2017 Christmas Coda: The Greek Tycoons Read online

  2017 Christmas Coda: The Greek Tycoons

  by Lucy Monroe

  http://lucymonroe.com

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Digital Edition December 2017 Lucy Monroe LLC

  COPYRIGHT © 2017 LUCY MONROE

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express, written permission from the author, Lucy Monroe, who can be contacted off her website http://lucymonroe.com.

  You may link to the authorized free downloads of this book via Lucy's established venues: KINDLE & NOOK. You may not, under any circumstance, upload this book to your own (or any other) website without Lucy's express written consent.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Praise for Lucy Monroe's Books

  Lucy Monroe captures the very heart of the genre. She pulls the reader into the story from the first to the last page. ~ NYT Bestseller Debbie Macomber

  Lucy Monroe writes smart, sensual, emotional books for intelligent women. ~ NYT Bestseller JoAnn Ross

  Thank you for writing those alpha heroes I love. ~ NYT Bestseller Lori Foster

  A Lucy Monroe book is a treat not to be missed. ~ NYT Bestseller Lora Leigh

  Lucy Monroe is one of my favorite indulgences. ~ NYT Bestseller Christine Feehan

  Monroe writes with a flourish the type of lovemaking and desire that women can truly appreciate. ~ RT Book Reviews

  Lucy Monroe excels at creating authentic erotic romance. ~ Romance B(u)y the Book

  Just when one thinks this author has written the best of her best heroes, she releases another story and we are proven wrong. ~ The Road to Romance

  "Lucy Monroe has a way of turning a traditional storyline into a refreshing one by using a different approach vs. the tried and true." ~ Stacy (reader)

  "I've found that with Lucy's passionate and powerful characters, not to mention her intricate plotlines I am always drawn in right from the first sentence." ~ Tami (reader)

  “The characters are well rounded and compelling. The writing is crisp and flowing. You can't go wrong in this latest book [Watch Over Me] by the talented Lucy Monroe.” ~ Judy (reader)

  DEDICATION:

  For my compassionate and patient readers, and particularly those who have asked over the years: What ever happened to so-and-so, was their baby a boy or a girl, will their children grow up and get their own stories? These vignettes peeking into the lives of past characters are for you!

  Dear Reader,

  Over the years, I've received countless questions about what happened to this or that character, did they have a baby, was the baby a boy or girl, what are they doing now?

  Some characters have gotten cameos in other books, like Leiandros Kiriakis from The Greek Tycoon's Ultimatum. He showed up in The Greek's Christmas Baby, but was also mentioned in Not Just the Greek's Wife. Sebastian Hawk showed up in other books, both before and after his own book (Forbidden: The Billionaire's Virgin Princess) was written.

  In fact, he has a cameo in my upcoming May release, Kostas's Convenient Bride.

  But ever since reading the yearly Christmas Codas put out by one of my favorite authors, I've toyed with the idea of doing my own. Now that I'm writing again, I was delighted with the prospect of fulfilling that dream.

  My 2017 Christmas Coda: The Greek Tycoons was a pleasure and a joy to write. I had a lot of fun re-reading all of my Harlequin Presents Greek Tycoon books and reacquainting myself with the characters before writing their vignettes.

  These vignettes are not intended to be books, or even novellas. They do not follow typical story structure with a beginning, a middle, a story climax and an ending. The beginning for each vignette was the book it's based on. Simply put, these are Codas, the asked for glimpses into the lives of favorite characters.

  Each of those glimpses is different. Some are very short, others are near novella length and the rest fall somewhere in between. A few are sexy and sensual, all are a bit emotional, but a couple will take you on a new heart-wrenching journey with the characters.

  All answer the question, "What happened after the HEA?"

  It is my sincere hope that you, my reader, will find as much joy reading these peeks into the lives of the characters as I had writing them.

  Love and Hugs,

  Lucy

  Leiandros & Savannah Kiriakis

  from The Greek Tycoon's Ultimatum (2003)

  December, 15 years after the birth of the twins.

  Taking a moment to enjoy the scene before her, Savannah Kiriakis stopped in the doorway to their living room. Both the older girls were home from university for a month. Savannah had missed them so much. Despite the fact that Eva was in her third year attending an American college and Nyssa, who had followed her to the US for school, was now in her second year, Savannah had never gotten used to them being gone.

  Neither had Leiandros, though he was less willing to admit it.

  He was here now, though, and had been all day, visiting with the girls and the twins, who were also out of school for the winter break.

  Her gorgeous, tycoon husband looked up and their eyes caught, her breath going shallow just like it always had. She'd never learned to take for granted her reaction to the man who did his best to show her his love every single day. Perhaps because her first marriage had been so painful and not at all sexually compatible, she still found wonder in how perfectly she and Leiandros, tycoon, family man and amazing husband, fit.

  "What are you thinking with that look on your face?" he asked, coming forward to take her hand in his and press a kiss to her cheek. "You look beautiful."

  "Thank you. I was thinking what a perfect husband you are."

  "Oh, please. Let's not go all mom-and-dad sappy before dinner," Nyssa, their twenty-year-old daughter, teased.

  Bea, their youngest daughter and one of the fifteen-year-old twins, rolled her eyes. "They're always like this. It doesn't matter what time of day."

  "Would you prefer we argued all the time?" Leiandros lobbed right back, while tugging Savannah to sit on the sofa with him.

  "You can't argue when you always give in," Leo said with an eyeroll very much like his twin's.

  Savannah gave her son a mock frown. "Your father does not always give in."

  "To you, he does. He's got other billionaire business colleagues quaking in their shoes, but you just have to look a little upset and boom, whatever you want." Her son did not sound as disgusted as his words might imply.

  In fact, his tone was wholly approving and a little wistful. Savannah couldn't help wondering if there was a certain daughter of one of their friends that inspired the desire to be the same. At fifteen, they were far too young for permanent commitments, but Leo and Chara Kouros had a connection that seemed very familiar to Savannah.

  She just hoped their lives allowed them to explore it without the trauma, guilt and pain she and their father had experienced finding their way to each other.

  And still…fifteen was too young.

  "Now you've got that, my children are growing up too fast look on your face," Bea said, looking just a tad more concerned than Savannah thought she would with such an offhand remark.

  "You all are growing up too fast!" Savannah's smile slipped a little as she accepted in that moment that, in the not too distant future, each of the incredible children she'd spent the last two plus decades pouring her heart into, would be leaving the nest.

 
"Now, she looks about to cry." Nyssa jumped up from where she'd been sitting beside the tree and rushed over to give Savannah an impromptu hug. "It's okay, mama. We're still here."

  "I love you all so much. My life as your mom has been so full, so perfect."

  "You can say that after how I screamed at you during my teenage years?" Nyssa asked with a laugh.

  Savannah felt the tears her daughter had teased about burning the back of her eyes as she nodded vehemently. "You are stubborn, a little dramatic and perfect."

  "I'm so not perfect." Nyssa shook her head. "But you always see the best in us children, even when we're calling you names and sending dad into apoplectic fits with our rebellions."

  "I have never been apoplectic, I assure you." Leiandros managed to utter that blatant lie without a single blink.

  "So that wasn't you shouting the house down when Eva and I ditched our bodyguards and spent the day shopping in Athens before going to a club?" Nyssa tormented her father with a memory that still caused the indestructible tycoon to wake in a cold sweat at night.

  "But you have promised to never do that again," Savannah said before her husband's good mood disappeared in memories.

  Nyssa grinned, unrepentant. "Never again. I promised."

  "And we let them go to university in America. What were we thinking?" Leiandros asked, not altogether teasing.

  "I don't know!" It wasn't Savannah answering that way to her husband, but their oldest daughter looking suddenly ready to explode with some terrible emotion.

  Savannah was on her feet in a second, headed across the room, but still Leiandros reached their usually quiet, not at all dramatic daughter before Savannah did.

  He pulled the now crying twenty-one-year-old into his arms. "It is all right, moro mou. Papa will fix whatever it is, I promise."

  "You can't fix this," Eva wailed. "Not even you."

  Savannah looked around at the other children, to see if any of them had an inkling what this wholly unexpected meltdown was about. Nyssa was staring at her older sister like she'd grown a second head. No joy there then. Leo looked panicked, like he didn't know what to do to make it better, but didn't like that feeling at all.

  But Bea, Eva's fifteen-year-old sister, was biting her lip, her eyes, the same espresso brown as her father's, filled with concern and understanding.

  Savannah pressed her hand to her sobbing eldest daughter's back, but focused on the youngest. "Bea? Do you know what's going on?"

  Bea wrapped her arms around her stomach and nodded. "Please don't make me tell you. That's for Eva to do. It's not my place."

  Savannah gave Bea as reassuring a smile as she could muster.

  What on earth was going on with her usually even-tempered daughter? Despite being an artist and going for a fine arts degree, Eva was the most level headed of Savannah's children. And she had plans. For her life, for her siblings. One of those plans had to have gone awry for this kind of reaction, but honestly, if it wasn't Nyssa, and her baffled expression said she had no idea what was going on, Savannah couldn't imagine which of her children could have gone off the rails to cause this kind of reaction.

  "What?" Leiandros shouted loud enough to make Savannah jump. "What did you just say to me?" he asked their daughter, his expression utterly gobsmacked.

  "You heard me," Eva said, making no move to leave the comfort of her father's arms.

  "You are pregnant?" Leiandros asked, his tone too bewildered to be angry, despite his earlier shout.

  Savannah didn't hear her daughter's answer. Blood was rushing too loudly in Savannah's ears. The room had lost all its oxygen too and she didn't know what to do about that, but no matter how many breaths she took, she felt like her chest was too tight. The world went a little black around the edges, but Savannah refused to sway on her feet.

  Her daughter couldn't see her dismay. Not right now. She needed support. Love. Encouragement. Inside, Savannah was screaming; terror unlike she'd felt since ending her marriage with a monster took over her brain. Fear for her daughter. Fear for the baby she carried. Worry for their family, concern for Leiandros. Because he adored his children. He would take this on himself, thinking somehow, something he had done had brought this about.

  Was it the end of the world? No.

  But Savannah's heart screamed at her. What if the father was that terrible boy Eva had been dating? The one the bodyguards had warned them got physical when he got angry; although, because of their presence, he'd never crossed that line. Only someone had crossed some line because Eva wasn't pregnant without having had sex.

  Savannah wanted to remind her that she'd promised not to ditch the bodyguards again, but now was not the time. Savannah had to stuff her fears way down. She had to let the love she felt for her daughter rise to the top. She was the voice of hope in their family, the emotional barometer and if she didn't keep it together, everything would fall apart.

  Never had she felt so sure that her own emotions did not matter, that they could not show, as in that moment when faced with her daughter's pregnancy.

  Eva was a year and a half from being finished with school. Did she even think about that? She'd had the opportunity to do things with her life that Savannah never had, the safety net that Savannah had lost when her aunt had gotten Alzheimer's when she was nineteen.

  "It will be okay," Leiandros was saying. "You are not alone."

  "Mama?" Eva asked, her voice trembling.

  Savannah hugged her daughter tight. "Your father is right. We are a family. Whatever you want to do, we will support you."

  "I want to finish school, but that's not fair, is it? After all, I made the mistake, nobody else." Eva was crying again.

  Savannah gently nudged her husband out of the way so she could take her daughter's face in her hands and meet beautiful green eyes. "Listen to me, right now, Eva. Yes, you had sex with a man and became pregnant. I'm not sure how that happened with the bodyguards, much less the birth control, but it happened. And we will go forward as a family."

  "But—"

  "No, no buts, no questioning the love of your parents. I've adored you since the moment you were conceived, your father has loved you nearly as long, but just as deeply. You are our daughter and this child? This child you carry is our grandchild."

  "I don't know what I want to do, what I can do."

  "Let's start with what you want."

  "You're not giving that baby up," Nyssa said with characteristic firmness and certainty of her own opinion. "He or she isn't just yours, but ours as well."

  "I know that," Eva said, giving her sister a grateful look, rather than the frown Savannah might have expected after that bit of bossiness. "I want the baby. I want to stay in school."

  "And the father?" Leiandros asked in even tones that meant he was doing his best to control his emotions as well.

  "He's not in the picture. I don't want him in the picture. When I told him I was pregnant, he…" Eva had to collect herself. "He hit me."

  "I will kill him and bury him so deep none will ever find the body."

  Savannah had no doubt her husband meant every word he said. She shook her head firmly. "No. We will let the lawyers take care of this. You aren't laying a hand on anybody, in fact, you'll pay him off if that's what it takes to get him to sign over parental rights."

  "His rights will be nil here in Greece. Good luck proving his parentage in our courts."

  "Nevertheless, we aren't going that route. We're getting the papers signed." Savannah looked around her family, letting every single one of them know just how serious she was right now. "We are going to grow by one within the next year and every single one of us will take on whatever role we are meant to with grace and love."

  "Yes, mama," all of her children said while Leiandros inclined his head, his expression saying, of course.

  "All right. As to school—"

  "She's not going back to the U.S. In fact, neither girl is going so far away again." Oh, Leiandros was going into full on protection mode.


  If Savannah didn't rein him in quickly, he'd have the younger children learning with tutors and the girls finishing their university years at an all-girls college as close as he could find one.

  "We will discuss where our daughters are going to university later," Savannah said, then went for the strategic change of subject. "We still have an annual party to host tonight. Our family's new addition and the changes the baby will bring will have to wait until tomorrow."

  "Chara is coming tonight," Leo said.

  Savannah bit back a smile. Like she didn't know the Kouros teenager was one of the three guests she'd allowed her son to invite to the adult party.

  "As tempted as you may be to discuss this new situation with your friends, we are not announcing Eva's pregnancy until we have solidified our future plans, is that understood?" Leiandros' tone and firm jaw did not invite argument.

  Neither Savannah, nor the children gave him one.

  #

  Savannah crawled into bed feeling older than her forty-seven years, so exhausted, her limbs ached. Hosting their annual Christmas party was always tiring, but doing it with the secret knowledge that her oldest daughter was pregnant by a man who had struck her when she told him? Now, that had challenged Savannah right down to her soul.

  Leiandros didn't climb in on his own side, but came into the bed on hers, pulling her under him and blanketing her body with his big one in that way that always made her feel safe. "Everything will work out. You need to trust me, agape mou."

  "She had sex with that awful boy."

  "We have all had sex with people we wish we had not. At least she is not compounding the mistake by trying to build a relationship with him."

  "But he'll always be a part of the baby's life."

  "No. He will not."

  "Even you can't guarantee that, Leiandros."

  "Watch me."

  Savannah had never gotten to a place where her husband's arrogance annoyed her. Okay, sometimes in the moment, but for the most part? His absolute confidence gave her a sense of security she'd never known in her first marriage, or even while growing up as she had done.