Carole Mortimer - The Balfour Legacy

‘Lois has nothing to do with us,’ he dismissed that line of argument.

‘The newspapers told it differently.’

‘You know all about newspapers, cara. They lie—or at the very least they tamper with the truth.’

‘You left that nightclub with her clinging to you like a limpet.’ Mia was unimpressed by his line of defence.

‘I delivered her home. I did not sleep with her.’

‘The way I see it, Nikos, you don’t sleep with any of your women.’

As a stab at their current sleeping arrangements Mia knew she’d hit her mark when his dark eyes shuttered and his mouth went tight.

‘No response?’ she sniped at him. ‘No smart comeback aimed to put me in my place?’

‘No,’ he murmured, looking away from her altogether.

‘Well, there you are, then.’ She looked away too. ‘You and I do not have the same view as to what marriage is supposed to be about.’

‘You’re pregnant with my child,’ he clipped out. ‘Such an event does not require mutual insight, it requires damage control.’

‘Damage control—?’ So hurt by that comment, she could not hold in her choked gasp. ‘And you wonder why I won’t say yes to you when you can come out with a cold statement like that?’

‘I’m trying to be practical—’

‘As you have been with our sleeping arrangements?’ She could not resist saying it, then yanked in a tight breath. ‘You get me pregnant. You expect me to marry you. But you don’t want to sleep in the same bed as me,’ she shook out. ‘I suppose you will also expect to continue to live your life as you have always done while I sit at home alone getting fat!’

‘So what do you want?’ he angled back at her.

A man who wants to marry me because he cannot live without me! Mia screamed inside her head. ‘Not a man who thinks of marriage as damage control,’ she muttered. ‘I would rather return to Italy and bring my child up alone than throw my life away on a man like that.’

‘ Our child,’ he gritted out. ‘And you are going nowhere with or without the marriage. I will bring up my own child, Mia,’ he stated very grimly. ‘I will not let your silly stubborn truculence push me out of the frame over some—crazy issues you have about the quality of my commitment.’

The problem was there was no quality about it! Hurt tears clogged her throat. ‘Can we go back?’ she husked. ‘I don’t think I can eat anything.’

His growling sigh was driven. ‘You are such damn high maintenance—!’ he raked out.

Mia widened her blue eyes in simmering astonishment. ‘I don’t believe that you dared to say that!’ she choked. ‘I have cost you nothing! Not even the price of accommodation since the flat I used in London was yours anyway and was already standing vacant!’

‘I did not mean—’

‘Shut up!’ she heaved out. ‘You know what you are, Nikos?’ she hit back at him shakily. ‘You are an arrogant, selfish—cheapskate!’ Almost tumbling over the word because she was not certain she had said it correctly, she knew she’d hit the word exactly right when he tensed like a board and pushed up his aggressive chin.

‘So I f-fancied you—big deal,’ she railed on an angry high now. ‘So you condescended to take what I was putting on offer—Great, thank you, grazie tanto , amore mia —not! For what did it cost you? A reasonably priced dinner and a few hours of listening to me bore you to death, followed by a posh party and a swift bit of pleasure in your bed before you turned on me like an ice man and threw me out! If that makes me high maintenance, then may God forgive you for what you usually shower on to your women! No wonder they say beware of Greeks bearing gifts!’

‘Have you finished?’ the ice man delivered from between his clenched white teeth. ‘If so, then may I finish what I was about to say before you blew my head off? Yes? Sì? Ne? ’ His sarcasm ripped like a razor through Mia’s trembling flesh. ‘I was about to add emotionally ,’ he incised with deliberate precision. ‘High maintenance emotionally ,’ he repeated. ‘And a bloody irritating pain in the neck!’

‘Don’t forget juvenile!’ Mia tagged on for herself.

The car came to a standstill. Without uttering another word Nikos opened his door and threw himself out. Mia continued to sit, simmering in silence, while she waited for him to come around and open her door. She could have got out under her own steam but she did not want to. If she had been given a choice—and he had allowed her very few choices over the past twelve hours—she would be staying right where she was!

‘Leave the temper in the car,’ he rasped as she arrived in front of him.

Refusing to give such a command mind space, Mia tossed her hair back from her face with an icy defiance that made Nikos grit his teeth.

Women were an absolute blast, he thought angrily as they walked together across the pavement towards one of the most exclusive eating establishments in town. They did not know when to behave themselves—or when a man had taken enough of their unbelievably volatile and inconsistent nonsense! She had not been so argumentative when he’d brought her down to straddle him during the flight over here and kissed her snappy mouth.

And, Theos , this was not the time to be recalling what they’d done next, when she was already firing him up again, because she looked nothing short of dazzling in full angry flow! Her eyes were alight, her mouth pumped and pouting because he’d cornered her just before they left his apartment and tried to kiss her out of her stubbornness. The kiss had been yet another ground-shaking experience—without the satisfying follow-up because her stubborn shell remained fixed in place.

But her sensational mouth still wore his kiss on it in defiance—and he wanted to kiss it again, right now!

‘Take care,’ he husked, taking hold of her arm as she went to negotiate the shallow step in front of the restaurant entrance.

She was wearing the usual lethal high heels and he made a silent promise to himself that he was going to chuck them all out the first opportunity he got! She was pregnant, for God’s sake. Carrying his baby. One accidental stumble off those ridiculous heels and it could all be over—

Something shockingly like panic struck down through his body, pulling him to a shuddering halt. Mia glanced up at him in frowning surprise and his heart made a weird kind of dive down to his toes.

‘What?’ she asked, glaring at him as if she was expecting yet another row to erupt.

‘Nothing,’ he said, pulling himself together. ‘I just remembered something I should have done before we left,’ he lied, feeling strangely light-headed as he reached around her to open the restaurant door.

She walked ahead of him into the foyer with a curvaceous glide of purple satin, short and fitted and fashionably edgy, her fabulous hair a silken stream of black waves that brushed her tense narrow back.

Purple for poison or purple for passion, he mused grimly. Tonight she was both.

The owner of the restaurant came hurrying up to greet him. He had to pull on his social face when he did not want to, smiling pleasantly while Mia stood beside him, thankfully donning her social smile too. So he’d taught her something, Nikos thought with bleak satire.

They were about to move on through to the restaurant proper when the door flew open and a group of newcomers came in. It was instinct that made him turn to send them a fleeting glance.

Nikos froze as an icy shaft of instant recognition locked up his muscles. No, he thought, this cannot be happening. He tried to deflect Mia’s attention when she turned to see where he was looking, but he was too late and she froze too.