The Stephanides Pregnancy

by Lynne Graham

  He curved his arms round her very gently and lifted her. Unexpectedly her eyes filled with tears and she kept her eyes tight shut, willing. them back. But when he settled her down on a bed, she began sitting up. 'I'm OK-'

  'You're not,' Cristos delivered. 'It's my fault you collapsed. I upset you. I shouldn't have been arguing

  with you-' -

  'Pregnant women get dizzy… goes with the territory,' she muttered chokily, feeling horribly sorry for herself.

  Cristos looked unconvinced. 'At least take it easy until the doctor arrives.'

  'Why did you call a doctor?' she groaned. 'There was no need for that.'

  In due course a suave older man from the private sector arrived. He was cheerful and brisk but he told her that she was exhausted and needed to take more care of herself. Cristos made no attempt to conceal his concern. She was almost willing to admit that she was so tired she could hardly lift her head from the pillow. 'I'll have a nap,' she finally conceded.

  Cristos watched her from the foot of the bed, his spiky black lashes low over his incisive dark golden eyes. 'I should warn you that I haven't changed my mind, pethi mou. I still intend to marry you. I want the right to look after you and my proper place in my child's life. You will never convince me that there is a better option.'

  'Right now I'm too sleepy to try.' Her softened green eyes lingered on his heartbreakingly handsome features and then, with a self-conscious flush, she turned her head away. 'I'm sorry I didn't believe you'd stick to the promises you made,' she muttered unevenly. 'I know you think you've come up with the best solution and I respect that. But women don't have to marry these days just to raise a child.'

  'A Stephanides woman does.'

  He was immoveable as a rock and she was amused.

  She drifted off into a heavy sleep with a faint curve to her weary mouth and slept for several hours. She had wakened and sat up, feeling very much refreshed by her nap when Cristos came in and extended a phone to her. 'For you… your parents want to speak to you…'

  ,'My parents?' she mouthed in disbelief back at him, but the door was already closing on his exit.

  'Betsy…' Corinne Mitchell said chirpily. 'Your father and I just couldn't wait a minute longer to phone you. While you were resting, Cristos called us and introduced himself-'

  'Cristos did… what?' Betsy prompted weakly. 'He's really worried about you doing too much… and he's dying to meet us-'

  ·Betsy had gone rigid. 'Is he really?'

  'I have to confess that we are very taken with him.

  I know he's so handsome and he has lovely manners when you talk to him. And he seems to be terribly. well off. I know you think money shouldn't be important but I like a man to be a good provider-'

  'Cristos is insisting that he will pay for the wedding,' Betsy's father chimed in, evidently on an extension line.

  'Yes, he's so generous and considerate,' Corinne Mitchell enthused. 'Mind you, I would normally be a little upset about your being pregnant-'

  'Cristos told you?' Betsy yelped in appalled embarrassment.

  'But you'll be married soon enough and at least he's not expecting you to be happy about being an unmarried mother like Rory does Gemma.'

  'No, I must say you can't fault Cristos there,' her father pronounced with hearty approval. 'He can't wait to put a ring on your finger.'

  'Where did you get the idea that Cristos and I might be getting married?' Betsy asked rather shrilly.

  'When he suggested we draw up a full list of the guests we want to invite,' Corinne explained with palpable excitement. 'He said we could ask as many people as we like. Don't tease me, Betsy. We're just over the moon for you. I've already phoned half of our relatives to tell them our good news. Maybe a big wedding will put Rory in the notion.'

  'It's a relief that your sister has made up with Rory,' her father commented. 'You'll be able to have Gemma as a bridesmaid-'

  'No, she won't!' his wife interrupted in dismay. 'Gemma wants to be a bride too much to act as Betsy's bridesmaid. Much better just to have little Sophie.'

  Those frank opinions having been exchanged, Betsy managed to finish the call by promising to ring back later. She was filled with shaken disbelief at the trap that Cristos had sprung on her without conscience. How could he have sunk so low? She could not credit that he had chosen to use her unsuspecting parents to put pressure on her. Her poor mother had started telling people that her eldest daughter was getting hitched, and if no wedding came off Corinne Mitchell would be devastated and humiliated.

  Betsy found Cristos in the drawing room, talking on a phone in Greek. Brilliant dark eyes met hers with stubborn cool. He set the phone aside.

  'How could you?' she pressed.

  'Some day you'll look back on this and appreciate that 1 had your best interests at heart,' Cristos asserted smoothly.

  'All you had at heart was your usual determination to do exactly what you want to do because you always think you're right!'

  'You could have a point.' Cristos seemed determined to maintain a low profile in the aggression stakes.

  'How am 1 supposed to tell my mum and dad that 1 don't want to marry you? Especially now they know I'm expecting a baby!' Betsy demanded in reproachful appeal.

  'I can see you might have a problem.'

  'I just can't believe you've done this to me… going calling my family and announcing that we're getting married when you know I've said no. You had no right to do that and involve them when they have no idea what's going on between us. 1 feel like I'm being blackmailed. '

  ~How do you feel otherwise?' Cristos enquired as if such accusations as she had made came his way every day and were unworthy of comment.

  'Well, I feel just wonderful, Cristos!' Betsy slammed back at him. 'You're set on wrecking both our lives by forcing me in a direction 1 don't want to go, You can't do this to Petrina…it's so cruel-'

  His hard bone structure clenched. 'Allow me to worry about Petrina-'

  'I can't bear to-hurt another woman the way 1 was hurt by Rory!' Betsy confided in distress.

  His golden eyes shimmered, his lean, powerful face taut. 'The baby must have first claim on your loyalty and mine.'

  Her slight shoulders slumped. He reached out to close his hands over hers and draw her close. She refused to look at him because she knew she could not trust herself.

  'Stop tying yourself up in knots, pethi mou,' Cristos urged, the low-pitched timbre of his deep voice already achingly familiar to her. 'Why upset yourself over what can't be altered? I intervened with your parents because I want us to marry quickly. I see no reason why we should publicize the fact that we're getting married now because you're carrying our first child.'

  Her fingers trembled in his. He knew how to press the right emotional buttons. Our first child. He was inviting her to look into a future that contained a real marriage in which other children would be welcomed as well. Her throat thickened and it was an effort for her to swallow. She really, really wanted to marry him.

  'But wouldn't you feel trapped?' she prompted half under her breath. 'Wouldn't you resent me?'

  Cristos closed one hand into the thick tumbling fall of her Titian hair to tug her head up. Stunning dark golden eyes met her troubled gaze in a direct onslaught. 'Never. I want you. I want our child as well.'

  She braced a hand against his shoulder,. let her fingers splay there in the shy but feeling touch of a woman longing to make physical contact. 'You'd have to be faithful… no excuses, no slips. I'd help you… I' d watch you like a hawk,' she warned him. 'You won't get away with anything, not even a flirtation if you marry me. Could you live like that?'

  'Is there a choice?' Cristos dared.

  Her green eyes fired up. 'No, and one strike and you're out too.'

  'But you'll marry me.'

  Today if you can fix it, she almost said. Fortunately she was too worked up to find her voice and it was only possible to nod, and she tried to nod with cool as if it were no big deal.

&nb
sp; CHAPTER SEVEN

  IT WAS Betsy's wedding day and she had never been happier.

  A diamond tiara sparkling on her head, she studied her reflection in the cheval-mirror. Having fallen in love with the emerald silk bustier on sight, she had teamed it with a flowing ivory skirt that enhanced the elegance of her tall, slender figure. As an outfit, it just screamed Cristos at her. Green was his favorite color. He liked her hair loose too, and her vibrant coppery-red mane hung as waterfall-straight down her narrow back as a sheet of silk.

  From the minute she had agreed to marry Cristos two weeks earlier, she had entered another world. But undoubtedly the toughest challenge, she reflected ruefully, had been barely seeing Cristos since then. He had had to return to Greece and after that there had been a business trip to New York. On the single occasion when they had been together, there had been a crowd present. Two members of his staff had dealt most efficiently with the wedding arrangements while still allowing Corinne Mitchell to feel that her input was highly important. In truth, though, Betsy's parents stood in total awe of their future son-in-law and had deemed the organization of a social event for hundreds of wealthy important people to be way out of their league.

  At Cristos' instigation, Betsy had given up her job and moved into the apartment, and for convenience her parents had been staying there with her. She had been amazed not just at the cloak of secrecy that Cristos seemed determined to cast over their big day but also at the elaborate security plans that he had insisted were necessary. He had suggested that the press might be tempted to make what he had termed, 'a nuisance of themselves' and that, in that event, she and her family would be safe from annoyance at the apartment. Betsy still could not credit that newspaper reporters would be even remotely interested in her.

  'How do you think you'll fit in with Cristos' rich friends?' Gemma remarked. 'Do you think they'll like you?'

  Betsy turned her dreamy gaze slowly from the mirror. 'I hope so. People are people whether they're rich or not-'

  'Well, his grandfather's obviously not too pleased about the switch in brides. 1 notice he hasn't made any special effort to welcome you into the family.'

  Betsy was becoming tense. 'Why should he have done? He's eighty-three years old and 1 expect he's quite happy to wait until he meets me today. Let's not make assumptions-'

  'I just suspect that your wonderful new life in Greece may not be a bed of roses. Cristos seems to go abroad a lot on business too.' Gemma· sighed. somehow contriving to vocalize Betsy's every secret concern about her future as a wife. 'With a hunk as good-looking as Cristos, that'll be a real worry for you.'

  'Why should it be a worry for me?' Betsy demanded for, while she ignored gibes angled at her, she could not bear to hear a word spoken against Cristos.

  'Oh, come on…' Her sister vented a suggestive

  laugh. 'Loads of girls would do anything to pull a guy like Cristos. He'll have to be a saint not to take advantage of the offers he must get. You're pregnant too and, let's face it, there's nothing sexy about a big tummy!'

  If Corinne Mitchell had not popped her head round the door at that instant to tell Gemma that the bridesmaids' car had arrived, Betsy honestly thought she might have screamed. She looked down at her still-flat mid-section and grimaced. Would Cristos find her unattractive when she lost her waist? If he did, he was hardly likely to admit the fact.

  The phone buzzed and she swept it up. 'Did she bitch at you?' Cristos asked, smooth as silk.

  'I'm not answering that.' Involuntarily, however, a reluctant grin began chasing the strain from Betsy's raspberry-tinted mouth.

  'I warned you not to have your sister as a bridesmaid,' Cristos reminded her softly. 'I only had to spend five minutes in the same room to see that she's a jealous little cat who can't stand not to be the centre of attention.'

  'Don't be unkind,' Betsy scolded him. 'Gemma is just going through a rough patch right now.'

  'Before I forget,' Cristos murmured then with studied casualness, 'there's a very large press contingent encamped outside the church. Ignore them. Dolius has arranged extra security cover-'

  'But why should they be that interested in our wedding?' Betsy frowned. 'Are you so important?'

  'No, I suspect they've heard a rumor about how very, very beautiful my bride is,' Cristos said, deadpan.

  Thirty minutes later, climbing into the wedding car with her proud father in tow, Betsy was still smiling. Although Cristos had warned her that the press was besieging the church, Betsy was still aghast at the sheer number of people waving cameras and shouting. Crash barriers were being employed and security men were standing shoulder to shoulder.

  'Good grief… the television cameras will be along next!' her astonished· father quipped.

  Flash bulbs went off. Betsy kept her head down while Dolius strong-armed a passage into the church porch where he slammed shut the heavy wooden door. The calm and peace enfolded her, soothing her nerves. She was about to marry the man she loved, she reminded herself: it was going to be a fantastic day.

  At the altar, formally garbed in a superb light grey suit, Cristos looked so spectacular, her tummy flipped. During the ceremony, he made his responses in a clear, crisp voice. She stumbled badly over his middle name, which she had never heard until that moment, and blushed in severe embarrassment. He was still smiling. when he put the ring on her finger. They went to sign the register and she whispered, 'How on earth do you pronounce that name?'

  'Xanthos' II

  'I needed coaching for that one.'

  As they walked down the aisle there was standing room only in the packed church. Cristos had a light arm curved to her spine. Her head was high and her eyes shone because he leant close to tell her how fantastic she looked.

  'Now… you are a Stephanides and you must learn how to deal with the paparazzi,' Cristos informe4 her in calm continuance.

  'How?'

  'You ignore them,' he instructed her. 'No matter what you are asked, you don't listen, you don't answer, you don't look at them and you don't ever let your face reveal any response.'

  'In other words, I am to stick my nose in the air and act like the press are absolutely beneath my notice,' Betsy paraphrased with bubbling amusement because she was in such a happy mood she could not be serious.

  His arm tightened round her. 'The press can be cruel. Be warned, yineka mou.'

  They walked out onto the church steps. The cameras went into a frenzy of flashing and clicking and requests to look this way and that flew from all directions and in more than one language. At the same time questions were being shouted. Cristos was urging her towards the limo when a raucous voice from quite close at hand yelled clear as a bell, 'Betsy… when's the baby due?'

  Almost imperceptibly, she flinched but kept moving.

  'Being kidnapped with Cristos has really paid off for you!' A dirty laugh punctuated that statement. 'Care to comment?' someone else bawled.

  'Are you sure the kid wasn't fathered by your lover, Joe Tyler?:

  When she fell abruptly still, white with shock and horror, Cristos let go of her and launched himself at the man who had hurled that final insulting question. Dolius practically lifted Betsy to get her into the shelter of the limo and then went back in haste to bodily retrieve Cristos from the fistfight breaking out. Hands braced to steady herself on the seat, her face stiff with humiliation, Betsy was trembling in disbelief.

  Her pregnancy was no longer a secret known only to her family. The press knew she was expecting Cristos' baby. How could that have happened? The paparazzi also knew about the kidnapping and about Joe as well. She felt stripped naked and exposed. Her wedding day was absolutely destroyed.

  Cristos swung into the car with athletic ease. He met her anguished gaze and shrugged. 'I knew they were on to us before I arrived at the church. I didn't want it to spoil your day-'

  'It's a nightmare…' Betsy mumbled.

  Temper back under control, Cristos flexed bruised knuckles with very male cool and acceptance. 'If
it's any consolation, I hit the bastard who made that filthy comment.'

  It wasn't. The guy who had told her how not to behave around journalists had just broken all his own rules because of something that had been said to her. She had become a source of embarrassment to Cristos. The whole world was now acquainted with the lowering fact that he had made a shotgun marriage. Even worse, nasty rumors about her relationship with the late Joe Tyler we~ doing the rounds. And, to top it all, Betsy reflected in positive anguish, absolutely everybody would be thinking what a slut she had to be to have gone to bed with Cristos when she hardly knew him!

  'How did all the stuff about the kidnapping come out?' she pressed.

  'It most probably came from more than one source.

  We did what we could to keep it quiet but per4aps too many people knew too much for it to remain buried,' Cristos breathed in a tone of regret.

  Betsy could not really see why the kidnapping had

  had to be hushed up to such an extent. She was a great deal more concerned by the much more personal nature of the revelations that had been thrown in her face in front of an audience. 'But who told them I was pregnant… who told them I'd ever even been out with Joe Tyler?' she gasped. 'I'd swear nobody at work knew about that one date!'

  'I suspect that only a woman would time the revelations in the hope of wrecking our wedding day. No doubt tomorrow's papers will educate us as to the source of the leaks.' Cristos dealt her a bracing appraisal. 'Today, however, we have a wedding to celebrate and we must put this unpleasantness back out of our minds again.'

  'But all your friends and family know that I'm pregnant now!' Betsy wailed.

  'So we're fertile…' Cristos shrugged a broad shoulder with a magnificent disregard for her mortification. 'People love to gossip. Our guests will revel in all this controversy. Most weddings are rather boring.'