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

‘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 thoserights…?

‘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.