Savas's Wildcat

On the spot, Cat knew she couldn’t back down. It mattered too much. “I want love. I want marriage. I want a family,” she said—and watched the color drain from his face.

She didn’t need any more answer than that.

“I don’t want to marry anyone. I don’t want to get married.” He shook his head. “Not on your life.” The slow shake of his head and the clear honest look in his eyes told her as much as his words did.

She didn’t need it spelled out any more clearly.

She felt a leaden weight in the pit of her stomach, but she managed very politely to say, “Thank you.” Then she turned and walked away.

“You’re not mad, are you?” Yiannis called after her.

She didn’t turn. “Of course not.” Mortified. Humiliated. Devastated. She kept walking.

“Good. Want to get a drink later?”

No, she did not.

Even now she could still remember the hot and cold of impotent fury and humiliation that had swept over her in successive waves even after she’d left her grandmother’s and driven back to her own place. She’d named their children and he’d thought she was someone just to have a drink with!

So much for enchanted evenings. So much for true love and all the rest of her song lyric pipedreams.

So much for Yiannis Savas.

About the Author

Award-winning author ANNE MCALLISTER was once given a blueprint for happiness that included a nice, literate husband, a ramshackle Victorian house, a horde of mischievous children, a bunch of big, friendly dogs, and a life spent writing stories about tall, dark and handsome heroes. ‘Where do I sign up?’ she asked, and promptly did. Lots of years later, she’s happy to report the blueprint was a success. She’s always happy to share the latest news with readers at her website, www.annemcallister.com, and welcomes their letters there, or at PO Box 3904, Bozeman, Montana 59772, USA (SASE appreciated).

Recent titles by the same author:

THE NIGHT THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

HIRED BY HER HUSBAND

THE VIRGIN’S PROPOSITION

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

Savas’s Wildcat

Anne McAllister

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

“YIANNIS?”

The voice came from far away—somewhere near his mouth, Yiannis decided, which was when he realized he had the receiver upside down against his ear. He rolled onto his back and fumbled to turn it right side up.

“Yiannis? Are you there?”

Ah, yes. Better. Louder, at least. He still didn’t have his eyes open. They were gritty and he was stiff all over.

“Yeah. ‘M here.” His voice was like sandpaper, too, rough and sleep-fogged. No surprise since it felt like he’d barely fallen into bed.

“Oh, dear. I’ve wakened you. I was afraid of that.”

He recognized the rueful voice now. It was Maggie, his ex-landlady and current tenant who lived in the apartment over the garage of the old beach house he’d bought from her almost three years ago. He knew she hated to ask him for anything. Maggie was as independent as they came. For her to call at this hour—whatever the hell hour it was—he knew it must be important. Maybe the roof had blown off?

“What’s wrong? What happened?” He usually didn’t have this much trouble with jetlag. But he’d spent more than thirty hours getting back from Malaysia and his head was pounding. He squeezed his eyes tight shut, then forced them open again.

It was light. Not bright, though, thank God. Through the half-open blinds he could see early morning fog. The California coast was thick with it until the heat of the day burned it off. Yiannis squinted at the clock. It wasn’t yet seven.

“Nothing’s happened. Well, not to the apartment,” she answered. He heard hesitation in her voice. “I have a favor to ask.” But she still sounded a little reluctant.

Yiannis shoved himself up against the headboard of his bed and said firmly, “Whatever you want.”

When he’d made an offer on her Balboa Island house the realtor had said nervously, “The owner wants to remain as your tenant. In the apartment over the garage,” she’d qualified quickly. “It’s a condition of the sale.” One she obviously hadn’t looked happy about.

But, when he’d considered it, Yiannis decided it could be a good thing. After all, an eighty-five-year-old tenant was likely to be far less noisy and troublesome than most of those who would be drawn by Balboa’s Southern California kick-back lifestyle.

“Give her a six month lease,” the realtor had advised.

But Yiannis had actually offered to let her stay in the house while he moved into the adjoining apartment. He liked the property. Where he lived on it wasn’t a pressing concern. Maggie had said no.

She was “downsizing,” she had insisted. Climbing stairs would be “good exercise.”

So as she’d wanted, he’d moved into the house and Maggie had taken the apartment over the garage. It had worked out well for both of them. Yiannis traveled for his business of importing and exporting fine woods for custom furniture makers. Maggie never went anywhere. She kept an eye on things while he was gone. He added to her postcard and tea towel collection from all over the world. She made him cookies and the occasional home-cooked meal when he was home.

She could stay forever as far as he was concerned. Maggie was not only a perfect tenant, having her there meant he didn’t have a lot of extra space for house guests. The Savas family had long ago proved itself infinitely expandable. And while Yiannis appreciated his family’s warmth and magnanimity, he didn’t appreciate having relatives foisted on him every time he turned around.

He liked his family—but at a distance. A continent between them seemed about right.

Right before he’d headed to Southeast Asia two weeks ago, he’d been able to tell Anastasia, one of his triplet cousins, who had rung him wondering if he’d have “room for all of us” for spring break, that gee, no, he didn’t. He smiled now at the memory.

Then he flexed his shoulders and swung his legs out of the bed, and stood up. “Whatever your heart desires, sweetheart,” he said to Maggie. “Especially if it’s tea towels,” he told her. “I brought you half a dozen.”

“Good heavens!” She laughed. “You spoil me.”

“You’re worth spoiling. What do you need?” He squinted out the back window. The roof still seemed firmly attached. But he was always happy to change a light bulb or repair a latch or carry her groceries up to her apartment, though at seven in the morning, he doubted that was the problem.

Maggie sighed. “I tripped over a stupid rug and my own feet this morning and I fell. I wonder if you’d give me a ride to the hospital.”

“The hospital?” Yiannis felt as if he’d been punched. “Are you all right?”

“Of course,” Maggie said briskly. “Just having a little trouble with my hip,” she said. “I called. They said I should get it x-rayed.”

“I’ll be right there.” Even as he spoke, he was pulling on his old Yale sweatshirt. Then he yanked on a pair of jeans and stuffed his bare feet into a pair of worn deck shoes. Less than a minute later, he was pounding up the steps to Maggie’s apartment and letting himself in.

She was sitting on the sofa with a disgusted look on her face. Her white hair was pulled up into a neat bun at the back of her head. “Sorry about this. I don’t like to trouble you.”

“Not a problem. Can you walk?” He crouched down beside her.

“Well, I don’t expect you to carry me!” She pushed herself up, wincing as she did so.

“I can carry you,” Yiannis said. She weighed about as much as the decorative fishing net she had hung on one wall.

“Nonsense,” she said, but when she tried to take a step, she gave a little gasp and would have fallen if he hadn’t grabbed her.

“We should probably call an ambulance,” Yiannis said grimly. But instead, he swung her up into his arms and carried her down the stairs to the garage where both his Porsche and her Ford sedan were parked side by side. He stopped.

Maggie sighed. “We’d better take my car,” she said, a note of regret in her voice.

Yiannis grinned. “You don’t want to show up at the hospital in the Porsche?”

“I’d love to,” she said. “But you don’t have room for a car seat.”

He almost dropped her. “What?”

“We’ll need the car seat. I’ve got Harry.”

“Harry?” Who the hell was Harry?

“Misty’s baby,” she explained. “You remember? You’ve met him.”

He remembered Misty. She was Maggie’s late second husband Walter’s granddaughter. No real relation to Maggie at all, but as far as Maggie was concerned, Misty was “family.” Mostly, though, she was a flirt and a flake and, now that he recalled it, an unwed mother.

An airy-fairy surfer girl with long blonde hair, a deep tan and wide vacant blue eyes, Misty was beautiful but irresponsible. Age-wise, he figured she was about twenty—except emotionally, where she seemed more like seven. The world always revolved around Misty. Yiannis was appalled when he’d heard she had a child.

“Who’s raising whom?” he’d asked Maggie.

She’d rolled her eyes at the time. “Maybe he’ll be the making of her.”

Yiannis hadn’t thought it likely. But he did remember a scrap of a human wrapped in a blanket from one of Misty’s visits a few months back.

“What do you mean, you’ve got Harry?” he said now.

“He’s asleep in the bedroom. Don’t worry. You can wake him. He won’t fuss. Much,” she added, and gave him a look that was, he was sure, meant to be reassuring. It merely looked hopeful.

“That’s comforting,” Yiannis said drily. He cast a look of longing at the Porsche as he edged past it and carried Maggie to the passenger side of her own car. “Where’s Misty? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

Now as he opened the door and tried to settle her in the passenger seat without hurting her, she said through gritted teeth, “She went to talk to Devin.”

The baby’s father. Yiannis remembered that name. He had never met Devin. Didn’t think much of his taste in women certainly. But all he really knew was that Devin was in the army.

“There. I’m fine now,” Maggie said, giving a little shudder. She looked white around the mouth, and Yiannis was worried.

“You’re not going to faint,” he told her. It wasn’t a question. It was halfway between a command and a plea.

“I’m not going to faint,” Maggie assured him. “Go back and get Harry. My car keys are in the rooster bowl on the kitchen bookshelf.”

Yiannis took the stairs two at a time, snatched the keys out of the bowl and then went into the bedroom where Misty had apparently set up some sort of traveling crib affair for her sleeping baby. Yiannis supposed he should give her some credit for that—a car seat and a crib.

He’d have expected Misty to just dump the baby on Maggie for the day without any provisions at all. Maybe she was growing up.

The baby was stirring as Yiannis approached the crib. His dark head bobbed up and he looked around. Yiannis didn’t know how old he was. Under a year, he thought. He remembered Misty being big as a whale and grumpy about it at the beginning of last summer. So Harry must have been born in the middle of it.

“Hey there, Harry old man.” He made his voice cheerful as he peered over the top of the crib.

Harry pushed himself to a sitting position and looked up. When he didn’t see whomever he’d been expecting, his little face crumpled.

Oh, God, tears.

“None of that,” Yiannis told him firmly, snatching the boy up before he could even begin to emit a wail. Harry looked at him, startled, his blue eyes wide but, fortunately, tearless. “Let’s go find your grandma,” Yiannis said and wedging the baby on one hip, he locked the door and pounded down the stairs.

Harry didn’t utter a sound—until he saw Maggie, whereupon he let out a warbling sound and held out his arms to go to her.

“Oh, honey, I can’t take you.” Maggie looked as distressed as Harry. “Did you change him that fast”

“What?” Yiannis had opened the back door of the car and was trying to figure out the logistics of getting Harry into the car seat.

“He just got up. He’ll be wet.”

Yiannis believed that. “We have to get you to the hospital.”

“I can wait,” Maggie assured him. She gave him a sweet hopeful smile.

Yiannis returned a glare. But he backed out of the car and studied her through the window to the passenger seat. She had her hands folded in her lap.

“You’re enjoying this,” he accused her.

Maggie gave a little sniff. “I’m not enjoying my hip hurting.”

He grimaced guiltily because, of course, that was true. But still he scowled. “Making the most of a bad situation then.”

She dimpled. “Something like that.”

“You think I can’t change a diaper?”

“I think you can do anything,” Maggie said blithely, which was of course the right answer.

It was also true—and he’d prove it. “C’mon, Harry. Give us a minute,” he said gruffly to Maggie and headed back toward the apartment.

It wasn’t that he’d never changed a baby before. Hell, he’d changed a thousand of them. Well, maybe not that many, but when you came from a family the size of his—despite the fact that he was second youngest of his parents’ children—you didn’t escape babysitting. There were always cousins and nephews and nieces to be fobbed off on the unsuspecting—not to mention, unwilling—bystander.

Now he made short work of Harry’s damp diaper and redressed the boy quickly. Apparently changing babies was like riding a bike. You didn’t forget, even if you wanted to. And Harry was reasonably cooperative. He only flipped over and tried to escape twice, and Yiannis had always had quick reflexes.

“There you go,” he said to the baby. “Now let’s get your grandma to the hospital.”

He scrawled a note and left it on the kitchen table for Misty telling her where they were and to feel free to come and get Harry. Then, carrying the baby, he went back down to the garage.

Harry bounced against Yiannis’s hip and grinned and waved his arms and clapped his hands at his grandmother who returned the salute and the smile.

“You are a man among men,” she told Yiannis as he put the boy in his car seat and figured out how to strap him in.

The nearest hospital was just up the coast a few miles. Yiannis had never been there before, but Maggie knew it well.

“It’s where Walter died,” she said.

“You’re not going to die,” Yiannis said, his jaw tight with conviction.

Maggie laughed. “Not today.”

“Not any time soon.” He wouldn’t permit it. He didn’t say anything else, just focused on getting to the hospital as quickly as he could. When they arrived, he pulled into the emergency area and went to get a wheelchair. But before he could, an orderly and a nurse appeared. They efficiently bundled Maggie into the chair and started into the building with her.

“You can fill out the paperwork as soon as you’ve parked,” the nurse told him.

“I’m not—” he began, but they had already disappeared inside the building leaving him alone.

Well, not quite alone. He had Harry.

He was bouncing up and down in his car seat and making cheerful noises. He even smiled when Yiannis bent down to look in at him.

Yiannis managed a semblance of a smile of his own. “Come on,” he said, going around and getting back into the car. “Let’s go find a parking place.”

By the time he did, then extracted Harry from the car seat and went back to the emergency room, Maggie was nowhere to be found.

“They’ve taken her to x-ray,” the lady at the admissions desk beamed at Harry. “Aren’t you a cutie? How old is he?” she asked Yiannis.

“I don’t know.”

Her brows lifted in surprise.

“He’s not mine.”

“Ah, well. Too bad,” she said. Yiannis didn’t think so, but he didn’t bother saying it. “They’ll be back shortly. She did all the paperwork herself, so you’re home free,” the receptionist said. “You can wait here—” she pointed to a busy waiting room where someone was coughing and someone else looked decidedly bloody “—or in the room we put her in.”

Harry was wiggling. Yiannis didn’t think waiting in a room where Harry couldn’t touch things was going to work. “We’ll go for a walk.” He gave her his mobile phone number. “Call me when she’s back.”

In the meantime, he would wander around outside with Harry and make a few calls of his own. He’d been out of the country, scouting out wood suppliers for the past two weeks. He’d dealt with emails while he was gone, but he had a dozen or more phone calls to return. So he played back his messages and began to return his calls, all the while letting Harry crawl around the grass, while he waited for Maggie to be ready to go home.

He was on his fifth call when the receptionist rang him. “Mrs Newell is back from x-ray.”

He scooped Harry up and hurried back to the emergency room.

“Room three,” the receptionist pointed them down the hall when they returned.

Room three was like all emergency rooms everywhere—filled with machines clinking and beeping as they surrounded the gurney on which Maggie lay. The nurse patted her on the arm. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “I just need to make the arrangements.”

“Thank you,” Maggie said to her. She almost didn’t look like Maggie. The Maggie he knew was quick and energetic—and dressed. This Maggie was wearing a hospital gown. Yiannis’s brows lifted.

Maggie grimaced. She looked strained and pale, though when she saw Yiannis, with Harry on his shoulders, she managed a smile.

“Hurting?” Yiannis guessed. But he grinned at her because she would expect that.

“A bit.”

“They’ll take care of it,” he assured her. “You’ll be fine in no time. Ready to run that marathon you’re always talking about.”

“That’s what they tell me. Well, not the marathon part, but the rest.” But she didn’t sound happy about it.

Yiannis grinned, hoping she would, too. “Well, maybe a half-marathon, then,” he said cheerfully. “It’ll be okay,” he assured her.

“They said that, too.”

It wasn’t like Maggie not to look at the bright side. He studied her closely. “Well, then—”

“It’s broken.”

He blinked. “What’s broken?”

“My hip.” Her voice was flat, resigned. “They’re arranging surgery now.”

“Surgery?” he echoed stupidly. Harry thumped him in the ear.

Maggie nodded. “For tomorrow morning.”

Before the implications could begin to swim in his head, the nurse returned.

“It’s all set,” she said to Maggie. “They’ve got a room for you on the surgical ward. We’ll be moving you there now. I’ve talked to Dr Singh’s nurse. He’ll do the replacement tomorrow morning at nine.” As she spoke, she began to unhook Maggie from the monitors, eventually leaving in only the IV that was connected to the back of Maggie’s hand. When she finished, she stuck her head out the door and called for one of the orderlies to come help.

Then she turned to Yiannis. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you can’t come with her. Since the flu outbreak this past winter, hospital regulations don’t permit children under fourteen on the ward.”

“He’s not mine.”

“But you’re holding him,” the nurse pointed out.

“But—”

“If you have someone with you that you can give him to,” she suggested, her voice trailing off, the implication obvious.

Yiannis shook his head.

The nurse shrugged and gave him a conciliatory smile. “Sorry. Rules, you know. Go home. Call her in half an hour. We’ll have her settled by then. Or she can call you. Don’t worry. We’ll take good care of her.”

“Yes, but—”

But the orderly came in then, and the nurse had other duties. She disappeared, leaving Yiannis holding the baby while he watched the orderly put Maggie’s clothes in a bag, then stow it in the bottom of the gurney. In a minute he was going to wheel her down the hall and leave him here—alone—with Harry.

“Maggie?” he said, as the realization came home to roost.

“I know,” Maggie said sorrowfully. “What will we do?”

“I don’t think you’re going to be doing anything,” Yiannis said flatly.

Maggie looked guilty. “I should have realized.”

“There’s no way you could have known,” Yiannis assured her. “Don’t worry. It will be fine.” He could cope for a couple of hours.

Maggie didn’t look too sure.

“All set?” the orderly asked Maggie, hooking the portable IV unit to the gurney and beginning to wheel it toward the door.

“You can manage until tonight?” Maggie asked over her shoulder.

“Tonight?”

Misty wasn’t getting back until evening? Yiannis tried not to sound annoyed, but he was. Not because of Maggie. But because it was just like Misty to impose like that. She was forever doing something and then expecting the whole world—mostly the world known as Maggie—to step in and pick up the slack. And now she’d taken off for the entire day and left her baby with an eighty-five-year-old. She’d probably never even considered that Maggie might fall and break her hip.

Well, he supposed, to be fair, if you knew Maggie, her falling and breaking her hip wouldn’t be the first thing you’d think of. For an eighty-five-year-old she was well-nigh indestructible. But still—

He hurried after the gurney as the orderly pushed it down the hall. “Don’t worry about it,” he said firmly, catching up, Harry bouncing along on his shoulders, hanging on to fistfuls of his hair.

“I know it’s an imposition.”

“For you, darlin’, I’ll manage.” He gave her a grin and a wink, determined that she shouldn’t fret about him dealing with Harry. “Really. It’ll be fine. But,” he added, “you’d better give me her cell phone number just in case.”

The least he would do was call and tell her about Maggie’s surgery. And if he casually chewed darling Misty up one side and down the other for taking advantage of her step-grandmother’s generosity, well, he figured it wouldn’t hurt Misty a bit.

Of course he didn’t say so. Maggie would not like him telling off Misty, not because of Misty’s failings, but because she wouldn’t want anyone to think she wasn’t as capable as she’d ever been.

“She put her number in the rooster bowl on the kitchen shelf at home,” Maggie said as they stopped at the elevator.

The orderly pressed the button. “This is as far as you go,” he told Yiannis as the door opened. The orderly pushed Maggie inside.

“Don’t worry,” Yiannis said to Maggie. He reached out and gave her hand a quick squeeze. “We’ll hold the fort, won’t we, Harry?” He tugged on the little boy’s foot. Harry giggled. “What time will she be back?”

“The fifteenth.”

He hadn’t heard her right. “Seven-fifteen?”

Maggie shook her head. “The fifteenth,” she repeated.

Yiannis stared. “What?”

Maggie sighed. “Of March.”

The elevator doors started to close.

Yiannis stuck his foot in between them. “That’s two weeks!”

Maggie nodded. “She’s hoping by the time she comes home, they’ll have things worked out and when he gets back they’ll get married. Actually I think she hopes they’ll get married over there.” Maggie managed to look bright at the possibility.

“Over where?”

“Germany.”

This time when Harry hit him in the ear it was nothing compared to what he’d just heard. “Germany?”