The Marakaios Baby

CHAPTER TWO

LEO STRODE FROM Margo’s apartment, his body still shuddering from their lovemaking—but no, he couldn’t call it that. Never that.

With one abrupt movement he lobbed the little velvet box into the nearest bin. A foolish waste, perhaps, but he couldn’t bear to look at that wretched ring for another moment. He couldn’t stand the thought of it even being in his pocket.

He drew a deep breath and raked a hand through his hair, willing back the emotion that had nearly overwhelmed him in Margo’s apartment. All of it. She was out of his life. He need never think of her again.

It wasn’t as if he’d loved her, he reminded himself. Margo had been right about that. He had liked her, yes, and they’d certainly shared an explosive sexual chemistry. She’d seemed the obvious choice when he’d decided it was time he married.

Six months ago, just after their mother’s death, his brother Antonios had resigned as CEO of Marakaios Enterprises and Leo had taken his place. It was what Leo had wanted his whole life, what he had striven for as a young man, working for the father who had never even noticed him. Who had chosen Antonios instead of him, again and again.

But he was over that; he’d made peace with Antonios, and his father had been dead for ten years. His mother too was gone now, and all of it together had made him want to marry, to start a family, create his own dynasty.

But Margo doesn’t even want children.

Why hadn’t he known that? Why hadn’t he realised she was so faithless, so unscrupulous? Theos, she’d been cheating on him. He could hardly credit it; they’d seen each other every week or two at least, and their encounters had always been intense. But she had no reason to lie about such a thing.

And when he thought of how he’d asked her to marry him, how he’d tried to convince her, persuade her with gentle reason and understanding because he hadn’t been able to believe she didn’t want him... Leo closed his eyes, cringing with the shame of it.

Well, no more. He wouldn’t marry. Or if he did it would simply be for a child. He would not engage his emotions, would not seek anything greater than the most basic of physical transactions. And he would never see Margo again, Margo of the cold feet and the marshmallows...

His face twisted with regret before he ironed out his features and strode on into the night.

* * *

Margo’s stomach lurched for the third time that morning and she pressed one hand against her middle, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. This stomach bug was both insistent and annoying. She’d been feeling nauseous for over a week, although she’d thankfully never actually been sick.

‘Are you all right?’

Margo looked up to see Sophie, her colleague and fellow buyer at Paris’s exclusive department store Achat, frowning at her.

They’d worked together for six years, starting as interns, Sophie with her freshly minted college degree and Margo doing it the hard way, having worked on the shop floor since she was sixteen. They’d both moved up to being assistants, and now they were buyers in their own right. Margo was in charge of the home department; Sophie covered accessories. Both of them were completely dedicated to their jobs.

‘I’m fine. I’ve just been feeling a little sick lately.’

Sophie raised her eyebrows, a teasing smile playing about her mouth. ‘If it was anyone but you I’d be worried.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Margo asked, a note of irritability creeping into her voice. She had been out of sorts for a month now, ever since Leo had left her alone and aching.

It was for the best—it had to be—but she couldn’t keep herself from feeling the hurt. The emptiness.

‘I mean,’ Sophie answered, ‘that I’d think you were pregnant. But you can’t be.’

‘Of course I’m not,’ Margo answered sharply.

Sophie knew her stance on relationships and children: one night over a bottle of wine they’d each confided their intention to have single, solitary, safe lives. At least that was how Margo had viewed it; she suspected Sophie just wanted to play the field.

‘I’m on the mini-pill,’ she stated, and Sophie raised her eyebrows.

‘You haven’t forgotten to take it, then?’

‘No, never.’

Margo frowned at her computer screen and the image there of a selection of silk throw pillows, handcrafted in Turkey, that she was considering for Achat’s exclusive range. Her mind was racing back to that night a month ago, when she and Leo had had their memorable farewell. But she’d taken a pill that morning, and one the next day. She hadn’t missed anything.

‘Well, then, it’s probably just a stomach bug,’ Sophie said dismissively.

Margo barely heard her.

The next morning she’d taken it a bit later, she recalled. She hadn’t been able to sleep after Leo had left, her mind seething and her body aching, so she’d taken a herbal sleeping tablet some time in the middle of the night. It had knocked her out, which had been a blessing at the time, and she had slept for eight hours, waking around eleven, which was only three hours after she normally took the pill...

She couldn’t be pregnant.

But what if those few hours had made a difference? Allowed enough of a window...?

She let out a laugh, then, a trembling, near-hysterical sound that had Sophie looking up from her laptop across their shared open-plan office.

‘Margo...?’

She shook her head. ‘Just thinking how ridiculous your suggestion was.’

And then she turned back to her computer and worked steadily until lunchtime, refusing to give her friend’s teasing suggestion a single second of thought.

Her mind was filled with a static-like white noise even as she focused on the Turkish pillows of hand-dyed silk, and at lunchtime she left her desk and hurried down the Champs-Élysées, walking ten blocks to a chemist that wasn’t too close to Achat’s offices.

She paced the length of the shop, making sure no one who knew her was inside, and then quickly bought a pregnancy test without meeting the cashier’s eye. She stuck the paper bag in her handbag and hurried out of the shop.

Back at the office, she went into the bathroom, grateful that it was empty, and stared at her reflection, taking comfort from the elegant, composed face in the mirror. Her mask. Her armour. For work she wore nothing more than some eyeliner and red lipstick, a bit of powder. Her hair was in its usual sleek chignon and she wore a black pencil skirt and a silver-grey silk blouse.

The shade suddenly reminded her of the colour of Leo’s eyes.

But she couldn’t think about Leo now.

Taking a deep breath, she fumbled in her bag for the test and then locked herself in one of the stalls. She read the directions through twice, needing to be thorough, to focus on the details rather than the big picture that had been emerging ever since Sophie had made her suggestion.

Then she took the test and waited the requisite three minutes, staring at the face of her watch the whole time. As the second hand ticked to twelve for the third time she turned the test over—and stared down at two blazing pink lines.

Positive.

She was pregnant...with Leo’s baby.

For a moment she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even see. She doubled over as the world swam and darkened all around her. Then she took a few shallow breaths and straightened. She wrapped the test in a paper towel and shoved it deep in the bin, washed her hands and retouched her make-up. She would not think about this yet. She couldn’t.

She went back to her office, ignoring a curious look from Sophie, and sat at her desk and worked non-stop until six. She took phone calls, she attended a meeting, she even chatted and joked a little with colleagues.

But all the time she could hear the buzzing in her head. She felt as if she were watching herself from a distance, applauding how effortlessly she was handling it all. Except she wasn’t really...because inside she could feel the beginnings of panic ice over her mind and her belly.

She was pregnant with Leo’s baby.

‘Do you want to go for a drink?’ Sophie asked as Margo rose to gather her things at six.

‘I don’t think...’ Margo began, intending to put Sophie off, but then she hesitated.

She couldn’t bear the thought of returning to her apartment and spending the evening alone—not with this bomb of knowledge still ticking inside of her, waiting to detonate.

‘Why not?’ she amended as lightly as she could, and slipped on her blazer.

It was a warm evening in early September, and the office buildings of Paris’s centre were emptying out onto the wide boulevard of the Champs-Élysées. They walked to a wine bar on a narrow side street, one of their favourites, and sat outside at a rickety table so they could watch the world go by.

‘Red or white?’ Sophie asked as she moved to go inside and order their wine from the bar.

Margo hesitated, and then shook her head. ‘I’ll just have a glass of sparkling water. My stomach is still a little queasy.’

Sophie stared at her for a moment and Margo held the stare. She’d come out with Sophie tonight to avoid being home alone with this new knowledge, this new life inside her, but she wasn’t ready to tell her friend yet.

‘Very well,’ Sophie said, and went inside.

Margo sat back in her chair and blindly watched people stream by, heading home or to a bar like this—people with plans, with jobs and busy lives...

Hours ago she’d been just like them—at least on the surface. To the world she presented an image of the confident, sophisticated career woman who had everything she wanted. She’d always known it was nothing more than a flimsy façade, but no one else had.

And now the façade was about to crumble. Because she was pregnant. Pregnant with a baby...a child of her own...

Instinctively her hand crept to her still flat stomach. She imagined the little life nestled inside her, the size of a grain of rice and yet with a brain and a beating heart. A baby...

‘So what’s going on?’ Sophie asked as she returned to the table and handed Margo her glass of water.

Quickly Margo dropped her hand from her middle. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ve been acting strange all afternoon. Almost as if you were in a daze.’

‘I’ve been working.’

Sophie just gave her a look; she knew her too well for Margo to dissemble. She took a sip of water to stall for time.

‘Is everything all right?’ Sophie asked quietly, abandoning her usual flippancy for a sincerity that made Margo’s eyes sting.

She didn’t have many friends. She had acquaintances and colleagues, people on the periphery of her life, but no one had ever been at its centre. She hadn’t allowed anyone to be, because loneliness was safer. And maybe it was all she deserved.

If you’d married Leo he would have been there.

But she couldn’t think that way because she’d made her choice. She couldn’t change her mind now, couldn’t wonder or wish for something else.

‘Margo?’ Sophie prompted, real concern wrinkling her forehead.

Margo took a deep breath. ‘Actually...I really am pregnant.’ She hadn’t been planning on admitting it, but now that she had it was such a relief to share the burden, even if Sophie looked as dazed and shocked as she’d felt a few hours ago.

‘Seriously? But...’

‘I took a test at lunchtime.’

Sophie shook her head slowly. ‘I didn’t even know you were seeing anyone seriously.’

‘I wasn’t. It was...casual. He lives in Greece.’

‘And...? Have you told him?’

Margo let out a trembling laugh. ‘Sophie, I told you, I just found out at lunchtime.’

‘Right.’ Sophie sat back in her seat and took a sip of wine. ‘So you’re still processing it, I suppose?’

Margo passed a hand over her forehead. Telling Sophie had made her pregnancy seem more real, and she felt a bit shaky as a result. ‘I don’t think I’ve even started.’

‘Well,’ Sophie said, ‘I didn’t think you wanted children.’

‘I didn’t. Don’t.’

Sophie raised an eyebrow and Margo realised her hand had strayed once more to her middle. She let out another uncertain laugh and dropped it.

‘I don’t know what I want,’ she said quietly, and felt everything inside her lurch at this admission.

‘What about the father, this Greek guy? How long had you been with him?’

‘We were together for two years—’

‘Two years?’ Sophie’s jaw dropped. ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me, Margo?’

‘I...’ Why hadn’t she told Sophie about Leo? Because, she supposed, she had been afraid to allow Leo to seem that important to her, and yet she was afraid it had happened anyway. ‘It was just a fling,’ she said lamely.

Sophie laughed in disbelief. ‘Quite a long-term fling.’

‘Yes, I suppose... In any case, our...relationship is finished. Completely.’ Margo stared down at her glass of water. ‘It didn’t end well.’

‘If you’re thinking of keeping the baby, he should still know,’ Sophie pointed out.

Margo couldn’t keep herself from wincing. How on earth could she tell Leo now? Considering what she’d said to him the last time they’d been together, he might not even believe the baby was his.

‘I can’t think about all this just yet,’ she said. ‘It’s too much. I have time.’

‘If you’re not going to keep it,’ Sophie replied warningly, ‘the sooner you decide the better. For your own sake.’

‘Yes...’

A termination, she supposed, might seem like the obvious answer. And yet the most fundamental part of herself resisted the possibility, shrank away from it in horror.

She hadn’t expected that. She hadn’t expected pregnancy to awaken anything in her but dread and fear. And yet she couldn’t deny the faint stirrings of hope, as ephemeral as a will-o’-the-wisp, that had gathered inside her. A baby. A second chance.

‘You do have some time,’ Sophie allowed, reaching over to pat her hand. ‘Don’t make any rash decisions, in any case.’

‘I won’t,’ Margo promised, but already her mind was spinning, spinning. If she actually decided to keep the baby she would have to tell Leo. And how on earth would that work? Would he believe her? Would he want to be involved?

She left Sophie an hour later and took the Metro back to her apartment on the top floor of an eighteenth-century townhouse on the Île de la Cité. As she stepped into the little foyer, with its marble table and antique umbrella stand, she felt some of the tension leave her body, uncramp her shoulders. This was her home, her haven, lovingly created over the years and the only real one she’d ever known.

She ran a bubble bath in the claw-foot tub and sank gratefully into its warmth, closing her eyes and trying to empty her mind for a few moments. But thoughts crept stealthily back in. A baby. How would she manage with her job? Childcare in Paris was expensive, and she was entitled to only sixteen weeks of maternity leave. Even though she made a decent salary she didn’t think she’d be able to keep her apartment and pay for the full-time childcare she’d need.

But far more concerning, far more terrifying than the financial implications of having a child, were the emotional ones. A baby...a human being she would be entirely responsible for, a person who would be utterly dependent on her...

A person she could love. A person she could lose. Again.

And then, of course, there was Leo. She didn’t even know if he would see her or listen to anything she had to say. And if he did...would he want to be involved in her child’s life? And if so...how much? How would they come to a custody arrangement? And was that what she wanted for her son or daughter? Some awful to-ing and fro-ing between parents who as good as hated each other?

Exhaustion crashed over her and she rose from the tub. She couldn’t think about all this yet. She certainly couldn’t come to any decisions.

* * *

As the days and then the weeks slipped past Margo knew she had to decide soon. Sophie had stopped asking her what she was going to do, but at work she could see the silent question in her friend’s eyes and knew she was concerned.

And then the sickness really hit. The faint nausea that had been plaguing her for a few weeks suddenly turned into something else entirely, something horrendous that left her barely able to get out of bed, and unable to keep anything down.

Lying alone in her bed, unable to do anything but crawl to the toilet, she realised how alone she was. She had so few friends in the city. Sophie wanted to help, but as a single working woman her resources and time were limited.

Margo knew all too well how short a step it was to destitution, to tragedy, when you were on your own. When there was no family, no safety net. If she was going to keep this baby she couldn’t do it on her own. She couldn’t risk it.

After suffering for a week, she managed to drag herself to the doctor for some anti-nausea medication.

‘The good news,’ the doctor told her cheerfully, ‘is that nausea usually means a healthy pregnancy. That baby is here to stay.’

Margo stared at him, his words reverberating through her. He had no idea, of course, how conflicted she was about this child. Except in that moment she realised she wasn’t conflicted at all. This baby was a gift—a gift she’d never expected to receive. And she knew then—realised she’d known all along—that of course she was keeping her child.

And of course she would have to tell Leo.

CHAPTER THREE

‘SOMEONE’S HERE TO see you, sir.’

Leo glanced up from his laptop at his assistant Elena, who stood in the doorway of his office on the Marakaios estate. He’d been going over some figures for a new deal with a large North American restaurant chain, and it took a few seconds for Elena’s words to penetrate.

‘Someone? Who is it, Elena?’

‘A woman. She wouldn’t give her name, but she said it was urgent.’

Leo frowned. His office was on the family compound in central Greece—the middle of nowhere, as Margo had so acerbically reminded him. He didn’t get unexpected visitors to his office here. Ever.

‘Well, why on earth wouldn’t she give her name?’ he asked as he pushed back from his chair.

‘I don’t know. But she’s well-dressed and well-spoken. I thought perhaps...’

Elena trailed off, blushing, and Leo took her meaning. She’d thought this woman might be one of his lovers. Only he hadn’t taken a lover in months—not since he’d last seen Margo.

And he very much doubted Margo had come all the way to Greece to see him.

Leo’s mouth twisted cynically at the thought. It had been over four months since he’d seen her—over four months since he’d walked out of her apartment with that ring in his pocket. Four months since he’d let himself think of her. That part of his life was over.

‘Whoever this woman is, Elena, I find it decidedly odd that she wouldn’t give her name.’

‘She seemed very insistent...’

With a sigh, Leo strode to the door. ‘I’ll see her, then,’ he said, and walked briskly out of his office.

It wasn’t until he reached the foyer and saw the woman standing there amidst the leather sofas and sleek coffee tables that his step slowed. His heart seemed to still. And an icy anger came over him like a frozen shell.

He folded his arms. ‘If I’d known it was you I would have told Elena to send you away.’

‘Please, Leo...’ Margo said quietly.

She looked awful—gaunt, with dark shadows under her eyes. She wore a black wool coat that made her ivory skin look pale...too pale.

Leo frowned. ‘What do you want?’

‘To talk to you.’ She glanced at Elena, who had gone back to her desk and was ostentatiously busying herself, but was of course listening to every word. ‘Privately.’

Leo opened his mouth to tell her they had nothing to say to one another, but then he paused. He didn’t want to have this conversation in public—didn’t want anyone, even his assistant, to know his private affairs.

With a terse nod he indicated the corridor. ‘Come to my office, then,’ he said, and without waiting for her to follow he turned and strode back the way he had come.

He watched as Margo came in and carefully closed the door behind her. She looked bruised and exhausted, as if a breath of wind would knock her right over.

‘You don’t look very well,’ he said flatly.

She turned to him with the ghost of a smile. ‘I don’t feel very well. Do you mind if I sit down?’

He indicated one of the two chairs in front of his desk and she sank into it with a sigh of weary relief.

‘Well?’ Leo asked, biting off the single syllable. ‘What do you want?’

She looked up at him, and he felt a ripple of uneasy shock at the resignation in her eyes. It was so different from the way he’d usually seen her—all elegant polish and sassy sophistication. This was a different Margo...one with a layer stripped away.

‘Leo,’ she said quietly, ‘I’m pregnant.’

He blinked, the words taking him totally by surprise.

She said nothing, waiting for his reply.

‘And how does this concern me?’ he asked coolly.

She held his iron gaze. ‘The baby is yours.’

‘And you know that how? Do I need to remind you of what you told me four months ago?’

‘No.’ She hesitated, her gaze moving away from his. ‘The other...man...he can’t be the father,’ she said at last.

A rage so fierce it felt like an earthquake shaking his insides took hold of him. ‘Don’t,’ he said in a voice like a whip-crack, ‘talk to me of him. Ever.’

‘This baby is yours, Leo.’

‘You can’t know that.’

She sighed, leaning her head back against the chair. ‘I do know it,’ she said wearily. ‘Utterly. But if you like I’ll have a paternity test done. I can prove it beyond a doubt.’

He stared at her, shaken more than he wanted to admit or reveal that she sounded so certain. ‘I thought you didn’t want children,’ he said, after a long, taut moment.

‘I didn’t,’ she answered.

‘Then I’m surprised you didn’t just deal with this on your own,’ he snapped.

She put a hand to her throat, the gesture making her seem even more fragile. Vulnerable.

‘Is that what you would have wanted?’

‘No.’ He realised he meant it utterly. A child...his child, if she wasn’t lying. Yet how could he trust a word she said? ‘Why have you come here and told me?’ he asked instead. ‘Do you want money?’

‘No, not particularly.’

He laughed at that—a cold, sharp sound. ‘Not particularly?’

‘I admit having this child will be hard for me financially. But I didn’t come here to ask for a hand-out. I came because I thought you should know. You’d want to know.’

He sank into his chair, the reality of it crashing over him as he raked his hands through his hair. ‘Theos, Margo. This is a lot to take in.’

‘I know. I’ve had three months to process it—’