Lynne Graham: The Stephanides Pregnancy

When he had finished eating he reached for her and peeled off the golden scrap of silk and carried her to bed.

'There's just one thing} want to say… about this stuff going on at work that you don't want to talk about,' she framed in a rush.

Superb bone structure tautening, Cristos looked blank. 'What are you referring to?'

'All} wanted to say was… ~ can live without this big house and all the staff and the luxury-'

'} couldn't;' Cristos slotted in with feeling.

'Yes, you could. At the end of the day, things like that aren't what is most important.'

'Betsy… ' Cristos surveyed her with a deeply pained expression. '} very much appreciate the message that you are trying to give me but there is nothing for you to worry about. I am very wealthy and I have every intention of staying that way, pethi mou.'

'But-'

The hard, hungry onslaught of his mouth silenced her. He buried his mouth in the delicate bluish hollow below her collar-bone where a tiny pulse beat and slivers of delicious awareness awakened her body to the animal attraction of his.

'You're so sweet…' Cristos said raggedly, tugging her back against his lean, powerful length to mould the pouting tenderness of her breasts.

The pleasure was a hot and insidious seduction as powerful as an invasion force. She did not and could not resist him. Afterwards, he held her close and murmured her name and she reveled in their closeness.

'Promise me I can meet you for lunch tomorrow. I know dinner's out because you'll be working late but I want to do something to mark my birthday.'

Cristos tensed. 'If I admit I haven't got you anything yet, are you likely to string me up?'

'No…it would be too quick and clean for you. Don't be daft,' she whispered snuggling up to him forgivingly, for when he was frequently so preoccupied he barely knew what day it was she saw no reason why he should have thought to look up her birthday. 'Worry about a presses next week… tomorrow I just want you and I to get together somewhere other than your office for lunch.'

'I'll arrange it. It's the least you deserve,' he assured her.’

The next morning a member of his staff called to inform her that Cristos would meet her at a restaurant at one. Betsy took real care getting dressed up. Her linen dress was the rich colour of amber and the shade looked amazing against her skin and her hair. She was the first to arrive at the restaurant and it was so up market an establishment that she felt desperately self-conscious seated at her table in what felt like the most prominent spot in the room.

Cristos was late. Surreptitiously, she tried to raise him on his mobile phone but it seemed to be switched off. She rang his office, only to be told that he was out and had not left word of his whereabouts. Believing that he had deliberately chosen to do that so that they could eat without interruptions, she assumed he was already on his way. Time passed painfully slowly. He was late but he would come. For goodness' sake, it was her birthday! She began to rehearse witty but rather stinging comments with which to greet him. She tried his mobile again without success. She did not try his office again because she did not like advertising the reality that she was still sitting waiting for him. It was after two when she left the restaurant, cut to the bone, tears closing up her throat in a painful knot.

The limousine got stuck in traffic. She switched on the television, desperate for something, anything to take her mind off her angry, hurt mortification. She was trying to think herself into a more reasonable frame of mind. Presumably some crisis had blown up and he had simply forgotten about her. Was she so self-important she could not accept an oversight?

The news was on, a background buzz in a language she didn't yet understand. She wasn't really looking at it until she saw that it was Cristos on camera. She sat forward then, intent on the screen. He was entering a large modern building, lots of people all around him.

The crowd waiting in the foyer parted and a female figure sped towards him. It was Petrina Rhodias and she flung herself in Cristos's arms. The camera work became positively frenzied, zooming in to show that not a paper width separated the former engaged couple. Petrina looked shockingly beautiful in spite of the tears on her face. She also looked ecstatically happy and Cristos was not fighting her off, imposing a touch of married-man-decent distance or pushing her away.

Betsy hit the off button on the remote control. The car phone was ringing. She stared at it. She just knew it was Cristos calling her but she couldn't face speaking to him. She used the override button on the rear passenger door lock just to climb out into the midst of the bumper-to-bumper traffic and lose herself in the throng of shoppers in the busy street.

Cristos had stood her up on her birthday to stage a public reconciliation with Petrina. A month ago that would have struck her as being as strange as the presence of cameras at the event. She would have been ignorant of how things had once been for Cristos and Petrina. But by asking the right questions of his chattering cousins she had learned a good deal. He said Petrina had once been the leading couple in Athenian high society, two young, beautiful and very rich people from socially and commercially prominent families. Their breakup had been equally big news. The public had once paired the Stephanides heir and the Rhodias heiress like salt and pepper and Betsy had become uncomfortably aware that some people believed that regardless of his marriage Cristos would somehow end up back with Petrina. "

Was he back with Petrina? Or was what she had seen on television just a staging post on the path to that ultimate end? How did she know that Cristos had told her the truth three weeks ago when he'd sworn that he had been speaking to Spyros'daughter, Petrine, and not his former fiancée, Petrina? The truth was that Betsy had wanted to believe the explanation he had given her. When you were head over heels in love with a guy, Betsy reflected wretchedly, the last thing you wanted to do was doubt his honesty and his level of commitment.

If she even began to count the number of things that Cristos must have in common with Petrina Rhodias, she would run out of fingers. Petrina appeared to be his perfect match. But they had not been quite Adam and Eve. The fatal flaw had been Petrina's reluctance to attach the strings of fidelity to Cristos. When Betsy had conceived, the perfectly matched couple had been destroyed because Cristos could not bring himself to walk away from his own child.

But before Betsy had married Cristos, she had warned him that she did not want to be his sacrifice. Now her pride was warning her not to make a complete fool of herself… How could she fight to hang onto a guy who didn't love her? If he wanted Petrina back, there was nothing Betsy could do to change that unless she was prepared to use guilt as a weapon to keep him with her. However, she didn't want Cristos on those demeaning terms… What was the point of confronting him about Petrina? Of condemning and crying? She couldn't make Cristos love her, could she? Her only option was to surrender with dignity and go back home to London.

Betsy sat on a bench in a busy square striving to talk herself into the dignified option. But there were problems. One, she couldn't bear the idea of Petrina having Cristos. Two, she hated both of them with a vengeful passion that had nothing forgiving or dignified about it. Three, underneath the hatred, she still loved him and walking away from him was easier to think about than actually do.

Tiny shooting pains were tensing her tummy muscles. She had had those same little stabs on a couple of occasions in recent days but, as they had caused her only the most brief and minor discomfort, she had ignored them. She would mention them at her next visit to the obstetrician. A sharper stab made her draw in a surprised breath.