Then he would have to listen to his father’s onetime and always scheming mistress, Evelina, arguing that his half brother, Val, was two days older than Javiero, and therefore all the money should go to them.
Mine, mine, mine.
The sickening refrain continued despite the instrument being dead.
Javiero wished the damned jaguar had finished him off. He really did.
As for Scarlett…? His grim mood skipped in and out of its channel, sparking and grinding at the mere thought of her.
She had called once while Javiero was in hospital. Once. On behalf of his dying father. His mother had informed her that Javiero would survive, and that had been all Scarlett had needed to hear. Not another word, no card or flowers. Nothing.
Why did that bother him? Until the last time he’d seen her, she had always been a very businesslike and unflappable PA. Almost pathological in her devotion to his father. She would turn up in one of her pencil skirts, blond hair gathered at her nape, delicate features flawlessly accented with natural tones, and she would irritate the hell out of him with her one-track agenda.
Your father wants me to inform you that he’s aware you’re behind the hostile takeover in Germany. He is willing to give you control of his entire operation if you come back to Athens and run it.
No.
Or, Evelina has made a specific request for funds. Niko has granted it. This is your mother’s equivalent amount. If you would like to speak to him about—
No.
And then that final meeting. Your father has run out of treatment options. He is unlikely to survive the year. Now would be the time to come see him.
No.
She had finally cracked and it had been fascinating.
She hadn’t understood how he couldn’t care one single rat’s behind about his father or his father’s money.
You don’t want what is rightfully yours? What if it all goes to Val?
That had caught his attention. If it was up to Javiero, Val could have every last cursed euro, but his mother would be devastated. Was Niko planning to leave it all to Val?
No, Scarlett had assured him, but that hadn’t been the whole truth. Come and see him, she had insisted, looking ready to take him by the ear to accomplish it. He hadn’t understood what had driven her so vehemently. It wasn’t love for his father. She had never said a harsh word about Niko, but she’d never said a kind one, either.
There had been a mystery there—Javiero had felt it—but he had refused all the same, annoyed that she was instilling a genuine temptation in him to solve it. He wanted to go with her when he had sworn nothing would ever induce him to see his father or visit that island again for any reason.
He’d sensed a finality to her visit, though. There’d been a futility in her that told him he wouldn’t see her again after this. It had added a layer of desperation to their power struggle. The tension had become sexual and had burst into a passionate encounter that had left him reeling.
But only him, it seemed. He had continued to think about her months later. She had left before the dinner hour, choosing to go back to work for a man Javiero hated with every fiber of his being rather than remain with her new lover.
That had been before he looked like hell. Would she be repulsed by his injuries when she saw him? Indifferent?
Why should he care what she thought?
He didn’t. But he entertained a small, malicious fantasy where he pointed out his disfigurement was only physical. Scarlett had character flaws.
“Javiero.” His mother’s voice behind him held such heightened emotion that the hair lifted on the back of his neck. Shock and urgency and something bordering on triumph?
He swung from the window in the small sitting area and almost had to reach for the back of a sofa to catch his balance. He was still getting used to his lack of depth perception.
His mother had insisted on rechecking her impeccable appearance. Her black hair was still rolled into its customary bun, but she was pale beneath her makeup. Agitation seemed to grip her while there was a glow of avaricious excitement in her blue-green eyes.
“Go in there.” She nodded toward the door to the ladies’ room.
Javiero lifted his brows and felt the pull under his eye patch against scar tissue that hadn’t fully healed.
“Is there a problem? I’ll call maintenance.” That came from Nigel, the assistant who had met them at the south entrance. He had taken one aghast look at Javiero’s face and had kept his attention on Paloma ever since.
“No,” his mother said firmly. She stepped aside and waved at the door, prompting. “Javiero.”
With a snarl of impatience, he strode past his mother and shoved into the women’s toilet, halting abruptly at the sight of Scarlett turning from the sink.
Distantly he heard the door drift closed behind him while he took in her appearance. Her blond hair was gathered at her nape, her face was rounder, her blouse untucked and her tailored jacket open to allow for—
He cocked his head, widening his one eye, not sure he was seeing this correctly.
He yanked his gaze back to her face. Her expression was frozen in horror as she took in his shaggy hair and eye patch and gashed face poorly hidden by an untrimmed beard.
The word pregnant landed in a pool of comprehension deep in his brain, sending a tidal wave of shock through his entire psyche.
* * *
Scarlett dropped her phone with a clatter.
She had been trying to call Kiara. Now she was taking in the livid claw marks across Javiero’s face, each pocked on either side with the pinpricks of recently removed stitches. His dark brown hair was longer than she’d ever seen it, perhaps gelled back from the widow’s peak at some point this morning, but it was mussed and held a jagged part. He wore a black eye patch like
