He remembered when he’d discovered that Anastasia had been playing him for a fool. Every lick of desire for her had been extinguished in that instant.
Tabitha was every bit as bad as his wife had been but the ache to haul her into his arms and taste those delectable lips anew thrummed inside him.
Never in a thousand years would he have believed her to be anything but a woman of breeding and wealth. She must have practised that cut-glass accent. The nerve it must have taken to tell the barefaced lie that she’d attended Beddingdales, one of the most exclusive all-girls boarding schools in Europe... She hadn’t skipped a beat. It had been a prepared lie, just as everything else had been.
‘Who is the puppet master behind your honey trap?’ he demanded to know.
Her face paled again, cornflower eyes widening, pretty brow creasing. ‘What...? There was no honey trap. You approached me first.’
‘Do you expect me to believe it was coincidence you were walking down the stairs at the exact moment I entered the hotel from my apartment? It would have been easy to watch me walk from my apartment from a window on the first or second floor and time your appearance to match mine.’
A flash of anger sparked from her eyes. ‘That’s absurd.’
‘Is it? Someone bought you, a chambermaid, a ticket and outfit to wear for the ball. What was the reason behind it if not to seduce me and entrap me?’
‘I didn’t seduce you!’ she cried. ‘Don’t rewrite what happened between us just because you don’t like the idea that you slept with the hired help. What happened between us just...happened.’
‘I could understand if someone had paid for your ticket to accompany them but you attended the ball alone. Why was that? Why did your benefactor not attend with you?’
‘They couldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because...’ Her shoulders hunched as she obviously thought of the most convenient lie to tell. ‘They just couldn’t. But, I promise you, there was no ulterior motive. They just wanted to do something nice for me.’
‘A very expensive way of doing something nice,’ he mocked. ‘Who was it? A rich family member?’ That would be the only answer he would find vaguely acceptable, although that would then beg the question of who would allow a member of their family to work in a job that involved cleaning other people’s messes if they had the kind of wealth at their disposal to purchase a forty-thousand euro ticket for a masquerade ball.
She took a deep breath and shook her head.
‘Who is your benefactor?’
‘It isn’t important.’
‘I disagree. No one would spend that amount of money on someone without expecting something in return. I want to know who your benefactor is and what you had to do in lieu of payment for attending a ball which you were expressly forbidden from attending.’
‘I don’t know what circles you mix in but you should look at expanding it.’ There was a tremor in her voice. ‘There are good people in the world and my benefactor is one of them. There was no ulterior motive. I know I let you believe I was a wealthy woman, and I’m sorry for that, but I didn’t have a choice—if I’d confessed who I was you would have fired me on the spot.’
‘You can try and talk your way out of it but the facts are indisputable. You posed as a paying guest. You spent the evening in my arms on the dance floor and in my bed. Strange behaviour for a woman who now claims she couldn’t tell me her true identity for fear of losing her job. If you were so concerned with keeping it, you wouldn’t have attempted this charade in the first place. You certainly wouldn’t have gone to bed with me.’
Even though her gaze was now on his carpeted floor, he could see the stain of colour on her cheeks.
It was the same colour that had flushed on her cheeks when she’d come with him buried deep inside her.
Theos, every cell in his body ached to feel that sensation again, of being so deep inside her they could have been fused together.
This woman could confess to being a mass murderer and he would still want her.
But she wasn’t confessing to anything and made no attempt to defend herself.
‘Your denials are pitiful,’ he said coldly, hating her but hating himself more for still wanting her. ‘You set out to entrap me and, if your claim that you’re pregnant proves to be true, then you have hit the jackpot.’
She lifted her head to look him square in the eye. ‘How?’ she challenged. ‘Tell me, please, how an unplanned pregnancy can be described as hitting the jackpot?’
‘If you really are pregnant and the child proves to be mine, you have a meal ticket for life.’
‘If?’ She jumped to her feet. ‘I am pregnant and you are the father. Go and buy me a pregnancy test if you don’t believe me! There hasn’t been anyone else. And I don’t want a meal ticket. All I want is some financial support...’
Fury thumped violently through him. He strode over to her and stared at the angry, beautiful face, his heart pumping harder as that delicate scent swirled into his senses.
One night he had spent with this deceitful woman and her scent had imprinted itself on him.
He had never despised anyone as much as he despised her at that moment.
‘I knew there would be a financial aspect in all this. There always is with women like you.’
‘Women like me?’ Her outrage vibrated from her very pores then her face contorted, her hands flew forward and she shoved his chest. ‘Are you implying that I’m a whore because I slept with you?’ she shouted. ‘What does that make you? A gigolo?’
He grabbed her wrists before she could push him again. ‘I did not call you a whore!’
‘You implied it!’
‘I did not. That must be your conscience.’
‘I was a virgin.’
CHAPTER FIVE
TABITHA WAS SO fired up with anger and shame, her awareness of him fizzing over her skin and buzzing through her veins, that if he hadn’t had such a tight hold of her wrists she would have slapped him.
Suddenly she found herself against the office wall, his hands either side of her face.
His features were taut as he stared at her, his long nose inches from hers, clear blue eyes pulsing with fury but also with something she recognised from their night together...
Her heart thrashed so wildly he must have been able to feel the beats against his chest which brushed against her breasts.
A thrill laced her treacherous spine when he pressed his cheek to hers.
‘You put me under an enchantment.’
She shivered at the whispered words, although the actual words barely registered, not when his breath was hot against her ear, hot enough to seep through her skin and melt her bones.
Then, just as suddenly as he’d trapped her, he stepped away. ‘Sygnomi,’ he muttered.
Legs like noodles, Tabitha kept her back propped against the wall for support and watched, dazed, as he turned his back and ran his fingers through his hair.
She had never known silence could be so charged.
He kept his back to her. ‘Were you really a virgin?’
‘Yes.’ She’d gone to an all-girls boarding school, had looked forward to starting university and finally being able to mix with men, only to find herself homeless before she’d finished her boarding school education and having to work her fingers to the bone to make ends meet, leaving no time for any kind of life.
His broad shoulders rose and she heard him inhale deeply. ‘And you really are pregnant?’
‘Yes.’
He muttered something in his native tongue she didn’t understand but which, judging by the tone, she guessed was a curse. She didn’t want to know if it was aimed at herself or the situation.
Resisting the strong urge to step over and place a hand on his shoulder, she took a deep breath and tightened her ponytail with shaki
ng hands.
The effect of his touch still blazed through her body. Her lips still tingled from the anticipated kiss that had never come. If she strained her ears she’d be able to hear the electricity still crackling through the tense silence between them.
As hard as it was, she had to ignore the tumult of feelings just sharing his air evoked in her. Tabitha might have been a virgin until their night together but she wasn’t naïve. She knew sexual awareness did not automatically equate to emotional feelings. Many people were capable of having physical affairs without emotional intimacy.
She’d just never thought she would be one of them.
The times when she’d allowed herself to think of a future where she could drag herself out of the drudgery of her life and find happiness, she’d always imagined it with a faceless man and a handful of children. She’d imagined happiness. Laughter. Love.
All the things that had been denied her since her father had died and her stepmother’s true nature had come out.
All the things that had got her out of bed at the crack of dawn every day, working so hard her hands were red and sore, the tips of her fingers calloused and cracked. Dreams of a future.
Those dreams were the only thing that had stopped her spiralling into a pit of despair.
At first it had been a matter of survival but what use was surviving if there was nothing else? She’d had to believe there was something else out there for her.
And now she had to believe there was something else out there for the tiny life growing in her belly. This man with whom she shared this most inexplicable of attractions had created a life with her. He had the means and the power to give their child a life without poverty.
Giannis turned back to face her, breathing heavily.
For a long moment all they did was stare at each other.
Tabitha straightened her shoulders. ‘What happens now? Do you want me to go and buy another pregnancy test? Only, I need to get back to work soon.’
His eyes narrowed dangerously and his brow furrowed.
‘You can’t sack me,’ she said with a bluntness that belied the knots in her belly. ‘I don’t expect any help from you until the baby’s born but I still need to support myself. I need to eat, a place to sleep... At some point I’ll need to buy maternity clothes. I can’t do that without an income. I have little savings. If you sack me, I’ll be homeless.’ She tightened her ponytail again to mask her agitation. ‘All I want is for you to let me keep my job until I can legally take maternity leave. Hopefully I’ll have found somewhere to live by—’
‘No.’ Giannis gritted his teeth and swallowed the bile rising up his throat. His guts were churning acid. All these things were happening within him but stronger than the rest was the sick compulsion to touch her, to keep touching her, to make her his again. Every part of him ached to drag her back into his arms, the few moments spent with his back to her, trying to take back control of the desire raging through him, fruitless. ‘You are not returning to your duties here. You’re coming to Santorini with me.’
She stared at him, the soft, full lips open but no words coming out.
‘I cannot leave you here knowing you might be carrying my child.’
Could it be true? Was there a child of his loins forming within the softness of the stomach he had kissed every inch of?
‘I thought you didn’t believe me,’ she whispered, cornflower eyes not leaving his face.
‘A visit to an obstetrician will prove if you’re pregnant and give a good indication of conception.’
He knew that first-hand. It was how he’d discovered it was not possible he’d fathered Anastasia’s child.
But there was a big difference, he had to acknowledge. His suspicions that Tabitha had been a virgin had been confirmed. He’d read stories about women selling their virginity to the highest bidder. Was this a different version of the same thing? A woman giving her virginity to a rich man with the express desire to get pregnant?
Her virginity was the only thing he would allow himself to believe. He’d been cuckolded and humiliated once. His pride had been wounded far more than his heart and he would never put himself in that position again. It was the reason he’d decided that his next wife would be chosen using cold, hard logic.
It made his guts twist to remember how the morning after he’d thought that Tabitha might be the woman for him. She’d fitted all his requirements and the desire between them had been off the charts.
But she hadn’t. She was nothing but a liar. She didn’t have the independent wealth he required his next wife to have as a form of surety that she wasn’t a gold-digger.
The only truth had been the desire between them and that desire had proved itself to be dangerous. It had driven him to become carried away and forget to use a condom until it had been almost too late.
Had it been too late? Tabitha was twenty-two. Helena, the second-oldest of his sisters, had fallen pregnant within a month of her marriage at the age of twenty-one. Giannis remembered his mother’s delighted comment that it was because she was in the prime fertile years of her life.
He could not allow this attraction to cloud his thinking any more than it already had. He’d been led by ‘feelings’ before and had vowed, as he’d watched his wife and her child be lowered into the cold ground, that he would not be made a fool of again.
He looked hard at the woman who had already fooled him once with her deception. He could never trust her and he could not trust the feeling in his guts that she spoke the truth.
Giannis hadn’t taken anything on trust in five years. He liked proof. Cold, hard facts.
‘You will come to Santorini with me and meet with my sister’s obstetrician,’ he said, voicing his thoughts as he decided them.
‘Aren’t there obstetricians in Vienna?’
‘This is one of the best obstetricians in Europe. If you are carrying my child he will be the one to monitor you throughout the pregnancy and deliver it.’
‘Hold your horses.’ Her hand shot out, palm up, dark, angry colour slashing her cheeks. ‘Ten minutes ago you thought I was lying to you.’
‘If you told me it was raining I would put my head out of the window to check. I’m still to be convinced about the pregnancy, but you would have to be the most audacious of fools to try and pretend something so easily disproved.’
‘And you would have to be the most audacious of arrogant twonks to think I would let you decide anything on my behalf!’
‘It’s my money that will be paying for it. You, by your own admission, don’t even have a home of your own to raise a child.’ Ignoring her splutters of outrage, he continued, ‘If things are as you say, a visit to the obstetrician will confirm it. Once it has been confirmed we can move things forward. I will put you up for the duration of the pregnancy and pay for all your expenses. If, however, the obstetrician proves that you’re lying...’ He smiled. ‘You can find your own way home.’
The dark colour on her cheeks had drained away. She took a step back and wrapped her arms around her stomach. ‘I didn’t have to tell you. I could have kept the baby a secret. You could have seen me every day in this hotel and you would never have recognised me because you would never have deigned to look at a lowly worker like me. I told you because...’
‘You needed my money,’ he supplied sardonically.
‘And because I thought you had a right to know. You might be a gazillionaire but that does not give you the right to use your money as a weapon.’
‘I can use my money however I see fit. But I’m not using it as weapon, I am merely giving you my terms. If you are convinced I am the father of your child, then you can have no objection to accompanying me to Santorini. If you want the best for the child you claim is mine then I fail to see how you can object to spending the pregnancy living in luxury with the best medical attention on hand if it is needed.’
Oh, she could object, all right, Tabitha thought, panic clawing at her throat as she recognised that he was serious. He wanted to take her to Santorini. Once he had her on his home turf she would be trapped. She had enough in her bank account to fly back to Vienna but she had no doubt there would be no job to return to and that no references would be provided.
She could fly back to England but where would she go? Back to the small hotel whose owners had taken pity on her when her stepmother had first thrown her out? Back to the tiny room too small for even the least discerning guest where there was no space for a cot? And that was if that tiny room wasn’t being used by someone else.
She rolled her shoulders and tried to clear the panic away to think clearly.
Giannis’s offer was more generous than she could have hoped. He was giving her a way to get through the pregnancy without having to worry about finances or worry about the physical aspects of her job harming the baby the further into the pregnancy she got. What woman wouldn’t want to be under the care of a top obstetrician in her first pregnancy?
So what if he didn’t believe her? She couldn’t expect him to take her word on trust, not after the lies by omission she’d told at the ball.
What was there to be so afraid of?
They would fly to Santorini and the obstetrician would confirm that everything she’d said was true. She had nothing to lose by going with him and everything to gain for her baby.
So why was she so afraid?
‘Well?’ he asked, folding his arms across his chest and staring at her with an imperious expression that made her heart ache for the generous lover who had swept her off her feet. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m coming with you.’
He looked at his watch. ‘Then I suggest you pack your belongings. We leave in two hours.’
* * *
Giannis wrapped up the meeting with his senior management team much quicker than he usually did.
He’d hardly paid attention to a word that had been exchanged.
His gut was telling him loud and clear that he was going to be a father. This was the same gut that had told him loud and clear that he was not the father of Anastasia’s baby.
The Greek's Pregnant Cinderella (Mills & Boon Modern) (Cinderella Seductions, Book 2) Page 6
