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‘I’m only doing a few hours here and there. I can’t afford to quit.’
‘Do you want this baby?’
Losing what little colour she had, Maddie nodded in dismay.
‘Then you need to rest and take it easy.’
Fear gripped Maddie. The only thing that had kept her sane through the long lonely weeks since she had left London had been the comforting prospect of her child. True, she had felt endlessly tired, and sick enough to lose her appetite and some weight, but it had not occurred to her that her pregnancy might be at risk. Confronted with that threat, she was appalled. She was living in a bed-and-breakfast, and working odd shifts as a cashier in a restaurant which was open to all hours.
But if Giannis was no longer engaged there was no reason why she shouldn’t contact him and ask him to help her out. Naturally she would have preferred to remain proudly independent—not least because she had not told him the truth when she might have done. But all of a sudden she was painfully and guiltily aware that she should be putting her baby first and her pride and her feelings last.
It was months since Giannis had given her the embossed business card, but she still had it in her purse. Before she could lose her momentum, she went into the shopping centre to find a public phone. She punched out his mobile number very slowly. Her heart was beating so fast and her mind was so full of apprehensive thoughts that she very nearly dropped the receiver before the call was answered.
Giannis spoke in Greek, which unnerved her.
‘Hello…it’s me,’ she announced stiltedly. ‘I mean, sorry…it’s Maddie.’
At the other end of the phone, Giannis rose from his seat. Every predatory instinct on instant hyper-alert, he murmured as smoothly as silk, ‘I’ve been hoping to hear from you. Where are you?’
The rich, accented timbre of his deep voice touched memories Maddie had not known she had, and brought a surge of unexpected moisture to her eyes. ‘I’m in Reading,’ she said gruffly. ‘I need to see you.’
‘Any time. Give me your address—I’ll send a car to pick you up,’ Giannis suggested, determined to pin her down to an exact geographical location.
Not yet ready to advance that amount of trust, Maddie spread uneasy fingers over the gentle swell of her stomach. ‘No. I’ll get the train to London this afternoon.’
An expert negotiator, Giannis knew when not to push. He had picked up on that audible note of wariness. ‘Where do you want to meet? My apartment?’
‘No…’ But her mind, she discovered, was a total blank. The doctor had said it was hormones, but sometimes she felt as if her brain had been hijacked.
She had no objection, therefore, to Giannis stepping straight into the breach with the immediate assurance that she would be met at the station and brought to a hotel where they could dine.
‘It’ll be very relaxed.’ Giannis was determined to do and say whatever it took to draw her out of hiding, though he was using persuasive tactics that were utterly new to him.
Maddie wondered dully how hungry he would feel after she had broken her news. Since she could hardly take care of that in a public restaurant, she felt she had to say in warning, ‘I sort of need to talk to you in private.’
Whatever, Giannis thought, energised by a wave of satisfaction and impatience. She had missed him. Of course she had. He had picked up on a hint of tears in her voice, but even so she had stayed away for over three bloody months! Strange how a woman who could be so gentle could also be as stubborn as a mule and as hard as granite. He realised that he was as angry with her as he was pleased, and it was a volatile combination. But stronger than either prompting ran a deep, atavistic need to stamp her as his again, with the raw, physical intimacy that would ensure she never ran in the wrong direction again. This enthralling imagery in mind, Giannis cancelled all his afternoon appointments with a casualness that shocked his personal assistants.
Even though it was a hot day, Maddie wore a long jacket which, amazingly, did a good job of concealing her changing shape. Nemos greeted her with a warm, welcoming smile and shepherded her through the busy station. She alighted in a quiet side street. The lavish hotel foyer was wrapped in the intimidating silence of an exclusive establishment. Her nervous tension increased, her palms dampening.
‘Mr Petrakos is in here…’A door was spread back and she saw him for herself: tall, vibrantly dark and devastatingly handsome, he wore a silver-grey business suit with the classy sheen of madly expensive silk. He was all she saw—the only element in the room that she could focus on. A tiny pulse was beating too fast in the hollow of her collarbone.
His first thought was that she looked incredibly lovely, like a painting brought to life. She looked tiny and fragile in a voluminous black jacket which acted as a vivid foil for her Titian mane of curls and pure white skin.
‘Would you like a drink?’ he murmured softly.
‘Oh, no—I mean…’
Giannis strode forward and offered to take her coat. He didn’t like the way she was hovering, or the evasiveness of her green eyes. He had never been so tense. He was trying not to think of what he would do if she decided to walk away again.
‘No…no, it’s okay.’ Maddie backed away, and then thought how ridiculous she must look—how pointless it was for her to try and delay the announcement that she had to make. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘You’re very jumpy? I can see that for myself.’
Maddie breathed in deep. ‘About three months ago I told you a lie.’
‘You’re forgiven,’ Giannis asserted huskily, feasting his appreciative and somewhat amused gaze on her, because he was convinced that what she termed a lie would only qualify as the most minor fib. After all, nobody knew better than he did that she had sterling principles set in stone.
‘But you don’t know what I lied about yet.’
His gilded bronze eyes narrowed and raked over her, lingering on the soft pink fullness of her mouth. ‘You look amazing. You’d have to be a guy to understand. Promise to come home with me tonight and I won’t even ask what the lie was, pedhi mou.’
Maddie could not initially credit his response, and then intimate and deeply embarrassing memories stirred and surfaced. He exuded hot, sexual energy, and he had taught her the meaning of exquisite pleasure. A heavy flush heated her entire skin surface. She could not deny that in Morocco she had been with him every step of the way. Furthermore, the extent of the passion he’d awakened had shocked her. She had not even known that it was possible for her to want a man to the extent that he could make her want him. So was it any wonder that he did not take her very seriously?
‘Do you ever think of anything other than the bedroom stuff?’ she asked in a stifled tone of discomfiture.
‘Not around you…it colours everything,’ Giannis confided in a driven undertone, opting for the honesty that she had insisted she wanted from him. ‘It even gets in the way of business. Perhaps if I had you all to myself for an unspecified length of time, and I could live out my every erotic desire, I could think of other things…occasionally.’
‘Like…as in having a serious conversation?’ Maddie prompted tightly, as she unbuttoned her jacket with trembling hands.
‘Don’t hold your breath, glikia mou.’ His lean, strong face taut, his brilliant dark eyes flashed languorous gold above his bronzed cheekbones. ‘I’m not into those.’
Maddie yanked off her jacket in a decidedly challenging fashion and pitched it at a chair, fearful that at any moment she would lose her nerve. She also hated herself for the fact that she really didn’t want to show him her pregnant body. He had found her unpregnant body deeply attractive and sensual.
‘And possibly you aren’t either,’ Giannis added thickly, hoping very much that she was going to continue with the strip.
He didn’t care how many serious conversations he had to be subjected to afterwards. Indeed, he dimly accepted that that might well be the price. She was a little conscience on legs, heavily prone to feeling bad about his natural human flaws. He just wished she could see how simple everything would be if she could only think as he did. She was back. They were together. He wanted her to come home with him. What was wrong with a celebration? There was no need to discuss the fact that she now had her own discreet surveillance team of three, who would ensure that she never got lost again. No, he didn’t make the same mistake twice.
‘G-Giannis…?’ Maddie stammered, the tip of her tongue sliding out to moisten her lower lip in the heavy silence. She had assumed that he would immediately notice that her trim waist had vanished.
Instead his smouldering gaze was locked to the sinfully ripe contours of her moist pink lips. ‘I love your mouth…’
Maddie realised that her black T-shirt and stretchy skirt were doing a better job of concealment than she had expected. Sucking in her breath, in the pathetic hope that some of her tummy would go in with it, she muttered unevenly, ‘Don’t you notice anything?’
On an erotic high of anticipation, Giannis was taking his time about inspecting her wonderfully rounded shape. The voluptuous curve of her bosom left him spellbound, and his scrutiny lingered there with the purist’s attention to detail. He was picturing her on his bed, in his office, in his apartment, on his private jet. Always there for him, always available. ‘Your breasts are amazing…’
Maddie went scarlet with rage and stress and disbelief and turned sideways. ‘What about my stomach?’
Sleek ebony brows pleating, Giannis stared. Black lashes lowering, he blinked, too taken aback to instantly grasp why she should look from that angle as if she had swallowed a cushion. ‘Enormous…’
Her eyes smarted; her face tightened and paled. Well, he had shot straight from the hip—and she had always known that he would find her rotund proportions deeply unappealing, hadn’t she?
‘Pregnant,’ Giannis almost whispered in Greek. And then he said it again for good measure in English. ‘But you can’t be pregnant because you said you were not.’
A silence full of dangerous sparks began to simmer in the tense atmosphere.
‘Isn’t that so?’ Giannis murmured lethally.
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