The Greek's Pregnant Lover (9 page)

“But you learned the truth?” Cass asked with a teasing glance to Zephyr.

“It took a bit, but I did.”

Zephyr feigned shock. “So, you
don’t
think I’m easy to work for?”

“I think anyone excellent at their job, who makes a minimum of mistakes, if none at all, and who understands how very seriously you take the success of each development, will find you a pussycat to work for.”

“That’s a lot of caveats,” Neo said, laughing.

Cass raised her brows at her fiancé. “I thought she did an admirable job of being diplomatic.”

“I’m not sure if that was a character assassination, or an endorsement,” Zephyr admitted.

“See? Diplomatic,” Cass teased.

“Zephyr, you are an amazing man, but just like Neo, you’re just a little superhuman for the rest of us. You just hide your intensity behind your charm.”

“Are you saying I am not charming?” Neo demanded.

Piper made a zipping motion over her sealed lips and they all burst out laughing.

Cass leaned against Neo and rubbed her head against his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Superman, I like you just the way you are.”

Seeing his friends like this usually gave Zephyr a twinge of useless envy, but tonight all he felt was a fleeting hope Piper was seeing it, too. And perhaps realizing a reformed Greek street kid wasn’t such a bad horse to place her wager on.

“Arrogance and all?” Neo prompted Cass.

She smiled and patted his leg. “That’s part of your charm.”

Neo gave Piper a triumphant look. “See, I
do
have charm.”

“I can attest to the arrogance part of it, anyway,” Piper said with a cheeky grin. “You and Zephyr both have bigger than the average dose.”

“Has he not told you that if it is justified, then we are talking about confidence here?” Neo asked.

“That’s right,” Zephyr agreed.

Both Cass and Piper simply laughed and shook their heads.

“Want to see the pictures?” Piper asked Neo.

“But of course. I would like evidence of Zee playing the tourist.”

“Well, here he is haggling with the jeweler in the Plaka over a necklace.” She clicked to one of the photos he had not known Piper had taken. It showed him in animated conversation with a short, square Greek about twenty years Zephyr’s senior.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to try to bargain inside actual shops,” Cass asked. “I’ve been reading up on it.”

Zephyr waved his hand in dismissal. A Greek boy who made his livelihood on the streets of Athens learned to bargain with the taxman, if that’s what it took. “What could it hurt to try? I was buying an expensive piece. If he wanted to move it that day, he needed to offer me an incentive.”

“And did he?” Cass asked.

Piper laughed out loud at that. “Do you really need to ask? Of course. No one in their right mind says no to billionaire tycoon Zephyr Nikos.”

“Remember that tomorrow,” Zephyr said under his breath.

But they all three heard him and gave him looks of inquiry in varying degrees.

He shrugged. “Show Cass the pictures of the view of Athens from the Acropolis.”

“Never mind that,” Cass said. “Do you know what he’s talking about, Piper?”

Piper frowned at him. “I do and it’s not something I’m comfortable discussing right now.”

“Does it have anything to do with why Zephyr asked me about moving the head offices to the island villa?” Neo asked.

Zephyr winced and bit back a particularly virulent curse.

“You did what?” Piper demanded, shock blatant in every centimeter of her lovely face.

“What?” screeched Cass. She gave Neo a confused look. “You told me we had to wait to talk to him about it until we’d been married at least a year!”

“You and Cass have already discussed it?” Zephyr asked, taking his turn at being taken aback.

“We’ve discussed many options for the future. Cassandra wants to experience other parts of the world and I want her to have every opportunity for maximum happiness,” Neo said with a shrug.

Now,
that
did not surprise him. With more trepidation than
he had felt since leaving Greece for the unknown, Zephyr shifted his gaze to Piper to see how she was taking this discussion.

Her azure eyes were fixed on him with steady intensity. “You’re going to pull out all the stops if that test comes back positive, aren’t you?”

“Would you expect anything different?” He was ruthless, but not dishonest.

“I guess not. I was trying very hard not to think about it at all, though.” Her voice was tinged with rueful inevitability.

He did not know if that was good, or bad. “I am sorry.”

“For showing your hand early?”

“For making you think about it.”

“What exactly is it we’re thinking about?” Neo asked in a voice others had learned not to ignore.

Luckily for Zephyr, he wasn’t other people and he had no trouble ignoring his best friend and business partner’s demand.

Piper closed her eyes with every evidence of counting to ten and he thought she’d probably succeed in ignoring Neo, too.

But then Cass elbowed her nosy fiancé. “Leave them alone, Neo.” Then she sighed. “Besides, it’s obvious and not something Piper should be forced to discuss before she’s certain one way, or the other.”

“One way, or the other, what?” Neo actually sounded plaintive.

Zephyr could not remember the last time he had heard that particular tone from Neo, but it had been at least a decade, probably longer. He had no idea how Piper would react to it. He thanked God and the angels besides when she laughed.

“So, what’s for dinner?” she asked.

Even Neo knew enough to allow the subject change to pass without incident.

The rest of the evening went well, considering. Cass kept Neo in line and Piper did her best to ignore any and all leading comments and questions.

But she didn’t turn toward his door when they left Neo’s penthouse. Instead, she headed for the elevator.

He put his hand on her shoulder as she pressed the button. “Where are you going?”

“Home.” She sighed and looked back at him. “I need some time to myself, Zephyr.”

Unexpectedly, the request hit him in that place permanently wounded when his mother left him in the orphanage and never took him home with her again.

Even so, he asked, “Are you sure? You seem to sleep well in my arms.”

“I’m not sure I’m going to sleep at all.” Unfortunately, she looked like the thing she needed most right then was a good night’s rest.

In his bed, snuggled against him, damn it.

But clearly, she did not agree. She did not want or need him right then. Maybe not at all.

“An even better reason for you not to be alone.”

She shook her head, a sad look passing over her face. “I’m sorry.”

Pleading not to be left behind when someone was intent on leaving you did no good. That was a lesson he had learned even better than how to make money and at a much younger age. But it still took an inordinate amount of inner fortitude to drop his hand from her shoulder.

He stepped back. “You will call me when you get word?” He did not like asking. It reminded him of asking for his mother’s consideration and getting excuses for why things could not be different.

“Yes, of course.”

But she did not.

Zephyr forced himself to wait until after lunch to try calling her. Surely, the doctor would have contacted her by now. His
call went straight to voice mail, though. He did not bother to leave a message.

An hour later, he called her home, but got her voice mail again. At the office, her assistant answered the phone. However, she informed him that Piper was not in and not expected today.

Neo walked into Zephyr’s office later that afternoon, after Zephyr had called Piper yet again, only to get the too professional message on her voice mail box.

“You look like hell. What’s going on?” Neo demanded.

Without having to consider it, Zephyr told him. Everything.

“You should have brought her to meet Cassandra and I before last night,” was Neo’s first reaction.

“Why?” Neo had never been particularly interested in socializing with Zephyr’s other friends, unless it advanced their company’s interest.

“You have been in a sexual relationship with Piper for months and friends for over two years. How did I not know this?” Neo asked, rather than answering.

“You knew we were friends.”

“Not that good of friends.” Neo shook his head. “She’s the reason you told me sex with a friend was so good, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Have you been with anyone else sexually since you began your relationship with Piper?”

“Do you really think that is any of your business?”

“Probably not, but answer anyway,” Neo insisted.

“Once, before I realized the first time wasn’t going to be a single shot.”

“And that did not tell you anything?”

“What? I like intimacy with Piper. I am too busy with our company to expend energy on other women.”

Neo’s lips twisted in a mocking frown. “How long has your head been in the dark place?”

Zephyr remembered accusing Neo of having his head up
his ass once, in regard to Cass. Apparently this was payback. “It’s not. We both knew what we had and what we did not have.”

“And now?”

“And now she may be pregnant with my child.”

“So, that changes everything?” Neo asked.

“Naturally.”

“Why?”

“You can ask?” After the way they had both grown up, he would expect Neo to be the first to understand.

“You are not taking my point,” Neo said with exasperation. “Don’t you see that she is bound to think you are only wanting marriage because of the baby?”

“That
is
the only reason. I would not have considered it otherwise.”

“Why the hell not?”

“She deserves better.”

For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Neo looked absolutely gobsmacked. “You
are
the best.”

“You are prejudiced.” But the belligerent certainty in his friend’s voice was surprisingly nice to hear.

“I am your brother, Cass says so. That means I’m allowed.”

Zephyr felt warmth he hadn’t known in decades, but he didn’t let it show on his face. He was no pushover despite these weird emotional twinges he was experiencing. “So, step outside your personal bias and look at this from Piper’s perspective.”

“I do not see the distinction here.” Neo’s eyes filled with something far too close to pity for Zephyr’s comfort. “You’re a good man, Zephyr.”

“I did not say I wasn’t.” Merely that Piper deserved better than what he had to offer her.

“So, what is the problem?”

“She wants to be
in love
with her next husband,” Zephyr explained grimly. “Like she was with Art.”

“And you do not love her?”

“No.”

“Bull.”

Zephyr shook his head. “Love doesn’t work for everybody.” At least on that truth, he was one hundred percent convinced. And he was one of those people.

Neo sighed. “You’re right, but giving up before you even try isn’t like you.”

“Sometimes trying is the stupidest thing of all to do.”

“That does not sound like you.”

“And you sound like a broken record,” Zephyr retorted.

“So, say something that makes me understand this defeatist attitude of yours.”

“She left last night.”

“When you wanted her to stay.” Neo knew him so well, he did not even have to make it a question.

“She said she was sorry.” Just like his mother had done, over and over again—first when leaving him behind and then when she refused to bring his little sister back to visit.

In situations like this, sorry didn’t mean anything.

“She also said she would call you,
ne
?”

“Yes.”

“So, trust her to do it.”

“When?” Zephyr snapped.

“When she is ready.”

“You were not this complacent with Cass.”

“I was in love with Cassandra.” Neo’s look challenged Zephyr.

Apparently, if he was not in love, he had no right to be worried, cautious or impatient. Like hell. “So, because I’m not playing the romantic hero, I have to wait and wonder if my lover carries my child?”

“You have to wait because she will call when she is ready and not before.”

“I am well aware of that.” And it was doing nothing for his mood, which he was sure was obvious, even to Neo.

Neo looked at him like he was a newly discovered species. “I still cannot believe you had a lover for almost a year and I did not know it.”

“I did not consider her my lover.”

An unholy light gleamed in Neo’s eyes. “My friend, this just gets better and better. When did
that
change?”

“In Greece.”

“That trip had a pretty big impact even before the missing birth control patch was discovered.”

“If you say so.”

“What I say does not matter. On the other hand, what you and Piper say is of utmost importance.”

“She
said
she would call, and she has not,” Zephyr all but growled.

“Be patient and believe in your friendship if you will believe in nothing else.”

“I have no other option.”

“Then make it work for you, that is what men like us do. We do not give up.”

That was one truth Zephyr could not deny.

Neo left and Zephyr forced himself to get to work on the piles of urgent papers and messages stacked on top of his desk from his time out of the office. It was nine o’clock that night before he admitted temporary defeat and left his office.

Piper still had not called, though he had called her on the hour, every hour, since the afternoon.

Piper sat outside the Seattle Aquarium, watching children and adults come and go. Her hand rested against her lower abdomen. She didn’t feel any different. Her body had not changed at all, but inside her womb a baby grew. Her baby. Zephyr’s baby. Their child.

The wholly unexpected fulfillment of one of her dearest hopes.

She should have called right away and told him the news,
but she couldn’t. She had to think and she couldn’t do that around him right now.

She loved a man who had taken great pains to make sure she understood he would never love her. And that same man was going to ask her to marry him. She was sure of it.