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

She nodded, and experienced the first stirrings of fear. Something was badly wrong, but she had no idea what… Perhaps he felt it was too soon, which didn’t make sense because he was the one who had just shrugged when she had mentioned precautions…

‘I know we weren’t trying…and we didn’t discuss it, but I thought you might be happy. You are happy?’

‘Happy? I’m bloody delirious,’ he contended grimly. ‘Can’t you tell, yineka mou?’

‘I d…don’t understand…’ she stuttered.

Angolos rounded a corner in the lane and stopped. He could see her sitting on the wall, oblivious for the moment to his presence. He took the opportunity to study her undetected.

With her hair tied back in a pony-tail and her face innocent of make-up she looked more like a teenager than the mother of a child—his child. The idea still seemed strange to him. Strange as in bordering on miraculous, though he didn’t expect Georgie to share his sense of wonder.

‘You were far away.’

Georgie jumped at the sound of his voice. ‘You’re late.’

He didn’t react to her shrill, accusatory tone. ‘Have you come to a decision?’

‘I have.’ She had thought long and hard; she had thought until her brain felt as if it would explode.

One dark brow lifted. The casual observer, looking at his face, would have said her reply was in no way important to Angolos. But Georgie was not a casual observer; she knew that Angolos cared very badly about her reply.

‘And…?’ The muscle in his tense jaw continued to click steadily as he held her eyes.

Not into playing games, she replied immediately. ‘I agree that I have no right to deny Nicky his heritage. I can protect him now, but I won’t be able to always. I’ll just have to teach him to look after himself. I think you’d be good at that, Angolos. So I will come to Greece with you, on trial basis.’

She saw the muscles of his shoulders relax. ‘Thank you for that, Georgette. For my part I swear that I will do my best not to disappoint you.’

The palpable sincerity in his voice brought an emotional lump to her throat. ‘I don’t think you would, but you didn’t let me finish. There are conditions.’

‘Whatever you say,’ he said immediately.

‘Don’t you think you ought to hear what they are first?’ she asked him.

‘Bring on your demands. It doesn’t matter what they are. I will do anything it takes to develop a relationship with my son.’

‘I understand that.’

One dark brow arched in sardonic enquiry as he scanned her face. ‘But you have your doubts? You don’t think it will work out?’

This drew a reluctant laugh from her. ‘Only a couple of thousand.’ Her expression sobered as she lifted her face to his; she could almost feel his impatience. ‘It didn’t work last time.’ Feeling her control slipping, she turned and began to walk towards the church.

Angolos cursed softly under his breath as he fell into step beside her. ‘The situation isn’t the same.’

That much was true. Last time he had loved her, or professed to at least. This time there was no pretence that his feelings for her were what they once had been; this was all about wanting to be a father to his son.

‘I know that, but everything else is. You…’ She stopped and smiled at an elderly couple who walked past hand in hand.

‘Lovely afternoon.’

‘Marvellous,’ she agreed.

‘Why are the British obsessed with the weather?’ Before she could defend the national obsession he added, ‘Why are you determined to be negative about this?’

‘I’m not being negative,’ she protested. ‘I’m being realistic. We’re going back to the same house. You’re the same man, your mother will still resent me.’

‘My mother did not resent you!’

Georgie smiled and looked away. ‘If you say so.’

‘Perhaps you have left out the most significant obstacle.’

She paused and ran her fingers along the moss-covered wall beside the church gate. Her glance lifted to the tiny church with its square Norman tower. As a young girl she had spent many an afternoon imagining herself walking up the aisle here, and standing underneath the big horse chestnut having her picture taken in its shade.

The reality could not have been more different: an anonymous register office. Angolos had let it be known that he hadn’t actually wanted a big wedding. ‘Been there, done that…but, of course, if you want…?’ he added.

‘No, I hate big weddings,’ she lied dutifully. ‘It’s the next twenty years that counts, not the day itself.’

He laughed at her earnestness and called her a hopeless romantic, but she was happy because she had pleased him.

With a sigh she rested her back against the wall now. ‘And what is that?’ She stretched out her hand and languidly watched the dappled light play across her skin.

‘You’re still the same person too.’

She shook her head, but didn’t look at him. ‘You’re wrong, Angolos. I’m not the same person at all.’

‘You mean you won’t grow discontented this time.’

This time she did look up. ‘Discontented…?’

‘You never made any effort to fit in.’

‘Fit in!’ she exclaimed in heated response to this monumentally unfair claim. ‘Short of changing my identity, that was never going to happen.’

‘What are you talking about?’

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.