Bridal Bargains
Page 51
Then he sighed—heavily. ‘Look, do you mind if I take a quick shower before we talk?’ he asked tiredly.
‘N-no, of course not,’ she replied, but she would have preferred him just to get on and say what he had to because she didn’t like the grim mood he was in, and she needed to know what he had discussed with her father. But he had already walked off into the bathroom, leaving her sitting there trapped in an electric state of tension.
True to his word, though, he was back in minutes. He had showered and shaved and looked marginally less weary, though no less grim, wrapped in a blue towelling bathrobe that left too much naked golden flesh on show for her comfort because her imagination was suddenly conjuring up images that set her over-sensitive breasts tingling and made that place between her thighs begin to throb.
Her knees came up, her arms loosely wrapping around them in an instinctive act of defensive protection for those susceptible parts of her body. But her eyes never left him as he came over to the bed and sat down on it beside her, the tension seeming to sing loud in the quietness of the softly lit bedroom.
‘What’s wrong, Alex?’ Mia asked anxiously, unable to hold the question back any longer.
His dark eyes flicked up and clashed with hers, then he smiled a rather rueful smile at her that did nothing for her equilibrium. ‘Nothing,’ he assured her, then went silent, those deceptively languid eyes of his studying her worried face for a few moments before he eventually went on, ‘Nothing that you need worry about, anyway …’
He did a strange thing then. He reached up to touch her hair, gently combing it away from her cheek and one creamy shoulder. The electricity in the air sharpened, sprinkling that well-remembered static all around her. Her heart began to race, those two over-active parts of her body sending her another jolt that reminded her just how irresistible she found this man.
‘I have to return to Greece,’ he announced, making her blink and forcing her to come back from wherever she had flown off to—bringing reality tumbling back into perspective. ‘I expect to be gone for about three weeks.’
His hand dropped away. She wanted to shiver, as if she’d just been shut out in the cold, and hated herself for being this vulnerable to him.
‘I accept that you cannot leave Suzanna yet,’ he continued while she struggled with her foolish emotions, ‘so I have arranged with Carol and Leon for you to stay here for now.’
At least he wasn’t making her return to Greece with him, Mia noted with relief, although remaining under this roof with his brother so clearly resenting her presence didn’t exactly fill her with joy. Still, she’d lived with worse, she told herself bracingly. And she could spend most of her time with Suzanna—keep herself as scarce around here as possible.
‘The other problem is Suzanna,’ he went on, as if his own train of thought was following the same lines as her own. ‘She is due to be discharged from hospital in a couple of days.’
‘I’ll go with her to my father’s house,’ Mia offered instantly. ‘It seems the best thing all round. I won’t be putting anyone here out.’
Alex was already shaking his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I will not have you exposed to your father in your condition so I have done a deal with him.’
Mia stiffened instantly. ‘You didn’t tell him you knew the truth about her, did you?’ she asked tensely.
‘Of course not!’ he snapped. ‘What do you take me for—a monster? You think I was blind to the way that child shrivelled up in his presence—the way you did the same thing yourself? You think I enjoy watching any child react to an adult like that?’
Mia lowered her lashes and said nothing—after all, it wasn’t that long ago that he’d enjoyed seeing her cringe from him.
The air grew thick, laden with anger, then he sighed heavily. ‘You cannot bring yourself to trust me even a small amount, can you?’ he muttered. ‘So, what do you suspect I am about to say to you now? That I have sold you into purdah for the duration of your pregnancy?’
‘Why not?’ she shot back. ‘I was in purdah before we came to London. Why not put me back there again?’
‘I have offered to take Suzanna off your father’s hands for the next three weeks until she returns to her school,’ he cut in tightly. ‘Your father has agreed, so long as you both reside at this house and Suzanna is not taken out of the country!’
‘He’s agreed to that?’ Mia couldn’t believe it.
‘He almost bit my damned hand off!’ Alex rasped in disgust. ‘Apparently, his housekeeper is about to take her annual vacation, which meant him having to hunt around for someone who could temporarily take charge of the child. So you being here fitted in very well with his own situation!’
‘Oh,’ she said, disconcerted by the amount of thought he had put into all of this. ‘Thank you,’ she mumbled belatedly.
‘That is not all,’ he continued, all that softness she had glimpsed in him a moment ago well and truly gone. ‘I have my own provisos to add to your father’s. The main one is that you promise me you will come back to Greece the day you take Suzanna back to school. The reason I demand this is because I will not be able to get back to London to collect you myself so I am going to have to take your word for it that you will come back to me.’
‘I’ll come back,’ she promised, frowning because she had never so much as considered doing anything else. They had made a deal, one where she had agreed to give birth to his son on Greek soil. ‘I will drive Suzanna back to school, then catch the next scheduled flight to—’
‘My plane will be waiting for you at an airfield close to Suzanna’s school,’ he interrupted. ‘And you will not drive yourself anywhere while you are here,’ he went on grimly. ‘One of my own drivers will be left at your disposal for the rest of your stay here.’
‘But I have a car!’ she protested. ‘It’s sitting, doing nothing, at my father’s house! It would be nice to drive myself again while I’m here in London!’
‘Not while you keep fainting,’ he said.
‘I do not keep fainting!’ She hotly denied that.
‘But those dizzy spells affect you too readily for you to be safe behind the wheel of a car. I saw the way you barely managed to hold yourself upright in front of your father at lunchtime,’ he added tightly when she opened her mouth to protest yet again. ‘So you agree to my terms or I take you back to Greece with me now. The choice is yours.’
He was, after all, only protecting his investment! ‘Yes, oh, master,’ she said sarcastically.
He had been about to stand up when she’d said that, but now he stilled and Mia felt a frisson of warning shoot down her spine as he turned those dark eyes on her—she recognised the look, recognised it only too well.
‘You know …’ he said, super-light, super-soft, ‘you are in real danger of baiting me once too often, agape mou. And, despite the delicacy of your condition or the fragility of that protective shell you like to hide behind, I am going to retaliate,’ he warned her. ‘And you’re not going to like it because I know your secret.’
‘I d-don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said warily.
‘No?’ he said quizzically—and his dark face was suddenly very close to her face. Her eyelashes began to quiver, and her fingers clutched nervously at the sheet. ‘Well, let us see, shall we?’ he suggested silkily, and his mouth covered her trembling one.
It was like being tossed into a burning furnace—she caught fire that quickly. Her mind caught fire, as well as her body, and she wasn’t even aware of how spectacularly she had done it until he was having to use force to prise her clinging fingers from his nape before he could separate his mouth from her greedily clinging one.
‘Now that …’ he drawled, touching a punctuating fingertip to the pulsing fullness of her lips, ‘is your secret. You may prefer to hate me, but you cannot damned well resist me!’
His words made her want to hit out at him, but he caught the hand before it landed its blow and arrogantly pressed his warm lips to her palm.
‘I can delay my departure for an hour or two, if you want me to …’ he offered.
That stung a different part of her entirely. Her eyes opened, angry fire burning alongside the passion. ‘Only an hour or two?’ she said scathingly. ‘Well, that just about puts your attitude to sex in a nutshell, doesn’t it? One quick fix then you’re off again before the sheets get warm!’
He should have been angry—she’d said it all to make him so angry that he would walk out! But he completely disconcerted her by arrogantly taking up the challenge.
‘You want more than that? A whole night of wild passion, maybe?’
‘You aren’t capable of spending a whole night in the same bed as me!’ she said scornfully.
His eyes darkened. Mia felt real alarm take a stinging dive down the length of her spine. ‘That lousy opinion you have of me really does need amending,’ he said curtly. Suddenly he was standing up, determined fingers already working on the knot to his robe.
‘W-what are you doing?’ she choked. ‘No, Alex …’ she protested huskily, not even trying to pretend that she didn’t know exactly why he was stripping himself.
It didn’t stop him. Her heart began to race, her tongue cleaving itself to the roof of her dry mouth as she watched in a paralysed mix of greedy fascination and mind-numbing horror that magnificent naked frame of his appear in front of her.
The air left her lungs on a short, sharp gasp at the unashamed power of his pulsing arousal. Her eyes moved upwards to clash with the fierce flame in his as he bent to lift the edge of the sheet.
At last she found the motivation to attempt an escape, slithering like a snake to the other side of the bed. His arm caught her before she could get away. It drew her back across the smooth white linen, then turned her so she was facing him.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she reminded him shakily, as if that should be enough to stop him.
It wasn’t. His arm slid beneath her shoulders then angled downwards across her spine so his hand could arch her slender hips towards him. The firm roundness of her stomach was pressed into the concaved wall of his taut stomach. He sighed a little unsteadily, his darkened eyes closing as if this first physical contact he was having with their unborn child was moving him deeply.
Enthralled by his totally unexpected reaction, Mia released a soft gasp. He heard it—felt the warm rush of air brush across his face—and opened eyes which had gone pitch black and seemed to want to draw her deep inside them.
Which is exactly what he did do. He didn’t speak—he didn’t need to. That expression had said it all for him. It was need. It was desire. It was hunger too long-standing for him to fight it any longer.
The last conscious thought she had before he completely took her over was that he’d been right. She can’t resist him, not when he looked at her like that, anyway.
Her eyes began to close, her soft mouth parting as it went in blind search of his. They fused from mouth to breast to hip. It was that easy to give in to it in the end.
For the next few hours they became lost in each other, the world outside with all its complications shut right out.
‘Why?’ Mia asked a long time later when they were lying in a heated tangle of sensually exhausted limbs. ‘When you rejected me the first night we came here.’
‘I promised you I would not touch you again once you were pregnant,’ he replied.
‘You made that promise to yourself, Alex,’ Mia corrected him quietly. ‘I never asked you for it.’
He was silent for a moment, then gave a small sigh. ‘Well, it is now a broken promise,’ he announced, ‘and one I have no intention of reinstating.’
Then he kissed her again, slowly, languidly, drawing her back down into that deep, dark well of pleasure from where she eventually drifted into a sated sleep, her arms still holding him and his still wrapped around her. It felt wonderful—so different from anything they had shared before that it was like a statement of future intent.
Yet when she awoke the next morning he was gone—as usual.
Which meant—what? she wondered grimly. A return to the status quo, with the sex thrown back in to spice it all up a bit?
CHAPTER NINE
SUZANNA was discharged from hospital three days later, and the time that followed went by much too quickly. Time that turned out to be a lot pleasanter than Mia had expected it to be, mainly because Leon’s manner towards her had softened remarkably—though forced to do so, she suspected, by a child who was so very eager to please that even Leon Doumas didn’t seem to have the heart to be anything but pleasant around Suzanna.
And that meant he had to include Mia.
Everywhere the little girl went, her fluffy rabbit, her pens and paper and her computer game went with her. Every night she insisted Mia read a story from her set of books. When in their company, her wistful green eyes followed Leon and Carol around like a love-starved puppy, eagerly waiting to be noticed. When not in their company she talked about them constantly, starry-eyed and happy, so pathetically grateful to the couple for allowing her to come and stay with them that sometimes it brought tears to Mia’s eyes to witness it.
With the resilience of childhood she recovered quickly from her operation, and with the vulnerability of childhood she worried constantly about the moment when she would have to go back to school because she knew that was also the time when Mia would be going back to Greece.
‘You might forget all about me when you have the new baby to love,’ she confided one evening as she lay in the bed Carol had allocated her in the room next to Mia’s.
‘New babies don’t steal love from one person for themselves, darling,’ Mia said gently. ‘They only ask that you let them share it. Do you think you can do that? Share all the love I have for you with this new baby?’
‘Will Alex let me come and visit sometimes, do you think?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Will he mind if I share you with the new baby?’
‘Of course not,’ Mia said. ‘Who was it who convinced Daddy to let you come and stay here until you go back to school?’
‘Carol said Alex likes children,’ the child said, with that painfully familiar wistful expression. ‘She said Alex likes me because I look so much like you.’
Well, that was a very kind thing to say, Mia acknowledged, and made a mental note to thank Carol when she next saw her.
Carol just shrugged her thanks aside. ‘It was only the truth,’ she said. ‘Alex does like children and he’s got himself so tied up in knots over you that he’s bound to like Suzanna simply because she looks like you.’
Tied up in what kind of knots? she wondered. Sexual knots? ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she replied dismissively.
‘No?’ To her annoyance, Carol started grinning. ‘Did Alex ever tell you about his mistress?’ she asked. When Mia instantly stiffened up Carol nodded, ‘I thought he would. I know how his mind works, you see, and he would have told you about her just to score points off you. But I bet he hasn’t told you that within a week of marrying you he had sent her packing.
‘No,’ Carol continued drily at Mia’s start of surprise, ‘I didn’t think he would. Too bad for his ego to admit that, having had you, he couldn’t bring himself to touch another woman. But that’s our dear Alex for you,’ she went on. ‘Committed. Totally committed to whatever he turns his attention to.’
‘Like an island he wants to repossess,’ Mia said derisively, refusing to believe a word Carol was saying because believing would make her start seeing Alex through different eyes, which in turn could make her weak.
And she couldn’t afford to be weak where Alex was concerned. She was already vulnerable enough.
‘Certainly, recovering
the family island has been the goal that has driven him for the past ten years,’ Carol agreed. ‘But marry some strange woman and produce a child with her in the quest for that goal?’ She shook her blonde head. ‘Now that was going too far, even for Alex. Or so I thought,’ she added sagely, ‘until I met you. Then I began to wonder if half the trap wasn’t of his own making.’
‘It wasn’t,’ Mia said coolly. ‘My father is a master tactician.’ And then some, she added bitterly to herself.
‘Your father knew why Alex wanted the island back so badly,’ Carol acknowledged. ‘A solemn promise to his dying father—you can’t really get a bigger incentive than that for a Greek. But I still say—’
‘His father?’ Mia cut in sharply. ‘Alex promised his dying father?’
‘Didn’t you know?’ Carol looked surprised. ‘Come on,’ she said suddenly, taking hold of Mia’s hand as she did so. ‘It will be easier to show you,’ she explained, pulling Mia into the hall and then into a room Carol used as a working studio. ‘See,’ she declared, bringing Mia to a halt in front of a large framed painting.
It was titled Vision and Mia’s heart stilled as she recognised it as the original of the print she had seen in the lift at the Doumas office building.
‘Their father had this painted when he knew he was going to have to sell the island,’ Carol explained. ‘Until then it had been in the family for ever. See the little graveyard.’ She pointed it out. ‘Every Doumas, except their father, is buried there, including their mother and their older brother. They were killed in a flying accident when Alex was a teenager and Leon a small child. The accident devastated their father. He adored his wife and worshipped his eldest son.
‘With them gone, he felt he had nothing left to live for, hence the sudden drop in the Doumas fortunes. His own health suffered until he eventually died prematurely—but not before he had extracted a promise from Alex that he would get the island back and have his remains transferred there. Do you understand now?’ she demanded finally.