CHAPTER TWO
EMMIESWAYED, her heart racing as she gripped her red-rose bouquet. She looked past crowded pews at the Greek billionaire standing in the aisle. The same man she’d dreamed about every night for the last seven months, in hot sensual memories that left her gasping with need.
“Are you pregnant with my baby?”
No!she wanted to shout. You can’t be his father. Because you’ll never know how to love him.
For months, Emmie had kept quiet about her pregnancy, hoping she could dodge this bullet. She’d never lied about paternity—not exactly. She’d just hoped that somehow Theo would never find out. She’d told herself that even if he knew, he wouldn’t care. She would just save him the trouble of rejecting her and the baby.
Emmie had to be hard-eyed and sensible. She’d worked herself through community college, taking night classes in accounting. She’d worked for years in a windowless basement for a corporation downtown before becoming secretary for a ruthless, amoral tycoon she despised. In her constantly struggling family, someone had to focus on the bottom line.
But even Emmie hadn’t been able to be practical in this case. She knew Theo would have given her child support, for legal reasons if nothing else. But though she’d picked up the phone a few times, she just couldn’t do it. Even with her father’s plumbing business losing money every month. She couldn’t call Theo, groveling and begging for cash. Her pride wouldn’t let her.
Or maybe she’d just been afraid of giving him that much power over her. Because unlike when she’d quit her job as his secretary, knowing he’d only break her heart further if she stayed—once he knew, she’d never be able to quit being the mother of his child.
But now he was here. Mouth dry, Emmie choked out, “Who told you?”
“Not you. That’s the point.” Theo Katrakis’s voice, slightly accented from his childhood in Greece, was low and angry as he came forward, his hard gaze pinning Emmie by the altar. “You lied to me.”
As he stalked past the crowded pews, whispers went through the church like wildfire.
“Her boss!”
“The billionaire!”
And, doubtfully, “He slept with her?”
His worn black motorcycle boots echoed in the sudden breathless silence. He stopped a few feet away, beneath the steps to the altar.
Suddenly, he was in front of her, close enough to touch.
“I didn’t...lie,” she choked out.
Theo’s black eyes flickered to her baby bump as his low voice cut her to pieces. “You lied.”
Shame went through her because she knew he was right, followed by anger because she’d had good reasons.
“So?” she cried, tossing her head in a wave of tulle. “We both know you’re not up for it. You don’t do commitment or love. What could you possibly offer our child but money?” She lifted her chin. “No, thanks. We’re fine without you.”
His lips parted with an intake of breath. Almost as if she’d wounded him. No, impossible. He had no heart to wound, though he’d hurt her so badly.
Then his eyes narrowed.
“So you cut me out.” His voice was as cold, smooth and dark as the surface of an arctic sea. “You took your judgment of me as license to steal my baby away.”
Emmie caught her breath. Steal? Was that what she’d done?
“You’re the father of Emmie’s baby?” Harold blurted out beside her. She’d forgotten he was there. Her erstwhile bridegroom seemed to shrink into his tux, goggling at Theo’s imposing frame.
And no wonder. Emmie looked up at her former boss.
It seemed a great injustice of the universe that after seven months apart Theo was more handsome than ever. His muscular chest and shoulders were wrapped in a form-fitting black T-shirt, and black denim caressed his powerful thighs down to short black leather boots. His square jaw was unshaven, leaving a dark shadow from hard cheekbones to his sensual lips. Black eyebrows slashed over his harsh, dark gaze.
She felt a sense of despair, of rage and grief that he could still dazzle her and make her want him. She gripped her bouquet, wishing she could smash him over the head with it. She felt a small burst of pain in her thumb as a single thorn pricked her. Putting her thumb to her lips, she sucked the aching spot.
Theo’s gaze fell to her mouth. His jaw tightened. He turned to her elderly bridegroom.
“You are no longer required here.”
“I can see that,” Harold replied with dignity. “You should take over.” Patting Emmie’s hand, he said quietly, “I wish you all the luck in the world, my dear, in your marriage.”
She stared at him, flummoxed. “You’ve got it all wrong. He’s not going to marry me—”
But Harold turned away from the altar to sit in the front pew. His elderly neighbor, Luly Olsen, wearing a flowery dress and pink hat decorated with cloisonné pins of dogs, caressed his shoulder consolingly.
Emmie couldn’t blame him for not wanting to face down Theo. Harold was an old-fashioned man and of course assumed Theo would wish to marry the mother of his unborn child.
But her father and brothers were not so trusting.
“Like hell he won’t!” From the other side of the pews, her father rose to his feet, his weathered face dumbfounded. “Katrakis. You’re the lover in Rio?”
“Her boss!” Beside him, the four big Swenson brothers, well-fed as linebackers, rose of one accord, fists clenched and lower lips stuck out.
Scowling, five Swenson men came forward with the hostility of an opposing football team or army battalion.
“You seduced my daughter. Abandoned her,” Karl Swenson accused.
She heard the low mutter across the church. There’d been sympathy for the Swenson family since Margie Swenson died, Margie of the kind word and buttery fika pastries. Margie who’d often snuck treats to children and dogs, offering free meals and gentle encouragement to anyone who needed a helping hand.
“There are more important things than money, Emmie,” her mother tried to tell her.
But even before she’d gotten sick, Margie had always been dreamy-eyed. At twelve, Emmie had taken charge of balancing her checking account and paying the bills so the power wouldn’t get turned off. By fifteen, she managed accounts receivable for her father’s plumbing business. Her father was excellent at getting customers to pay what was owed but not so good at keeping track of it.
Everyone in their Queens neighborhood knew not to mess with Karl or his four sons. Broad-shouldered and quick-tempered, her four younger brothers, spanning in age from nineteen to twenty-six, were protective of their only sister.
Theo didn’t seem worried. Arrogant in his own physical strength, he only looked at Emmie.
“Tell me,” he said quietly. “I want to hear you say it.”
She looked up at Theo’s darkly beautiful face, his penetrating black eyes and the sharp lines of his cheekbones and shadowed jawline. His aquiline nose was slightly crooked between the eyes, broken in some long-ago fight and never set quite right. Her gaze fell to his cruelly sensual lips that she could still feel against her skin, kissing and caressing every inch of her virgin body.
The light from stained-glass windows left a whirl of red and purple and blue against her white satin skirts. Emmie closed her eyes.
“Yes,” she whispered. “He’s yours.”
“He?” Theo had a sharp intake of breath. “A boy?”
“Yes,” Emmie’s father growled. “And you’re going to give my grandson a name and marry my daughter right now.”
Emmie’s eyes flew open in horror. “No, Dad—”
“Or else.”
“Or else,”her brothers chorused behind him, clenching their hands.
Emmie flung a terrified glance at Theo, knowing he’d respond with a sarcastic insult that would make her father lose his mind. Any moment, the blows would fly, and someone she loved would be hurt. She spread her arms, trying to create a wall between him and her family. “Please, I promise you, Theo, I don’t even want to marry—”
Theo gently pushed her aside. Tilting his head, he gave Karl Swenson a hard nod. “Deal.”
“You’ll marry her?” her father responded suspiciously.
Theo held out his hand. “Agreed.”
Her father brightened. “Well, then.”
The two men shook hands, as if they’d just agreed to the sale of a used plumber’s torch at cut-rate prices or maybe a truck-mounted sewer jetter with barely a touch of rust.
Looking between the two men, Emmie’s forehead creased. “Is this some kind of joke?”
Theo glanced pointedly at the minister, the guests, the church, and lifted his eyebrow as he inquired sardonically, “Do I look like I’m joking?”
Whispers and gasps sizzled through the crowd. By now, many wedding guests were holding up cell phones, because otherwise how would anyone believe it, that a plain, twenty-eight-year-old spinster like their Emmie had managed to entice a handsome Greek billionaire into bed—and into marriage?
Reaching out, Theo took her hand. Slowly, he pulled Harold’s engagement ring off her finger. She trembled feeling his fingers slide down her hand. Then he turned back to the elderly man.
“Thank you for standing in,” he said gravely, giving him the ring. “I’ll take it from here.” Holding Emmie’s hand, Theo turned to the minister. “Go ahead.”
Go ahead?
Emmie tried to pull back her hand. “Are you crazy?” she hissed. “I’m not suddenly going to switch grooms!”
“Why?” he asked coolly, as if she were the one being unreasonable.
Emmie didn’t know why he seemed as if he wanted to marry her, but after a year and a half as his secretary, she knew Theo Katrakis always got what he wanted, when he wanted it.
But not this time. Oh, no. Not this time.
Yanking her hand away, Emmie said, “We don’t have a license. Or a ring! And, oh, yeah—we don’t love each other!”
Theo’s dark eyes slanted sharply to Harold in the front row with Luly Olsen in her big pink hat. He lifted an eyebrow skeptically. The meaning was clear.
Emmie stiffened. Marrying Harold without love was entirely different—she knew the man could never break her heart! Desperately, she turned. “Dad.”
But her father only patted her shoulder. “You’ll thank me later, sweetheart. It’s for the best.”
“For the best,” her younger brothers repeated, nodding sagely.
She was being railroaded. Looking around the church, she saw no allies. Everyone clearly believed she’d been about to settle for a marriage of convenience with Harold, and so they expected her to clap her hands with joy at a chance to marry Theo instead.
How would anyone understand that it was far worse for her to marry Theo Katrakis, even if he was the father of her baby, even if he was handsome, even if he was a billionaire?
With a deep breath, she whirled back to him.
“Please don’t do this. You’d regret it,” she choked out. Black mascara smeared her fingertips as she wiped her eyes. “You’d make me regret it.”
He looked down at her.
“I’m your baby’s father,” he said quietly.
Those four words made Emmie catch her breath. Was she wrong to deny Theo even the chance to try to raise their son in the same home, just because she was scared?
Scared if she ever let herself get close to Theo again he’d wrap her heart around his little finger and never let go. And if he made her love him again, there’d be no escape for her this time, not if they were married with a child. She’d be chained to him forever, by the bonds of matrimony and family and by her own heartsick longing.
She’d spend the rest of her life loving a man who could never love her in return. The endless rejection would destroy her, until it finally crushed her into pieces so small she really would be invisible.
But—what about her baby?
Maybe Theo could never love her. But what if there was hope for him as a father?
Could Emmie really deny their baby the chance to be raised in a secure home with both parents? Could she actually be selfish enough to put her own needs first?
“Just go through the ceremony,” Theo told the minister arrogantly. “We’ll fix the paperwork later.”
“I’m not sure...” the man began, then looked at Theo and shrugged. He turned to Emmie, his eyes grave behind his spectacles as he placed his finger on the correct page. “What do you say, my dear? Should I begin again?”
Lump in her throat, Emmie stared at him uncertainly.
“Do it,” Theo said in a low, husky voice. “Say yes. Marry me.”
She turned, seeing all the staring eyes in the pews, feeling like she was in some awful dream. “I don’t know—”
Her voice cut off as he roughly pulled her into his arms. She gasped, breathing in the scent of leather and engines and woodsy aftershave and something even more intoxicating. Something just him. Theo’s black eyes blazed.
Then, lowering his head, he kissed her.
Theo deployed his kiss like a weapon.
He’d meant to use his sensuality against her, to assert the power of his will and make her agree. He’d done it a few times in the past with other women for much less reason, lazily, almost without thinking. He could always convince a woman to see things his way. And now that he’d decided to marry Emmie, in shocked determination to permanently secure and protect the son he’d just found out about. He had no compunction about his method, just the outcome. The end justified the means.
But as his lips touched hers, something happened that Theo hadn’t expected.
The contact of their kiss caused a flash of electricity to curl through him, sizzling up his nerves, burning through his body. It had happened that way before, that night he’d taken her virginity, when they’d conceived their child. But he’d almost convinced himself in the months since then that he’d deceived himself, that he’d been drunk, that he’d been crazy, that he’d imagined that overwhelming ecstasy.
But he hadn’t imagined anything.
Kissing Emmie Swenson had made his world spin.
With an intake of breath, Theo pulled her tighter, feeling the firm curve of her pregnant belly and lush fullness of her breasts against his chest, the white satin of her wedding gown sliding against his T-shirt. He gripped her body against his as if she were the answer to the question he’d been asking all his life.
He needed this. Needed her. Oh, God. He heard a soft moan and realized it had come from his own throat.
Shocked, Theo wrenched away.
Applause and catcalls rolled through the pews as Emmie looked up at him. Her blue-violet eyes were luminous beneath the ridiculous pile of white fluff on her head. He saw the same agony, the same need and fear, reflected in her beautiful, haunted face. She bit her lower lip, her red lipstick scarlet as roses, emphasizing bow-shaped lips in a heart-shaped face as she searched his gaze. She swallowed, then backed away.
“No,” she breathed.
Throwing her bouquet on the floor in an explosion of red petals, Emmie turned and ran from the altar, leaving everything and everyone behind as she disappeared through the side door.
Theo’s jaw dropped.
“Guess she needs a little convincing,” her father ventured, in what seemed like the understatement of the year. Theo scowled.
Damn it, why was it always so difficult to convince Emmie of anything? To be his secretary? To tell him about her pregnancy? To marry him?
She’d resisted becoming his wife just as she’d once resisted becoming his secretary. Back then, he’d thought it was proof of her good sense, that she saw through his charm and wasn’t easily fooled.
But now...
It seemed Emmie’s opinion of him hadn’t changed at all. Even after their year and a half of working together, she still thought he was not only a selfish bastard but an utter villain. How else to explain why, after their kiss, she’d looked at him with trepidation almost like fear?
Standing abandoned at the altar beside the minister, as the people in the pews gleefully held up their phones, Theo felt foolish, as he hadn’t in decades. His cheeks burned.
He’d never imagined asking any woman to marry him, but he’d always assumed that if for some reason he deigned to select a lucky bride, she’d immediately and gratefully jump into his arms.
Instead, Emmie had run away.
“Excuse me,” Theo told everyone grimly and turned to pursue his fleeing bride out the side door.
He caught up with her on the other side, in the church hall decorated for a wedding reception.
“Wait,” he growled.
Emmie looked back at him, her face troubled. “I’m not going to marry you.”
He caught her hand. “Just stop.”
“Don’t touch me.” She wrenched her hand away, her brilliant eyes flashing in the dappled light. Such an intoxicating shade. He thought dazedly of violet flowers, the symbol of ancient Athens. The color of the city’s horizon at sunset.
“Fine.” Keeping his hands wide of her, Theo took a deep breath. “We need to talk.”
“About what?” She lifted her chin. “Maybe we should talk about that little stunt you just pulled, demanding we get married out of nowhere. Kissing me? In front of everyone?”
He looked past the reception hall’s long folding tables to the homemade wedding cake surrounded by paper plates and stale-looking mints. A hand-painted banner was spread across the back wall, anchored by cheap, drooping balloons. Congrats, Emmie and Harold.
His jaw set. “You didn’t seem to have any problem marrying that old man.”
“Harold’s a good person,” she protested.
“Why, Emmie? Why him?”
“He offered us a home.”
“I could give you a home,” he said. “Several homes around the world. Why didn’t you ask me?”
“Because...” She swallowed, then looked away. Finally she met his eyes. “Why are you pretending you want this, Theo? A wife, a child?”
“I’m not pretending.”
She gave a low, bitter laugh. “You forget I know you. Even before I worked for you, I saw how you were. I heard you the morning of Nico’s wedding, telling him it wasn’t too late to make a run for it! And you were the best man!”
Theo licked his lips. “You heard?”
“I was her maid of honor. I was standing right there. I might have been invisible to you, but...”
“You weren’t invisible.” He remembered that day, Nico and Honora’s wedding on the beach. “You were pretty, in that dress. For once you weren’t smothered in the ugliest clothes you could find.” His gaze lingered on her lumpy, out-of-date wedding gown, and her cheeks went red.
“You despise the idea of marriage. Why would you ask me?”
Theo looked away, at the arched windows overlooking the courtyard. How to explain something he couldn’t even understand himself?
“You’re right. I’ve always avoided commitment,” he said haltingly. “In every love affair I’ve had, I was always planning my exit beforehand. But with you, that night in Rio...”
She waited.
His eyes met hers. “I wasn’t careful.”
Now Theo heard her sharp intake of breath. She looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap.
“The mistake was mine,” he said quietly. She looked up.
“Is that how you see our baby?” Emmie flared. “As a mistake?”
His heart was galloping strangely. “Yes.” He looked at her. “A mistake. But it’s one I intend to take responsibility for.” Looking away, he said softly, “I won’t leave you to struggle alone, like my mother had to.”
Silence fell. He’d never spoken about his childhood before. Not to anyone.
Emmie’s expression changed. “If you want to be a father to our baby, you can.” Her tone was suddenly gentle. “I’ll let you see him anytime you want. But...that doesn’t mean we need to marry.”
“The only way I can truly protect him,” he said, lifting his chin fiercely, “is by protecting you. The only way I can commit to him...is by committing to you.”
Her eyes widened. She took a deep breath, dropping her gaze again. The sweep of her blackened lashes brushed against her cheek like a butterfly’s wing.
Makeup made Emmie look...different. More obviously attractive, rather than the secret beauty she’d been, visible to his eyes alone. Theo wasn’t sure he liked it.
The truth was, he didn’t like any of this.
Not this cheap reception hall. Not feeling tired and hungry after his crazed overnight rush here from Europe. Not being forced into marriage by the conscience he hadn’t known he had.
Not Emmie’s badly fitting wedding dress, which showed off the swell of her baby bump and her full breasts, barely contained by tight, straining satin. Her pregnant body, laced into that modestly demure dress, made her look like a sex goddess of fertility no man could resist.
Except you’d no longer have to resist her, a voice whispered. His body tightened. Not once she was his wife.
He could still feel their kiss pouring through him, liquid fire in his veins. His gaze kept returning to her face, to her bruised, reddened lips.
“I’m being rude.” She looked back at the closed door to the church. “All my family and friends are probably still waiting, wondering what to do. I’m going to tell them it’s all off, and they should go home.”
His gaze sharpened. “Emmie—”
“I’m not running away. I’ll be back.”
After she disappeared through the side door, Theo paced, tapping his foot. His hand went to his pocket for his phone, by habit. Then his stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday. His eyes fell on the wedding cake on the center table.
Crossing past the humble homespun wedding decorations, he brushed his finger alongside the edge of white frosting on the plate. Buttercream. Delicious. He heard a noise.
A white-haired woman in a flowery dress and big pink hat walked through the far door, saying happily to another woman behind her, “It was the answer to my prayers, I tell you. When Harold—”
They stopped when they saw Theo, standing beside the wedding cake with one finger on the edge of the frosting.
“We’re here to tidy up,” one of the women blurted out. He gave them a hard, charming smile.
“Later.”
“Of course,” they stammered and fled, holding their dainty hats.
Licking the frosting off his finger, Theo reached for the decorative knife, intending to cut himself a slice—the cake obviously wouldn’t be needed now—when his phone rang.
It was his lawyer, calling to report that the demolition permits had come through for his new property in Greece. Hearing it over the phone wasn’t quite as satisfying as it would have been to see it in person, as he’d intended.
Then the man added, “And we finally found the item you’ve been looking for.”
Theo blinked. “Where?”
“At a pawn shop. In Thessaloniki. We’ll dispatch it to your office.” Pause. “I heard you returned to New York quite quickly, sir. Was there an emergency?”
“I came back to get married.” It surprised Theo how easy it was to speak those words.
His attorney, the biggest attack dog at the white-shoe law firm of Jaber, Greenbury and Moire, heard the word married and gasped out, “But you got a prenup first, of course, Mr. Katrakis?”
Hearing Theo’s sheepish reply to the negative, his attorney whimpered like a Victorian maiden collapsing on a fainting couch.
Hanging up moments later, Theo marveled at his own stupidity. He’d been standing at the altar, ready to marry Emmie. He hadn’t even thought about the risk to his fortune.
What was it about her that caused him to lose his mind?
Well, no more. From now on he’d be cold. Cold and smart. He’d convince her to marry him—and to sign a prenup. How to convince her? How to get leverage?
The side door opened, and Emmie walked into the reception hall in a swish of white satin, looking pale but determined. He braced himself to argue, to charm, to persuade. “You’re going to marry me, Emmie.”
She looked at him.
“Fine,” she said suddenly. “I will.”