Pregnant by the Greek Tycoon (7 page)

‘I was wondering when your mother and Sacha were going back home.’

He threw back his head and laughed. ‘They are home,
yineka mou
, didn’t I say? They live here.’

Somehow the strained smile stayed glued to her face. ‘No, you didn’t say.’ The realisation that they would be sharing a home with his family made her spirits plummet. It had taken about five minutes for her to realise that she and her mother-in-law were never going to be pals, and that her sister-in-law, whom Georgie considered horribly indulged, looked down her aristocratic little nose at her.

‘Mother will be a big help while you’re settling in, and Sacha is your age—you’re bound to have a lot in common.’

Georgie, who seriously doubted either of these claims, responded to the kiss he planted on her lips with less enthusiasm than previously.

‘Are you all right?’

Georgie, a big fan of telling it as it was, heard herself lie. ‘Terrific…just a bit tired.’

That was the first time she concealed her feelings from him, but not the last time. She even got quite good at it though her acting talents were stretched to the limit when he dropped one particular bombshell on her.

Angolos went to Paris, this time on business and without her. ‘I’d love for you to come with me, of course I would, but this is business. You do understand…?’

On his return he casually mentioned, in a ‘you’ll never guess who I bumped into’ sort of way, that he had had dinner with his ex-wife while there.

Georgie, who had already been force-fed a daily dose of Sonia-worship by her in-laws, wanted to scream, but instead she smiled and said quietly, ‘How nice.’

The following month he announced he had invited Sonia up for the weekend. That his ex arrived late seemed to be taken for granted. Georgie could have accommodated her tardiness, but she could never forgive their guest for being poised, self-assured and, it went without saying, drop-dead gorgeous. In fact she had all the qualities necessary to be Angolos’s wife—heck, she even still had her ring; she’d just swapped fingers!

In other words she was everything Georgie longed to be and wasn’t.

She was also very tactile, always touching and stroking. Georgie was forced to watch as she stroked Angolos’s arm or ran her fingers over his lean cheek. It seemed to Georgie that every time she walked into a room they were there, laughing in a corner, sharing their jokes and their secrets. Feeling totally alienated, she retreated into her shell.

‘You never struck me as sentimental.’

She turned her head towards Angolos and smiled. Unexpectedly recalling the traumatic events made her realise just how much she had changed in the intervening years. It was quite an empowering experience to realise that if she found herself in that situation today she would not creep away to feel slighted and sorry for herself in the corner.

No, she would tell the other woman to lay off. She would confront Angolos—at best his behaviour was insensitive, at worst he still had feelings for his ex. She would demand he decided whom he wanted, because she wasn’t playing second fiddle to anyone!

‘I was being ironic. The watch—’ she glanced at her wrist ‘—is a good investment, much more likely to rise in value than money in the bank, or so I was told.’ By her dad when he’d returned the watch, having taken it to be valued without her knowledge.

‘You had it valued?’

She nodded; her father had been shocked that she’d been walking around wearing something that was, as he’d put it, ‘worth as much as a two-bedroomed house’, without any insurance.

‘My finances were tight.’

‘You seem to have a more practical attitude to money than you once did.’

‘Practical?’ She thought about the wild flowers, carefully pressed and preserved alongside other treasures in the velvet-lined box. Angolos had picked them for her the first time they’d walked through the sand dunes. ‘I’m working on it. But I don’t think I’ll ever care about money for its own sake and I don’t put a price on things the way you do.’

‘Not even your virginity?’

Heat flooded her face as her furious flashing eyes flew to his face. ‘Don’t you dare make out I held out to make you marry me!’ she snapped. ‘You always put a higher value on that than I did,’ she reminded him. ‘You could have had it for nothing, Angolos—you didn’t have to marry me.’

In the long simmering silence their eyes locked. His chest lifted as he expelled a long sibilant sigh.

‘I know.’ She would never know what it had cost him not to accept what she had been so anxious to give him.

‘Then why…?’

He pressed his fingers to the groove above his masterful nose and scanned the stretch of beach. It was empty but for a few people walking dogs.

‘Why did you marry me, Angolos?’

‘Do you want to walk?’

She released a hiss of frustration through clenched teeth. ‘You’ve no intention of telling me, have you?’

The disturbing smile that played around the corners of his sensual lips neither confirmed nor denied her husky accusation.
‘Walk…?’

‘Walk?’ In contrast to the restive energy that Angolos was projecting, she felt utterly drained.

‘You know—put one foot in front of the other.’

It really ought to be that simple, but her shaking knees didn’t have the strength or co-ordination to move her from the spot. ‘You’re impossible,’ she accused.

‘But cute?’ he suggested.

She only just stopped herself responding to his smile. ‘I never thought I’d hear you say “cute”.’

‘Is that a yes?’

‘No.’

One winged dark brow arched. ‘No to cute or a walk?’

‘Both.’ She sat down rather hurriedly.

‘As you wish.’

Angolos followed suit but with less haste and considerably more grace. As she tucked her knees under herself and arranged her skirt around her legs Georgie was aware of his dark eyes watching her. She was aware of just about everything about him, including the warm male scent that made her oversensitive nostrils twitch.

‘Don’t try and charm me, Angolos. I’ve got immunity. Anyway, you’ve no need to butter me up. Like I said, I already know what this is about.’

Her head lifted, their eyes connected. Angolos’s expression was wary; it cost her a supreme effort to smile. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to make a fuss, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

Angolos looked at the envelope she handed him but made no effort to take it.

‘I think I’ve signed all the places I need to.’

He still didn’t react, just carried on looking at it with a total lack of recognition in his eyes.

‘For heaven’s sake.’ She leant across and deposited it in his lap. ‘I found it, it must have fallen out of your pocket. Did you think you’d lost it?’

He took the envelope and turned it over in his hand cautiously as though he expected it to burst into flames. Georgie found his manner bewildering.

‘
Dios
, I had totally forgotten about this.’ After his meeting with Paul he had contacted his lawyer. The papers were already prepared; they had been for two years.

‘How long will it take to be…final? The d…divorce.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

ANGOLOS’S glance lifted to Georgie’s face. There was a strange look in his deep-set eyes that she couldn’t interpret.
‘Never!’

The forcefulness of his explosive retort made her stare at him in confusion. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Then understand this.’ Georgie gave a grunt of shock as he began to tear the envelope into pieces with slow, deliberate thoroughness before tossing them up into the air.

She watched in open-mouthed astonishment as the fragments went flying down the beach in several directions, drifting like confetti on the air currents.

‘Have you gone mad?’ She turned her astounded eyes on him. ‘Why make the effort to bring that here personally and then do that?’

‘I never intended…’

‘Never intended what?’ she prompted.

His jaw tightened. ‘We’re not getting divorced.’

She pressed her hands to her head, the dull throb in her temples had turned into a blinding headache. ‘But you came here to…and I
want
to get divorced!’ she added on a note of escalating misery.

‘Too bad.’

‘
You
want to get divorced.’ The squally sea breeze suddenly caught her skirt and lifted it. It took her several moments to smooth it back down, and when she looked up she saw something in his eyes that made her sensitive stomach flip.

‘You saw Paul at his surgery.’

Georgie didn’t want to talk about Paul. ‘So that’s how you knew we were here.’

Angolos inclined his dark head.

‘I know some people think strong and silent is attractive, but ask them how they feel about it after they’ve lived with strong and silent for a few weeks. I think you’d find they’d have changed their tune,’ she predicted grimly. ‘For goodness’ sake, don’t just look all brooding and beautiful—
say something
!’

His only response to her emotional outburst was a raised eyebrow—one of these days she would swing for this man.

‘What would you like me to say?’

‘I give up!’ she declared. She slid an exasperated sideways glance at his lean, saturnine profile. ‘What were you doing discussing me with Paul anyway?’ she demanded crossly. ‘He has no right to discuss me; there’s such a thing as patient confidentiality.’

Angolos dismissed her complaint with an impatient motion of his hand. ‘I’m your husband.’

‘On paper.’ Paper that was even now blowing across the ocean…her divorce would probably end up in Normandy. ‘And even if we were together, that doesn’t give you a right to know my medical details.’

‘He didn’t divulge any private details, medical or otherwise,’ Angolos cut in impatiently. ‘He told me I have a son.’

She dug her toe into the sand and vented an ironic laugh. ‘That was news…?’

‘To me it was.’

‘How can you say that?’

He ignored her exasperated exclamation. ‘Now I know that Nicky is mine, obviously things must change.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Two words I’m not liking there…“must” and “change”.’

‘Don’t be obtuse, Georgette. You know where I’m going with this.’

She shook her head. ‘Not a clue.’

‘Then I’ll spell it out: we will be a family.’

The bad feeling in her stomach coalesced into straightforward panic. ‘I have all the family I need.’ He wasn’t…he just
couldn’t
be suggesting what she thought he was!

‘A family requires both parents. You and Nicky will come back to Greece with me and we will be a family.’

A hoarse laugh was drawn from Georgie’s aching throat. ‘And to think I used to be intimidated by your vast intellect. You know, mostly I was scared stiff of giving an opinion in case you laughed at me.’

Angolos looked so appalled by this confidence that under less fraught circumstances she might have laughed.

‘But now I know that you may be clever, but you’re also stark staring crazy.
Me live with you again…?
The only way you’ll get me back to Greece is in a strait-jacket.’

‘You’re speaking emotionally without considering—’

‘I don’t need to consider anything. I recognise insanity when I hear it.’

Until he captured her wrists in his she wasn’t aware that she had been tugging at her own hair. ‘Calm down. You’re overreacting.’

He acknowledged her snarling,
‘shut up!’
with an infuriatingly tolerant smile.

‘Once you’ve thought about it—’ he continued talking across her demand to be
let go!
‘—I think you’ll come to appreciate that this is the right thing to do. Sometimes being a parent involves sacrifice.’

He really was incredible. ‘
You’re
telling
me
that? Know a lot about being a parent, do you? Gosh, share your wisdom, I’m all ears,’ she begged.

Her sarcasm drew a soft expletive from his lips. ‘You are—’ A dark line appeared across the slashing curve of his cheekbones as he swallowed the rest of his furious retort. ‘You can mock as much as you like.’ The fingers encircling her wrists tightened and then, much to her intense relief, fell away completely.

‘Thanks, but I don’t need your permission.’

‘But,’ he continued as though she hadn’t spoken, ‘it doesn’t alter the fact that a child needs both parents.’

‘I can tell you from personal experience that you can get by perfectly well with one.’

‘You have your stepmother.’

Her brows lifted. ‘And who’s to say that at some future date Nicky won’t have a stepfather…?’

There was a short, stark silence, during which the muscles in Angolos’s brown throat rippled convulsively. Then, capturing her defiant eyes, he smiled and lifted his dark head to an imperious angle. ‘I am to say,’ he responded simply.

The scornful retort died on her lips as she encountered the chilling determination in his unblinking eyes.

‘So now you’re going to vet my boyfriends, are you? I’d be interested in how that works.’

‘This isn’t about you. This is about what is best for our son.’

More absurd than him trying to make her feel guilty and selfish was the fact she actually did! ‘I’ve been doing the best for our son for the past three years. What have you been doing for him? On second thoughts, you staying out of his life probably was the biggest favour you could do him.’

He visibly paled in response to her vitriolic attack, but didn’t attempt to defend himself. ‘I can understand your anger.’

‘I doubt that, I really doubt that,’ she gritted. ‘And besides, I don’t want your understanding.’ What did she want from him? Was she going to be happier if he walked away? She fixed him with a resentful glare. ‘I wish you’d never come.’

‘Has it occurred to you that you are denying him his heritage?’

This change of tack increased her growing sense of unease. ‘You’re the one who denied him that. Besides, Nicky is perfectly happy where he is.’

‘He doesn’t even speak his own language.’

‘His language is English.’ She winced to hear both the defensiveness and doubt in her voice.

‘Nicky is half Greek. He will only have to look in the mirror to see that.’

‘I’m not trying to hide his heritage from him.’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘No, I’m not. I would never lie to my son.’

‘
Our
son.’

Gritting her teeth, Georgie refused to respond to the correction.

‘He will know when he goes to school that he does not look like the fair-skinned children in his class. What will you say when he asks you why he is different?’

‘You obviously know very little about the ethnic mix in most schools, if you think that Nicky will stand out. Have you never heard of a multicultural society?’

One dark brow angled. ‘So what will you do when he asks about me?’

‘I…I haven’t thought about it.’

‘Don’t you think it’s about time you did?’

She lifted her resentful eyes to his. ‘Nicky’s happy,’ she contended stubbornly.

Angolos studied her face. ‘You know I’m right, don’t you, Georgette?’ Before she had a chance to deny his assertion he added, ‘And I can see that Nicky is happy.’

Her hopes rose, only to be dashed.

‘However, I will not permit my son to be brought up not knowing who his father is…thinking that he is unwanted…’ He swallowed hard, the muscles of his throat contracting as he visibly struggled to control his feelings. ‘The boy is being brought up surrounded by women…’

‘And what’s wrong with women?’

His face relaxed briefly into a slow smile. ‘I like women…’

‘Tell me something I don’t know.’ And they liked him. Everywhere they had gone together women’s eyes had followed him—that he had seemed for the most part oblivious to the fact had been no comfort to her at the time.

‘But a boy needs a male role model?’

Feeling increasingly on the defensive because of his uncomfortable ability to come up with a reply for everything she said, Georgie set her chin on her steepled fingers. ‘There are plenty of men in Nicky’s life.’

The fire in his dark eyes provided a stark contrast to the icy expression of austere disdain that spread across his lean face.

‘I have no wish to be regaled with your romantic adventures. Nicky does not need
men
in the plural…’

The criticism struck her as the height of hypocrisy. ‘I’m not the one who has trouble forming stable relationships… And who did you have in mind as a role model?’ Her feathery brows lifted. ‘You? Don’t make me laugh,’ she pleaded with contempt.

Angolos’s expression was glacial as he responded. ‘You have someone you consider more suitable in mind?’

Her chin lifted. ‘And if I do?’ she challenged pugnaciously.

‘If you do, Georgette, I would advise you not to pursue that very dangerous course.’

Her chest swelled with outrage. ‘Is that a threat?’

His silky smile sent a shiver down her rigid spine, but it was the fluttery sensation low in her stomach that sent her several steps closer to outright panic.

‘Threats are for wimps.’

A hissing sound of disgust issued from her pursed lips. ‘That is
exactly
the sort of macho posturing I don’t want my son exposed to.’

‘
Our
son.’

Their combative stares locked and the seconds ticked by. Georgie was the first to break the lengthening silence.

‘You can’t just walk back into my life this way, Angolos…’ She turned away, her face scrunched up in anguish as the fight drained from her body. ‘It’s not fair.’

‘Only children expect life to be fair.’ The unexpected note of sympathy in his voice brought a lump to her aching throat.

‘It rather depends on their experience.’ Her lips curved upwards, but there was no smile in her eyes as she added, ‘You forget that my mother walked out when I was a baby.’

‘No, I remember.’ He dragged a hand through his hair. ‘Your grandmother will be pleased to see us reunited.’

‘Don’t talk like it’s a done deal, Angolos,’ she warned, managing a weak smile at his irony.

‘But you agree that a stable family environment is the best place to bring up a child.’

‘Of course I do; I’m not stupid.’ Georgie forced her clenched fists to relax. ‘I need time to think. This is just too much…too soon…’

‘We were good together…you must remember…’

Her eyes flew wide open as anger surged through her body—other things surged too, but she concentrated hard on the anger.

‘So
good
, in fact, that you threw me out.’

Unable to hold her accusing gaze, Angolos brought his dark lashes down in a concealing screen. ‘I am not proud…’

‘I don’t much care about your precious pride or regret or anything else!’ she declared hotly. ‘The fact is you rejected our baby… So you want to be a family now—’ her slender shoulders lifted ‘—big deal! Next year or next week even you’ll probably have changed your mind again. Do you think I’d put my future and that of my son in the hands of someone so…who can’t make up his mind what he wants?’

‘I know exactly what I want.’

His low, throaty declaration sent a jolt of sharp sexual awareness through her body. ‘Yes, you want your own way,’ she contended without looking at him. Looking at him would be a
very
bad idea just now.

‘I want us to be a family and I think you do too.’

She angled a narrow-eyed look at his face. ‘That was what I thought we were four years ago. Give me one reason why I should ever believe what you say to me? You’ve never even told me why! All I got was a shrug and a sneer and c…coldness.’ She stopped and bit her lip to control the quiver in her voice.

‘All I want to know is
why
…’

‘Well, for starters, I knew that you were sleeping with someone else.’

A long throbbing silence developed.

‘Not
that
again,’ she said wearily. ‘Not even
you
are that stupid. Sure…sure I had a string of lovers.’

The expression she saw cross his face suggested this wasn’t the response he had been expecting. ‘I had proof.’

‘
That
I would really like to see.’

‘You’ve got nerve, I’ll give you that,’ he gritted back. ‘But you were not as careful as you thought.’

‘Come on, Angolos, I’m not listening unless you tell me the real reason you rejected Nicky.’

His beautiful mouth twisted as their eyes touched. ‘I was prepared…I actually thought we might be able to get beyond your infidelity,’ he recalled. ‘I blamed myself for leaving you alone.’

‘You were going to forgive me!’ This got even more implausible. ‘If you seriously thought there was another man you would have torn him limb from limb,’ she contended.

He gave an odd, twisted smile. ‘You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you?’

‘So what’s the
real
reason?’

Above the sound of the waves crashing softly on the sand she heard his white teeth grating. ‘Be honest,’ she recommended.

‘
Me
, honest?’

‘A baby didn’t fit in with your life then, did it?’ she claimed, ignoring his raw interjection. ‘I don’t know what’s changed, but now you’ve suddenly decided—’

He pressed his hand to his mouth and shook his dark head.
‘Theos!’
he thundered, eyeing her with frustrated incredulity. His chest rose and fell in tune to his rapid, uneven respirations. ‘I knew I couldn’t have children.’