His Pregnant Bride: Pregnant by the Greek Tycoon / His Pregnant Princess / Pregnant: Father Needed. Robyn Donald
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his tense jaw continued to click steadily as he held her eyes.
Not into playing games, she replied immediately. ‘I agree that I have no right to deny Nicky his heritage. I can protect him now, but I won’t be able to always. I’ll just have to teach him to look after himself. I think you’d be good at that, Angolos. So I will come to Greece with you, on trial basis.’
She saw the muscles of his shoulders relax. ‘Thank you for that, Georgette. For my part I swear that I will do my best not to disappoint you.’
The palpable sincerity in his voice brought an emotional lump to her throat. ‘I don’t think you would, but you didn’t let me finish. There are conditions.’
‘Whatever you say,’ he said immediately.
‘Don’t you think you ought to hear what they are first?’ she asked him.
‘Bring on your demands. It doesn’t matter what they are. I will do anything it takes to develop a relationship with my son.’
‘I understand that.’
One dark brow arched in sardonic enquiry as he scanned her face. ‘But you have your doubts? You don’t think it will work out?’
This drew a reluctant laugh from her. ‘Only a couple of thousand.’ Her expression sobered as she lifted her face to his; she could almost feel his impatience. ‘It didn’t work last time.’ Feeling her control slipping, she turned and began to walk towards the church.
Angolos cursed softly under his breath as he fell into step beside her. ‘The situation isn’t the same.’
That much was true. Last time he had loved her, or professed to at least. This time there was no pretence that his feelings for her were what they once had been; this was all about wanting to be a father to his son.
‘I know that, but everything else is. You…’ She stopped and smiled at an elderly couple who walked past hand in hand.
‘Lovely afternoon.’
‘Marvellous,’ she agreed.
‘Why are the British obsessed with the weather?’ Before she could defend the national obsession he added, ‘Why are you determined to be negative about this?’
‘I’m not being negative,’ she protested. ‘I’m being realistic. We’re going back to the same house. You’re the same man, your mother will still resent me.’
‘My mother did not resent you!’
Georgie smiled and looked away. ‘If you say so.’
‘Perhaps you have left out the most significant obstacle.’
She paused and ran her fingers along the moss-covered wall beside the church gate. Her glance lifted to the tiny church with its square Norman tower. As a young girl she had spent many an afternoon imagining herself walking up the aisle here, and standing underneath the big horse chestnut having her picture taken in its shade.
The reality could not have been more different: an anonymous register office. Angolos had let it be known that he hadn’t actually wanted a big wedding. ‘Been there, done that…but, of course, if you want…?’ he added.
‘No, I hate big weddings,’ she lied dutifully. ‘It’s the next twenty years that counts, not the day itself.’
He laughed at her earnestness and called her a hopeless romantic, but she was happy because she had pleased him.
With a sigh she rested her back against the wall now. ‘And what is that?’ She stretched out her hand and languidly watched the dappled light play across her skin.
‘You’re still the same person too.’
She shook her head, but didn’t look at him. ‘You’re wrong, Angolos. I’m not the same person at all.’
‘You mean you won’t grow discontented this time.’
This time she did look up. ‘Discontented…?’
‘You never made any effort to fit in.’
‘Fit in!’ she exclaimed in heated response to this monumentally unfair claim. ‘Short of changing my identity, that was never going to happen.’
‘What are you talking about?’
As if he didn’t know.
‘Tell me, Angolos,’ she began with vibrating antagonism. ‘How long had we been married before you began regretting it? A week…two…?’ Now he was prepared to put his life on hold to be with their son; back then he hadn’t even been able to free a weekend to spend time with her! If her friend Alan hadn’t arrived she would have felt even lonelier.
‘This,’ he said heavily, ‘is getting us nowhere.’
‘Maybe someone is trying to tell us something,’ she murmured as she levered herself up onto the wall.
‘It’s not exactly constructive raking up the past every five seconds.’ Angolos’s gaze moved from the small hands folded primly in her lap to her neatly crossed ankles and his jaw clenched.
‘You look like a child,’ he accused throatily.
She continued banging her heels against the stone as he set his hands against the uneven wall either side of her. But it was an uphill battle to continue to act as if her pulses weren’t racing like crazy and she weren’t painfully aware of the proximity of his warm male body.
‘I’m not, and I’ve got the stretch marks to prove it.’ Without thinking, she moved her hand to hover above the area low on her belly, where the silvery lines were a permanent reminder of her motherhood.
‘I’m well aware you’re not a child.’ He exhaled a long shuddering breath that sucked in the muscles of his flat belly and expanded his impressive chest. He dragged a hand through his dark hair. ‘I used to know your body as well as I knew my own.’
The accusing throaty addition brought her startled glance to his face. Their eyes meshed and her insides dissolved.
‘The attraction is still there.’
‘I don’t know if Greece fell short of your expectations or I did? But it is my home and once,’ he added, ‘it was yours. I would like for my son to have the opportunity to learn to love it also.’
‘It was never my home.’ The sadness in her eyes was tinged with resentment. ‘I was always a visitor and not a welcome one at that.’ His mother, the daunting Olympia, had made sure of that.
‘That’s ludicrous. This melodrama isn’t helping anyone,’ he retorted impatiently.
Georgie didn’t respond. She knew perfectly well that he would never believe that his family had loathed her; in front of him they had been sweetness and light.
‘I don’t want to share a home with your mother and sister.’
‘Is that a fact?’
She could tell from his expression that he didn’t take her seriously. She took a deep breath. If she was going to do this, she was going to do it on her terms. ‘Let me rephrase that. I won’t share a house with your mother and sister.’
Eyes narrowed, he scanned her face. ‘You’re serious?’
‘Deadly serious.’
His expression changed. ‘You expect me to throw my mother and sister from their home?’
Georgie could see he was totally outraged by her suggestion. ‘They’re hardly going to be homeless, are they?’ His mother owned a palatial villa a few miles away and a town house in Athens and they were only the ones Georgie knew about! ‘As for Sacha, if you let her stand on her own feet instead of fighting her battles…’
‘She got married last year.’
‘Oh,