The Petrakos Bride Read online

  But if Giannis was no longer engaged there was no reason why she shouldn’t contact him and ask him to help her out. Naturally she would have preferred to remain proudly independent—not least because she had not told him the truth when she might have done. But all of a sudden she was painfully and guiltily aware that she should be putting her baby first and her pride and her feelings last.

  It was months since Giannis had given her the embossed business card, but she still had it in her purse. Before she could lose her momentum, she went into the shopping centre to find a public phone. She punched out his mobile number very slowly. Her heart was beating so fast and her mind was so full of apprehensive thoughts that she very nearly dropped the receiver before the call was answered.

  Giannis spoke in Greek, which unnerved her.

  ‘Hello…it’s me,’ she announced stiltedly. ‘I mean, sorry…it’s Maddie.’

  At the other end of the phone, Giannis rose from his seat. Every predatory instinct on instant hyper-alert, he murmured as smoothly as silk, ‘I’ve been hoping to hear from you. Where are you?’

  The rich, accented timbre of his deep voice touched memories Maddie had not known she had, and brought a surge of unexpected moisture to her eyes. ‘I’m in Reading,’ she said gruffly. ‘I need to see you.’

  ‘Any time. Give me your address—I’ll send a car to pick you up,’ Giannis suggested, determined to pin her down to an exact geographical location.

  Not yet ready to advance that amount of trust, Maddie spread uneasy fingers over the gentle swell of her stomach. ‘No. I’ll get the train to London this afternoon.’

  An expert negotiator, Giannis knew when not to push. He had picked up on that audible note of wariness. ‘Where do you want to meet? My apartment?’

  ‘No…’ But her mind, she discovered, was a total blank. The doctor had said it was hormones, but sometimes she felt as if her brain had been hijacked.

  She had no objection, therefore, to Giannis stepping straight into the breach with the immediate assurance that she would be met at the station and brought to a hotel where they could dine.

  ‘It’ll be very relaxed.’ Giannis was determined to do and say whatever it took to draw her out of hiding, though he was using persuasive tactics that were utterly new to him.

  Maddie wondered dully how hungry he would feel after she had broken her news. Since she could hardly take care of that in a public restaurant, she felt she had to say in warning, ‘I sort of need to talk to you in private.’

  Whatever, Giannis thought, energised by a wave of satisfaction and impatience. She had missed him. Of course she had. He had picked up on a hint of tears in her voice, but even so she had stayed away for over three bloody months! Strange how a woman who could be so gentle could also be as stubborn as a mule and as hard as granite. He realised that he was as angry with her as he was pleased, and it was a volatile combination. But stronger than either prompting ran a deep, atavistic need to stamp her as his again, with the raw, physical intimacy that would ensure she never ran in the wrong direction again. This enthralling imagery in mind, Giannis cancelled all his afternoon appointments with a casualness that shocked his personal assistants.

  Even though it was a hot day, Maddie wore a long jacket which, amazingly, did a good job of concealing her changing shape. Nemos greeted her with a warm, welcoming smile and shepherded her through the busy station. She alighted in a quiet side street. The lavish hotel foyer was wrapped in the intimidating silence of an exclusive establishment. Her nervous tension increased, her palms dampening.

  ‘Mr Petrakos is in here…’A door was spread back and she saw him for herself: tall, vibrantly dark and devastatingly handsome, he wore a silver-grey business suit with the classy sheen of madly expensive silk. He was all she saw—the only element in the room that she could focus on. A tiny pulse was beating too fast in the hollow of her collarbone.

  His first thought was that she looked incredibly lovely, like a painting brought to life. She looked tiny and fragile in a voluminous black jacket which acted as a vivid foil for her Titian mane of curls and pure white skin.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ he murmured softly.

  ‘Oh, no—I mean…’

  Giannis strode forward and offered to take her coat. He didn’t like the way she was hovering, or the evasiveness of her green eyes. He had never been so tense. He was trying not to think of what he would do if she decided to walk away again.

  ‘No…no, it’s okay.’ Maddie backed away, and then thought how ridiculous she must look—how pointless it was for her to try and delay the announcement that she had to make. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

  ‘You’re very jumpy? I can see that for myself.’

  Maddie breathed in deep. ‘About three months ago I told you a lie.’

  ‘You’re forgiven,’ Giannis asserted huskily, feasting his appreciative and somewhat amused gaze on her, because he was convinced that what she termed a lie would only qualify as the most minor fib. After all, nobody knew better than he did that she had sterling principles set in stone.

  ‘But you don’t know what I lied about yet.’

  His gilded bronze eyes narrowed and raked over her, lingering on the soft pink fullness of her mouth. ‘You look amazing. You’d have to be a guy to understand. Promise to come home with me tonight and I won’t even ask what the lie was, pedhi mou.’

  Maddie could not initially credit his response, and then intimate and deeply embarrassing memories stirred and surfaced. He exuded hot, sexual energy, and he had taught her the meaning of exquisite pleasure. A heavy flush heated her entire skin surface. She could not deny that in Morocco she had been with him every step of the way. Furthermore, the extent of the passion he’d awakened had shocked her. She had not even known that it was possible for her to want a man to the extent that he could make her want him. So was it any wonder that he did not take her very seriously?

  ‘Do you ever think of anything other than the bedroom stuff?’ she asked in a stifled tone of discomfiture.

  ‘Not around you…it colours everything,’ Giannis confided in a driven undertone, opting for the honesty that she had insisted she wanted from him. ‘It even gets in the way of business. Perhaps if I had you all to myself for an unspecified length of time, and I could live out my every erotic desire, I could think of other things…occasionally.’

  ‘Like…as in having a serious conversation?’ Maddie prompted tightly, as she unbuttoned her jacket with trembling hands.

  ‘Don’t hold your breath, glikia mou.’ His lean, strong face taut, his brilliant dark eyes flashed languorous gold above his bronzed cheekbones. ‘I’m not into those.’

  Maddie yanked off her jacket in a decidedly challenging fashion and pitched it at a chair, fearful that at any moment she would lose her nerve. She also hated herself for the fact that she really didn’t want to show him her pregnant body. He had found her unpregnant body deeply attractive and sensual.

  ‘And possibly you aren’t either,’ Giannis added thickly, hoping very much that she was going to continue with the strip.

  He didn’t care how many serious conversations he had to be subjected to afterwards. Indeed, he dimly accepted that that might well be the price. She was a little conscience on legs, heavily prone to feeling bad about his natural human flaws. He just wished she could see how simple everything would be if she could only think as he did. She was back. They were together. He wanted her to come home with him. What was wrong with a celebration? There was no need to discuss the fact that she now had her own discreet surveillance team of three, who would ensure that she never got lost again. No, he didn’t make the same mistake twice.

  ‘G-Giannis…?’ Maddie stammered, the tip of her tongue sliding out to moisten her lower lip in the heavy silence. She had assumed that he would immediately notice that her trim waist had vanished.

  Instead his smouldering gaze was locked to the sinfully ripe contours of her moist pink lips. ‘I love your mouth…’

  Maddie realised that her black T-shirt and stretchy skirt were doing a better job of concealment than she had expected. Sucking in her breath, in the pathetic hope that some of her tummy would go in with it, she muttered unevenly, ‘Don’t you notice anything?’

  On an erotic high of anticipation, Giannis was taking his time about inspecting her wonderfully rounded shape. The voluptuous curve of her bosom left him spellbound, and his scrutiny lingered there with the purist’s attention to detail. He was picturing her on his bed, in his office, in his apartment, on his private jet. Always there for him, always available. ‘Your breasts are amazing…’

  Maddie went scarlet with rage and stress and disbelief and turned sideways. ‘What about my stomach?’

  Sleek ebony brows pleating, Giannis stared. Black lashes lowering, he blinked, too taken aback to instantly grasp why she should look from that angle as if she had swallowed a cushion. ‘Enormous…’

  Her eyes smarted; her face tightened and paled. Well, he had shot straight from the hip—and she had always known that he would find her rotund proportions deeply unappealing, hadn’t she?

  ‘Pregnant,’ Giannis almost whispered in Greek. And then he said it again for good measure in English. ‘But you can’t be pregnant because you said you were not.’

  A silence full of dangerous sparks began to simmer in the tense atmosphere.

  ‘Isn’t that so?’ Giannis murmured lethally.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MADDIE winced at that direct hit. ‘Yes, but—’

  Giannis focused on her with a fierce intensity that made her feel horribly like a condemned prisoner in the dock. ‘Is this the lie you mentioned?’

  Maddie nodded reluctant confirmation.

  Giannis lifted a strong hand and brought it down again in a compelling motion. A warning flare of gold was glimmering in his gaze. ‘You are not forgiven.’

  ‘I realise that this is a shock for you…’

  Outrage was roaring through Giannis, who prided himself on his control of his temper. It was bad enough that she had disappeared, but that she should have done so when she carried his child incensed him. All those wasted months when they might have been together. ‘It is a great deal more than a shock—’

  Coppery red curls streamed back from her oval face as her chin came up. ‘A disaster? That is how you labelled the possibility of me conceiving.’

  ‘That is unjust. You’re rewinding right back to the first day we met to quote a casual comment?’ Giannis shot back at her, fast as the speed of light.

  ‘What was casual about it? It wasn’t casual for me,’ Maddie protested painfully. ‘I may not have known it that day, but you were engaged. Yes, I accept that it was casual for you, and of course you didn’t want me to have your child. Why can’t you just admit that me falling pregnant is the worst situation you can imagine?’

  His lean, darkly handsome face hardened. ‘Do not tell me how I think or how I feel,’ he intoned in sizzling disdain. ‘Don’t make excuses for yourself either!’

  Maddie dealt him a defensive glance. ‘I’m not—’

  ‘You are—and it makes what you have done even more unacceptable. So I didn’t think you would conceive?’ Giannis flung up his hands and contrived to shrug his indifference to that angle of argument. His Greek heritage had never been more apparent to her. ‘But you did conceive and the instant that occurred everything changed for both of us.’

  ‘How?’ Maddie realised that she had very much underestimated the depth of his anger.

  Stunning eyes fiercely intent, Giannis studied her. He moved away a little to get a better view. The lush mound of her once flat stomach was fast becoming a source of fascination to him. He could not recall ever looking at a pregnant woman before. He had not had the slightest interest. But this was different—she was different in that starring role. Somewhere deep within his male psyche a primitive glow of satisfaction burned with his every fresh appraisal of her altered figure. He was fertile. She was carrying his seed in her belly.

  ‘The child is mine,’ he pointed out. ‘From the first moment I had a right to be involved in every decision you made.’

  Maddie was squirming, wishing he would stop glancing at her tummy as if he expected her to expand in girth before his very eyes, like Jack’s beanstalk. ‘That’s not how I see it.’

  ‘Then you had better learn to see it my way. Look at what a hash you have already made of things!’ Giannis launched in sudden fierce accusation. ‘How dare you go away without telling me you were expecting my child? What am I? Such a tyrant that you exclude me from what I should have known from the outset?’

  ‘I have not made a hash of things!’ Green eyes bright emerald with defiance, Maddie screwed her hands into fists. ‘I thought I was doing you and your fiancée a favour.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Giannis raked back at her with lethal derision. ‘You took off without telling me because I was engaged. That was my punishment and your revenge—’

  ‘That’s an awful thing to accuse me of…As if I’d be so petty and selfish and downright spiteful!’

  ‘The first thing you can do is tell me where you have been all these weeks,’ Giannis informed her grimly.

  Her brow was tight with tension and she rubbed it with her fingers. ‘I moved to Southend, but I had trouble with the landlord so I had to move on again—’

  ‘What sort of trouble?’

  Her soft mouth compressed. ‘He kept on calling in to see me and it gave me the creeps.’

  ‘I would soon have dealt with him,’ Giannis growled, inflamed by that admission. ‘Why did you not phone me then?’

  ‘It wasn’t any big deal. But…’ Maddie worried at her lower lip and sighed unhappily, feeling ashamed that she had not managed the business of surviving more efficiently. ‘That second move left me broke, and it was hard to get work. With me in this condition, not every job was suitable either.’

  Dragging his smouldering gaze from her, Giannis stood by the window, his tall well-built frame rigid, his broad shoulders straight as an axe handle. He was deeply aggrieved by her failure to approach him for support. Every word she spoke increased his displeasure. No woman had ever denied him his proper place in her life. No woman had ever behaved as though he could not be trusted.

  ‘So what happened to those fine principles of yours?’ he derided. ‘You were so proud of your ethics. Where were they when you walked away from me without telling me that you had become the mother of my child?’

  Maddie shifted uncomfortably. ‘I really did think I was doing the best thing—’

  ‘But I listened when you talked about your principles and I trusted you.’ Giannis directed a chilling look of censure at her. ‘Yet you lied to me—’

  ‘It was an emotional time for me. I was feeling very guilty,’ Maddie muttered unhappily. ‘But I do see now that if I was involved in the break-up of your engagement then I shouldn’t have gone away after I discovered that I was pregnant.’

  Giannis stiffened, and his brilliant dark eyes screened to a very wary glitter below his dense black lashes. That particular association of ideas disturbed him. She was moving way too far and too fast for him. ‘There was no connection. You played no part in the break-up,’ he emphasized, smooth as polished steel. ‘I hope that eases your conscience.’

  ‘Yes.’

  But Maddie was quite unaware of her conscience at that moment. His sardonic response had struck like a dagger in the heart, and she felt so wounded by his blunt rejection that she did not dare to look at him. From that hurt came a deeper self-knowledge and a horrid sense of humiliation. The instant she had learnt that Giannis and Krista had split up she had grasped the first excuse to contact him and rush back to his side. How revealing was that? How full of herself she must have sounded when she made the assumption that their affair might have led to his change of heart about marrying Krista! She wanted to cringe.

  ‘Don’t tell me any more lies. I expect more from you, pedhi mou,’ Giannis concluded, keenly appraising her small figure again. Even as he looked, his anger at the way she had kept him in the dark steadily receded. Though pregnant, she was gorgeous. He was beginning to adjust to the shock of her new body shape. In fact he was finding her burgeoning figure distinctly pleasing. After all he, he acknowledged, was responsible for that change.

  Maddie, on the other hand, was feeling more than a little fragile. He had knocked the emotional stuffing out of her. She was just a woman he had slept with who had got in the family way. As she brushed her curls back from her brow, her tummy gave a warning lurch of nausea. She was nothing special to him. Her forehead dampened with perspiration. But he had somehow become so very special to her. Terrified of being sick in his vicinity, she struggled to block that painful passage of thought. She snatched in a discreet gulp of oxygen in an effort to combat the wave of dizziness consuming her and backed blindly down into a seat.

  ‘Giannis, I…’ As the giddy attack of nausea worsened, Maddie leapt up again in a sudden movement, intending to leave the room. But darkness folded in on her like a suffocating blanket and she keeled over in a dead faint.

  For a split second Giannis just surveyed her in horror. But then he reacted quickly. He hit the alarm on his watch to call his security team, and crouched down beside her to put her in the recovery position.

  Maddie swam back to consciousness and loosed a startled moan as a camera flash almost blinded her. ‘What…what on earth?’

  Mounting the steps to doors already flung wide for their entrance, Giannis tightened his arms round her slight frame. ‘Paparazzi,’ he growled. ‘They were waiting outside the hotel and they followed us here. Blood-sucking vultures!’

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘A private clinic. I want you checked out.’

  ‘But I saw a doctor this morning,’ Maddie argued.

  ‘He didn’t do you much good,’ Giannis told her forcefully.

  ‘I haven’t eaten since breakfast, which was stupid of me,’ she groaned. ‘Put me down, for goodness’ sake. I can walk perfectly well!’

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