The Greek Tycoon's Tarnished Bride (Men of the Zodiac) Read online

  There had been news about the wedding bombers, nothing official, but he had eyes and ears on the inside of the Greek police, and something was going down. This was a good enough reason to skip dessert and head back to the safety of the castle where any fallout could be contained. Or at least kept out. He felt incredibly on edge and wouldn’t be able to relax until they were back behind the thick, tall walls however oppressive they felt to him. It didn’t sit easily with him having to live behind locked gates no matter how vast his enclave, but Nick and Erica had to be his priority. He would live with the discomfort as long as he had to.

  “You go on ahead,” he said to a long-faced Erica as the electronic gates closed tightly shut, the locking mechanisms clanking and thudding into place like the back end of a car ferry. “I have a few business things I need to attend to. Give Nick a kiss for me, will you?”

  She nodded and went off towards his residential wing where they had spent most of their time recently. Nick was in an adjoining nursery and the nannies had a small apartment each off that room so everyone had access to Nick but their own privacy. It worked well.

  Tito sat down in the silence of his office and flicked on his computer. It was rigged up with a huge firewall of security software, and it was the way he preferred to communicate with his people if at all possible. Cell phones were far too easily compromised. He watched the egg timer symbols and whirling circles as everything loaded and suddenly felt weary. He should be sliding into bed with Erica right now, but this situation couldn’t be ignored. He had to get updated on the latest intelligence in its rawest form before everything got passed on, sanitized, and adulterated. He also hated being one of the last people to know anything and this time the situation was highly personal.

  Perhaps he should pour himself a drink. There was a commotion outside and the sound of running feet and his body reacted immediately by leaping up from his chair and grabbing the nearest heavy item on his desk, a heavy Murano glass paperweight.

  Mary ran into the office with a face that looked like she’d seen a ghost. “The baby! Nick! There is something terribly wrong. Call the doctor immediately!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Erica held Nick close to her chest and rocked him because she didn’t know what else to do. He had been asleep when she went in to kiss him good night but her touch must have woken him, and she could sense immediately that something was wrong. His eyes were listless and he felt too warm. Instead of his lusty cry there had been a wheezy moan, the pitch of which was devastating. It was weak; this wasn’t her little boy and his tiny limbs seemed to be quivering as he drew his legs up to his tummy and there was a rash forming. Something was definitely wrong.

  The door opened and closed behind her; it was Tito, and she could feel his presence immediately. “Doctor Mamalakis is on his way. He should be here in minutes.”

  “Good.” Her voice was a croaky whisper as she tried not to cry. Among all her thoughts that evening, her selfish, jealous thoughts, Nick hadn’t crossed her mind. Or at least his health hadn’t. Otherwise she would never have gone out to drink fine wine and enjoy herself because she would have stayed with him. Perhaps this was some kind of divine punishment for being rude about the ultra-religious women who swept in like black manta rays each week with their crucifixes, beads, and bunches of herbs.

  “Let me see him.”

  “No,” Erica said in a low voice. “He’s mine, not yours. Not anybody else’s. Nobody feels about him like I do, because I’m his mother.”

  She felt his hand close over one shoulder, and then the other hand pulled her gently back into his embrace. His chest and body was flush with her back, neck, and head. His silence was acquiescence, and it was the most beautiful thing he could have done. He was respecting her wishes and comforting her at the same time. “I’m with you. The doctor will be here soon, and everything will be okay, I promise.”

  A tiny noise escaped Erica’s throat as she rocked her baby, checked him every five seconds, listened to his chest and tried to breathe calmly herself. She hadn’t felt like this since the police came, and she had opened the door to the tall, dark men with somber faces. “He can’t be sick, Tito, he can’t.”

  “Everyone gets sick sometime. Everything will be fine.”

  The door to the nursery swished open, and Erica heard the doctor come in; his shoes had a particular squeak and there was a smell he carried that was astringent and cold. He smelled very similar to Nick’s Greek granny. He spoke to Tito in Greek, flicked her a reassuring smile, and peeled Nick away from her without asking. Her instinct was to cling on but her brain told her to let go. The doctor quickly laid him down in the cot and did the standard diagnostics. Nick’s head flopped listlessly from side to side as if he were exhausted and unaware of what was going on around him. Then there was a horrible noise as he was sick and the doctor quickly put him on his side so he didn’t choke. “He needs to be taken in as quickly as possible,” he stated in English and fixed Tito with a stare that meant business. “I will call ahead, but I think it would be better to take him ourselves rather than wait for an ambulance. It’s been a busy night in Accident and Emergency from what I’ve heard. Another boatload of sick tourists with heat stroke, probably.”

  Tito cursed in Greek under his breath and looked at the floor. “Okay, but I want you to come with us. We can be there in a few minutes, it’s not far.”

  “No problem. I have all the equipment a paramedic does anyway.” The doctor touched Erica’s arm. “It will all be fine. Just let us do this for him.”

  Doctor Mamalakis bundled Nick up in a clean towel that was by his cot, and Erica heard a feral wail that bounced off the ancient castle walls. It was her own voice, the only sound her body could make in the circumstances and its sound terrified her. It was something primeval, something nobody should ever have to hear.

  The doctor’s head snapped around as they rushed to the car bay below the castle and his face looked pale and drawn in the security lamplight. “Please try to be quiet Kyria Makris,” he said. “Don’t let him hear your fear. Be strong for your son. Seriously, hold it all together, you know you can. Do it!”

  Tito flinched, presumably at the doctor’s harsh words, and put his arm around her. “Let’s go,” he whispered. “Let’s get our little boy to hospital.”

  Tito drove the bulletproof SUV at high speed toward the hospital. He’d only had one drink that evening and had said it was more sensible to have the doctor in the back with the baby in case anything more happened en route. Black, blue, and white phosphorescent street lights, zigzag signs, and road markings burned their images onto Erica’s retinas and they arrived at the emergency entrance within minutes.

  A crash team was waiting and everything happened so quickly that Erica worried she might faint again. She had to stay conscious and functioning for Nick’s sake—she couldn’t leave him for a second. Letting the medical team take her baby away was like having her heart ripped out, but Tito held her arms tight against her body and let her sob uncontrollably into his chest. “He’s in good hands, trust me. We can see him again soon. Let them do what they need to.”

  Erica felt like she was going to combust. “He’s mine!” The words bounced off the ceiling, walls, and floor but she didn’t care. Her baby and life was spinning out of her control, and she couldn’t just sit quietly and do as she was told. Her head hurt, she felt sick, and her heart was pounding so hard and fast she knew it couldn’t be doing her any good. Somebody offered her a white plastic cup of water and then everything went orange, then purple, then black.

  “Tito, we made a terrible mistake in trying to separate mother from child.” Khloris Frangos wrung her hands together in the hospital relative’s room. “The demands we put on you were unreasonable.”

  Tito’s head was in his hands as he sat slumped over in an armchair, his elbows on his knees. All he wanted was to get back to Nick and Erica, but Khloris had refused to leave the hospital without speaking to him. “It will mean nothing if Nick
dies,” he said gruffly. “Now leave me alone.”

  She touched the cross that hung from her neck on a string of wooden beads as he finally looked up at her. “We are all praying for their recovery.”

  “Great.”

  She reached out and touched his hand tentatively. “They will survive, believe me. There is only so much tragedy that can fall on this family. I can feel it, truly.”

  Tito pushed her hand away. “I can’t go through something like this again. I can’t watch another baby die.”

  “You must be strong, and I know you have that strength. They will be fine and then you can reclaim your life, make changes, correct the mistake the trustees made you make…”

  “I don’t make mistakes.”

  “You took a wife you did not love. You did it because you saw no other way. The burden of your sacrifice weighs heavily on me. Yannis would not have wanted you to be trapped in a loveless marriage. Divorce her. Free yourself and there will be no repercussions.”

  Anger blasted him with vocal strength. “Erica is in there unconscious the same as Nick. Now is not the time to plot taking her child from her again. Have some respect.”

  “No, wait. Listen to me.” Khloris shook her head vehemently. “We had an emergency meeting. Erica can stay, live in your house if you will permit and raise Nick until he is a man. She can live her own life as long as Nick is safe and cared for, we will make sure of that. You don’t need to keep her as your wife.”

  He had never wanted a wife, so this should have been music to his ears, but now Tito refused to consider the fact that he secretly might not want a divorce. “But if she is no longer married to a Greek, it’s only a matter of time before the authorities ask questions.”

  Khloris cackled and the sound of her laughter bounced off the sterile hospital walls. “We can deal with that, come on!”

  Tito shrugged, his mind muddled, his heart aching. “I guess money still talks in this country.”

  “It does. And even more so now that there is little of it around.”

  “Erica might not want to stay under my roof if we are divorced. She might want to take Nick and live somewhere else in Crete to gain his inheritance. How would that be? How could we keep them both safe?” And what about me? How would I cope being separated from them now? I don’t want to let them go.

  “Then we will have to remind her it is for the best, that they will be safer with you, like a godfather, instead of a stepfather. It will work out fine, you’ll see, and nobody in authority will bother her; a woman of means minding her own business. A woman who is mother to the Frangos heir.” She looked pleased with herself. “And I doubt she would be stupid enough to turn her back on the secure and luxurious lifestyle she will enjoy in your castle at your expense. The place is huge so you needn’t even see each other if you don’t want to. The staff can be intermediaries. Neither of you wanted to get married anyway, did you? So now you don’t have to pretend any more. Good?”

  Not good. He didn’t want a divorce, and that feeling was growing stronger with every word Khloris uttered trying to convince him he should. His mind clawed desperately for a reason to leave things just as they had been before. “And her reputation? Her fitness to be a mother. Have you forgotten all the things said about that?”

  “Forget all that. Just words.”

  He was beginning to feel like a pawn in some sick family game. “Forget about it? After you were all so adamant she was nothing but a money-grabbing whore?”

  “We were wrong.”

  Tito shook his head and looked at his feet. There was a hidden agenda behind this visit, and it didn’t take much working out. “And you coming here now has nothing to do with your daughter, Valeta?”

  Khloris sighed and broke eye contact. Pure guilt. “I cannot ignore her tears and pain at what you have done.”

  He knew it, more matchmaking. They never gave up, these women. “I don’t love Valeta, however far back we go. She is Yannis’s sister and that is all she can ever be to me.”

  Khloris’ voice became pleading. “Can you not find it in your heart to take pity on her? She would never question you, Tito. She would be the perfect Greek society wife and mother.”

  He couldn’t bring himself to say that Valeta was exactly the kind of woman he didn’t want as a wife. Once upon a time he would have wanted Veleta, but Erica’s defiance and independent personality had turned his head and snared his heart. Nevertheless, he didn’t have any desire to be cruel to the old woman. “I’m sure what you say is true, but I don’t think I could ever be the husband she deserves.”

  She drew closer, and he became worried that she might actually fall to her knees and beg him. “You are the only husband she has ever wanted…”

  He touched her arm compassionately. “I’m sorry, Khloris, but I don’t love her.”

  “Perhaps in time you could? You married Erica for the greater good at the time, why not Valeta?”

  Tito felt defeated but he could not lie, and he would not give false hope so he kept his silence. There was only one woman on his mind right now.

  “I must go now,” Khloris said sadly. “Please call and let me know if anything changes. But know my heart is breaking all over again.”

  There were great sweeping banks of soft fluffy clouds…white and silver…the smell of vanilla, coffee, plastic…medicine.

  “What the—” Erica’s voice echoed, sounded strange, and then prickly reality started to flow through her veins. Her heart fluttered and her mouth felt incredibly dry. “Nick!” She sat bolt upright in the hospital bed and felt immediately nauseous, her fingers gripping at the rough white linen sheets and trying to tug them off. “Where’s my baby?” she screamed and there was a sudden burst of activity in the shiny white hospital room.

  Cool, soft hands came on either side of her and gently stopped her from trying to slide off the bed. “Please, Mrs. Makris, please be calm. You don’t want to pull your drips out. We’re here to help you, to get you better.”

  “What happened? Where am I?”

  “You’re in Rethymnon hospital, everything is fine. You’ve picked up a bug as well as being dehydrated and in shock. Your son and husband are just a few doors away.”

  “I want to see Nick, and I want to see him now,” she grunted and gasped at the way her head and stomach suddenly hurt. Another nurse appeared on the other side of the raised bed and her large brown eyes looked anxious as Erica stared at the drip taped to her hand. “And get this thing out of me immediately.”

  “But Mrs.—”

  “But Mrs. nothing, just do it!”

  Erica saw the two nurses exchange a look. “And the catheter as well?” the elder looking of the two said.

  “What!”

  “We all need to be sure you can stand up and go to the toilet unaided before we take that out.”

  Erica threw back the crispy sheets and swung her legs to the edge of the bed, now horribly aware of the tube that was visible at the bottom of the robe she had been put in. “I am so angry right now.” She stood up and glared at the collection bottle that must have been filling up for a while and retched. “Get all these tubes out of me, or I’m going to go berserk.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” both nurses replied in unison and Erica caught them rolling their eyes at each other which made her even crosser.

  “And where are my bloody clothes?”

  The younger nurse with the big brown eyes didn’t exactly smirk but her arched eyebrows had a sarcastic look about them. “I’m afraid Mr. Makris told us to incinerate them. They were a bit of a mess…”

  Ten minutes later, and then only after a doctor’s approval, Erica was unhitched from all the medical paraphernalia that kept her attached to the hospital bed like an animal in a pen. She hated hospitals ever since having Nick. It had been a painful, drawn out process in a dirty, noisy ward, and she had been alone apart from the overstretched medical staff. She had been the only woman who had nobody she knew to cling to for reassurance or comfort. She’d b
een shipped out of the hospital within twenty-four hours and when the baby blues kicked in on about day three she had been at her lowest ebb ever. Even the smell of the place brought back those hollow, terrifying memories, and she wondered if Nick would be sensing the same level of panic and anxiety, because that kind of trauma stayed in the subconscious for a long time if not forever.

  A community volunteer took her in the wheelchair the staff insisted she use down the corridor and pushed open a pale-colored door with a tiny pane of glass in it for viewing purposes. What she saw made her heart skip a beat. Tito sat in an armchair, his eyes closed and head leaning back against the wall. Dark stubble covered his jaw, and his normally immaculate hair was unkempt. There were stains all over his blue shirt, and Nick lay sleeping in a white blanket in his arms. As she was wheeled into the room Tito’s green eyes opened, and they were dull with fatigue. He smiled weakly and tipped his head towards the baby’s sleeping form.

  “Great to see you’re back with us so quickly.” He yawned and something about the sight of his jaw and throat made her insides melt. He was still crushingly handsome even if he did look like he’d gone a few rounds in an illegal boxing ring. “I’ve been going back and forth between you both all night. The doctors said you couldn’t be in the same room, which is understandable but I am exhausted.”

  Now that the volunteer had gone, she wanted to hug him senseless for being on duty all night and for being there for Nick when she couldn’t be, but she needed to know what was going on immediately. “What’s wrong with him, Tito? What did the doctors say?”

  “They’re not entirely sure. The first set of blood tests didn’t come back with much so they’ve run some more. He’s hydrated now and the diarrhea has stopped. I think the poor little guy must be empty by now.”

  Pain lanced through her at the thought of her child’s suffering, and she stood up weakly from the wheelchair. “The nurses say I’ve got a bug. Could it be the same thing? Did I give it to Nick? Oh God, this is so awful.”