A Ring to Secure His Heir

by Lynne Graham

  ‘Feel better, latria mou?’ Alexius prompted thickly, wanting so much more but satisfied to have smashed the platonic barriers she had set up between them.

  ‘Like I’ve died and gone to heaven,’ she whispered honestly, daring to open her eyes, catch a glimpse of the busy city street the limo was traversing and shocked by the sight. ‘I can’t believe you just did what you did.’

  Alexius released his pent-up breath slowly above her head and held on tight to her with both arms, sealing them both into the intimacy she had sought to deny. He had been tempted to whip off that last barrier and sink deep into her but in fact he could hardly believe he had gone as far as he had in the back of a limo either. It wasn’t him—he was a conventional guy. He didn’t do stuff like this. There was something about her that made him more spontaneous, not that he thought that was much of an excuse for behaving like a horny teenager. She lifted her tousled head and gave him a guilty but sunny smile of appreciation. It made him feel ten feet tall and the painful throb of his own unsated body receded in receipt of it.

  ‘Oh, my goodness,’ Rosie mumbled, lifting her arms to break his hold and scramble off him again. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so selfish … I didn’t do anything for you—’

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ Alexius drawled.

  But Rosie could see from the cut of his trousers that there was a problem, a very big problem from his point of view. It was, however, a decidedly positive revelation for Rosie to realise that he could still summon up that amount of desire for a body she had always regarded as not that desirable on male terms. ‘You know I could … I mean, I haven’t done that before but I’m sure you could give me directions—’

  In receipt of that offer, Alexius was startled when he found himself laughing out loud and he gave her a heart-stopping smile that welded her embarrassed eyes to him. ‘Not in the back of a car in broad daylight. Some other time … I’ll survive. Touching you again was worth it,’ he told her huskily.

  Hot colour washed Rosie’s face and she suddenly felt incredibly shy and unsure of herself.

  ‘Come home with me after we do the wardrobe thing,’ Alexius urged.

  It was the key for confusion and indecision to engulf Rosie like a tidal wave because she suffered instantaneous cold feet. ‘Wouldn’t it be wiser to write off what just happened as a little slip?’

  The last glimmerings of his smile died away. He stared steadily back at her, his gorgeous eyes pained. ‘A mistake and a little slip? Is that the sum total of what we have?’

  ‘You’re the best judge of that,’ Rosie whispered, knowing she was already in so deep with him she might as well have been buried alive. The raw sexual attraction between them was undeniable but were there any other layers for him beyond her conception of the blob?

  On her side of the fence, layer was piling onto layer with regard to her feelings about Alexius Stavroulakis. She couldn’t look at him—even when he was being difficult—without wanting him. She couldn’t look at him without thinking that he was beautiful. He was absolutely never out of her thoughts. He had insisted on accompanying her to pick up Bas when he was released from the animal clinic and had turned up with a plush new basket for her pet. He also unfailingly phoned her every day to check that she was all right, although he never seemed to have much to say when he did call and the silences gnawed on her nerves until she learned to fill those awkward moments with inconsequential chatter. She was falling in love with Alexius and had no idea how to call a halt to that seemingly inevitable process, even though she knew that she was only storing up trouble for the future.

  A svelte stylist took Rosie’s measurements and questioned her about her clothing preferences. Rosie made no objection and she was very much ashamed of her change of heart. But after what had happened in the limousine with Alexius she was ridiculously reluctant to argue with him again. She had noticed that he had told her very little about her grandfather and his family yet clearly he knew them all. She was convinced that if Alexius was advising her to dress up there was probably a good reason for it and she cringed at the suspicion that her grandfather might well be embarrassed by a cheaply and casually clad granddaughter who clearly came from a much poorer background. Could she come to care for people who were willing to judge her purely on her appearance?

  The limo drew up outside the building where she lived and Alexius gave her a look, an ebony brow slanting up in wicked question, and she knew exactly what he was silently asking, wished she didn’t, wished even more that her treacherous body didn’t leap at the prospect of going to bed with him again. It would just be sex, no doubt fantastic sex, but it would only complicate things. It was, she acknowledged, a great shame that she had slept with Alexius before she got to know him, but what was done was done and if they did become intimate again she wanted her brain rather than her body to make that decision for her.

  One last exam and then Greece, she told herself encouragingly. Her mind would be clearer then, her instincts less prone to her present horrendous desire to lean on Alexius for support. That wasn’t a good idea because he might not be there for the long haul … only time would tell. But what if he was already prepared to phone some other woman to satisfy the need she had stirred up? That fear kept Rosie awake half the night as she finally accepted that she couldn’t have it both ways, no matter how much she wanted to. Either she slept with Alexius or accepted that he would eventually and maybe even sooner sleep with someone else.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ROSIE sat on the wonderfully comfortable seat, buckled up for take-off. The seat was comfy but she was not. The sheer opulence of the private jet spooked her. Bas lay in his basket on the seat beside her, slumped in an awkward pose, one front leg enclosed in a cast. He was quieter since the assault, more nervous too, Rosie conceded with regret, frantic to think of anything other than the forthcoming ordeal of meeting her father’s family in Athens. She didn’t feel like herself any more, not sheathed in the very elegant little green dress that nipped in at her bust, waist and hips to give her a shape she had not known she had. Every garment had been professionally altered to suit her height and she didn’t even want to think about how much money such perfect tailoring might have cost. Used to shopping in children’s departments to find any kind of a fit, Rosie was unnerved by the fashionable expensive clothing that had been delivered to her bedsit to fill not only one but three accompanying suitcases. Would she be expected to change clothes several times a day like a member of the royal family?

  Her exams were over but she had not been free to go out on the town with her classmates to celebrate the night before. Not only could she not drink but she had also been reluctant to face Alexius with bruised eyes and the pallor of someone who had stayed out too late. But since when had she become so concerned about what she looked like? That new pitiful self-consciousness that had her sitting in high heels that flattered her legs but that nonetheless pinched like the very devil infuriated Rosie. Everything that had once mattered to her from her fierce independence to her freedom seemed to have been wrenched from her. She thought of her baby and mentally apologised to it for her troubled mood.

  Meanwhile, gloriously unaware of the doubts and insecurities assailing his passenger, indeed assuming that she was looking forward to meeting her wealthy relatives, Alexius worked with determination at his laptop on the other side of the saloon. Watching her board, her pale hair bouncing on her shoulders and shining in the sunlight, her chin lifting in challenge when she saw his attention lingering, had been quite sufficient. He saw her, he wanted her like a starving man faced with a banquet: it was that simple, that shamefully basic. And Alexius didn’t like feeling like that one little bit. Subjected to that galling heat when he least welcomed it, he brooded on the mystery of it and longed to shake free of it. The maddening hunger she had infected him with like a virus outraged his pride and threatened his self-control. He wondered if greater access to that enticing little body would provide the cure that would kill the constant ache of arousal and
programme his brain back to cold normality. He would get bored with her—he always got bored with his lovers, he reflected with sudden satisfaction.

  ‘Where will I be staying tonight?’ Rosie asked abruptly.

  ‘At your grandfather’s …’ Alexius raised a questioning black brow at the expression of dismay his answer had earned. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘I assumed I’d be staying at a hotel … I mean, I don’t know these people and it’s not going to help that I arrive pregnant and unmarried, is it?’ Rosie pointed out apprehensively. ‘It could be very uncomfortable for me.’

  ‘That’s an understandable concern,’ Alexius positively purred, delighted to step into the breach in her hour of apparent need. ‘I should have thought of that. You’ll want to get to know Socrates at a more relaxed pace than you would enjoy as a house guest.’

  ‘Yes …’ Rosie awarded him a look of relief at his grasp of her plight. ‘I’m glad you can see that.’

  ‘I’m not as insensitive as you like to believe,’ Alexius told her, a shot of adrenalin firing through him, his devious streak having a field day at her expense. On a high of gratification, he stood up and even bent down to stroke a daring forefinger over Bas’s exposed spine as he moved past. Bas twisted his head round, his bat ears unfurling like sails, and bared his crooked teeth in a growled warning that Alexius should keep his distance.

  ‘No, Bas,’ Rosie said firmly.

  Suppressing a revealing grin, Alexius buzzed the steward to pour drinks. Suddenly he felt like punching the air: this was his chance to take her home with him!

  A couple of hours later, Rosie sat rigid in the limo whisking them out to the suburbs where Socrates Seferis lived, her nervous tension pronounced. ‘Who else lives with my grandfather?’

  ‘Currently only your aunt Sofia.’

  Rosie’s spine eased down a little. ‘Do we admit that I’m pregnant … I mean, how are we going to broach that?’ she pressed with a wince of discomfort at the prospect. She didn’t even know these people but right from the start she would feel at a disadvantage.

  ‘We’re not dependent teenagers, Rosie.’

  ‘The way we behaved we might as well have been.’

  ‘I will deal with it. You don’t need to say anything.’

  ‘Maybe you should just let it go for the moment—it’s not like I’m showing yet.’

  His beautiful, wilful mouth tightened. ‘On this issue, I prefer honesty from the outset.’

  She resisted the temptation to say that she wished that had always been his attitude. The limo purred up a driveway to a large impressive modern house set in manicured gardens. She climbed out, gripping Alexius’s hand to steady herself when she teetered on her heels.

  ‘You can hardly walk in those shoes,’ Alexius censured.

  ‘But they look good,’ she countered flatly. ‘And according to you that’s all that matters.’

  ‘It wouldn’t matter to me if you walked barefoot.’

  Considering that he had not been put off by her cleaning uniform, she gave considerable weight to that remark. A manservant received them in a large airy hall and then a heavily built older man with grizzled grey hair strode out of one of the rooms to survey her with keen eyes and a wide welcoming smile. ‘Rosie?’

  The warmth of his greeting dispelled her worst tension and she gave him a shy smile. ‘Grandad …?’

  ‘And Alexius.’ The man by her side was welcomed with an open affection that seemed to make her companion’s lean darkly handsome features set in even tauter lines. For the first time, it occurred to Rosie that Alexius, for whatever reasons—and she didn’t want to think about that—had not been looking forward to this meeting in the slightest. ‘Smile,’ Socrates urged. ‘This is a day of celebration. You’ve brought my grandchild home to me.’

  They were ushered into a large sunlit room and a small blonde woman, who looked to be in her forties and had sharp, not unattractive features moved forward to introduce herself as Sofia. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. Her father began to ask Rosie a stream of eager questions, his interest in her likes, dislikes and hobbies rather touching for a young woman who had never before found herself the focus of so much attention. The older man’s grasp of English was not the equal of his godson’s, however, and several times Alexius stepped in like an interpreter to clarify her answers. When she told Socrates about her studies, he beamed at her in approval, and she would have mentioned her plans to go to university had she not been thinking that with a baby in tow that might yet prove an impossible challenge. The more Socrates talked to Rosie, the more stiff and silent Sofia became until eventually she closed a determined hand to Rosie’s forearm. ‘You and I need to get better acquainted. I’ve got photos of the family to show you,’ she said, urging Rosie across the room to a sofa and settling a large album down on her lap.

  ‘I can’t help being really curious about this family,’ Rosie admitted, leafing through the album while Sofia put a label to innumerable faces. She recognised her own father as a teenager in a beach photograph, good-looking, smiling and surrounded by girls. It was a fair match for the faded photo that was all her mother had had to show for her affair with Troy Seferis. When Rosie’s aunt pointed out her uncle, Timon, Rosie asked if she would be meeting him as well.

  Sofia frowned. ‘I don’t know. Timon is in rehab again. I’m afraid my brother has been a drug addict since he was seventeen and my father is still struggling without success to straighten him out.’

  Rosie absorbed that sad news without comment, wishing that Alexius had forewarned her and desperately searching for a safer topic of conversation. ‘Can you tell me anything about my father, Troy?’ she prompted hopefully.

  ‘Only that with the exception of my father the men in this family are and were fairly useless,’ Sofia told her in a tart undertone. ‘Timon has two sons but while they were working in one of Dad’s hotels they set up a scam to skim off money for themselves.’

  Rosie was taken aback at that admission of her cousins’ criminality. ‘My goodness …’ she remarked uncertainly just as her grandfather sprang up out of his chair on the other side of the room with surprising vigour and spat something in guttural Greek at Alexius, which sent her startled eyes flying in that direction instead. ‘What’s happened?’

  Alexius’s body was rigid and unyielding, his face hard and expressionless. Rosie had never seen his innate reserve so pronounced. His godfather was ranting at him and Alexius was saying very little in response.

  ‘Thee mou, you might look ladylike and quiet but you’re clearly a very clever little schemer,’ Sofia commented, shooting Rosie a look of tremendous satisfaction.

  Realising that her aunt understood the source of the conflict between the two men and very much afraid that she did as well, Rosie composed her face and said, ‘And why would you think that?’

  ‘Falling pregnant by a billionaire is a world-class coup and surely no accident on your part? Not with a mother who pulled the same stunt on my younger brother!’ Sofia jibed with a chuckle of unconcealed amusement and derision. ‘And to think I thought you were coming here to charm and impress my father. Instead, he’s shocked and furious …’

  Allowing her aunt’s cheap, unfeeling sneer to roll off her, Rosie pressed urgently, ‘What’s your father saying to Alexius?’

  ‘This is as good as a soap opera,’ the older woman commented with enjoyment. ‘According to my antiquated father, your reputation is now ruined for all time …’

  Well, we’ll see about that, Rosie reflected in exasperation, rising from her seat in a quick movement and advancing to within a few feet of the two angry men. Alexius might not be shouting but she knew by his powerful stance and the wild, stormy glitter of his eyes that he was furious and that only his respect for the older man was making him withstand the tirade in silence.

  ‘Stay out of this,’ Alexius breathed tautly, when he realised Rosie was at his elbow.

  ‘No, it’s not fair and it’s not the Dark Ages
either!’ Rosie protested, fixing her attention on her red-faced grandfather and addressing him directly. ‘Please calm down. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known I was likely to cause so much trouble between you and Alexius. It can’t be good for your heart to get so worked up … and don’t say anything more to Alexius. He did ask me to marry him.’

  ‘You … did?’ Socrates turned back to stare at his godson in astonishment, his anger visibly falling away at that information.

  ‘And I said no,’ Rosie slotted in before her grandfather could get too excited about what was not going to happen.

  ‘No?’ her grandfather thundered back at her instead. ‘Are you insane? You’re carrying his child and you said no?’

  ‘I think we should let the dust settle on this and leave for now,’ Rosie suggested tightly, laying a trembling hand on Alexius’s sleeve. ‘I can come back to visit when tempers cool … if I’m still welcome, of course.’

  ‘Of course, you will be,’ Alexius pronounced with unbelievable cool as if nothing whatsoever had happened. ‘It is I who will not be so.’