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Leonidas stared with brooding intensity at the space Maribel had so recently occupied. She had walked out on him—again. Savage frustration roared through his big powerful frame. So, he had got it wrong. Badly wrong. It was exceedingly rare, but he had made a mistake and he was prepared to acknowledge the fact. Why was she always judging him? Even worse, finding serious fault? Walking away, refusing to compromise or even negotiate? What did it take to please Maribel? If it was a wedding ring, she was destined to disappointment, he reflected harshly, dark eyes hard as iron. What kind of blackmail was that? His chilling anger was tempered, however, by the picture he could not get out of his head—his son taking refuge beneath the table with that pathetic dog. It felt very much like an own goal and that galled him. But what honed his anger to a gleaming razor edge was the knowledge that without Maribel’s permission he could not even see Elias.
A week crept past on leaden feet for Maribel.
She was surrounded and ambushed by paparazzi at home and wherever she went. At her request, the police restricted the press presence to gathering at the foot of the lane, but she was still afraid to take Elias into the garden lest a stray photographer pop up from behind the hedge or the fence. She was also tormented by the fear that she had been unfair to Leonidas who, after all, was what he was because he had been horribly neglected as a small child.
In Maribel’s opinion, his late mother, Elora Pallis, had had no more notion of how to be a parent than a shop-window dummy. An only child, the volatile heiress to the Pallis fortune of her generation, Elora had racked up four marriages and countless affairs before she’d died of a heart attack in her mid thirties. Non-stop scandal and drug and alcohol addiction had ensured that Elora was a poor mother to the daughter born while she was still a teenager and the son born three years later. Leonidas had only found out who his true father was after the man had died. He had received little in the way of love, attention or stability. When he was fourteen, he had gone to court to demand legal separation from his capricious mother and had moved in with his grandfather. Within three years, however, his mother, his older sister and his grandfather had passed away leaving him alone. And alone was what Leonidas had been ever since, Maribel conceded heavily. At least, until he had met Elias.
Eight days after their London meeting, Leonidas strode into Maribel’s office in the ancient history department when she was labouring over a timetable.
‘Leonidas?’ she queried in stark disconcertion, rising hurriedly upright behind her cluttered desk. Her heart was pounding uncomfortably fast because her once rock-solid nerves had taken a real battering since the paparazzi had begun chasing her around.
Although the lean sculpted face was austere and his dark, deep-set eyes hard as granite, his breathtaking attraction still made the breath catch in her throat. ‘If marriage is the only way, I’ll make you my wife.’
Shock took Maribel by storm as this was not a development she had foreseen. ‘But I wasn’t serious…I was only making my point.’
Leonidas looked grimmer than ever and unimpressed by her claim. ‘Elias is a powerful incentive. I’m suggesting a business arrangement, of course.’
‘Of course,’ she echoed, not really sure she knew what she was saying, or indeed what she was feeling, beyond a sense of unreality. ‘How could a marriage be a business arrangement?’
‘What else could it be? I want access to my son. I want him to have my name. I want to watch him grow up. You won’t share him without a wedding ring. I recognise a deal when I get offered one, glikia mou.’
‘But that’s not what I meant. I simply want what is best for Elias.’
Leonidas elevated an imperious brow. ‘Yes or no? I will not ask twice.’
Maribel thought very fast. If she married him, she would be giving him legal binding rights over Elias, but she would be around to curb any parenting excesses and watch over her son. If the relationship went wrong she would at least be able to afford the services of a good lawyer. Those were the practical considerations, but what about the personal ones? A business arrangement could only mean that he was talking about a platonic relationship.
Those acquainted with the fabled Pallis cool and control would have been astonished to learn that, at that precise moment, Leonidas was hanging onto his temper by a very slender thread. He had just done what he had always said he would never do: he had proposed marriage. A gold digger would have accepted before he even finished speaking. A woman who cared about him would have displayed some generous and warm response, he reasoned fiercely. But what was Maribel doing? Mulling the offer over with a serious frown on her face!
