“Been putting on a bit of weight, sweetie?” Tess asked, giving her a scathing once-over. “I think a little extra time at the gym and a little less sitting around eating bonbons is in order, don’t you?”
“I can honestly say that I’ve never had a bonbon in my life,” Harry said. “Nice to see you, too.”
Tess opened her mouth to make a response, but at that moment she caught sight of Iakovos and his swarm of ladies. “What do we have here?” Tess asked, her voice a purr. “My god, he’s gorgeous. Just look at those legs! And that chest.”
“He’s something, isn’t he?” Harry asked, fighting to keep her lips from betraying her. She leaned closer and said softly, “Rumor has it that he’s packing, too.”
“A man that big? I wouldn’t doubt it at all. I bet he’s a handful in bed. Or should I say, two handfuls.”
“Two, definitely,” Harry said, pretending her nose itched so she could cover her mouth.
“He looks familiar. What is he doing here?” Tess asked, her gaze all but eating Iakovos up. “Is he a vendor or something? No matter, I don’t care if he’s here to fix the toilets, it’s clearly time to separate the girls from the women!”
She oiled her way forward, all sinuous hips and outthrust breasts. Iakovos had evidently reached the saturation point of female adulation, for he managed to extricate himself from the gaggle of ladies and headed straight for Harry. Tess stopped in front of him, cooing, “Hello there.”
“Hello,” he said politely, not pausing until he reached Harry.
“I love you,” she told him before she leaped on him, wrapping her legs around his hips. He chuckled as he hoisted her up, kissing her with the passion that never failed to flare between them.
She heard more gasps behind him, followed by a smattering of applause.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked as she lowered her legs to the ground.
“In just one sec.” She turned back to the ladies, her hand on his arm. “Tess, I don’t think you got to meet my fiancé, Iakovos. If he looks familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen him in magazines. I’ll miss you all, but you know you’re welcome to visit if any of you ever come to Greece.” She hugged each one of her friends, Tess included, accepting their best wishes and promises to stay in touch.
As they left the building and headed for Harry’s car, Iakovos slid her a glance and asked in a misleadingly bland tone, “Was it everything you hoped it would be?”
“Oh, that and so much more. I particularly liked it when Ruthie had to sit down with her head between her knees because you kissed her hand.”
He stopped her as she was about to get into the car. “Are you sure you’re not going to miss this?” he asked, nodding toward the gym. Harry couldn’t help but notice that the entrance was a solid mass of women plastered against the glass watching them.
“I’ll miss it, but it’s not a vital part of my life. You are.”
“As you are to me, sweetheart.”
“You know,” she told him as he slid behind the wheel, “this is exactly the sort of moment when a person might declare his love to the woman who is giving up her entire way of life just so she can be with him. Don’t you think this is that sort of a moment?”
“I do,” he agreed, pulling out of the parking lot. “The next time such a moment comes up, I count on you to remind me.”
CHAPTER 16
I akovos was anxious to get back to New York so he could wrap up his pressing business there. He wanted to be back in Greece with Harry—no, not wanted, he needed to bring her home so he could finally relax.
He didn’t understand just why he felt uneasy about her being in the States; he knew only that he wanted her where she belonged. He wasn’t going to be happy until he had her home.
There was one last task she had to perform before they could leave, however, and he bit back his impatience, determined to give her the time she needed to wrap up her business and social affairs.
“You sure about this?”
Iakovos’ gaze settled on the man who was speaking quietly with Harry in the hallway. Even though he was seated in a minute living room of the apartment next to Harry’s, he could hear every word the neighbor spoke to her. “Greece is an awful long way away.”
“It is a long way, but I’m more than sure it’s the right thing, Tim. Iakovos makes me deliriously happy, happier than is right for any one person to be. Besides, you can visit us, and I’m sure we’ll be back in the U.S. frequently. Iakovos has business concerns everywhere, and he says he visits New York a couple of times a year.”
“That’s still a long way away,” the man protested. Iakovos wanted to grab him by the collar and shake him.
“Then you’ll just have to get that European tour for the kids set up that you keep talking about.” Harry entered the room, taking a seat next to him, her hand going to his leg. He liked her little shows of possession. Normally such things in his lovers irritated him, but Harry always seemed to turn his feelings upside down.
Tim rolled his eyes as a woman entered the room.
“Baby’s down at last,” she said, giving him a smile. Iakovos approved of Jill, although he thought her husband was out of line in trying to convince Harry to stay in Seattle. “What are we talking about?”
“A European tour for the kids,” Harry said, her hand stroking his thigh. She did it without being aware of the effect she had on him, he knew. Despite her propensity for flinging herself on him in public, she wasn’t the type of woman to tease him physically when others were around. That didn’t change the fact that if she stroked his leg two inches to the left, she’d be brushing his growing erection, and then he’d be forced to pick her up, make their excuses, and take her back to her almost empty apartment to show her that there were limits to what he could endure.
Jill snorted. “With little miss prima donna Cynthia? I think Tim would prefer keeping them in a country where she’s not likely to cause so much trouble.”
“Cynthia? What happened to Cyndi?” Harry asked.
“Oh, she’s determined to remake herself. She’s Cynthia now . . . and she’s tried to break the contract and grab a bigger percentage,” Jill answered.
That didn’t surprise Iakovos in the least. She’d always struck him as being wholly concerned with her own well-being regardless of who was inconvenienced.
“Ugh. Well, you guys know you’re welcome to visit us, with or without them.”
Harry glanced at him. “Certainly,” he agreed, his fingers tangled in her hair. “We would enjoy having you as our guests.”
“Maybe when John is a little older,” Jill said, and to his relief, Harry indicated it was time to leave.
He watched her as Tim gave her hands a squeeze and told her to be happy. Her gaze met his for a moment, and he was reassured to see the love in them.
“I will be. I am,” she told Tim.
“Let us know about the wedding,” Jill said from behind her husband.
“Will do, but don’t hold your breath.”
“Despite asking me to marry her, Harry seems to have trouble actually picking a date to do so,” he told them, his arm around her.
“I like that! You asked me after I asked you, so that’s the one that counts.” She glared at him until he was forced to kiss her. “And I can’t help it if I’ve never been a big wedding sort of person. Besides, we have plenty of time.”
He would prefer to be married sooner than later, but he was determined not to force her into a date. He knew how touchy she was about being perceived as being interested only in his wealth, and rather than get into an argument about it, he left the decision of a date to her. He just hoped she’d get over her reluctance soon.
Business demands took him back to New York, this time with Harry at his side. They settled into a relatively calm existence while he dealt with a couple of complicated situations regarding a land dispute in New Zealand, but life, he decided one evening when he lay with Harry snoring softly in his arms, was strangely free o
f storms. He stroked his hands over the little bump that was her belly, some primitive need inside him to reproduce well pleased with the knowledge that it was his children who grew there. He’d long since come to terms with the fact that he would never be able to have children. A man, he had once thought, didn’t need children. He had been perfectly happy without the possibility of them, or so he’d told himself for all those years.
But now . . . He gently rubbed her belly, picturing a life he hadn’t thought possible. Trust his wild child of the sea to turn everything in his life upside down. He went to sleep with her held tight, happier than he had ever remembered being.
Harry was seriously unhappy. She glared at the message on her cell phone.
Delayed getting out of Ottawa. Theo arriving early. If not back in time, go to dinner with him.
Can’t believe you’re telling me to go to dinner w. another man, she texted back. What’s next? Breakfast w. Chippendales dancer? Lunch w. male model?
Smart-ass, was his answer, but the follow-up text made her smile. Miss you.
She climbed into the car waiting for her. “Home, Mikos.”
“Something wrong, Harry?”
“Yes. Your boss is driving me nuts.”
“So, business as usual, then?” Mikos smiled at her. She liked him—he had a breezy manner and a wicked sense of humor that appealed to her. He was also a womanizer, but she turned a blind eye to the fact that he was always juggling at least three different women at any one time. He seemed to have that Greek charm that had so many women panting.
Herself included, she thought, rubbing her expanding belly at the thought of seeing Iakovos after a five-day absence. She went over the many and varied things she planned to do to him when she got him alone. Originally she’d wanted to meet him at the airport, but that plan was now revised to simply waiting until she was back from the publishing industry dinner at which she’d been asked to speak.
And Iakovos wasn’t going to be there to be shown off, dammit. She debated making an excuse and just staying home, but that wasn’t fair to the people who’d invited her to participate. “Poor souls, they’ll just have to survive the evening with a non-listworthy handsome Greek.”
“You talking about me, Harry? Because if you are, I’m going to have to break your heart. No, no, don’t beg me to go with you to your party tonight—it won’t do any good. Mr. Papaioannou is a good employer, and much as I would like to do as you ask, I couldn’t betray his confidence.”
“Darn,” she said, making a face at him as he laughed at her in the rearview mirror. “And here I was ready to throw Iakovos over just so I could sit next to you when you drive him around places.”
“Life is hard, but we do the best we can,” he said with a grin.
“Uh-huh.”
“Theo going with you tonight, then?”
“Sounds like it.” Harry mused sourly on that, told herself to stop acting so immature, and instead made some plans for Iakovos when he did, eventually, arrive home.
Iakovos didn’t have an apartment in New York, since he wasn’t normally in the U.S. long enough to justify one, he had told her when he showed her around the hotel suite where he stayed when in town. The fact that the suite was at least five times the size of the apartment she had just left was neither here nor there, she guessed. At least not to a man like Iakovos, who liked room to spread out.
She greeted the concierge, Marcel, who dealt with the rich people living in the suites, exchanging pleasantries for a few minutes before proceeding on to the four-bedroom suite.
“Oh, you are here. Hello, Theo,” she said as she dropped her bag and laptop onto the couch in the living room. “I understand Iakovos has called you in to pinch-hit for him tonight—oh, bloody hell, Theo!”
She’d thought he had been watching TV, since a large flat screen was blaring away, but as he slowly rotated his head to look at her, she saw the familiar expression of incomprehension.
“’Lo, Harry,” he said, struggling to get to his feet. “Jake isn’t here.”
“I know. He’s on his way home, though.” She looked at the young man who was soon to be her brother-in-law. He made an effort to pull himself together, brushing the shoulder-length black hair off his face, rubbing his whiskery chin, and giving her a smile that she knew would probably melt the underwear off a nun.
“I’m so tempted to just leave you like this so your brother can see for himself that you have a serious problem, but I don’t suppose that would do much but make him furious.” She took his arm and steered him toward the small kitchen portion of the suite. “Come on, let’s get some coffee into you. Iakovos is going to be seriously annoyed if you don’t take me to that dinner tonight.”
“You’re not so bad after all,” Theo told her as he stumbled alongside her, shaking his head somewhat groggily as he almost tripped on an ottoman. “Not a gold-digging bitch like Patricia says. I’m going to tell her that, too, the next time I see her.”
Harry blinked at him in surprise, grabbing him when he veered off course and was about to fall over a barstool. “Sit,” she ordered, pushing him onto the high-backed stool before pulling out a couple of bags of sealed beans and a coffee grinder.
Theo watched silently as she set up the grinder and poured beans into it. “You can stop looking at me like that,” she told him. “I’m from Seattle. We take our coffee very seriously there. I’m having a case of the coffee shipped straight to Iakovos’ former palace of sin.”
“We’re Greek,” he told her with yet another sloppy smile. “We know how to do strong coffee.”
“Oh, yes, strong enough to strip paint off a wall as well, but thank you, I prefer to keep my stomach lining. All right, you’ve dropped your bombshell. Who is Patricia, why were you talking about me to her, and why do I care if she thinks I’m a gold-digging bitch? No, wait—” Harry held up her hand. “I’m having a premonition. She’s one of Iakovos’ ex-girlfriends, someone who he still sees, and who you probably expect me to get quite jealous over.”
“It’s like you’re psychic,” he said, laughing as she poured him the first few inches of coffee without waiting for the rest of the water to work through the coffeemaker. She knew it was bound to be hideously strong. He drank it and smacked his lips. “Just like my mother used to make.”
“You’re impossible,” Harry told him with a shake of her head.
“Yeah, but you love my big brother, so you have to put up with me. Besides, I’m a Papaioannou. Women can’t resist us.”
“Uh-huh.” She hoisted herself up beside him. “Go on, tell me the worst. Is this Patricia monster someone Iakovos still works with?”
“She runs a decorating business, so the answer to that is yes.”
“I might have figured,” Harry said, sighing dramatically. “There just had to be at least one jealous ex-girlfriend on the scene bent on making my life a misery. You don’t get to number five without that. Is she pretty?”
“Gorgeous,” he said, trying to wink at her, but failing. She shoved the coffee cup closer to him. “Legs up to her armpits. Tits that make your mouth water. Cute little ass. Great in bed.”
“You’ve slept with her?” she couldn’t help but ask.
“First. Then she caught sight of Iakovos, and that was all she wrote. I was forgotten until they broke up.”
I’m not going to ask, I’m not going to ask, Harry told herself. It doesn’t matter. I know he loves me. I see it in his eyes. I see it in his face. I feel it when he touches me. His past with this woman has absolutely nothing to do with me. Besides, they probably broke up years and years ago.
“When did they break up?”
“I mean, really nice tits . . . Huh?” He weaved in the seat as he thought. “Must have been four . . . no five . . .”
Four or five years. That wasn’t so bad, Harry thought, relaxing against the back of the barstool.
“No, it was four months. Right before Elena’s party. I remember thinking it was funny that Iakovos hooked up with
you so quickly after Patricia. Usually he takes a few months off between women.”
“There are times,” Harry told him with great dignity as she climbed off the barstool, “when I am convinced fate has determined I should live my life as if it were a soap opera. I won’t have it, do you hear me? I won’t be jealous! I will not be jealous of this ex-girlfriend!”
“That’s good, because you’re probably going to see her soon. She’s been out of the country working on that hotel reconstruction in Buenos Aires, but now she’s back in town. I ran into her today.”
Harry took a deep, calming breath but said nothing.
“Want to see a picture of her?” Theo said, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. It took him a few minutes of poking around, but at last he smiled and held the phone up for her to see.
She looked at the blond woman, petite, thin, dressed in a gauzy evening gown that seemed to float around her and heighten her elfin appearance. But it was the man next to her that held her attention, the tall, broad-shouldered man whose head was dipped down to the blonde’s, a smile on his delicious lips.
“Not . . . jealous . . .” she ground out between clenched teeth, and marched off to the bedroom, where she took great pleasure in destroying the pillow that bore Iakovos’ scent.
Theo managed to sober himself up by the time she was ready to leave. She wore a black knee-length cocktail dress with a crimson satin sash that tied under her breasts, a dress she was barely able to get into. That was just one more thing to annoy her—she’d have to go shopping at some point to buy maternity clothes.
“You have a feather in your hair,” Theo said as they met in the living room.
“You want to make something of it?” she snapped, and refused to notice that he looked very nice in his tuxedo. Damn those Papaioannou genes.
“You spoiling for a fight, Harry?” he asked, holding the door open for her.