CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVEN

G IGI WAS WAKENED early by her phone the next morning and she found herself alone in the bed, only a dented pillow beside hers letting her know that, at some stage, Jace had shared the room with her.

Sitting up, flustered and still half asleep, she came instantly wide awake when she recognised the voice of the CEO of the animal shelter, her boss, Thea. She learned that there was such a crowd of paparazzi camped out waiting for her arrival at work that Thea thought it would be best if Gigi took some time off on leave and they brought in a locum. Although the police had moved the crowd out onto the pavement, the staff and the usual visitors were being harassed for information about Gigi.

Gigi spluttered out a surge of embarrassed apologies only to fall silent when Thea congratulated her on her engagement. Her... engagement ? Deeming it wisest not to tell the truth in such circumstances, Gigi thanked the older woman and came off the phone again. Getting dressed in her usual casual shorts and a top, she went downstairs in search of Jace.

Dmitri showed her into the grand dining room where Jace was chatting on the phone. He ended the call and turned to her, sheathed in fitted chinos and a casual jacket, a silk scarf at his throat, a warmer jacket tossed over a nearby chair. He looked effortlessly, sleekly European and as perfectly groomed as though he had walked off a modelling shoot. Her heart gave a stirring thud and stuttered inside her. She felt far too plain to be even seen in his sophisticated company.

‘You must have risen very early,’ she remarked, resisting the temptation to ask him what time he had come to bed. After all, he didn’t owe her any explanations. Nor had his late night etched so much as a shadow on his lean, darkly handsome face.

Jace smiled as he sat down at the table. ‘I’m always up at first light.’

‘Someone’s released photos of us at the party and announced that we’re engaged to the media,’ Gigi told him anxiously as she sank down into a seat beside him.

‘One of the party guests with a phone,’ Jace guessed grimly. ‘We’ll ride it out.’

‘It’s not so easy for me.’ Gigi explained that she had been asked to take leave to minimise the harassment at the animal shelter.

‘This is my fault. I’m sorry,’ Jace said flatly, his exasperation making her feel mortifyingly raw. ‘If I had stopped that rumour in its tracks, this wouldn’t have happened. You can’t even go home—’

Gigi frowned. ‘Of course I can.’

‘The paps will soon have your address as well. Stay onboard the yacht while I’m away,’ Jace advised.

A lump formed in her throat and her eyes prickled and she looked away from him. ‘I think we both need space right now and living on your yacht will only add substance to those rumours.’

Jace froze. For a split second, all he wanted to do was put a ring on her finger and tough the immediate future out, but that sudden surge of possessiveness and that desire for permanency appalled him, particularly when it pertained to a woman who had firmly rejected the concept of being his fiancée or his wife. Jace could never handle rejection easily because he came from a background full of similar rebuffs.

‘That’s a decision that only you can make,’ he pointed out. ‘But I don’t agree with it.’

Colour flared in her cheeks again. ‘How long will you be away?’

‘About a week. You could come with me,’ Jace murmured, startling himself with that impulsive invitation.

Gigi stiffened. ‘Thank you, but no. But I’m sorry I offended you yesterday. I sort of felt trapped into a role I didn’t feel comfortable in, and I took it out on you. I’m not very good at faking stuff...or lying.’

Long brown fingers closed over hers where her hands were knotted on her lap and her blue eyes flared up into compelling green framed with lush black lashes. ‘I didn’t think the situation through from your point of view—’

He leant closer, a lean hand reaching out to smooth up her slender neck and ease her closer. His wide sensual mouth drifted slowly across hers and her heart hammered like crazy. He kissed her slow and he kissed her deep: it was not a casual caress. She wanted to grab him, hold him close, say stuff that she knew she shouldn’t say to him, and those impulses scared her. She needed to get back in control of herself fast.

‘Guess who’s kicking himself now for not coming to bed sooner last night,’ Jace growled. ‘Our last few hours together and I chose to waste the opportunity—’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Jace groaned. ‘Even if you decide not to stay on the yacht while I’m away, leave Hoppy and Tilly onboard because if the paps stage a vigil at your place, it’ll upset them.’

‘Hopefully, this will all settle down in a couple of days,’ Gigi said brightly.

They didn’t return to the yacht. She already had her stuff and they climbed into a helicopter to be returned to Rhodes. They parted at the airport because Jace was boarding his private jet there to fly to Japan. A limo stuffed with security guards ferried her home, cleared a path through the shouting, aggressive mob on her doorstep and saw her indoors, where she found her father waiting.

‘I used my key and came straight inside because I’d prefer not to be identified,’ Achilleus Georgiou announced with an apologetic wince. ‘I’ve been waiting, hoping you would return. I went to the shelter first but your boss told me that you wouldn’t be coming in to work for a while.’

On edge as she always was with her father, Gigi was already lifting the post he had set on the table to examine it. There was a letter from her solicitor and she tore it open, wondering if her mother’s property had finally found a buyer.

‘Is it true? Are you engaged to Jace Diamandis? It was a shock to see a picture of you at their family party,’ the older man admitted.

‘We’re not engaged. That was just a stupid misunderstanding,’ Gigi volunteered tightly. ‘But we are still seeing each other.’

Even her ability to make that modest claim eased the raw tension that had begun to build inside her the night before when Jace had let her go to bed alone. And then he had kissed her again and the breach between them had been healed with sincerity. Her sense of relief was so extreme that it scared her even more. She was falling in love with Jace Diamandis. She didn’t want to but it was already happening in a process that had begun very early on at that first dinner together on the yacht. That was when she had seen the male seething with emotion behind the smooth playboy facade.

‘What’s in the letter?’ Achilleus asked, as keen as she was, it seemed, for a change of subject.

‘When I came out here, I couldn’t find a buyer for Mum’s house because there was a problem with the tenant. Now that the tenant has moved out, there’s an offer on the house and the buyer has discovered that there’s still stuff stored in the attic. I never checked the attic,’ she grumbled guiltily. ‘Mum put her personal belongings in a storage locker before she rented the house out and I did sort through that. I’ll have to go back to Oxford, accept the offer and empty the attic.’

‘Is there no alternative?’ her father prompted.

‘No, I don’t think so and, since I’m on leave, it’s best handled now. I didn’t even know that Mum had ever used the attic!’

‘I never thought I’d see my daughter at a swanky Diamandis party,’ Achilleus confessed at the back door, from which he was hoping to make an unnoticed departure. ‘You looked like a little queen, standing beside his grandmother... I was proud of you. Sorry I said what I did when I first knew you were seeing him. He’s treating you with respect and I think the better of him for that.’

‘Yes.’ Gigi smiled up at him, for once at ease with the older man, even catching a glimmer of warmth in his dark eyes and heartened by it.

Gigi closed her front curtains, ignored the knocking on the front door and set about tidying and cleaning the house because she was restless. She phoned Thea to request a couple of weeks off and gained her agreement. She texted Jace to tell him she was travelling home to sort out some property hassles and asked if Hoppy and Tilly could stay on Sea King until her return. He phoned her to offer her the use of his private jet and she said no, thanks, and then he demanded to know where she would be staying and suggested that she use his property in London.

‘I was going to book into a hotel.’ A cheap hotel, she acknowledged, because even though her mother’s property would be vacant, it had very little furniture and it wouldn’t be worth buying bed linen and all the other things she would need to spend only a few nights there.

‘Use my apartment,’ Jace urged. ‘I’d prefer that. I’d know that you were there and safe.’

Gigi parted her lips to argue again and then asked herself why she would argue. That he wanted to know she was safe and comfortable was reassuring. Not since childhood had anyone worried about Gigi’s safety and comfort. ‘OK.’

‘And the jet?’

‘Don’t push it,’ she told him drily.

Jace laughed. ‘You’ll be picked up off your flight and we’ll have that blood test done while you’re in London. Send me your flight details.’

Having booked her flight, Gigi relaxed a little. It would be a relief to finally settle her mother’s estate. Once the house was sold, she would have the money to consider buying her own property on Rhodes. After all, her grandmother’s house would eventually sell and she would have to find somewhere else to live. With her relatives on the island and closer friends than she had retained in the UK, that impressed her as a good plan. When had she stopped making such plans? When had she settled into a routine of only work and more work? Jace had sprung her out of that rut, but the price of their relationship would ultimately cost her dearly, she reflected unhappily. Nothing this good lasted for ever and she would be hurt.

Three days later she was collected by a limo at the airport in London and wafted back to a penthouse apartment. She was shown into a spacious, comfortable bedroom and served with an evening meal in the chic dining area off the large airy lounge with its views of the city. Breakfast awaited her when she rose early and a car arrived to ferry her to Oxford. The small, detached house that had belonged to her mother had few childhood associations for Gigi. She had vague memories of the rooms when they were still furnished but she had never climbed the folding metal stair that led up to the loft.

‘Let us take a look first, Miss Campbell,’ her driver and his companion urged, having already opened the hatch door for her to access the space.

Gigi let them climb up ahead of her and report back that there were only a few small pieces of old furniture and a couple of boxes. They brought the boxes down and she leafed through one, finding old files of her mother’s and setting them aside to dump. The second box was more interesting, and she worked through it much more slowly because it contained family photos that she had never seen before as well as a photo of her actual parents posing together in sunlight, her mother smiling as she had so rarely smiled. There were old letters from people she had never heard of and right at the very bottom she found a dozen unopened letters that had been posted from Rhodes.

Her brow furrowed because she recognised her father’s handwriting. Why were his letters to her mother unopened? The postal dates spanned the first six years of her life. Had an earlier letter from Achilleus angered her parent into rejecting all communication with him? Shaking her head over her mother’s inflexibility, she tucked away the photos and the letters but she already knew that she wouldn’t open her father’s private letters. She would return them to him and perhaps that would prompt him to talk about the past and answer her questions, she reasoned.

When she rang Jace that evening, she told him about the letters. His attitude was very different from hers. He would have opened them.

‘No, I’ll be diplomatic and hand them back to him, see what he says,’ Gigi argued. ‘They’re addressed to Mum and weren’t meant for me to read.’

‘It’s your decision,’ Jace sighed.

As soon as Gigi had organised the removal of the remaining furniture through a man who did house clearances, she visited the solicitor to sign the sale documents. It felt final and she was sad at the awareness that visiting her mother’s former home had liberated no fond memories that she might have cherished. But then her mother had rarely given her daughter personal time. They had only ever shared occasional moments before her mother left on another business trip or Gigi returned to school. And her mother’s main interest in her only child had always been limited to Gigi’s academic achievements.

Late afternoon, Gigi went to the laboratory Jace had designated and agreed to a blood test taken from her arm. My goodness, she thought in sudden dismay, what if the result were to be positive? It would blow her entire future to pieces and set her on a totally different path. For the first time, she thought of how her mother had prioritised her career over family and she felt light-headed, acknowledging that, for a single parent, one’s profession was all the more important when it came to financial security. Had she been a little harsh in her judgement of her mother? Even if she hadn’t been loved, she had been well looked after. She breathed in deep. Her career was her security, she reminded herself. Helping animals validated her in a way family life had failed to do. No doubt she would deal with the upheaval if she was pregnant, she told herself firmly, refusing to let her fears and insecurities creep in. How would Jace react if ...?

She refused to let herself sink into that craven state of anxiety. Wasn’t it bad enough that she was twisting and turning in her bed every night remembering what it was like to be with him? She was reliving steamy moments and discovering that the sensual side he had awakened did not tidily go to sleep when he wasn’t available. He was phoning her every day and it still wasn’t enough. She was missing him more than she had believed it possible for her to miss anyone. Grow up, she told herself sternly. She was obsessing about Jace and it was unhealthy. And she would pay for it all in the future when he inevitably lost interest. Irritated by her state of mind, she contacted two university pals she had done internships with and suggested going for a drink the following evening to catch up.

‘I can just call an Uber,’ Gigi protested the next day when Jace’s driver insisted that he needed to drop her off wherever she was going and Stavros, the beefy bodyguard, announced that he would be keeping her within view at all times. ‘It really isn’t necessary.’

‘Mr Diamandis decides what’s necessary,’ Stavros responded. ‘Perhaps you should mention it to him...but please don’t quote me on that.’

Gigi gave up the argument and resolved to speak to Jace when she was dropped off at the bar. She had barely stepped onto the pavement when she was hailed by voices from an outside table. Glancing over, she saw Edison rolling his eyes at her and Marion staring at her with wide eyes.

She had forgotten that Edison was a chain smoker and always sat outside and she was grateful that she had a warm coat on because it was late October and, although it was dry, the breeze was icy.

‘Gigi.’ Edison stood up, his long, lanky frame towering over her. ‘You’ve finally grown up. I can’t believe it—’

‘I think you’re shooting for the moon here trying to chat her up when she arrives in a chauffeur-driven car!’ Marion quipped and stood up, a small no-nonsense woman with wildly curly hair and warm brown eyes. ‘But Ed’s right. It’s been four years. At my wedding, you still looked like a kid and now all of a sudden you’re an adult like the rest of us.’

Accepting a brief hug, Gigi took a seat and ordered a drink while Stavros seated himself close to the entrance. ‘So, you’re a mum now,’ she said to Marion. ‘What’s it like?’

‘If you’re going to talk kids, I’m out of here,’ Edison threatened.

‘What’s it like?’ Marion looked heavenward. ‘Overwhelming and terrifying and wonderful and all at the same time and often on the same day.’

Talk about work and their various specialities took over. Edison worked almost exclusively with horses but Marion was like Gigi, keener on dealing with smaller animals and pets. She was talking about the rescue centre when Marion answered her phone and almost instantly stood up and gathered up her bag. ‘I’m going to have to cut and run. Damien has a fever and Steve is panicking,’ she told them apologetically. ‘Keep in touch, Gigi.’

‘Looks like it’s just the two of us.’ Edison smirked at her and snaked an arm round her.

Gigi shook off his touch like a bristling cat. ‘I should leave too,’ she said wryly, reaching for her bag.

‘Oh, come on, you’re not that innocent these days...not when you’re running around with an infamous Greek playboy,’ he told her with amusement, catching a thick hank of her hair in his hand to prevent her from moving. ‘I fancied you like mad when we were working together but you were way too young and na?ve—’

‘Unfortunately, I don’t fancy you any more,’ Gigi told him furiously. ‘I have a boyfriend and I don’t cheat—’

‘You heard her...let go of her,’ a masculine, achingly familiar voice interposed from behind her.

Gigi almost pulled her hair out of her scalp twisting to look behind her in disbelief. ‘Jace?’

Jace tugged her hair firmly free of Edison’s hold and literally lifted her out of her seat, both arms wrapped round her as though she were a parcel. ‘Any more?’ he questioned as Stavros pulled open the door of the limo and he settled her on the passenger seat.

Gigi was on a high. Jace was here with her in London and she didn’t know whether she was on her head or her heels, only that suddenly life felt wonderful and full to the brim with exciting possibilities again. ‘I had a monster crush on Edison when I worked with him three years ago but nothing ever happened between us. I’m sure he guessed but I wasn’t the pushy, flirtatious type,’ she revealed, her cheeks heating at the memory as Jace vaulted in beside her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d be coming?’

‘I wanted to surprise you...wasn’t expecting to get a surprise myself and find some jerk coming on to you!’ he admitted, arranging his long-limbed length in a relaxed sprawl in the other corner of the back seat. ‘Especially one that yanks at your hair to imprison you when you clearly don’t want to be touched. He’s lucky I didn’t thump him!’

Gigi collided with black-lashed witch-green eyes and simply succumbed to temptation. She scrambled across the seat separating them like a homing pigeon. ‘I missed you so much!’ she groaned, burying her face in the shoulder of his coat, drinking in the ocean-fresh scent of him as though it were an addictive drug.

Jace locked two powerful arms round her and held her close. ‘I missed you too, more than I wanted to, more than I expected to...you’ve got under my skin.’

Gigi finally lifted her head and looked down at him. Her mouth fell open. ‘You’ve cut your beautiful hair!’ she wailed, slender fingers threading forlornly through the cropped black hair. ‘I loved your curls.’

‘I thought it was time for a change.’

‘You should’ve discussed it first.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘I’ll go out tomorrow and get my hair cut to two inches long all over and see how you like it!’ Gigi threatened.

Jace gazed up at her with a spellbinding smile tilting his wide, sensual mouth. ‘I can see that being one half of even a temporary couple involves rules,’ he murmured wickedly. ‘It’s time I started making some. No meeting up with other men when I’m not around—’

‘Are you the jealous type?’ Gigi asked with interest.

Her blue eyes were sparkling with considerable amusement and faint dark colour edged his sculpted cheekbones.

‘I didn’t used to be, but I don’t like seeing another man put his hands on any part of you...most especially not without your permission.’ Long, lean fingers threaded through her wind-tousled hair, spanned the base of her skull and drew her head down.

Her heart was racing so fast she was breathless with anticipation. He crushed her parted lips beneath his. He was hungry, urgent, demanding in flavour and it was exactly what she most wanted and needed to satisfy the hollow ache inside her. Unfortunately, it only whetted her appetite for more, her hands sliding below his coat and running down his shirt-clad sides, yanking at the fine cotton to reach skin. He flexed his hips up and she felt him hard and long and thick through the barrier of their clothes and lust almost ate her alive.

Jace sat up fast, his hands biting into her hips as he lifted and steadied her. ‘Not here, not in the car.’ He dropped a kiss on the crown of her head and she felt his lean, taut frame shudder against her. ‘You could make me as reckless as a teenager, koukla mou ,’ he groaned, setting her beside him on the seat and belting her in.

‘It’s been a long week,’ she mumbled, shamefaced that he had called a halt before she had.

He closed a hand over her smaller one. ‘Did you go for that blood test?’

‘Yes. I should get a call tomorrow,’ she told him stiffly, finding it impossible not to tense when it came to discussing that controversial subject. ‘I still think you’re worrying about nothing.’

‘We’ll see.’

They made it as far as the private lift up to the penthouse and he grabbed her and kissed her with all the hungry urgency he had earlier restrained. Plastered to each other, they exchanged kiss for kiss, their tongues duelling, their bodies tangling so that he carried her out of the lift and down to the main bedroom. Gigi was quivering, every nerve-ending screaming with excitement, her heart hammering when he laid her down on the bed and stood over her, tipping off his coat, wrenching his tie off, toeing off his shoes, appraising her with fierce impatience.

‘Yes, you definitely did miss me,’ Gigi murmured with unconcealed satisfaction as he yanked her free of her jeans.

‘I almost got ravished in the limo,’ Jace traded smugly. ‘You’re unlikely to win a who-missed-who-most competition. I was shocked rigid by your enthusiasm, Miss Campbell. Only weeks ago, you were an innocent virgin.’

Gigi came up on her knees. ‘Shut up,’ she told him, reaching up to undo his belt and run his zip down because he wasn’t stripping fast enough for her.

And then he was in her arms again as he had not been in days and everything in her world seemed to slot perfectly back into place again, as though he were the missing piece of her personal puzzle. The heat of him, the strength of his long, lean frame, the scent of him, the touch of him, all of it engulfed her like a tidal wave. His mouth on hers, his hand on her breast, the urgency of his answering arousal against her stomach drove her higher in the sky than a kite. Her heartbeat crashed inside her, thundered in her ears as Jace dug out protection and thrust deep inside her, joining them in the intimacy she craved. Nothing had ever been more exciting than that exact moment when she gazed up into his striking green eyes and realised that she truly loved him to a level she had never realised she could love anyone.

Jace stilled in the aftermath, both arms still solidly locked round her. He didn’t want to let go of her yet. Nothing wrong with that, he assured himself, not considering how much he had missed her. He supposed it was an infatuation and he was overdue for the experience, but he reckoned that he would never ever admit to his uncle that a relationship could be so much more exciting than casual, uncommitted sex. Evander had lived long enough to already know that as a fact. But naturally , Jace, who was still only twenty-eight, would bounce back from this total immersion experience with one woman and want his freedom of choice back, he told himself without hesitation. He wasn’t interested in a permanent relationship, not when his own history warned him of how dangerously unstable and messy such entanglements could become.

In the middle of the night, Gigi lurched out of bed and made snacks for them from what she found in the well-stocked fridge. ‘When do you start back to work again?’ she heard herself ask, dismayed by the anxiety that gripped her at the idea of him leaving her again.

‘I’m working here for a couple of days, sleeping off the jet lag, spending time with you,’ he framed lazily, lounging back against the kitchen island while he ate. He resembled a pin-up model, clad only in black boxers and his dazzling smile, all the lean, muscular, bronzed, hair-roughened beauty of him on full display.

And he still, at a mere glance, she acknowledged guiltily, stole the very breath from her lungs. There wasn’t much she could do about that. She would see it through until the end and ensure that it finished without recriminations and with dignity. That was the only promise she made to herself.

‘I miss the pets,’ she confided.

‘Of course you do, and you even had to part with two of them on Faros, but we’ll be back in Rhodes in forty-eight hours,’ he reminded her. ‘And I’ve no doubt there are more Gigi rescues in your future—’

‘I haven’t much space. Once the money from Mum’s house clears, I’m planning to buy somewhere with at least a small garden attached. My grandmother’s house where I’m living will ultimately sell.’

‘Stay with me on the yacht, instead,’ Jace urged.

Gigi paled and tensed at that suggestion. ‘Not a good idea for us to be blurring the lines that way—’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Jace demanded starkly, his big shoulders straightening and lifting, all relaxation abandoned.

Gigi’s mouth ran dry and she shrugged awkwardly. ‘I don’t want to be depending on you for the roof over my head when we break up.’

‘Thank you,’ Jace breathed with lashings of sarcasm. ‘As a thought for the day on the same day that we reunite , that is kind of depressing.’

Gigi wrinkled her nose in semi-agreement. ‘But realistic.’

Jace gritted his teeth on the truth that only hours earlier he had been thinking the same way, but the very concept of Gigi walking away, retaining her independence... Gigi with other men...still drove him crazy. He still hated rebuffs. Rejection always sucked him back to his birth parents’ negative treatment of him.

He breathed in slow and deep and said nothing because he couldn’t think of what he could say in the face of Gigi’s immensely gloomy but intelligent practicality. He lived in the moment. Gigi lived on a much wider plane, foreseeing problems that didn’t even occur to him. Did that mean that she was more mature than he was? a dark little voice whispered inside him and he immediately suppressed that suspicion. Much the same as he had done with the suspicion that, had she been a different kind of woman, she was clever enough to have run rings round him.

Hours later, Jace groaned. ‘That’s your phone, not mine. Switch it off,’ he urged.

Gigi rolled naked out of bed in the daylight filtering through the curtains and dug through the pile of clothes spread across the floor to find her jeans and answer her phone.

‘Miss Campbell?’ the polite voice began. ‘This is a confidential call. Could you give me your details before I give you the test result?’

It was the laboratory. As Gigi answered the questions to prove her identity, she paused. Jace had sat up in bed, shrewd eyes as green as polished emeralds pinned to her sudden pallor and the tension etched in her fine-boned features. A minute later she pushed the phone back into the pocket of her jeans.

‘I’m pregnant,’ she whispered shakily in total shock and denial, perspiration breaking out on her brow.