The Greek Billionaire’s Love-Child Page 3

  ‘Yes. From the moment they come through the main door, they’re separated from the adults. What do you think?’ Rose, the senior nurse in charge of the main emergency department, looked at him nervously. ‘We’ve had builders working non-stop for the past four months.’

  Trying to show an interest, Nikos strode through the cheerful reception area and paused in the doorway of one of the cubicles. As well as state-of-the art equipment, there were neat boxes of toys, piles of children’s books and DVDs. ‘Resuscitation room?’

  ‘Next door on your left.’ Rose hurried along next to him, struggling to match her stride to his. ‘Can I ask you something, Professor?’ They were in the resuscitation room now and Nikos was mentally itemising each piece of equipment in an attempt to distract himself from the issue that had dominated his brain for the past week.

  ‘Call me Nikos, and, yes. Ask.’

  ‘We’re thrilled you’re here, obviously but—why did you take this job?’ Rose gave an apologetic shrug. ‘You’re in demand all over the world. I heard you lecture two years ago. The auditorium was completely packed out—there wasn’t even breathing room.’

  ‘Perhaps it was raining outside,’ Nikos drawled lightly, and Rose gave a lopsided smile.

  ‘I think we both know that wasn’t the case. You could be working anywhere. Why us?’

  ‘Sick children are sick children. It doesn’t matter what the setting is.’ Nikos cast his eye over the intubation tray, refusing to reveal his real reason for being there, even though he knew it would become apparent soon enough. ‘Tell me about the staff.’ He kept his tone neutral. ‘They are paediatric trained?’

  ‘We have a core of staff who are paediatric trained and we also rotate staff from the main emergency department according to need. This afternoon the paediatric nurse in charge will be Ella. She’s wonderful.’

  Ella.

  A hard knot of tension settled in his stomach and his brain was filled with a distracting image of perfectly smooth blonde hair, a sweet, seductive smile and curves designed to fuse a man’s brain. ‘I know Ella.’ Not by a flicker of an eyelid to Nikos reveal just how well he knew her. ‘We worked together in London.’

  And now she was pregnant with his child.

  A fact she’d concealed from him.

  Sharp claws of anger dug into him like talons and he breathed deeply, searching for control, shocked by the raw intensity of his rage. Well aware that people called him the ice doctor, he wondered what they’d say if they knew that at the moment he was close to meltdown.

  What was that phrase that people threw out so carelessly? Everyone has their limit.

  Was this his?

  Had he reached his limit?

  With a supreme effort of will Nikos reminded himself that anger achieved nothing. Losing his temper was not going to help.

  Emotion didn’t solve problems. What was needed was rational discussion.

  She was going to have her say. He was going to have his say.

  It was all going to be calm and reasonable.

  They were going to be civilised.

  ‘You know Ella?’ Rose was looking at him, surprised. ‘That’s wonderful.’

  Nikos gave a cool smile, well aware that Ella was going to find the situation a great deal short of wonderful. She’d kept the news of her pregnancy from him. ‘I’m looking forward to renewing our acquaintance.’

  ‘Well, you won’t have to wait long. She’s on a late shift this afternoon. She’ll be here any minute.’

  As if on cue Nikos heard her laughter from somewhere behind him and the sound released his temper. How could she laugh?

  What was funny about intentionally depriving a man of his child?

  Emotion thickened until he could taste it, until he was ready to put his fist through something.

  Rational discussion was no longer on his wish list.

  He forgot calm and reasonable.

  He forgot civilised.

  As she walked through the door, his anger erupted with volcanic force.

  Her arms were raised, her hands occupied scooping her shiny blonde hair into a ponytail, a pose that seemed to emphasise the air of vulnerability that surrounded her. And suddenly Nikos found himself thinking about all the times he’d kissed his way down her slender, creamy throat while she’d writhed and moaned his name in a desperate plea for satisfaction. He remembered how shy she’d been the first time, how hard he’d found it to believe that a woman of twenty-four had so little experience.

  Looking at her now, it was like taking a punch full in the gut.

  She was wearing a scrub suit covered in pictures of jungle animals and for a moment Nikos was distracted. With her cheerful smile and sense of fun, she’d always had a gift for turning the emergency department into somewhere a child was almost pleased to visit.

  ‘Hello, Ella.’

  She stopped instantly, the smile dying on her lips as she saw him standing there.

  Her arms dropped to her sides and she turned so pale that Nikos took an involuntary step forwards, preparing to catch her if she crumpled to the floor. Her breathing was audible and she stepped back, as if his approach represented a physical threat. For a moment she just stood there, her chest rising and falling as she sucked in air and stared at him.

  Guilt, he thought grimly, as he watched her face. What she’d done was unforgivable and she knew it. But even as the anger took him by the throat once again, his hands were ready to catch her if she fell. There was no way he was going to let her land on the floor in a heap, pregnant with his child.

  His lips burned with the need to speak his mind, but it wasn’t the time or the place so instead Nikos communicated the full force of his anger in a single, hotly charged glance.

  Apparently unaware of the dangerous shift in the atmosphere, Rose was cheerful. ‘Ella—good timing. I had no idea that you and Professor Mariakos know each other. I’m delighted. It will make things so much easier. Now I have an experienced team running the paediatric emergency unit. It’s going to be a happy summer.’

  Anticipating anything but a happy summer, Nikos kept his simmering, accusing gaze fixed on Ella’s pale, shocked face. ‘It will be like old times.’

  Something flickered in her slanting green eyes and he knew that she was thinking what he was thinking—that it was going to be nothing like old times.

  This time when they worked there would be no intimate glances, no delicious thrill of excitement as they anticipated the time when they could be alone. No soft whispers, no swift smiles and absolutely no explosive sexual chemistry.

  Only anger, blame and recrimination.

  She’d hidden the fact that she was pregnant, and no woman was doing that to him again.

  This time he wanted the right to be a father to his child.

  Pain thumped through his gut and suddenly he wanted to tower over her and demand an explanation right here, right now. He wanted to know why the hell she hadn’t contacted him herself.

  The depth of his disillusionment surprised him because he’d always considered himself to be realistic about women.

  Rose glanced between them. ‘I’ve scheduled the two of you to work together on every shift right through the summer. I don’t need to tell you that the hospital management are scrutinising this department very closely. I know it’s going to be a fantastic success.’

  Nikos dragged his gaze from Ella’s but somehow his eyes simply shifted to a different part of her, this time her abdomen. To the untrained eye her pregnancy wasn’t visible under the loose fabric of her scrub suit and yet he knew her so intimately that he could see the changes in her. Her glorious breasts were even fuller than usual, her hips more generously curved.

  Cradling his child.

  What would she have to say for herself?

  What excuse would she give?

  Was she one of these modern feminist women who wanted a baby but not a man?

  His mouth tightened into a grim line as he pondered that possibility. If that was the ca
se then she’d picked the wrong guy for a stunt like that. He was Greek. And she was about to discover exactly what that meant.

  ‘Just breathe normally, sweetheart,’ Ella soothed, her hand gently stroking the little girl’s head as she tried to relax the terrified child. ‘This mask is going to help you breathe.’

  The little girl squirmed and clawed at the oxygen mask and Ella felt her heart contract as she tried to calm her. The poor child was terrified and her fear was making her condition worse.

  Faced with a potentially life-threatening situation, Ella pushed her own problems to the back of her mind and concentrated on the job she was trained to do.

  Moments after Rose had given her the keys to the drug cupboard, the department had suddenly been swamped with patients. A dog bite, two asthma attacks and a child who had slipped while scrambling over the cliffs and sustained a nasty laceration to his lower leg.

  Denied any opportunity to dwell on the implications of Nikos’s presence, Ella had taken the most serious of the cases, a three-year-old girl with an acute asthma attack.

  Thank goodness for training, she thought numbly as she adjusted the flow of oxygen and carefully observed the child’s breathing. It was only training that was allowing her to function as if nothing was wrong. Her hands were doing the right things and her mouth was saying the right things, but inside she was shocked and shaking.

  After Helen’s confession, she’d cycled the brief distance along the canal to the hospital, her mind sifting through the various scenarios and how she’d handle them.

  He’d come. Deep down, she’d known he’d come. And she’d decided that the most important thing was to stay calm and not allow emotion to play a part in their discussion. She’d be dignified and distant and keep the conversation focused on facts and nothing more. She’d find out what he wanted in terms of access and then go away and think about it. Nothing personal. She’d dismiss him as easily as he’d dismissed her.

  At least, that had been the theory.

  But how could any woman dismiss a man like Nikos Mariakos? How did you dismiss six feet two inches of strikingly good-looking, unwaveringly confident, muscle-packed male? Muscle-packed angry male.

  Fortunately he’d gone with Rose to complete some paperwork, leaving Ella to work with Alan, a doctor with six months’ accident and emergency experience who was spending the next month in the paediatric department as part of his training. Alan was unfailingly polite and courteous and perfectly competent with the routine stuff that came through the doors of the main emergency department. Privately, Ella wasn’t sure he had the skill set to work with sick children, but she was hoping she’d be proved wrong.

  So far three-year-old Tamsin had refused to allow him to listen to her chest, and nothing he tried could persuade her to co-operate. Flustered and out of his depth, the young doctor grew red in the face as he tried to reason with the child using a falsely bright voice.

  Sensing his lack of confidence in a way that children always seemed able to do, Tamsin’s panic increased and she flailed her little arms, becoming more and more upset and making it harder for Ella to calm her.

  ‘Sweetheart, he’s not going to hurt you.’ Deciding that his presence was counter-productive, she discreetly waved a flustered Alan away from the trolley and picked up a doll from the toy box. ‘This is Angie, isn’t she beautiful? We’re going to put a dress on her and then give her some special air to breathe, just like you. Which dress do you think? You choose.’ She grabbed two dresses from the box and held them up. ‘Pink or purple?’

  Tamsin was panting for breath but she stopped clawing at the mask and pointed to a dress.

  ‘Pink? Good choice. I love pink, too.’ Ella pulled the pink dress over the doll’s head and Tamsin reached out a hand for the doll.

  ‘Say please, Tams,’ the child’s mother muttered, but Ella didn’t care about manners. She just wanted the child to keep the oxygen mask on.

  ‘Are you going to help me put a mask on Angie? Oops—it’s a bit big.’

  Forgetting her own mask, Tamsin tried to help the doll.

  ‘Good girl. Aren’t you clever? She’ll soon be feeling all better.’ As Ella praised the child she glanced at the monitor again and felt a flash of unease. Worried about what she was seeing, she glanced at the child’s mother. ‘Amanda, has she had an attack like this before?’

  ‘Nothing this severe.’ The woman was cradling a young baby and trying to calm Tamsin at the same time. ‘Just breathe through the mask like the nurse is telling you, Tams.’

  ‘Has she had a cold? Any sort of infection you’re aware of?’

  ‘Nothing.’ The baby started to cry and Amanda shifted the tiny bundle onto her shoulder with an apologetic look. ‘Sorry. I wouldn’t have brought the baby but I didn’t have anyone to leave her with. Shh, Poppy—not now. Good girl, hush.’

  Alan pushed his glasses higher up his nose. ‘Someone could give your husband a ring, if that would help?’

  Amanda gave a quick shake of her head and looked anxiously at Tamsin, clearly afraid of upsetting her still more. ‘He’s not on the scene any more,’ she murmured quietly. ‘Not since he discovered I was having this one.’

  Ella felt a rush of sadness as she focused on Tamsin’s sweet face. Long eyelashes. Blonde curls. And no father.

  Another fractured family.

  He should be here, she thought grimly, holding his little girl when she needed him.

  Mortified at having been tactless, Alan mumbled an apology, but Ella was too concerned about the condition of the little girl to dwell on the unreliability of the male gender.

  ‘Alan, that salbutamol inhaler isn’t having much of an effect. Do you want to give her some prednisolone?’

  ‘She doesn’t seem to be wheezing that badly.’ Wary of approaching the child and unsettling her again, Alan hovered a safe distance from the trolley. ‘Perhaps we ought to just try checking her peak flow?’

  ‘She won’t be able to manage it. She’s too young.’ Ella contemplated telling him that wheeze didn’t give an accurate indication of airway obstruction, but decided it would be better to mention it later when they were alone. She didn’t want to worry the child or the mother.

  Suddenly she wished that Nikos hadn’t chosen that moment to disappear with Ruth. It was impossible not to compare Alan’s hesitant, hyper-conservative style with Nikos’s bold, fearless approach to every emergency that crossed his path. He might be the last man in the world she wanted to see personally, but professionally he was a dream.

  She was swiftly weighing up her options when Tamsin’s small hand slid into hers. She looked exhausted and frightened, but the trust in her eyes tugged at Ella’s heart.

  ‘You’re going to be fine, sweetheart. We’ll make you better.’ Her hand tightening over the child’s, Ella looked at Alan. ‘She needs prednisolone.’ She spoke firmly, hoping that Alan would realise that she had experience in this area and just agree with her. ‘I think a dose of 20 milligrams would be a good idea.’

  Alan rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. ‘I’m wondering whether perhaps I might just pick the prof’s brains on this one.’

  Ella gritted her teeth. ‘Go ahead.’ She didn’t really care, just as long as someone with more experience than Alan checked the little girl. ‘See if he’s free.’ Do it now.

  As if the cosmos had ordered it, Nikos strode into the room at that moment. He’d shed his jacket, rolled his shirt-sleeves up to the elbows and everything about him was relaxed and confident. ‘Everything all right in here?’

  ‘Professor…’ Alan straightened, a flicker of awe in his eyes. ‘We weren’t sure whether or not to go straight ahead and give her a dose of prednisolone or wait a bit and see if the inhalation improves her breathing. It’s been a bit tricky, persuading her to co-operate.’

  Nikos took one look at the gasping child and murmured, ‘Give the prednisolone—now,’ in a tone that suggested the question should never have been asked.

  Alan gave Ella a
n apologetic look and she gently pulled her hand from Tamsin’s. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she soothed as the child gave a whimper of protest and clutched at the air. ‘I’m right here. Just getting you something to help you breathe.’

  She felt Nikos’s gaze on her as she reached for the dose she’d already prepared in anticipation of that exact outcome.

  ‘Her sats are 95 percent.’ Ella turned back to the child, making encouraging noises as she coaxed the medicine down the little girl, painfully conscious of Nikos’s powerful frame on the other side of the trolley. ‘The charts are behind you if you want to take a look.’

  But Nikos didn’t look at the charts. He was looking at his little patient.

  ‘Tamsin?’ A smile danced in his eyes and his expression changed from detached to playful. ‘You have no idea how happy I am to see you.’

  Tamsin shrank closer to Ella, like a tortoise retreating into the safety of its shell to hide from danger. ‘Go away.’

  Nikos leaned on the trolley to reduce his height and make himself less intimidating. ‘I will if you want me to, but first I was hoping if you could help me out with this. I have no idea what to do with it.’ From his pocket he produced a small stuffed mermaid with long golden hair. Despite her growing stress levels Ella couldn’t help smiling because it was so typical of him to know exactly how to relate to each patient.

  People said he was cold, but she knew that wasn’t always the case.

  The little girl’s expression changed from panic to interest. Still clutching Ella’s hand, she reached out for the toy, but Nikos held it just out of reach. ‘First you have to give her a name. What are we going to call her?’

  Ella caught the startled expression on Alan’s face and knew that he was wondering why a professor of international repute would choose this moment to play mermaids with a little girl.