Greek Affairs: To Take a Bride: The Markonos Bride / The Greek Tycoon's Reluctant Bride / Greek Doctor, Cinderella Bride

It was just one hard shock too many. The breath came and went from her body in appalled understanding of what that coolly delivered statement actually meant. ‘You’ve been having me watched!'

He didn’t even bother to deny it, just clasped her arm and led her across the last few metres to where his car was parked then leant past her to open the door.

‘Get in,’ was all he said.

When she turned to argue with him a cold chill went chasing through her because he looked so stern, so unrelentingly tough, and on a sudden bright flash of understanding it hit her that during his days away from the island Andreas had come to some serious decisions about them.

‘Why?’ she whispered shakily.

Irritation flicked across his hard-boned features. ‘Because I am not indulging in a stand-up fight with you here?'

His sarcasm hissed the air from her body. ‘Don’t be so—'

He pulled her against him then lowered his head and captured her mouth. It wasn’t an angry kiss or even a passionate kiss, it was a—frustrated, compulsive, shut-up kind of kiss that locked the two of them together in a dusty car park with the sun beating relentlessly down on their heads.

‘That,’ he husked out as he drew away again, ‘was for Father Lukas. Now get in the damn car before I take the next one for myself!'

Shaken—shocked some more because she’d forgotten all about the watchful priest standing in the church doorway, Louisa subsided into the low car seat. She pretended not to notice the way Andreas dropped his glinting gaze to her legs as the wrap-around skirt slithered open to reveal the length of a long and slender thigh, pale as porcelain and as smooth as silk—before her trembling fingers covered it up.

He closed the car door with a sharp flick from long fingers then strode around the bonnet with her wide blue eyes fixed on his tall, lean bulk as it moved with a smooth animal grace. His dark suit shifted expensively against him as he opened the other door then got in beside her, making her mouth go dry, because once again she was recognising that this Andreas was a completely different kind of beast from the one she had used to know.

‘Why have me watched?’ she demanded as he stretched out a hand to turn the key in the ignition.

The engine fired. He slipped it into gear. ‘I had to go back to Athens for a few days,’ he answered. ‘We had just enjoyed unprotected sex and I could not be sure what you would do about it once the shock had worn off, so I had one of my security team flown in to keep an eye on you.’

His security team? Her image of him was growing bigger and bigger. ‘For what purpose?’ she snapped out. ‘To stop me from throwing myself off the peninsula in despair—or to push me off it if I went near the edge?'

‘I protect my own,’ was all he said, as if that should mean something to her.

Well, it didn’t. ‘I do not belong to you.’

The square cut of his chin jutted as he turned them around in the car park. ‘As my wife you belong to me, as does the child in your womb.'

‘If there is one—if!’

Car tyres crunched as they drove over gravel. A few seconds later they were turning onto the road. ‘You had your chance to make it a definite no, Louisa, and decided not to take it.'

Heat flooded her cheeks. ‘I will not apologise for that decision.'

‘Did I ask you to?’ He sent her a cool glance as the car accelerated away, all slick, smooth man of the minute, she observed with a resentful sting. A sophisticated man in his sophisticated suit driving his sophisticated car, wearing a sophisticatedly implacable expression on his too, too handsome face.

‘Implied it,’ she said, seeing herself sitting beside him in her high-street skirt and little top and with about as much sophistication running in her blood to make a complete mockery of the fact that they had ever been drawn to each other in the first place!

‘Then I apologise. It was not intentional.’

‘How did your henchman know what I was thinking outside the pharmacy anyway?’ she flung out.

‘He didn’t. He merely relayed your movements to me and I drew my own conclusions.'

‘So you’re very clued up on tacky things like the morning-after pill?'

‘As, by all accounts, are you,’ he returned. ‘In truth,’ he added after a moment, ‘at first I thought you must be hovering over going in the shop to buy a pregnancy-testing kit. It only occurred to me later that you could only be so upset if you had been considering the—other thing.'

Louisa froze where she sat, she was so stunned that she had not thought of buying the test kit herself!

Twisting round in her seat, ‘Take me into town and I will buy a test right now,’ she said urgently.

‘And give the islanders something to really gossip about?’

He had an answer to everything. Sinking back in the seat she seethed in silence for a few seconds—then suddenly took notice of where they were.

‘You’ve gone the wrong way—the hotel is in the other direction.'

His answer was a quick, smooth change through the gears and an indifferent profile.

‘Andreas …’

‘I know where we are going,’ he drawled.

‘But,’ not liking this, not liking the tight, tingling feeling that was telling her she had lost control of everything that was happening here, ‘I need to go back to the hotel,’ she insisted. ‘I’m meeting Jamie there in less than five minutes and you—'

‘Liar,’ he said. ‘I met Jamie in town this morning. He has gone fishing for the day with Yannis’s son.'

Silence met that. Andreas turned his head to study the way she was sitting there with her silky blonde hair blowing back from the delicate formation of her face so she could not hide the guilty look at being caught out with the lie. She was not breathing as far as he could see and her teeth were pressing sharp crescents into her soft lower lip.

‘He did the protective-brother thing and warned me to stay away from you,’ he extended coolly.

‘Oh, he didn’t.’ She closed her eyes on a groan.

Turning his attention back to the road, ‘It was his right to do it,’ Andreas shrugged. ‘I respect him for it.'

‘What did you say to him?’

‘I told him nicely to stay out of it,’ he responded. ‘Then I loaned him some money because he was hovering around the bank, which was closed, and the wall machine was not working.'

‘Jamie accepted a loan—from you?’

Her disbelief made him grimace. ‘Not without a bit of manly posturing,’ he admitted. ‘Then, because he did not like to take anything from me without some pay-back, he told me about an enterprising guy called Max Landreau …'

The air inside the open-top car had been circulating quite pleasantly but at that precise moment it seemed to go perfectly still. Lifting up her chin and turning her face to the sun-kissed coastline speeding by her side of the car, Louisa pressed her lips together and refused to say a single word.

Tension inched into the sun-drenched vehicle.

‘Who is he?'Andreas asked when it became clear she was going to say nothing at all.

Building an image of Max’s tall dark shape in her head, she paused before answering, ‘That is none of your business.'

The hiss of his breath kept her chin up and her face averted. ‘He could become my business if you slept with him before you came here.'