Page 16 of Billion-Dollar Baby Shock

Tara deftly started taking off his clothes to get to the nappy and said to Dionysios, ‘Can you get him a bottle?I’m sure the nanny will have left some pre-prepared.’

Dionysios started to walk from the room and Tara called out, ‘Make sure it’s warm.’

He nodded and kept going.Tara busied herself changing her son and tried not to let that fact—her son!—overwhelm her too much.She managed to find clean clothes—there were enough clothes for ten babies.She also found a teething ring and when she gave it to him he promptly put it straight in his mouth, confirming her suspicion.

She was just picking him up again—freshly changed and dressed—when she heard a sound behind her andturned to see a slightly flustered-looking Dionysios holding a bottle of milk.He said, ‘I think this is it.They were in the fridge.’

Tara took it.‘I’ll give him a feed and see if he’ll go down afterwards.I think he’s tired.’

She saw a rocking chair and went and sat down, positioning Niko in the crook of her arm.She tested the milk’s temperature and it was fine.As soon as she put the teat into Niko’s mouth his little hands grabbed the bottle and he drank as if he hadn’t been fed in hours, eyes glued to hers as if she held all the secrets in the universe.In that moment she was barely aware of the powerful figure of the man in the doorway watching them both warily.

She was enraptured with her son and knew there and then that she would lay down her life for him.

* * *

Dion looked at the woman in the rocking chair with the baby in her arm, feeding him, little pudgy legs kicking happily, hands clamped on the bottle.

The jarring juxtaposition of what he and she had been doing just hours ago and what he was looking at right now was too much for him to try and unpick.It made him feel very off-centre.As did their intense absorption in each other—his son and this woman.Ridiculously it made him feel excluded in a way that he hadn’t felt before when the nannies had tended to Niko.

Maybe she’s telling the truth?

No, Dion assured himself.He was too cynical to be taken in so easily.

She was an opportunist who had somehow found out what the press didn’t even know yet.That he’d had a son.And she was using the information to get something out of him.

But he couldn’t deny, as peace reigned again and the only sound that could be heard was the rhythmic sucking of the baby on the bottle, that he needed her for now.

Dion left the charming but disturbing tableau and went back down to the kitchen, making himself a strong coffee.It had been mayhem as soon as he’d arrived at the villa, with the nanny crying and all but shoving his son into his arms saying something about her mother in hospital.Dion hadn’t even had time to offer assistance before she’d been gone.

He had to admit uncomfortably that he hadn’t quite given due thought to the reality of having a baby in the house.Elena had travelled to the States with him to collect Nikolau after he’d been born, and he’d been so tiny that Dion had been justifiably terrified of doing anything to harm him—so he’d been quite happy to let the nanny take charge.

And since then, not much had changed.He’d held his son but as soon as he felt that little body tensing, or squirming and stiffening and arching away from him as if he knew instinctively that Dion couldn’t provide what he needed, a kind of terror would take over and he’d hand him back.

When Elena had left earlier, he’d looked at his son in his arms and had suddenly become aware of just how fragile he was.And that he was now looking to Dion to fulfil needs that Dion had no idea how to fulfil.And then Niko had gone from zero to full-on meltdown and then his security guard had informed him they’d found an intruder, andshe’dappeared.

Dion didn’t like to admit it to himself, especially now, but, before she’d dropped her bombshell, he had been toying with the idea of seeing her again, in spite of everything—her innocence, and the fact that he rarely saw the same woman twice.

But thankfully he hadn’t exposed himself.She’d got to him and she’d exposed a weak link in his defences and that was unforgivable.

There was a small sound from behind him and then a voice.‘He’s down.He’s exhausted, the poor mite.’

Dion turned around.Tara was standing a few feet away.Still in bare feet.Long legs slim and pale under the shorts.She’d taken off the jacket and now wore just the sleeveless silk shirt.There were stains on her clothes, evidence of her clambering through his bushes.Her hair was loose and wild, reminding him of how it had looked spread out over the pillow as he’d joined their bodies.

The memory made his voice sharp.‘Shouldn’t you be with my son?’

She held up a white plastic device with different colours going up and down along a display.‘It’s a baby monitor.He’s asleep.He’s fine.I’ll hear if he wakes up.And speaking of which, shouldn’t you have been with him last night?’

‘His nanny was with him.’Dion’s conscience pricked.The truth was that even if he’d been here he would have deferred to the nanny’s care.The gaps in his knowledge about how to bond and handle his own son were becoming glaringly apparent and he didn’t welcome the sense of exposure in front of this woman who seemed to be able to see through him in a very disconcerting way.

‘He’s got the best of care, around the clock.’

She shook her head.‘Who does that?Acquires a baby and then hands it over to staff?’

Dion gritted his jaw.No one spoke to him like this.‘You have no right to judge my reasons for having a son.He will want for nothing.’

‘Except a mother?’

Dion’s patience snapped.‘My mother had me purely to extort money out of her rich lover.When the money ran out she dumped me on the steps of an orphanage and walked away.I survived and thrived.I’m proof that perhaps mothers don’t always know best.’