Page 2 of Billion-Dollar Baby Shock

Dionysios Dimitriou scanned the thronged room full of the crème de la crème of Athenian society with a practised eye. It was an annual glamorous charity event—a masked ball held in a private villa with jaw-dropping views over Athens.

Dusk was fading into night beyond the wide-open French doors leading out into landscaped gardens. Lanterns threw golden light over the already glittering crowd. The Acropolis was lit up on a hill in the distance, the ancient monument humbling in its magnificence.

Moments like this never failed to fill Dion with a sense of pride—for how much he’d achieved all on his own.

His gaze skated over tycoons, billionaires, politicians and beautiful women. Each woman was more alluring than the last and yet…nothing. He didn’t feel a blip of interest. But in recent months his priorities had shifted quite dramatically so he wasn’t unduly surprised.

His phone vibrated from inside his jacket pocket. He pulled it out. There was a message from the nanny.

Nikolau is asleep, the night nanny will be here shortly. See you tomorrow. Elena.

This was the reason why his priorities had shifted.

His baby son, born to a surrogate in America six months ago.

Dion was afraid to admit that he’d yet to feel a real sense of connection with the baby but he’d been assured by doctors and experts that this was normal.

Sometimes it took fathers a while to connect and he had no experience of babies or children.

It was the most spontaneous thing he’d ever done, pursuing becoming a father. But something had compelled him—a growing sense of wondering what were all of his achievements for if he had no one to share it with or pass it down to?

He’d realised that he had a desire for someone in his life—but not a long-term lover.

And certainly not a wife. He wanted a child.

A child who he could ensure had a better upbringing than he’d experienced.

Which wouldn’t be hard as the bar was so low.

He wanted a child who could inherit the fortune he’d created and nurtured and continued to grow.

He wouldn’t turn his back on his child as his parents had done to him.

Dion’s mother had had an affair with a rich tycoon who had wanted nothing to do with Dion, because he had already been married with his own family.

It was safe to say that when it came to trusting women with his emotions, Dion didn’t. Not after the trauma of being abandoned by the one woman who should have loved him most.

And so almost two years ago, Dion had put his plan into action, selecting a couple of the best fertility clinics in Europe to create embryos with carefully selected egg donors and his sperm.

He’d managed to create a viable embryo with an egg from a clinic in Ireland, and then the baby had been born to a surrogate in America.

And now he had his son. Nikolau Dimitriou.

What about love? asked a little voice.

Dion scowled. Love hadn’t helped him to where he was today. Anger and pain had. Sheer grit and determination to succeed. His son would receive better things than love: security, respect, support. A father. He didn’t need a mother. Dion had survived without his.

He looked up from his phone and took in the crowd again. He spotted a woman making her way towards him and, in spite of her mask, recognised an ex-lover he had no intention of reconnecting with.

He turned on his heel and walked across to the other side of the room where there were tables groaning under lavish displays of finger food and drinks.

Flutes of sparkling wine as far as the eye could see.

Black-and-white-clad wait staff moving nimbly between guests. A jazz band playing in a corner.

Dion had to hand it to Leo Parnassus and his wife, Angel, the hosts of this charity event. Every year they exceeded themselves. No mean feat in Athens.

And then something caught his eye. Or, some one . Standing at the buffet table. He wasn’t sure exactly what had caught his eye but he found himself resting a shoulder against one of the marble columns in the massive ballroom and watching.

It was a woman. Above average height. She was wearing a strapless dark green satin dress that had a criss-cross pattern under her breasts and over her midriff before it fell in layers of silk and tulle to the floor.

Her skin was very pale, with freckles that he could discern from a distance. Maybe that was what had drawn his attention? When the skin of most other people in this room ran to carefully cultivated golden tans from exclusive exotic holidays or beauty salons.

She stood out. She had red hair, that very unique Celtic coppery red. Impossible to replicate. Again, not usual in this environment. It was pulled back in a rough chignon, drawing the eye to her slender neck and shoulders.

She wore a face mask covering the top half of her face with an elaborate feather of some kind. The same colour as the dress.

He found that he was curious to see her up close. See her face. Touch her skin. And just like that, awareness pulsed to life in his blood. Not so uninterested after all.

As he watched he saw her reach out and choose something from a plate and put it into her mouth. He could see her profile now. Straight nose. Delicate jaw. Her mouth—closing around the…prawn?—looked lush and pink. The awareness in his blood started to sizzle.

And then, she made a face and he saw her pick up a napkin, look around furtively for a moment and then spit what was in her mouth into the napkin. She looked around again.

Dion couldn’t help smiling at her actions, believing she was unobserved. She was a total novelty. He hadn’t come here to find a lover but now his interest was piqued.

He took a step out of the shadows and her head turned towards him and just before he reached her he could see the flush of pink climb up over her skin and into her face, the part of it not hidden by the mask.

He could make out green-blue eyes behind the mask and had another realisation as he drew closer. She was stunning.

* * *

Oh, God. Had he seen her spitting the food back out into the napkin? Tara wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole.

She couldn’t believe she’d been allowed into the party in the first place.

Her brother Oisín—a tech wizard—had somehow managed to get her on the guest list and, to Tara’s surprise, when she’d arrived and said her name, the scarily efficient-looking event people hadn’t blinked.

They’d just waved her in and her mind hadn’t stopped boggling since she’d walked into the most extravagantly glamorous space she’d ever seen in her life.

Not to mention the crowd. She’d never seen so many genetically blessed people in one room.

And that had never applied more than right now, to the man who was walking towards her with a half-smile playing around his mouth.

His mouth. Tara’s legs felt a little weak.

His mouth looked as if it had been sculpted from living marble. Firm and sensual.

He was tall and dark and intimidatingly gorgeous, obvious even with the black Zorro-style mask covering the upper half of his face. Dressed in a black tuxedo that seemed to be shrink-wrapped to his powerful body, he could have stepped straight out of a movie or fashion magazine.

Maybe he was a movie star? Tara was pretty sure she’d already spotted at least one Hollywood megastar as she’d tried to fade into the background along the edges of the room.

And then she’d spied the buffet table and remembered she hadn’t eaten since she’d left Dublin on a flight at the crack of dawn.

And she needed sustenance for what she had to do.

Find the father of her baby. A son. She knew that much.

The man was in front of her now and Tara had to tip her head back. She wasn’t that small but he still stood almost a foot over her.

‘Hello.’

His voice was low and gravelly. Accented. From somewhere Tara found her voice and it came out like a squeak. ‘Hi.’

‘You’re not from around here, are you?’

Tara shook her head, aware of the feather on the mask floating somewhere off to the side of her head.

She’d thought it was too much but her little sister Lucy, who was a fashion design student, had insisted.

She’d said, ‘I’ve researched this, Tara.

You don’t want to stand out for the wrong reasons, believe me. ’

And, to give her her due, Tara’s outfit did seem to blend in pretty well, which wasn’t bad considering it was home-made.

There were women dressed in a lot less and a lot sparklier and a lot more expensive.

If Tara did stand out it was because she was like a milk bottle next to the far more honeyed tones of skin around her.

She said in a more modulated tone, ‘I’m from Ireland. Dublin.’

‘Nice country, very green. And wet.’

‘I can’t argue with that.’

He held out his hand, palm facing up, and Tara looked at it. She realised he wanted her to give him the food she’d rolled up in a napkin. She put it into his palm and he coolly handed it over to a server behind the tables, who took it without so much as a flicker of surprise.

Now she was really mortified. Maybe this guy was some kind of special security dressed up like a guest and she was going to be taken out discreetly and turfed out—

‘Okay, so what do you like? Not prawns, evidently.’

She blinked. He was holding a plate and a pair of tongs and looking at her. She looked at the food and pointed at skewers of chicken. He picked a couple up and put them on the plate along with some salad.

‘Do you like hummus?’

She nodded, totally bemused, and watched as he loaded up her plate with more things. Flatbread, cheese, olives.

He handed her her plate and then filled a plate for himself. He caught a waiter and snagged two glasses of sparkling wine and said, ‘Follow me.’