Read Online One Night to Risk It All by Maisey Yates - Free Book Online Page A

injustice, and then he’d looked at the one man who had risen above it. Clean, pristine and well-respected. Rich as god with a beautiful woman hanging on his arm.
    And he’d known that next on his agenda was making sure that Ajax Kouros knew helplessness. That he knew fear. That he knew what it was to lose the things he loved.
    And while he hadn’t destroyed the other man’s business yet, not for lack of trying, he did have Ajax’s fiancée.
    And though he wasn’t actively using Rachel as revenge at the moment, that thought almost made him cheerful.
    “Where are we?” Rachel asked as the plane touched down, white sand and turquoise sea rushing into view.
    “An island near Turkey. I call it...” And he realized that earlier he’d told her his mother’s name. It made him feel exposed, to tell her what he called the island when she would know why. He cursed his moment of sentimentality. Cursed the fact that he still cared so much for a woman who’d never loved him back. Who had ended her life rather than spend her days with him. “I call it Meli’s Hideaway,” he said. “And before you ask, no, my mother never saw it. She...died just before I left the Kouklakis compound. But if she hadn’t...this is where I would have taken her. So she could have a rest, finally. Though she’s resting now, I suppose.” If she had given him a chance. If she had trusted in him at all. If the idea of being with him hadn’t been a torture she couldn’t bear.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice muted. “My mother passed away, too. It’s hard. Really hard.”
    “Life is hard,’ he said, lifting one shoulder in a casual gesture.
    “What? That’s it?”
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “Life is hard and then you die. Is that better?”
    She shook her head. “Not really. You’re not exactly enjoying the journey, are you?”
    He stood up as the plane came to a stop. “Enjoying the journey is for another sort of person, from another sort of life. Someone like you, agape. ”
    “Well, I won’t deny that I have a great family. That I’ve been blessed to have a lot of nice things. Yes, I do enjoy the journey.” She was lying, though. He could sense it. Strange because when he’d met her in Corfu, she had exuded light. Joy. But he didn’t see those things in press photos of her.
    It was like she was hiding that light most of the time.
    “Were you going to enjoy spending the rest of your journey with Ajax?”
    She nodded, her posture stiff. “Of course I would have. I care about him deeply.”
    “But you don’t love him.”
    “Oh, bah. Why are you people so fixated on love?” Alana had tried to talk her out of the wedding at the eleventh hour. Citing love as the primary reason. “I like him. I love him in a way. Sure it’s not an all-consuming kind of love, but—”
    “But you aren’t crying your eyes out just at this moment, either,” he said.
    “I have a lot on my plate here,” she said. “I just found out I’m pregnant.” She paused and swore. “Pregnant. Oh...I can’t even. I can’t even take all of this in. And I just ran out on my wedding. And I’m in Turkey. With you.”
    “We’re not in Turkey. We’re on my island.”
    “Yeah, big effing difference to me just at the moment.”
    “If it’s any consolation, I feel similarly...run over. Is that how you feel?”
    “Run over by a train, yes.”
    “This doesn’t have to be difficult,” he said. He was about to propose marriage again. Yes, she’d brushed his mention of marriage off the first time, but she’d been shocked. She would come around, he was certain of it.
    One thing he knew for sure, and that was that he refused to be a shadowy figure in the background of his child’s life. He would not be that man. He would be as different from his own father as humanly possible. As different from everyone in his family as humanly possible.
    If you can be.
    No. He wasn’t the same. He would love his child. He wouldn’t want to own his child,