Mediterranean Millionaires

‘I’d know that without even hearing you,’ Vanessa chipped in.

If her friend had been hoping to put Andreas out of countenance, she had misjudged her man. Ablaze with confidence and purpose, Andreas vented an appreciative laugh. ‘Good.’

His amusement cut through Hope’s sensitive skin like a knife. That was how much her current crisis meant to Andreas Nicolaidis. He had refused to credit that the baby was his and he didn’t really need to care about her predicament. She studied him with helpless intensity. Getting by without him was agony and seeing him only increased her craving to be with him again. She had to get over that.

‘I don’t want to see you…or have anything to do with you,’ Hope breathed unevenly, and she reached forward and slowly, carefully closed the front door in his darkly handsome face.

‘I can’t believe you just did that!’ Vanessa gasped, wide-eyed. ‘He’s the love of your life and your idol!’

‘I need to cultivate better taste. That was the first step and overdue.’ Hope retreated back to her bedroom to retrieve her bag. She felt as if she were bleeding to death. She wanted to run out the door and chase after him like a faithful pet. For the very first time she was learning to say no to Andreas and it did not feel good to go against her own nature. In fact it hurt like hell.

Four hours later, she was climbing out of a taxi clutching the key for the picturesque country cottage that belonged to the Fitzsimmons and Campbell families. It lay down a leafy lane and was sheltered by tall, glossy hedges of laurel. Cottage was a bit of a misnomer for a property containing more than half a dozen bedrooms. It was a substantial house.

In the charming bedroom she chose for herself below the overhanging eaves she looked out over the back garden towards the gentle winding river and the open countryside beyond. The silence and the sense of peace were wonderful. Her train had been packed and noisy and she had not initially been able to get a seat. Exhaustion was making her droop.

‘Carrying a baby is a tiring business,’ the doctor had warned her. ‘You have to be sensible and take extra rest if you need it.’

It didn’t help that it had been weeks since she had benefited from an unbroken night of sleep. Bad dreams and worries had haunted her. Shedding her clothes where she stood, she pulled on a thin white cotton nightdress and sank between the sheets on the comfortable bed as heavily as a rock settling in silt.

Wakening refreshed the following morning, Hope felt her mood lift in tune with the sunshine filtering through the curtains. It was a beautiful day. She put on a light summer dress, attempted unsuccessfully to suck her tummy in and still breathe, and finally went downstairs to satisfy her ravenous appetite for food. She blessed Vanessa when she found that the fridge already contained a few basic foodstuffs. A local woman acted as caretaker and Vanessa had evidently contacted her.

Hope ate her toast on the sun-drenched terrace beside the river and then allowed herself five olives. She had so many decisions to make. But her friend had been right on one score: whether or not to keep her child was not one of them. She had the lucky advantage of being cushioned by the cash her brother had given her. Only now she was no longer sure of what to do with that money. Perhaps putting it into property might be the wisest move.

Her business plans would have to go on the back burner for a while. Too many new businesses failed. Having a child to care for would change her priorities. She was less keen to take on financial risk. Setting up a viable enterprise to craft handmade bags and employing even a couple of workers would always have been a risky venture. But to set herself such a task with a new baby on the way and single parenthood looming would be downright foolhardy.

Ben arrived when she was working on new ideas for bags, an exercise that never failed to relax her. Lost in creative introspection, she did not hear his car arriving. When she glanced up, she just saw Ben standing at the corner of the house watching her. Thrusting aside her sketch pad, she scrambled up, taut with apprehension. With his fair hair fashionably tousled into spikes and his green eyes usually serious, he had a rakish, boyish attraction, she acknowledged. He wasn’t a bad kisser either. Only her heart didn’t go bang-bang-bang when she saw him and the almost-sick-with-excitement sensation, which she associated with Andreas, did not happen for her around Ben.

‘You didn’t need to come down to see me,’ she said awkwardly.

‘I did.’ Ben dug restive hands deep into his pockets. ‘You should have been the one to tell me about the baby.’

‘Vanessa didn’t give me the chance.’ Hope sighed.

‘This was one of the times when she should’ve minded her own business. She made me feel like I had no place in your life.’ Ben subjected her anxious face to a rueful appraisal. ‘I’m not going to pretend that this development hasn’t knocked me for six…it has. But however this pans out, we’ll still be friends.’

Her soft mouth wobbled and she compressed it. But it was no good—her eyes overflowed and, with a sound that veered between a laugh and a sob, she groaned. ‘The slightest thing brings tears to my eyes at the minute. It’s so embarrassing…please ignore me!’

Ben draped a comforting arm round her shoulders but he did not draw her close as he would have done only days earlier. ‘You’ve had a rough week. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Vanessa says that you and Andreas are engaged in major hostilities. That’s my fault—’

‘How can it possibly be your fault?’

‘I could’ve put him right about us a couple of months back but I didn’t see why I should. I wanted a chance with you and if you stayed with your Greek tycoon, I wasn’t going to get it. I took advantage. I’m admitting it,’ Ben said bluntly. ‘But even I draw the line at continuing to muddy the water when you’re expecting his kid! That has to be sorted out.’

Ben insisted on taking her down to the medieval pub in the village and treating her to lunch. His unexpected plain common sense had left her conscience uneasy. Her own behaviour seemed less sensible. Feeling horribly hurt and humiliated, she had shut the door in Andreas’s face and refused to talk to him. It might have been what Andreas deserved and it might have made her feel less like a doormat, but important issues still had to be resolved. Andreas could not be allowed to retain the impression that Ben might have fathered her child. She was not to blame for the misunderstanding. But for Ben’s sake and for the baby’s, she needed to keep on trying to ensure that Andreas accepted the truth.

Early evening that same day, Andreas brought the powerful Lamborghini to a throaty halt in front of the thatched cottage.

He had leant on Vanessa until she had buckled and told him where Hope was. Hope might well be in need of a break in which to recoup her energies, but he was not willing to accept that she had to be protected from him. Even though he had missed a family christening in Athens, he was feeling good about what he was doing. In fact he was aware of a general improvement in his mood. That was no surprise to him. When had he ever done anything quite so unselfish? Naturally he was proud of himself. Although Hope had no claim on him and even less right to his consideration, he had set aside his perfectly justifiable anger and understandable distaste to check that she was all right.

Hope clambered out of the bath because she was terrified of falling asleep in the water. Wrapping her streaming body in a velour towel imprinted with zoo animals, she padded back into the bedroom. From the low window there she saw Andreas springing out of an elegant long, low silver car. He hit the knocker on the front door.

‘Oh, heck…’ Her first glance was into the mirror to note that, yes, her hair was damp and messy and piled on top of her head where it was anchored by a canary-yellow band. And her face was hot pink. And nobody was ever likely to suggest that her figure was enhanced by a bulky towel in primary colours. Was her tummy really that…? She flipped sideways and wished she hadn’t bothered. Sometimes ignorance could be bliss.

Yet even in profile, Andreas looked stunning, his bold, bronzed features vibrant with dark, intrinsically male beauty. Tall and well built, he emanated powerful energy. Her hand flew up to tug off the band restraining her hair. In a panic, she finger-combed the resulting tangle. The door knocker went a second time. Breathless and reckless as a teenager, terrified he would decide she was out and leave if she did not hurry, she raced down the stairs as though her feet had wings and dragged open the door.

His dark, deep-set gaze narrowed below thick black lashes and roamed from the lush pink cupid’s bow of her mouth to the voluptuous creamy swell of her breasts. Not even the sight of a pink elephant marching across the towel could dim Andreas’s appreciation of her fabulous shape. His eyes flared to smouldering gold.

Her mouth ran dry. ‘How did you find out where I was?’

‘Vanessa told me.’

Hope was amazed. ‘She…did?’

‘I said I was concerned about you. That unnerved her. Suddenly she didn’t want the responsibility of withholding information from me,’ Andreas explained lazily.

‘I’m glad…we do need to talk,’ Hope conceded quietly, backing towards the stairs. ‘If you wait in the sitting room, I’ll get dressed.’

‘Why bother?’ Andreas was tracking her every tiny move with keen male attention.

‘Because I’m not wearing enough clothes,’ she mumbled uncertainly, finding it incredibly hard to concentrate beneath Andreas’s steady appraisal.

‘You’re not wearing any,’ Andreas contradicted huskily. ‘Do you hear me complaining?’

‘Don’t talk like that,’ she begged, her tension rising because she knew she wanted him to talk like that to her. In fact her protest was a truly appalling lie when she knew that more than anything else in the world at that moment she wanted him to kiss her.

Her retreat from the door had exposed the jacket slung down carelessly across the window seat. Andreas treated the garment to a fulminating scrutiny. His hard jaw line clenched taut. ‘Whose jacket is that? Daddy Bear’s?’

Disconcerted, Hope followed the path of his eyes. Her fine brows pleated when she saw that Ben, who had departed a couple of hours earlier, had forgotten to take his jacket with him.

‘Hope?’ Andreas prompted icily. ‘That’s a man’s jacket.’

Never in her life until then had Hope been so tempted to tell a lie for the sake of peace. While she was wondering whether an elderly gardener with expensive tastes could be the likely owner of a designer leather jacket, time ran out.

‘Is Campbell here?’ Andreas slung at her wrathfully. ‘Upstairs in the bedroom?’

Hope exploded into emotive speech, ‘No, of course not. He’s not here but he would have every right to be if he wanted to be! Vanessa may have given me permission to be here but the cottage belongs to her family and Ben’s.’

Andreas paced forward a step. His lean, strong face was set like stone, his brilliant eyes hard as steel. ‘When was Campbell here?’

‘That’s none of your business,’ Hope dared shakily.

His intent gaze flared to a volatile gold. ‘You made it my business again. Either you’re with him or you’re alone. If you’re still with him, I want to know about it!’

‘I’m not discussing Ben with you. You have no right to ask me these questions—’

‘If you’re still involved with Campbell, why did you approach me?’ Andreas launched at her in raw condemnation.

Hope lifted her head high, turquoise eyes dark with stress. ‘This is your baby. It’s got nothing to do with Ben, so just leave him out of things—’