Mediterranean Millionaires

Slowly, Hope withdrew her fingers from his and sat up. ‘I think you’re not going to like my answer.’

Andreas misunderstood. ‘If you prefer a more traditional wedding, I don’t mind. Have as many frills as you like. How we do it isn’t important as long as we do it before the baby’s born.’

Hope pushed herself upright. ‘I’m afraid the answer has to be…no.’

‘No?’ She saw that it had not once occurred to Andreas that he might meet with rejection.

‘I love the house, love the picnic—’ Love you too, Hope reflected painfully but kept that admission to herself ‘—but unfortunately you don’t want to marry me for the right reasons.’

Utterly taken aback by that criticism, Andreas sprang upright, dark golden eyes incredulous. ‘What are the right reasons?’

‘If you don’t know, there’s no point in me spelling them out for you,’ she said heavily.

‘Are you still determined to keep your options open? Is that what this is all about?’ Andreas ground out.

Her brow indented. ‘I don’t know what you’re getting at.’

‘Or are you punishing me for listening to my sister three months ago and letting you down?’ Andreas demanded in a raw undertone.

Hope studied him with pained intensity. ‘I wouldn’t behave like that. But I am afraid that you were so willing to believe Elyssa’s lies because you wanted your freedom back—’

‘I always had my freedom. I made a free choice to be with you!’ Andreas contradicted.

‘And when I made the mistake of reminding you that we’d been together almost two years, you were in no mood to celebrate.’ Hope sighed. ‘There was no question of your making a commitment to me then—’

His even white teeth gritted. ‘Everything’s changed since then—’

‘Yes. But you don’t need to put a ring on my wedding finger because I fell pregnant,’ Hope told him gently.

‘How are you planning to manage without me?’

Hope lost colour at that crack. ‘Are you saying that if I don’t marry you, you’ll break up with me again?’

An electrifying silence fell.

His beautiful dark deep-set eyes struck sparks from hers. ‘No, I’m not saying that. I’d have to be a real bastard to abandon the mother of my child in any circumstances.’

‘For goodness’ sake, I know you’re not that.’ Hope felt as though she were standing on the edge of a chasm in the middle of an earthquake. If she wasn’t careful she might tumble into the chasm and lose everything. Was she being foolish? Should she be willing to settle for a marriage of convenience with a guy who didn’t love her? Or was it that she was more scared of Andreas marrying her and then regretting it?

While she was frantically questioning whether or not she was making the biggest mistake of her life, Andreas closed his arms round her. ‘I made you happy before…I can do it again,’ he intoned fiercely.

‘I know, but—’

‘Theos…Just you try and find this same fire with someone else!’ He bent his arrogant dark head and crushed her ripe mouth under his, unleashing a passion that took her by storm. His lips were firm and warm and wonderful on hers and she could not get enough of his kisses.

Breathless and trembling, she knotted her fingers into the shoulders of his jacket to hold him close. She did not want to set him free to find someone else. She did not want to be alone.

‘Andreas…?’ she framed through reddened lips, turquoise eyes clinging in urgent appeal to his. ‘Don’t get the wrong idea about what I’m about to say. I’m not suggesting that I be your mistress. But could we live together instead of getting married?’

Andreas was a long way from happy with that proposition. His smoothly laid plans had been derailed when he’d least expected it. He felt hollow, bewildered by his failure, quite unlike himself.

Had he rushed her too much? He always moved fast and made decisions at the speed of the light but she did not. Once, though, she had had touching faith in him and his judgement. Now, however, she was wary, unsure of herself and of him. For the first time he recognised how much he must have hurt her when he’d dumped her. He could hardly blame her for being afraid to trust him again.

He saw that there had been a fatal flaw in his approach. He had put more effort into marketing the house than himself. Having recognised the problem, he saw the solution and came up with a fresh strategy. That disturbing sense of disorientation that had afflicted him mercifully vanished. All he had to do was demonstrate that he would make a perfect husband and a fantastic father.

‘Andreas…’ Hope prompted worriedly, afraid she had offended him.

The brooding light in his dark reflective gaze ebbed and his slow, charismatic smile curved his handsome mouth. ‘I’ll buy the house this afternoon. How soon will you move in?’

She blinked, thrown by his immediacy. ‘Whenever you like.’

‘I like it best when you’re not out of my sight for longer than five minutes, pedhi mou,’ Andreas told her, tugging her up against his lean, powerful frame and anchoring her below one strong arm while he called the agent to negotiate.

‘No, you’re not to look at that,’ Andreas scolded, flipping an offending newspaper out of her reach six weeks later.

‘Why not?’ Hope watched him lounge back against the crisp white pillows. The sheet had dropped to below his waist, exposing the hard, hair-roughened expanse of his bronzed torso and the sleek, muscular strength of his superbly fit body. He looked breathtakingly handsome.

‘There’s an entry about us in the gossip column…I don’t want you lowering yourself to look at trash like that,’ Andreas delivered in a tone of finality.

Unimpressed, Hope put out her hand. ‘Give it to me,’ she told him.

A raw masculine grin slashed his beautiful mouth. ‘No…’

‘Stop being bossy!’ Levering herself up, Hope flung herself across him in an effort to wrest the paper from him. Laughing with rich appreciation, he caught her in his arms and pressed her gently back against the pillows. Teasing golden eyes met hers. ‘Behave yourself!’

‘You can’t censor what I read—’

‘If there is the tiniest risk that something might upset you it’s my duty to protect you from it. I’m Greek. You’re my woman and I look after you. Learn to live with what you can’t fight,’ Andreas warned with unblemished good humour.

‘I’ll just walk down to the village and buy another copy.’

‘You’re supposed to be taking it easy.’ Frowning, Andreas handed the disputed item over. ‘That was blackmail.’

‘I know.’ Far from ashamed of herself, Hope wriggled up again, snuggled back into him for support and opened the paper. Sometimes it was rather sweet to be treated like impossibly fragile spun glass, but other times it made her feel horribly like a burden. It was bad enough that he should be full of energy and vitality while she was falling asleep in the middle of the day. In addition, anything more intimate than a hug was off the menu as well. When her cautious gynaecologist had said that her exhaustion could become a source of concern, Andreas had decided that sex was absolutely out of the question.

Having leafed through the newspaper, Hope found a most unflattering photo of herself that seemed to concentrate rather cruelly on her pregnant stomach. She looked like a large woman overfilling a little black dress, an archetypal ship in full sail trundling across the pavement. The photo had been taken two days earlier as they’d left the well-known restaurant where Andreas’s grandfather, Kostas, had entertained them to dinner and initially trying questions. She had soon warmed to the blunt-spoken older man, however. Kostas Nicolaidis had made it clear that, although he would much prefer them to marry, he was overjoyed that she was carrying his grandson’s baby and that Andreas was finally settling down.

‘Oh, no…’ Hope exclaimed, aghast, as she started reading the article beside the photo.

‘So what’s wrong with my grandson that you won’t make an honest man of him?’ Kostas had asked baldly, and there were those exact same words in print, clearly overheard and passed on to the columnist. Below the execrable title, BAG LADY REFUSES NICOLAIDIS HEIR, virtually every female that Andreas had ever dated was listed, the suggestion being that he had been turned down because no sane female would seek to tie down a rampant womaniser.

‘Kostas will be thrilled. He loves to see his name in newsprint,’ Andreas commented cheerfully.

‘But I look simply huge!’ she wailed in embarrassment.

Andreas stretched appreciative hands across the rounded swell of her stomach, stretched them just a little more and contrived to link his fingers. ‘You look fantastic, really, really pregnant now. Ripe like a peach, pedhi mou.’

‘Very round and squashy?’ Hope refused to be comforted. ‘Aren’t you angry that everybody knows that you proposed and I said no?’