Mediterranean Millionaires

Hope reddened with hurt and embarrassment. She had forgotten just how critical Jonathan could be of a body image that was not as lean as his own. His wife, Shona, was a physical education instructor and the couple and their children led a formidably healthy lifestyle. Although it had been some time since Hope had had the courage to approach the bathroom scales, she was already painfully aware that she had put on weight and she could have done without her brother’s blunt comments. At present only the larger sizes in her wardrobe were a comfortable fit. I thought you were pregnant. How could he say that to her? Did she really look that large? Tears burned the backs of her eyes.

‘You’re letting yourself go. It’s time for a wake-up call,’ her sibling continued without a shade of discomfiture. ‘A good diet and exercise regime would transform you. Did I tell you that Shona has opened a fitness salon?’

‘No…’

‘Business is good, very good,’ Jonathan asserted with satisfaction. ‘I’ll get Shona to send you a copy of her favourite diet.’

Pregnant. Hope was lost in her own feverish thoughts. She was thinking of the new bras she had been forced to buy and considering her tummy’s more rounded profile. She was gaining weight in a pattern that was different from her own personal norm. Then there were those secret binges on olives. Hadn’t she once read that some women were afflicted by strange cravings during pregnancy? But aside of all those vague factors, what had happened to her menstrual cycle in recent months?

‘My firm is operating to full capacity. We can hardly keep up with the order book,’ her brother informed her cheerfully. ‘Life has been very good to Shona and I.’

‘I’m happy for you,’ Hope mumbled, transfixed by the alarming awareness that she could not recollect when she had last had a period. It was not something she took a note of or indeed looked for or had ever made welcome. But her cycle had always been a regular one. Yet if her memory served her well, her cycle had not been functioning correctly for several months at the very least. Did that mean that there was a possibility that she could be pregnant?

‘I’ll always be grateful that you had the generosity to allow me to inherit mother’s estate,’ Jonathan added squarely. ‘At the time I needed that inheritance and I was able to make excellent use of it.’

It was only with the greatest difficulty that Hope could keep up with the conversation, for anxiety had turned her skin clammy. She was being forced to acknowledge that there was a distinct chance that she could have conceived while she was still with Andreas.

‘Hope…’ Jonathan prompted.

‘Sorry, I’m a bit preoccupied today,’ Hope apologised weakly. ‘But I was listening. I know you’ll have made good use of that money.’

‘But it’s been on my conscience ever since and it’s only fair that you should get the same opportunity. After all, you cared for our mother for a long time and you sacrificed your education and prospects.’ With a look of distinct pride Jonathan laid a cheque down on the table in front of her. ‘I can now afford to return the original inheritance to you. If you’re still planning to open your own business, a cash injection should help.’

Hope stared down at the cheque open-mouthed and blinked in astonishment. Her sibling had managed to thoroughly disconcert her. Below the level of the table she had splayed her fingers across the soft swell of her stomach while she’d focused on the shattering idea that she could be carrying a baby. But now she had to concentrate on the very large cheque that her brother had just presented her with.

‘My goodness…’ she said shakily.

‘If you’re about to embark on a new business, you’ll need to be super fit,’ Jonathan warned her. ‘I still think a diet should be at the very top of your agenda.’

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_2f63dfde-a145-5fe7-8dbb-c46765cd5dd7)

ANDREAS saw the artistic photo of the three handbags first. The shot was part of a feature in a Sunday magazine devoted to Vanessa Fitzsimmons’s deeply trendy photographic exhibition. There was a miniature silver-on-black Hope label in the seam of the tiny lime-green bag and it was a dead giveaway to Andreas. Courtesy of Vanessa, the handbags had been arranged against a rough stone wall as though they were works of art. His handsome mouth curled. He wondered why he was even looking at such superficial rubbish.

Flipping the page, however, Andreas was wholly entrapped by a shot of Hope sitting on a rock by a river. Several other faces that were far more well known on the social scene featured in the same study, which was called simply ‘My friends’ but Andreas initially saw only Hope. A multicoloured gypsy-style top open at her creamy throat, her face bathed in golden sunlight and her turquoise eyes luminous, she looked knock-down stunning. A tiny muscle jumped at the corner of his clenched jaw line. His brilliant dark gaze slashed from Hope to the male standing to one side of her: that smug-looking bastard, Campbell, who had a proprietary hand resting on her shoulder.

A boiling tide of rage filled Andreas. He wanted to smash something. Instead he poured himself a drink. It was only ten in the morning. Self-evidently, he was on edge because he had been working too hard for too long, he reasoned grimly. Rage had no place in his disciplined world. All emotion, irrational and otherwise could be controlled, suppressed and ultimately nullified by intelligence. He drained the glass and smashed the crystal tumbler in the Georgian fireplace. The deed was done before he was even aware of his intention.

Hope emerged from the doctor’s surgery on rather wobbly legs.

Vanessa leapt up and groaned. ‘You are, aren’t you? I can tell by your face!’

Hope nodded and did not speak until they reached the street. She had been told that she was more than five months pregnant and she was in complete shock. ‘The oddest thing is,’ she mused helplessly in the fresh air, ‘I’m a healthy weight for a pregnant woman. I’m not too heavy. Can you believe that?’

‘Andreas Nicolaidis has ruined your life,’ her friend lamented in a tone of unconcealed resentment. ‘You’ve just started seeing Ben, you’re just about to look for business premises and then it all goes pear-shaped on you. How could you be so careless?’

Hope went pink and cast down her eyes. She had not been careless; Andreas had been, though. Several different types of contraceptive pill had failed to agree with her and Andreas had been concerned that she would be damaging her health if she persisted. For that reason, about nine months earlier, he had said that he would take full responsibility in that field. Unfortunately he had been rather forgetful on at least a couple of occasions that came to mind. Certain methods of birth control could put a breaker on spontaneity and Andreas was a very spontaneous guy, she reflected with a pained stab of recollection.

‘So how far along are you?’ Vanessa enquired gloomily.

Hope sucked in her tummy guiltily, for she could see that the sight of her changing shape depressed her friend. ‘I’ll be a mother in just over three months.’

Vanessa stopped dead in the middle of the street and surveyed her in wonderment. ‘But you can’t be that pregnant!’

‘I am…’

‘But how could you not have noticed?’ The redhead gasped, standing back to subject Hope’s stomach to a distinctly embarrassing appraisal. ‘I mean, give your brother a medal. You do look pregnant and yet none of us noticed!’

‘I’ve been wearing loose clothing,’ Hope pointed out. ‘And people only see what they expect to see.’

When she had first fallen pregnant, her life had been incredibly busy and she had been so wrapped up in Andreas that she had failed to notice that her menstrual cycle had come to a mysterious halt. The other signs of pregnancy had also passed her by. Her health had never given her cause for concern and she had shrugged off the slight nausea and the dizziness she had experienced, believing neither symptom worthy of a visit to the doctor. In more recent months her personal woes had acted like a cocoon that had blinded her to everything outside her own thoughts and feelings, she acknowledged ruefully.

‘What are your plans?’

‘I have to tell Andreas.’

Vanessa pulled a sour face. ‘Let Ben know first.’

But Hope did not fall for that suggestion. For the first time in two and a half months, she rang Andreas on his mobile phone and left a message on his voicemail asking if she could see him to discuss something important.

It was three hours before he returned her call. ‘What is it?’ he breathed coldly without any preliminary greeting.

‘I need to see you and I can’t talk about it on the phone. Where are you?’

Somewhere close by, a woman giggled and muttered something in a low, intimate voice. ‘In the UK and busy,’ Andreas said dryly.

She squeezed her aching eyes tight shut. She did not want to speak to Andreas and hear his dark, deep drawl and she especially did not want to listen to another woman speaking to him in the teasing tone of a lover. In fact she really could not bear that torment at all.

‘I’m also leaving for Athens tomorrow morning,’ Andreas informed her coolly. ‘This is your one chance to speak to me. Use it or lose it.’

‘No, I have to see you in person and in private,’ Hope countered tautly. ‘I don’t think that’s such a huge thing to ask.’

‘Perhaps not but the prospect is not entertaining,’ Andreas fielded, smooth and sharp as a shard of glass cutting into tender skin. ‘In short, I don’t want to see you.’

‘Do you expect me to beg you for five minutes of your time?’ Hope demanded painfully, angry, humiliated tears clogging up her throat, for she had not been prepared for that level of bluntness.

‘OK. If you’re that keen, you’ll find me at the gym tomorrow morning at seven.’ He finished the call without another word and left her staring into space.

How was she supposed to tell a guy that cold and unfriendly that she was carrying his child? He was not going to be happy about that. Even when they had still been together, Andreas would not have been happy about that. How much worse would it be to break such shattering news now that they were apart? It had been a long time since they had broken up as well. What male was likely to be even remotely prepared for such an announcement weeks and weeks after the relationship had ended? How could he be so cruel as to demand that she come to the gym where he trained at practically the crack of dawn? He knew the one thing she had always hated was getting out of bed early.

Andreas enjoyed extensive private facilities at an exclusive sports club and visited it several times a week. He had a fitness room at his town house but rarely managed to use it. He had once explained that the club offered him the advantage of sparring with an instructor and training without distractions.

As Hope walked past the limousine in the car park his chauffeur acknowledged her with a polite inclination of his head. What did it matter where she was when she made her announcement? she was asking herself ruefully. His office would not have been any more suitable and she would not have felt comfortable at the town house, which he had never invited her to visit even when they had been together. Furthermore, it was foolish to suspect that some slight was inherent in his suggestion that she meet him at his club. After all, Andreas had very little free time and she had to accept the reality that she no longer enjoyed special status in his life.

The weathered older man presiding over Reception asked to see proof of her identity and then told her where to find Andreas. Smoothing damp palms down over the long black wool coat she wore, Hope pushed back the swing door on the gym.

Clad in black boxing shorts and a black vest, Andreas was pounding a speedball with so much energy that he remained unaware of her entrance. She had always been madly curious about exactly what he did at the sports club. Now she remembered him telling her that he had boxed at university. Her attention clung to him. He looked drop-dead gorgeous, she thought helplessly. Every lean, muscular and bronzed line of his long, powerful physique emanated virile masculine strength. She missed looking at him, being with him, touching him, talking to him. She even missed the pleasure of being able to think about him without feeling guilty.

‘Andreas…’ she croaked.