One Night to Risk It All Read online

  He wasn’t powerless anymore. He never would be again.

  The bathroom door opened and Rachel appeared, white-faced, blue eyes watery.

  “What?” he asked.

  “There were two lines.”

  “Well, what does that mean?” he asked, tension making his heart race, pumping too much restless energy in his muscles.

  “It means that I’m pregnant. And before you ask—it is your baby, I won’t lie to you about that.”

  “You will not marry him.”

  “You know there are like...a thousand wedding guests coming? A hundred reporters?”

  “You have two options, Rachel,” he said, the adrenaline that was spiking through him making his mind run quickly. “You leave with me, now, don’t speak to anyone. Or you go forward with the wedding. But mark my words, if you do that, I will stop the ceremony and I will tell everyone that you are pregnant with my child. That I seduced you in Corfu and that you gave it up to me in record time. Even without a paternity test, your precious Ajax will know. Because I’m the only man that’s had you. And a due date with that big of a gap from your wedding night won’t lie.”

  “The press...”

  “The press is here, and they’ll hear and report every word I say. But the decision is yours.”

  “It’s not mine,” she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts. She was still wearing nothing more than her underwear. “I’m in an impossible situation here. I can’t go back. I can’t fix this. I can’t...” she paused. “I could get a...” She looked away from him. “I could make it go away.”

  His stomach clenched. “No.”

  She shook her head, her blue eyes filling with tears. “You’re right. I can’t. I just... I can’t.”

  “Come with me.”

  “And what?”

  “Marry me.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “YOU’RE INSANE,” RACHEL SAID, aiming the air-conditioning vent at her face as Alex’s red sports car peeled out of the driveway of the family estate.

  Holy crap. She’d done it. She was running away from her wedding. She had...almost nothing. A few clothes, her favorite shoes. Her computer, her phone, her books.

  But when he’d told her about the options, it was like seeing ahead, straight and clear. She could go out there, dressed all in white, the virginal bride, and promise herself to Ajax, knowing she was carrying another man’s baby. Knowing the press would slaughter all involved if Alex strode down the aisle after her and told everyone in attendance what she’d done.

  That was something she’d known she couldn’t do even before she’d confirmed the pregnancy.

  She knew the position she was in. She’d been made so fully aware of it that day in her father’s office when he’d told her he would no longer shield her from the scandal she was exposing herself to.

  She’d managed to stay perfect in the eyes of the public and because of that the media had placed her on a pedestal. That meant that any whiff of scandal would send a mob of reporters out to knock her straight off it.

  Nobody liked a paragon, not really. They only kept her around for the chance to see her fall. She’d been spared that fate. Her father had protected her from the consequences of her actions, and after seeing the extent to which she could have ruined things for herself she’d decided that she would be playing the part of dutiful daughter, and wife, for the rest of her life.

  And all she’d done was delay the inevitable—she saw that now.

  It would be vicious when they found out about this, and no matter how she played this, she would come out the villain. She knew it for certain. But she didn’t have the strength to have it happen in front of an audience. To let Alex say his piece like that, in front of all those guests and reporters, without any control for what was said or how.

  The thought of it... It felt like her whole life, the life she’d taken such great pains to build from the time she was seventeen, was slipping through her fingers. She had become The Holt Heiress. Rachel Holt, style icon and media sweetheart. Eternal hostess, role model and...and what else she didn’t know.

  That night with Alex had brought something out in her she hadn’t known had existed, and she was paying for it dearly now.

  Stepping off that straight and narrow path had proven to have some pretty permanent consequences. And right now, she was taking a temporary leave of absence from those consequences. Because this way, she didn’t have to look at Ajax’s face when he found out. Or her father’s.

  Or Leah’s.

  She took her phone out. “I have to text Leah at least.” She thought of her sister, who was all set to be maid of honor in the wedding. Her lovely, sweet sister who’d always gotten such crap from the press, but who was one of the best people Rachel had ever known.

  It made her sick to think how Leah would worry.

  How her father would worry.

  And Ajax...

  She had ruined everything. She was going to panic. She was officially on the verge of a panic attack.

  “Don’t text them until our plane is about to leave. And why am I insane?”

  “Because everything is insane!” She exploded. “And you want me to marry you. I am not marrying you. I don’t know you. I don’t like you, either.”

  “How can you dislike me if you don’t know me?”

  “Fine. I don’t know you very well, and what I do know about you, I don’t like.”

  “You like my body.”

  “And if you were only a body, maybe that would matter. But there is, unfortunately, a personality beneath those hard muscles and it freaking blows.”

  “Does it?”

  “You’re a liar. You’re hell-bent on ruining my fiancé’s life, and I don’t even know why, and you used me to get revenge on him.”

  “And then didn’t do anything about it.”

  “You came today.”

  “Yeah, so I might have done something. But I wasn’t going to come to the wedding so I wasn’t planning on doing anything anymore. It’s just...it’s just that then I ended up coming. And it was a good thing I did.”

  “It was not.”

  “You would have married him then?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not.”

  “Why do you hate him, incidentally? It seems like this might be really important to my future.” She looked down at her hands and noticed they were shaking.

  “As I told you, Ajax Kouros is a created name. A created identity. Hell, mine is, too, for the most part. Christofides is anyway. I was never called by a last name at all.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “I was the son of a woman who couldn’t remember her real name. Or if she did, she chose never to use it. ‘Meli’ was all she ever called herself. Honey. I think it was a double entendre of some kind. We lived in Ajax’s father’s compound. The infamous Nikola Kouklakis.”

  “What?”

  “I suppose you’ve heard of him.”

  “The depth of that trafficking ring was...horrendous. When it was broken up a few years ago...”

  “Yes, it was shocking. So many people. So many lives ruined. My mother wasn’t one who was kidnapped. She was seduced. By the drugs. By the money. By love of some kind. We lived in the compound. As did Ajax. I remember seeing him and thinking he was quite something with his suits. The cars. But I learned very quickly to be afraid of him, because he was the big boss’s son. Because what if he saw me causing trouble?”

  “Alex...I don’t... This can’t be.”

  “What? You think I goad him for fun? I goad him because I don’t think he deserves any of what he has, not while so many of us live with the lasting wounds of where his fortune came from.”

  “But he didn’t earn any of it from...anywhere bad. He came
to my family when he was a boy. He got work with my father. He built up from nothing.”

  “You don’t know him like I do. You think you do, Rachel, but you don’t know him.”

  “I do.”

  “Why had you never slept with him?”

  “He’s not...very passionate. And I figured I wasn’t, either, so fine.”

  He chuckled, a dark, humorless sound. “I witnessed some of his behavior back at the compound. He was with the women there. He’s certainly not passionless, and knowing his background I find it worrisome more than anything that he hasn’t touched you. Perhaps he was just going to savor your virginity.”

  Her face heated, anger and anxiety shooting through her. “He didn’t know I was a virgin. I had a...a relationship before him, and I didn’t... I obviously didn’t sleep with him, but it wasn’t chaste. Okay? And Ajax and I never discussed it, so he really didn’t know.”

  “Trust me, agape, he knew.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I only knew you for an afternoon.”

  “It had some lasting consequences,” she said, leaning against the window of the car and watching the scenery fly by. “Why am I going with you again?”

  “You don’t want me destroying your reputation in the press? Or destroying Ajax at the altar, though I can’t imagine why.”

  Her head was swimming. She couldn’t even imagine the Ajax she knew, the man who seemed to spend twenty-four hours a day in a crisply pressed suit, prowling the halls of a drug house and mingling with prostitutes. It didn’t make sense.

  “I only know what I know about him.”

  And that of all the things that she felt right now—which were blessedly cushioned by shock or she would be rocking in a corner— heartbreak wasn’t one of them. So the other thing she could add to the list of Very Obvious Things She Knew was that she did not love Ajax, for certain.

  That part of her was relieved to be fleeing the wedding, even if it was with Alexios Christofides.

  Even if she was having his baby.

  Her stomach pitched. No, she wasn’t relieved about that. She couldn’t even really think about all that.

  “You aren’t going to hold me prisoner, are you?” she asked when the car pulled up to the airport.

  “If I wanted to do that, I would have done it back in Corfu.”

  “I suppose.”

  “There’s no suppose about it. I had you wrapped around my finger, agape mou.”

  She gritted her teeth and opened the door to the car. He followed, and an employee came out for their bags. Not the normal treatment, even when she flew, and she was accustomed to first class.

  She whirled around to face him. “Actually, Alex, no matter what you say, no matter what your plan was, I’m fairly confident I had you wrapped around mine.”

  “You had me by something, but it wasn’t my finger.”

  She curled her lip. “You’re despicable. Now which terminal are we going to?”

  “We are taking a private plane. All the better for us to discuss our issues.”

  “Why do I feel like I’m in the presence of the big bad wolf?”

  “Because of my big...teeth?”

  She made a face. “Maybe it’s your ego, did you ever think of that?”

  “It could be that,” he said, obviously completely unbothered by her insults.

  “I don’t like you,” she said. For some reason, with him, the honesty flowed.

  “I know, but you still want me, and that really bothers you.”

  Her hackles rose, because, dammit, it was true. “Not half as much as having your baby bothers me.”

  “Then why are you coming with me?”

  She shook her head and stopped walking. “Because...because as angry as I am at you, this isn’t all your fault. Not really. I blew up my future. I put a bomb in the middle of it and now it’s so wrecked there’s no putting it back together. If I stay, I expose my family to more scandal than if I go quietly.”

  “And how it affects your family is what really matters to you?”

  “It matters. My mother was the most lovely, gracious woman around. No one ever found fault with her. My father is so...decent and my sister gets hell from the press for no reason other than they wanted a punching bag and they picked her. I can’t make things worse for them.”

  “What about you?”

  “Fine. Me, too. I don’t want cameras in my face, and lots of questions asked. And...Alex, you’re the father of this baby, whether I like you or not. And I feel like you deserve a chance. Not marriage, mind you, but a chance.”

  “So what is it you want?” he asked.

  “To know you, would be a good start.”

  “I take it you don’t mean in the biblical sense.”

  “I already do, and it got me nowhere but pregnant and out of a wedding, so let’s just hope that the other kind of getting to know you goes better.”

  “If you expect me to sit around and talk about my feelings, you’re out of luck. If, however you would like to get to know me more closely in the biblical sense...”

  “I’m thinking of two words here, Alex, and they are brought to you by the letters F and U.”

  “I had the impression you were a docile little thing, based on media reports. And also that you weren’t very smart.”

  Heat streaked across her cheekbones. “I suppose you did, but then that’s the way the media likes to show me, I guess.” Partly by her design. “Simple and accommodating.”

  “And you aren’t.”

  “Not on the inside,” she muttered.

  But she’d learned to be. After all the parties had started catching up with her. After Colin and his sleazy seduction that had concluded with her agreeing to some drunken, pornographic photos and a brief video.

  One she’d had to confess the existence of to her father. If there was anything more horrifying on the face of the planet she couldn’t think of it. Hard evidence of just how stupid she was being. And as her father had pointed out, she was lucky that the worst of it was the photos. Going off alone, drunk with a man who was essentially a stranger could have ended much worse.

  Then there had been the partying, the drugs she’d been experimenting with. The fact that she’d been driving herself home under the influence...

  She’d deserved the dressing down her father had given her. The threats of being cut off. And as she’d looked at the pictures of herself with Colin...it had been a full-color exhibit of her bad choices.

  The wake-up call she’d badly needed. And after the photos and video had been managed, after Colin had been paid off, her mother had gotten sick. Rachel had thrown herself into caring for her mother, driving her to appointments, keeping her company, helping her plan her parties. Helping host them.

  And then on the other side of that, after her mother’s death, had been Ajax.

  Her father had expected her to marry him. Of course, her father also hoped she would love Ajax. Either way, she’d known what she was supposed to do.

  Ajax treated her like she was fine china he was afraid to break. Unlike Alex, who seemed to think she could withstand all manner of rough treatment. Brute.

  She sniffed. Loudly.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You aren’t very nice to me,” she said, walking ahead of him, following the cart that held their luggage. “Interesting you claim Ajax is such a villain but he treated me like a—”

  “Nun.”

  “—a princess.”

  “You aren’t a damn princess. You’re just a regular woman.”

  “Ajax thinks I’m a princess.”

  “In about four hours Ajax will think of you as that traitor who left him at the altar.”

  She clenched her teeth together tightly. She couldn’t arg
ue with that. And she couldn’t blame all of this on him, not when she absolutely had a stake in the guilt. But she really, really wanted to.

  The conversation stopped when they approached a sleek jet parked on the runway. The door opened—a carpeted staircase waited to ease their entrance.

  “Swank,” she said, going up the stairs and into the plane, where her tart descriptor was proven to be an understatement.

  Everything was beautiful beyond belief, polished and plush, from the cream-colored floor to the soft leather couches.

  “There’s champagne chilling,” Alex said, coming in behind her. “Of course, you can’t have any. Bad for the baby.”

  “Are you always this insufferable?”

  “Are you?”

  “No, I never am. I’m actually extremely pleasant, all the time. It’s just that you make me... There really isn’t a word strong enough to express the anger-slash-anxiety I feel when you’re around.”

  “Attraction?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “That’s not the word.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I am so sure.”

  “Then why did you kiss me earlier?”

  She sat down on the couch, suddenly feeling taxed. “You also make me crazy. I do stupid things when you’re around.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  She crossed her arms. “I wouldn’t. Can you at least get me an orange juice?”

  “That, I could manage.” He pushed a button on his arm rest and gave the order.

  She leaned back and crossed her arms. “Where are we going, anyway?”

  “Back to my house. Away from the media firestorm that will no doubt ensue when they realize the bride has failed to show up for the wedding of the century. You’ll have to face the fallout eventually, but why not put it off for a while?”

  It really did sound good. To avoid reality for just a bit.

  “You can text your sister now.”

  Oh, yes, that was a bit of reality she really couldn’t avoid. Otherwise her family would be sending the police after them. For a couple of seconds she entertained the idea of letting them arrest Alex for kidnapping. But that was a news story she didn’t really want her child going back and reading, so she decided against it.