Chapter 5
“ What. The. Fuck. Tell me that didn’t happen,” Velvet exclaimed over Skype, sheer disbelief causing Mairi’s curvy redhead friend to sit up from the leather couch she had been lounging on. And then she started to laugh. “But it did, didn’t it?”
Mairi cried out, “You’re not helping!” The words came out louder than intended, causing the few teachers in the faculty room to turn her way. She ducked her head immediately in embarrassment. Dear God, why couldn’t these cubicle walls be a little taller?
Velvet, seeing her friend trying to turn herself into a tiny ball, laughed harder. “You are so hopeless.”
“ I know .”
Velvet rolled her eyes when she caught a glimpse of Mairi’s miserable face on her iPad. “Oh, come on, Mairi. You have nothing to be guilty about. Tell me, did you want to kiss him?”
Mairi gasped. “Of course I didn’t want to ki—-” She caught herself in time. Grabbing her own iPad from the desk, she typed her answer instead. OF COURSE I DIDN’T WANT TO KISS HIM!
“Then there you go,” her friend answered promptly upon reading Mairi’s reply. “So there’s nothing to be guilty about, like I said.” She paused. “Have you told Damen?”
Mairi slowly shook her head.
Velvet blinked. “Oh.” She frowned. “That’s not like you.”
Mairi fiddled with the cord of her earphones. “I just think it’s really bad timing, you know? I mean, we came here so we’d be far away from trouble and then... this .” Thinking about it had her lips burning. Snatching a new sheet of tissue, she wiped her lips furiously, wishing it were just easy to erase what had happened.
Mairi wanted to knock her head against her desk repeatedly. Oh God, how could she have been so stupid?
“Just tell him and get it over with.”
“I don’t want to,” Mairi half-wailed, half-whispered.
Velvet did her best to suppress a smile at the answer. It was really cute, the way her friend hadn’t lost her childish ways even though she was now one of the most powerful women in the world. With the Greek tycoon wrapped around her little finger, there was precious little Mairi couldn’t have.
“Repeat after me,” Velvet said solemnly. “Damen...”
“Damen,” Mairi mumbled under her breath.
“Something happened.”
“Something happened.”
“I became a cougar.”
“I became a cou—-what?”
Velvet laughed. “Sorry, I couldn’t help it.”
Mairi sniffed. “You’re no help.” She glared at her iPhone screen so her friend would know she was serious. “If you and your own Greek billionaire have a fight, I swear to God I won’t be on your side—-” The rest of her words were cut off by a beep.
Her eyes widened. “Velvet, Damen’s calling!” Panic caused Mairi to raise her voice. “I gotta go, sorry.” Ending the call after hearing Velvet say goodbye, Mairi switched to answer Damen’s, saying breathlessly, “Hello?” The sound of her voice made Mairi wince inwardly. Oh my God, she was giving herself away already!
“Are you all right, sweetheart?” Damen asked right away. The odd note in his wife’s voice had him stopping in his tracks, which caused the group of executives behind him to stop as well.
Mairi cleared her throat. “Y-yes.”
Damen frowned. Checking his watch, he saw that it was still about two hours away from Mairi’s scheduled lunch break. “Have I caught you at a bad time?”
“No, no, of course not.” In her mind, Velvet’s words started to echo. Tell him. Tell him. Tell him.
She took a deep breath.
“Mairi?” Damen’s voice was tinged with concern now.
“I love you,” Mairi blurted out and winced inwardly right after. Coward, coward, coward!
His face softened.
Behind him, the executives appeared in need of treatment for shock. The elevator’s glass doors allowed Damen to see their expressions. Everyone was clearly having a difficult time reconciling the man before them with the one who had earlier taken them to task scathingly for being complacent.
“I love you, too, sweetheart. Nala and I will be waiting for you once your classes are done.”
The mention of their daughter allowed Mairi to momentarily forget her worries. Unable to help beaming, she exclaimed, “Yay!” Her aunts had only borrowed their little girl for the weekend, but it had seemed like forever at times.
Outside, the school bell rang, indicating the end of class, and Mairi knew it was time to go.
Damen heard it as well. “You’ve another class to teach?” he asked a little gruffly. If it had been up to him, he would’ve preferred Mairi to be with him at all times.
“Yeah. Let’s talk later after work?” She got to her feet as she spoke, gathering her things from the desk.
“Ne.”
“Bye.”
When their call ended, Damen said without looking back, “You can all pick up your jaws from the floor now, gentlemen. I’m not paying any of you six figures just to catch flies.”
“Y-yes, sir.” Everyone hastily pretended to be busy.
His mind went back to his wife as he stepped inside his private elevator while everyone else used the one next to it. She was worrying about something , Damen thought. And she didn’t want him to know about it. Why?
****
“H ERE SHE IS,” VILMA Tanner declared softly as she came back into the living room, a sleeping baby in her arms.
Norah blinked back tears furiously as she watched her sister carefully place their grandniece in her father’s arms. Sometimes, she still worried over Mairi, wondering if her tenderhearted niece had made the right choice. Sometimes, she still wondered if she herself had done the right thing, raising Mairi on a diet of fairy tales that had Greek billionaires as heroes instead of princes on horseback.
But then there were instances like now, when she’d glimpse the love softening the hard planes of Damen Leventis’ face, and her worries faded. While the corporate tycoon might never lose his ruthless streak, Norah knew that same ruthlessness would be used to protect Damen’s family against all trouble.
And trouble, as it happened, was once again brewing just around the corner, if rumors were to be believed.
Damen pressed a feather-soft kiss on his little girl’s forehead, not wanting to accidentally wake Nala up. She was her mother through and through, except for her hair, which was dark like his. Three months had already passed since her birth and yet he was still awed by her.
His daughter.
His and Mairi’s.
A miracle of love he would cherish his entire life.
“I hope she didn’t give you any headache,” Damen murmured to Mairi’s aunts even though his attention remained firmly focused on the child he cradled in his arms.
“She didn’t ever cry,” Vilma said proudly.
“Which means she took after Mairi’s mother rather than us,” Norah admitted ruefully. “She was a well-behaved baby, the only one among us three.”
Taking a seat next to her nephew-in-law, Vilma exchanged glances with her sister, asking Norah silently if now was the right time to speak of their concerns.
Attuned to the sudden undercurrents in the room, Damen looked up. “What is it?”
“We have been hearing things,” Vilma confessed. “We’ve still been keeping track of your mother’s actions. Recently, we’ve heard reports about Esther frequently meeting with unsavory members of the press.”
Damen frowned. “Unsavory in the sense of...?”
“They specialize in hacking celebrities’ accounts then blackmail those same individuals. If they don’t think they can get away with it, they then auction off the information and the highest bidder gets to dish out the dirt before anyone else.”
Damen’s lips compressed at the news. If he had his way from the start, he would have taken everything away from his mother. Revenge wasn’t even his motivation. All he wanted was to ensure she could never do his wife harm.
But Mairi, the woman Esther had hurt the most, was also the one who had stopped him from doing anything. His wife had pleaded with him. ‘Let’s just put the past behind us,’ Mairi had told him.
And because he had wanted to please her, he had reluctantly promised to do as she said.
But now...
“Thank you for letting me know.”
Norah repressed a shiver. Although Damen’s voice was gentle, it had a cold note that boded ill for his own mother. “You won’t do anything drastic, won’t you, dear?”
“Absolutely.”
When Damen left, Nala in tow, Norah glanced at her sister anxiously. “He won’t go off the rails on his mother, would he?”
Vilma shrugged. “As long as he can keep our niece out of harm’s way, I don’t really care what he does to Esther Leventis. Too much power’s made that woman crazy. It’s time she’s taught a lesson.”