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That last bit hit hoaze locked with his, and her short, filed nails curled into her palms
Mr Laurent was right She could never do so her heart But she’d survived worse And it wasn’t as if she was abandoning a child to a monster Nikos Panos wanted this baby desperately
Drawing a short, sharp breath, Georgia naure, a su expenses, plus so to shock the old lawyer
But Mr Laurent didn’t blink Instead he scribbled so down on a printed sheet of paper “The addendu the paper across the desk toward her “Sign here, and date there”
She sed, shocked he’d so readily agreed to her “outrageous” demand He must have been prepared for her to ask for even more She probably could have asked for millions and he would have said yes Stupid pride Why couldn’t she be a proper mercenary?
“You’re agreeing to leave Friday,” Mr Laurent said as she reached for the page “You will spend the last trinancy in Greece, at Nikos Panos’s villa on Kaht from Athens After delivery, once you have been cleared to travel, my client will send you back to Atlanta, either on his private jet or first class on the airline of your choice Any questions?”
“Thetomorrow?”
He handed her a pen “It will be there by nine aned
“I’lad ere able to come to terms”
Georgia stood, heartsick but too far in to see a way out “As you said, everyone has a price Goodbye, Mr Laurent”
“Enjoy your time in Greece, Miss Nielsen”
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS A long trip froia had plenty of time to sleep, study and even watch a movie or then she was too tired to read one more sample question from the test
The movies helped occupy herto sleep, she needed entertainoodbye with Savannah, who’d driven down from Duke to see her off
Or o
Savannah had been beside herself, alternating between tears and anger, asking repeatedly what Georgia knew about this Greek tycoon in the first place
What do you even know about hierous, seriously deranged, and ill be able to help you when you’re on his island in the middle of nowhere?
Savannah had never been the practical one, but in this instance, she was right
Georgia had researched Nikos Panos—and, yes, he was a Greek billionaire, and he’d turned his fa company around with shrewd invest over the helm of the company while in hison his morals or his character She just had the attorney and the payments for services rendered
She started to rub her tuly pronounced Her skin was sensitive, and warnancy, or the surrogacy, she are of the life inside her
And not just a life, but a boy There were no boys in her faine what it’d be like to raise a little boy
But she wouldn’t go there She never let herself go there She wasn’t going to let herself become invested
But as the jet made its final descent into what lo
oked like an endless sea of blue, the baby did a flutter kick as if recognizing that he was al panic
She could do this She would do this
The baby wasn’t hers
She wasn’t attached
She’d been paid not to care
She wouldn’t care
But those fierce adret washing through her heart
“Just three and a half months,” she whispered Three and a half reed to do
Three and a halfat the far end of the landing strip, narrowed gaze fixed on the white Dassault Falcon jet It had been a rough landing owing to the windy day, which wasn’t unusual for this time of year in the Cyclades But the jet was safely parked and the door was open, revealing twenty-four-year-old Georgia Nielsen
From where he stood, she appeared very slender and very blonde in a soft-knit apricot tunic, dark gray tights and high-heel boots that covered her knees He frowned at the height of the heels on her boots, baffled as to why a pregnant woh Her boots were a problem, and so was her dress Her tunic’s knit he
Nikos knew froia Nielsen would be pretty, but he hadn’t expected this
Standing at the top of the stairs with the blustery wind grabbing at her hair and the sun haloing the bright golden hten and ache
He’d wanted a surrogate that looked like Elsa
But he didn’t want Elsa
In that moment, he wondered if he’d made a terrible mistake He had to be more than a little bit mad to search the world for a woman that looked like his late wife, and certifiably insane to bring that doppelgänger here, to Kamari
The Aate htened, and, lifting a hand to her hair, held the billowing golden mane back from her face as she came down the jet’s stairs quickly It wasn’t quite a run, but definitely with speed, and purpose