The Greek's Billion-Dollar Baby. Clare Connelly
treated her with complete disdain and disrespect, skulking out in the middle of the night, leaving a note! It wasn’t as if she’d have begged him for more—they’d both agreed to it being one night only. It was the salt in the wound of him vanishing, not even bothering to say goodbye.
That was the man she was having a child with.
She grabbed hold of that thought; she needed to remember that.
The Stathakis yacht was the biggest in the marina, and it was pumping with life and noise. Her eyes skimmed the yacht, running over the partygoers moving around with effortless grace, all scantily clad, from what she could see. Music with a heavy beat sounded loud and somehow seductive, so something began to beat low in her abdomen. There were staff, too, their crisp white shirts discernible even at a distance, the trays they carried overflowing with champagne flutes.
She narrowed her eyes, lifting a hand and wiping it over her forehead. She was warm—the sun was beating down, even now in the early evening, and she’d been travelling since that morning.
She was tired, too, the exhaustion of the first trimester not giving way in the second.
She moved closer to the yacht, mindful on her approach that security guards stood casually at the bridge that led to the deck.
As she approached, one of the men spoke to her in Italian. At her blank expression, he switched to Greek and then, finally, English. ‘Can I help you, miss?’
‘I need to see Leonidas Stathakis. It’s important.’
The security guard flicked his gaze over Hannah, his expression unchanging. ‘It’s a private party.’
She had expected this resistance. ‘If you tell him my name, I’m certain he’ll want to see me.’
The guard’s scepticism was obvious. ‘And that is?’
‘Hannah. Hannah May.’ Her voice was soft, her Australian accent prominent.
The guard spoke into his walkie-talkie, the background noise of the party coming through louder when he clicked the button at its side. She discerned only her own name in the rapid delivery of information. Then, he clicked the walkie-talkie back to his hip.
‘He says you can go up.’
‘Thank you.’
Nerves were jangling inside her, doubts firing in her gut. Maybe she should turn around. Go back to London, or even Australia, far away. Call him with this information. Or not. She had no idea. She just knew suddenly the thought of coming face-to-face with Leonidas filled her with ice.
She was going to be sick.
‘Miss? Are you okay?’
But she’d come all this way. She’d grappled with this for weeks now, she’d faced the reality of being pregnant with Leonidas’s baby, trying to work out the best way to tell him. She had to tell him—there was nothing for it.
‘I will be.’
Yes, she would be. She needed simply to get this over with. The faster the better. ‘This way?’ she prompted, gesturing towards the boat.
‘And to the left.’
Hannah’s smile was tight as she surveyed the crowd, not particularly relishing the idea of weaving her way through so many people. ‘Thank you.’
She stepped onto a platform and then went up a set of polished timber and white stairs. At the top, another guard opened a section of the boat’s balustrade, forming a gate. The noise was deafening up here. She braced herself for a moment, frozen to the spot as she recognised at least a dozen Hollywood celebrities walking around in a state of undress. Men, women, all in their bathers, suntanned, impossibly slender and toned with very white teeth and enormous eyes.
Hannah stared at them self-consciously, this world so foreign to her, so foreign to anything and anyone she knew. These people were his friends?
There was a loud noise, a laugh, and then the splashing of water. She turned, chasing the interruption, to see a handsome man standing above the pool, a grin on his chiselled face. It wasn’t Leonidas, but she recognised him nonetheless from the few photos she’d pulled up while trying to find out how to contact Leonidas.
Thanos Stathakis, the playboy prince of Europe, all golden and carefree, and surrounded by a dozen women who were quite clearly vying for a place in his bed. She pulled a face, straightened her spine and began to cut through the party.
She didn’t belong here. She didn’t want to be here. She just needed to tell him and get out.
‘Miss May?’ A woman wearing a crew uniform approached Hannah, a professional smile on her pretty face. ‘This way, please.’
Hannah nodded stiffly, falling into step beside the woman, almost losing her footing when she saw a Grammy award–winning singer breeze past, laughing, arm in arm with the undisputed queen of talk-show television.
Hannah stared after them, her heart pounding. She felt like a fish way, way out of water. The crew member pushed a door open and Hannah followed, grateful for the privacy and quiet the room afforded.
‘Would you like anything to drink, miss?’
Hannah shook her head. ‘No, thank you.’
She waited until she was alone and then scanned the room, her eyes taking in the obvious signs of wealth that were littered without care. The yacht was unlike anything she’d ever seen, the last word in luxury and money. Designer furniture filled out this room, a television the size of her bed on one wall, and through the glass partition a huge bedroom with a spa against the windows.
Leonidas’s bedroom?
Her pulse picked up a notch and on autopilot she wandered towards it, her heart hammering against her chest as she pushed the door open.
Yes. She couldn’t say how she knew, only there was something in the air, his masculine, alpine fragrance that instantly jolted her senses.
She backed out quickly, as though the very fires of hell were lining the floor in there.
She had to do this. She would tell him, and then leave, giving him a chance to digest it, and to consider her wishes. This would be over in minutes.
Minutes.
She waited, and with each moment that passed her nerves stretched tighter, thinner, finer and more tremulous, so, five minutes later, she honestly thought she might pass out.
She was on the brink of leaving the room and going in search of Leonidas herself when the door burst inwards and he strode into the room, wearing only a pair of swimming shorts, and a look that—in the seconds before surprise contorted his expression—showed his impatience with her arrival.
He was partying.
He was probably the centre of attention, being just as fawned over and celebrated as his brother. Jealousy tore through her, but Hannah told herself it was outrage. Outrage that she’d been agonising over the baby they were going to have while he’d slipped out of bed and gone back to his normal life as though it had never happened.
If she’d held even a single shred of hope that he might be glad to see her, it disappeared immediately.
‘Hannah.’ His eyes roamed her face and then dropped lower, until he was staring at her stomach, and she felt the force of his shock, the reverberation of his confusion. It slammed into the room, slammed against her, and if she weren’t so consumed with her own feelings she might almost have felt sympathy for him.
‘Yes.’ She answered the unspoken question, her voice slightly shaky. ‘I’m pregnant. And you’re the father.’
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