SHE COULDN’T SLEEP. Margo had tossed and turned in the guest bedroom for several hours before she’d finally given up trying. It wasn’t the bed—it was one of the most comfortable she’d ever slept in. And it wasn’t that she wasn’t tired, because she still felt exhausted. Even so her mind seethed with half-formed questions and thoughts, and they spun around in her brain until she decided to make herself some herbal tea in an attempt to help her sleep.
She reached for her dressing gown and the box of ginger tea she’d brought with her; it was one of the few things she could stomach. Tiptoeing out of her bedroom, not wanting to disturb Leo, she made her way to the kitchen.
The rest of the day had passed uneventfully enough: she’d had a nap and a bath while Leo had worked in his study. And at around dinnertime he’d knocked on her door and told her he was planning to order food in, asked her what she’d like.
It had reminded Margo painfully of the weekends they’d spent together in this hotel or that, drinking champagne and eating takeaway, making love. Weekends stolen from reality, and yet so precious to her. Weekends when she’d felt carefree and alive in a way she never had before—or since.
She’d thought those weekends had kept her safe, kept her from being emotionally engaged. Emotionally vulnerable.
Now she knew she’d been a fool. And she was still being a fool, because every moment she spent with Leo made her feel more raw. More afraid.
The meal they’d shared tonight had been utterly different from those earlier ones. They’d sat at either end of a huge dining room table, a modern-looking thing of carved ebony, and Margo had picked at her plain pasta while Leo had eaten souvlaki and answered emails on his smartphone. Neither of them had spoken.
This, then, was her future. Silent meals and endless tension.
Would it have been different if she’d said yes to Leo’s proposal? Or would they have ended up here anyway, because they’d never loved each other? At least, Leo hadn’t loved her. And what she’d felt for Leo had been only the beginnings of something, a tender shoot that had been plucked from the barren soil of her heart before it could take root and grow.
She hadn’t let herself truly love Leo because loving someone meant opening yourself up to pain, heartache and loss. She’d learned long ago that people left you. Her mother, her foster parents, her sister. Oh, God, her sister.
Margo closed her eyes and willed back the rush of memory and pain.
Leo wouldn’t leave her. He had too much honour for that. And as for this child... She pressed a hand to her middle and closed her eyes. Stay safe, little one, she prayed silently. Stay strong.
She made a cup of ginger tea, cradling the warm mug in her hands, and curled up on a window seat in the living room. The huge bay window overlooked Kolonaki’s wide boulevards and narrow side streets, now illuminated only by a few streetlights and a thin crescent moon high above. In the distance she could see the Acropolis, its ancient buildings lit at night, a beacon for the city.
She took a sip of tea and tried to settle her swirling thoughts, but they were like leaves in a storm and the moment she tried to snatch at one another blew away. She closed her eyes and leaned against the window frame, tried instead to think of nothing at all.
‘Is everything all right?’
Margo opened her eyes to see Leo standing in the doorway, dressed only in a pair of navy silk pyjama bottoms that rested low on his trim hips. The sight of his bare chest, all sleek rippled muscle, the sprinkling of dark hair veeing down to the waistband of his pyjamas, made her heart lurch and the breath stop in her lungs. She knew how hot and satiny his skin could be. She remembered the feel of that crisp hair against her seeking fingers. She knew the intimate feel of his whole body pressed against hers, chest to breasts, hips bumping, legs tangled.
She stared at him, willing herself to speak, not to want. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she finally managed, her voice coming out in little more than a croak. ‘I made some tea to help me settle. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.’
‘I couldn’t sleep either,’ he said, and to her shock he came to sit down beside her on the window seat, his hip nudging her toes. ‘Why couldn’t you sleep?’ he asked quietly.
‘Why couldn’t you?’ Answering his question with one of her own was easier than admitting all the fears and worries that were tumbling through her mind.
‘It’s a lot to process,’ Leo said after a moment. ‘A baby, marriage... Just over twenty-four hours ago I wasn’t anticipating either.’
‘No, I suppose I’ve had more time to deal with it.’
He glanced down at her bare feet and then wrapped one warm hand around her foot. Everything in Margo jolted hard, almost painfully, at the feel of his strong hand curled around the sensitive arch of her foot, his fingers touching her toes.
‘Your feet are cold,’ he said, and drew them towards him, tucking them under his leg just as he had so many times before, when they’d been together.
Margo simply sat there, rigid with shock, with both of her feet tucked under his legs, everything in her aching.
‘When you found out you were pregnant...’ Leo asked slowly. ‘How did it happen? How did you feel?’
Margo tensed, wondering if this was some kind of trap. Was he attempting to remind her once again of how non-maternal she’d been? Because she knew that. Of course she knew that, and it fed her fear.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I just want to know. I feel like I’ve missed a big part of this.’
‘I’m only four months along, Leo,’ Margo said, but she relaxed slightly because she believed him. This wasn’t a trap. Not with the sincerity she heard in his voice and her feet tucked under his legs.
‘I had no idea at the start,’ she began. ‘I was on the pill, as you know. I didn’t even miss taking one.’
‘Then how did you get pregnant?’
‘The day after...’ She swallowed, felt a blush heat her cheeks and hoped Leo couldn’t see in the dark. ‘The day after I saw you I slept in. I took the pill three hours later than I normally would.’
‘And that was enough to keep it from working?’
With a self-conscious laugh she patted her little bump. ‘Apparently the mini-pill has to be taken at exactly the same time every day—although I didn’t know things were quite that strict until it was too late.’
‘You must have been shocked.’
‘I was in a complete daze. I...I didn’t know what I was going to do.’ She hesitated in making that admission, afraid that Leo would use it against her, but he just nodded.
‘That’s understandable.’
‘So for a while I didn’t do anything. And then I felt so sick I couldn’t do anything but drag myself through each day. When I went to the doctor to get some medication for my nausea he said something—just a throwaway comment about how such sickness usually meant the baby was healthy. “Here to stay,” is what he said. And I knew that he was speaking the truth. That this baby was here to stay...that my inertia had been out of—well, out of fear,’ she said.
Suddenly she realised just how much she was revealing. But she hadn’t talked about this to anyone, and it felt good to unburden herself a little. Or even a lot.
‘Fear?’ Leo frowned. ‘What are you afraid of?’
So many things. ‘Of what the future would look like,’ Margo answered, knowing she was hedging. ‘Of how it would work. And of how you would take the news—what it would mean.’
‘And so you decided to ask me to marry you?’ Leo said. ‘I still don’t understand that, Margo.’
She swallowed, her throat feeling tight and sore. ‘I grew up without a father,’ she said after a brief pause. ‘I didn’t want the same for my child.’
He was silent for a moment. Then, ‘I don’t actually know anything about your childhood.’
And there was a very good reason for that. ‘We didn’t share many confidences, really, during our...’ She trailed off.
‘Our fling?’ Leo filled in tonelessly.
‘Yes.’
Even though her toes were still tucked under his warm thigh she felt a coolness in the air, tension tauten between them. It was a timely reminder of just what they’d had together...and what they had now.
‘You want this baby,’ Leo said slowly, a statement.
He lifted his head to look her straight in the face, and even in the darkness she could see the serious, intent look on his face, although she didn’t know what it meant.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘You’ve changed in that, then?’
She took a deep breath and nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
She stared at him, knowing he deserved to know at least this much. ‘I didn’t want children before because I was afraid,’ she said slowly. ‘Afraid of loving someone...and losing them. Or of getting it wrong. Parenting is a huge responsibility, Leo. The biggest.’
‘But one you feel ready to take on now?’
‘With your help.’
Except she didn’t feel ready, not remotely. She felt inadequate and afraid and guilty. Because she wasn’t sure she deserved another chance with someone’s life.
‘I will help you, Margo,’ Leo said. ‘We can do this. Together.’
She smiled even as she blinked back tears. She wanted to believe him. She almost did.
‘I hope the tea helps you sleep,’ he said, nodding towards her cup.
Margo knew he was about to leave and realised she didn’t want him to.
‘Leo...thank you,’ she said, her voice both hurried and soft.
He stopped and turned to look at her in surprise. ‘What are you thanking me for?’
‘For...for being kind.’
He let out a huff of sound—almost a laugh. ‘I don’t think I’ve actually been very kind to you, Margo.’
‘I know you were angry. I know you thought I’d cheated on you—maybe you still do. But even so you’ve agreed to marry me, and you’ve—you’ve shown concern for my welfare. I do appreciate that.’
He gazed at her for a long, fathomless moment before rising from the window seat. ‘That’s not very much, really.’
‘I’m still grateful.’
It seemed as if he were going to say something else, something important, and Margo caught her breath...waited.
But all he said was, ‘Get some sleep,’ before returning to the darkness of his bedroom.
* * *
Leo stretched out on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, as far from sleep as he’d ever been. So much had happened today, tender little moments that had left him feeling uneasy and raw. It would be easy, he realised, to let himself care about Margo again. Let himself fall in love with her.
Let himself be rejected. Again.
Whatever had kept Margo from being with him before, it was still there. He didn’t know what it was—the conversation he’d just had with her had left him wondering, uncertain. He’d seen a new vulnerability and fear underneath Margo’s glossy, confident sophistication, and it had shocked him. It had made him realise there was depth and sadness to the woman with whom he’d had a passionate affair. The woman he was going to marry tomorrow.
The results of the paternity test were nothing more than a formality; he knew the baby was his. He knew Margo knew it. And with a baby and a marriage they could, in time, begin to build something together. Maybe not a grand passion or love, but something good and real and strong.
Then he reminded himself with slamming force of how she’d refused to marry him just four months ago, when they’d still been having their fling. She still clearly viewed their marriage as a sacrifice. How could he build on that—and, even if he could, why would he want to?
He’d had enough of trying to win people’s trust or affection. For his entire childhood he’d been desperate for his father to notice him, love him. But Evangelos Marakaios had only cared about his business, and about handing it to his oldest son. In his mind Leo had been nothing more than spare—unneeded, irrelevant.
When his father had died Leo had hoped that his older brother Antonios would include him more in the family business, that they would have a partnership. But Antonios had cut him off even more than his father had, making him nothing more than a frontman, the eye candy to bring in new business without actually having any serious responsibility.
All that had changed six months ago, when Antonios had finally told Leo the truth. Evangelos had been borrowing against the company, making shoddy and sometimes illegal investments and running everything into debt. He’d hidden it from everyone except Antonios, confessing all when he’d been on his deathbed. Antonios had spent the next ten years hiding it from Leo.
He’d finally told the truth when prompted by his wife Lindsay and by Leo’s own furious demands. And, while Leo had been glad to finally learn the truth, the knowledge didn’t erase ten years of hurt, of anger, of being intentionally misled. His father and his brother, two of the people most important to him, had lied to him. They hadn’t trusted him, and nothing they’d done had made Leo believe they loved him.
After so many years of trying to make them do both, he was far from eager to try the same with his soon-to-be wife.
He let out a weary sigh and closed his eyes, willed sleep to come. Enough thinking about Margo and what might have been. All he could do was take one day at a time and guard his heart. Make this marriage what they’d both agreed it would be: businesslike and convenient, and, yes, amicable. But nothing more.
Never anything more.