Bought To Carry His Heir

“I wasn’t at all uncomfortable. I love Kamari, so it was easy to answer. I will raise my son here. We will live here, and I will teach him about his family, his lineage, and make sure he is prepared to inherit the Panos business and fortune. He is my legacy. He is the future.”

For a moment after he’d finished speaking there was just silence. It wasn’t an easy silence. She was very much processing every word he was saying. Georgia Nielsen was no intellectual lightweight.

He gestured to her already nearly empty glass. “More water, Georgia?”

“I’m fine.”

Yes, she was. She was actually more than fine, and it would be a problem if he didn’t check his interest immediately. What they needed were boring topics. Safe subjects. And distance. “We Greeks like our water. We serve water with coffee, water with dessert. It’s often the beverage of choice—” His voice was drowned out by the roar of an engine.

He fell silent as the white Falcon that had brought Georgia to the island flew directly overhead. Georgia’s head tipped, and she watched the plane take off, soaring up into the sky.

“Your plane doesn’t stay here?”

“No. The hangar’s in Athens.”

She was still watching the jet. He watched her, appreciating the elegant lines and delicate angles of her face. The gold of her hair. The cool blue-gray of her eyes. Her complexion wasn’t pink but palest cream with just a hint of gold.

Elsa’s complexion hadn’t been honey, but pink and cream. Roses and porcelain. The blue of her eyes had been more violet. Her lips were smaller, her eyes set a little wider. Doll-like.

Georgia was nothing like a doll.

She turned her attention from the sky back to him. “Why Athens?”

“It’s where I keep all of my planes.”

“You have more?”

“Yes. Helicopters, too.”

“Any boats?”

“Of course. I live on a remote island.”

She pushed a blond tendril back from her brow. “Is it too late to tour the island now?”

“The sun will be setting in the next hour. It’s better to wait for the morning. I’ll show you the gardens, the walking paths and the pool. I imagine you’ll want to get your exercise in.” He rose and went to get the water pitcher and refill her glass. “Mr. Laurent said you exercise regularly. Is that still the case?”

“I walk, swim and cycle and lift weights—”

“No more weights.”

She laughed, amused, the sound soft and husky. “We’re not talking Olympic moves here.”

“No weights,” he repeated. “I don’t think it’s necessary to stress you, or the baby, that much.”

She opened her mouth to protest but closed it, shrugged.

“The pool is heated,” he added. “I think you’ll find it quite pleasant.”

She leaned all the way back against the cushion and extended her long legs. “Will it be this way for the next three and a half months?”

“What does that mean?”

“Will you be supervising my nutrition along with my exercise?”

He heard the mockery in her voice, and it didn’t anger him as much as stir his senses. She had no idea how appealing he found her. He should warn her. If not for her sake then his. “Yes,” he answered smoothly. “It will be this way.” There was no point denying it. She was here so he could monitor the pregnancy and make sure the third trimester went well.

Her lips curved faintly. Amusement lurked in her eyes. “Then we have a problem.”

“Not if you’re compliant.”

She gave him another long look, one perfect brow lifting. “And is that how Mr. Laurent described me? Docile...sweet...compliant?”

The air was suddenly charged, crackling with tension and resistance.

No, he couldn’t imagine her ever being described as any of those, and he hadn’t been throwing down a challenge, either, just setting forth his expectations. But she was turning his expectations into something more.

Heat rushed through him, hot and heavy in his veins. His body ached. His blood hummed. He was waking up. It felt far too good.

“I don’t believe that was ever Mr. Laurent’s description,” Nikos replied gently, aware of the dance they were being drawn into. “I think my attorney used words like intelligent, gifted, successful, ambitious.”

Her blue gaze held his. She was looking so deeply, so directly, that he wondered what she was thinking...seeing. She didn’t appear threatened. Didn’t seem the least bit uneasy. If anything she radiated confidence. Control.

For being just twenty-four, Georgia Nielsen struck him as a powerful woman in her element.

Not the surrogate he’d expected. Not the surrogate he wanted.

But just possibly a woman he wanted.

Careful, he told himself. Do not be stupid...do not complicate things...

“I’m not accustomed to being told what to do,” she said, her voice pitched low and firm. “And I might be your guest here for the next few months, but I am my own person.”

And he wasn’t accustomed to negotiating with anyone, certainly not a woman. But he found it exciting. She was exciting. “Can you not think of it as care and concern for the well-being of my son?”

A light flickered in her eyes. “I have taken excellent care of him so far.”

“I appreciate that. But as his father, I expect you to respect my wishes.”

She stared back at him, unrepentant.

There was definitely a power struggle taking place. He hadn’t anticipated that, either. She was carrying his son. She was hired to carry his son. All she had to do was heed his wishes. But it appeared that Georgia either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, and her resistance was like gasoline to a flame.

He wasn’t angry. Not in the least. But his heart was thudding, and blood was drumming in his veins.

Nikos placed her glass on the corner table and sat back down across from her. “I think we have a misunderstanding.” His tone was pleasant. There was no need to snarl. He knew just how dangerous he was...just how dangerous he could be. “Maybe it’s a language barrier. Maybe it’s cultural—you are American, I am Greek—but business is business. You entered into an arrangement with me, and I have met my end of the agreement. I have paid you, handsomely, for your service—”

“We are discussing my body. I am not a shipping container or a maritime vessel. I am not your employee, either. I am a woman who is giving you a gift—”

“Providing a service,” he interrupted. “We have to call it what it is.”

“Yes, the gift of life,” she shot back, tone defiant, blue eyes blazing. “But I’m not just any woman. I’m the one you wanted to be both egg donor and surrogate. There was a reason you picked me. You could have picked any woman, but you selected me, which means you have me, and I am not going to be pushed around. I don’t respect men who throw their weight around, either. You can have a conversation with me, but don’t dictate to me.”

* * *

For a long moment there was just silence.

Georgia felt the weight of Nikos’s inspection. He wasn’t happy. At all. She wasn’t afraid, just alert. Aware. Aware of his intensity, and how energy seemed to crackle around him. He wasn’t moving, and yet she could feel the air hum.

She’d never met anyone like him before. And if she weren’t here, trapped on an isolated island with him, she’d be intrigued. She’d be tempted to test the fire and energy, but she was trapped here, and the survivalist in her told her she needed to be careful, and she needed to get off the island. Soon.

“Does no one else live on Kamari?” she asked, filling the taut silence.

“Just my staff.”

“Are there many?”

“A half dozen or so, depending on the day and occasion.”

“And do you ever leave here? Will we ever go anywhere?”

His mouth quirked, his dark eyes narrowing. “You’ve only been here a few hours. Are you already so anxious to leave?”

“I’ve never been to Greece.”

“And here you are.”

She smiled and glanced past him, her attention drawn to the blue horizon. “But I see other islands. They cannot be that far.”

“The closest is Amorgós. It is twenty-six kilometers away.”

“How do you get there?”

“I don’t.”

She allowed her smile to grow, stretch. “What if I wanted to visit?” she asked lightly.

“And why would you want to do that?”

“I might want to shop—”

“You want to buy olives...bread...soap? Because that is all the shops have there this time of year. It’s not high season. In winter, Amorgós is not for tourists. It has a few small shops with meat and produce, but that is all.”

“Surely there is more to the island than that.”

His broad shoulders shifted. “There is a ferry, a hospital and a monastery—plus churches. Many churches. But no museums, no café culture, nothing that would appeal to you.”

“You don’t know me. How do you know what would appeal to me?”

“You are young and beautiful. Young, beautiful women like to have a good time.”

She laughed, entertained. Or at least, it was what she’d have him think. The quickest way to lose control was to get emotional. “That is so incredibly sexist.”

“Not sexist. I’m just honest. And before you think I am being unfair to the female gender, let me add that young, beautiful men like to have a good time, too.”

“But not you.”

“I am neither young nor beautiful.”

“Are you fishing for compliments?”

He leaned forward so that they were just inches apart and stared deeply into her eyes. “Look at me.”

Oh, she was, and this close his eyes weren’t just dark brown, but rich chocolate ringed with a line of espresso. His lashes were black, thick, long, perfectly framing the rich brown irises. His black brows were strong slashes. “I’m looking,” she said calmly, her cool voice belying the change in her pulse, her heart beginning to race. She didn’t know what was happening, but it was hard to breathe. She was growing warm, too warm. It was no longer easy to concentrate. “And you are still young, and despite the scars, you are still beautiful.”

The space between them, those precious inches, shimmered with heat and tension. Even the air felt charged. Georgia dragged in a breath, feeling feverish.

“Is this a game to you?” he growled.

“No.”

“Then look again.”

“I am. So tell me, what am I supposed to be seeing?”

He reached up, and shoved his dark hair back from his temple, revealing the swath of mottled skin. “Now look at them.”

“I am. They are burns,” she said, struggling to sound clinical and detached as she reached out and lightly traced the thickened scar tissue. “They extend three inches above your brow, into your hairline, and then follow your temple down to your ear and out to the top of your cheekbone.” Her fingers shook as she drew her hand back. She curled her hand in her lap. “How long ago did it happen?”

“Five years.”

“They’ve healed well.”

“There were a number of reconstructive surgeries.”

His words told her one thing, but his espresso eyes said something else. She was far too warm and unsettled to want to analyze what was happening.

Too much was happening, and much too fast.

She hadn’t come to Kamari prepared for any of this...

For him.

He was so overwhelming in every way. The sheer physicality of him—his height, his size, the width of his shoulders, the thick angle of his jaw—coupled with his electric energy was knocking her sideways, making it difficult to think.

The next three and a half months would be impossible if she didn’t throw up some boundaries, get some control. Normally she wasn’t easily intimidated, but Nikos Panos was getting under her skin. She needed space and distance, fast.

“I’m exhausted,” she said, rising. “I think I should return to my room.”

“You need to eat.”

“Then perhaps you’d be so kind as to send something to my room for me? I’m dying to eat and crawl back into bed.” She managed a small, tight smile. Seeing that he was about to protest, she added quickly, “I might as well sleep now, while I can. I understand it won’t be easy towards the end of this next trimester.”

His brow furrowed. He didn’t seem happy with her decision, but after a moment he rose. “I’ll walk you back.”

“No need.”

“You are a guest here, and you’ve only just arrived. I’ll see you to your room. It’ll give me a chance to check your door, make sure it has been repaired.”

She couldn’t argue with his logic, and if she was going to survive here, she’d need to acquiesce now and then. She might as well allow him to win small victories.

They went down a flight of stairs, passing through the gleaming white living room and then out into a whitewashed hall that reflected gold-and-red light from the row of windows overlooking the sea.

Rays of burnished gold fell on Nikos, highlighting the width of his shoulders and haloing his dark head with light. With the sunset illuminating his strong profile he looked like an oil painting come to life, or perhaps a page lifted from a book on the Greek gods. One of Zeus’s immortal sons here on earth...

“My room is just down there,” he said, nodding to a corridor. “Should you need anything later.”

“I won’t need anything,” she said.

“But if there’s an emergency.”

“There won’t be.”

He stopped outside her room. Her door was closed. He gave a twist to the door handle. It opened soundlessly. He closed it again. It closed smoothly. “It seems to be working properly.”

She stepped past him and checked the door herself. It opened and shut, but the paint was scraped clean in a spot. A bit of hardware was missing.

The lock had been removed.

Georgia turned to face him. “This is not all right.”

“The door shuts.”

“You had the lock taken off. I told you—”

“And I told you that I need to be able to reach you should there be an emergency,” he ground out, silencing her. “If you cannot sleep without a locked door due to anxiety or fear of being attacked, then I will sleep in your room with you—”

“No. That will not happen.”

“Then deal with an unlocked door, because those are your options.” He towered over her, features hard. “I will have a tray sent to you now, and I will see you in the morning for the tour of the house and gardens.”

CHAPTER FOUR

IT TOOK FOREVER for Georgia to fall asleep.

She’d only been in Greece a few hours and yet she was already wishing she’d never agreed to travel to Kamari. The money wasn’t worth it—

She stopped herself there.

The money would be worth it, if she calmed down and focused. Getting upset wasn’t going to help. She’d been through many difficult experiences in her life and she could handle this one.

With that said, it would have been better to have known more about Nikos Panos than she did. Mr. Laurent had told her a little bit about the Panos family when she’d been selected for the surrogacy. He’d explained that the Panos family’s fortune was fairly recent, only since the end of World War II, and that they’d made their money rebuilding war-torn Europe, then branched from construction into shipping and from shipping into retail.

She did a little more research on her own at that point. The Panos story wasn’t all sunshine and roses. The company had floundered during the past decade, poor investments and too much expansion in the wrong direction. Teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, son and heir Nikos Panos took the helm and turned the floundering company around.

Nikos’s success had reassured her. She’d assumed he was successful and stable. She needed to learn not to make assumptions.

Or perhaps she needed to stop thinking about Nikos. Maybe she needed to practice detachment. And not just about Nikos, but the pregnancy, too.

She’d lost so much when her parents and sister and grandparents died. And now she had to be careful she didn’t get her heart broken again. He wasn’t her baby. He wasn’t her son. Nor would he ever be.

Georgia finally fell asleep, but the morning came far too quickly. Waking, she frowned at the bright sunshine. She was not ready for the tour or more time with him.

Boundaries and distance, she told herself, showering and then dressing, choosing skinny jeans and an oversize gray cashmere sweater and gray ankle boots. The sky was clear, but her room was cold and outside the wind howled, buffeting the stone villa.

Boundaries and distance, she repeated when Nikos knocked at her bedroom door a few minutes later, coming to collect her personally for the morning tour.

It was a shock seeing him in the windowless hall, cloaked in shadows. He was wearing black trousers and a black shirt, and although she was tall, he towered over her, his broad shoulders filling the doorway, consuming space.

His dark gaze swept over her before focusing on her feet. “Please change the boots to something more practical.”

She choked on an uncomfortable laugh, thinking he was joking, but he didn’t laugh or smile. Her brows lifted, unable to believe they were starting a new day this way. “You’re serious?”

“That’s the third pair of boots. Heeled boots—”

“These are practically flats. The heel is maybe an inch tall.”

“They are two inches or more, and you’re not going to wear them and risk twisting an ankle or breaking your neck.”

“I don’t know what clumsy women you dated in the past—”

“We are not on a date. You are a surrogate. Change your shoes.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it.

From the darkening of his expression, he hadn’t expected that response, which made another bubble of laughter rise. She struggled to smash this one, too, but the sound escaped, and she bit the inside of her lip, trying to muffle her amusement and failing miserably.

Did he really expect her to jump to his bidding? Was he accustomed to women bowing and scraping?

Clearly he had no idea who he was dealing with. The Nielsen sisters were not pushovers. Neither Savannah nor Georgia were known to be quiet, timid, pliable women. The daughters of Norwegian American missionaries, they’d grown up overseas, moving with their parents from mission to mission, before losing their family in a horrific assault four years ago. Georgia and her sister had battled through the grief together and had emerged stronger than ever.

And Nikos should know that.

He’d selected her from thousands of egg donors and potential surrogates. Mr. Laurent told her that Nikos had examined her profile in great depth as he was very specific about what he wanted—age, birth date, height, weight, blood type, eye color, natural hair color, education, IQ.

“You laugh,” Nikos said grimly.

“Yes, I did, and I will again if you continue to act as if you’re a barbarian. I might be your paid surrogate, but I’ve a good brain, and I don’t need you telling me what to do every time I turn around.”

“Then your good brain and your common sense should tell you that wearing impractical shoes is asking for trouble.”

“They are ankle boots, with a tiny stacked heel.” She held up her fingers, showing him a sliver of space between her thumb and pointer finger. “Tiny.”

His sigh was heavy and loud. “You are as exasperating as a child.”

“I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with children, but you do seem to be an expert in belittling women—”

“I’m not belittling women in general. We’re discussing you.”

“You might be surprised to discover that I don’t want your attention. I don’t want your company, either. You are insufferably arrogant. I completely understand why you live on a rock in the middle of the sea. Nobody wants to be your neighbor!”

“And I think you enjoy fighting.”

“I don’t enjoy fighting, but I’m not about to bow and scrape. I don’t like conflict, but I won’t let you, or anyone, bulldoze over me.” She was breathing fast, and her hands knotted at her sides. “You started this, you know. You talk to me as if I’m feebleminded—”

“I’m helping you.”

“You’d help me more by staying out of my business. I don’t tell you how to eat or exercise. I don’t tell you how to dress or what shoes to wear—”

“I’m not pregnant.”

“No, I am—that’s correct. And when I’m upset my blood pressure goes up and my hormones change and the baby feels all of it. Do you think it’s good for your child when you get me all worked up? Or maybe since he is your son he enjoys a good fight.”

Nikos scowled at her. “I don’t enjoy a fight, and nor does he.”

“Then if you don’t enjoy a fight, don’t provoke one.”

“Maybe you are the one that needs to compromise.”

“I am. I have. I’m here!” Georgia gestured to the room, the window, the view beyond. “I left my home to be your guest for three and a half months, and I’ve given up everything to make you happy. You can try to make me happy, Nikos.”

He stretched out his arms, putting an elbow on either side of the plastered doorway, his shoulders forming a thick, muscular wall. He drew a slow, deep breath, his dark eyes burning, revealing his chaotic emotions. “We are not going to do this for the next three-plus months,” he growled as a lock of his thick black hair fell forward, half hiding one dark eye, concealing the scars at his temple. “This is my home, my sanctuary. It’s where I live to be calm and in control—”

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