For the Greek Tycoon's Pleasure

“I will make sure you are still pampered,” he assured her.

“What about you?”

“What about me?” he asked, not following.

“Don’t you think you could do with a bit of pampering?”

“I will avail myself of the spa services.”

“To check their quality standard, I bet.”

“So?”

“So, you’re something of a workaholic,” she clarified.

“As are you.”

“I love my business.” But she wasn’t really a workaholic. Once her business was established, she had every intention of cutting back her hours to make room for other things. “I never intended it to be everything in my life.”

“Then why do you consider the prospect of parenting the dissolution of your dreams?”

Shocked at his interpretation of her earlier words, she jerked in startlement. “I didn’t mean my business.”

He didn’t look like he believed her. “What did you mean, then?”

“It’s not something I want to discuss right now.” Really. Truly. It would do neither of them any good to hash over her old dream of building a life with a man who loved her, and the more recently acknowledged dream of having Zephyr be that loving man.

He opened his mouth to say something, but before he got a chance, a masculine voice from behind them said, “You’ve arrived. Finally.”

They both turned to face an attractive black man.

Zephyr stepped forward with his hand out. “Ah, Jean-René. Good to see you.”

He turned back to Piper. “Pethi mou, this is our architect, Jean-René Tilieu. Jean-René, this is Piper Madison, our designer.”

Jean-René’s smile was white-white and full of charm as he bent over Piper’s extended hand, rather than shaking it. “An exceptional pleasure, mademoiselle.”

“Merci. I’m really looking forward to working with you. I find your work both inspiring and impressive.”

“Ah, you know the way to a man’s heart is flattery, non?”

Zephyr stepped forward and put his arm around Piper’s waist. “Piper does not flatter, she always speaks the truth.”

Jean-René gave them a speculative look and then met her eyes, his expression serious. “Then I am doubly honored by your praise, mademoiselle.”

“Piper, please.”

“That is an interesting name, n’est-ce pas?”

“I was named for one of my father’s mentors in the army,” she informed him.

Zephyr looked down at her. “You never told me that.”

“It’s a bit embarrassing, to be named after a grizzled army master sergeant who chewed tobacco and shot pistols with equal enthusiasm.”

“Piper is a feminine name, though, non? This master sergeant who chewed tobacco is a woman?” Jean-René asked.

Piper laughed. “No, Pipes is his nickname and I never asked how he got it.”

“That’s probably best,” Zephyr said, humor lacing his tone.

She smiled up at him. “That’s what I thought.”

“Two great minds.” Jean-René flashed that brilliant smile again. “Clearly this project is in sympathetic hands.”

“Without a doubt. I’ve studied your work in depth and I’ve worked on enough developments with Zephyr to know that our approaches are going to dovetail nicely.” Her only concern, and it was not strong, was how the Greek contractor would be to work with as he was a complete unknown to her.

“Très bien. Do you wish to discuss initial thoughts over dinner, or wait until tomorrow?” he asked Zephyr.

Zephyr turned his head so his and Piper’s gazes met. “What do you think?”

Why was he asking her? Maybe this was about watching the sunset. “Is the dining room on this side of the house?”

“No, but we can eat in here,” Zephyr replied.

“Mais oui, the view of the setting sun is magnifique. I saw the most glorious rays yesterday evening when I arrived.”

“Then it is settled.” She stepped away from both men and headed toward the stairs. “I’m happy to jump right in, as I’m sure you are both eager to do. Which room is mine?”

“I had the housekeeper put us in the master suite.” This time Zephyr did not ask her opinion and his expression dared her to disagree.

Like she was going to argue. She enjoyed sleeping with him. “I’ll see you upstairs, then.”

She went in search of the master suite, assuming it wouldn’t be difficult to find and she was right. The fact that she found a maid inside unpacking their cases was almost as big a clue as the giant four-poster bed that would have looked silly anywhere but a master bedroom.

It was covered with a cotton spread in eggshell-white, decorated with intricate stitching a single shade darker. Gauze curtains draped the bed, the large picture window and the French doors leading out onto the second-story balcony that wrapped around the house. The armoire, dresser and matching bedside tables were heavy wooden pieces, stained dark. It was easy to tell that this had been a man’s room, but she still liked it. A lot.

Taking in the gorgeous view, she skimmed off the royal-blue shortwaisted jacket she’d donned over a paler blue sheath dress that morning. She tossed it over the back of one of the twin oversized armchairs. They faced a large stone fireplace that was laid for a fire.

Interesting. If the weather leant itself toward doing so, she would want to talk to Jean-René about incorporating fireplaces in the main areas of the resort at least.

“Pardon me, but do you speak English?” she asked the maid, who was now sliding their cases under the huge bed and out of the way.

“Yes.”

“Great, because my Greek is nonexistent.”

The young woman smiled. “You are American, yes?”

“Yes. I took Spanish in school.” It was the only language she knew she would find at any high school, no matter where her father had been stationed, so she could take it for the full four years. “Will it get cold enough in the evenings to light the fire?”

“Some, yes. Not so cold, but the fire, it is cozy.”

“I see.” Piper smiled. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

“When did Mr. Nikos give instructions for us to share a room?” She felt ridiculous asking, but needed the answer for some reason.

The maid gave her an odd look, but didn’t hesitate to answer. “I do not know. On Monday, the housekeeper, she tell me to ready the room for Kyrie Nikos and his guest.”

So, he’d planned to share a room all along. This was not altogether shocking. They did not take pains to hide their sexual relationship, but he was not usually so blatant in a work setting. Before his revelations over dinner in Athens, she would have taken this as a good sign for the future of their relationship.

Now, it just added to her confusion about the man she loved.

Prior to this morning, he had not considered her in the role of mother to his children. He had also made it clear he did not anticipate ever entering into a permanent relationship with her. All bets were off if she was pregnant, though. That was something she had no doubts about.

If she was carrying his baby, he would insist on marriage. His assertion he was nothing like his parents hadn’t been necessary for her to realize Zephyr Nikos would insist on being a major player in his child’s life.

She just wasn’t sure what she wanted to do about that.

Zephyr found Piper sitting on a cushioned wrought-iron lounger on the terrace outside their bedroom. “Tired, pethi mou?”

“What?” She looked up at him, eyes the same color as the sea they’d been gazing at vague. “No. I was just thinking, trying to work things out and getting more confused in the process.”

“Would you like a sounding board?”

“Not this time.”

He frowned; that was not the answer he wanted, he realized. “You like the house?”

“You know I do. But house? I don’t think so. Mansion more like. How many bedrooms does this place have anyway?”

“Twelve, four of them large suites like this one.”

“Then how can you tell this is the master?” she challenged him.

“How did you tell?”

“The maid was unpacking our cases.”

“Really, that was it?” One eyebrow raised knowingly.

“You know it wasn’t.”

He nodded. “The bed.”

“It couldn’t be in any room but the master.”

“Exactly.” He moved to stand in front of her and put a hand out, which she automatically took. “I’m glad we aren’t tearing it down.” Sometimes, they had no choice but to destroy in order to build something new. Thankfully, that was not necessary this time.

“Is it going to be part of the resort?” Piper asked, not looking all that pleased at the prospect.

He tugged her to stand, then took her place in the chair and pulled her into his lap. “At first, I thought it would, but every time I come, I grow more attached to the place. Neo likes it as well. I think we may keep it for our personal use, but he’ll have to find his own master-suite bed, I’m keeping this one.”

“Really?”

“Why so surprised? We agreed the bed is perfect.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She squirmed until she was comfortable against him, having a predictable effect on the blood-flow south of his waist. “I don’t see either of you relaxing enough to get any use out of it.”

“He’s getting married. They will have children. This is a good place to bring them. The resort will only make it better. Cass likes to travel, but prefers private residence to hotels.”

“That makes sense, considering.”

“Yes.” He tugged her to relax further against his chest. “And you, can you imagine staying here on the occasional holiday?”

She sighed, her head coming to rest against his shoulder. “Too easily. If I owned a property like this, I wouldn’t relegate it to vacation home, though. I couldn’t resist living here.” The buried longing in her voice surprised him. “I don’t know how the previous owners did.”

“How would you run your business from here?”

“I thought daydreams didn’t have to be practical.”

“Indulge me.” He wrapped his arms around her waist, enjoying this moment of relaxed closeness.

She was good for him, which was just the dangerous kind of thinking he needed to avoid before he started spilling secrets again. This was about learning what was going on in her complicated brain, not revealing more of his own thoughts. And he would remember that.

“Living here would be the ultimate indulgence, but in answer to your all too prosaic question, with high-speed Internet, a reliable telephone service and a color fax machine, I could run my business from anywhere.”

“It would require a lot of travel.” Especially if she continued to work full-time.

“I travel a lot now.”

Didn’t he know it? He understood her desire to live here, though. “I forget how much I enjoy the sunshine sometimes, but a few days in Greece and I’m spoiled to blue skies again.”

“We can’t claim our fair share of those in Seattle.” She gave a rueful sigh.

He chuckled. “This is true. The first year Neo and I lived there, we thought the rain would never end.”

“Seattle gets all four seasons.”

“And all of them have rain.”

“True,” she said grudgingly. “But it’s better than New York blizzards, trust me.”

“Here, though, the weather is perfect.” He and Neo had not left Greece because they wanted to get away from the sunshine.

“If you are partial to a warm climate.”

“Which I am.”

“Me, too.” She sighed. “Maybe I should have relocated to Southern California, when I left New York.”

“No, we would not have met.”

“You might have been better off.”

What? He did not think so. He maneuvered her so their gazes met, and saw that her azure eyes were troubled. He shook his head. “Are you trying to imply that our friendship has been a detriment to me in some way?”

“Well, it’s not as if I’m the woman you envisioned as the mother of your future children.” Her voice echoed with pain he would not have expected.

“I had not given any thought to who that might be.” No serious contemplation anyway. He had thought of her in that role, before they started having sex. He admired her character and thought she would make an ideal mother and wife, except for that romantic streak even her rotten marriage had not cured her of.

“But you would not have considered me.”

“You are right.” At least that had been his final determination.

She turned her head away completely, but not before he saw sadness making her blue eyes shimmer dangerously.

Oh, no. Tears were not going to happen. He gently, but inexorably, tugged her face back around. “Not because I do not think you would be eminently suitable, but because I knew you would never consider a…what did you call my nebulous marriage plans? A business merger.”

“Why would it have to be a business transaction between the two of us?” she asked plaintively.

“How could it be anything else?”

“Love.”

“Love?” Hadn’t they already discussed this? “Whatever propensity to love I may have had once is gone. Even if it were not, love does not always last. Blood ties do not count for much, either.”

“So, there is nothing left but business?”

“True friendship can endure,” he admitted.

“Like your friendship with Neo.”

“Yes.”

“He’s the only person in your life who has never let you down, isn’t he?”

“On a personal level? Yes.” He brushed her lips with his thumb. “Well, not actually. You have never let me down, either.”

“Until this morning.” Her lower lip trembled and she bit it.

“You did not let me down.”

“How can you say that?” she asked.

“It is the truth. We are done assigning blame, remember?”

“I don’t think I got the memo.” She gave a pale version of her usual teasing smile, but at least she was no longer on the verge of tears.

He hoped. “We agreed this morning.”

“That was not agreement, that was you saying it did no good.”

“I am right.”

“You have what can be an annoying tendency to think you are.” But she nuzzled his neck and he was not too worried.

“What can I say? I usually am.”

She pulled back and gave him a gloating glare. “Ah, so you admit to at least some small level of infallibility.”

“Naturally.”

“You’re so darn arrogant.” She shook her head in bemusement. “Why do I find that charming again?”

“You tell me.”

“I plead the Fifth.”

“We are in Greece,” Zephyr pointed out, “not the U.S. The Fifth Amendment does not apply here.”

“I bet the Greek constitution has some similar guarantee against having to testify against themselves for their citizens.”

“We are getting off topic here.”

“You’re right.” Piper gathered her thoughts. “Why, if you trust friendship so much, do you think a marriage based on it would fail?”

“I did not say I believed a marriage between us would fail utterly, but it would fail to make you happy.” And ultimately, that had decided him against the prospect.

“Why? Would you plan to sleep around after?”

“No. I could give you fidelity.” Of that, he had no doubts. “However, I could not give you something you’ve made clear is of equal importance to you.” Long before their discussion of love at dinner the other night, he had known she was still waiting for her fairy-tale ending complete with love ever after and Prince Charming.

He was a former street rat, no prince, and love was not, and never would be, on his agenda.

“You’re talking about love again, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Can you honestly say you would have considered a marriage proposal without it?”

She bit her lip and looked away, shaking her head once in negation.

“As I thought.”

“So, where does that leave us?”

“I do not know.” If she was pregnant with his child, he would try to convince her to accept his proposal, regardless of her finer feelings.

He knew his inner ruthlessness would show itself and he could not even be sorry about that. If she carried his baby, neither of their dreams took precedence. They would do what was best for their child.

He would never allow a child of his to be anything but absolutely certain of its place in his life. Unlike both his mother and father, Zephyr Nikos would consider his role as parent the most important one he would ever hold.

He did not know how to be a father, but he and Neo had self-educated themselves in business and that had been an eminently successful endeavor. With the same work and dedication, he could learn how to be a dad as well. Unlike when he was a teenager, he did not have to rely on used books, and firsthand experience at ground level.

He could afford to consult the most eminent minds in the field of child development, read the best books on the subject and do whatever else was necessary to be the best parent possible.

Zephyr had never done things by halves and becoming a parent would be no exception.

“I don’t want to take an over-the-counter pregnancy test,” Piper said after several quiet moments of her head resting on his shoulder again.

“So, we will wait until we return to Seattle and make an appointment with your doctor. We are only scheduled to be here three days.”

“They’ll feel like an eternity.”

He could not disagree.

The contractor arrived the next morning and between the four of them, they kept extremely busy laying the groundwork for preliminary plans to be drawn up. Jean-René flirted shamelessly with Piper, making her smile when that worried expression slid into her eyes.

Zephyr did not worry about the other man, knowing he adored his French wife and would never consider betraying her. Besides, Zephyr had made it patently clear that he and Piper were together.

On their last night, they climbed the stairs after a lively postdinner discussion over whether or not to place the main resort near the current villa, or nearer the accessible beach on the northern shore of the island. Piper was in favor of the beach, but the contractor liked the idea of taking advantage of already existing power and water access.

Jean-René had played devil’s advocate, arguing both for and against each of the locations.

Zephyr had made the final decision, going with the beach-front scenario. Guests would appreciate the easy access to the ocean and while the view might not be quite as majestic, it was still magnificent. Besides, it would give him and Neo and their future families privacy when they were on the island.

“You know he reminds me a little of Art, only different,” Piper said.

“The contractor?”

“Jean-René. He flirts. All the time, but there is no sexual heat behind it.”

“And there was with Art.”

“Yes. He accused me of being immaturely jealous, but after seeing Jean-René in action, I can say definitely that the intent behind the flirting makes all the difference.”

“Yes, Jean-René is a Frenchman. He flirts with a ninety-year-old grandmother as warmly as he would a runway model.”

Piper nodded. “It’s all about making a woman smile, without making her feel like sexual prey.”

“Art did not understand the difference?”

“How could he? Any woman even halfway attractive to him was sexual prey.” The disgust that tinged Piper’s tone was a definite improvement over the grief that used to lie so heavily on her when she talked about her ex.

“I do not flirt.” Or rather, he only flirted with intent and since he and Piper had begun their liaison, there had been no other woman he wished to seduce.

She laughed and hugged him, right there on the stairs. “No, you don’t.”

He enjoyed the spontaneous embrace. While she never drew away from his displays of affection, she had been more circumspect in offering her own since they reached the villa. He didn’t know if that was because she blamed him for her possible pregnancy, though she’d said she didn’t. Or maybe she was responding to his pulling away from talking about personal things.

He just did not see the need to discuss their future when they did not know whether they needed to take a pregnancy into account, or not. He’d also resisted talking any more about his past. It was over and done. They did not need to keep revisiting it.

He followed her into the bedroom and closed the door behind them. “Are you ready to go back to Seattle tomorrow?”

Drawing aside the drape at the window, she did not answer for several seconds. “I don’t know.”

“It is hard to leave here.” He began divesting himself of his clothes.

“But I want to know.”

He did not ask what she wanted to know. There was only one thing causing worry lines between her elegant brows.

Part of him, a very large part if he were honest with himself, wanted her to be pregnant. Then he could be selfish and convince her to marry him despite the lack of love between them. It would be the best thing for the baby and he trusted her to make the needs of her child paramount.

He cupped her shoulder, caressing her nape with his thumb. “I have something more interesting to focus on than a dark vista.”

She turned to face him, her expression soft and yearning. “Do you?”

“Can you doubt it?”

She just shook her head and waited. Waited for him to kiss her, to touch her, to show her that in this at least, they had perfection.

And that was exactly what he did.

Piper flew back to Seattle in Zephyr’s private jet with him. When they landed, she learned that he had already made an appointment for the next morning with her doctor. She wasn’t even a little surprised by his excessive efficiency. She was a bit startled by the fact that he’d gotten an appointment so quickly. She was never so lucky with her doctor’s appointment keeper.

But then Zephyr Nikos moved entire ranges, not simply single mountains, when he wanted to.

He spent the night with Piper in her apartment. They didn’t make love that night, but he held her close in the darkness protecting her dreams and making her feel safe.

“We’ll call you tomorrow with the results,” the nurse said after setting the vial with Piper’s blood aside.

Piper stood up and put the chair they’d used for the blood draw back against the wall at the head of the exam table. “Thank you. Have the doctor call my cell phone, all right?”

“Of course. I don’t think our office has ever successfully gotten hold of you on your house or business line.”

“I travel a lot.”

“It must be nice.” The nurse put the vial in a small red carrier.

“It can be.” When she’d first moved to Seattle, she’d loved the travel, but after she and Zephyr became friends, she missed him when she was away. Even before the sexual side to their relationship started. “It can be exhausting, too.”

“Well, if this test comes back positive, you can count on being exhausted even more.” The wry grimace on the usually friendly nurse’s face could in no way be described as a smile.

What was she supposed to say to that? Thank you? She was sure the other woman thought her information necessary, if not welcome. Piper would rather focus on the upside of this pregnancy…just as soon as she figured it out. She got up and grabbed her bag. “Well, um…goodbye.”

“See you soon.”

Piper didn’t know about that. She rarely visited her doctor between physicals. Of course, if she was pregnant, that would have to change, wouldn’t it?

CHAPTER SIX

ZEPHYR was waiting for her when she came out. “How did it go?”

“A little prick, a bandage and we were done.” It seemed like something awfully innocuous to find out something so momentous.

“They’ll know tomorrow?”

“That’s what the nurse said.” Piper had tried to dissuade Zephyr from coming to the doctor’s office with her.

It wasn’t as if she was having a difficult procedure, or something. But he’d insisted and now, she was kind of glad.

He put his hand out to take hers and led her outside. It was one of Seattle’s rare sunny days. Not so uncommon in the summer, but not something to be taken for granted, either.