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

As if he didn’t know.

‘Tell me, Angolos,’ she began with vibrating antagonism. ‘How long had we been married before you began regretting it? A week…two…?’ Now he was prepared to put his life on hold to be with their son; back then he hadn’t even been able to free a weekend to spend time with her! If her friend Alan hadn’t arrived she would have felt even lonelier.

‘This,’ he said heavily, ‘is getting us nowhere.’

‘Maybe someone is trying to tell us something,’ she murmured as she levered herself up onto the wall.

‘It’s not exactly constructive raking up the past every five seconds.’ Angolos’s gaze moved from the small hands folded primly in her lap to her neatly crossed ankles and his jaw clenched.

‘You look like a child,’ he accused throatily.

She continued banging her heels against the stone as he set his hands against the uneven wall either side of her. But it was an uphill battle to continue to act as if her pulses weren’t racing like crazy and she weren’t painfully aware of the proximity of his warm male body.

‘I’m not, and I’ve got the stretch marks to prove it.’ Without thinking, she moved her hand to hover above the area low on her belly, where the silvery lines were a permanent reminder of her motherhood.

‘I’m well aware you’re not a child.’ He exhaled a long shuddering breath that sucked in the muscles of his flat belly and expanded his impressive chest. He dragged a hand through his dark hair. ‘I used to know your body as well as I knew my own.’

The accusing throaty addition brought her startled glance to his face. Their eyes meshed and her insides dissolved.

‘The attraction is still there.’

‘I don’t know if Greece fell short of your expectations or I did? But it is my home and once,’ he added, ‘it was yours. I would like for my son to have the opportunity to learn to love it also.’

‘It was never my home.’ The sadness in her eyes was tinged with resentment. ‘I was always a visitor and not a welcome one at that.’ His mother, the daunting Olympia, had made sure of that.

‘That’s ludicrous. This melodrama isn’t helping anyone,’ he retorted impatiently.

Georgie didn’t respond. She knew perfectly well that he would never believe that his family had loathed her; in front of him they had been sweetness and light.

‘I don’t want to share a home with your mother and sister.’

‘Is that a fact?’

She could tell from his expression that he didn’t take her seriously. She took a deep breath. If she was going to do this, she was going to do it on her terms. ‘Let me rephrase that. I won’t share a house with your mother and sister.’

Eyes narrowed, he scanned her face. ‘You’re serious?’

‘Deadly serious.’

His expression changed. ‘You expect me to throw my mother and sister from their home?’

Georgie could see he was totally outraged by her suggestion. ‘They’re hardly going to be homeless, are they?’ His mother owned a palatial villa a few miles away and a town house in Athens and they were only the ones Georgie knew about! ‘As for Sacha, if you let her stand on her own feet instead of fighting her battles…’

‘She got married last year.’

‘Oh, that’s great.’

‘They had a falling out and—’

‘Let me guess—she came back home.’

Angolos’s expression grew defensive. ‘And why should she not?’

‘Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that she’s never going to sort out her own problems while she knows you’re always going to ride to the rescue when the going gets tough?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Do you dislike my family so much?’

She released an exasperated sigh. ‘I don’t dislike them at all,’ she protested. ‘They’re not keen on me. Actually I think they’d dislike anyone who wasn’t Sonia.’

‘That’s nonsense.’

She felt her anger mount at his dismissive attitude. ‘They still think you’ll get back together.’

‘That is totally ridiculous. We divorced years ago. Who knows why we ever got married…?’ he added half to himself.

Angolos knew from personal experience that youthful infatuation might feel intense, but was by nature a transitory thing doomed to fade as the people involved matured. Maybe it was the fact he and Sonia had both wanted out of the relationship that they had remained friends—whatever the reason, the civilised arrangement owed more to luck than good judgement.

‘It could have something to do with the fact she’s beautiful, talented, sexy and can’t keep her hands off you.’

‘Were you jealous?’

Georgie laughed. She couldn’t help it, he sounded so startled. ‘You really are not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you? Of course I was jealous. What wife wouldn’t be?’

‘One that did not have a self-esteem issue.’

When he got that smug, self-satisfied look she wanted to hit him. ‘Your ex-wife told me I was just the sort of quiet, homely wife you needed.’

‘Sonia didn’t mean anything by it, I’m sure. She just says the first thing that comes into her head. She’s very spontaneous.’

The speed with which he flew to the other woman’s defence brought a bitter smile to her lips. If he had been half as eager to defend me… She pushed aside the unfinished thought and squared her jaw.

‘If I asked the staff to do anything they checked first with your mother before.’

‘Ridiculous.’

‘It was ridiculous that I put up with it, but I was very young and naïve.’ The observation made him flinch, but Georgie was too caught up in her own recollections to notice. ‘That was bad enough,’ she recalled, ‘but when they automatically deferred to Sonia as well I felt as if I was a poor relation… No, that’s not right, I didn’t feel as though I was a relation at all.’ She swallowed and gave a grim smile.

‘You’re exaggerating.’ Despite this claim, she saw for the first time a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes.

‘How would you know? You were never there.’

‘I had been away from work for a long time. I had a lot of catching up to do and my mother went out of her way to make you feel at home,’ he told her stiffly.

Sure she did, Georgie thought as she tactfully conceded the point with an inclination of her head.

Angolos’s face was a rigid mask of constraint as he replied. ‘If I had wanted Sonia I would have stayed married to her. I wanted you.’

Georgie’s stomach flipped. Her covert glance at his hard, male, deliciously streamlined body resulted in an adrenaline surge of huge proportions. She inhaled deeply and nearly fell off the wall.

‘And you wanted me…’ Her heart was hammering so fast she could barely breathe. Her knees had acquired the consistency of cotton wool.

‘And you wanted me.’ He said it again.

A scared sound rasped in her throat and her eyes lifted. ‘Things change,’ she croaked defiantly.

Angolos studied her flushed face, lingering on the softness of her trembling lips. ‘And some things don’t.’

Silently she shook her head.

He took her chin in his hand and tilted her face up to him. There was anger in the dark eyes that moved hungrily over her delicate features. ‘Why can’t you admit it?’ he rasped.

‘Because I don’t want to feel this way…when you…’ Without warning she slid off the wall and under his restraining arm. Eyes blazing, her breasts heaving, she stood defiantly glaring at him.

‘I’m not an impressionable kid. Getting me into bed won’t change my mind.’

‘It might make you feel less frustrated, however.’ Georgie was about to respond angrily to this supremely arrogant suggestion, when he added, ‘I know it would make me feel less frustrated. Where you are concerned I’ve never had any self-control…’ He watched her eyes widen with shock and his lips twisted in a self-derisive smile. ‘You haven’t the faintest idea what it does to me to be this close to you and not touch…’ he said thickly.

A surge of heat travelled through her body. ‘Tell me…’ she demanded throatily, then almost immediately started to backtrack as though her life depended on it. ‘No…no, I didn’t mean that.’

He responded to her denial with a disturbing smile. ‘Are you sure?’ His smouldering glance dropped to her parted lips.

Georgie heard a soft moan and realised with a sense of shock that she had made it. Ashamed of the desire that drenched her shaking body in a wave of intense sexual heat, she tried to turn away, but her knees gave and she stumbled.

His arm shot out to steady her. Heads close together, their eyes meshed. ‘Do you like the idea of me wanting to touch you, Georgette?’

An image of the last time they’d made love flashed into her head. He had walked into the bedroom and she hadn’t heard him. She hadn’t known he was there until she’d turned around and found him standing with his shoulders against the door-frame, staring at her.

He’d looked so immaculate in an open-necked shirt and tailored trousers that she’d immediately wished that she had not delayed taking her shower. ‘How long have you been there?’ He didn’t reply, just carried on looking at her. ‘I was clearing out the drawers of this—’

He levered himself off the door and moved unhurriedly towards her, tall, lean and shockingly sexy. ‘There are people to do that sort of things.’

He reached her side in seconds, and since his eyes had locked onto hers his unwavering stare had not left her face for an instant.

‘I keep forge—’

The rest of her sentence remained unspoken as he bent forward and, taking her face between his hands, he fitted his mouth to hers. He kissed her with a driving desperation that bent her body backwards. She clung to him, shaking violently with need. She gasped and moaned his name as his hands slid under her skirt, pushing back the lace of her pants to touch the damp heat between her legs.

‘Whenever I touch you, you are ready for me…’

‘Georgette…?’

The sound of Angolos’s voice dragged her back to the present. Disorientated, she blinked.

‘Are you all right?’

‘You asked me if I liked the idea of you wanting to touch me…?’

The dark colour scoring his high cheekbones deepened. ‘You’re right. This isn’t the place or time—’

‘Thinking is good, doing is better.’

And Angolos had been very good at doing. When she closed her eyes she could see him above her, his skin glistening as he drove deep into her again and again. Her cries urging him on and on.

With a frightened gasp she opened her eyes. ‘What am I doing?’

He caught hold of her chin and angled her face up to his. ‘I don’t know, but if you don’t stop doing it I could end up getting arrested.’ His eyes gleamed with laughter but, under the laughter, darker, more dangerous emotions lurked. The darkness in his eyes exerted a powerful fascination for her. It always had.

As she lowered her mortified gaze she caught sight of a bead of sweat running down the brown column of his throat. She followed its progress, unable to tear her eyes from it.

‘I didn’t mean to.’ She gave a self-condemnatory groan. ‘That sounds so stupid! But I just do and say things around you that I wouldn’t even think around anyone else… I’m really sorry.’

‘Do I look offended?’

Her eyes lifted. She shook her head and restlessly twisted her hair into a knot on the nape of her neck.

Don’t even think about telling him how he looks, she cautioned herself.

‘You still want me. This is not to my mind a cause for repentance.’

‘Well, there’s no need to act as if you didn’t already know,’ she returned, centring her cross frown on his dark, devastatingly handsome face.

‘I didn’t consider it the foregone conclusion you seem to,’ he contended drily.

His eyes strayed to the exposed length of her slender throat and stayed there. Flushing, she let her hair fall and lowered her arms. Crossing them in front of her chest, oblivious to the fact the protective action pushed her compressed breasts upwards, she pursed her lips in a scornful grimace.

‘I bet you were a bundle of insecurity.’ Angolos, a victim to fragile self-esteem…? Oh, sure, that was really likely.

‘The flame that burns brightest does not always last the longest. You were very young—’

‘And stupid,’ she cut in angrily. ‘Yes, a lot of people think that, and it just goes to show that a few more years on the clock don’t necessarily make you any less stupid!’ If anything she wanted him more now than she had then.

‘So that aspect of being back with me does not fill you with disgust?’

‘The sex was always pretty fantastic,’ she grunted, avoiding his eyes as though her life depended on it. ‘It was the other stuff we were terrible at.’

‘So, we will work on the “other stuff”, and enjoy the sex,’ he announced, sounding pleased with himself, which, considering she had just told him she fancied the pants off him, was not surprising. Why did her mouth detach itself from her brain when she was around this man?

‘That remains to be seen,’ she replied as he fell in step beside her, moderating his long stride to match hers.

‘Where are we going?’

‘I’m going to pick up Nicky from Ruth’s, and then—’

‘I’ll come with you.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

GEORGIE walked into a room full of people and blinked.

‘Look at her,’ Robert Kemp teased. ‘She forgot we were coming.’ He enfolded his startled daughter in a bear hug.

‘No, of course I didn’t, Dad,’ Georgie lied. ‘How are you?’

‘We’re fine…but never mind us. How’s my favourite grandson? More to the point, where’s my favourite grandson?’ he asked, looking around the room expectantly.

Her more-observant stepmother laid a concerned hand on Georgie’s arm. ‘Is anything wrong, Georgie, dear?’

‘I’m fine, thanks, Mary. He’s in the garden, Dad.’ On cue the sound of Nicky’s high-pitched laughter drifted in through the open door. ‘No, don’t go yet,’ she added, catching her father’s arm as he headed towards the French door. ‘I need to tell you something.’ Deep breath…keep calm, be firm…don’t get apologetic. ‘No, actually I need to tell everyone something,’ she corrected.

‘Well, go on, then, don’t keep us in suspense,’ her father urged impatiently.

‘Sit down, Robert,’ his wife, her eyes on Georgie’s tense figure, instructed sharply. ‘Can’t you see there’s something wrong?’

‘There’s nothing wrong exactly, I’ve just made a decision.’

Her grandmother spoke for the first time. ‘It’s that man, isn’t it? You’ve seen him again. Oh, yes, and I’ve heard that he’s been here. You can’t drive around in a flashy car like his and not get noticed.’

‘What man?’ Robert Kemp demanded in exasperation. ‘Will someone please tell me what’s going on?’

‘The Constantine creature.’

Robert turned to his daughter, his face stern. ‘Tell me this isn’t true, Georgie.’

Georgie scanned the three faces staring accusingly at her. No wonder I feel as if I’m on trial, she thought wearily. ‘Angolos has a right to see Nicky, Dad.’

Her father groaned and clutched his head in his hands. ‘He’s sucked you in again, hasn’t he? That man has caused this family nothing but heartache since the moment he appeared and I for one wish you’d never laid eyes on him.’

‘Well, if I hadn’t I wouldn’t have Nicky, would I?’

‘Don’t be smart with me, my girl. I hope you’ve told him we don’t need him.’

‘Not exactly,’ Georgie admitted uneasily. ‘Actually,’ she added, ‘I agreed to go back to Greece with him…’

There was a stunned silence.

Her father was the first to recover his voice. He jerked his head towards the window. ‘Is he here now?’

‘Dad, please…?’ Georgie begged.

‘Were you born stupid?’ he wanted to know.

Her grandmother reached for her pillbox and popped a pill with her hand pressed significantly to her heart. ‘If that man suggested you jump into the nearest lake you would.’ There was nothing frail about her contemptuous observation. ‘All he has to do is get you into bed and you’d sell your own soul or, in this case,’ she declared dramatically, ‘your son.’

Georgie flushed at the accusation. ‘Nicky has a right to know his father, Gran.’ Does he? Didn’t he lose those rights…?

‘This isn’t about Nicky, it’s about you,’ the old lady retorted.

Georgie coloured guiltily. This was a charge she had levelled at herself. And she still couldn’t swear, hand on heart, that there wasn’t an element of truth in it. She wanted to do the right thing for Nicky, but, when the right thing involved being back with the man who was the passion of her life, could she ever be sure her decision was totally objective?

‘If that man goes near my grandson I’ll…’ Robert added.

Georgie lost her patience. Her family had been there when she’d needed them, but this was her life they were discussing.

‘You’ll what, Dad?’ she asked. ‘Teach him a lesson? Do you really think you could? Sorry.’ She bit her lip. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I know you have my interests at heart, but this is my life. This isn’t an impulse, you know. I’ve given it a lot of thought.’

‘Well, in that case there’s no more to be said.’

Georgie heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Thank you, Dad. I really appreciate this.’

Robert looked at the hand extended to him and deliberately ignored it as he walked to his wife’s side and placed an arm around her shoulder. ‘You go to Greece with your so-called husband if that is what you want, but if you do you are no longer my daughter.’

‘You can’t mean that, Dad,’ she said, even though she knew he did.

‘Robert!’ her stepmother protested. ‘You can’t make her choose this way… He doesn’t mean it, Georgie, dear.’

‘I do mean it. You go to Greece and I wash my hands of you.’ He patted his wife’s hand. ‘Sometimes tough love is called for, Mary. This is a matter of loyalty.’ Face set in stone, he turned to his daughter. ‘What is it to be, Georgie? Your family or this man who cares so much about his son that he’s been too busy for the last three years to notice he’s alive?’

‘I’ve made my decision, Dad.’

An expression of blank amazement spread across Robert Kemp’s florid face. ‘You’re going to Greece?’

Her grandmother, who had been watching proceedings from her armchair, reached for her walking stick and rose majestically to her feet. ‘You ungrateful child.’

‘Please, Gran…’ She slid an anguished look in her father’s direction. ‘I know what it’s like not to see a parent. I don’t want Nicky—’

‘You think your father stopped your mother seeing you?’

‘I don’t blame Dad. I know Mum hurt him badly.’

‘Your father is too soft to tell you. He didn’t. The fact is she didn’t want to. My daughter-in-law didn’t care about you at all,’ the old lady spat contemptuously. ‘The only thing she cared about was her pretty-boy waiter and he didn’t want a baby. I think,’ she added, her normal strong voice quivering, ‘this could be called history repeating itself.’

Shock had drained the colour from Georgie’s face. Her eyes darted from one person to the other without really seeing them. Silly, really. She knew that if her mother had wanted to contact her she would have, but like any child she had nursed her fantasies. And those images had persisted into adulthood: her mother a victim of cruel fate, separated against her will from the daughter she loved.

‘I wouldn’t leave Nicky, not ever, not for anything.’

‘Of course you wouldn’t, Georgie,’ her stepmother soothed. ‘You’re a marvellous mother.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’ Angolos waited until every eye in the room was fixed on him before continuing. ‘Georgette has been doing the job of two parents for three years. I think it’s time she was relieved of some of the load.’

Georgie turned towards the sound of that deep, confident voice. She experienced a wave of inexpressible relief as their eyes connected.

‘Angolos, I…’ How much had he heard?

‘I think this young man needs a clean-up.’ Acting as if there weren’t an atmosphere you could cut with a knife in the room, Angolos slanted an amused look at the grubby figure in his arms. The love in his face was so palpable that Georgie couldn’t believe she was the only one who could see it.

That was why she was doing this.

Angolos shared his smile between the three other occupants of the room. ‘I will wait here.’

‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea,’ Georgie said dubiously as he transferred their restless son to her arms.

‘You’ve got him?’

She nodded. ‘I think it might be better if you just went. You can ring me later.’ He simply couldn’t be oblivious to the hostility aimed at him, but from his manner you’d never have known it.

Her father, apparently sharing her view, muttered under his breath, ‘He’s got a nerve.’

‘You haven’t changed a jot, Robert—are you working out?’ While the other man pressed a hand to his expanding middle and turned dark red with incoherent rage, Angolos turned calmly to Georgie. ‘Go on,’ he urged. ‘It will be fine.’

Throwing a last worried frown over her shoulder Georgie mounted the staircase.

Angolos’s smile lasted until he heard the sound of a door opening and closing upstairs. ‘Right, you can’t stand the sight of me—I can live with that. I have an incredibly thick skin and I am not at all sensitive,’ he admitted. ‘The only person your insults hurt is Georgette and I don’t actually think you want to do that…?’ He arched a dark brow and levelled a questioning look at his father-in-law, who glared at him with venomous dislike.

‘In your place,’ Angolos admitted, ‘I would probably feel the same way. You would like me to disappear from your lives. It isn’t going to happen, so I suggest you get used to it.’

‘Never!’ Robert Kemp grunted.

‘I have no particular fondness for you either, but I am prepared to tolerate you for Georgette’s sake. You are my son’s grandparents and I hope you will remain an important part of his life. I realise that you spoke in the heat of the moment and you have no wish to disown your daughter or grandson, so I think it will be best all around if we forget you ever said it.’

‘You…you think…?’ Robert blustered, ignoring his wife’s agonised aside to leave it be. ‘What makes you think I give a damn what you think?’

‘I don’t. But I think you care about what Georgette thinks. Perhaps we should concentrate on what we have in common.’

‘And what would that be?’ Robert sneered.

‘We both want Georgette to be happy. I can make her happy.’ With that he walked out of the room leaving a stunned silence behind him.

Though his approach had been silent Georgie sensed his presence at her shoulder. ‘He fell asleep.’

‘So I see,’ Angolos said, looking at the sleeping child. ‘Amazing,’ he breathed softly. ‘How are you?’ he added, not taking his eyes from Nicky’s cherubic face.

‘As well as could be expected considering my family have cast me off.’ Despite the tough words, he could feel the waves of hurt emanating from her.

‘And that would bother you…?’

Narrow shoulders hunched, she picked up a stuffed toy from the floor and tucked it in beside the sleeping child. ‘Do one thing for me,’ she husked, not turning around.

‘It’s possible I might do one thing for you.’

‘Please don’t be nice,’ she pleaded from between clenched teeth.

His expressive lips quirked. ‘You want me to be unpleasant?’

‘I want you to be yourself, which amounts to much the same thing.’

‘I will do my best to behave with the callous lack of consideration you expect of me.’

Georgie whipped around and promptly forgot the acid retort that had hovered on the tip of her tongue. He was closer than she had anticipated…very much closer. Close enough to feel the heat rising off his skin, smell the warm, male, musky scent of him. She couldn’t summon the strength to fight as she felt herself sink beneath a wave of enervating lust.