Robyn Donald - His Pregnant Bride - Pregnant by the Greek Tycoon / His Pregnant Princess / Pregnant - Father Needed

‘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, that’s great.’

‘They had a falling out and—’

‘Let me guess—she came back home.’

Angolos’s expression grew defensive. ‘And why should she not?’

‘Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that she’s never going to sort out her own problems while she knows you’re always going to ride to the rescue when the going gets tough?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Do you dislike my family so much?’

She released an exasperated sigh. ‘I don’t dislike them at all,’ she protested. ‘They’re not keen on me. Actually I think they’d dislike anyone who wasn’t Sonia.’

‘That’s nonsense.’

She felt her anger mount at his dismissive attitude. ‘They still think you’ll get back together.’

‘That is totally ridiculous. We divorced years ago. Who knows why we ever got married…?’ he added half to himself.

Angolos knew from personal experience that youthful infatuation might feel intense, but was by nature a transitory thing doomed to fade as the people involved matured. Maybe it was the fact he and Sonia had both wanted out of the relationship that they had remained friends—whatever the reason, the civilised arrangement owed more to luck than good judgement.

‘It could have something to do with the fact she’s beautiful, talented, sexy and can’t keep her hands off you.’

‘Were you jealous?’

Georgie laughed. She couldn’t help it, he sounded so startled. ‘You really are not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you? Of course I was jealous. What wife wouldn’t be?’

‘One that did not have a self-esteem issue.’

When he got that smug, self-satisfied look she wanted to hit him. ‘Your ex-wife told me I was just the sort of quiet, homely wife you needed.’

‘Sonia didn’t mean anything by it, I’m sure. She just says the first thing that comes into her head. She’s very spontaneous.’

The speed with which he flew to the other woman’s defence brought a bitter smile to her lips. If he had been half as eager to defend me… She pushed aside the unfinished thought and squared her jaw.

‘If I asked the staff to do anything they checked first with your mother before.’

‘Ridiculous.’

‘It was ridiculous that I put up with it, but I was very young and naïve.’ The observation made him flinch, but Georgie was too caught up in her own recollections to notice. ‘That was bad enough,’ she recalled, ‘but when they automatically deferred to Sonia as well I felt as if I was a poor relation… No, that’s not right, I didn’t feel as though I was a relation at all.’ She swallowed and gave a grim smile.

‘You’re exaggerating.’ Despite this claim, she saw for the first time a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes.

‘How would you know? You were never there.’

‘I had been away from work for a long time. I had a lot of catching up to do and my mother went out of her way to make you feel at home,’ he told her stiffly.

Sure she did, Georgie thought as she tactfully conceded the point with an inclination of her head.

Angolos’s face was a rigid mask of constraint as he replied. ‘If I had wanted Sonia I would have stayed married to her. I wanted you.’

Georgie’s stomach flipped. Her covert glance at his hard, male, deliciously streamlined body resulted in an adrenaline surge of huge proportions. She inhaled deeply and nearly fell off the wall.

‘And you wanted me…’ Her heart was hammering so fast she could barely breathe. Her knees had acquired the consistency of cotton wool.

‘And you wanted me.’ He said it again.

A scared sound rasped in her throat and her eyes lifted. ‘Things change,’ she croaked defiantly.

Angolos studied her flushed face, lingering on the softness of her trembling lips. ‘And some things don’t.’

Silently she shook her head.

He took her chin in his hand and tilted her face up to him. There was anger in the dark eyes that moved hungrily over her delicate features. ‘Why can’t you admit it?’ he rasped.

‘Because I don’t want to feel this way…when you…’ Without warning she slid off the wall and under his restraining arm. Eyes blazing, her breasts heaving, she stood defiantly glaring at him.

‘I’m not an impressionable kid. Getting me into bed won’t change my mind.’

‘It might make you feel less frustrated, however.’ Georgie was about to respond angrily to this supremely arrogant suggestion, when he added, ‘I know it would make me feel less frustrated. Where you are concerned I’ve never had any self-control…’ He watched her eyes widen with shock and his lips twisted in a self-derisive smile. ‘You haven’t the faintest idea what it does to me to be this close to you and not touch…’ he said thickly.

A surge of heat travelled through her body. ‘ Tell me …’ she demanded throatily, then almost immediately started to backtrack as though her life depended on it. ‘No…no, I didn’t mean that.’

He responded to her denial with a disturbing smile. ‘Are you sure?’ His smouldering glance dropped to her parted lips.

Georgie heard a soft moan and realised with a sense of shock that she had made it. Ashamed of the desire that drenched her shaking body in a wave of intense sexual heat, she tried to turn away, but her knees gave and she stumbled.

His arm shot out to steady her. Heads close together, their eyes meshed. ‘Do you like the idea of me wanting to touch you, Georgette?’

An image of the last time they’d made love flashed into her head. He had walked into the bedroom and she hadn’t heard him. She hadn’t known he was there until she’d turned around and found him standing with his shoulders against the door-frame, staring at her.