Page 13 of Billion-Dollar Baby Shock

Tara sat down and let the nurse swab inside her mouth. Dion stood in the corner looking brooding, arms folded across his chest. The nurse bagged up the swab and spoke to Dion in Greek before nodding at Tara and leaving.

Dion stayed standing in the corner of the room. ‘We’ll have the results tomorrow.’

‘That fast?’

He nodded. Then he looked at his watch and said, ‘I have an event to go to this evening. Feel free to help yourself to food from the fridge. The housekeeper will have left something ready to heat. I mostly eat out.’

‘Even since Niko?’

He looked at her and his jaw clenched. He obviously didn’t like her implication. ‘I have sole custody of my son. How I choose to bring him up is not up for discussion.’

Tara stood up. ‘When it’s proven that I’m his mother I will have rights, Dion.’

‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’

Clearly he still expected that this DNA test would come back negative and he could be shot of her, and this was all a reminder that he didn’t want her here.

The atmosphere between them couldn’t be more different from the previous evening, when she’d grown dizzy under the full impact of his charm and seduction.

He hadn’t even had to seduce her all that much.

One blistering-hot kiss and she’d been ready to get onto a helicopter and let him take her anywhere.

‘I’ll go and introduce myself to Maria.’

She turned and left the room before he could see the humiliation she felt for being so…easy. She found the nanny, a perfectly pleasant dark-haired young woman, in the kitchen with Niko and did her best to push out of her mind that tomorrow she would be embarking on a very different life path.

* * *

When Dion returned from the event he felt restless and irritable. He undid his bow tie and opened it and the top button of his shirt, feeling constricted. All evening he’d been distracted. Thinking of her and how she’d been like such a breath of fresh air when he’d spotted her last night.

She was a Trojan horse, not a breath of fresh air. She was here, under his roof, and she couldn’t have planned it better.

But when he got near to the bedrooms he heard the cry of a baby and saw a shadowy figure pushing open the door to Niko’s room. He knew it wasn’t Maria. Because he knew the figure in those soft jeans and T-shirt intimately.

And he wanted to know her again.

At that moment a sleepy Maria appeared in the corridor, belting her robe over pyjamas. Then both women saw Dion and startled. Dion put out a hand. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.’

Tara was framed in Niko’s doorway. She said, ‘It’s okay, Maria, I was up watching a movie. Why don’t I check on him and you go back to bed?’

The nanny shot Dion a worried glance, clearly not used to having to answer to anyone else, but after a moment’s hesitation he just nodded and said, ‘It’s fine, go back to bed, Maria, thank you.’

Dion followed Tara into the baby’s bedroom illuminated only by a low light. She went over to the cot and lifted Niko out. He looked sleepy and Dion had that sense again of not knowing what he should do, but hating himself for this fear of interaction.

Tara turned around. ‘I was in the lounge watching something on TV. I hope that was okay?’

Dion was disconcerted by how natural it felt to see her here in this milieu and how much she’d occupied his thoughts all evening. She didn’t look like a Trojan Horse at all now. She looked utterly innocent. And he couldn’t trust it for a second.

‘It’s fine,’ he dismissed. Tomorrow she would be gone, once they knew for a fact she was an opportunist.

Tara cut into his thoughts. ‘Have you ever changed a nappy?’

Dion shook his head. He hadn’t been expecting that.

‘Want to try?’

For a man who regularly faced down adversaries in boardrooms and negotiated deals worth billions of euros, he suddenly felt a spike of terror. But that galvanised him.

He walked forward. ‘Sure, it would be useful to know.’

In case you have another emergency like today? prompted a sly voice, reminding him of how Tara had stepped into the breach.

She had Niko lying on his back on a high table and she was getting him out of his sleep suit explaining as she went. A pungent smell hit Dion’s nostrils and his face screwed up. Niko was looking at him and laughed, gurgling.

‘He thinks you’re funny,’ Tara said.

A little glow of warmth settled in Dion’s chest. He moved closer. Niko kept staring at him. Tara was deftly undoing the nappy and wiping Niko. She said, ‘Here, your turn.’

She kept a hand on Niko’s belly as she moved aside and handed Dion a fresh nappy.

‘Open it out…like that, yes…the sticky ties will be at the top, hold his feet together and then lift…like that, and slide the nappy under his back…pull through his legs…and up over his tummy and then secure it…perfect.’

As if sensing he was being used in a lesson, Niko didn’t make a sound. Dion looked at the baby, fresh nappy in place.

‘Here’s a clean sleepsuit.’

And now Tara was handing him something that looked as if it had a hundred arms and legs. She lifted Niko to sit up and helped Dion get him into it, saying, ‘They’re really not that fragile. Don’t be afraid to handle him.’

Their fingers touched and it threatened to derail Dion’s focus but he somehow managed to get Niko buttoned up.

‘Why don’t you hold him while I get a bottle in the kitchen?’

Tara was already handing Niko to Dion and he had to take him. Then she was gone. He was holding Niko awkwardly and he struggled to recall how the nannies and Tara did it—effortlessly.

Experimentally he lifted him up against his chest and to his surprise Niko curled against him and put his head into the crook between Dion’s shoulder and neck. Dion went very still. One hand was on Niko’s back and he had an arm under his little bottom, cradling him.

He moved his hand up and down. He’d never held Niko like this before. Felt his little sturdy body curling into him so trustingly. For him, deciding to have a son and going about it—even since Niko had come home—had felt like a more abstract or existential thing, not an actual physical reality.

But now it felt very real and he had a sense of his son’s vulnerability. And now Dion felt ashamed, because it was very belatedly coming home to him that Niko was a tiny human being who would need a lot more than nannies doing shift work while he got on with building his empire.

With uncanny timing Tara returned to the room with a bottle in her hand. She held the bottle out to Dion. ‘Do you want to try feeding him?’

Dion was reeling with the revelation he’d just had and Tara’s eyes were far too incisive.

He’d been exposed enough for one night. He lifted Niko away from his shoulder and he made a little snuffling sound that almost had Dion clutching him back.

But he said, ‘I’ll leave that to you. I don’t want to upset him. ’

Tara deftly took Niko back into her arms and said, ‘He seemed very happy just now. He’s half asleep again anyway, he probably won’t even drink any of this.’

‘We’ll have the DNA results first thing in the morning.’

She sat down in a rocking chair with Niko and looked up at Dion. ‘Good, then we can know how to proceed.’

Dion hated to admit it, but every sense in his body was telling him that the news they would get tomorrow would not be conducive to restoring his sense of control or equilibrium. Quite the opposite.