CHAPTER TWO

LAILAWALKEDAROUND the enormous bedroom she'd been shown into, feeling untethered from her own life.

Sebastian had walked away after telling her he would see her when the boys arrived in an infinitely polite voice. If she hadn't seen and understood the scope and depth of his art, she'd have thought him the uncaring, ruthless, powerful man who had exploited an old man's weakness and driven him to losing his home.

But that night three years ago, she had not only stolen the promissory note he had taken from Guido as guarantee for his gambling debts, but had also gotten a glance at what Sebastian Skalas hid from the world.

The true core of the man he hid beneath his useless playboy persona. The profound beauty of his art had stolen her breath, pulled the very foundation of her assumptions about him, making her wish she'd met him under different circumstances.

But that kind of stupid wishing was not her. Neither had it stopped her from taking pictures of his art on her phone, to use as further guarantee that he would leave Guido alone. Even then, flushed with guilt and pleasure at sleeping with him, she had known that he wouldn't want the world to know who he truly was.

With that perspective that she had of him—that she knew no one else in the world did—Laila shouldn't be surprised by his easy acceptance. But she was.

Apparently, he believed her sons were his just like that, and it was a big deal that he had two sons. She'd expected, at least, garden-variety accusations thrown around about her character, her sexuality, her conduct and her tactics for gold-digging.

Instead, she'd been left standing in the middle of the patio, her stomach growling because she hadn't eaten anything since finishing Zayn's smushed toast hours ago, and the lingering feeling that he'd never forgive her. Which was strange because she didn't want his forgiveness in the first place.

Alexandros had pressed a quick kiss to Annika's temple and walked away, without meeting her eyes. Clearly, the Skalas men didn't abandon self-control even when they were angry. It was so reminiscent of her father that it soothed Laila, amid the gnawing confusion.

Her boys would have good male role models in their father and uncle at least. She added it to the positive column in her head, much like how Zayn collected his precious rocks.

Knowing she had a husband and brother-in-law feeling betrayed, Annika had looked as emotionally worn out as Laila had felt, and ordered the staff to show her to the guest suite.

So here she was at two in the afternoon, hungry and tired and sleep-deprived.

When was she not, to be honest?

Her brain glitched at the anticlimactic silence surrounding her. It wasn't just that she was away from the boys—she'd returned to work when they were three months old. Or that she had spent most of her adult life, and a good bit of her teenage life, looking after her father, then her mother and her sister and even Guido and his sister Paloma.

It was seeing Sebastian again. And knowing that all her preparation—stalking every piece of news and watching videos of him on social media in an unending loop—hadn't made an iota of difference to her reaction.

She'd had three years, and few enough moments without mom brain, to dwell on how decadently gorgeous he was. How his mobile mouth could mock even as his gray-eyed gaze stripped layers to see beneath. How he could be both entirely charming and exhilaratingly cunning with his quips. How some mysterious, magical thing she didn't understand had driven her to seek pleasure in his arms, bypassing all logic and rationale.

She'd thought she'd be...immune to his brand of physicality after all this time.

She wasn't and her brain didn't know what to do with this unforeseen glitch.

He was the most interesting man she'd ever met and three years and thousands of sleepless hours hadn't made a dent in her fascination with him.

He was still lean and yet somehow impossibly broad. There was a new sharpness to his gray gaze, a tightness around his mouth that she attributed to her arrival. He moved with a lazy grace and talked with an ease that she rarely saw in men who tried to dominate the people and situations around them.

No trying to intimidate the opponent for Sebastian Skalas. His power thrummed in the very air around him, making her prickly and aware. He'd tamped down his anger as easily as if he were closing his eyes.

Neither did she have any problem understanding his intent. He had meant it when he'd said, "We'll get married."

He meant for them to marry and live in this gigantic villa and play happy families for Nikos and Zayn. And she would be his plain, tall, big-boned wife burying her head in statistics, raising her boys in his gigantic home, feeling like a fish out of water while he...so beautiful that it hurt her eyes to look at him, went off to date stick-thin models, have sophisticated affairs, all the while laughing at her and the world. The very picture in her head made Laila want to run away and hide. Fortunately, the chirp of her phone pulled her out of the absurd reality of her marrying Sebastian.

The text was from the twins' nanny, Paloma, saying they were on their way and that the boys had settled into a nap. So, at least one stop to change their diapers and give the boys a minute—especially hyperactive Nikos—to stretch their chubby legs.

And she had three hours and one chance to convince Sebastian that his proposal was nothing but an invitation to disaster.

She found him swimming laps at the overhang pool out on one of the multiple terraces on the second floor, after walking the maze-like grounds around the silent villa, to the beach and back, and finally going up the open stairs that had a gorgeous view of the Ionian Sea.

The villa was built into the very side of the mountain, looking like it very much belonged there, with the Skalases reigning as undisputed kings. Of course, she had known he was wealthy, and in the last few months, she had come face-to-face with the fact that the Skalas family's wealth and power rivaled some of the richest people on the planet.

So what did a man like Sebastian Skalas—who had all this and the millions of euros that his paintings were in circulation for—need from an old chauffeur like Guido? So much that he had lured the old man into a gambling debt using his weakness against him, holding the threat of ruin on his head?

It was a question Laila had pondered for three years with no satisfying answer. And now, it came back to her again, given his easy acceptance of her claim. A missed step on the stairs brought her jarringly back to the world around her.

Her awe and admiration for the sea and the beaches and the near-floating palace that was the villa only lasted a few more seconds. Suddenly, all she could see were the dangerously open ledges and unending terraces and open stairs—a million places where her boys could get hurt.

When she reached the overhang pool on the second floor that seemed to stretch right out into the middle of the very ocean, though, she promptly forgot all her reservations.

Sunlight pierced through the bluest blue water and painted the man's muscled limbs and smooth strokes with splashes of golden light. It would be better to approach him after he showered and dressed, give him some more time to cool down, although he hadn't really let his emotions show.

Despite the noise of her warnings, Laila simply went to him, feeling as if there was that hook under her belly button, tugging her toward him. Memories of sleek limbs and soft touches and hard nips... The one night she'd spent with him came back in a thrumming buzz, making her skin feel tight over her own muscles. A loose, lazy kind of heat thrashed through her and she tugged her T-shirt away from her breasts. The orange stain near her left boob—from when Zayn had thrown mango pulp at her—broke the spell and she came back to herself.

That night, that role she'd played to get his attention, had been a fantasy. Reality was that she was right now very hungry, and her rationale needed to be fed. She smiled as she noticed the covered lunch tray. Grabbing it, she opened the cover to find a colorful salad, pasta in thick white sauce and a slice of thick chocolate cake.

With an easy practicality that came with dealing with two prima divas all her life, and now two very energetic toddlers, Laila had learned to eat her food with gratitude and urgency. Also, it was a timely reminder that this would be her lot if she agreed to his ridiculous plan.

He would be out there living his usual, bored playboy life and she'd be left wondering where he was.

Not that it stopped her from groaning as the rich white sauce melted on her tongue. She attacked the cake next, her eyes going back in her head at the richness of the chocolate. The salad and sweet, tart lemonade were last.

If she wasn't aware of the sudden narrowing of Sebastian's gaze on her like a soft hum under her skin, she'd have spread her legs, unzipped her mom jeans, patted her belly and fallen into a much-needed nap before the boys arrived.

For a moment, she wondered if that was the best way to discourage him from his ridiculous proposal. Wasn't Mama forever telling her that no man liked a woman who ate like he did? Who was at least as smart as him if not more, and stood just as tall, argued logic all the time and made no effort to hide any of those obnoxious traits?

She ticked at least two boxes with most men and with Sebastian, she could also add the "men want their women to be at least as good-looking as themselves" rule Mama kept throwing in her face.

So maybe all she had to do was be herself.

After all, she was nothing like the woman who had taken on Sebastian Skalas. She was not beautiful—that routine with false lashes and hair straighteners and rented clothes had taken her two hours that evening—she was not a helpless damsel in distress and she was definitely not the wide-eyed, naive, out-for-a-good-time party girl she'd pretended to be.

If she was ruthlessly honest, though, he had thoroughly reduced her to the last part. Once she'd started chatting with him, she'd forgotten the whole reason she was there.

By the time he stepped out of the pool, she had a battle plan. Or so she'd thought.

Clad in black swimming trunks that outlined every inch of his chiseled body—taut buttocks and muscled thighs and a lean chest with a smattering of hair and bands of abdomen muscles—he made it impossible to not remember how that body had felt on top of hers. How much care he'd taken with her. How he'd taught her that she was meant for pleasure, too, and how he'd wrung every ounce of it out of her.

"I do not know if the hungry way your gaze travels my body is indicative of the fact that your defenses are down or if you've revived your act."

It was the last thing she expected him to refer to. And in that smooth-as-sin voice that wrapped itself like a warm tendril around her flesh.

Laila tilted her head back and licked her lips, feeling hunger of a different kind bloom in places she hadn't thought of in a while. Not since that night. "I have no energy left to put on an act. If you'd spent a little more time in the pool, you'd have found me snoring with my mouth open, drooling away."

"So you're eating me up with the same eagerness you showed the cake because you're lusting after me," he returned in such a reasonable voice that it took Laila a few seconds to process his taunt. "I feel like I have an upper hand for the first time since you appeared."

She blinked and looked away as he wiped himself. "I know you're not so starved for the female gaze to make this a scoring point between us."

"I'm not hearing a denial, Dr. Jaafri," he came back, lightning fast.

Laila would have docked him a point if he addressed her like that to mock her—she'd met enough people in life who used her brains as a weapon against her femininity—but he said it like it was his nod to her. "It's an exercise in exhaustion to deny things that are fact. Annika tried her best to do the right thing for all of us. I didn't tell you about the pregnancy or the boys all this while because I didn't know what you would do in retaliation for what I did to you first. And yes, I'm horny as any woman would be, especially since you're a super-stud on steroids and no, it's not a good thing or a bad thing between us." She sighed as his grin got wider. "Except it seems to stroke your ego as if you were a randy teenager in search of validation instead of a thirty-seven-year-old man."

"Now you sound like my grandmother Thea."

She didn't want to remind him of his grandmother. But maybe that was a good thing, too. "Please, will you put some clothes on? I can't think straight with all this..." She moved her arm in the air signaling at his torso.

Flashing another grin, he walked away.

Laila could breathe again and tried to take stock of the situation. Clearly, whatever shock he'd felt at her news had been handled. Because he believed her? Because it was that easy and of not much consequence to him? She groaned out loud. It was hard to remember she was dealing with a chameleon when he blinded her with that megawatt smile or that naughty twinkle in his gray eyes.

When Sebastian returned, his hair was slicked back, and he wore gray sweatpants that sat low on his lean hips. He sat down on the lounger opposite her, his legs caging her in, without touching her.

An invitation but never an imposition.

Sebastian Skalas toed that line so well.

"I'm not sure if I should enjoy your refreshing honesty or search for a deeper motivation."

"Then why tie yourself to me in marriage?" Laila probed.

"Because my children will grow up with me." His dictatorial tone would have bothered her if she didn't see the resolve in his eyes. "If you had come to me immediately after you discovered you were pregnant, I'd have demanded the same."

"You're the last man I can imagine to happily settle into matrimony and domesticity, and my sons..." Whatever fake warmth was there in his eyes turned to frost, and she backtracked. "Fine. Our sons are not hobbies you pick up because you're in the mood to play father for a season. They're a lifetime commitment and—"

"You claim to rely on cold, clear facts and not emotions, no?"

She nodded.

"From all the data you collected from Annika, you must already know that whatever my beliefs about you, and marriage and all those relationship traps, I would never let any harm or negligence come to any child, much less my own, ne? You're basing your character profile of me on nothing but vague impressions. So, no, I will not let you cheat me out of what is mine again."

There had been such warmth in Ani's words when she'd talked about Sebastian that Laila had found herself weaving fantasies about what it would be like to share her life and her sons with such a man.

Baba had been kind, fun, down-to-earth for a distinguished poet, and had showered her, and even her half sister, Nadia, when she'd allow it, with such unconditional love. After losing him, it was Guido, their housekeeper and papa's childhood friend, who had looked after her while her mother romanced man after unsuitable man, teaching Nadia to prize beauty and wealth and power over everything else.

Without Guido to hold her through the grief of losing her father, Laila might have unraveled completely.

"The picture I have of you is based on the fact that you'd have ruined an innocent man. You used his weakness for gambling to rob him of his home, the only thing he had, threatened him with ruin. All for what, Sebastian?" Laila said, glad for the reminder. "Guido wouldn't speak of what you wanted from him—"

"Where is this innocent man in all the hardships you faced?" he said, cutting her off. "Was he worth the elaborate farce? Was he worth sleeping with me?"

And there was the anger she'd expected, though only a small ember. Laila almost felt relieved at his silken thrust of a question. The deceit she had pulled on him had never sat well with her. Especially when he was the father of her sons. Especially when her entire life had been about taking care of others. Sometimes at the cost of her own well-being. That woman who had schemed to meet him, with the intention of getting close to him, the woman who had then lost all common sense and followed him to his apartment and slept with him... That was not her. Only desperation to somehow save Guido from his clutches and the genuine connection she had felt with him had driven her that far.

She hadn't realized until this moment how much she'd craved to explain her actions, how much she needed to hear his own reasons. "Guido died of a heart attack six months to the day after the boys were born. He was the first one to hold both of them. He spent hours on the floor playing with them. He stayed up with me so many nights when I couldn't get Zayn to settle down, when I'd have broken down and admitted defeat. The boys' nanny, Paloma, without whom I'd never made it through last year, is his sister. So, yes, the little I did for him, he paid it back a thousand times over, even before the boys, Sebastian. He was the one who watched out for me when I lost Baba, the one who held me steady through grief and pain. Nothing I did would have been enough to pay back the care he showed me and then my sons."

"It is your own fault that you had to depend on strangers." His polite mask slipped, and a hardness entered his tone. And yet, Laila had the strange, or delusional, notion that it wasn't directed at her. "Now, Nikos and Zayn will have my name and everything that comes with it."

"That's not possible if we share custody?" Laila asked, knowing that he had neatly sidestepped her question about why he had nearly ruined Guido. She wanted to push and prod until he answered. But right now, she needed him to back off this ridiculous wedding dictate even more.

"I'm not willing to share custody," he said without missing a beat. "You have admitted that it is hard to manage a career and the boys and all the financial responsibilities. I'm offering a solution that will satisfy both our individual requirements and...their well-being."

"So, I'd be free to devote myself to my career, with the added advantages this marriage would bring?" Laila said. Despite her best intentions, tendrils of curiosity swept through her. "If I were to be gone for days, or weeks, you would be present full-time for them? You would not use my career against how good of a mother I am?"

"Of course you would be free," he said, leaning forward. "There are a lifetime's benefits for you."

"Now you sound like an insurance salesman," she said, the very logic she trusted tasting like sawdust when it came out of his mouth.

This close, she could see the lines on his forehead, the thick sweep of his lashes and the lushness of his wide mouth. His very male presence and the heat it evoked in her and the logical offer he made—without a hint of anger or emotion peeking in—her own mind and body felt the cognitive dissonance. "A marriage like that becomes bitter. Nikos and Zayn will suffer."

"Not if we set clear expectations. What is that you truly want, Laila?" Her name on his lips, after all this time, made her feel dizzy.

"I've never dreamed of a partner or a husband or a family or anything remotely traditional. Nikos and Zayn are blessings I didn't know I'd want. But that's as far as I can stretch my imagination."

"Why not?"

"Because those things happen to normal women. Not women like me."

He cursed and she flushed at how she was painting herself. She'd never been a victim before in her life, and she refused to be one in front of this man. She'd command respect in this relationship, if nothing else. "I'm stating facts, not looking for your sympathy. In fact, that expression in your eyes feels like an itch on my back I can't get to."

He laughed and it fanned tiny spiderweb-like crinkles around his eyes and his gorgeous mouth—a sign that he laughed a lot. At himself and at the world, in that sly, self-deprecating tone. That same quality pervaded his paintings, too.

"Maybe a husband would be handy with scratching that itch."

She pursed her mouth even as a smile wanted to blossom. He was disarming her one smile, one declaration, one question at a time, and they weren't even really for her.

"Unless the problem is that you already have a man in your life and theirs?" he probed, sounding so smooth that she almost missed the feral undertone to his words.

Laila stared, stunned at how he could change moods and masks.

"I will not play second fiddle to another man in their life."

"I don't have enough time to sleep or eat, much less romance some—"

"But you will have extra support now that you have come to me, ne? I don't think you comprehend how your life will change when it comes out that they are my sons and Skalas heirs. You have set something in motion you cannot control."

Laila leaned away from him, heart pounding loudly in her chest. "You're scaring me on purpose."

"No. I'm showing you reality as I see it coming. From staff you hire to long-standing colleagues, friends you've known forever to strangers you meet ahead, people will see you differently, want things from you, will take advantage of your elevated station in life. They will invade your privacy and the boys' hoping to sell the tiniest tidbit of their lives, your life, my life to some tawdry magazine. The only way to protect the boys from that is to protect you. To make sure no one takes advantage of you with the intention of getting to them or me."

"You don't have to clarify that it's all for the boys. There's no chance of me misunderstanding it," she said, sounding miserable and confused to her own ears.

Whatever he saw in hers, something gentled in his expression. "I believe that you didn't hide them from me with malicious intentions. That you came here today seeking very little for your own benefit."

Laila stared, stunned. For just a second, she wondered if he was manipulating her by giving her that. But he wasn't. Whatever his reasons, even with the past tangled in knots between them, he was willing to believe her reasons for showing up today and spilling a life-changing secret. It was more than she'd hoped for. "Thank you for that."

"Now, you have to see that I do not go around offering to marry women who hide big, life-changing things from me."

His words made perfect common sense, but Laila was afraid to go with her gut feeling, even when it made her feel good. Especially then. And something about Sebastian had always found a weakness in her.

"Tell me what would sweeten the deal," he added, leaving no doubt in her mind that he'd do anything to ensure Nikos and Zayn's future was tied to his.

"Nothing you offer could make me interested. I don't believe in love and marriage and...‘all those relationship traps' for me," she said, using his own words.

"We're at an impasse, then," he said with a shrug, olive skin gleaming across taut shoulders, inviting her fingers for a touch. "The boys won't leave my side in the foreseeable future. And knowing the part you play in their lives, I'm loath to separate you from them, even for an afternoon."

If he'd said that in a threatening way, Laila would have sprouted thorns. But all she heard was his sense of loss at not knowing about them, his need to make it right. Was that the thing that drew her to him even now when she didn't truly know what kind of a man he was? Because she had seen that keen loss and that sense of purpose in another man's eyes?

"Baba...my father..." She cleared her throat. "He was a man who loved deep and true. I'm...sorry for depriving you of the boys until now. I only did what I thought was right for them."

His gray gaze held hers, a flash of emotions passing through, far too fast for her to catch any. For a second, Laila had the sense of standing at the edge of a cliff, looking into an abyss that promised untold delights if only you jumped. She wanted to run away with her sense of self intact just as much as she wanted to take a leaping dive.

Then his gaze flattened, leaving behind a touch of warmth. "You loved your father very much."

She nodded, feeling the loss deeply, even after all these years. "I did. Really, I've been fortunate..." She swallowed the sentimental words.

Even with all of Baba's love and care, she'd missed her mother. She'd desperately wanted to be part of her colorful life, wanted to drink in her exuberant personality, wanted to travel with her to all those fancy places that Nadia constantly teased her about. But that wouldn't be her sons' fate. "If you promise that Nikos and Zayn will have that... That's more than enough."

Sebastian's hand came up to tuck a curl behind her ear and every inch of Laila's body wanted to bow into the touch.

She shivered and swallowed, wondering how she was supposed to resist a man who could set her alight with one innocent touch, who was everything she shouldn't want and couldn't have. It was the same fight she had fought that night and lost.

The more time she'd spent with him, the more she'd realized there was more to Sebastian Skalas than the charming playboy or the ruthless predator of innocent men. So much so that she'd done the unthinkable and followed him to his bedroom and lost herself with him in a way she'd never done with a man, or even wanted to.

Now, again, he proved he was so much more even without answering her burning question. Even with the thorny knot of lies and half-truths between them, Laila felt that connection flare to life with one single touch, felt the need to give herself over into his hands. But there was so much more at stake between them now, more than just each other.

The worst part was that he was dangling himself in front of her, just within reach—a delicious, decadent prize, in some tragic parody of her deepest wish.

"Stay a few months here at the villa," he finally said. "Take as much time as you need to revive your career. Then you'll see that marrying me is giving the boys the best chance to thrive, with their parents together under one roof."

The need to ask his expectations if they married, to demand he promise her fidelity and more...hovered on her lips. Was it even possible after everything they had done to each other? Even now, he refused to tell her why he had targeted Guido in such a ruthless way. Even if he promised her the world and she accepted it, he'd soon tire of her. And she'd rather not face that inevitability.

"I agree, to stay here for a few months," Laila said, cautiously.

He leaned closer, temptation incarnate.

Laila dug her teeth into her lower lip to catch any wayward question and his gray eyes danced with a wicked light as if he knew how tempted she was.

"I hoped to provide some more data for your reassurances. But let's do this instead. How about I grant you three wishes, Laila?"

"Like my very own genie?" she said, unable to contain her excitement. She'd grown up living on those stories, hearing them in Baba's voice, always fervently wishing for the same one thing. "Except you're far too stud-like for any genie I ever imagined."

He laughed. It was a real laugh with deep grooves on the sides of his mouth and it tugged at her heart and somewhere else. "Yes, like that. Please feel free to rub me any which way you want. Though I will grant you three wishes without that, too."

She flushed and he grinned, the rogue. "You're a billionaire. A world-renowned artist, even if the entire world doesn't know it. You could probably charm the panties off a woman by smiling at her. Whatever I ask for, you can grant it to me easily."

"But there's the catch, Dr. Jaafri. I'm giving you a chance to up the stakes. You get to decide what you will ask me. But if I do grant you something...that truly makes you happy, that should count as a point in my favor, ne?"

"You can't...cheat your way through this, if that's what you're planning," she said, getting into the spirit of the challenge. It was a ridiculous bet, they both knew that. And yet, the spirit of playfulness beneath it had her arrested.

"I'm not the one who began our relationship on that note."

Laila sighed, knowing she deserved that. "So if you grant me three wishes that I truly want, I have to marry you," she said, laughing at the absurdity of the challenge. "If somehow you fail to grant me these three wishes, then you will agree to do this my way?"

He shrugged. "Yes. It is that simple."

Something about his confidence was heady and invigorating and so damned sexy. Something about the way he played with her, flirted with her, taunted her...was invigorating.

Laila wanted to bite that lower lip, and then kiss him. Only to find out if he truly wanted her, in this plain incarnation of hers. "Fine, I agree," she said, feeling a lightheartedness she hadn't known in years.

He walked away, leaving Laila feeling as if she was suspended upside down in a pool of honey, even as every inch of her thrummed with anticipation, with a new energy, just like last time. Except somehow it felt like, this time, he was the one casting the lure, and openly inviting her to walk into it.

And Laila was going to walk in with her eyes wide open.