The bump jolted him. His child. His son.
For a split second he couldn’t breathe. It was suddenly real. The life he’d made...his seed...her egg...
“Do you want to touch him?” she asked quietly.
He looked up into her face. Her cheeks were pale, and yet her gaze was direct, steady. “He’s moving around,” she added, lips curving faintly. “I think he’s saying hello.”
Nikos dropped his gaze to her hands resting at her side, and then back to the gentle curve of her belly.
“Isn’t it too soon for me to feel him moving?” he asked.
“It might have been a week or two ago, but not anymore.”
He stared at her bump for another moment, conflicted. He wanted to feel his son kick, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch her, not wanting to feel the tautness of her belly or the warmth of her skin. She wasn’t supposed to matter in any way, and yet suddenly she wasn’t this vessel, this hired womb, but a stunning young woman carrying his son.
“Not right now,” he said, fingers curling around the stick shift, changing gears, driving forward. His gut was hard, tight. Air ached in his lungs. What had he done bringing this woman to him? How could he have thought this would be a good idea? “But it is good to know that he’s moving and seems healthy.”
“He’s very healthy. I trust you’ve been getting the reports and sonograms from my checkups?”
“Yes.” But he didn’t want to talk about the baby. He didn’t want to talk at all. She was here now so she didn’t have to fly late in the third trimester, but he hadn’t brought her to Kamari to create a friendship. There would be no relationship between them. He needed her to be safe, but beyond that he wanted nothing more to do with her, and the sooner she understood that, the better.
“And town?” she repeated, catching a fistful of billowing golden hair.
He shifted gears as he accelerated. “There’s no town. It’s a private island.”
She was looking at him now. “Yours?”
“Mine,” he agreed.
“And the house? What’s that like?”
“It’s close to the water, which is nice in summer.”
“But not as nice in winter?”
He shot her a swift glance. “It’s an old house. Simple. But it suits me.”
Her hand shifted on her mass of hair. “Mr. Laurent referred to it as a villa.” She shot him another curious look. “Was he wrong?”
“In Greece, a villa is usually one’s country house. So, no, he wasn’t wrong, but I myself do not use that word. This is where I live now. It’s my home.”
She opened her mouth to ask another question but he cut her short, his tone flat and flinty even to his own ears. “I am not much of a conversationalist, Georgia.”
* * *
If Georgia hadn’t been quite so queasy, she might have laughed. Was that his way of telling her to stop asking questions?
She shot him a swift glance, taking in his hard carved features and the black slash of eyebrows above dark eyes.
Just looking at him made her feel jittery, putting an odd whoosh in her middle, almost as if she were back on the plane and coming in for that rocky landing all over again.
He wasn’t what she’d expected. She’d imagined a solid, comfortably built tycoon in his early to midthirties, but there was nothing comfortable about Nikos Panos. He was tall with broad shoulders and long limbs. He had thick, glossy black hair, piercing eyes and beautiful features...at least on one half of his face. The other side was scarred around the temple and cheekbone. The scars were significant but not grotesque, but then she understood what they were—burns—and she could only imagine how painful the healing process must have been.
If one could look past the scars, he was the stuff of little girls’ fairy tales and teenage fantasies.
Correction, if you could look past the scars and brusque manner.
I am not much of a conversationalist, Georgia.
What did that even mean? Was there no one she would be able to talk to during her stay here?
Mr. Laurent had told her there was no Mrs. Panos. Mr. Laurent had said his client would be raising the child as a single father. Was this where the child would be raised?
On this arid volcanic island, in the middle of this sea?
“Where will you live?” she asked abruptly. “Once the baby is born?”
His black eyebrows flattened. “Here. This is my home.”
Georgia held her breath and stared out at the narrow road that clung to the side of the mountain. The road was single lane, barely paved, and it snaked down and around the hillside. She wished there was a guardrail.
She wished she was back in Atlanta.
She wished she’d never agreed to any of this.
Georgia fought her anxiety and practiced breathing—a slow, measured inhale, followed by an even slower exhale.
Why was she doing this? Why was she here?
The money.
Her chest ached with bottled air. She was doing it for the money.
Sometimes focusing on the two huge sums that had been wired to her bank account gave her perspective when her hormones and emotions threatened to overwhelm her, but it wasn’t working now.
Maybe it was the long flight or jet lag or just the relentless nausea, but Georgia’s stomach heaved once, and then again. “Please pull over,” she begged, grabbing the car’s door handle. “I’m going to be sick.”
IN HER ROOM at the villa, Georgia slept for hours, sleeping away the remainder of the day.
She dreamed of Savannah, of her goodbye with Savannah yesterday, her younger sister’s emotional cry playing out in her dream.
What do you even know about him?
He could be dangerous...seriously deranged...
Who will be able to help you when you’re on his island in the middle of nowhere?
The dream was broken by the dull, but insistent, pounding on her bedroom door.
Georgia heard it but didn’t want to wake, and for a moment she lay in the strange bed, heart racing, pulse pounding, late-afternoon sunlight slanting through wooden blinds, as she tried to cling to the last of the dream, missing Savannah already.
But the knocking on her door wouldn’t stop.
Georgia dragged herself into a sitting position and was just about to rise when her door crashed open and Nikos came charging into her room.
“What on earth are you doing?” she cried, rising.
“Why didn’t you answer the damn door?”
“I was asleep!”
“We’ve been trying to rouse you for the past hour.” He stalked toward the bed, his dark eyes glittering. “I thought you were dead.”
She pulled on the hem of her cotton pajama top, trying to hide the skin gaping beneath. She was just starting to need maternity clothes. She hadn’t bought any maternity wear until recently, not wanting