The Pregnant Mistress

by Sandra Marton

  “Is that the situation between you and Demetrios?”

  Now the silence was on Samantha’s end of the line. After what seemed a very long time, she sighed. “I don’t go for men like him. For one thing, he’s far too sure of himself.”

  “Authoritarian,” Amanda said. “I know the type.”

  “Exactly. Authoritarian, demanding, and used to taking charge. And I do not want to be taken charge of, Mandy. That’s not my style at all.”

  “But there’s this—this appeal…”

  “Maybe. In some, uh, some very basic way.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “You asked how it was with Nick and me when we met. Well, it was like that. The initial antipathy. The fast sizzle.” Amanda’s voice held a smile. “And then we fell in love and got married.”

  Sam shut her eyes and rubbed her forehead. Her sister had marriage on the brain.

  “Mandy,” she said gently, “believe me, this has nothing to do with love and marriage. I am not the least bit interested in love and marriage. Neither is Demetrios. This has to do with sex.”

  “Sex is part of love.”

  “For you,” Sam said gently. She stood up, walked back into her bedroom and looked at the open suitcase still lying on her bed. “It isn’t, for me. I don’t sleep around. You know that. But I don’t think going to bed with a guy has to lead to the altar, either. There have been men in my life, Amanda. Nice men. Great guys, some of them. But I’m never foolish enough to equate lust with love. I think it’s terrific that it works for you and for Carin, but that doesn’t mean it’s what I’m looking for.”

  “In that case, you’ve answered your own question. Why worry about going to Greece with Demetrios? If you end up having an affair with him, you’ll enjoy it. And if you don’t, well, then you’ve lost nothing. Right?”

  Sam thought it over. It was such a logical equation. Why hadn’t she come to it on her own?

  “Right,” she said, after a few seconds. “Definitely right. But you have to promise me, no more meddling ever again. I don’t want you fixing me up. Or trying to fix me up.”

  “Okay,” Amanda said, far too quickly.

  “I’m serious. Don’t say ‘okay’ when what you really mean is that you’ll wait a couple of months and do the same thing all over again. You understand me?”

  “Samantha—”

  “Swear! Like when we were little.”

  A sigh came over the phone. “‘Cross my heart, hope to die, honest and true, it’s not a lie.’ Are you satisfied? Look, if you don’t want to settle down, if you don’t see falling in love, getting married and starting a family as something you—”

  Sam groaned. “You’re never going to stop, are you?”

  “Oh, come on! I just said I would. And, you know, now that I think about it, I already did. Stop, I mean. If I were playing matchmaker, why would I have thought it was a terrific idea for Nick to tell Demetrios what a great translator you were?”

  “So you could get the two of us together, any way possible,” Sam said sweetly.

  Amanda chuckled. “Okay. Maybe. But,” she said, turning serious, “this is a real job. Nick says it’s going to need skill. He says that Demetrios made it very clear he wouldn’t hire you just because you’re my sister.”

  “That was before he knew I wasn’t just your sister, I was the woman he’d almost—” Sam caught her lip between her teeth. “It was before he knew who I was.”

  “That’s my point. He didn’t know who you were, just that you were a great translator. That was why he wanted to meet you.”

  Sam sighed. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  “Honestly, you’re making this more complicated than it has to…Jason? Jason, stop that right now! Give back your sister’s teething ring. Jason, you are four years old, you’re a big boy, and…Sam. Honey, your nephew just stole the baby’s toy. I’ll have to cut this short. I can call you later. Well, no. I can’t do that. We’re going out to dinner. Look, I’ll call you in the morning. First thing.”

  “I won’t be here. I’ll be on a plane, to Greece. That is, I’m supposed to be on a plane, to Greece.”

  “You sure about this?”

  “No. Oh, not because of what might happen between Demetrios and me. I mean, what you said is right. If something did happen, if we got involved…But we won’t. In fact, after this afternoon, I can’t even figure out why I thought I was interested in him at all. He’s everything I dislike in a man. Controlling. Overbearing, self-centered, disgustingly macho and too damned good-looking to be let loose.”

  “Yum, yum.”

  Sam couldn’t help it; she laughed. Amanda laughed, too, then cleared her throat.

  “Sis?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I know what you just said. I know what I said…but do me a favor and watch yourself, okay? I guess I’m ready to admit that you’re not looking for Mr. Right, but that doesn’t mean your heart can’t be broken.”

  “My heart isn’t the part of my anatomy the Greek God wants,” Sam said dryly. “And all I want from him is the money he’s promised for my services. It’s going to be business, nothing else.”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  “Yes, and some of them—me, for example—actually mean it.” Sam winced as a baby’s sobs and a little boy’s shrieks rose to a deafening pitch. “Kiss the kids for me,” she shouted, “and don’t worry. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

  “You sure? Because if you’re not—”

  “I’m positive. I’ll call you from Greece.”

  She would, Sam thought, as she put down the phone, unless she changed her mind about going. That was still her privilege.

  By ten, she’d finished packing. She scrubbed her face, brushed her teeth and got into bed wearing cotton panties and an oversize T-shirt she’d bought at a flea market in Paris for no better reason than that she liked the parade of poodles high-kicking across its front. It was late and she was tired, and if she woke up with doubts, she thought as she set her alarm clock, she could always meet the irritating Mr. Karas in the lobby and tell him what he could do with his job.

  Satisfied, Sam punched her pillow into submission and fell asleep.

  * * *

  By ten, Demetrios was still pacing the floor of the bedroom in his New York penthouse, high above Fifth Avenue.

  He was not in a good mood, a fact he’d made abundantly clear hours earlier to his cook when she’d asked if he was ready for dinner, and to his houseman, who’d committed the unpardonable sin of smiling when he greeted him.

  Demetrios had snarled at the both of them. Once inside his bedroom, he’d shed his jacket, undone his tie, opened the top buttons of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves. Then he’d caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror, sighed, picked up the intercom and made apologies, however brief, first to the cook and then to the houseman.

  Why let his anger out on them, when the person who’d caused it was Samantha Brewster?

  But his temper didn’t cool down, not even when he tried diverting it by dictating some notes into a small digital recorder.

  “Memo to my broker,” he said, as he paced the bedroom. “If the market share on Invixa slips again, you are to contact me immediately, before…”

  Before what? How could he concentrate on business when he was still trying to figure out why in hell he’d hired Samantha Brewster for a job she probably couldn’t do, despite all Nick’s hype? A woman could be beautiful and still be intelligent. He was not foolish enough to think the combination impossible. But this woman went beyond beautiful. She was like a cat: sleek, soft and elegant, purring and stretching under a man’s hand as if she desired his touch before suddenly turning into a spitting demon that was all teeth and claws.

  She was a tigress, and he had just arranged to spend four months with her at his side

  Demetrios groaned, tossed the recorder on the bed and stalked to the window. What in hell had possessed him to employ her? I
t was a ridiculous question. He knew the answer. Lust. Lust had possessed him, and at his age, with his experience of women, admitting to such a thing was disgraceful.

  He’d listened to his hormones instead of his head and hired a woman who could not, would not be able to do the kind of subtle translations he needed. And even if, by some miracle, it turned out that she could, did he really want her around as a temptation?

  “No,” he growled.

  Hell, no. He did not. He had not come this far in life by acting on impulse, by doing things that were rash. He studied companies before he invested in them, ideas before he let himself believe in them. He hired only the best people, and never before seeing their references.

  Until now.

  All he’d done was mention his need for a highly competent linguist to Nick. And Nick said, well, as it happened, he knew just such a person. She was his sister-in-law. Yes, one of Amanda’s sisters.

  Demetrios had nodded, but he hadn’t been impressed. First Amanda had a sister who couldn’t find her own man; now, she had one with a degree—a post-graduate degree, Nick had emphasized—in an amazing number of languages. It seemed too much to swallow but Nick was his friend so he’d said, well, wasn’t that interesting? And when Nick asked if he’d like to meet her, what could he have said but yes?

  What he’d meant was that he’d meet with her as a courtesy. And if, by some miracle, she seemed competent, he’d made it clear that he was promising nothing except to have her credentials vetted. There was no rush. He had translators back home that he’d used before. It was only that he suspected they were too academic, too literal for situations in which inference might be just as important as accuracy.

  Demetrios put his palms against the cool window glass and stared down at the city lights twinkling far below him.

  All those intentions had vanished when he’d discovered that Nick’s supposedly brilliant sister-in-law was the very woman he’d almost made love to that night in Brazil, discovered, as well, that she was as beautiful in the flesh as she’d been in his memory all these weeks.

  One look at Samantha and all his plans and logic had flown out the window. He’d ended up offering her much more money than he’d intended—much more than she’d expected, judging by the look on her face. And if that weren’t enough, just to be sure she took the bait, he’d framed his job offer as a challenge, the kind he knew, instinctively, she would not be able to turn down.

  Demetrios shook his head.

  So much for the conventions by which he lived. He’d grown up in a household in which the regulations were legion; he had not made the mistake of repeating that pattern of rigidity but he did have a few immutable rules by which he lived.

  He never did anything carelessly. He didn’t behave precipitously. And he never mixed business with pleasure.

  So, what had he done this afternoon? Broken every one of those rules, that was what. He was flying to Greece with a woman who might not speak French or Italian any more fluently than he did, a woman he’d almost taken to bed, a woman who could still stir his passion even now, after she’d walked out on him, made a fool of him, treated him as if he were dirt.

  Had he lost his mind? His own stupidity enraged him…but there was a solution. You had to know when to cut your losses.

  This, most assuredly, was the time.

  Demetrios grabbed his suit jacket, dug through the pockets. Nick had given him Samantha’s address and phone number. He’d pulled out the slip of paper when he put her into the taxi. What had he done with it after that?

  There it was, in his breast pocket. He glanced at it, crossed the room, started to pick up the phone…and saw the time. Midnight. Was he really going to phone at this hour and tell her he’d changed his mind about employing her? No, he was not. She might read something into it, might assume there was some urgency in his need to call off their deal.

  Besides, it would be far more pleasurable to give her the news in person.

  He would go to Samantha’s apartment in the morning, as planned. He’d wait in the lobby and when she appeared, he’d be polite, soften the blow with a check that was the equivalent of a month’s pay and say that he’d thought things over and changed his mind. If she insisted on a reason, he’d tell her that he really wasn’t sure she had the skills necessary for the job.

  Yes, he thought, with a little smile of contentment. His smile broadened as he undressed. It was good to feel back in command again. That was where a man should always be, where a woman was concerned.

  Still smiling, definitely satisfied, he got ready for bed, punched his pillow into submission, and fell soundly asleep.

  * * *

  He awoke at six, well before the buzz of his alarm.

  He shaved, showered, dressed. The penthouse lay draped in early morning darkness when Demetrios tossed his carryon bag into the back seat of the black Ferrari he kept in the garage beneath the building. He drove through quiet city streets. It was a Sunday, when New Yorkers slept in.

  Samantha’s apartment building was shabby, its saving grace the tiny pocket park behind it. He frowned as he parked his car. No wonder his job offer had brought such a shocked expression to her face. Clearly, she needed the money, but her finances were not his problem.

  He trotted up the steps to the front door. At least it was locked, he thought grimly…No. It wasn’t. The knob turned easily and he stepped into a small lobby. A woman should not live alone in such insecure circumstances—but that was not his concern, either.

  Demetrios glanced at his watch. He was a few minutes early. He shifted from foot to foot. It was almost as cold inside the lobby as it was in the street…if you were foolish enough to call this miniscule space a lobby.

  He looked at his watch again, then at the mailboxes lining the wall to his left. S. Brewster, Apartment 401. At least she had the presence of mind not to list her entire name and let the world know that she was a woman who lived alone.

  She did live alone, didn’t she?

  Not that that was his affair, either.

  Dammit, a man could get claustrophobia trapped in a space hardly larger than a telephone booth, breathing in air that was redolent of cabbage. He glanced at the staircase ahead and sighed. Four flights to climb, he thought, and started up. Was that how she kept that beautiful body trim?

  His frown deepened.

  He hadn’t come here to think about Samantha’s body or how she lived her life. He’d come to tell her, in person, that their deal was off, and to give her the check he’d tucked into his pocket.

  Her apartment was at the top of the stairs. He took a breath, cleared his throat, ran a hand through his hair…

  “Hell,” he muttered, and stabbed the doorbell with his finger.

  Nothing happened. He scowled, glanced at his watch. She was supposed to meet him downstairs in a few minutes. Wasn’t she up? Wasn’t she dressed? What kind of competency did such behavior suggest?

  Not much, he thought coldly. It was a good thing he’d decided not to hire her.

  He rang the bell. Rang it again. And again. And…

  The door opened a crack, stopped by the length of a security chain. He could see half of her face as she peered out at him. An eye. A cheek. A tumble of wet, curling, autumn-dark hair.

  “You,” she said tightly.

  “Me,” Demetrios said, just as tightly. “Open the door, Miss Brewster.”

  “Why? What are you doing here? You’re not due here for another twenty minutes.”

  “Ten minutes. Will you please open this door?”

  Sam hesitated. What did he want? She’d just come out of the shower. She wasn’t dressed for a confrontation with Demetrios. She knew how this would go. She’d tell him she’d decided against the job. He’d try to talk her out of the decision. It would be better to hold the discussion under more formal circumstances.

  “Miss Brewster.” His voice was sharp and commanding. “I am not in the habit of discussing business in tenement hallways.”

  Sam glo
wered at him. “This is not a tenement, Mr. Karas, but I suppose someone born with a 24-karat spoon in his mouth thinks any place without hot and cold running servants is a tenement.”

  She shut the door, undid the chain, then flung the door open. What did it matter if she was wearing a terry-cloth robe she’d owned since college? If her feet were bare, her hair dripping onto the carpet, her face free of makeup? She didn’t have to look like something out of Vogue to tell Demetrios to take his job and shove it.

  “Very well,” she said, her tone the equal of his, “come in.”

  He stepped inside and wasted no time. “You’re fired,” he said curtly.

  Sam folded her arms. “You can’t fire me.”

  “I can do whatever I choose, and I choose to fire you.”

  “Not if I’ve already quit.”

  He stared at her. “What do you mean, you’ve already quit? You can’t do that!”

  “But I have. I don’t want to work for you.”

  He hadn’t expected that. Sam could tell because the scowl on his face turned to consternation. Lovely, she thought with delight. Had anyone ever walked out on the Greek God? She doubted it. Not an employee, if he paid them as well as he’d intended to pay her. Not a woman. What woman would turn away from him if he wanted her?

  I would, she told herself, and lifted her chin.

  “I see,” he said. “You live in a place like this, and you turn down a job that pays as well as the one I’ve offered you?”

  “A place like what?” Sam glared at him. “This is how real people live, Mr. Karas, but I guess you wouldn’t know that.”

  “This building has no lock on the outside door. That security chain you hide behind could be taken out by one determined push…”

  What was he doing? How she lived, where she lived, was none of his business. Hadn’t he reminded himself of that just a little while ago?

  “Unless,” he said softly, “you don’t live alone.”

  Sam narrowed her eyes. “Thank you for your concern, but I don’t need it or your money. I repeat, Mr. Karas. I quit.”