The Billionaire's Pregnant Mistress

by Lucy Monroe

He laughed, but it was a sound without mirth. “Don’t try it. Your sister already slapped me.” He lifted his plastered hand as a silent indicator of that wound. “I’m in no mood to sustain further injury.”

  “Poor you,” she jeered.

  “Keep pushing it and my temper will override my patience.”

  Remembering the inimical fury he’d exhibited the day she told him of her pregnancy, she shivered. “I used to think you were such a cool guy, no scenes, no temper tantrums, all sleek sophisticated Greek male.”

  “Do not forget rich.”

  “I don’t care about your filthy money. I never did.”

  “Yet it will be difficult for you to win against it, should you attempt to withhold my child from me.”

  Fear tried to take hold, but she refused to give into it. “You don’t scare me. This isn’t Greece. You can’t take my baby away from me just because you’re rich and male. United States family law is heavily balanced in the mother’s favor.” She’d looked into it as soon as she’d hit New York. She’d known even then that if Dimitri ever decided to claim her child, she would be facing difficulties ahead.

  “Perhaps, but can you afford the constant legal battles? The draining expense of hiring top-notch lawyers to plead your case.”

  The picture he painted was a bleak one. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep my child.”

  “Anything?”

  “Yes! Anything.”

  “Then come with your baby to my home.”

  That sent her to her feet in a hurry. “You arrogant toad! Do you honestly believe I would go anywhere with you after everything that has happened?”

  Her stomach churned. Did he think she was such a dope that she would let him set her and their son up somewhere convenient while he lived happy families with Phoebe? Another ugly thought followed the last one. “I won’t be your mistress,” she hissed with enough venom to slay him.

  He too shot out of his chair. “I’m not looking for a mistress.”

  “Good, because I won’t be one. Not ever. I learned all I wanted to know about having uncommitted sex with a guy so primitive he should be in a museum. The next time I have sex with a man, I’m going to have a ring on my finger and an avowal of love to go with it!”

  “Just who is this man?” he demanded in a near roar.

  “I don’t know, but when I find him, he won’t be anything like you!”

  “You think not?” Then he reached out and grabbed the lapels of his suit jacket again, yanking her to him. “I think this mythical man will be just like me because he will be me. No other man touches the mother of my child.”

  He’d said the words a breath above her lips and then closed the distance. And the electric current of desire was there, waiting, lurking in her deepest subconscious to come to the fore with the first touch of his mouth to hers.

  She went under so fast, she didn’t even have time to despise herself for her weakness. His mouth moved over hers with truly possessive passion and she responded like a woman deprived of physical intimacy for years.

  Her hands locked around his neck, her body stretched to press itself to his and her mouth opened in serious invitation. He took it and deepened the kiss even as his hands caressed her back, pressing her closer to him, letting her feel his heat and his excitement. Blatant evidence of that excitement brought her to her senses and she shoved herself away from him so fast and so hard, she stumbled backward and fell flat on her bottom.

  He was on his knees beside in her in a second. “You foolish woman! You could have hurt yourself. Are you trying to kill our son? Are you all right?” His hands were doing a hasty examination of her and her body was getting the wrong message entirely from those impersonal touches.

  She slapped his hands away. “Stop it. I’m fine.” Her bottom was sore, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. “Babies are resilient. I’m not going to lose him from such a small fall.” Oh Lord, please let that be true.

  “You would take such a risk?” He glared at her. “What other risks have you taken with our child?”

  If she’d had a gun, she would have shot him, or at least at him…to scare him a little and wipe that condescending look of censure off his face. “It’s not my fault you acted like a lecher and kissed me. What was I supposed to do, tolerate it?”

  He swelled with affronted pride. “You have never merely tolerated my kiss in your life.”

  She had no argument to that, so she didn’t try making one. “Married men are not supposed to kiss women other than their wives,” she said instead.

  He shrugged. “I agree. Does this worry you?”

  Was he for real? Of course it worried her. He was married to Phoebe and he’d just soul-kissed Alexandra. “Am I crazy, or are you?” she asked, feeling helplessly bewildered.

  His mouth twisted in a grimace. “I have been crazy since the first report from the private investigators trying to locate you. They had not a single lead and you had disappeared in one of the largest cities in the world.”

  He tucked the suit coat around her slender shoulders once again, then leaned down and lifted her in his arms. Was there something about imminent fatherhood that made the male of the species go all basic? She could remember only one other time he’d carried her during their year together and that had been one night she’d had a little too much champagne and fallen asleep in the car on the way home.

  Yet, tonight, he’d picked her up like he owned her. Twice. “Please put me down, Dimitri.” It was a sign of how vulnerable she felt that she made it a request instead of a demand.

  Either way, he did not comply. “I do not think I should. You are too volatile right now.”

  She closed her eyes in frustration. “I’ll control myself if you keep your hands and lips to yourself.”

  “I cannot promise this.”

  “Poor Phoebe. Does she know what an unfaithful letch she is married to?”

  “Phoebe is married to a man of absolute honor,” he replied, his voice laced with furious affront.

  “You? Don’t make me laugh,” she scorned. A man with integrity did not marry one woman after impregnating another.

  Dimitri sat down, keeping Alexandra pinned in his lap. His blue gaze scorched into hers. “You believe I am married to Phoebe? And you believe I have no honor?” The last was said with escalating anger.

  “I suppose you’re going to try to tell me you’re not married to your little Greek paragon.”

  “This is true. I am not.”

  Alexandra closed her eyes. She didn’t know why, but she hadn’t expected him to lie to her. She opened them again and stared into his deceitful face. “She told me she was your wife, so you can just forget about the smoothy deceptions.”

  “She would not have told you she was my wife.” His voice was filled with such conviction that Alexandra thought back to the devastating phone call.

  “She told me she was Mrs. Petronides.”

  “But then she told you she was married to my brother.”

  “What?”

  “She told you she had wed my brother.”

  “She did no such thing!” But she could have. Alexandra remembered the voice still talking as she’d ended the call.

  Dimitri wouldn’t let her look away from him, his compelling eyes holding hers hostage. “She did.”

  “But…”

  “She also pleaded with you to tell her where you were.”

  Alexandra remembered that part. “I wasn’t about to have a heart-to-heart with your new wife.”

  “She is not my wife.”

  “Prove it.”

  In his shock at her demand, Dimitri’s grip loosened and Alexandra extricated herself from his lap, this time much more carefully. “You say you are not married to Phoebe Petronides. Well, I don’t trust you anymore, Dimitri. If you want me to believe it, you’ll have to bring me proof.”

  He shot to his feet again, all outraged male. “How dare you question my word?”

  “You wouldn’t believe how easy it
is,” she admitted.

  That seemed to shake him. “I will get you the proof you require,” he said angrily.

  “Fine. Until then, I suggest you go.”

  “I am not letting you out of my sight again.”

  “What do you propose, setting up camp outside my sister’s door and dogging my every footstep?”

  “Count on it, but I have no desire to sleep in a hallway. You can come with me to my suite.”

  “No way. I’m not staying in a hotel room with you.”

  “There are two bedrooms, though there was a time you would not have required the other one.”

  She glared at his, to her mind, savagely insensitive reminder. “Forget it. I’m not going.”

  “Then I will stay here. It is a large apartment. I’m sure your sister has a spare room I could use.”

  She felt flummoxed. “You can’t stay here. Madeleine would have a hissy fit. She hates you.”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Speaking of hissy fits, your brother-in-law implied your mother would have one if you were featured in a scandalous article.”

  Alexandra couldn’t prevent her eyes from rolling in exasperation. “Yes.” She’d spent six years living as someone else to protect her mother’s sense of family dignity. Dupree women did not work.

  Only this generation of Dupree women would have been out on the street if one of them hadn’t ignored the old money heritage and gotten a job to support the family. The cousin of a friend from school had offered her a modeling contract. She’d taken it with one proviso…she work anonymously under an assumed name. He’d gone one better and helped her create Xandra Fortune, French orphan turned fashion model.

  Dimitri was speaking again. “She would be most upset to see an exposé interview with her daughter’s discarded tycoon lover and rejected father of her child.”

  Her body didn’t know whether to go faint or boil with fury at his implied threat and twisting of the facts. “I didn’t discard you. You dumped me to marry Phoebe, the Greek virgin bride, or don’t you remember?”

  “I am not married to Phoebe.”

  “You don’t have to have committed a murder to be guilty of a crime.”

  Instead of getting angrier, he smiled. “Are you saying you believe I did not marry her?”

  “No!”

  “You still require proof?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’ll have to convince your sister to give me a bed for the night because I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  “And if I don’t, you’re going to make sure my family’s name gets a good smearing in the tabloids, is that it?” she asked with all the derision at her disposal.

  He didn’t even flinch. “Yes.”

  “I despise you.”

  “Not hate?”

  “No. I don’t love you anymore, but I refuse to hate you. Part of you is in my child and I won’t ever have my child believing there is anything about him I could hate.” Her son deserved better than a mother eaten up by bitterness.

  A look she could not decipher settled on Dimitri’s chiseled features. “That is commendable. Now, shall we talk to your sister about my accommodation?”

  In the end, Alexandra decided it would be better to accompany Dimitri to his suite. The mere thought of trying to work out the current complications in her life with her younger sister breathing fire at Dimitri left her cold. Alexandra did not want Madeleine and Hunter forced into a position of enmity with a man of Dimitri’s wealth and power because of her.

  Going to Dimitri’s suite was the only workable solution. It wasn’t going to be all that bad, she decided. She didn’t need to worry about Dimitri getting to her. She was well and truly over him. The kiss had just been physical reaction to memories and she wouldn’t let it happen again.

  All that was left between them was to determine how they would handle his role in her son’s life.

  If anyone had asked Alexandra two days ago the chances of her sitting down to breakfast with Dimitri in his hotel suite, she would have said nil. Nada. Zilch. Absolutely not one. Yet, here they sat. She pushed her eggs and fruit around the plate of breakfast room service had provided minutes earlier. He eyed her with calculating regard.

  She knew what he saw. A positive hag. She hadn’t been able to sleep again last night, not with the knowledge that Dimitri rested on the other side of the wall. Her eyes looked bruised while her complexion wore its usual sallow tint from her pregnancy. Most women finished with morning sickness at three to four months. Not Alexandra. She still woke up every day feeling like she had the flu and she was in her fifth month.

  Her one consolation was Dimitri didn’t look much better. She’d been too overwrought to notice it the night before, but he’d lost weight and there were new lines around his eyes. His grandfather’s illness coupled with the search for his unborn child must have taken their toll on the man usually untouched by human frailty.

  “You need to stop playing with your food and eat it.”

  Her head snapped up. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  He leaned back in his chair on the other side of the small walnut table and smiled. “It appears someone needs to. I have always heard pregnant women glow. You look as if you’ve just come off a nine-day flu.”

  Stupid tears filled her eyes. She knew she wasn’t the beautiful model he’d gone to great lengths to get in his bed any longer, but did he have to rub it in? She gritted her teeth and blinked her eyes, trying to rid them of their wet sheen.

  She hated the emotional weakness she’d experienced since getting pregnant. “It’s a good thing I’m not trying to make a living as a model any longer then, isn’t it?”

  He reached across the table, grabbing her hand before she had a chance to pull it away. “I did not say you are no longer beautiful, merely that you look unwell.”

  She jerked her hand out from under his as the warmth of his skin burned into her own. “I’m pregnant.” It was fine for him to sit there looking a bit worse for the wear, but still sexy as sin and in sickeningly good health.

  “Yes, but not happily so from the look of things.”

  “Are you trying to imply I don’t want my baby?”

  He exhaled an impatient breath. “I think the fact you are five months into an obviously difficult pregnancy is ample proof you want my child.”

  “I don’t want your child. I want this baby.”

  His lips creased in a devilish grin. “Same thing.”

  Unwilling to agree on any point, but equally unwilling to deny the truth, she remained silent and took a bite of ripe melon, savoring its sweet and juicy freshness in her mouth. “I want this baby and I’m keeping him. Do you hear me?”

  His mouth twisted. “Have I at any time implied that you should not?”

  “You told me you wanted my son.”

  “You believe I am married to Phoebe, therefore I must want the baby without the mother?” His hands lifted in an expression of exasperation she knew well. “Do I have this right?”

  She wasn’t totally certain any longer, so she shrugged. He could make what he liked of it.

  “Your opinion of me is very low,” he said grimly, all humor gone from his countenance. “I should have the proof you need of Phoebe’s marriage to Spiros within the hour.”

  She remained mute. She’d believe it when she saw it. It wasn’t his brother Spiros who had announced his engagement to the young Greek heiress.

  “I can see it is of no use attempting to talk with you until I have the documents.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you at all,” she admitted.

  It was a useless sentiment. She was pregnant with his child. They would have to come to terms eventually, but those terms would not include her giving up her baby.

  “Do not play the child.”

  She forced herself to eat a bite of her eggs. Their fluffy warmth tasted like sawdust on her tongue. She had believed she was even tempered before she met Dimitri.

  “You said you are no
longer modeling to support yourself.”

  She nodded, wary of where this was leading. She didn’t want to give away any more information than she had to.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Maybe I’m just living off Hunter’s largess.” She knew the idea of another man supporting her while she was pregnant with his child would infuriate Dimitri.

  Sure enough, his eyes narrowed. “Are you?”

  “I’m living with them,” she pointed out.

  He just waited and when she remained silent, he sighed. “I already have five reputable detective agencies on my retainer. Now that I know the name you are living under, it should be a matter of a phone call or two to elicit the information.”

  “I’m working as a translator and interpreter for an agency that sends out temps.”

  His blue eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened. “You go out to work for strangers?” He made it sound like she was some sort of call girl or something.

  “It’s not that different from doing a modeling assignment.”

  “But then you knew the photographers, the other models.”

  She pushed her plate aside and took a sip of herbal tea. “What difference does it make?”

  “You are pregnant and obviously ill.” His gaze wandered over her with tactile force. “You should not be working.”

  If he didn’t want Hunter supporting her, how did he expect her to live? “I have to support myself. I refuse to be my younger sister’s charity case.”

  “Why have you not returned to your parents’ home?”

  A traditional Greek man who shared the loving rapport he had with his grandfather could never understand the complicated relationship she had with her mother. “I’m not welcome,” was all she said.

  “This cannot be. You are pregnant with their grandchild. Surely your parents desire to care for you at this time.”

  “My father died six years ago and my mother is only willing for me to return to New Orleans and the family home if I invent a fictitious husband who conveniently died recently or lives overseas. It’s positively draconian, but that’s the way she is. She refuses to even discuss the baby and hasn’t come to visit Madeleine since I moved in.”

  His jaw set. “You refused to invent this pretend spouse?”