‘Thank you. But really, I can’t possibly afford to think of sending Jamie to a private school.’
‘You don’t have to afford anything,’ he said impatiently. ‘I can afford it.’
‘Can we talk about this another time?’
‘In a couple of months’ time, you mean? We’ve almost had that. Shall we wait for another two?’
Abby sat up and looked at him, mouth open, as a sudden thought began to gather pace, galloping with clattering, panicky hooves through her brain.
‘What did you say?’ she asked, dry-mouthed, and Theo looked back at her through narrowed eyes.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Sorry? What?’ Abby blinked at him, desperate for him to leave so that she could consult the diary in her handbag.
‘Forget it. I’ve got to go now.’ He swooped round so that he was sitting on the bed by her. Frequently, his departures were delayed because one touch and they couldn’t seem to stop themselves from climbing right back into bed. This time, Abby was barely aware of him tilting her chin up so that he could look at her squarely in the face, hardly noticed the brief touch of his mouth against hers.
‘Amazing. I still can’t seem to get enough of you,’ he murmured. He trailed his fingers through her hair and watched, fascinated as always, by the startling contrast between that spectacular blondeness against the tan of his own skin.
‘Yes, that’s quite something, isn’t it, Theo?’ Abby returned more sharply than she had intended.
‘Meaning?’ he enquired with sudden coolness in his voice.
‘Meaning that most normal human beings wouldn’t really see a couple of months as an amazing feat of endurance.’ She smiled wanly to dispel the little burst of sarcasm. She had learnt early on not to trip up on any relationship issues. ‘But then,’ she teased, ‘we both know that you’re not a normal human being.’
‘Hopefully that doesn’t stop me functioning in all the right places,’ he murmured in that husky, sexy voice of his that could turn her to jelly.
‘You should go. It’s already after eleven. Lord knows how you manage to function on so little sleep.’ She stroked the side of his face, loving the feel of his skin against her palm.
‘You forget. I’m not a normal human being. I don’t need the normal amount of sleep.’
‘Which isn’t to say that you shouldn’t try. Even the toughest of men can get tired and that’s when illnesses start kicking in.’
‘Nice to know you care, sweetheart.’ He laughed and subjected her to a lingering kiss that was followed by a lazy exploration of her breasts. Something sweet to take away with me on the trip back, he told himself, looking up from the nipple on which he had been lavishing his attention. The diary waiting in her handbag momentarily faded into insignificance as she lay back with a sigh to enjoy the feel of his mouth curving around her nipple, licking and sucking, a man enjoying a feast. Her fingers were curled in his hair, which he had grown a bit longer now at her insistence.
‘It seems that I’m a bit hungrier than I thought…’ he murmured, giving her a wicked grin.
‘Theo, you should really go…’ Was that her voice? Weak with helpless desire? ‘Besides, I have an early start tomorrow…’
‘So I won’t be long…’ He pulled aside the duvet which she had dragged over herself earlier, when some spark of common sense had still been functioning, and parted her legs so that he could bury his mouth against her soft, moist femininity, drawing out a muted gasp of pleasure as he tasted the honeyed core of her.
Satisfying himself took a back seat to satisfying her, and this he did with a thoroughness that had her squirming under him, arching up to meet his questing tongue, tightening her hands into fists that clutched the duvet. He could feel that little bud tightening and blossoming under his tongue and he felt her burst of uncontrollable pleasure as she reached the peak of her excitement and her body took over, convulsing as wave after wave of sexual fulfilment rocked her.
Abby looked at him drowsily when he finally moved up to plant a feathery kiss against the corner of her mouth.
‘Sweet dreams,’ he said. ‘Just so long as they are of me and only me.’
‘As if I would dare dream of anyone else,’ she whispered truthfully. As if I could.
She was very tempted simply to fall asleep when she heard the click of the front door closing behind him, but the temptation lasted only long enough for her to realise that falling asleep on a potential problem didn’t actually go a long way to solving it.
Not, she feverishly told herself as she tiptoed downstairs, clutching her dressing gown around her, that there was going to be a problem. Not, she thought, as she realised that her period was late, that that meant anything. Her body clock had never behaved in a predictable fashion and, besides, she was on the Pill so she couldn’t possibly be pregnant.
When she had been pregnant with Jamie she had had all sorts of symptoms. She was a symptom-free zone, which meant that there was nothing to worry about.
She virtually didn’t need to go through the trouble of buying a kit to prove what she knew it was destined to prove, but she spent the following morning barely able to concentrate and by twelve-thirty her feet had somehow managed to take her to the chemist on what she told herself over and over was a wasted trip.
It had to be.
It required a will of steel not to sneak to the bathroom during the course of what was a very busy afternoon to put her nerves to rest.
Later, much later, she wondered whether she hadn’t already known, deep down, that she would receive the information she didn’t want, that she couldn’t possibly behave in a normal manner at work if she did. Hence her decision to wait until Jamie had finally gone to bed at a little after seven.
In the darkness of her bedroom she lay on the bed and tried to get her mind around the nightmare that she was indeed pregnant. She couldn’t work out how, except to assume that the Pill, that small white tablet, had failed at the worst possible moment. She had had a tummy upset, she remembered. Had it been then? Did it matter anyway?
Every muscle and nerve in her body was rigid with tension as she tried to find a way forward through the mess. She couldn’t tell Theo. She attempted to picture the conversation, struggled to think how she could just drop that little nugget of a bombshell into their conversation. How would he react?
Just thinking about it made her feel sick.
Here was a man who didn’t want a relationship and especially would never consider a relationship with her. He would be coldly, unspeakably furious. He might even think that she had done it deliberately to trap him into a situation he would never have offered of his own free will. Worse, he would probably insist on taking over financial responsibility. Another horrifying thought struck her. Would he want more than financial responsibility? Would he want to take the baby away from her, bring it up in some traditional Greek way?
Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes and she didn’t bother wiping them away as they trickled down the side of her face.
She wanted to imagine a sane conclusion to any conversation she might have with Theo about his sudden, unwanted escalation to fatherhood, but couldn’t. It was just beyond the realms of her imagination. Theo might have shown her another side of him over the past few weeks, but the side that had attacked her when they had first met was still there. It hadn’t been some lunatic aberration.
She fell asleep when her brain could no longer deal with the enormity of her nightmare and woke up with only a few seconds of blissful peace before the nightmare resumed its relentless pacing.
This was so much worse than when she had discovered that she was pregnant with Jamie. At least then she had wallowed in the optimism that Oliver would be happy, that they would be together, one sweet little family unit. When her hopes had been dashed there was no speculation about what would happen next in the scenario. She would raise her baby by herself and Oliver would disappear.
This time round, there was no optimism. There
was likewise no certainty as to where the road would take her, and the more she laboured the unhappy options the more she realised that Theo wasn’t simply going to walk away and wash his hands of his child. Whether he liked to admit it or not, he was a natural father. She had seen that in the way he dealt with her own son.
No, Theo would either remove his baby from her custody, which wouldn’t be difficult—he was a man of enormous wealth and influence and she was a single mother struggling to make ends meet—or else he would insist on sharing custody, which would entail years of contact with him, years of watching the man she loved turn into a stranger who hated her, who only communicated with her through lack of choice. He would find his own love and she would always be there, forced to stand on the sidelines and watch while her own life shrivelled up and disappeared.
It was only when the end of the week drew closer that she began to see a tentative light at the end of the dark tunnel.
Not a very morally uplifting light, she had to admit, but a light nevertheless.
He had asked whether she would accept his financial handouts, become his paid mistress in effect. Naturally, she had thrown his offer back in his face, but she would re-introduce the subject, make sure that she stepped over the lines she had been scrupulously avoiding for weeks. She would ask him about their relationship. Just one scrap of hope and she would tell him, she would trust in the blind hope that they could reach an amicable solution. Surely, if there was some affection, it wouldn’t be a complete impossibility? She could work from amicable.
If there was nothing, then she would break off the relationship and disappear. It would mean leaving behind dear, dear Michael, but how else could she play it?
She was still a bag of nerves when Friday rolled round, however. He had called to tell her what time to expect him, and as usual he had told her how much he had missed her, missed her sexy body, missed waking up next to her in bed. Abby tried to sound natural and wondered how long those sentiments would last if he were to find out that the sexy body was en route to becoming a fairly sizeable one.
He was, he said, going to be with her by ten. Meetings had overrun during the day, he said regretfully, hence the ridiculous hour.
‘I’m kind of tired anyway,’ Abby said down the end of the line and she was aware of silence as the seconds ticked by. She was pulling back and he was too sharp to miss it, but what else could she do? Her head hurt from thinking and all her thoughts led in one direction. No more Theo. No more blissful, wonderful, earth-shattering sex and the blossoming of being in the company of the man she loved. ‘It’s been a long week,’ she said shortly, thinking that no truer word had been spoken. ‘There was a problem with the computer system and everything seemed to take ten times longer than it should. No one’s fault, but it did mean that we all ended up working overtime just to keep on top of things.’
‘We’ll discuss this when we meet,’ Theo said shortly.
For the first time since their fragile affair had begun, she was treated to the soft click of disconnection. An ominous warning of things to come, she decided.
Even more ominously, he was late, though full of apologies when he finally walked through the door at a little after eleven.
‘Apologies and champagne,’ he said with a grin, spinning her round to face him when she was ready to head for the kitchen. Too much looking at him and her sense of purpose would evaporate like a puff of smoke. Now that she had braced herself for walking away she realised, belatedly, just how much he had got under her skin. It wasn’t sufficient that she knew every inch of his face, the way his eyes followed her in that lazy, sexy way of his, the way his mouth curved into a smile that held the promise of untold excitement. She even, she realised bleakly, knew his smell. It was clean, with just a hint of aftershave, and very, very masculine.
‘What’s the matter?’ Theo asked sharply, tangling his fingers in her hair so that she was obliged to remain where she was and meet his penetrating gaze.
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing? Is that why, for the first time, you’re suddenly tired?’
‘People get tired, Theo. Not everyone has your stamina.’ She dropped her eyes, hoping to maintain some semblance of control, although she could feel her heart thudding out of control. ‘And thanks for the champagne. Honestly. But I think I’d fall asleep over the first glass.’
‘I told you my solution to your exhaustion problem.’ He dumped the bottle on the sideboard by the door, shrugged off his jacket, and then before she could protest scooped her off her feet and headed for the sitting room. ‘Normally,’ he murmured, ‘I wouldn’t be heading in this direction, but we need to talk. Lifting you like this reminds me of that first night, when you sprained your ankle. Remember? I held you and you filled my nostrils. Did I ever tell you that at that very moment I knew that I wanted you?’
The word want was like a shard of glass cutting into her heart. She shook her head dumbly and allowed herself to be placed on to the sofa, feet on his lap so that he could massage them.
‘You’re right. We need to talk, Theo.’
His hand stilled for a few seconds before he continued the languorous caress of her feet.
‘You’ve thought about my offer to you?’ he prompted, and Abby could hear the thread of satisfaction in his voice. Of course, it wouldn’t have crossed his mind that she might seriously turn him down. She drew her feet up, tucking them under her, well out of reach of his seductive fingers.
‘I thought about it and…’ she wondered how to phrase what she needed to say ‘…I don’t know why you would want to support me. I thought you despised the kind of woman who looks to a man for her upkeep.’
‘I never said I despised that kind of woman,’ Theo said irritably. ‘I said I despised women who set out to trap men into supporting them.’
‘How can you think of paying for me? How long would it last? You must know that…well…’
‘Go on.’
His voice was not encouraging and Abby swallowed painfully. ‘We’ve been seeing each other now for nearly two months,’ she began falteringly. ‘I’d like to know where you see this relationship going. I mean, in the long term, so to speak.’
‘In the long term?’ Theo looked at her narrowly. ‘Is that what this mood of yours is about? You’re concerned that I might be on the verge of dumping you?’
‘You’re prone to boredom when it comes to women. You’ve told me that yourself.’
‘You don’t bore me.’
‘Not yet, anyway.’ They stared at one another. Theo, she noticed, looked as though he had taken a sip of his coffee only to find that the milk was off. If the situation wasn’t so serious it would almost be comical.
‘What do you want me to say, Abby?’
‘I want you to tell me where you think we’re going. It’s not the most difficult question in the world to answer.’
‘How do I know where we’re going? I don’t possess a crystal ball!’
‘But face it, I’m not the sort of woman you ever had in mind for any kind of long-term relationship, am I?’ she asked. The time for beating about the bush was over and done with. Now, all the questions she had diplomatically shelved were coming out of their hiding places. ‘I’m a woman who was involved with your brother.’ She ticked that off on one finger. ‘I’m English. I have a child by someone else. I could never represent a union of dynasties, like that…like that girl you were introduced to at your grandfather’s party in Santorini!’
‘No. You’re right. You’re not the sort of woman I ever contemplated being married to.’
The finality of his words dropped into the silence between them like poison. So, what had she expected? That he would warmly talk to her about commitment? Maybe throw love into the conversation?
Theo watched the defeat settle over her features like a shadow. Really, he didn’t know why he hadn’t anticipated this. He should have known sooner or later that she would want more out of a relationship than the simple pleasure of enjoying each othe
r’s bodies. Best this way, he thought. Ever since he had met her, he had stopped focusing on the only thing in life worth focusing on, namely his work. She was in his head far too much and he hadn’t been lying when he had told her that she was not the sort of woman he would ever marry. His eventual marriage had more or less been planned in his head. Marriage to a Greek woman, probably with the same vast connections that he had. Yes, call it a meeting of dynasties, he thought irritably to himself. It sounded cold but it would be practical, and practical things lasted. He looked at her soft face, now unreadable, and was angry with himself for the sharp jab of confusion and panic he felt at the thought of no longer seeing her, touching her, being with her.
‘How do you imagine that I could ever consider a long-term relationship with you when at the back of my mind I’m all too aware that you were prepared to offer yourself to my brother for the wrong reasons? I’m not a monster but I am, I like to think, fairly intelligent.’ Theo’s voice was coldly detached.
Abby didn’t say anything. She looked away, eyes glazed with tears, and chewed on her fingernail.
‘What’s to say that you have not switched allegiances to me because I am a better financial bet than my brother and one you fancy into the bargain?’
‘That’s cruel and unfair!’
‘That’s called the ruthless march of logic.’
‘And there’s no room in your life for anything but the ruthless march of logic, is there? Even relationships and commitment have to be logical, don’t they, Theo? A logical, committed relationship requires the right girl with the right credentials, and, well, there’s no room in your life for the illogical, is there? No, that would be a crime in the world of Theo Toyas!’
‘This is a ridiculous conversation.’
‘This is a necessary conversation. Any girl, even one with all the wrong credentials, eventually wants to know where she’s going.’
‘And where did you think we’d end up, Abby? Walking down the aisle? I thought we both enjoyed where we were.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Why spoil things?’
‘I think it’s time you left now.’
The Greek's Forbidden Bride Page 15