“The doctor was wrong,” she told him, taking his face into her hands and kissing him again. “You may have just one, but it sure did the job. Only . . .” She frowned, concentrating. “You have two testicles, Iakovos. I know; I’ve seen them. They’re right where they should be.”
“One is a prosthetic.”
“Really? They have prosthetic balls? Who’d have thought?” She was amazed by that fact, unable to keep from glancing down at his lap. “Er . . . which is the pretender?”
“The right,” he said with a twist to his lips. She kissed the twist.
“So . . . if you thought you couldn’t have children, why did you ask me if I was on birth control? I mean, that explains why you weren’t overly panicked when I ran out, but earlier, when we first went to bed, you asked.”
“I asked because I always ask. The first time I slept with a woman after the accident, I didn’t ask, and she thought it was strange. After that, I made sure to inquire.”
She stroked a hand down his cheek. “You could have told me, you know.”
“I was going to, as soon as we got back home.” He gave a little shrug. “You never mentioned children, so I didn’t think they were high on your priority list at the moment.”
“They weren’t, but you are.” She smiled at him, wishing he knew just how much she loved him.
“Harry . . .” He hesitated, looking incredibly uncomfortable.
“Oh, no, you’re not going to make me feel guilty and let you off the hook. You have to apologize. You put me through a hellish two days, you know.”
He took a deep breath, his big chest rising, almost enough to distract her. “I’m sorry. I knew as soon as I hung up that you would never betray me. I know you love me, and yes, to answer your question, I’m very happy with the news, although not at all surprised that you’re giving me twins. I should have expected you wouldn’t follow convention even with that.”
“Twins are quite conventional,” she protested, and let him kiss the breath out of her. By the time he was beginning to make noises about making love to her on the couch, she knew that everything was good again.
“Go on and do businessy things,” she said, shooing him from the desk, smiling when she saw that the picture on it was one he’d taken of her and Elena the day after the birthday party. “You have two children to support now.”
He grinned and started to leave, pausing when she called his name. A beautiful teal blue glass mug was on his desk, empty but for half an inch of coffee. She ran her fingers idly around the rim. “You could do one thing for me.”
“I intend to do a great many things for you, many of which will require you to be naked.” He thought a moment. “No, I lie—all of them will require you to be naked.”
“Now would be the absolutely most perfect time ever to tell me you loved me.”
“Yes, it would, wouldn’t it?” he said with a grin, and left the room.
The sound of glass splintering against the wall was loud, but not so loud as to drown out the sound of his whistling as he returned to the boardroom.
Four days later, he was in his office when his New York secretary, a middle-aged woman named Nanna, entered his office with a stack of mail, most of which she handed to Dmitri. Her lips pursed as she handed Iakovos a large square envelope. “I assume this is meant for you.”
He looked at the envelope. It was addressed to Yack-ynos Papamaumau. “Yes,” he said without the slightest quiver of his lips. “It is from my fiancée.”
“Hrmph.” Nanna snorted her opinion of women who didn’t take a man’s heritage seriously, and left the office, Dmitri on her heels. Iakovos opened the envelope to find a handmade card inside.
On the front, someone had drawn a stick figure of a man with a sad face, standing in front of a plaque with a crossed-out number three, below which the numeral five had been written. Across the top were the words “Sorry to hear you only have one testicle.” He opened the card to find another stick figure, this time of a woman with a huge stomach. Beneath it Harry had written, “On the other hand, if you had two, I’d probably be having quadruplets.”
CHAPTER 15
She had to return to Seattle, of course. She didn’t want to leave New York, and it was true that Iakovos offered to get someone to pack up the remainder of her belongings so she could stay there with him, but she told herself she wasn’t so clingy that she couldn’t be away from him for a few days now and again.
“How are you feeling?” he asked when she’d been back in Seattle for two days.
“Horrible. I’m moping. I barf all day long, and picture myself as big as a house, and you standing around in a tuxedo at cocktail parties with all sorts of skinny, beautiful women slinking their way around you. I hate them. I don’t even know them, and I hate them. How are you doing? Are you doing anything interesting?”
“I’m fine, and about to meet with a woman, as a matter of fact.”
“I bet she’s svelte and beautiful, and wants your number five perfect body.” Honestly, could she be any more miserable? Just the thought of him meeting with women made her furious. Oh, she trusted Iakovos, but if she wasn’t there to guard him, all sorts of women would annoy him with their unwanted attentions.
“She’s beautiful, yes. She’s not particularly svelte, though.”
Well, that, at least, was something. “Is this for a meeting?” she asked him, trying very hard not to pout, wishing a magic genie would just pick her up and plop her down in New York City.
“Lunch,” he answered.
She looked up as someone knocked on her door. It was probably Tim coming to invite her over to see more baby pictures. She didn’t want to see more baby pictures, cute as he was. She wanted Iakovos. “Someone’s at my door. Have a nice lunch. I love you. This would be a good time for you to tell me how much you love me, too, not that I expect you will because that would improve my day too much, and evidently I’m not allowed to be happy anymore.”
“I have to go, sweetheart. Enjoy your moping.”
She swore as he hung up, stomping over to the front door, intending to take out her horrible mood on whoever it was who had the nerve to interrupt her misery.
Iakovos leaned against the doorframe, a smile on his face. “Hello, Eglantine. Would you like to have lunch?”
She shrieked and threw herself on him, kissing every part of his face that she could reach.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming out here?” she asked some time later, when she was sitting on his lap, unable to keep from touching him.
“I didn’t know if I was going to be able to make it until the last minute. And then I figured I’d just tell you when I saw you. I missed you, my round little tempest.”
“I am not round!” she protested, her hands on one of his where it rested on her belly.
His eyebrows rose.
“All right, just a little round, but Bess says that’s normal at this point if you’re carrying twins. Did you get the pictures of the scans that I sent you?”
“Yes. They don’t look like babies. Are you sure you’re not having meerkats or frogs?”
She straightened up and gave him a quelling look. “I will thank you not to refer to our progeny in that manner. They will be perfectly baby-like babies later on. How long are you staying?”
“Two days if we’re lucky. Can you be ready to go by then?”
She thought of all the things still left to do, all the packing, all the managing of business affairs, all the leave-taking of friends, and licked his upper lip. “Piece of cake.”
Harry came to a sad conclusion the following day. “You don’t fit in my life, Yacky. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.”
Iakovos looked up from where he was sprawled naked on her bed, his laptop on his bare thighs as he tapped industriously away on the keyboard. “This is about the incident last night, isn’t it, Eglantine? I apologized, if you recall, and I will do so again if it will make you feel better.”
“I have forgiven you for the
fact that you pushed me out of my own bed last night,” she said, giving up trying to pack her entire wardrobe tidily. She’d long since gotten past the point where she gave a damn if all her clothes came out of the boxes wrinkled and twisted into blobs. She dumped the armload of clothes unceremoniously into the box and turned to face him. “I’m willing to admit that my bed, while perfectly sized for a normal person, is not meant for a normal person who is possessed of a six-and-a-half-foot-tall former number three most-lusted-after man in the world. I also know you were sound asleep and you aren’t aware that when you sleep, you spread.”
“I’m aware of it,” he said, his eyes once again on the laptop screen. “That’s why I have big beds. And I didn’t push you out. You fell out.”
“I fell because I, as a nurturing woman who loves the aforementioned six-and-a-half-foot-tall former number three most ogled man in the world, accommodate you at night.”
His grin warmed her. “You certainly do.”
“That is not what I meant, and you know it. I’m simply trying to absolve you of guilt for spreading out over the entire surface of my bed so that I ended falling off the edge. No, my darling number five, what I meant about you not fitting in has nothing to do with my bed. I meant that you don’t fit in here. Into my life here.”
He looked up again, and her heart squeezed at the flash of uncertainty in his beautiful dark eyes. “What are you trying to say, Harry? You don’t want to come home with me?”
She shoved the box aside, picked up his laptop and set it on the nightstand, swinging a leg over his as she sat on his thighs facing him. She took his face in her hands. “The day will never dawn in which I don’t want to spend every single moment with you.”
He relaxed against the pillows, his hands sliding under the gauzy skirt that was one of the few things she found would still fit her. “In what way, then, do I not fit in your life?”
“You’re too handsome. No, don’t give me that look; I know you can’t do anything about your appearance any more than I can, but, Iakovos, there is a big difference between you looking like a fashion model when you’re at gala events in Athens with ambassadors and movie stars, and even-richer-than-you oil billionaires, and you wandering down the aisle of the local grocery store buying toilet paper. I cannot in a million years conceive of you popping down to the local store to pick up toilet paper, my darling. I just can’t.”
“Do we need toilet paper?” he asked, looking confused.
She kissed his upper lip dip. “No.”
“Then why are you upset about this?”
She was silent for a moment, trying to figure out how to explain her tangled emotions without hurting him. “I love you, Iakovos. I’m going to marry you. I want to have your babies and spend every day of the rest of my life with you. But your life isn’t my life, and although I’m happy to live yours, it’s just kind of a rude shock to see how different our lives really are.”
“Is it because of my money?” he asked after a few seconds.
“No. Yes. Not really. It’s just more of a lifestyle thing. You own your own friggin’ island, for god’s sake.”
“You like my island,” he pointed out.
“I love your island. I love you! It’s just . . . oh, never mind. It doesn’t really matter, because I’m going to live with you.”
He looked thoughtful. “Are you saying you want me to live here with you, in your apartment? And do things that you do, like buying toilet paper?”
She brushed a strand of hair back off his brow. “Would you live here if I said yes?”
He looked around her bedroom, which at that moment resembled a war zone. “Would you let me get a bigger bed?”
“Yes,” she said gravely. “You could have a bigger bed.”
“Then I would live here with you.”
She leaned down to kiss him. “You are so adorable when you think you can fool me. No, don’t tell me you meant it. I know if I suddenly lost all my marbles and demanded that we not live in your fabulous house and beautiful, if a little sterile, penthouse apartment, that you would agree to it, because underneath all that handsomeness that makes women want to rip off their underwear and fling themselves on you, there’s a truly wonderful man, but you don’t have to worry; I’m not going to do any such thing.”
“You forgot the villa in the Bahamas,” he said, his hands moving up to cup her breasts.
“I don’t know why I brought it up. Just, I guess, to point out that unlike you, I’m not used to a life of glamour, and . . . you have a villa in the Bahamas?”
His teeth flashed white against his lovely olive brown skin. “Two, actually, although I was thinking of selling one.”
She stared at him for a second, then slowly climbed off, putting the laptop back on his lap. “Do your work,” she said in a voice that even to her ears sounded strangled. “I have to go say good-bye to the morning group.”
“Morning group?” he asked, his attention once again on his laptop.
“It’s a group of ladies I exercise with three times a week.” She glanced at the clock balanced rather precariously on a stack of books that hadn’t yet been packed. “In fact, I need to hustle if I want to get there.”
He turned off the laptop and stood up, stretching. Harry stopped in the middle of changing her clothes, unable to take her eyes off him. Really, you’d think after living with him for more than three months, she’d be used to seeing him naked, but there she was, standing there with her mind squirreling around, and all she could think of was pouncing on him.
“I’ll come with you,” he said, and went into her little bathroom.
“You will?”
“Yes. You’re absolutely right in that I haven’t made much of an effort to fit into your life, while you’ve done everything to fit into mine. I would be honored to meet your friends.”
She stared into space, trying to imagine the effect he was going to have on the ladies’ gym where the group met.
He popped his head around the door. “Unless you don’t want me to go with you.”
She looked at his drop-dead-gorgeous face. He would have the same sort of an impact as if someone had set off an atomic bomb in their midst. All would be chaos and havoc and utter confusion.
There was no way on this green earth that she was going to miss it.
“I’d be delighted to have you go with me. I think the ladies would . . . enjoy . . . meeting you.” Honestly, she deserved an Oscar for being able to deliver that last sentence without bursting into hysterical laughter.
“Good,” he said with a nod. “I’ll just take a quick shower. I’d invite you to take it with me, but your bed isn’t the only thing not big enough for us both.”
Her lips quivered as he returned to the bathroom, his voice raised as he sang loudly over the sound of the water.
Oh, this was promising to be one of the most entertaining mornings of her entire life.
Half an hour later, all hell broke loose at the women’s gym. Men weren’t forbidden to enter the august confines of the gym, but Harry knew that never in the memory of the ladies who utilized the facilities had a man been entertained who wasn’t of the delivery persuasion.
As Iakovos strolled in next to her, she adopted an expression of mild surprise when all the women in the place froze like so many deer caught in an abnormal number of headlights.
The woman nearest her, a plump brunette, literally fell off her elliptical at the sight of him standing there, one hand on Harry’s back as he looked around with interest, clad in black jeans and a white shirt that Harry had made sure was open to show a bit more of his manly chest than was normal.
“Harry!” the woman said, rubbing at the shin she had whacked when she fell off the machine, her eyes never leaving Iakovos as she spoke. “Nice to see you again. We’ve missed you. You look great. Who is your . . . uh . . . friend?”
“Harry!” A woman emerged from the bathroom, a bottle of water in her hand, a towel around her neck. “Come to say good-bye to us at
. . . holy Mary, mother of god!”
“Hello, ladies,” Harry said, enjoying herself hugely as eight women descended upon them. “How’s everyone doing?”
“Fine, just fine. Who . . . er . . .” The sore-shinned woman gave Iakovos a sharky smile. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
“Introduce you?” Harry looked confused. “To who? Oh, this man?” She gestured toward Iakovos. “I have no idea who he is. We just happened to come in at the same time.”
The bottle of water being held by Carrie, one of Harry’s oldest friends, dropped to the floor.
Iakovos slid Harry a look before turning to the group of ladies surrounding them. He gave them all a smile that Harry knew could cause palpitations a hundred paces away, and she wasn’t at all disappointed with their gasps in reaction to it.
“I am delighted to meet all of you,” he told them. “I am Iakovos Papaioannou, Harry’s fiancé.”
“Fiancé!” One of the ladies gasped again. “Good lord, he’s going to marry you, Harry?”
“I had to beg her to accept me,” he told the ladies, and she honestly thought that Sue Ann, a sixty-something grandmother, might swoon right there and then.
It took only two minutes before Harry found herself pushed to the outside of the crowd as the ladies crushed in around Iakovos, asking him a hundred and one questions about Greece, his work, his personal likes and dislikes, previous girlfriends, and pretty much anything they could think of to keep him talking.
Harry was content to lean against the door, watching the love of her life handily deal with eight googly-eyed women. Most men might have run screaming from the room, but not her Yacky. He was simmering sensuality personified, and she could see why Theo had once told her that Iakovos had yet to meet a woman he couldn’t charm.
“Why, if it isn’t Harry,” came a cool voice from behind her. “We haven’t seen you in weeks.”
Harry turned, her smile growing when she realized that her day really was going to be the best ever. “Hello, Tess.”
Tess Hayerson, it was whispered around the gym, was a woman who chewed men up and spat them out, usually after marrying them. Rumor had it that her third ex-husband had agreed to a divorce settlement that paid her in enhancement surgery, rather than money. In her early thirties, with long auburn hair, and an eye for the male of the species, she was the sexpot of their little group.