A Ring to Secure His Heir

by Lynne Graham

  ‘Kind-hearted?’ Rosie settled blistering green eyes of condemnation on him. ‘If you were standing at an open window at this moment I’d push you out of it! I hate you—’

  ‘You hardly know me … how can you hate me?’ Alexius fielded drily.

  Taken aback by that unwelcome reminder, Rosie stood up and walked across the room, taking in everything around her, recognising that the perfectly decorated walls and toning upholstery were undoubtedly the work of a top-class interior designer. It looked like a glossy magazine spread: faintly unreal. She turned back to collide unexpectedly with stormy liquid-silver eyes. ‘Why are you angry with me? What have you got to be angry about?’ she demanded furiously.

  Alexius, who prided himself on his powers of camouflage and reserve, gritted his even white teeth together. ‘I’m angry that I made such a mess of getting to know you that you will take it out on your grandfather.’

  ‘I don’t take things out on people who haven’t done me any harm. I’m sure he’s a nice old man and I wish him well, I truly do,’ she muttered uncomfortably. ‘But I don’t know if I want to meet him and I certainly don’t want to go anywhere with you after what I’ve found out about you!’

  ‘What have you found out about me that is so threatening?’ Alexius traded, striving not to notice the pert curve of her derriere in the jeans and the tininess of her waist. He liked her body, the delicacy and restraint of it, the slender perfection that had so entranced him in her bed. The pulse at his groin quickened, and he felt the heavy push of arousal.

  ‘You might as well be an alien from another planet,’ Rosie told him truculently, throwing up her hands in expressive comment on the opulent room. ‘You’re rich and educated. I’m poor and struggling to complete my education. But, worst of all, I can’t trust you because you don’t tell the truth.’

  His shapely sensual mouth quirked with a hint of amusement that infuriated her. ‘If it helps, I can promise you now that I will not tell you another half-truth or omit the truth no matter how unwelcome it may be to you.’

  ‘That would be a good start. I mean, how rich are you?’ she prompted shakily. ‘Do you have a private jet?’

  Alexius had a fleet of them but decided to keep that news to himself. He nodded confirmation.

  Her face fell in disappointment because she had hoped that he was not that rich. ‘And do you own more than one house?’

  Beginning to appreciate by the expression on her revealing little face that she was not enamoured of what she was finding out about his bank balance, Alexius released his breath in an impatient hiss. ‘Yes. I inherited a great deal of money from my parents, both of whom were wealthy in their own right when they married.’

  How dumb must she have been to believe that he was a comparatively ordinary guy? Pain gripped Rosie, pain that she could have been so blind as not to notice the very expensive gold wristwatch he wore, the diamond-encrusted cufflink winking against the pristine white of his shirt, the impossibly well-tailored cut of his striking dove-grey business suit. Not an office worker with a company car. No, he owned and ran the business and, according to her employer, STA Industries was an extremely large international concern.

  ‘Why did you come looking for me, Rosie?’ Alexius prompted quietly, wondering why it had never occurred to him before that a woman might actually exist who saw his great wealth only as a barrier and a problem. The concept fascinated him.

  Rosie rested dulled green eyes on him and shifted a tiny shoulder in a fatalistic shrug. ‘Because I’m pregnant …’

  And that bold announcement just lay there in a silence that grew and grew until it seemed to fill the whole room and threaten to suffocate her, impelling her back into urgent speech.

  ‘Sorry to dump it on you like that but, although I was taking the contraceptive pill as I told you, I had a stomach upset that same week and my doctor thinks that the sickness probably wrecked the level of my protection,’ she extended in a jerky rush.

  Alexius continued to study her much as though she had landed in a parachute in front of him without warning. He had lost colour beneath his bronzed complexion and he was very tense, his brilliant eyes veiled, his hard jaw line clearly delineated. ‘You’re pregnant? Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course, I’m sure. Tests can tell very early these days,’ she muttered uneasily.

  ‘And you’re sure it’s mine?’

  ‘You know there wasn’t anyone else before you and I can assure you that there’s not been anyone else since,’ Rosie proclaimed curtly, resenting that he had asked that question even if logic suggested he had the right to ask it. ‘It’s your baby.’

  A baby. The very concept of a baby blitzed Alexius’s brain. Adrenalin pounded through him, powering aggression that had no hope of escape because with her words she had fulfilled his worst fear. She had trapped him as he had always sworn he would never be trapped. He had friends who had put themselves in the same position and it hadn’t worked out happily for any of them. All his adult life he had been careful not to take that risk and yet with her, for no more reason than the fact that his jacket was lying halfway across the room, he had had sex without adequate precautions. As the more experienced partner, he could only blame himself for accepting that threat of consequences without real thought of what it might mean if things went wrong. And they had gone wrong, horribly wrong, he registered harshly.

  ‘You’re shocked,’ Rosie breathed, stiff with discomfiture at the acknowledgement. ‘I was shocked too but I’m afraid I don’t want a termination—’

  ‘I wouldn’t ask you to have one,’ Alexius cut in smoothly. ‘We’re adults. We will deal with this.’

  ‘Babies aren’t so easy to deal with,’ Rosie remarked helplessly, thinking of the heavy round-the-clock demands of the babies she had come across in the foster-care system. A baby was almost a full-time job, she thought fearfully. It couldn’t be left alone for a minute. It needed constant care and might not even sleep through the night. The birth of a baby would blow her life apart and wreck all her plans for the future.

  ‘I could have done without this right now,’ Rosie added ruefully. ‘I have my exams to sit in two weeks. I’m in the middle of my revision and now I can’t concentrate—’

  ‘You’re studying for exams?’ Alexius emerged from his black cloud of foreboding to enquire.

  ‘Yes, I want to go to university in the autumn.’

  Alexius thought about the giant holes in the investigation Socrates had had done on her. Just as the photo had not shown her beauty, the basic facts, right down to her current address, had been outrageously inaccurate. She was not content simply to clean offices for the rest of her life; clearly, she had drive and ambition and had he asked a few more personal questions he might have discovered that for himself. But in the long run, who she was, what she was, no longer mattered in the face of the fact that she had conceived his child. Socrates deserved better than that embarrassment at his hands. He dragged in a shuddering breath and braced himself to make the ultimate sacrifice of freedom and self-will. ‘I’ll marry you …’

  Rosie laughed and frowned simultaneously as though he had cracked a rather off-colour joke. ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said, staggered by the suggestion.

  Alexius gritted his teeth because marriage was the only acceptable solution he could see to the problem, loathe that reality though he did. ‘I’m serious. I’ll marry you. It will give the baby my name and I will support you so that you do not suffer in any way.’

  Belatedly appreciating that he was completely serious in his offer, Rosie stared at him wide-eyed. ‘You would do that? You would actually marry me?’ she pressed in helpless fascination.

  ‘It is what I should do for your sake … and the child’s.’ Cool silvery-grey eyes enhanced by startlingly black lashes met hers unflinchingly. ‘I cannot leave you to raise my child alone.’

  ‘You’re worried about what my grandfather might think,’ Rosie assumed. ‘But people don’t get married now just because there’s a
baby on the way.’

  ‘It’s still the right thing to do,’ Alexius responded flatly. ‘The most practical approach.’

  ‘I disagree. You don’t want to marry me, Alex. I wouldn’t marry you on that basis. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us,’ Rosie countered quietly. ‘But I suppose I should thank you for asking—it was a nice thought.’

  Alexius stared back at her in stunned silence, unable to believe that she was actually turning him down and with the barest minimum of deliberation. ‘A “nice thought”?’

  ‘You taking the old-fashioned approach even though it’s not what you personally want,’ Rosie extended in rueful clarification of her thoughts. ‘No, you’re quite safe on that score. I don’t want to marry you either. Please be honest with me—’

  Alexius compressed his handsome mouth hard. ‘I am being honest, Rosie—’

  ‘Alex, you don’t want me as a wife and you don’t want to be a father either. I can feel that reluctance in you,’ Rosie muttered with emphasis, her wide green eyes troubled but open. ‘You don’t need to pretend otherwise with me. I’m just as shocked as you are about the baby but we don’t have to get married to do the right thing.’

  ‘Your grandfather will very much disagree with you.’

  ‘Well, should I ever meet him, we’ll have to agree to differ. I don’t want a reluctant husband or an unwilling father for my child and that’s sensible, not silly,’ Rosie pointed out with conviction. ‘For a start I couldn’t fit into your world. Your friends would laugh at me. I’d embarrass you. I’m a cleaner, for goodness’ sake!’

  ‘Nobody would laugh at you while I was around,’ Alexius ground out forcefully, his accent thickening his vowel sounds to send a quiver of awareness running down her spine. ‘I would make a real effort to be a good husband and father—’

  ‘But you don’t love me … and to have you trying all the time would be very hard on my self-esteem,’ Rosie protested.

  Alexius threw her a derisive look that stung. ‘Love is lust, nothing more, and I can assure you that in that department I’m unlikely to disappoint you.’

  Confronted by that amount of cynicism, Rosie was more than ever convinced that she was making the wisest decision. ‘I don’t agree that all love between men and women is lust and if I ever marry, I want love.’

  His strong jaw line hardened. ‘I can’t give that to you.’

  ‘And that’s fine since I’m not going to marry you,’ Rosie replied, stifling the wounded feeling that he could be so very certain that she could never inspire such finer feelings in him and then angry with herself for even thinking that way. ‘Maybe you should concentrate your “trying” on trying to love our child when it’s born.’

  A thunderous aspect had clenched his strong features and his eyes were bright as diamonds in a dark night sky. ‘You’re being foolish, Rosie.’

  Rosie folded her arms. ‘I’m the best judge of that.’

  ‘To turn down my offer of marriage without even properly considering it is stupid,’ Alexius informed her harshly.

  ‘We had a one-night stand, not a relationship!’ Rosie slung back at him hotly, temper surging up through her like lava breaking through rocks to the surface. ‘You don’t know me, you don’t know or care what I need or want and you walked away after that night, making it quite clear that you didn’t even want to see me again!’

  A very faint line of colour delineated the high arc of his exotic cheekbones. ‘But I knew I would see you again when I took you to Greece to meet your grandfather,’ he reminded her crisply.

  ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever agree to that. Right now with the baby I’ve got enough to be getting on with in my life,’ Rosie admitted, tight-mouthed.

  Alexius stared at her. The luscious pink mouth that had melted beneath his had now compressed into a tough little line of obstinacy. Frustration leapt through every line of his body. He wasn’t used to defiance or opposition. He wanted to bundle her up and stuff her on a plane, regardless of how she felt about it, because he knew that in this instance he knew best. ‘Are you planning to continue cleaning every night while you’re pregnant?’ he asked with unconcealed scorn.

  Her face burned below that derisive appraisal. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘That you need my support right now so that you can stop working … and concentrate on your exams instead,’ he added reflectively, happier to picture her with books rather than a giant floor polisher almost too heavy for her to lift. ‘You can hardly need to be told that the sort of work you’re doing at present is too strenuous for a woman in your condition.’

  Rosie had paled. ‘That’s nonsense. I’m managing fine—’

  ‘You fainted,’ Alexius reminded her stubbornly. ‘How is that fine?’

  Her fingernails bit into her palms as she clenched her hands tight on the wave of antipathy gripping her, which rose higher every time he spoke. ‘Do you want to know why I fainted? I’m getting morning sickness and I can’t face eating first thing so trekking over here on a nerve-racking trip to confront you was a major strain on an empty stomach. I got light-headed, that was all.’

  ‘And if you get light-headed on a set of stairs, you will very probably fall and get injured. Am I supposed to accept that and just let you get on with it?’ Alexius blasted back at her. ‘What sort of man would simply accept that state of affairs without interfering?’

  ‘The same man who had sex with me and walked out in the middle of the night without a word of explanation,’

  Rosie supplied without hesitation. ‘Let’s not pretend that you are Mr Sensitive, Mr Caring, because you’re not.’

  That condemnation still ringing in his ears, Alexius snatched up the apartment phone to communicate with his housekeeper and order breakfast for his disruptive guest. He was in a rage, a rage such as he had not felt since his teenaged years of hormonal turmoil. He was getting nowhere with her. She didn’t listen. She had no respect. She had not even agreed to meet Socrates yet. The temper he always contained was like a wildfire seething inside him, struggling to escape the bonds of his rigid self-discipline.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Rosie demanded unevenly, suddenly breathless at the effect of those stunning liquid mercury eyes beating down on her. ‘I can look after myself, Alex. You don’t need to worry about me.’

  ‘You can look after yourself so well that you let me into your bed the first night!’ Alexius hurled back at her in a lion’s roar of intimidation.

  Unable to argue the truth of that, Rosie didn’t budge an inch or bat a single eyelash. She knew she was annoying him but suspected that anyone who said no to him annoyed him, in which case it was past time someone said no and he was forced to hear and accept it. ‘Everyone makes mistakes … you were mine.’

  Alexius strode forward, marvelling that she was standing her ground fearless before him when the rare sound of a raised tone issuing from his mouth sent his staff rushing for cover. How dared she call him a mistake? How dared she turn down his marriage proposal as if it were worth nothing? How dared she not listen?

  ‘That night wasn’t a mistake, moraki mou,’ Alexius growled low in his throat, his scorching gaze locked to her triangular face, lingering on her emerald-green eyes and succulent pink mouth with an intensity that dismayed her.

  Reacting to the simmering buzz of energy he put out, Rosie felt her breasts push against her sweater, her stiff, tender nipples rubbing against the scratchy wool. The hot damp sensation at her feminine core was no longer new to her, for she dreamt about that night almost every night and she was used to it now, accustomed to that nagging pulse, that ache that he had taught her to feel.

  ‘Of course, it was a mistake,’ she contradicted.

  ‘No, it was not.’ Alexius locked a big hand round her wrist and pulled her up against his hard muscular body. A spluttered squawk of shock erupted from Rosie before he brought his mouth crashing down on hers with a fire that burned like a naked flame on unprotected skin. He crushed her to him with a rou
gh groan of satisfaction and kissed her with a passion that sang through her senses like a magical spell of entrapment, his tongue stabbing with erotic rhythm into the moist interior of her mouth. One minute she was knotting her hands into his luxuriant black hair to push him away and the next her fingers were delving into those silky depths in exploration and appreciation, before finally moulding to his well-shaped head to hold him close.

  Alexius lowered her to the sofa and sent a hand roving up below the sweater to tease the dainty swollen peaks that had so entranced him that night three weeks earlier. Her slender spine arched, a moan of startled pleasure wrenched from her as he played with those responsive buds that were so very sensitive to his touch. Pushing up the sweater, he bent his head to dally there with his mouth instead. A knock sounded on the door and he sprang back from her.

  Returned to reality with a mortifying bang, Rosie looked down at her bare chest in horror and, wrenching her sweater back down, she sat up. ‘Don’t touch me like that again!’

  Alexius skimmed knowing eyes like silver arrows back to her, a slumberous light in his gaze. ‘Because you like it too much to say no?’ he mocked as he strode to the door to open it.

  Rosie’s heart-shaped face was so hot it felt sunburned. He was a taker, a user. He had stolen that kiss as coolly as he had stolen her virginity and she needed more self-control around him. She certainly shouldn’t be noticing that he crossed the room with the grace of a strolling tiger, all fluid rippling muscle and aggressive confidence. The real problem was that he excited her and just being in the same room with him was thrilling and there was something frighteningly seductive about the charge of that excitement. Was that excitement lust? She guessed it had to be.

  Alexius settled a heavy tray down on the coffee table. ‘Eat …’ he urged.

  There was a chocolate croissant amongst the assorted baked offerings in the bread basket and her mouth watered even as she reached for it. She poured tea and asked him politely if he wanted any, for there was a second cup.