reason.
Which truth was the truth?
“I could have sent you a bouquet with a note congratulating you on your new status. But I had no idea where to send it, so I decided to do the decent thing and come in person, hoping to find Dev Harris. Instead I found
you.
”
With her wintry indictment, she jerked herself out of his arms and hurried back to the bedroom. “Now that you’ve been given the news, I need to catch the boat back to Chios.” She started to put the contents of her purse back, but his hand was faster, preventing her.
“I’m afraid not. There won’t be another one until tomorrow.” He slid her cell phone and passport in a pocket of his pants.
Her head swerved to meet his piercing gaze. “I never wanted or expected anything from you, and that’s a good thing, because I don’t know who you are.”
“Nor I you.” His voice grated. “Except in the biblical sense.” He saw a glint of pain in her eyes before she started for the doorway. “Go ahead, but without a passport, you won’t be allowed to board the plane back to the States.”
“You can’t keep me here! I have a job to get back to, a condo to take care of. My flight leaves for Florida in the morning.”
“You should have thought of that before you ever targeted me.”
Her naturally arched brows frowned in puzzlement. “You certainly have an inflated opinion of yourself. I’ve met men in Florida with a lot of money. Maybe not as much as the Vassalos family, but enough to keep a grasping woman in style for the rest of her life. Since you can’t wait for me to be gone, how long do you intend to keep me here?”
“For as long as it takes to get the truth from you.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed as if she was too weak to stand. Her pallor convinced him that part of her story was the truth. She was nauseous, but maybe it covered something other than pregnancy. Kon’s wife had done a spectacular job of convincing him she was pregnant.
“Dev... We met purely by accident, when I was scuba diving at the resort with my friends from Crystal River.”
“Yet you managed to locate me here without any difficulty whatsoever. Now you’re telling me you’re pregnant with my child. We both know you were already pregnant when you slept with me on vacation. If you’re hoping to inveigle your way into my life with this announcement, it won’t work.”
By now her hands had formed into fists, and she jumped up from the bed. “I don’t want to stay here!” she cried, sounding on the verge of hysteria. “I can’t! I’m expected back at work. My friends will wonder where I am.”
He would never have credited her with being an hysterical woman. It didn’t fit with what he knew about her. Yet what did he really know, except what she’d allowed him to see while they were both on vacation? “No problem. You can call them and tell them you’ve been detained.”
“Dev—”
“It’s Nikos, remember?”
“All right then. Nikos. Please don’t do this. I need to get back to the hotel in Chios for my personal belongings.”
“We’ll sail there and Yannis will collect them for you.”
“Yannis?”
“He’s a seaman who worked for my family when I was boy. Now he works for me.”
“What do you mean, collect?” she asked in fresh alarm.
“After we leave Chios, we won’t be touching land again for at least two weeks.”
After letting out a moan, she started pacing, then stopped. “Call my obstetrician in Florida. He’ll verify the dates so you’ll have your proof.”
“That won’t prove anything. You could have been with a man the night before we met. Maybe several.”
A gasp escaped. “Surely you don’t believe that! There was only you. Phone Delia. She’ll verify everything.”
“How much did you pay her and her boyfriend to tell me a lie if I called her?”
Stephanie paled more. “Nikos...who are you?”
He raked a hand through his hair, wondering the same thing. After living through a hellish childhood with his father, plus the memory of Kon’s disastrous marriage and divorce, Nikos had developed a much more cynical outlook on life.
Part of him couldn’t help but wonder why Natasa had been waiting around for him all these years, if not to marry money. She’d lived with wealth all her life and needed a rich husband to be kept in that same lifestyle. The thought sickened him.
What if Stephanie was telling him the truth? His black brows furrowed. “Someone who doesn’t like being taken advantage of. You were very clever to try and convince me you found me by sheer perseverance. For the time being you’ll remain with me on the
Diomedes.”
It was an impulsive decision, one he hadn’t had time to examine yet.
She looked frantic. “Please don’t do this.”
For a moment he was carried back three months in time. She’d begged him not to tease her when he kept kissing her face, but not her mouth. He’d been on the verge of devouring her and couldn’t hold back much longer. Just now that same appeal was in her voice, confusing him, when he needed to keep his wits.
“You don’t have to worry. I’ll let you contact your boss and make it right with him. Tell him your medical condition has made it necessary for you to stay in Greece for an indefinite period. Your boss will have to understand.”
“But Nikos—”
“No doubt your friend Melinda will run by your condo for you and check your mail.” He put his T-shirt back on and slid into his sandals. “As for you, I’ll make sure you’re taken care of in your fragile state. Just be grateful I’m not turning you over to the authorities for trespassing on private property. You wouldn’t last long in one of our jails.”
Her appealing body shuddered.
“It would be interesting to know who told you I was on the yacht. No one knows except my parents.”
“I—I met an older woman waiting for the boat that would take me back to Chios,” Stephanie stammered. “She pointed to this yacht and said it belonged to the Vassalos family.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Because I asked her if she lived here and knew your family.”
“What did she say?”
“That everyone knew your family.”
“Did you exchange names?”
“No! I simply offered her some of my grapes while we were waiting for the boat.”
“So at that point you just decided to walk over to the yacht and see if it met your high expectations, did you?”
“No. My intention was to find out if anyone on board knew where you really were.”
“I guess I’m not surprised you decided to use your beauty to sweet-talk the crew into revealing my whereabouts.”
She stiffened. “There
was
no crew.”
“Yet having been told I was out of the country indefinitely, you still waited for someone to come to the yacht.”
She moistened her lips. “I was afraid that if you were at work and knew I was looking for you, you’d pretend to be away. It was my last resort to try and reach you.”
“Therefore once again it was pure luck that you didn’t take no for an answer and sought me out at the yacht.”
“It appears that way,” she whispered.
“I’m afraid your luck has run out.” Before he walked out of the bedroom, he said, “Go ahead and fix your own meal. There’s food and drink in the galley. We just restocked everything. You’re paler and weaker than I remember. That couldn’t be good for you in your condition.”
“I notice you’ve lost weight and don’t look as well, either!”
Touché.
“In fact, you—” Suddenly, she stopped talking.
“I what?” he demanded.
Stephanie averted her eyes. “Nothing.”
He’d seen her glance at the cane, and had an idea what she’d intended to say. It angered him further. “Don’t try to go up on deck while we’re leaving port.”
Adrenaline drove him out of the room and down the hall to the stairs. But he paid the price for not taking care because when he reached the top deck, he felt pain at the base of his spine and realized he’d exerted himself too much without support.
Damn it all.