Page 41 of Billion-Dollar Baby Shock

CHAPTER EIGHT

After a fifteen-minutejourney across the Aegean Sea, they landed on a much bigger island on a small airfield beside an airport.A car was waiting to take them to the venue and Tara sat in the back, glad she and the dress and her hair were still relatively intact.

The driver put up the privacy division, cocooning them in the back of the car.She was still feeling guilty at walking away from her son but Dion’s words reverberated in her head.

‘You’re not on your own with this.’

No, she wasn’t.And it was taking some getting used to.The fact that she could take time for herself.Indulge herself.

Tara sensed Dion’s eyes on her and her skin got hot.She looked at him and his gaze was golden.He was looking at her with such nakedly explicit desire that her insides liquefied.He did still want her.The relief was a little shameful.He said, ‘I’m glad you came.It would have been an awful waste of a dress.’His gaze moved down and then back up again.He said, ‘Gattina…you’re killing me.’

Gattina.Tara couldn’t breathe.

He had so much control over her body it made her feel vulnerable enough for a moment to try and injectsomething of the outside world back into this cocoon.She wasn’t quite ready to succumb to his raw magnetism without letting him know she was still focused on her son.‘Have you thought about what you’ll do when I don’t leave?’

He said nothing for a long moment, then finally, ‘I’m sure we’ll make it work.’

Tara tried to envisage that.With her living and working in Athens to stay close to her son.In the same city as Dion.Possibly seeing him out and about with other women.And what if he did meet someone one day who managed to break through that impenetrable wall he’d built around himself?A woman who he would marry.Niko would have a stepmother.

Tara suddenly felt quite alone at that prospect and it shook her to her core because, not only had finding out she had a son turned her world upside down, but his father had too.Making her rethink everything she’d believed she wanted for her life, after years of sacrificing her own wishes and dreams for her siblings.

She’d believed her freedom would come from no longer feeling responsible for her siblings, but she realised that would never go.And now she had a new responsibility: Niko.But he didn’t feel like a responsibility.He felt like opportunity and possibility and things Tara had never considered she might feel.

Excitement, for the future.Love, desire.She looked at Dion in shock as those words struck her.Love and desire.

He caught her eye and frowned.‘What is it?You’ve gone pale.Are you all right?’

Somehow Tara shook her head and garbled something unintelligible.‘Fine, just fine.’She hurriedly looked out ofher own window unseeingly as that revelation resounded through her head and body.She knew she was in thrall to him physically, but was she really falling for Dion?A man she’d met mere…days ago, and yet she felt as if she’d known him for ever.And who she would know for ever, no matter what.Their lives were bound together by Niko.But Dion had made it very clear that they wouldn’t betogether.She would be at a remove somewhere.

The thing that was keeping them together, this crackling electricity, was finite.As Dion had also pointed out.Maybe he thought—hoped?—that a couple of days in Paris would rid him of any desire for her.

Feeling a little desperate, Tara wondered if it might rid her of this notion that she was falling for him.And rid her of her desire for him.It wasn’t exactly a complication she relished either!

It was a far cry from what she’d originally imagined might happen when she met Niko’s father.If she did love him, how would she cope if anything happened to him, or Niko?She went cold all over.She knew the devastation of loss.How had she not even considered this until now?

Her breathing became short and fast and she could feel her chest tightening.She hadn’t had a panic attack in years but she was afraid she was on her way to one right now.But then Dion took her hand.‘Tara, look at me.’

She turned her head and concentrated on Dion’s eyes.The lines of his face.His hand, warm on hers.She managed to get her breathing under control.The tightness in her chest eased.

‘Are you nervous about this evening?’

She shook her head.‘No, I’m okay now.’Which was just as well, because the car was pulling to a smooth stopoutside the venue.All Tara could see were huge stone walls and lots of people being disgorged from cars onto a red carpet.

Dion let her hand go and stepped out of the car and came around, opening her door to let her out.She sucked in fresh air.He took her hand again and she clung on as they walked over to the red carpet.A veritable wall of photographers was on one side.Dion bent his head towards her.‘Just follow my lead, okay?Normally I wouldn’t stop but we’ll let them take some pictures.’

Tara had no choice but to follow Dion as they stepped up in front of the bank of photographers.She even heard one say to another, ‘Dimitriou is stopping—he never stops!’

And then it went crazy, a million flashes of light.Dion bent his head again.‘Just smile, a couple more seconds.’

Tara fixed a rictus grin on her face and, somehow, endured the ordeal and then Dion was leading her up the carpet and into the venue.Tara’s heart was clamouring.Dion turned to her, ‘Okay?’

She half nodded.‘That was…intense.Is it always like that?’

He nodded.He looked grim.‘Sorry, I should have warned you.’

Tara waved a hand.‘It’s fine, but I think I might need a drink.’

Dion snagged two glasses of sparkling wine from a passing waiter and handed her one.Tara took a gulp and wrinkled her nose at the fizz.Dion was looking at her.