Helen began thinking maybe Leon Aristides was more upset than he appeared. Suddenly she remembered Delia mentioning that his wife and newborn child had died in an accident. This must be a double blow to him—she had lost her best friend but he had lost his father and his sister—and her soft heart squeezed with compassion.
‘But he will have to be told later and in the meanwhile—’ Aristides rose to his feet and stepped towards her ‘—I want to see some proof the boy actually exists and is here,’ he declared with a sardonic lift of an ebony brow.
Helen gritted her teeth at his cynical comment and any sympathy for him disappeared. ‘Of course.’ She stood up and found he was much too close, and sidestepped out of his way. ‘If you will follow me,’ she murmured and made for the door.
The curtains were closed against the dismal dark day and a small car-shaped night light that Nicholas adored illuminated the bedroom. The bed was also a model of a car, and lying flat on his back was Nicholas wearing white underpants and a tee shirt. With his curly black hair falling forward over his brow, and his thick black lashes lying gently against his smooth cheeks, he was deeply asleep.
Helen smiled down at the infant, and very gently brushed a few stray curls from his brow. She heard a deeply indrawn breath, and glanced back at Aristides. She could sense the tension in every muscle and sinew of his big frame as he stared down at the sleeping boy, totally transfixed.
Helen didn’t like the man, she found him hard and cynical. If she was honest she also found him intimidating. He was not only tall, but powerfully built with wide shoulders and a broad chest, lean hips and long legs. Yet right at this moment he looked as vulnerable as the child who held his complete attention.
Silently she moved back a few steps towards the door, to give him some privacy in which to get over the shock of seeing his nephew for the first time. He was entitled to that much, but he was not necessarily entitled to sole care of the child, she reminded herself firmly.
Her eyes misted with tears as she saw again in her mind’s eye Delia’s face when she had turned up out of the blue on a day in February much like this one four years ago. She had been upset, but determined, and no amount of talking had been able to get Delia to change her mind.
Delia had been pregnant and unmarried at twenty. There had been no way she was going to tell her father, and she had asked Helen to help her take care of the baby until she came into her own fortune. Then she could say to hell with her father and bring her child up as she wished.
Personally Helen had thought it was the craziest idea she had ever heard, and had told her so. She had doubted Delia could keep the pregnancy hidden, never mind keeping a child secret, and what about the father?
The father was a fellow student who had been killed in the London train crash that had been all over the papers a few weeks earlier. But Delia had had it all worked out. She would go home for Easter as usual and return to university in London afterwards. Her father had been ecstatic at the news Leon’s wife was finally pregnant so he would pay Delia even less attention than usual.
Delia had been convinced she could get through the holiday without anyone realising she was pregnant. The baby was due on the first of July and it would be simple to book into a private hospital in London to have a Caesarean delivery in mid-June. Then she could leave the child with Helen and still be able to return to Greece for the summer holidays without her family being any the wiser. Helen had thought the whole idea ridiculous, but Delia had been nothing if not determined.
A wry sad smile tipped the corners of her lips. Thinking about Delia now, she realised she had been just as stubborn and autocratic in her own way as her father and brother.
Even so Helen had flatly refused her request and with the help of her grandfather had tried to persuade Delia that she must tell her family the truth. Helen had thought they had managed to convince her to do just that when she had left two days later.
A strong hand grasped her arm shocking her out of her musings.
‘He is every inch an Aristides,’ Leon said softly, turning towards her and blocking her view of the room. ‘You and I really do need to talk.’ The pressure of his fingers on her arm and the closeness of his large frame did extraordinary things to her breathing. ‘Are you alone here?’
She gasped and tilted back her head to lift her gaze and met his intent black eyes. Her mouth ran dry and her pulse took off at an alarming rate. He saw her reaction and his dark gaze fell to her softly parted lips and then provocatively lower to linger on the proud thrust of her breasts against the soft wool of her sweater, before flicking back up again to her face. ‘You are a very attractive woman—perhaps a live-in lover?’
‘Certainly not,’ she snapped, blushing to the roots of her hair.
‘That makes it easier,’ he murmured, and settled a long finger over her lips. ‘But shh—we don’t want to wake the child.’
Her lips oddly tingling from the touch of his finger, before she knew what was happening she was out of the bedroom, the door closed behind her and halfway down the stairs.
‘You can let go of my arm now.’ Helen finally found her voice, deeply shaken by the startling effect Leon Aristides’ deliberately sensual look and touch had upon her.
He let go of her arm without a word, and walked down the stairs and into the sitting room, obviously expecting her to follow. She stopped for a moment at the foot of the stairs to gather her chaotic thoughts into some kind of order. But the resentment burning bitterly in her breast did not help. Who the hell did he think he was, treating her home as if it were his own?
Unfortunately she knew exactly who he was, she recognised with her next breath; a wealthy, powerful man who happened to be Nicholas’ uncle. Much as she would like to be rid of him, she realised it wasn’t in Nicholas’ best interest or hers to antagonise the man, and reluctantly she finally followed him into the room.
He had flopped down on a sofa, his head thrown back and his eyes closed. He had opened his jacket and loosened his tie. The top button of his shirt was undone, revealing the strong tanned column of his throat. His long legs were splayed out in front of him, the fabric of his trousers pulled tight across his thighs and graphically outlining the bulge of his sex.
Flaked out as he was, for a moment his sheer physical impact hit her like a blow to the stomach. Leon Aristides might be one very conservative banker, but there was no mistaking he was all virile male.
Her violet eyes roamed in helpless fascination over his superb body. He was probably a magnificent lover, she thought, and a shaming tide of pink coloured her cheeks.
Helen felt like a voyeur; erotic thoughts about men had never bothered her before. What on earth was happening to her? She rubbed suddenly damp palms down her thighs, and, swallowing hard, took an involuntary step back. She raised her head to find his dark, astute eyes resting on her. Oh, my God! Did he know what she had been thinking? And quickly she broke into speech. ‘Would you like another coffee or something?’
‘Something…’ His dark eyes swept leisurely over her in undisguised masculine appreciation. Suddenly she was horribly conscious of her old denim jeans and the well-washed sweater she was wearing. But even worse was the peculiar swelling in her breasts at his lingering appraisal. ‘Yes, the something has more appeal,’ he drawled huskily. ‘What do you suggest?’ and he smiled.
Her gaze dropped from the amusement in his dark eyes to the curl of his sensual lips, revealing gleaming white teeth, and for a second she stopped breathing, mesmerised by the unexpected brilliance of his smile.
Realising she was staring again, she hastily glanced somewhere over his shoulder and blurted out the first thing that entered her head. ‘Tea or wine, if you prefer? When my grandfather was alive he kept quite a lot of red wine and I don’t drink much so there are a couple of bottles around.’ She was babbling again, but nothing like