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Savas's Wildcat
Anne McAllister
A week of temptation…Yiannis Savas, the irresistible playboy of the Savas dynasty, was every girl’s dream. But he quickly turned into Cat’s nightmare when his promises led no further than a fiery affair. Now Cat MacLean has grown up and out of her girlish fantasies.Determined not to fall prey to smooth talk and fast charm again, she’s engaged to someone sensible. Then she’s forced to spend a week with the one man she’s never forgotten. Yiannis’s heated gaze pierces her defences, and suddenly sensible doesn’t seem quite so exciting…
On the spot, Cat knew she couldn’t back down. It mattered too much. “I want love. I want marriage. I want a family,” she said—and watched the color drain from his face.
She didn’t need any more answer than that.
“I don’t want to marry anyone. I don’t want to get married.” He shook his head. “Not on your life.” The slow shake of his head and the clear honest look in his eyes told her as much as his words did.
She didn’t need it spelled out any more clearly.
She felt a leaden weight in the pit of her stomach, but she managed very politely to say, “Thank you.” Then she turned and walked away.
“You’re not mad, are you?” Yiannis called after her.
She didn’t turn. “Of course not.” Mortified. Humiliated. Devastated. She kept walking.
“Good. Want to get a drink later?”
No, she did not.
Even now she could still remember the hot and cold of impotent fury and humiliation that had swept over her in successive waves even after she’d left her grandmother’s and driven back to her own place. She’d named their children and he’d thought she was someone just to have a drink with!
So much for enchanted evenings. So much for true love and all the rest of her song lyric pipedreams.
So much for Yiannis Savas.
About the Author
Award-winning author ANNE MCALLISTER was once given a blueprint for happiness that included a nice, literate husband, a ramshackle Victorian house, a horde of mischievous children, a bunch of big, friendly dogs, and a life spent writing stories about tall, dark and handsome heroes. �Where do I sign up?’ she asked, and promptly did. Lots of years later, she’s happy to report the blueprint was a success. She’s always happy to share the latest news with readers at her website, www.annemcallister.com, and welcomes their letters there, or at PO Box 3904, Bozeman, Montana 59772, USA (SASE appreciated).
Recent titles by the same author:
THE NIGHT THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
HIRED BY HER HUSBAND
THE VIRGIN’S PROPOSITION
Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Savas’s Wildcat
Anne McAllister
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
“YIANNIS?”
The voice came from far away—somewhere near his mouth, Yiannis decided, which was when he realized he had the receiver upside down against his ear. He rolled onto his back and fumbled to turn it right side up.
“Yiannis? Are you there?”
Ah, yes. Better. Louder, at least. He still didn’t have his eyes open. They were gritty and he was stiff all over.
“Yeah. �M here.” His voice was like sandpaper, too, rough and sleep-fogged. No surprise since it felt like he’d barely fallen into bed.
“Oh, dear. I’ve wakened you. I was afraid of that.”
He recognized the rueful voice now. It was Maggie, his ex-landlady and current tenant who lived in the apartment over the garage of the old beach house he’d bought from her almost three years ago. He knew she hated to ask him for anything. Maggie was as independent as they came. For her to call at this hour—whatever the hell hour it was—he knew it must be important. Maybe the roof had blown off?
“What’s wrong? What happened?” He usually didn’t have this much trouble with jetlag. But he’d spent more than thirty hours getting back from Malaysia and his head was pounding. He squeezed his eyes tight shut, then forced them open again.
It was light. Not bright, though, thank God. Through the half-open blinds he could see early morning fog. The California coast was thick with it until the heat of the day burned it off. Yiannis squinted at the clock. It wasn’t yet seven.
“Nothing’s happened. Well, not to the apartment,” she answered. He heard hesitation in her voice. “I have a favor to ask.” But she still sounded a little reluctant.
Yiannis shoved himself up against the headboard of his bed and said firmly, “Whatever you want.”
When he’d made an offer on her Balboa Island house the realtor had said nervously, “The owner wants to remain as your tenant. In the apartment over the garage,” she’d qualified quickly. “It’s a condition of the sale.” One she obviously hadn’t looked happy about.
But, when he’d considered it, Yiannis decided it could be a good thing. After all, an eighty-five-year-old tenant was likely to be far less noisy and troublesome than most of those who would be drawn by Balboa’s Southern California kick-back lifestyle.
“Give her a six month lease,” the realtor had advised.
But Yiannis had actually offered to let her stay in the house while he moved into the adjoining apartment. He liked the property. Where he lived on it wasn’t a pressing concern. Maggie had said no.
She was “downsizing,” she had insisted. Climbing stairs would be “good exercise.”
So as she’d wanted, he’d moved into the house and Maggie had taken the apartment over the garage. It had worked out well for both of them. Yiannis traveled for his business of importing and exporting fine woods for custom furniture makers. Maggie never went anywhere. She kept an eye on things while he was gone. He added to her postcard and tea towel collection from all over the world. She made him cookies and the occasional home-cooked meal when he was home.
She could stay forever as far as he was concerned. Maggie was not only a perfect tenant, having her there meant he didn’t have a lot of extra space for house guests. The Savas family had long ago proved itself infinitely expandable. And while Yiannis appreciated his family’s warmth and magnanimity, he didn’t appreciate having relatives foisted on him every time he turned around.
He liked his family—but at a distance. A continent between them seemed about right.
Right before he’d headed to Southeast Asia two weeks ago, he’d been able to tell Anastasia, one of his triplet cousins, who had rung him wondering if he’d have “room for all of us” for spring break, that gee, no, he didn’t. He smiled now at the memory.
Then he flexed his shoulders and swung his legs out of the bed, and stood up. “Whatever your heart desires, sweetheart,” he said to Maggie. “Especially if it’s tea towels,” he told her. “I brought you half a dozen.”
“Good heavens!” She laughed. “You spoil me.”
“You’re worth spoiling. What do you need?” He squinted out the back window. The roof still seemed firmly attached. But he was always happy to change a light bulb or repair a latch or carry her groceries up to her apartment, though at seven in the morning, he doubted that was the problem.
Maggie sighed. “I tripped over a stupid rug and my own feet this morning and I fell. I wonder if you’d give me a ride to the hospital.”
“The hospital?” Yiannis felt as if he’d been punched. “Are you all right?”
“Of course,” Maggie said briskly. “Just having a little trouble with my hip,” she said. “I called. They said I should get it x-rayed.”
“I’ll be right there.” Even as he spoke, he was pulling on his old Yale sweatshirt. Then he yanked on a pair of jeans and stuffed his bare feet into a pair of worn deck shoes. Less than a minute later, he was pounding up the steps to Maggie’s apartment and letting himself in.
She was sitting on the sofa with a disgusted look on her face. Her white hair was pulled up into a neat bun at the back of her head. “Sorry about this. I don’t like to trouble you.”
“Not a problem. Can you walk?” He crouched down beside her.
“Well, I don’t expect you to carry me!” She pushed herself up, wincing as she did so.
“I can carry you,” Yiannis said. She weighed about as much as the decorative fishing net she had hung on one wall.
“Nonsense,” she said, but when she tried to take a step, she gave a little gasp and would have fallen if he hadn’t grabbed her.
“We should probably call an ambulance,” Yiannis said grimly. But instead, he swung her up into his arms and carried her down the stairs to the garage where both his Porsche and her Ford sedan were parked side by side. He stopped.
Maggie sighed. “We’d better take my car,” she said, a note of regret in her voice.
Yiannis grinned. “You don’t want to show up at the hospital in the Porsche?”
“I’d love to,” she said. “But you don’t have room for a car seat.”
He almost dropped her. “What?”
“We’ll need the car seat. I’ve got Harry.”
“Harry?” Who the hell was Harry?
“Misty’s baby,” she explained. “You remember? You’ve met him.”
He remembered Misty. She was Maggie’s late second husband Walter’s granddaughter. No real relation to Maggie at all, but as far as Maggie was concerned, Misty was “family.” Mostly, though, she was a flirt and a flake and, now that he recalled it, an unwed mother.
An airy-fairy surfer girl with long blonde hair, a deep tan and wide vacant blue eyes, Misty was beautiful but irresponsible. Age-wise, he figured she was about twenty—except emotionally, where she seemed more like seven. The world always revolved around Misty. Yiannis was appalled when he’d heard she had a child.
“Who’s raising whom?” he’d asked Maggie.
She’d rolled her eyes at the time. “Maybe he’ll be the making of her.”
Yiannis hadn’t thought it likely. But he did remember a scrap of a human wrapped in a blanket from one of Misty’s visits a few months back.
“What do you mean, you’ve got Harry?” he said now.
“He’s asleep in the bedroom. Don’t worry. You can wake him. He won’t fuss. Much,” she added, and gave him a look that was, he was sure, meant to be reassuring. It merely looked hopeful.
“That’s comforting,” Yiannis said drily. He cast a look of longing at the Porsche as he edged past it and carried Maggie to the passenger side of her own car. “Where’s Misty? Or shouldn’t I ask?”
Now as he opened the door and tried to settle her in the passenger seat without hurting her, she said through gritted teeth, “She went to talk to Devin.”
The baby’s father. Yiannis remembered that name. He had never met Devin. Didn’t think much of his taste in women certainly. But all he really knew was that Devin was in the army.
“There. I’m fine now,” Maggie said, giving a little shudder. She looked white around the mouth, and Yiannis was worried.
“You’re not going to faint,” he told her. It wasn’t a question. It was halfway between a command and a plea.
“I’m not going to faint,” Maggie assured him. “Go back and get Harry. My car keys are in the rooster bowl on the kitchen bookshelf.”
Yiannis took the stairs two at a time, snatched the keys out of the bowl and then went into the bedroom where Misty had apparently set up some sort of traveling crib affair for her sleeping baby. Yiannis supposed he should give her some credit for that—a car seat and a crib.
He’d have expected Misty to just dump the baby on Maggie for the day without any provisions at all. Maybe she was growing up.
The baby was stirring as Yiannis approached the crib. His dark head bobbed up and he looked around. Yiannis didn’t know how old he was. Under a year, he thought. He remembered Misty being big as a whale and grumpy about it at the beginning of last summer. So Harry must have been born in the middle of it.
“Hey there, Harry old man.” He made his voice cheerful as he peered over the top of the crib.
Harry pushed himself to a sitting position and looked up. When he didn’t see whomever he’d been expecting, his little face crumpled.
Oh, God, tears.
“None of that,” Yiannis told him firmly, snatching the boy up before he could even begin to emit a wail. Harry looked at him, startled, his blue eyes wide but, fortunately, tearless. “Let’s go find your grandma,” Yiannis said and wedging the baby on one hip, he locked the door and pounded down the stairs.
Harry didn’t utter a sound—until he saw Maggie, whereupon he let out a warbling sound and held out his arms to go to her.
“Oh, honey, I can’t take you.” Maggie looked as distressed as Harry. “Did you change him that fast”
“What?” Yiannis had opened the back door of the car and was trying to figure out the logistics of getting Harry into the car seat.
“He just got up. He’ll be wet.”
Yiannis believed that. “We have to get you to the hospital.”
“I can wait,” Maggie assured him. She gave him a sweet hopeful smile.
Yiannis returned a glare. But he backed out of the car and studied her through the window to the passenger seat. She had her hands folded in her lap.
“You’re enjoying this,” he accused her.
Maggie gave a little sniff. “I’m not enjoying my hip hurting.”
He grimaced guiltily because, of course, that was true. But still he scowled. “Making the most of a bad situation then.”
She dimpled. “Something like that.”
“You think I can’t change a diaper?”
“I think you can do anything,” Maggie said blithely, which was of course the right answer.
It was also true—and he’d prove it. “C’mon, Harry. Give us a minute,” he said gruffly to Maggie and headed back toward the apartment.
It wasn’t that he’d never changed a baby before. Hell, he’d changed a thousand of them. Well, maybe not that many, but when you came from a family the size of his—despite the fact that he was second youngest of his parents’ children—you didn’t escape babysitting. There were always cousins and nephews and nieces to be fobbed off on the unsuspecting—not to mention, unwilling—bystander.
Now he made short work of Harry’s damp diaper and redressed the boy quickly. Apparently changing babies was like riding a bike. You didn’t forget, even if you wanted to. And Harry was reasonably cooperative. He only flipped over and tried to escape twice, and Yiannis had always had quick reflexes.
“There you go,” he said to the baby. “Now let’s get your grandma to the hospital.”
He scrawled a note and left it on the kitchen table for Misty telling her where they were and to feel free to come and get Harry. Then, carrying the baby, he went back down to the garage.
Harry bounced against Yiannis’s hip and grinned and waved his arms and clapped his hands at his grandmother who returned the salute and the smile.
“You are a man among men,” she told Yiannis as he put the boy in his car seat and figured out how to strap him in.
The nearest hospital was just up the coast a few miles. Yiannis had never been there before, but Maggie knew it well.
“It’s where Walter died,” she said.
“You’re not going to die,” Yiannis said, his jaw tight with conviction.
Maggie laughed. “Not today.”
“Not any time soon.” He wouldn’t permit it. He didn’t say anything else, just focused on getting to the hospital as quickly as he could. When they arrived, he pulled into the emergency area and went to get a wheelchair. But before he could, an orderly and a nurse appeared. They efficiently bundled Maggie into the chair and started into the building with her.
“You can fill out the paperwork as soon as you’ve parked,” the nurse told him.
“I’m not—” he began, but they had already disappeared inside the building leaving him alone.
Well, not quite alone. He had Harry.
He was bouncing up and down in his car seat and making cheerful noises. He even smiled when Yiannis bent down to look in at him.
Yiannis managed a semblance of a smile of his own. “Come on,” he said, going around and getting back into the car. “Let’s go find a parking place.”
By the time he did, then extracted Harry from the car seat and went back to the emergency room, Maggie was nowhere to be found.
“They’ve taken her to x-ray,” the lady at the admissions desk beamed at Harry. “Aren’t you a cutie? How old is he?” she asked Yiannis.
“I don’t know.”
Her brows lifted in surprise.
“He’s not mine.”
“Ah, well. Too bad,” she said. Yiannis didn’t think so, but he didn’t bother saying it. “They’ll be back shortly. She did all the paperwork herself, so you’re home free,” the receptionist said. “You can wait here—” she pointed to a busy waiting room where someone was coughing and someone else looked decidedly bloody “—or in the room we put her in.”
Harry was wiggling. Yiannis didn’t think waiting in a room where Harry couldn’t touch things was going to work. “We’ll go for a walk.” He gave her his mobile phone number. “Call me when she’s back.”
In the meantime, he would wander around outside with Harry and make a few calls of his own. He’d been out of the country, scouting out wood suppliers for the past two weeks. He’d dealt with emails while he was gone, but he had a dozen or more phone calls to return. So he played back his messages and began to return his calls, all the while letting Harry crawl around the grass, while he waited for Maggie to be ready to go home.
He was on his fifth call when the receptionist rang him. “Mrs Newell is back from x-ray.”
He scooped Harry up and hurried back to the emergency room.
“Room three,” the receptionist pointed them down the hall when they returned.
Room three was like all emergency rooms everywhere—filled with machines clinking and beeping as they surrounded the gurney on which Maggie lay. The nurse patted her on the arm. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “I just need to make the arrangements.”
“Thank you,” Maggie said to her. She almost didn’t look like Maggie. The Maggie he knew was quick and energetic—and dressed. This Maggie was wearing a hospital gown. Yiannis’s brows lifted.
Maggie grimaced. She looked strained and pale, though when she saw Yiannis, with Harry on his shoulders, she managed a smile.
“Hurting?” Yiannis guessed. But he grinned at her because she would expect that.
“A bit.”
“They’ll take care of it,” he assured her. “You’ll be fine in no time. Ready to run that marathon you’re always talking about.”
“That’s what they tell me. Well, not the marathon part, but the rest.” But she didn’t sound happy about it.
Yiannis grinned, hoping she would, too. “Well, maybe a half-marathon, then,” he said cheerfully. “It’ll be okay,” he assured her.
“They said that, too.”
It wasn’t like Maggie not to look at the bright side. He studied her closely. “Well, then—”
“It’s broken.”
He blinked. “What’s broken?”
“My hip.” Her voice was flat, resigned. “They’re arranging surgery now.”
“Surgery?” he echoed stupidly. Harry thumped him in the ear.
Maggie nodded. “For tomorrow morning.”
Before the implications could begin to swim in his head, the nurse returned.
“It’s all set,” she said to Maggie. “They’ve got a room for you on the surgical ward. We’ll be moving you there now. I’ve talked to Dr Singh’s nurse. He’ll do the replacement tomorrow morning at nine.” As she spoke, she began to unhook Maggie from the monitors, eventually leaving in only the IV that was connected to the back of Maggie’s hand. When she finished, she stuck her head out the door and called for one of the orderlies to come help.
Then she turned to Yiannis. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you can’t come with her. Since the flu outbreak this past winter, hospital regulations don’t permit children under fourteen on the ward.”
“He’s not mine.”
“But you’re holding him,” the nurse pointed out.
“But—”
“If you have someone with you that you can give him to,” she suggested, her voice trailing off, the implication obvious.
Yiannis shook his head.
The nurse shrugged and gave him a conciliatory smile. “Sorry. Rules, you know. Go home. Call her in half an hour. We’ll have her settled by then. Or she can call you. Don’t worry. We’ll take good care of her.”
“Yes, but—”
But the orderly came in then, and the nurse had other duties. She disappeared, leaving Yiannis holding the baby while he watched the orderly put Maggie’s clothes in a bag, then stow it in the bottom of the gurney. In a minute he was going to wheel her down the hall and leave him here—alone—with Harry.
“Maggie?” he said, as the realization came home to roost.
“I know,” Maggie said sorrowfully. “What will we do?”
“I don’t think you’re going to be doing anything,” Yiannis said flatly.
Maggie looked guilty. “I should have realized.”
“There’s no way you could have known,” Yiannis assured her. “Don’t worry. It will be fine.” He could cope for a couple of hours.
Maggie didn’t look too sure.
“All set?” the orderly asked Maggie, hooking the portable IV unit to the gurney and beginning to wheel it toward the door.
“You can manage until tonight?” Maggie asked over her shoulder.
“Tonight?”
Misty wasn’t getting back until evening? Yiannis tried not to sound annoyed, but he was. Not because of Maggie. But because it was just like Misty to impose like that. She was forever doing something and then expecting the whole world—mostly the world known as Maggie—to step in and pick up the slack. And now she’d taken off for the entire day and left her baby with an eighty-five-year-old. She’d probably never even considered that Maggie might fall and break her hip.
Well, he supposed, to be fair, if you knew Maggie, her falling and breaking her hip wouldn’t be the first thing you’d think of. For an eighty-five-year-old she was well-nigh indestructible. But still—
He hurried after the gurney as the orderly pushed it down the hall. “Don’t worry about it,” he said firmly, catching up, Harry bouncing along on his shoulders, hanging on to fistfuls of his hair.
“I know it’s an imposition.”
“For you, darlin’, I’ll manage.” He gave her a grin and a wink, determined that she shouldn’t fret about him dealing with Harry. “Really. It’ll be fine. But,” he added, “you’d better give me her cell phone number just in case.”
The least he would do was call and tell her about Maggie’s surgery. And if he casually chewed darling Misty up one side and down the other for taking advantage of her step-grandmother’s generosity, well, he figured it wouldn’t hurt Misty a bit.
Of course he didn’t say so. Maggie would not like him telling off Misty, not because of Misty’s failings, but because she wouldn’t want anyone to think she wasn’t as capable as she’d ever been.
“She put her number in the rooster bowl on the kitchen shelf at home,” Maggie said as they stopped at the elevator.
The orderly pressed the button. “This is as far as you go,” he told Yiannis as the door opened. The orderly pushed Maggie inside.
“Don’t worry,” Yiannis said to Maggie. He reached out and gave her hand a quick squeeze. “We’ll hold the fort, won’t we, Harry?” He tugged on the little boy’s foot. Harry giggled. “What time will she be back?”
“The fifteenth.”
He hadn’t heard her right. “Seven-fifteen?”
Maggie shook her head. “The fifteenth,” she repeated.
Yiannis stared. “What?”
Maggie sighed. “Of March.”
The elevator doors started to close.
Yiannis stuck his foot in between them. “That’s two weeks!”
Maggie nodded. “She’s hoping by the time she comes home, they’ll have things worked out and when he gets back they’ll get married. Actually I think she hopes they’ll get married over there.” Maggie managed to look bright at the possibility.
“Over where?”
“Germany.”
This time when Harry hit him in the ear it was nothing compared to what he’d just heard. “Germany?”
“Please, sir. Keep your voice down,” the orderly said sharply.
Yiannis did his best, demanding through his teeth, “Tell me Misty didn’t go to Germany.”
Maggie gave a helpless shrug. “I can’t. She went. Well, she went to London first. But then Germany, yes. Devin has two week’s R&R.”
“And he didn’t want to see his kid?”
“Er, I don’t believe he knows about Harry.”
“For God’s sake!” Yiannis exploded.
“Sir!” The orderly looked censorious.
“I’m so sorry, dear,” Maggie apologized.
Yiannis sucked in a breath. “It’s all right,” he lied because after all, it wasn’t Maggie’s fault. “I’ll call her. Get her to come back.”
“Not necessary,” Maggie said. “I’ve taken care of it.”
Thank God. He smiled his relief.
“You won’t be alone,” she added. Her smile brightened. “Cat is on her way.”
Cat? Here?
Just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse.
Yiannis opened his mouth to protest as the elevator doors began to slide shut.
“She’ll be delighted to see you,” Maggie promised as they closed to leave him staring at them.
Delighted to see him? Not hardly.
Catriona MacLean was the sexiest woman he’d ever met. She was Maggie’s own granddaughter, as opposed to her step-granddaughter, the flaky Misty. Cat was the sensible granddaughter.
The one who hated his guts.
Taking a plane would have been quicker. The hour flight from San Francisco to Orange County, even with all that standing around airports beforehand, would have got her to her grandmother’s bedside in far less time.
But Cat would need her car when she got to Balboa. Southern California wasn’t meant for those who depended on public transportation. And Gran had said her surgery wasn’t until tomorrow morning. So even though she hadn’t been able to leave until after work, Cat knew she’d be there in plenty of time.
Besides, it wasn’t a matter of life and death.
Yet.
The single renegade word snuck into her brain before she could stop it.
Don’t think like that, Cat admonished herself, sucking in air and trying to remain calm as she focused on the freeway. Gran wasn’t dying. She had fallen. She had broken her hip.
Lots of people got broken hips and recovered. They bounced back as good as new.
But most of them weren’t eighty-five years old.
Which was another nasty thought that got in under her radar.
“Gran’s a young eighty-five,” Cat said out loud, as if doing so would make it truer. Exactly what a “young eighty-five” meant, she didn’t know. But it sounded right.
And she knew she couldn’t bear the thought of losing her grandmother.
Normally she never even thought about that sort of thing. Ordinarily Gran seemed just the same as she had always been—no different—or older—than when Cat had come to live with her twenty-one years ago. Margaret Newell had always been a strong, resilient healthy woman. She’d had to be to take on an angry, miserable orphaned seven-year-old.
She still was resiliant. Cat reminded herself. She just had a broken hip.
“She’ll be fine,” she said, speaking aloud again. “Absolutely fine.”
But even though she said it firmly, she feared things might be changing. Time was not on her grandmother’s side. And someday, like it or not, ready or not, time would run out.
But usually she didn’t have to think about it. She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want Gran’s mortality thrust front and center in her life right now.
Or ever.
She was momentarily distracted by a pinging sound in the engine of her fifteen-year-old Chevy that she didn’t think should be there. She didn’t ordinarily depend on her car as her first choice of transportation. Foolish, perhaps, but in San Francisco, she didn’t need to. The bus or Adam, her fiancé, took her wherever she needed to go.
Of course she had intended to get new tires before she came down to see Gran at Easter. But Easter was still a month away. So she hadn’t got them yet. Besides, she was hoping Adam would come down with her. Then she might be able to put off getting them even longer.
But, in reality, Cat knew she should have got them last week. She should have been prepared. When your only living relative reached eighty-five years, you should always be prepared for anything. But “anything” seemed to imply “dying.” And there she was back at the grimmest of possibilities again.
Damn it! She slapped her palms in frustration against the steering wheel.
“Don’t die,” she exhorted her grandmother now, though only Huxtable and Bascombe, her two cats fast asleep in the backseat, were there to hear her. They both slept right through her exhortation.
“You’ll be fine,” Cat went on as if her grandmother was listening. She infused her voice with all the enthusiasm she could muster. The cats ignored that, too. They ignored pretty much everything she did or said that didn’t have to do with cans of cat food.
“It’s no big deal, Gran,” she went on firmly. But her voice wobbled and she knew she wouldn’t convince anyone—especially no-nonsense Maggie Newell.
But she said them again. Practiced them all the way to Southern California because if she sounded convincing, then they would both eventually come to believe it. That was how it worked.
“You can make it happen,” Gran had told her long years ago, “if you sound convincing.”
And Cat knew for a fact it was true. She remembered those months after her parents had been killed and she had come to live with Gran and Walter. She’d been devastated, angry, a ball of seven-year-old misery. She’d hated everyone and she was sure she’d never be happy again.
Gran had sympathized, but had insisted that she try to look on the bright side.
“What bright side?” Cat had wanted to know.
“You have a grandmother and grandfather who love you more than anything in the world,” Gran had told her with absolute conviction.
Cat hadn’t been all that sure. It might be true, but it hadn’t seemed like much compared to the love she’d lost at her parents’ death. Still, she knew Gran had to be hurting, too. If Cat had lost her parents, Gran had lost her only daughter and her son-in-law. Plus she’d suddenly been saddled with an opinionated, argumentative child just when she and Walter were getting ready to retire and do what they wanted to do.
Still, Cat had wrapped her arms around her chest and huddled into a small tight cocoon of misery, resisting when Gran had slid her arms around her skinny shoulders and said, “Let’s sing.”
“Sing?” Cat had been appalled.
Gran had nodded, still smiling and wiping away the tear streaks on her own cheeks. “There’s a great deal to be learned from musical comedies,” she said firmly.
Cat hadn’t known what a musical comedy was. She’d sat, resisting, stiff as a board. But Gran had persisted. She didn’t have a good voice, but she had all the enthusiasm in the world.
She sang “Whistle a happy tune,” and then she sang “Put on a Happy Face.” She had smiled into Cat’s unhappy one and kissed her nose. Then she’d sung “Belly Up to the Bar, Boys.”
It was so absurd that even feeling miserable, Cat had giggled. And Gran had hugged her tighter, and then the dam inside her broke, and she remembered how she had by turns sobbed and laughed in her grandmother’s arms. They’d sobbed and laughed together. And Cat could still feel the solid comforting warmth of her grandmother’s arms around her that day. She longed to put her own arms around her grandmother now.
“It will be fine,” she had told her grandmother on the phone that afternoon, refusing to let her voice crack. “We won’t only sing. We’ll dance,” she vowed. “You’ll be dancing in no time.”
In her mind’s eye she could see Gran dancing now. It made her smile—and blink away unshed tears. There. That was better.
Gran was right: you had to sound convincing to be believed—especially by yourself.
It did work. Cat knew it worked. At least in cases of misery—and in cases where the outcome was up to her.
If theme songs weren’t one hundred percent foolproof it was because one time she’d been a fool and dared to believe in something she had no control over. Warbling “Whistle a Happy Tune” had got her through making new friends at her new school and in the Girl Scout troop. “Climb every Mountain” had helped her through swimming lessons and eighth grade speech. “Put on a Happy Face” had forced her to smile through teenage angst.
And if “Some Enchanted Evening” had failed her, it wasn’t because there was something wrong with the song. There had been something wrong with the man.
She’d loved. But her love had not been returned. So she’d learned her lesson.
That was all behind her now. Now she had Adam who really did want to marry her, who smiled indulgently and shook his head and called her “Little Mary Sunshine,” though sometimes she wasn’t entirely sure he thought her sunshiny attitude was a good thing.
Adam was a banker, a very serious banker. Cat didn’t mind serious. She didn’t mind that he was a banker. It meant he was trustworthy. Dependable. The right sort of man to start a family with.
And more than anything Cat wanted a family.
She flexed her shoulders and tried to ease the kinks out of them. Bascombe mewed and poked his head between the two front seats. She wondered if he sensed that they were coming home. He’d been born on Balboa Island, had spent the first two years of his life there. They were south of Los Angeles at last, heading toward Newport and the beach. It was past one in the morning now and she was tired. Her only stop had been for gas in King City. Now she yawned so widely that she heard her jaw crack.
“Almost home,” she told Baz. But the moment she said the words her stomach clenched, because once again the memories came flooding back, reminding her of the days she’d thought that Gran’s old house would become her home again, that she’d marry and raise a family there.
And now—now it wasn’t. She wasn’t.
“Don’t go there,” Cat warned herself.
Because every time she did, she thought about Yiannis Savas and she grew hot and flustered and mortified all over again. Everything in her wanted to turn around and head straight back to San Francisco. For more than two years, she’d done exactly that—stayed well away from him.
But this time she couldn’t because Gran was counting on her. She had to suck it up and act like the grown-up woman she was, and forget all about the airy-fairy fool who’d had her head in the clouds—or in the song lyrics—that had only brought her pain.
Determinedly she turned on the radio and tuned in the heaviest metal she could find. Baz hissed in protest.
“Sorry,” she said, but he couldn’t have heard her over the noise.
No matter. She needed it. Usually when she came down to visit Gran she tried to time it for when he was out of the city or, better yet, out of the country.
But this time she feared her luck wasn’t that good.
When Gran had called she’d said Yiannis had brought her to the hospital. He was wonderful to her, of course. As always Gran couldn’t say enough good things. Yiannis was “so thoughtful. So helpful. Taking care of everything until you get here.”
What “everything” meant had not been specified.
“But I know you’ll help him when you get here,” Gran had said confidently.
The words had made the skin on the nape of Cat’s neck prickle. Help Yiannis? Not likely.
Whatever needed doing, she would do it herself. She would step in, take over, and that would be the last she would have to see of him. Fine with her. And she suspected it would be fine with him, too. Yiannis wouldn’t want her around “getting ideas” the way she had the last time, would he?
Her cheeks started to burn again.
“I told him you’d help,” Gran had said firmly when she hadn’t replied.
Cat wasn’t going to say what she was thinking. It wasn’t the sort of thing you said to an eighty-five-year-old woman on her way to surgery the next morning. So Cat had made noncommital noises that could be construed as agreement.
“Couldn’t be bothered to stay and see you settled in?” She did say that and it sounded about right. Yiannis wasn’t one for commitment. Even the two hour variety.
“He just got back from Malaysia last night. He’s exhausted. He needs his rest.” Gran always managed to think the best of him.
But Cat had snorted. She knew Yiannis worked. But she also knew he played. Hard. Mostly what she saw Yiannis doing was playing—chatting up women. Charming them. Rubbing suntan lotion on their backs. Kissing them. Making them fall in love with him.
Then moving on to the next one.
Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel.
Poor Yiannis, she thought, annoyed. Yes, he might be exhausted. But she was willing to bet that if he was in his bed right now, he wasn’t sleeping.
When she finally drove onto the island, the streets were deserted. Even the bars were closed. And while it ordinarily took ages to navigate Balboa’s crowded main streets to get to Gran’s, now she was pulling up to park in just a few minutes. All the lights were off at Yiannis’s house on the front of the lot. But in the back, above the garage, there was a light on in Gran’s living room. Apparently Mr Savas had left the light on for her.
Grudgingly, Cat gave him one point for that.
She opened the car door and, in the unaccustomed silence, could hear the sounds of waves breaking against the shore. Getting out, she stretched, working the stiffness out of her cramped muscles and breathing in the damp sea air. Then, still rolling her shoulders, she opened the back door and reached in, scooping a cat up into each arm.
She carried them past Yiannis’s house, through the small garden and up the stairs to the apartment. Then she opened Gran’s door and shooed the cats in. Then she went back for her suitcase. Lugging it up the stairs, she tried to imagine when her grandmother would be able to climb them again.
Or if she would.
Something else she didn’t want to think about.
Finally she reached the small porch, shoved open the door and heaved the suitcase inside. The cats loped toward her, then wove between her ankles, purring and meowing.
“Food,” she translated and fished a can and their bowls out of her suitcase. While they were eating, she filled the litter box that Gran kept for their visits. By the time she finished Hux and Baz were back, looking for more food.
“Tomorrow,” she told them sternly “Now just chill out and let’s get some sleep.”
They purred a bit more, but she resolutely ignored them. She was too exhausted to think. Her brain buzzed. Her eyes felt scratchy.
At least tonight, with Gran in the hospital, she wouldn’t have to sleep on the sofa.
She went into the bathroom and stripped down to her T-shirt and underwear, too tired to dig through her suitcase for a nightgown. Then she brushed her teeth and shook her head at the sight of her bloodshot eyes in the bathroom mirror. Then, yawning, barely able to keep those eyes open, she pushed open the door to the bedroom, flicked on the light …
And stopped dead.
Yiannis—and a baby—were fast asleep on Gran’s bed.
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU!”
At the squawk of feminine indignation and the sudden blinding overhead light, Yiannis threw up a hand to protect his eyes. Squinting, trying to figure out where the hell he was, he raised his head and saw two things—a sleeping baby on his chest and Catriona MacLean—in her underwear—gaping at him from the doorway.
He gaped right back, as dazed by the view as by the light. Fortunately he had the presence of mind to keep a hand firmly on Harry’s back as the little boy began to stir. “Turn off the damn light,” he commanded, though it rather pained him to do so. The view—as his pupils adjusted—was stunning.
“What?” Cat didn’t move.
Harry whimpered.
“Turn off the flaming light, woman.” Yiannis would have levered himself up and done it for her, but doing so would have disturbed the baby. “Unless,” he added through his teeth, “you want him to start screaming. Again.”
After three hours of virtually nonstop crying that had only tapered off what felt like minutes ago, Yiannis sure as hell didn’t. All his nerve endings were frayed. Harry would probably still be yelling if Yiannis hadn’t finally taken a page out of his brother Theo’s book and settled the little blighter down on his chest.
That at last, had worked. But even as he finally quieted and drifted off, Harry still emitted intermittent heart-wrenching sighs that shuddered through his small frame. They made Yiannis feel guilty, though he wasn’t the one who ought to be, heaven knew.
Fortunately the shuddering sobs were getting fewer and fewer. But he was not inclined to let anyone wake Harry again any time soon. He thought he might have to get up and shut it out for her when finally Cat did what she was told. The light flicked off. But he could still glimpse those memorable slender curves silhouetted in the doorway.
“What are you doing in Gran’s bedroom?” Cat demanded.
What the hell did she think he was doing?
“Guess,” he said irritably. “And shut the door while you’re doing it. I’ll be out when I’m sure he’s settled.”
“Huh.” It was a snort that carried with it a truckload of doubt. But at least she finally pulled the door shut and remained on the other side of it.
Yiannis ground his teeth. He would have shut his eyes and gone back to sleep again, given half a chance, even though he’d doubtless have Cat’s curves dancing on the insides of his eyelids. But he knew sleep was out of the question.
Cat would be back, even more annoyed than she was now—and she’d wake Harry. And while a part of him thought it would serve her right to deal with a screaming child, the sane sensible part knew that Harry didn’t deserve to be awakened again.
Sighing, Yiannis worked a hand under Harry’s belly and slowly rolled onto his side so he could slide Harry off onto the mattress. Harry made a soft whuffling noise. Yiannis froze.
The door cracked slightly. “Well?” a voice whispered.
Yiannis’s teeth ground together. “Out!” And he held his breath, waiting until he was sure Harry was asleep again. Then he brushed a hand over Harry’s downy head and started to slide off the bed when suddenly he felt something bounce onto it.
“What the—?”
A hard fur-covered head bumped against his shoulder. Yiannis reached out a hand and encountered a cat. A cat?
He grimaced. Oh, hell, yes. He remembered it now. Careful not to jostle the mattress, Yiannis eased himself off it, then snagged the cat up into his arms and, quietly as he could, he crossed the room and eased open the door.
Catriona MacLean was hastily zipping herself into a pair of baggy shorts. Pity. He would have liked to have seen more of those long bare legs. He remembered them well enough. Too well, damn it, for his peace of mind. The sight of them and the pert breasts that still peaked braless beneath her shirt were distractions that would only complicate things. More complications he didn’t need.
When he dragged his gaze up to her face, he found her glaring at him. Deliberately and quietly he shut the door behind him, crossed the room and dropped the cat into her arms. “Yours?” he said acidly.
Her arms came around the cat and she buried her face against him for one long moment. Excellent. The feline covered her breasts.
“Mine,” she said tersely. Then she lifted her flashing eyes. “What are you doing here? You and … and … your baby?” She almost stumbled over the last word.
Hell! She thought it was his?
“Not my baby,” Yiannis said firmly.
An expression he couldn’t quite interpret flickered across her features. “Then what are you doing with it?” she demanded.
“Him,” Yiannis said. “His bed is here.”
“His bed?” She blinked.
“Crib,” Yiannis said. “Didn’t you see it?”
“I didn’t notice. I saw—you … and …” She gave a wave of her arm toward the bedroom.
“Harry.”
She stared. Her mouth opened. And shut. “H-Harry?” There was a flicker of recognition colored by doubt.
Yiannis nodded. “Harry.”
“Not …” She shook her head as her voice trailed off. Her gaze flicked to the closed door, then back to him. She hugged the cat tighter, as if he were some sort of shield she could hide behind. But of course he was a cat and had no intention of letting himself be used for anything at all. So he twisted and rippled right out of her arms and bounded away. Cats were like that. That’s why Yiannis was a dog person.
“Misty’s Harry?” Her tone was a mixture of doubt and disbelief.
“The very same.”
He watched as Catriona MacLean digested that. The doubt and disbelief both wavered, then slowly vanished, followed by a look, not of shock, but of weary resignation. Her mouth tightened into a thin line. It looked as if she had the same opinion of Misty that he did.
Finally—something they could agree on.
“Where is Misty?” She looked around as if she might not have noticed Harry’s mother in the room.
“Germany.”
“What?” Then, “You’re joking.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
Their gazes locked, dueled.
Finally Cat accepted the truth and shook her head. “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She sounded weary and disgusted, and her still pale face now showed an interesting blotch of freckles that stood out against her pallor. The indomitable Catriona MacLean looked worn out.
It was the first time he’d been given a glimpse of the Cat beneath the fierce facade she presented to the world. Or at least to him. It reminded him of the day she’d told him her hopes—and he’d walked away from them.
He didn’t want to think about that. Nor, apparently, did she. She must have realized that she was betraying her feelings, so she drew herself up sharply and wrapped her arms across her breasts.
“So what’s he doing here?” she asked coolly. “With you?”
“He was staying with your grandmother.”
“While Misty went to Germany?” Doubt dripped from her words.
“Apparently that’s where Harry’s father is.”
Cat pursed her lips, the information obviously gave her pause for thought. Then she apparently had the same thought he’d had. “Why didn’t she take Harry?”
“Maggie said Harry’s dad doesn’t know he is one.”
Cat groaned. “So she’s gone to tell him.”
It wasn’t a question. She sighed and shook her head. “Fat lot of good that will do.” Then she reconsidered. “Well, I suppose it does her some good. Gets her away from her responsibility for a day or two.”
“Week or two,” Yiannis corrected. “Two, actually.”
“What?”
“Quiet! You’ll wake him up again. You don’t want that. Trust me.”
To his amazement, she immediately pressed her lips into a firm tight line and didn’t say another word, just stared at him mutely. And he stared back, wondering why he did—why he always had. Catriona wasn’t beautiful, God knew. And she wasn’t his usual type. Ordinarily Yiannis went for blondes with long straight hair, small curvy girls who fit beneath his arm. Cat was nearly as tall as he was, more angles than curves, with vivid red curls, a million or so freckles, a tiny gap between her front teeth and green eyes that flashed fire rather than spoke of bedroom delights. Not his type at all.
And yet he’d wanted her from the moment he’d seen her.
Still did. And that was the annoying part.
He didn’t want to be plagued by attractions that wouldn’t go away. He’d steered clear of them his whole life. He’d had plenty of women tell him he was commitment-phobic. They all wanted to know what dire circumstance in his past had so damaged his psyche that he couldn’t bring himself to get involved.
“He’s not damaged. He’s selfish,” his sister Tallie had told one of them.
It was, essentially, the truth. Relationships required effort. They made demands. Took time. He wasn’t interested. He liked his freedom, wanted to be unencumbered, forever footloose and free.
It was why Cat snarled and spat at him. They’d had three months together. Damn good months, he remembered. He’d never clicked with any woman the way he had with Cat, in bed and out.
But ultimately she’d wanted more than he’d been willing to give. And now, according to Maggie, she’d found someone who was willing. He found himself looking at her hand to see if she wore a ring.
She did. It flashed in the light as she moved. His jaw tightened.
“Impressive,” he grunted.
She blinked. “What?”
“Never mind.” More power to her, he thought grimly. She’d got what she wanted. And he didn’t have to keep standing here. He was free to go. Smiling, he flexed his shoulders.
“Right,” he said. “I’ll be off then.”
“Off? No!” The sudden urgency in her tone surprised him, as did the volume. So much for silence. Instantly Cat clapped her hand over her mouth, then warily uncovered it again after a long moment’s wait didn’t produce a wail from the bedroom. Then she said in little more than a whisper, “I mean, no. You can’t.”
“Can’t?”
Cat shrugged awkwardly. “Well, I mean … he doesn’t know me. He knows you!”
“He didn’t know me fifteen hours ago.”
“But he knows you now,” she insisted.
“So?”
The color was high in her cheeks. “So you don’t want him having a fit when he wakes up and finds a stranger here.” She waved her hands. The ring flashed again.
Yiannis narrowed his eyes. “You mean you don’t.”
But she didn’t admit that. She gave him a guileless look, then pursed her lips and raised her chin. “Children need continuity.” She sounded like a public service pronouncement.
“Says who?”
“I deal with children every day. I’m a librarian.”
“Then tell him to shush.”
Her green eyes flashed. “Not a stereotypical librarian. I give programs. I tell stories with puppets.”
“I’m sure Harry will love puppets.”
She hugged her arms across her chest. “You’re laughing at me.”
“I’m not,” he swore, but he did like watching her eyes flash. He always had.
“You are,” she disagreed and gave him one of her disapproving looks. “But when he wakes up and doesn’t know who I am, that won’t be good for him.”
“I’m not sure life has been particularly good for Harry.”
Cat’s mouth opened. And closed again. From her expression he thought she was considering what Harry’s life was like.
Finally she sighed. “Poor Harry. Gran shouldn’t have said she’d take him.”
He frowned. “And that would have been better because?”
She flung her hands in the air. “Because then maybe for once Misty would act responsibly.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
“No. Probably not. But I don’t know what to do. I can’t take him for two weeks! And Gran won’t be able to.”
“Misty’s number is in the rooster bowl,” Yiannis told her. “Maybe you’ll have better luck getting hold of her than I did.”
“I doubt it. Germany?” She shook her head. “I can’t think why Gran would have agreed. She didn’t even mention it when she called me.”
“She didn’t mention him to me, either—until I was putting her in the car.”
At Cat’s look of surprise, Yiannis shrugged. “Well, what was she going to do? Call social services and tell them to come and get this spare baby she couldn’t take care of any longer?”
“Of course not, but—” Cat paused, considering. “I guess she didn’t want to give you a chance to back out.”
“Or you, either, obviously,” Yiannis said.
“So, what are we going to do?”
Yiannis blinked. “We?”
“Oh, I forgot. You don’t do responsibility, do you?”
“I’m here,” he pointed out, irritated at how the veiled accusation stung.
“And leaving,” she reminded him.
“You want me to spend the night with you?” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
“I do not. I know better than that,” Cat snapped. “I’m only trying to think of what’s best for Harry.”
“Well, I did my bit. Maggie said you’d be taking over.”
“It’s not what she said to me! She said I should help you.”
“You’re her granddaughter.”
“You’re her landlord!”
“You’re Harry’s aunt. Or cousin. Or something.”
“Not … technically. Misty is Walter’s granddaughter. Not related to me.”
“Or me,” Yiannis pointed out.
There was a silence during which he could actually hear a wave break against the sand half a block away, could almost see thoughts forming in Cat’s mind, though he didn’t know what they were.
Finally she sighed. “Fine,” she said abruptly. “Go. Take your freedom and leave. It’s only what I’d expect.” She started toward the bedroom.
Instinctively Yiannis blocked her way. “If you need me to stay, I’ll stay.”
Where the hell had that come from?
Cat stopped inches from him. Close enough that he could count her blasted freckles. Dark brows hiked haughtily on her forehead. “I don’t need you at all!”
“But you’re afraid Harry might,” he persisted.
She shoved a hand through her hair. The diamond winked. “He might,” she said grudgingly. “If he was that upset before, how upset will he be if he wakes up and finds yet another stranger here. But never mind. You’re right. Harry is my responsibility. Of the two of us, I’m the one who should be taking care of him. Now—” she looked past him toward the front door, as if wishing him through it “—it’s late. I’ve driven all the way from San Francisco. I’d like to go to bed. I’m tired.”
Yiannis would like to go to bed, too. With her, damn it. He was a healthy red-blooded male, for God’s sake. But thinking about it wasn’t going to make it happen. So he shoved the thought away.
“You’d better hope Harry sleeps then,” he told her.
“I hope Harry sleeps.” She said it with enough fervency to make it sound like a prayer. “Good night.” She brushed past him to put a hand on the bedroom door. “Turn out the light when you leave.”
He’d been dismissed, but Yiannis didn’t move. “Do you know anything about babies?” he asked.
Cat glanced back at him over her shoulder and gave a half-shrug. “I expect I’ll learn.”
“At Harry’s expense.”
“We’ll be fine,” she said stoutly. “I babysat once or twice when I was a teenager, and I deal with preschoolers all the time.”
“Harry’s not a preschooler.”
“And I’m not a teenager. We’ll cope.”
He doubted it. He’d just been through a three hour Harry War Zone. At least he knew what to do. And he’d done a damn sight more babysitting in his life than she apparently had. Harry wasn’t any docile cherub. He wriggled when you changed him, and he could crawl faster than lightning. She’d probably let him fall off the bed.
“Fine,” he snarled. “I’ll stay.”
“What? No!”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Two minutes ago you didn’t want me to leave!”
“I over-reacted.”
“Maybe,” he said grimly. “But you haven’t seen Harry at full throttle.”
“Don’t do me any favors.”
“I’m not doing you any favors. I’m doing Harry a favor.”
Cat opened her mouth as if she were going to dispute that. But apparently she thought better of it. She gave a casual lift of her shoulders and said, “If you think so.”
In fact Yiannis thought he needed his head examined. He wanted to bed her, not spend the night with an eight-month-old. But he couldn’t leave Harry to her mercies, could he? And she wasn’t going to sleep with him anyway. Not the way she kept flashing that ring around. No, he was doing this for Harry—because she’d basically said she had no idea what she was doing. “I think so,” he said shortly.
“Suit yourself,” she said as if it were a matter of supreme indifference. “I’ll make up the sofa for myself then.”
And she brushed back past him to go and open the chest beneath the window next to the sofa.
He should have turned on his heel and gone straight into the bedroom. Of course he didn’t. He did what he always did when she was around—watched her. And if he’d thought she was tempting before, the sight of Cat MacLean’s lush bottom and long legs as she bent to pull out a sheet and summer weight blanket made Yiannis’s body go on full alert.
Don’t look, his sane sensible self told his rampaging libido.
But it was like telling himself to turn away from two speeding trains headed straight at each other, just about to crash. Only when she straightened again and tossed the sheet onto the sofa did he manage to drag his gaze away.
“What?” Cat demanded when he still stood there, his brain turning to mush while other parts of him felt more like hot steel.
He turned away abruptly, clearing his throat. “Nothing.”
“Well, then?”
As if on cue there was a whimper from beyond the door.
Cat’s eyes widened. “He wants you.”
“He probably wants his mother.”
“Then more fool he,” Cat said. Yiannis totally agreed with her. “What’s wrong with him? Is he hungry?” she asked, looking a bit nervous.
“Maybe. I gave him a bottle about eight.” Fortunately he’d found plenty of formula when he’d gone through the cabinets. Either Misty or Maggie had thought ahead, thank God. But even so, he’d called his sister, Tallie, who had four kids of her own to ask what he was supposed to feed Harry and how often.
Predictably Tallie had laughed. “You have a baby?”
“I’m taking care of it. For the moment,” he’d said.
“Moment. Yeah,” Tallie had said doubtfully. But then she’d asked him dozens of questions, most of which he didn’t know the answer to, about how old Harry was and what he was accustomed to eating. Given the little he had been able to tell her, he thought she’d given him reasonably good advice.
Harry hadn’t cried those three hours because he was hungry. He had screamed because life was doing bad things to him—going where he didn’t want to go, taking over, spinning seriously out of control.
There came now a long serious wail from the bedroom.
Yiannis knew exactly how he felt.
Crying wasn’t an option.
But Cat rather wished it were.
Dear Lord, what a mess! Bad enough that Gran had broken her hip, that she was having surgery and would not be able to come back to her apartment for heaven knew how long. It wasn’t even clear if she would be able to be on her own any longer at all.
It was, Cat would have thought, a worst case scenario.
But apparently not worst enough. Now she didn’t only have her grandmother to worry about, Cat had Misty’s perennial irresponsibility to factor in. And not just the sort of ethereal blend of flakiness and selfishness that Misty generally wafted about in. No, this was Misty’s very solid, flesh and blood, one hundred percent real baby in the next room.
And Yiannis Savas, for good measure.
Looking every bit as handsome and appealing as he ever had. He was still—damn him—able to make her pulses hammer, her body tremble and her common sense turn to mush.
A very large part of Cat wanted to bundle her cats back in her car and head straight back to San Francisco this very moment.
Of course she couldn’t. She was Gran’s only living relative. Gran was her responsibility, a responsibility she was perfectly willing to accept. She loved her grandmother. And she owed her as well.
Gran had been a shelter of comfort and strength at the worst time of Cat’s young life. She knew she could never repay that. But she would do her best. So there was no leaving.
But there was no sleeping, either.
She should have fallen asleep the second her head hit the pillow. Instead she lay there, aware of the man in the next room, and tossed and turned for hours.
Sleep, Cat told herself firmly, trying to find a comfortable spot on Gran’s seriously lumpy sofa. But she didn’t. She thought about Yiannis.
And because that was as unlikely to be productive as ever, she forced her mind to other problems—her grandmother’s future, which was too uncertain to have any useful thoughts about, and ultimately, Harry.
Harry she would be required to do something about. Soon.
Trust Misty to dump a baby on her.
Not that she didn’t like babies—or at least, the thought of babies. But she had so little experience with them, whereas Yiannis—damn it, there he was again!—seemed to be able to deal with them. Or at least, if she credited his insistence that Harry had cried for three hours earlier in the evening, to persevere.
She would have to learn to persevere. She could. She’d been persevering with Misty ever since she’d come to live with Gran. Not the easiest of relationships, especially since Cat’s permanent arrival on Gran and Walter’s doorstep had meant Misty had had to share the limelight. Or should have.
Mostly it had meant that Misty did what she wanted and left Cat, five years older and decades more responsible, to mop up after.
Not, Cat reminded herself, determined to be fair—which Misty certainly never was—that Harry’s mother had intended for her to take care of him this time.
In fact, Misty would probably have spun in her grave, if she’d been in one, at the thought of Cat in loco parentis to her son. She knew that more than anything Cat wanted a family, and Misty had never been one to share.
Certainly she wouldn’t have knowingly shared Harry with Cat. She’d never even brought him around when Cat had come to visit Gran. Until tonight Cat had never met Harry.
And she’d barely caught a glimpse of him this time. If she recalled anything about him, she’d been struck by his thick dark hair—a trait he shared with the man whose bare chest he had been sleeping on.
The memory still had the ability to make her breath catch.
She had not expected Yiannis. Not here. Not tonight.
And certainly not on a bed, asleep with a baby in his arms.
She squeezed her eyes shut now, trying to blot out the memory. But she feared the sight would be emblazoned on the insides of her eyelids until her dying day.
It had once been the stuff of dreams.
Hopes and dreams crowded back—resurrected by the sight of him holding Harry—and pain she had resolutely put behind her, now stabbed her again. She tried to put them out of her mind, but whether it was the circumstances—he was here right now on the other side of a six inch wall with a baby in his arms—or her exhaustion, she couldn’t seem to shut them out.
Couldn’t shut him out.
“Stop it!” she muttered aloud and squeezed her eyes shut tight. But he really did seem to be on the inside of her eyelids.
She snapped them open and found herself nose to nose with Bas.
“Uh!” She picked him up and dropped him gently onto the floor. Then she sat up and scrubbed at her eyes. It didn’t help. Nothing helped.
It had been like this since the day she’d met him.
She could remember it as though it had been yesterday, the afternoon she’d seen this lean, muscular guy with the wind-ruffled black hair and stubbled jaw sauntering down the street toward her. She’d been coming back from the grocery store, her arms full of bags, eager to get to Gran’s and set them down. But at the sight of the most gorgeous man she’d ever laid eyes on, the weight of the grocery bags had meant nothing and she’d slowed her pace, wanting to look her fill before they passed on the street.
But he’d slowed, too—as if he were as taken with her as she had been with him. If an entire orchestra had risen up out of the pavement and begun playing “Some Enchanted Evening” she would not have been surprised.
Of course it had not been evening. But she’d granted fate poetic license. No one had ever accused Cat of lacking imagination. Before he reached her, she had imagined him pausing to smile and flirt a bit. They would talk, and, finding her a kindred spirit, he would ask her out. They would fall in love, get married, have three children and a golden retriever and live happily ever after right here on Balboa Island.
The trouble was, it had actually happened—the first bits. He had smiled. He’d flirted. He’d introduced himself. He had been coming to see her grandmother, interested in buying Gran’s house. He’d asked her out. Once, twice. Half a dozen times. They’d clicked. It was exactly the way it was supposed to be.
He’d bought Gran’s house.
It was perfect. Even the sex was perfect. Hot and intense and absolutely amazing. Of course it was, because they were perfect for each other. Cat knew she’d met the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with.
And then …
And then it fell apart.
It turned out that life was not a series of musical comedy song moments. Life was discovering Yiannis seeming a little distant whenever she talked about how she was longing to have a family of her own. Life was him changing the subject if the M word ever remotely cropped up in conversation. Life was him leaving for Singapore or Finland or Dar es Salaam. It was her waiting eagerly for him to come back from wherever and then getting an email saying he’d decided to spend a week on the beach at Goa and then go right on to New Zealand instead.
And then, of course, there had been Misty.
Misty had never met a man with cheekbones, a great smile and all the standard male equipment that she didn’t like—and want.
And that went double if it was a man paying attention to Cat.
There wasn’t a toy or a game or a boy or a man that Cat had first that Misty didn’t consider fair game. Cat understood that.
She just hadn’t thought Yiannis would take a second glance.
But if there had been any mistaking Misty jumping into his arms on the beach or sitting across an intimate table from him at Swaney’s bar or coming out of his place at seven in the morning, there had been no mistaking his answer when Cat had asked him point blank about where Misty stood—and she stood—in his life.
“Where do you stand?” He stared as if he’d never given it a thought.
She’d got a pretty good idea of the answer from his baffled echo of her question. But though her fingernails bit into her palms, she had nodded and hoped he might yet give her the answer she was hoping for.
Instead he’d countered with a question of his own. “Where do you want to stand?”
On the spot, Cat knew she couldn’t back down. It mattered too much. “I want love. I want marriage. I want a family,” she said—and watched the color drain from his face.
She didn’t need any more answer than that. As far as she was concerned, Misty could have him. She’d said so.
“I didn’t sleep with Misty,” he told her. “She came by to pick up her sunglasses. She left them here yesterday and she wanted them before she went to work.”
Cat had absorbed that, had allowed a flicker of hope to remain in her heart—until he said, “And I sure don’t want to marry Misty.” He grimaced at the thought. “I don’t want to marry anyone. I don’t want to get married.” He’d shaken his head. “Not on your life.” The slow shake of his head and the clear honest look in his eyes told her as much as his words did.
She didn’t need it spelled out any more clearly than that.
She felt a leaden weight in the pit of her stomach, but she’d managed very politely to say, “Thank you.” Then she turned and walked away.
“You’re not mad, are you?” Yiannis had called after her.
She didn’t turn. “Of course not.” Mortified. Humiliated. Devastated. She kept walking.
“Good. Want to get a pizza later?”
No, she had not.
Even now she could still remember the hot and cold of impotent fury and humiliation that had swept over her in successive waves even after she’d left her grandmother’s and driven back to her own place. She’d named their children and he thought she was someone to share a pizza with!
So much for enchanted evenings. So much for true love and all the rest of her song lyric pipe dreams.
So much for Yiannis Savas.
Less than three months later Cat took a job at a library in San Francisco.
Gran hadn’t been pleased, but Cat had been adamant. Putting four hundred miles between herself and the man who had no interest in being her one true love seemed only sensible. Not that she’d said anything about that to Gran.
Her stupidity was her secret, and hers alone.
And she’d been careful to avoid him ever since because he unfortunately hadn’t grown any less gorgeous or any more resistible. And even though she was an engaged woman now—with a man who wanted exactly the same things she did—as soon as she saw Yiannis the stupid song lyric feelings were still there.
That one single glimpse of him tonight, asleep on Gran’s bed with Harry on his chest was like a kick in the gut. Those perverse misbegotten childish fantasies were not dead yet.
Furiously Cat flung herself over again with such force that she slipped right off the narrow sofa and landed on the floor.
“Oh, hell!” Wincing at the thud, she scrambled up onto the sofa and lay perfectly still, holding her breath, terrified that Harry would start crying or—worse—that Yiannis would appear in the doorway to demand what the devil she was doing.
A minute passed, then two. She didn’t move. On the other side of the wall she heard a whimper, but no footsteps. She breathed again. Shallowly. Rolled carefully onto her side.
The whimpers were coming more emphatically now. Harry seemed to be working up a head of steam now, starting to cry.
The door to the bedroom opened. Yiannis stepped quickly out and shut the door behind him. The crying in the bedroom continued unabated.
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