His Pregnant Bride: Pregnant by the Greek Tycoon / His Pregnant Princess / Pregnant: Father Needed

Saying the resemblance was striking was hardly proof positive. Frankly the unscientific approach from someone who really ought to know better surprised him.

Paul had to be wrong.

Then why are you here?

Because, he admitted to the dry voice in his head, if I don’t see this child for myself I’ll never know for sure. A niggling doubt—or was it hope?—would always be there. Irrational, of course; if he had a son he would know. It was simply not possible.

The part of the sea front he had reached was newly pedestrianised. There were signs excluding litter, dogs, and skate-boards…and it had worked; he had the stretch pretty much to himself. He could see the church spire in the distance. He knew if he headed in that general direction he would end up where he wanted to be.

Although in these circumstances want was not really an appropriate term.

The Kemps’ holiday home was reached by a narrow, tree-lined lane that ran one side of the churchyard. A more direct route was via the beach—the house boasted a garden gate that gave direct access to the dunes and sand.

Angolos chose the more direct route. The sooner this nonsense was over with, the better, as far as he was concerned. He could not really spare the time as it was.

Angolos was not a man who lived in the past, but under the circumstances it was hard to prevent his thoughts returning to the first occasion he had walked along this stretch of sand.

He had been euphoric after receiving the final all-clear from the hospital earlier that morning. His first thought had been to immediately drive down to the coast to share the good news with the friend whom he owed his life to. If Paul hadn’t picked up on those few tell-tale symptoms and cajoled him into having a blood test that had revealed his problem, he’d had no doubt that he would not have been here now.

His plans had been frustrated. Paul and his wife Miranda hadn’t been at home. Driving along the sea-front road on his way back to the capital, on impulse Angolos had pulled the car over.

The sea air had filled his nostrils; the sun had warmed his face; he had felt alive…he had been alive.

There was nothing like a brush with death to make a man appreciate things he would normally have overlooked, but even had his senses not been heightened he would have noticed her. Why one pretty girl should have attracted his attention when there were so many pretty girls in the world remained a mystery.

Maybe it was the fact she had refused his impulsive offer of dinner that had made the honey-haired English girl with the golden eyes remain in his mind the rest of the day.

And maybe it had been coincidence that had made him return to the beach late that evening when the light had been fading, but Angolos was more inclined to consider it fate.

And fate was not always kind.

When he’d tried the second time, Paul and Mirrie had been home. They had opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate and had insisted he should stay the night. He ought to have been able to relax—he had been given his life back; he had been in the company of friends—but Angolos had felt strangely restless.

The evening had been sticky and stifling; a few distant rumbles had promised thunder. When he’d announced his intention of taking a walk on the beach, his understanding hosts had said fine, and given him a key to let himself in.

Walking along the pebbly foreshore, he hadn’t immediately appreciated that the figure in the waves had been in trouble. Assuming the swimmer had been messing around or drunk, he had turned a deaf ear to the cries.

When he had realised what had been happening he had responded instinctively to the situation. On autopilot he had fought his way out of his jacket as he’d run down the beach, pausing only at the water’s edge to step out of his shoes.

He was a strong swimmer and, even hampered by his clothing, it had taken him very little time to cover the hundred or so metres. Even though clearly exhausted, desperation had lent the struggling swimmer strength as she had wrapped her arms around his neck, dragging him down. She had clung like a limpet—yes, even in the desperation of trying to break her stranglehold, he had registered that the body sealed to his was female—and in his weakened condition it had taken him a few worrying minutes to subdue her.

Fortunately she had appeared to have exhausted herself fighting him, and had remained passive as he’d towed her to shore. The undercurrent, which had presumably been too strong for her to negotiate, had been against him on the way back. The swim back had taken its toll on his remaining strength.

The relief when he’d got her ashore had been intense.

It wasn’t until he had carried the limp and bedraggled figure from the water and dumped her, coughing, onto the sand that he had recognised her. Lying at his feet had been the golden-eyed girl from earlier.

Something had snapped in his head. That someone like this girl with everything to look forward to could have been so careless of life when he’d known how fragile and precious it was had incensed him beyond measure.

Anger had coursed through his body and brain, causing his vision to blur and his hands to shake. He hadn’t been able to recall being this angry in his life—not even when the doctors had given him a poor prognosis. On that occasion he had had to control his feelings, but not now. He had been incandescent with rage.

Dropping down onto his knees beside her, he had taken her small heart-shaped face between his hands, pushing aside the drenched strands of hair that had clung like fronds of exotic seaweed to her face.

He had been able to feel the rapid beat of the pulse that had throbbed in her blue-veined temple. Her taut breasts had lifted as she’d tried to drag air into her oxygen-starved lungs. The black swimsuit had clung to her supple young body as lovingly as a second skin. Her skin, he’d noticed, had an incredible, luminescent clarity, at that moment it had been icy cold.

The image of her lying there was so perfect it might have happened yesterday. His body responded to the memory as if it had been that night nearly four years earlier. He was rock-hard.

‘How could you be so stupid?’ he demanded then. He shook her until her eyes opened.

Amazing amber eyes, big and not quite focused, blinked back at him. She was exhibiting classic signs of shock, but he was in no mood to make allowances.

‘I didn’t think…I…I mean it was—’

‘Did you want to kill yourself?’ he ranted on, oblivious to her pitiful and barely audible apology.

‘Of c…course not.’

‘You could have drowned us both.’ Her eyes widened; the swimming depths reflected mute horror. ‘What the hell were you doing?’

‘I was swimming.’

‘No, you were bloody drowning!’ He watched her full lower lip tremble and without thinking covered her mouth with his own.

Even now, all this time later, he could recall her startled gasp, the salty taste of the soft lips that parted sweetly under his and the softness of her body as she went bonelessly limp. The deep, soundless shudder that sighed through her body would stay with him for ever.

From somewhere he dredged up the strength to lift his mouth from hers when all he wanted to do was explore the sweet, moist recesses. Her fierce little groan of protest as the contact was broken made him forget for several dangerous seconds why this wasn’t a good idea.

The tenacious fingers that curled tightly in his wet hair proved infinitely more difficult to resist than the tide that had tried to pull them under.

He grabbed her hands and pinned them above her head, just to stop her touching him. ‘You don’t want to do this.’

‘You’re insane,’ she contended, shaking.

‘Certifiable,’ Angolos agreed thickly. The slim body beneath his was burning up. He could feel the blast of heat through the layers of wet clothes that separated them.

‘Don’t stop!’ The husky command wreaked havoc with his already-shredded self-control. She was like fire in his arms, supple, soft and displaying the same sort of savage desperation that thundered through his veins.

He hadn’t held a woman for almost a year, let alone had sex.

When he had first been diagnosed, his life had been thrown into utter confusion. He had always known where he was going and how he was getting there. The only restrictions placed on him had been by the responsibilities that had come with the privilege attached to his birth.

His focus and self-belief had always been enough to get him where he wanted to be. Helplessness had never entered the picture; then he had lost control. Someone had moved the goalposts and he had been angry.

He hadn’t realised how angry until he had said to the consultant treating him, ‘Tell me straight, Doctor, could this thing kill me?’

‘Yes, Mr Constantine, it could, but not if I have anything to do with it.’

It was a week later that he had woken up next to a woman, and he hadn’t known her name.

It had been a wake-up call. He had never ducked a fight in his life, but that, he’d then realised, was what he had been doing.

He had never been a saint, but he had always been discriminating and one-night stands had never been on his agenda. He had told himself to stop wallowing in self-pity, and had cleaned up his act. Of course later, when the treatment had taken his body to the limits of endurance, escaping into mindless sex had not been an option. He hadn’t had the strength, let alone the inclination.

That evening on the beach had been the first time in months that he had felt the stirring of sex…finding the object of his fantasy in his arms, half naked and begging him to kiss her, had transformed those stirrings into a raw, raging hunger.

He must have retained a shred of sanity because he had tried to stop, he could remember loosing her wrists and putting out a hand to lift himself off her, but instead his fingers had closed over the soft curve of one small, perfect breast.

The air had suddenly vibrated with the sexual tension that had erupted between them. Angolos had been immobilised by a wave of lust. In his head he had seen himself pushing aside the black material to reveal the straining pink bud. He had seen himself run his tongue over the straining peak, had heard her soft moan of pleasure…no, the soft moan had been real.

‘That feels so…’ Mesmerised, he watched her lips form a soundless oh as, eyes closed tight, her body arched.

‘I want you.’

Her eyes flicked open, tawny and wild. The most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. ‘I’m yours.’ She reached up and slid her hands under his wet shorts, letting her fingers slide over his skin.

Of course he lost it; what man wouldn’t? He pulled her under him and traced the shape of her skull with his fingers, lifting the heavy wet hair from the nape of her lovely neck. The sound that vibrated in her throat as her head fell back reminded him of a cat’s purr.

Her eyes opened and he touched his finger to the corner of her wide mouth and traced the full, soft outline. ‘You have the most amazing lips,’ he told her thickly. ‘And such beautiful, beautiful eyes…tiger’s eyes.’

‘You’re amazing all over.’

He allowed himself to kiss her then, driving his tongue into her mouth. He felt her searching hands on his body, sliding beneath his steaming clothes, baring his flesh to the air.

As his body pressed her into the wet sand she was still shaking and so was he, no longer with cold or anger, but with a wild, frenzied desire. Through the wet clothes separating them he felt the fresh wave of sexual heat that washed over her skin. She wrapped her legs around him and gasped as she felt his erection press into her soft belly.

Angolos wanted to bury himself in that softness more than he wanted to take another breath. He might have done just that, if the night hadn’t suddenly been illuminated by a jagged shaft of lightning. Lightning so bright he could see it through his closed eyelids.

He rolled off her with a groan and as he lay there panting there was a roll of thunder that broke directly overhead. The rain began to fall then, cold on his overheated skin.

She touched his shoulder and he shook his head. ‘I am not in control,’ he told her thickly.

‘Me neither. Good, isn’t it…?’ She sighed. ‘You don’t have to worry. I’m not afraid of thunder, and the boyfriend…I was lying. I don’t really have one. And I don’t expect…’

He turned his head. ‘You don’t expect what?’

‘I don’t expect it to be…you know…the first time…’

The husky confidence made him freeze. ‘Theos! Can it be true…?’ He scanned her face and knew. ‘Dear God, it is.’

A man who prided himself on his control, he couldn’t believe what he had just done. If it hadn’t been for the storm he…

She reached for him and she looked hurt when he jerked back avoiding contact.

He had never wanted a woman so much in his life.

‘You’re mad with me…?’

He looked at the tears trembling on her eyelashes and cursed slowly and fluently under his breath.

‘No, I’m mad with me,’ he told her as he picked her up.

She lay passively in his arms as he carried her across the sand dunes to where his car was parked in a quiet lane. The place was totally deserted as he dumped her in the front seat.

‘Are you kidnapping me?’ There was no alarm in her voice, just a lazy curiosity.

‘No, I’m warming you up,’ he said, switching on the engine and turning up the heater full blast.

‘Maybe I should take off my wet things…?’

The only wet thing she was wearing was a black swimsuit with a zip up the front. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t,’ he said, trying hard not to think about that strategically placed zip. One tug…

‘I don’t think I should have got in a car with a stranger,’ she observed absently as he draped a jacket that had been in the back seat over her shoulders.

‘You didn’t get in. I put you in.’

‘So you did. I’m warmer.’ She leaned back in the deeply upholstered seat with a sigh. ‘You know, I don’t think I’m quite myself,’ she confided.

That makes two of us. ‘You nearly drowned.’

Her eyes, which had been closing, suddenly flickered open. Tawny eyes scanned his face. ‘You kissed me.’ She pressed a hand to her soft lips. ‘I liked it.’

Beside her he didn’t dare move; he didn’t trust himself to speak. The ferocious tension in his body was so extreme that he remembered the bones in his face aching.

‘I noticed,’ he admitted.

She lifted a hand and ran a finger down his lean cheek. ‘Are you going to do it again?’

‘You’re in shock.’

‘I’m something, but not that. I think you saved my life. How can I repay you?’

He caught hold of her wrist and dragged her hand from his face. ‘Well, you can cut that out, for a start.’

She flinched visibly at the cutting response. After a second’s hurt incomprehension, a tide of mortified colour washed over her face.

‘Theos! Don’t look at me like that,’ he pleaded throatily.

She bit her lip and fixed her eyes on her hands, which lay clenched in her lap.

‘I’m s…sorry,’ she stuttered. ‘I really don’t know what came over me.’

‘The same thing that came over me. Where do you live? I’ll take you home.’ And after that he was going to drive away in the opposite direction.

He didn’t do virgins.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘CAN we have the ball back, mister?’

The request dragged Angolos back from a time he mostly succeeded in blanking from his mind.

To his way of thinking, no useful purpose could be served from preserving the memory of a time when he had allowed himself to be humiliated and deceived, except possibly to learn a lesson. He would never trust a woman again.

Had it amused Georgette to see him oblivious to her affair? Had she laughed with her lover as they had planned to pass the child off as his…?

A muscle clenched in Angolos’s lean cheek as he pulled a hand across his brow to wipe off the moisture that clung to his tanned skin. It had started raining and he hadn’t noticed; neither had he noticed until now that he was within a hundred yards of the gate that led to the garden of the Kemp house, a slightly battered timber cottage with a tin roof. Bending, he picked up the ball that lay at his feet and threw it back to the family playing a game of beach cricket.

‘Good throw,’ somebody acknowledged cheerily before they returned to their game.

Angolos headed for the gate. It creaked on the rusty hinges as he pushed it open. His lips curled in distaste as his hand rested on the peeling paintwork. At one time he had found the shabby chic of the Kemp home, so totally unlike what he was accustomed to, charming. Now he just found it, well…shabby.

The family he had never found charming and the feeling was mutual. Her relatives had come across as a bunch of xenophobic idiots who had been appalled at the idea of one of their number marrying a foreigner. Later, when Georgette had confided that her mother had run off with a Greek waiter, her family’s attitude had been more understandable.

His critical glance skimmed the semi-screened area. The cottage and garden looked the same as he remembered; the only thing that hadn’t been here four years ago was the clutter of children’s toys. Angolos’s dark eyes were drawn against his will to the evidence of childish occupation…the tricycle, the plastic toy cars, the bucket of shells gathered from the beach.

His classical profile tautened as he averted his gaze and strode purposefully to the door. There was absolutely no point prolonging this.

The door was opened before he had an opportunity to announce his arrival. His raised hand fell to his side as he looked at the woman framed in the open doorway. She was, he judged, somewhere in her mid-fifties, her grey-streaked dark hair was cut in a short modern crop, she had intelligent blue eyes and an interesting rather than attractive face.

She was a stranger to Angolos.

‘Hello, I’m—’

‘Good gracious, you’re Nicky’s father.’

Angolos was so surprised by her automatic assumption that his response was uncharacteristically unguarded. ‘No, I’m not anyone’s father,’ he ejaculated bitterly.

‘Nonsense, of course you are,’ she dismissed, dealing him an amused look.

Angolos was taken aback by this response. ‘I will not argue the point with you.’

The woman scanned his face, then threw back her head and laughed, not intimidated by the hauteur in his manner.

Angolos liked that.

In his position there were too many people ready to say what he wanted to hear. They had been saying what he wanted to hear since the day he’d stepped into his dead father’s shoes at the age of twenty-two. He valued people who could look him in the eyes and say, ‘You’re wrong.’

‘Well, that would be rather pointless, wouldn’t it?’

‘It would?’

‘Most definitely,’ came the robust response. ‘You want to see Nicky…of course you do,’ she added before he had an opportunity to respond. ‘May I be frank?’

‘Can I stop you?’ he wondered.

The dry intonation brought a fleeting smile to the woman’s lips. ‘This puts me in an awkward position…’ she confided. ‘I have no idea what agreement you have…visiting rights and so forth? Actually I didn’t think you saw him at all.’ She studied the tall man’s face. ‘I can see you don’t want to discuss your personal business with a nosy old woman.’

‘I can assure you I have not come to kidnap the boy.’

‘I’m glad to hear it, but under the circumstances it might be better if you came back when Georgie is home.’

‘But the child is here?’ Angolos probed and saw the older woman’s expression become guarded. ‘The thing is, Mrs…?’

‘My name is Ruth Simmons. Miss.’

‘Miss Simmons, I’m rather pushed for time.’

The woman eyed him with patent disapproval. ‘After all these years?’

Angolos supposed he ought to have expected this. Georgette had obviously decided to paint herself as the injured party and him as the unnatural father. His broad shoulders lifted in an infinitesimal shrug. Did she plan to poison this child’s mind in a similar manner…poor kid?

‘When do you expect Georgette to return?’

Ruth Simmons looked uncertainly at the remote and quite sensationally handsome face of Nicky’s father and her brow puckered.

‘I really couldn’t say.’ Was this the sort of man who would turn his back on his own child? He didn’t seem the type… Of course, you could never tell, but the Greeks she had met were very family orientated.

‘Couldn’t or won’t…?’ He lifted one long-fingered hand in an unconsciously elegant gesture. ‘No matter.’ He consulted his watch. ‘I will return at a more convenient moment.’ And then again maybe I won’t…After all, the entire exercise was totally pointless. Better to get in his car and drive back to London.

The tall man’s mechanical smile did not reach his eyes; Ruth noticed all the same that it was effortlessly charming. In the flesh this man was even more startlingly good-looking. If I were twenty years younger…? The self-mocking smile that curved her lips vanished as a loud bang followed by an even louder wail emerged from the living room.

‘What now?’ she cried, hurrying inside.

Angolos stepped through the open door.

A few moments later, with the crying child cradled in her arms, Ruth viewed the damage. It could have been worse. Still, it was a pity that her friend was fond of the hideous ornate Victorian bust that was now lying in fragments on the floor. The overturned chair was a clue as to how the three-year-old had managed to reach the shelf where it had been displayed.

‘Did you fall, Nicky?’ Her matter-of-fact tone and manner had a soothing effect upon the crying child, who stopped to catch his breath. ‘Poor you,’ she said, rubbing the obvious bruise that was developing on the child’s forehead. ‘Did you hurt yourself anywhere else, sweetheart?’

Nicky shook his head. ‘Granny will be cross…’

‘No, I’m sure she won’t.’

‘She will,’ the child, whose tears had subsided, retorted positively. ‘Who are you?’ he asked, poking a chubby hand in the direction of the stranger.

‘Gracious!’ Ruth exclaimed, realising for the first time that the tall Greek had followed her into the room. He was standing there frozen. The only flicker of movement in his body was supplied by his stunning eyes, which were trained on the child in her arms.

Without replying, he continued to draw air into his lungs through clenched teeth, like a man who had forgotten how to breathe. As he squatted, bringing his face level with the toddler, she saw that his gloriously golden skin had acquired a greyish tinge. She saw his lips move; nothing came out.

‘Gracious!’ she added once more and with feeling. The physical similarity between father and son was truly startling… Nicky began to cry again.

‘Nicky…your name is Nicky?’ The tearful boy nodded his head.

Georgie walked in through the open door weighed down by supermarket carrier bags filled with groceries. A car, she reflected wistfully, would make life a lot easier, but her budget didn’t run to such luxuries.

‘Big boys don’t cry, Nicky.’

She froze, the blood draining from her face. It was a voice Georgie would never, could never, forget.

It was a voice she heard in her dreams and her nightmares.

She stood there oblivious to the eggs that had broken when she’d dropped her bags and were now running stickily over the carpet.

This isn’t happening.

Her first instinct was to run as fast and as far away as possible. She subdued her selfish reflex…she couldn’t run and leave Nicky. Anyway, running would have been futile if Angolos wanted her. A shudder slid down her spine. When Angolos wanted something he was totally focused and implacable.

Only Angolos didn’t want her; he had made that perfectly clear.