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

Because, he admitted to the dry voice in his head, if I don’t see this child for myself I’ll never know for sure. A niggling doubt—or was it hope?—would always be there. Irrational, of course; if he had a son he would know. It was simply not possible.

The part of the sea front he had reached was newly pedestrianised. There were signs excluding litter, dogs, and skate-boards…and it had worked; he had the stretch pretty much to himself. He could see the church spire in the distance. He knew if he headed in that general direction he would end up where he wanted to be.

Although in these circumstances want was not really an appropriate term.

The Kemps’ holiday home was reached by a narrow, tree-lined lane that ran one side of the churchyard. A more direct route was via the beach—the house boasted a garden gate that gave direct access to the dunes and sand.

Angolos chose the more direct route. The sooner this nonsense was over with, the better, as far as he was concerned. He could not really spare the time as it was.

Angolos was not a man who lived in the past, but under the circumstances it was hard to prevent his thoughts returning to the first occasion he had walked along this stretch of sand.

He had been euphoric after receiving the final all-clear from the hospital earlier that morning. His first thought had been to immediately drive down to the coast to share the good news with the friend whom he owed his life to. If Paul hadn’t picked up on those few tell-tale symptoms and cajoled him into having a blood test that had revealed his problem, he’d had no doubt that he would not have been here now.

His plans had been frustrated. Paul and his wife Miranda hadn’t been at home. Driving along the sea-front road on his way back to the capital, on impulse Angolos had pulled the car over.

The sea air had filled his nostrils; the sun had warmed his face; he had felt alive…he had been alive.

There was nothing like a brush with death to make a man appreciate things he would normally have overlooked, but even had his senses not been heightened he would have noticed her. Why one pretty girl should have attracted his attention when there were so many pretty girls in the world remained a mystery.

Maybe it was the fact she had refused his impulsive offer of dinner that had made the honey-haired English girl with the golden eyes remain in his mind the rest of the day.

And maybe it had been coincidence that had made him return to the beach late that evening when the light had been fading, but Angolos was more inclined to consider it fate.

And fate was not always kind.

When he’d tried the second time, Paul and Mirrie had been home. They had opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate and had insisted he should stay the night. He ought to have been able to relax—he had been given his life back; he had been in the company of friends—but Angolos had felt strangely restless.

The evening had been sticky and stifling; a few distant rumbles had promised thunder. When he’d announced his intention of taking a walk on the beach, his understanding hosts had said fine, and given him a key to let himself in.

Walking along the pebbly foreshore, he hadn’t immediately appreciated that the figure in the waves had been in trouble. Assuming the swimmer had been messing around or drunk, he had turned a deaf ear to the cries.

When he had realised what had been happening he had responded instinctively to the situation. On autopilot he had fought his way out of his jacket as he’d run down the beach, pausing only at the water’s edge to step out of his shoes.

He was a strong swimmer and, even hampered by his clothing, it had taken him very little time to cover the hundred or so metres. Even though clearly exhausted, desperation had lent the struggling swimmer strength as she had wrapped her arms around his neck, dragging him down. She had clung like a limpet—yes, even in the desperation of trying to break her stranglehold, he had registered that the body sealed to his was female—and in his weakened condition it had taken him a few worrying minutes to subdue her.

Fortunately she had appeared to have exhausted herself fighting him, and had remained passive as he’d towed her to shore. The undercurrent, which had presumably been too strong for her to negotiate, had been against him on the way back. The swim back had taken its toll on his remaining strength.

The relief when he’d got her ashore had been intense.

It wasn’t until he had carried the limp and bedraggled figure from the water and dumped her, coughing, onto the sand that he had recognised her. Lying at his feet had been the golden-eyed girl from earlier.

Something had snapped in his head. That someone like this girl with everything to look forward to could have been so careless of life when he’d known how fragile and precious it was had incensed him beyond measure.

Anger had coursed through his body and brain, causing his vision to blur and his hands to shake. He hadn’t been able to recall being this angry in his life—not even when the doctors had given him a poor prognosis. On that occasion he had had to control his feelings, but not now. He had been incandescent with rage.

Dropping down onto his knees beside her, he had taken her small heart-shaped face between his hands, pushing aside the drenched strands of hair that had clung like fronds of exotic seaweed to her face.

He had been able to feel the rapid beat of the pulse that had throbbed in her blue-veined temple. Her taut breasts had lifted as she’d tried to drag air into her oxygen-starved lungs. The black swimsuit had clung to her supple young body as lovingly as a second skin. Her skin, he’d noticed, had an incredible, luminescent clarity, at that moment it had been icy cold.

The image of her lying there was so perfect it might have happened yesterday. His body responded to the memory as if it had been that night nearly four years earlier. He was rock-hard.

‘How could you be so stupid?’ he demanded then. He shook her until her eyes opened.

Amazing amber eyes, big and not quite focused, blinked back at him. She was exhibiting classic signs of shock, but he was in no mood to make allowances.

‘I didn’t think…I…I mean it was—’

‘Did you want to kill yourself?’ he ranted on, oblivious to her pitiful and barely audible apology.

‘Of c…course not.’

‘You could have drowned us both.’ Her eyes widened; the swimming depths reflected mute horror. ‘What the hell were you doing?’

‘I was swimming.’

‘No, you were bloody drowning!’ He watched her full lower lip tremble and without thinking covered her mouth with his own.

Even now, all this time later, he could recall her startled gasp, the salty taste of the soft lips that parted sweetly under his and the softness of her body as she went bonelessly limp. The deep, soundless shudder that sighed through her body would stay with him for ever.

From somewhere he dredged up the strength to lift his mouth from hers when all he wanted to do was explore the sweet, moist recesses. Her fierce little groan of protest as the contact was broken made him forget for several dangerous seconds why this wasn’t a good idea.

The tenacious fingers that curled tightly in his wet hair proved infinitely more difficult to resist than the tide that had tried to pull them under.

He grabbed her hands and pinned them above her head, just to stop her touching him. ‘You don’t want to do this.’

‘You’re insane,’ she contended, shaking.

‘Certifiable,’ Angolos agreed thickly. The slim body beneath his was burning up. He could feel the blast of heat through the layers of wet clothes that separated them.

‘Don’t stop!’ The husky command wreaked havoc with his already-shredded self-control. She was like fire in his arms, supple, soft and displaying the same sort of savage desperation that thundered through his veins.

He hadn’t held a woman for almost a year, let alone had sex.

When he had first been diagnosed, his life had been thrown into utter confusion. He had always known where he was going and how he was getting there. The only restrictions placed on him had been by the responsibilities that had come with the privilege attached to his birth.

His focus and self-belief had always been enough to get him where he wanted to be. Helplessness had never entered the picture; then he had lost control. Someone had moved the goalposts and he had been angry.

He hadn’t realised how angry until he had said to the consultant treating him, ‘Tell me straight, Doctor, could this thing kill me?’

‘Yes, Mr Constantine, it could, but not if I have anything to do with it.’

It was a week later that he had woken up next to a woman, and he hadn’t known her name.

It had been a wake-up call. He had never ducked a fight in his life, but that, he’d then realised, was what he had been doing.

He had never been a saint, but he had always been discriminating and one-night stands had never been on his agenda. He had told himself to stop wallowing in self-pity, and had cleaned up his act. Of course later, when the treatment had taken his body to the limits of endurance, escaping into mindless sex had not been an option. He hadn’t had the strength, let alone the inclination.

That evening on the beach had been the first time in months that he had felt the stirring of sex…finding the object of his fantasy in his arms, half naked and begging him to kiss her, had transformed those stirrings into a raw, raging hunger.