The Greek's Forbidden Bride

by Cathy Williams

  God, what had he thought? Certainly not that he would open his heart and still have to endure watching her walk away from him, because that was what she was doing now. He could feel it in his bones. The way she was standing, clasping herself protectively, the distance she had put between them, the closed, uncertain expression on her face. None of this had been part of his plan.

  ‘Theo…’

  ‘Don’t say it,’ Theo answered harshly. ‘I said too much.’ He stood up and shoved his hands into his pockets and looked away at the picture hanging on the wall, an uninspired painting of sea and rocks and stormy skies.

  ‘Theo, I love you. I’ve loved you…I feel I’ve loved you for ever, but there’s something I have to tell you and I don’t know what you’re going to say. Well, actually, I can kind of guess…you’re going to be angry, but I didn’t feel I had a choice, just like I didn’t have a choice when it came to telling you about Michael…’

  ‘You love me. That’s all that counts.’ He walked towards her, prepared to fight for this amazing, vulnerable, feisty woman who had taken hold of his heart. ‘If there’s another man involved, then you let that go. God, Abby, I can’t live without you…’ He was now only inches away from her and he could see that she was shivering. He wrapped his arms around her and felt her push him away.

  ‘Do you remember when we talked? I mean, for the last time? You told me that there was no future for us, that you could never trust me, that I could never be the sort of woman you could have a relationship with…’

  ‘You have to forgive me for that,’ Theo muttered hoarsely. He could hear the desperation in his voice and he didn’t care. ‘I’d never felt like this before for anyone. I didn’t even recognise it for what it was. God, I was still clinging on to the belief that I could survive without you and I can’t.’

  Abby licked her lips nervously and looked at him. ‘I was so afraid,’ she whispered. ‘I knew that without love and trust, there could only be hatred if I told you…’

  ‘Told me what?’

  She squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Told you that I’m expecting your baby…’ She waited for the shocked reaction, for him to slam into her for deceiving him, for allowing him to walk away from his own child. It didn’t come. Eventually, she opened her eyes and risked a glance at his face.

  ‘You’re…pregnant?’

  ‘I thought you would hate me, would think that I had done it on purpose to try and con you into a relationship you didn’t want! I thought you might try and take the baby away from me…because you didn’t care about me, might see me as an unfit mother…I was afraid…’

  ‘You’re having our baby.’ There was wonder in his voice and then he smiled, a slow smile that crept under her defences and sent the little seed of hope rushing upwards.

  ‘You’re not mad?’

  ‘I’m mad because I wasted weeks, allowed you to go through all that uncertainty on your own. I’m angry with myself because…I can understand why you would have been scared of telling me after I had shut you out…God…’ His voice broke and this time she crept into his arms and lost herself in him, sighing with contentment as he held her protectively into him.

  ‘You know you’ll have to marry me, don’t you?’

  ‘Theo…I understand you might just want to take it a step at a time…’

  ‘Nothing too big, but I have a lot of family…’ He looked down at her. ‘There is no way I ever want to let you out of my sight again,’ he said. ‘I want to marry you. In fact, I’m insisting on it.’ He placed one finger under her chin and kissed her gently on her mouth, tasting her like a man sipping nectar.

  ‘In that case…yes. Yes, yes, yes!’ She reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck and returned his kiss with interest. When he placed his hand on her stomach, holding it there, she felt such a swell of love and joy that she thought she might faint.

  Later, much later, after he had met and charmed her mother and kept Jamie up way past his bedtime, which was fine because he still hadn’t become accustomed to the rented apartment in which they were staying, he and Abby took a walk down to the beach.

  She filled him in on her parents and the unexpected twist in her own life, with a mother and father who had somehow turned out to be model parents. They talked about Michael, agreeing that it was best that he was honest with himself and honest with the people he loved.

  Abby felt as though she was walking on a cloud. When he seductively wondered aloud whether, as parents to be, they were too old for high jinks in the back seat of a very big car, she couldn’t help but giggle.

  But this time, this was very special lovemaking, exquisitely rewarding, two people touching each other in the safety of knowing that they loved and were loved in return.

  The car was miles away from anywhere. ‘I feel like a kid,’ he groaned, pulling her to sit on him. ‘It’s too small, it’s too uncomfortable and the windows are misting up. But, God, am I hot for you?’

  ‘Good.’ Abby opened up her shirt so that he could see the swell of her breasts and felt a heady, joyous power when he groaned.

  ‘Your nipples are bigger and darker already.’ He tested one with his tongue. ‘And your breasts are heavier.’ As if to prove his point, he weighed them in his hands, like ripe fruit, before returning to the job of tasting what he was holding.

  ‘I can’t wait for your belly to swell with our child,’ he murmured, stroking her now. ‘I’ve missed touching you and talking to you and waking up next to you. You are mine now and I’m never going to let you go.’

  Abby sighed as he bent to suckle at her breast. Hers for ever. This wonderful, complex, loving man. Her dark, demanding, rewarding lover…

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-1659-8

  THE GREEK’S FORBIDDEN BRIDE

  First North American Publication 2008.

  Copyright © 2005 by Cathy Williams.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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