by Lucy Monroe
Her tiny feet were tucked between his calves and his morning erection was pressed against her delectable bottom. It felt incredible, but he did not think she would agree if she were to awaken in such a position. She would accuse him of taking advantage. Her comment regarding that the night before still bothered him.
He'd messed up the morning after, but their time together in bed had been perfect and their passion had been mutual. If she had convinced herself otherwise because of what had happened afterward, he had little hope of her giving him another chance.
Carefully, so as not to wake her, he disengaged their bodies and got out of the bed, but he did not immediately leave the room. Bright morning sun filtered through the window shades and he watched her sleep. She was so beautiful. So gentle.
And the mother of his baby.
He gave thanks for her pregnancy, certain that had she not conceived she would never have contacted him again. And Heaven alone knew when Hawk would have found her otherwise.
He'd engaged the services of the international investigative firm the day she left, but she'd made it out of Greece without leaving even a trail of her flight. Sebastian understood that now. She'd been traveling under a different name. Newman.
He could not believe it had never once occurred to him after the rather one-sided discussion with his mother that Rachel might take that sort of concrete action to distance herself from such a notorious woman as Andrea Long Demakis. She'd made a totally new life for herself in the States and had told him that day in the study how much she'd hated the media attention.
He appreciated the reality of how separate her new life was from her old one after trying to find a clue to her whereabouts in Andrea's New York apartment. The only number Andrea had had there for Rachel had been disconnected two years previously.
He'd asked his mother how she'd contacted Rachel to apprise her of Andrea's death. After another lecture on his intelligence, or lack thereof, she had told him the contact information had been in an address book of Andrea's. Rachel had tossed it when cleaning out her mother's things. His mother's attitude had softened toward him when she realized he had no idea of how to contact Rachel, but wanted to.
Later, he had remembered Rachel's claim that one of Andrea's friends had contacted her and he'd had Hawk interview the women known to be in Andrea's circle of cronies. The investigator hit pay dirt when he'd literally had to offer money to one woman for Rachel's E-mail address.
Sebastian had tried to contact her that night only to discover the E-mail account had been deactivated when the message came back to him as undeliverable.
Hawk had been working on tracing the account when Rachel called. Yes, Sebastian had many reasons to give thanks his woman had gotten pregnant the first time they made love, but he was also concerned about her health.
The fact she'd been going along without treatment for two weeks made him want to hit something.
He wasn't a violent man, but damn it...she could have died.
Rachel walked into the kitchen, her nose sniffing appreciatively at the smell of bacon, buttery toast and aromatic coffee.
She stopped on the threshold of the room at the sight of a bowl of freshly prepared fruit in the center of her small Mission style dinette table. Even more shocking was the spectacle of Sebastian standing at the coffeemaker, his feet bare and his dress shirt hanging loose over his lean hips.
"You have hidden depths, Kouros." She took a deep whiff of the Sumatran blend coffee. Her favorite. "I would never have guessed you for a closet cook."
He turned from where he was pouring coffee into mugs and she realized his shirt was not only untucked, but unbuttoned as well.
Bronze skin rippled over rock hard abs as he leaned over to place one of the mugs on the table. "I am not, but one of my bodyguards is handy in the kitchen. He just left."
From the look of the perfectly prepared breakfast, the bodyguard had been cooking when Sebastian had woken her to tell her she had fifteen minutes to shower.
They ate in silence for a little while before she asked, "Where did your security team stay last night?"
What she really wanted to ask was where Sebastian had slept last night? As in, had he slept on her side of the bed with his arms around her? She thought she'd woken up at some point and been surrounded by male warmth. She'd felt protected and slept better than she had since leaving Greece, but he'd gotten out of bed before her. She simply could not be sure it had been a harmless dream, but she much preferred that scenario to her body finding instinctive and unconscious comfort in his presence.
"They stayed in a nearby hotel."
She pulled out one of the ladder-back dinette chairs and sat down. "Nardo was okay with that?"
His security chief made sure the bodyguards followed him everywhere. Although they stayed in the background, there had even been security men in the apartment and at the villa the whole time she'd been there.
"He was not given a choice."
She bet Nardo was an unhappy head of security this morning.
"I don't mean to be a problem for you."
"You are not a problem." He joined her at the table, his coffee mug in one hand, his gaze disturbingly intent on her. "You are the mother of my unborn child."
"You say that with such assurance, but I'm still surprised you didn't want tests." About traumatized by astonishment really.
"You were a virgin when we made love. The baby could have no other father."
"You're sure of that now?"
"Yes."
"For heaven's sake, why?" Nothing had changed that she could see, but all of a sudden she was not some awful man-eating liar.
What was going on here?
His big shoulders tensed. "You reacted like a total innocent. I should have given that more credence the next morning, but I did not."
"You were too busy making assumptions because there had been no blood." He was so medieval, he should be in a museum.
His gray gaze darkened with some intolerable emotion. "You said you were attacked."
“And you said I was making up stories in order to trap you like my mother had used lies to lure Matthias in." That had hurt so much.
She'd never told anyone about what had happened in her teens and to have the one person she shared it with disbelieve her had been as devastating as his wholesale rejection.
At that moment, granite and his jaw could have competed in the rigidity stakes. "We would do better to forget the things I said the morning after we made love."
Just like that. Amazing. She was having his baby, so she was supposed to pretend everything was fine between them?
She didn't think so.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"So, are you saying you now also trust me about my past?"
"That is what I am saying."
She shook her head, not believing him for a single second. It was too easy, too much of a blanket acceptance of what he had violently rejected before. "I wish I could understand why you are so sure the baby is yours."
She was certain the rest of his supposed newfound faith in her stemmed from that belief.
He looked wary and that pricked her curiosity.
"What changed, Sebastian? When I left your apartment, you thought I was little better than a whore."
"Never that."
"You accused me of using my body for financial gain. What would you call it?"
"Stupidity."
"Tell me why."
He looked distinctly uncomfortable. "My mother thinks I am a fool."
"You're kidding, right?" Greek mothers revered their sons and Phillippa thought Sebastian and Aristide were the best the male species had to offer.
Besides, what did Phillippa's opinion have to do with Sebastian changing his?
"She called me a dinosaur and said that lack of blood is no indication of a sexual past."
It took a second for the meaning of his words to sink in. but when they did. Rachel jumped from her chair and screeched, "Yo
u told your mother about us having sex?"
What must Phillippa think of her? Here Rachel's mother and stepfather had been less than two weeks dead and she'd been hopping in the sack with Sebastian. It had to have appeared indecent to Sebastian's mother.
Heck, it had been indecent.
Sebastian reached out and anchored her wrist. "Sit down and calm yourself, Rachel."
She did sit, but only because she started feeling woozy and didn't want him to realize it. She yanked her wrist from his grasp and glared at him. She'd spent her whole life calm and had never even realized she had a temper until Sebastian started pricking at it after the funeral.
"Please tell me you did not discuss what happened between us with your mother," she gritted out between clenched teeth.
Red scorched Sebastian's cheekbones. "I told her, yes. And I believe it was the first time in my life my mother spoke freely to me about matters of a sexual nature. It would please me if it were also the last."
If she hadn't been so angry and mortified, she would have laughed at his aggrieved expression. The fact he had accepted his mother's opinion on a matter she had no firsthand knowledge of, but not Rachel's personal avowal also rankled.
"So, Phillippa believes I told the truth about being a virgin and you accepted your mother's opinion as Gospel after pillorying me as a liar."
"That is the way it was, yes."
"Did she tell you she believed me about the other too?"
"No! I did not bring this up to her."
"Why not? You told her everything else."
"Not everything." He rubbed his eyes as if tired.
She wondered how much sleep he'd gotten the night before. They'd gone to bed in the wee hours of the morning and he'd woken up before her.
"What, did you forget to mention what color of socks I was wearing?"
"You weren't wearing any socks. Your lovely legs were bare and I did not go into that great a detail with my mother. I would not do such a thing. Have I no credit in your eyes at all that you could believe I would do so?"
Realizing she'd really offended him with that remark, she still shook her head and told him the truth. "No, pretty much not any."
He grimaced. "Well I did not." He waved a hand toward her food. "Eat your breakfast. You need your strength."
For the baby's sake.
Looking down at the beautifully prepared food, she thought he had really jumped headfirst into protective soon-to-be father mode. She mentally shrugged. She would not give daylight to the wish that some of his concern could have been directed toward her person rather than her role as incubator.
That kind of thinking was in the past.
She no longer cared that Sebastian could not love her. She would not let herself.
Without eating any more of the still half-full plate of food, he got up and put it on the counter. Turning to face her, he leaned his tall, hard body against the cupboard.
His silent scrutiny unnerved her and her breath caught in her throat at the partial view she got of his chest because of his open shirtfront. Her gaze slid down of its own volition and she almost choked on that held breath.
His stance outlined semi-aroused male flesh and she felt an unwelcome answering response in the heart of her femininity.
She couldn't possibly be experiencing desire for him.
Not after everything that had happened.
Yanking her gaze from his body, she concentrated on her food.
"When you are finished here, we will go to see a specialist about your thyroid and heart." She could not tell from his tone of voice whether or not he had noticed her appraisal.
She nodded her head, not looking up, not wanting to know.
"While we are gone," he continued, "my people will start packing your things. If there is any furniture to which you have a sentimental attachment, we can have it shipped to Greece or the New York apartment for now."
Her head snapped back and she met his eyes in a hurry on that one. "Packing me? What are you talking about? I'm not going to Greece."
His gorgeous face gave nothing away.
Villains were supposed to be ugly with oily mustaches, like Simon Legree, not men who could compete for the cover of a woman's eye candy magazine.
"Rachel, you need looking after. I cannot do that from half a world away. You will come to Greece."
He was so arrogantly sure he knew what was best and just on principle, she opened her mouth to argue, but then snapped it shut again. Hadn't she called him for this very purpose?
She wanted someone who would take care of her baby if something happened to her. He might be going about it in his usual, King of the World manner, but this time she'd let him get away with it.
"Okay, but we don't have to pack up my apartment. I won't be pregnant forever."
"Yes, we do."
"Why?"
"Your pregnancy may not be permanent, but the changes it will affect in your life will be."
He was right, but she still wasn't going to let him tell her when it was time to move to a bigger place. "I can get by in a one-bedroom until the baby is old enough to walk at least."
"As my wife you will have no need of this rental or to get by with anything."
Her heart started beating too fast and she had no idea if it was the stupid arrhythmia or Sebastian's extraordinary statement offered much too casually.
He'd said it like them marrying was a foregone conclusion, but, "I don't remember being asked if I wanted marry you."
"What you or I want is not important right now. Our baby must be brought into a secure environment of two parents willing and able to care for it."
"I don't have to marry you in order for you to be there for the baby."
"Yes, you do. Anything less than marriage between us will shortchange our child a parent and deprive me of the opportunity to raise him."
"Maybe I don't want to be shortchanged by a husband who thinks I'm a good candidate for slut of the year." She pushed her plate away, having eaten more than Sebastian, but not all of it by any stretch.
He crossed his arms over his chest, his expression bleak. "I told you, I do not think this of you."
"Yes, you do. Don't think I'm stupid enough not to see you're only being nice to me for the baby's sake, but that does not change your real opinion of me."
"I told you that I no longer believe you lied to me."
"You don't have to think I'm a good person to believe I was a virgin. For all I know, your Machiavellian brain has come up with some nefarious reason for me giving my virginity to you particularly. I mean, obviously a schemer like me would have purposefully forgotten protection in the hopes of getting pregnant by you and to trap you into supporting me and my decadent lifestyle for the foreseeable future."
"I did not say these things!"
"But for all I know, you're thinking them." She sighed, feeling tired all at once. "I know how you feel about family, Sebastian. You believe my baby is yours because your mother convinced you I didn't lie about you being my first lover. That means you will do whatever is necessary to protect your unborn child, even pretend a rapprochement with a woman you despise as a manipulative liar."
"You do not trust me at all."
Had he just worked that out? "You know, one thing still leaves me wondering. You've never even raised the possibility of me having gone to bed with someone else in the three months I've been home from Greece. After all, there is no shortage of sexy, available men in Southern California."
Molten fire shot from Sebastian's eyes. "You will go to bed with no other man."
"But how can you be sure I haven't already?"
"You were attacked. You were afraid of intimacy. Although you overcame that fear with me, there is no guarantee you could with another man."
"You've got an incredibly fast mind, Sebastian, but I still don't believe anything you say." She'd made the mistake of trusting him once, even knowing that to trust someone from his world was stupidity itself.
>
He'd hurt her so much her heart had been frozen.
She would not make that mistake again.
Sebastian's hand slashed the air with angry impatience. "I do not think you are a slut. I know you have never had another man besides me and I was the experienced one. If anyone is to blame for the lack of protection that night, it is me."
Well, that explained a little more of what was motivating him now. He was taking on board the responsibility for her unplanned pregnancy.
She was too honest to let him. "Just because I'd never made love doesn't mean I was ignorant about birth control. I just never thought of it."
"I did not either. I was too far gone."
Was there some significance in his admission? She refused to look for it.
"So, it was both our faults. That does not mean you have to pay the ultimate sacrifice by marrying me."
