Pregnant by the Greek Tycoon Read online

  ‘If my daughter was involved with the wrong man I would not advise her to have sex with him,’ he assured her grimly.

  ‘What would you do?’ she asked, even though she could hazard a guess from his expression.

  ‘I would remove the man from her life.’

  ‘And if he didn’t want to go?’

  He looked astonished that she needed to ask. ‘I would not give him a choice.’

  She shook her head. ‘I think it’s just as well that Nicky wasn’t a girl.’

  ‘Our next child might be, though.’

  The colour drained from her face. ‘What did you say?’ she choked.

  His brows lifted. ‘Would you condemn Nicky to be an only child?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘Me condemn…! You really are a piece of work. Don’t you dare try and use moral blackmail on me.’

  ‘Moral blackmail.’

  ‘Don’t give me that innocent look. I’ve seen wolves who looked more innocent than you.’

  The accusation drew a grin from him. ‘I believe that wolves suffer from a very bad press. They are not the bad guys of popular fiction. Did you know they mate for life?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m willing to give wolves the benefit of the doubt,’ she gritted. ‘But we both know that you’d do whatever it took to get what you wanted.’

  ‘You don’t want another baby?’ Despite his mild tone his eyes were fixed with a curious intensity on her face.

  She blinked; the question took her aback. Did she want another baby? ‘That’s not the point—’

  ‘I would say it’s very much the point,’ he inserted drily.

  ‘It’s far too early…’ She stopped and angled a searching look at his lean face. ‘Do you want a baby?’

  ‘And if I said I did, would it make a difference to you?’

  She looked from the sensual curve of his mouth to the velvety darkness of his eyes and felt her concentration slipping… Her expression hardened.

  ‘You expect me to believe you give a damn about what I think?’ She released a scornful trill of laughter and saw the anger flicker in his liquid dark eyes. ‘Let’s not drift into fantasy land here…’

  Angolos cut across her. ‘Actually I don’t feel that having a baby at this time would be a sensible idea.’

  The colour in her cheeks receded. She ought to welcome his comment, she told herself crossly. Anyone would think I wanted to have his baby. ‘When we don’t even know if we’ll be together in two weeks’ time, let alone two years, I couldn’t agree more,’ she contended coolly.

  ‘The positive attitude again. You know, Georgette, cynical doesn’t suit you.’

  ‘Get used to it, Angolos,’ she suggested, maintaining her indifferent pose.

  ‘Do you realise that the moment I start to get close to you…’ He took an actual step towards her and without thinking Georgie retreated two steps. ‘I was going to say, you push me away, but maybe that should have been you run away.’

  A defiant frown formed on her face as she met his ironic smile. ‘I’m really not in the mood for your silly games.’

  ‘I’m not playing games, Georgette. I know you want to punish me,’ he revealed in a harsh voice, ‘but hasn’t it occurred to you that I’m not the only one suffering here? You’re hurting too. You want me, Georgette. We both know that.’

  She opened her mouth to angrily rebut this claim and stopped. She released a long, slow, shuddering breath. ‘I am hurting, but there’s not a lot I can do about it. And I doubt very much if getting into your bed is going to make that hurt go away. I will probably sleep with you, Angolos.’ She saw triumph flare in his eyes and added with a self-derisive shrug, ‘You’re right—I have very little self-control where you are concerned. But I can’t let myself trust you again, Angolos; you hurt me so much.’

  The taut silence lengthened. Angolos walked over to the window. ‘That cuts both ways.’

  Bewildered, she stared at his broad back. ‘I hurt you…?’

  Angolos turned back; he didn’t want to hear another denial. ‘I really think there is no point dissecting what went wrong between us.’

  On one level he could recognise how the situation could have driven her into another man’s arms: she had felt isolated; he had been too busy with work to give her the attention she needed…recognise but never forgive.

  ‘I thought you wanted to talk,’ she protested, bewildered by his swift change of mood.

  ‘I think we should talk about the future.’

  ‘Suits me.’ She shot him a wary glance. ‘But let’s not go over ground we’ve already covered,’ she cautioned.

  ‘What ground would that be?’

  ‘Babies,’ she elaborated.

  ‘I was not…I actually think you’re a marvellous mother.’

  Georgie’s eyes widened. Coming from Angolos, who didn’t throw around the compliments, this was praise indeed. ‘I’m a fairly all right mother,’ she corrected. ‘I’m a long way from marvellous. I make loads of mistakes. I expect you will too. It’s a steep learning curve so don’t expect to get it right the first time. I suppose it’s not unlike riding a bike or…’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘I forget,’ she said, unable to think on the spur of the moment of a more convincing lie. Angolos didn’t look convinced.

  She released a hiss of angry frustration and she shot him a look of fulminating frustration. ‘I was going to say making love, but I’m sure you were always perfect at that, damn you!’ she added with a resentful sniff.

  The look of astonishment that spread across his face was swiftly supplanted by a slow, sensual smile. ‘There’s no need to look so smug.’

  ‘I don’t feel smug. I’d just forgotten how much you always made me laugh.’ Then to her dismay he did just that in a loud and uninhibited way.

  Hell, she thought, he really did have the sexiest laugh in the world.

  ‘Shut up,’ she hissed, ‘Nicky will wake up, or someone will come up to see what’s going on.’

  ‘Is this better?’ he asked.

  Georgie studied the sober face he showed her. ‘Your hair’s sticking up,’ she said. It wasn’t, but it helped her not say what she wanted to. You’re beautiful might take this conversation in a direction she really didn’t want to go!

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, drawing a hand over the neatly trimmed pelt. ‘Has your family got something against laughter?’

  ‘No, just you.’ The rueful smile created a brief sense of unity. ‘Do you remember…?’ she began, then stopped.

  ‘What?’ he prompted.

  ‘I was just thinking about the first time you met the family, and your face when Gran asked you if you worked in a bar. You looked so astonished.’ She shook her head. The memory of his aghast expression was so strong that it was hard to keep the quiver of amusement from her voice. ‘And you said no, but you thought that you might own a vineyard, but you’d have to ch…check.’

  ‘I did check and I own two, but they are very small.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘YOU’LL wake him,’ Georgie reproached Angolos again before stuffing her fist on her mouth to stifle her own laughter. She laughed until her ribs ached and when she stopped she wiped away the tears from her cheeks. A quick peek revealed that Nicky was still sound asleep.

  ‘It’s lucky he’s a…’ She turned towards Angolos and promptly forgot what she had been about to say.

  There was no lingering amusement on his face. Under the sweep of his dark, luxuriant lashes his eyes glittered. The expression on his lean face was intense and raw.

  The air between them suddenly buzzed with an almost visible electric charge. It made the fine hairs on her arms stand on end and caused a tell-tale, quivery ache low in her belly.

  If she didn’t do something and do it quick things were going to happen. And she didn’t want that, did she?

  ‘You’re staring,’ she accused with a weak little laugh that fooled nobody, especially herself.

  He carried on staring.

>   She looked at his mouth, seeing it against her breasts. Inside her shirt her nipples grew hard as though his lips had actually brushed over them.

  ‘This is a trial,’ she began, calling on every ounce of her will-power to control her voice. ‘I was explaining, before you hijacked the conversation, that I’m going to give work my notice.’

  There was a long uncomfortable silence while he studied the rigid lines of her determined face.

  ‘They’ve always been good to me at the school. Nicky has a free place at the nursery,’ she continued.

  ‘So it’s non-negotiable?’

  Her shoulders sagged in relief. ‘Yes.’

  ‘In that case I suppose I’d better rearrange my schedule.’

  Georgie, who had been expecting something along the lines of, Over my dead body, raised suspicious eyes to his face. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that now that I’ve found my son I’m not about to wait to be his father. I will relocate.’

  ‘But your work!’ she protested.

  He dismissed his multimillion-pound company with a casual shrug of his shoulders. ‘If necessary I will work from home.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t even know where I work and you can’t possibly run an international company from a Sussex village.’

  He gave her a mocking look. ‘Anyone would think you didn’t want me to move in with you, yineka mou,’ he drawled.

  Anyone would be right. Her body grew rigid as the full import of his comment penetrated. ‘Move in…?’ She echoed sharply.

  ‘I think we should start as we mean to go on. This is to be a marriage in every sense of the word.’

  Her shoulders suddenly relaxed as she realised that what he suggested was impossible. ‘That would be sensible…the starting as you mean to go on bit, I mean,’ she agreed. ‘But unfortunately my flat is tiny, one bedroom.’ Her glance came to rest on his broad-shouldered frame. ‘You wouldn’t fit in…and I mean that in the literal sense.’ She actually meant that in every sense.

  ‘I am very adaptable.’

  ‘Trust me, not that adaptable. My kitchen is about three feet square.’

  ‘Compact.’

  She gritted her teeth. ‘The idea of slumming it might seem amusing to you now, but I think the novelty would wear off rather rapidly.’

  ‘You think I am spoilt? That I am incapable of roughing it?’

  ‘Frankly, yes. When I said there was one bedroom…’

  ‘Cosy.’

  Her stomach muscles tensed. ‘Very cosy with Nicky’s bed in there too.’

  ‘Nicky shares a room with you?’

  She nodded. ‘And I don’t need to turn my TV on; I can hear the one in the flat next door.’ A sweet couple, but noisy. ‘I can hear a door close, and as for what I can hear through the bedroom walls! Even with a pillow over my head…not that we’d—’ She broke off, blushing madly.

  ‘You don’t think that our love life would be as uninhibited as that of your neighbours?’

  She flushed and hissed, ‘I’m really not interested in other people’s sex lives.’

  ‘You never used to be a prude.’

  She shot him a look of anguished embarrassment. ‘I’m not a prude,’ she denied indignantly. ‘I just happen to think that what goes on between two people behind closed doors should be private,’ she said. ‘As for uninhibited, I seriously doubt that anyone could be as uninhibited as you!’ As a lover Angolos had been not only passionate, but inventive. Thinking about how inventive made the colour fly to her face.

  Her agonised observation made his lips quiver. ‘You never seemed to mind and I always considered you the noisy one. There was that sound…’ Eyes half closed, he drew a deep, shuddering breath. ‘You know the one I mean, when I—’

  Georgie pressed her hands to her burning cheeks. ‘You’re disgusting!’ she hissed. ‘You probably like the idea of people listening.’ She could cope with being embarrassed; it was being aroused by his taunts that she couldn’t deal with.

  He was oblivious—she hoped—to her internal struggle; her embittered accusation caused his white grin to broaden.

  ‘I never found I needed to resort to other forms of stimulation when you were in my bed, agape mou, but I’m always open to suggestions. In fact, you almost make me want to share your flat. However, you are right: it is not a practical solution.’

  She regained enough control of her breathing to be able to respond with simulated calm. ‘Exactly, and three months isn’t very long. You can still see Nicky during that time…take him to the park and so forth.’

  The way Angolos felt at that moment three months was a lifetime! If he didn’t get Georgette back in his bed, and soon, he might well explode. He would certainly be incapable of functioning.

  There was not a shred of his rampant frustration in his voice as he responded. ‘That would be one solution, certainly. However, I favour a less…passive approach.’

  ‘What approach did you have in mind?’ she asked suspiciously.

  ‘I’ll get onto a local property agent.’

  ‘There’s virtually no rental property in the area,’ she inserted quickly.

  He looked amused by her intervention. ‘I don’t intend to rent; I intend to buy.’

  ‘Buy!’ she echoed, startled. ‘That’s crazy. It’s only three months. Think of the expense.’

  ‘Expense…?’ He looked amused.

  ‘All right, you have money to burn,’ she conceded crossly. ‘But it takes ages to find a suitable house, let alone buy one.’

  ‘If you want something badly enough you make it happen.’

  Their eyes connected and she knew that she hadn’t imagined the undercurrent in his voice, the one that had sent a prickle of heat through her body. ‘Now,’ he continued, adopting a businesslike attitude, ‘are there any areas you prefer? Is the distance to your work a factor?’

  Georgie sighed and decided to go with the flow. When Angolos made up his mind about something, it was the most sensible thing to do.

  With any luck the agent wouldn’t have anything suitable on his books.

  The agent did.

  Two days later they drew up outside their new home.

  It wasn’t until the moment when Angolos opened the car door and stood back impatiently waiting for her to get out that the enormity of the step she had taken struck Georgie.

  She was going to move in with the man who had broken her heart.

  Angolos expected her to share his bed. She wanted to share his bed. It was inevitable, so where was the problem?

  She slid from the front seat and stepped out onto the gravelled forecourt.

  ‘So do you like it?’ He sounded impatient to hear her opinion.

  She flashed him an incredulous look. Like the place…? It was gorgeous. Georgian, faced in local brick, it had a gated approach, swish circular drive and, as she later discovered, private gardens in the rear that led down to the river.

  ‘You’ve bought this?’

  ‘I would have preferred for you to see it first, but there was a lot of interest. I had to act swiftly to secure it. It’s small, but you were right—there isn’t much on the market.’

  ‘Small!’ She released a slightly hysterical laugh as they walked up the steps that led to the porticoed entrance. Her entire flat could have fitted into one small corner of the massive hall revealed when he opened the door. She swung back to him. ‘It’s massive.’

  ‘It’s workable,’ he conceded. ‘And it’s basically sound. I hope you didn’t mind that I bought the furniture in situ… It is not something I would normally do, but it is only a stopgap.’

  She was unable to repress a laugh. ‘You have a very unique take on stopgap, Angolos.’ She ran a finger over the back of a carved oak chair. ‘And I like the furniture.’

  ‘Would you like to look around?’

  She nodded eagerly and followed him into the drawing room. As they explored she couldn’t hide the fact she was enchanted with the place. A satisfied
expression appeared in his eyes as she began to plan out loud what she would use the rooms for.

  ‘This can be Nicky’s room,’ she cried immediately when they walked into a light and airy south-facing room on the first floor. ‘It’s big, but not too big, and he will just adore the garden.’ She gazed happily through the window. ‘I wish we’d brought him with us.’

  ‘I’m sure he will enjoy his little friend’s birthday party.’

  Absently Georgie nodded. ‘I can just see him on his little trike out there.’ Without thinking about it she leaned back into Angolos’s body.

  The contact with the hard warmth of his body sent a sharp shock through her own that sizzled down to her toes. She stiffened and then allowed herself to relax.

  After a moment his arms came around her, drawing her closer as they tightened across her ribcage. Georgie, aware of every hard inch of him, pretended not to notice. If she acknowledged the embrace she would be obliged to do something about it, and she didn’t want to.

  ‘I always wished that I could afford somewhere with a garden,’ she admitted with a wistful sigh.

  ‘You could have if you hadn’t been too proud and stubborn to use the money in the bank.’

  ‘I couldn’t take anything off you when you didn’t believe that Nicky was yours.’ Still in the circle of his arms, she turned her head and caught a stricken expression on Angolos’s lean face. An expression that vanished the moment their eyes connected.

  Without thinking, she half turned and reached out. ‘It’s now that’s important, isn’t it…?’

  Angolos looked at the small hand laid on his arm and the muscles around his stern mouth relaxed. ‘Yes,’ he agreed.

  The smile in his eyes as he looked into hers made her own smile fade. The emotions she’d been working so hard at keeping in check flowed without warning over the barriers she’d constructed.

  Angolos watched the tears well in her eyes and his expression grew alarmed. ‘Are you unwell?’ Bending forward, he brought his face to her level and cupped her chin in one big hand. ‘What is it? Tell me?’ he demanded with increasing urgency.