The Stephanides Pregnancy

‘You were out of line,’ Betsy snapped at him furiously. ‘What sort of a guy tries to pull his chauffeur?’

‘One who has just become a convert to total snobbery,’ Cristos spelt out with maddening assurance.

It was at that point that Betsy saw a male figure crouched down by the side of the road just ahead. That was the only warning she had before something that gleamed metallic and grey in the sunlight was thrown at the car. The wheels ran over it. A tyre blew out and then another, sending the powerful vehicle out of her control into a dangerous swerve. The limo hit the ditch with a thunderous jolt that rattled every bone in her body. Almost simultaneously the door beside her was yanked noisily open.

In disbelief, Betsy saw Joe Tyler peering in at her and momentarily wondered if she was coming round after having been knocked out, for she could not understand how otherwise he could have been there on the spot. ‘Joe…?’ she framed uncertainly, still reeling from the impact of the crash.

‘Have a nice sleep, Betsy.’

Too late she noticed that he had what looked like a gun clutched in his hand. She did not even have time to panic. A tingling pain hit her midriff and she gasped because without warning her limbs seemed to turn to jelly. Joe thrust her aside with no more care than he would have accorded a sack. Just before she passed out she heard him speak again, but what he said made little sense to her.

‘Imagine a bloke like you fancying my girlfriend…well, you both deserve a surprise!’

The black claustrophobic cloud of oblivion rolled in over Betsy and her body slumped down on the seat. Within seconds her passenger was in the same condition.

CHAPTER TWO

CRISTOS recovered consciousness first.

Instantly he came alert and defied any awareness of physical discomfort to spring off the bed on which he had been lying. His keen dark eyes took on a dazed aspect as he struggled to get a handle on his unfamiliar surroundings. He studied the unconscious woman still on the bed with scorching intensity. The ubiquitous cap had gone and straying strands of bright Titian hair feathered her brow. Her skin was white as snow. Like Mary’s little lamb in the nursery rhyme? A harsh laugh escaped Cristos but there was nothing of humour in it.

What a very dangerous distraction Betsy Mitchell had proved to be! There was nothing more galling to Cristos than the awareness that he had allowed a woman to lead him into a prearranged trap. It was poetic justice however that she had been double crossed by her partners in crime and abandoned to the tender mercies of their victim. No doubt she would learn the hard way that Cristos would choose death over victimhood any day.

Fierce thirst brought Betsy out of her stupor. Even before she opened her eyes, she knew she felt dreadful. Her limbs felt as heavy as leaden weights. She was also incredibly hot and it was that awareness that first roused her to register that something was wrong. She was wearing clothes and she never lay down fully dressed. In the same moment as she lifted her lashes on an unfamiliar room, she remembered Joe attacking her. She pressed a hand to her midriff, felt a slight soreness there and tore off her uniform jacket to lift her shirt and touch the tiny red puncture wound. A sense of complete unbelief enveloped her. He must have shot her with some sort of tranquilliser dart because she had passed out. But why would Joe have done such a thing? Cristos! Cristos Stephanides. Where on earth was he?

In the grip of fear and horror that Joe was some kind of maniac who had kidnapped her because she had rejected him, Betsy scrambled upright. She was only wearing one shoe and there was no sign of the missing one. Kicking off the one that remained, she raced out of the bedroom and headed straight for the wide open door several feet beyond.

In that doorway, Betsy came to a breathless halt. She blinked. Her lower lip parted company from the upper in an inelegant expression of astonishment. Barely a hundred feet away a shimmering sea as crystal-blue as the sky above was washing a sandy beach. The beauty of the scene struck her as incongruous and she thought she had to be hallucinating. When she had lost control of the limo, it had been raining. It had been a typical English spring day: sunny and damp in turns with a breeze thrown in for good measure. But the heat of the golden sun above seemed Mediterranean.

Cristos strode into view from behind the rocks girding the northern edge of the beach. Her tummy flipped. Intense relief filled her. He was safe and, whether it was logical or not, his presence made her feel less afraid. As he drew closer she charted the changes in his once immaculate appearance. He had doffed his suit jacket and tie. A pearl-grey shirt open at his brown throat outlined his broad shoulders. His black hair was tousled and a heavy growth of dark stubble outlined his stubborn jaw line and wide, sensual mouth. He still looked spectacular. Her tummy performed another somersault. His hardcore sexuality had a powerful charge.

Seeing her, Cristos came to a halt. Glittering dark eyes zeroed in on her, his lean, handsome features clenching into formidable stillness. ‘Where are we?’ he asked roughly.

Her brow furrowed, for she could not understand why he should ask her that question in a tone that implied that she would have that information at her fingertips. ‘I don’t know…do you?’

‘How the hell would I know? Don’t play dumb with me,’ Cristos warned her.

Her spine stiff with tension and forgetting that she was not wearing shoes, Betsy moved out onto the sun-warmed path. The surface was uncomfortably hot for soles encased only in nylon tights and she hurried into the sparse shade thrown by the gnarled tree that grew at the front of the house. ‘Play dumb? I don’t understand—’

‘I know that you were involved in plotting my kidnapping—’

‘You know…what?’

‘You must’ve been shattered to wake up here and realise that your fellow conspirators had decided to ditch you—’

‘My fellow conspirators? What on earth are you accusing me of?’ Betsy fired back at him in frank bewilderment.

‘You greeted the gorilla who shot us both full of knock-out drugs by name.’

Her brain, she discovered in frustration, was very reluctant to process thoughts with anything like its usual efficiency. Gorilla? Did he mean Joe? Of course Joe was involved in the kidnapping because he had attacked them both. ‘Joe works for Imperial Limousines…I didn’t appreciate what was happening when he first opened the car door—’

‘You said his name quite happily,’ Cristos Stephanides countered.

‘I was in shock…I hadn’t had enough time to appreciate that the crash hadn’t been an accident.’ She lifted an unsteady hand to her brow, which was damp as much with stress as with the unfamiliar heat. She pulled out the clip anchoring her hair and let it fall, massaging the back of her neck where the clip had left a tender spot. ‘That was a stinger that was hurled in front of the car to puncture the tyres and force us to a stop, wasn’t it?’

Cristos surveyed her with brooding intensity. ‘If you’re trying to convince me that you’re innocent of any involvement, you’re wasting your breath. You are also making me angry—’

Her anxiety growing, Betsy gazed back at him. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you? But you can’t decide that I’m a criminal just because I know Joe—’

‘I don’t think I’m quite that simplistic.’ Cristos dealt her a derisive look.

‘How could I not know him when he works in the same place?’

‘Oh, I think the connection between you and Joe was a touch more intimate than that,’ Cristos murmured with scathing softness.

Betsy was exceedingly reluctant to accept that he might be implying a certain fact that she was in no hurry to tell him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘He referred to you as his girlfriend.’

The guilty colour ran up hot beneath her skin. Too late she recalled Joe making some crack in that line before she’d lost consciousness. ‘I went out with him once…OK?’

‘No, it’s not OK. Nothing about this situation is OK.’ His lean, hard-boned face was grim. ‘You’re involved in this filthy business right up to your throat—’

‘Look, if you dated a serial killer once, would you be responsible for her crimes?’ Betsy threw at him. He was being so unfair to her. She was ashamed and embarrassed that she had ever gone out with someone of Joe’s evident propensities. But surely nothing she had said or done could possibly have contributed to the current situation?

‘I haven’t got time for this nonsense…’ Cristos strode forward and closed lean hands to her forearms. ‘I’ve been kidnapped. My life is at risk. I have no plans to sit around on a deserted island in the middle of an ocean waiting for the kidnappers’ next move—’

‘We’re on an island?’ Betsy interrupted in dismay, wincing a little at the strength of those long, tensile fingers, which were biting just a tad uncomfortably into her arms.

She had always considered herself to be a fair height. However, Cristos Stephanides had to be around six feet four inches tall. He towered over her to such an extent that she felt tiny. Indeed she was beginning to feel actively intimidated by him. He was very strong and he was very angry and he was not listening to her. Could she blame him for that? He had been kidnapped. His life probably was at risk. Whether she liked it or not she could understand why he should be highly suspicious of a woman who appeared to have been on terms of familiarity with one of his kidnappers.

‘Where is this island?’ Cristos demanded harshly. ‘I need to know everything that you know so that I can work out what’s coming next!’

‘But I don’t know anything…’ In a sudden movement that took him by surprise, Betsy tore herself free and backed hurriedly away from him. ‘You’ve got to believe me about that—’

Unafraid to turn up the pressure, Cristos advanced. ‘I don’t. You were the bait, and very effective bait. I went for it—’

Her slender length rigid, Betsy slowly increased the distance between them with quiet, cautious steps. Her nervous antenna was on a high state of alert. After all, what did she know about Cristos Stephanides and how violent he might be in such circumstances? He believed she had conspired with his kidnappers and might feel that his need for information was justification for getting rough. She found it bitterly ironic that just ten days earlier she would have stood her ground against Cristos, blithely confident that she could look after herself and that most men were essentially decent. It was Joe Tyler who had taught her to fear masculine strength. He had held her against her will long enough to teach her to be scared and had for ever stolen her peace of mind in male company.

‘I wasn’t the bait,’ Betsy swore, fighting to put as much weight and sincerity into her voice as she could while at the same time wondering what the heck he was talking about. ‘I had nothing to do with your kidnapping and I was as shocked by all this as you are.’

‘Like hell you were,’ Cristos growled, watching the sunlight pick up the deep coppery tints in the fantastic rippling coil of hair sliding across her shoulders with her every movement. He was convinced she had let her hair down in an effort to distract him. ‘You were a part of it right up until your boyfriend decided to sacrifice you—’

‘He isn’t my boyfriend…he’s a creep I went out with one time!’ Betsy launched back at him in frustration.

‘I won’t accept your lies. I want answers from you and I want them fast.’ Lean, strong face hard with determination, Cristos surveyed her with merciless dark eyes. ‘You have put my life at risk and you owe me, so start talking…’

The menacing chill he exuded scared her. She felt that an unspoken threat hung in the air between them. The very tone of his dark, deep drawl sent a shiver licking down her taut spinal cord. In a sudden movement, she spun on her heel and took off across the beach. He shouted after her, called her name but she just ran even faster.