The Sarantos Baby Bargain. Olivia Gates
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pained her, she had to let Malcolm butt his head against the wall that was Andreas Sarantos.
But it wasn’t as if Malcolm didn’t know it was probably futile, anyway. He’d been after Andreas’s transformative financing even before they’d become partners seven years ago. It was when Andreas finally answered one of Malcolm’s persistent invitations that she’d first met him, a year after she, Malcolm and Ken had set up Sinclair, Ulrich & Newman, or SUN Developments.
Andreas had come to inspect one of their first projects, with Malcolm hoping to tempt him to finance their ambitious offshore expansion plans.
From photos, Naomi had already thought him the most incredible looking man she’d ever seen. But it had taken that face-to-face encounter to turn her inside out.
His gaze and handshake had been cool, detached, yet an all-out invasion at the same time. Throughout his fifteen-minute presence, he’d fascinated and intimidated her as no one had ever done. He’d made few comments, but those had been so ruthlessly denuding, they’d uncovered weaknesses neither she nor her partners had realized had been inherent in their system. Then he’d abruptly taken his leave, giving no indication if he’d been interested or not in their business plan—or in her.
That hadn’t stopped her from thinking of him to distraction afterward....
The images on the screen changed, interrupting her reminiscing. Her gaze clung to his figure as he strode away to his limo. Even from the back, he looked every inch the indifferent raider who conquered without trying, devastated without effort and cared nothing about the damage he left in his wake. The reporter, a woman evidently unnerved by her close encounter with the Greek god, regretted that she hadn’t been able to get enough from Mr. Sarantos.
Enough from, or of? a voice inside Naomi scoffed.
But if she could have given the woman a word of advice, she would have told her that no one got a thing from Andreas Sarantos. Nothing but hurt, heartache and humiliation.
Malcolm reached for his cell phone. “I’d better call him right away, reserve the first free hour he has while he’s here, before the whole city starts hounding him.”
Feeling as if she’d run a mile, Naomi rose unsteadily to her feet. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Hey...” Malcolm stood, too, his expression dismayed. “We haven’t even started our meeting.”
“There’s always tomorrow.” Naomi stopped at the door, mainly to lean on it until she regained her balance. “And I’d probably be useless to you, worrying about Dora, anyway.”
Which was, incidentally, true. Leaving Dora with a slight fever had made her unable to focus on anything all day. She’d spent most of it checking back with Hannah obsessively, though her nanny kept insisting everything was fine. Now Andreas’s unexpected return—even when Naomi was certain that the news spot would be her only exposure to him—had finished off any possibility for coherent thinking today. Might as well head home early.
She attempted a smile. “Just as well you found a more important thing to pursue today.”
“Nothing is more important than you!”
Naomi’s smile remained unchanged at his protest, and she made no response as she closed his office door behind her.
Malcolm had always made such gallant statements, but lately she’d been detecting something more in his courteous remarks. Something she hoped she was wrong about. She’d hate it if anything spoiled their friction-free working relationship and friendship. She’d started the partnership with him and Ken in the first place because both men had been happily married. But after Malcolm’s wife died from cancer three years ago, she’d started picking up different vibes from him. They’d become more noticeable since Nadine’s and Petros’s deaths three months ago. Naomi dreaded thinking Malcolm might be rebooting his program with her as the object of his monogamy.
Her mind was overflowing with this disturbing possibility and with Andreas’s out-of-the-blue return when she entered her apartment in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
She’d thrown her purse on the foyer table and was hastily hanging up her coat when she heard footsteps rushing toward her. She swung around to find Hannah, once her nanny and now Dora’s, looking anxious.
The heart that had been thudding all the way here now pounded with alarm. “Is Dora’s fever up again? Why didn’t you call me? I would have come back at once, taken her to the doctor!”
Hannah looked momentarily taken aback before waving her hand. “Oh, I told you countless times today that her temperature went down after you gave her medicine, and hasn’t come up again. We had a wonderful day and she went down for the night a couple of hours early.”
Naomi leaned against the wall as tension deflated abruptly. She exhaled. “When you came rushing like that—God, my mind’s been all over the place, more than usual today.”
Sympathy overflowed in Hannah’s shrewd hazel eyes. “After what you’ve been through, it’s natural for you to be jumpy. It’s amazing you’ve held up this well. But you don’t have to worry about Dora. Robust little tykes like her can weather far more than a temperature. After raising four kids of my own, and you and Nadine, with Dora my seventh baby, I should know.”
“While I feel I know nothing,” Naomi lamented. “Next week Dora will be ten months old and I still feel like a total novice. I keep worrying every minute she’s out of my sight. Accidents do happen....” Like the accident that had taken Nadine’s and Petros’s lives.
The words clogged in her throat, the wound that had never stopped bleeding for the past three months opening yet again.
Hannah reached for her, gave her one of those hugs that, as far back as she could remember, had always made things better even at the worst of times. “Being paranoid is part of being a parent, sweetie. And you have more reason than usual for your anxieties. But we won’t let anything happen to our Dora, ever, and she’ll grow up safe and loved, and become a beautiful, exceptional woman like her mom and aunt.”
Agony swelled all over again as her sister’s exuberant face filled Naomi’s mind. Before tears flowed, she nodded into Hannah’s ample shoulder, letting her touch and scent soothe her. Hannah had always been an integral part of her life, filling the void her mother had left behind when she’d died when Naomi was only thirteen.
Sniffling and attempting a smile, she pulled away. “So why did you come rushing to the door like that? Did you think I was an intruder or something, since I’m a bit early? Shouldn’t you have come armed?” Her smile wobbled as another alarm sent her hair-trigger nerves into an uproar again. “If you ever suspect anything of the sort, lock yourself in a room with Dora and call the police—”
Hannah raised both hands. “You really are extra jumpy today. This apartment building is intruder-proof, and you’ve certainly padlocked all entrances against an invading army. Anyone who comes in here has to be invited.” She stopped, hesitated, unease creeping over her genial face again. “Which brings me to the reason I rushed out to intercept you.”
“Intercept me...before what?”
“Before you walked into your family room and found me.”
Naomi lurched, a spear of shock lodging in her heart.
That voice. The voice that had never stopped whispering its insidious spell inside her mind.
Andreas.
A bolt of stupefaction wrenched her around.
And there he was, filling the archway of her foyer.
Andreas Sarantos. The man she’d barely escaped four years ago, with her soul and psyche in tatters.
It was impossible, preposterous for him to be here. In her apartment, where he’d never even dropped her off, let alone set foot inside, during the years they’d been together...though not really together.
But there