by Lucy Monroe
Love. He had said he had betrayed their love. She knew it. While she’d been screaming her invective at him, he’d admitted he had loved her. Did he still love her? Could he after the way she’d rejected him over and over again since he found her in New York?
She still loved him.
She did love him, but she hadn’t acted like it. Not when they’d been together in Paris and not since his resurgence in her life. She had withheld her secrets, herself and her trust. What kind of love was that?
The only kind of love she’d known—conditional and with limits. Her limits had been born of fear, but they had damaged Dimitri as much as her mother’s limits had hurt her. Alexandra felt that knowledge clear to her soul. She had wanted to receive unconditional love, but she hadn’t been willing to give it. Was it too late?
She went toward the dressing room with one purpose in mind. She flipped on the light and started sifting through her lingerie. There had to be something, then she remembered and started looking for white gossamer. Dimitri had bought it for her their second week together. It was a flowing nightgown with a princess cut and yards and yards of gossamer fabric that fell from the gathered waistline below her breasts. The wide straps accentuated the delicate curve of her shoulders and it had reminded her of a wedding dress…a see-through wedding dress.
It was one of the few gowns that would fit over her pregnant stomach. She slipped it on, her mission firmly in her mind. To be on the safe side, she pulled a robe on over it as well. No telling who might be wandering around in the hall outside her door to witness her state of dress. Security cameras at the very least.
She sifted through her cosmetic bag until she found a hatpin she used to unstop clogged tubes of makeup. She walked over to Dimitri’s dresser and pulled out the bottom drawer. The pregnancy test was still there. With it and the hatpin clutched firmly in her hands, she left the bedroom.
Dimitri had said he was going to be next door in the guestroom. The door to the room on the right of their bedroom suite stood open. The door to the left was closed. She walked toward it. She tried the handle. It turned in her hand and she breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t had a grandfather with tremendous foresight see that she was taught how to pick a lock.
The hatpin was for effect.
She opened the door and stepped into the room. The bed was empty, she could see from the light spilling through the open doorway. There was no other light in the room. She didn’t need light to know he was there, though. She could sense the presence of the other half of her soul as surely as she knew her feet were attached to her body though she couldn’t see them.
He stood at the window, his hand gripping one of the heavy draperies. He’d shed the robe he had been wearing and the sculpted muscles of his virile body lured her with animal magnetism. She could never let this man go again.
“Go back to bed, Alexandra.”
She dropped the dressing gown and took a step toward him. “Make me.”
He tensed, but he did not turn around. “I am in no mood for further arguments. Spare us both more unpleasantness and leave me. Please.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT WAS the “please” that did it.
She couldn’t stand to hear her proud Greek husband pleading with her.
She flew across the room and landed against his back, her arms going around him like channel locks. She felt the baby move and kick. She was plastered so close to Dimitri, he had to have felt their son as well.
His entire body shuddered as if he’d been touched by a live electric wire.
She pressed her face into back, kissing him with feverish intensity. “I don’t hate you. I love you,” she whispered fiercely against his skin. “I’m sorry I’ve expressed my love so dismally you can’t believe me. Love is supposed to be generous, but I’ve been too busy protecting myself.”
He forcefully peeled her hands from his body and spun around. “Don’t yineka mou. I cannot stand it. It is I who have hurt you. I who stupidly rejected your gift of a child, your gift of yourself. You have nothing to reproach yourself for.”
“Don’t I?” She shook her head and placed her hand over his mouth when he opened it to speak. “Please. Let me say this.”
His lips moved against her palm in a kiss as gentle as the brush of angel’s wings and he nodded.
She lowered her hand and stepped back from him. She met the blue depths of his gaze and held it. “I love my mother, but she’s always doled out her approval and affection based on my performance as her daughter.” Alexandra took a deep breath and let it out. “I learned early on that love was conditional, that it had limits and that it hurt.”
He nodded as if he understood and considering his background, she had no doubt he did.
“So when I fell in love with you, I set limits on that love, impossible conditions you had no way of meeting. I didn’t tell you the truth because I was afraid to. You were, you are, this incredible guy, Dimitri. You teased me about how my mom sees you as a god among men, but for me it’s no joke. You’re so much more than anything I ever believed I could have. More generous. More sexy. More wonderful. More man. More everything and I couldn’t believe you wanted me.”
She sucked in more air, trying to control her emotions, before going on. “It shocked me that you’d want Xandra Fortune, but I was sure you wouldn’t want Alexandra Dupree, a convent educated girl from a conservative family that had lost all its money. And to be honest, I thought if I kept that part of myself from you, I could protect myself from you taking me over completely. There would still be that part of me left when you were gone.”
At his look of dawning understanding, she nodded. “You were right in Paris. I did expect our relationship to end, though I didn’t consciously acknowledge it at the time. By keeping the other part of my life from you, I was preparing to go on when it did. But it didn’t work because as you’ve said more than once—I was both Xandra Fortune and Alexandra Dupree with you. I grieved your loss in my other life as surely as I would have grieved if I’d stayed in Paris.”
“I wish you had stayed. I would have found you sooner.”
She grimaced. “I didn’t think you wanted to find me.”
Devastating pain radiated from his eyes. “I know. This is my fault.”
She didn’t deny it. They each had their portion of blame for the disastrous end to their relationship.
“I should have told you where I was going on my trips. I made it easy for you to distrust me and when I told you about the baby, it was understandable you thought at first I might have had a lover.”
“No! It was not!” The words exploded from him. “I let my mother’s behavior color how I saw you. I had no reason to distrust you. You were so generous with me when we made love, so giving of yourself. I knew, I knew you could not have been that way with anyone else, but I was fighting a rearguard action against ending up as obsessed as my father had been. The feelings I had for you made me vulnerable. That was not acceptable, so I acted like the bastard you called me.”
Tears clogged her throat. “No.”
“Yes. My only excuse is that I was not thinking clearly. Worry for my grandfather, frustration over the promise he had extracted from me, it played hell with my thinking processes. The worst part was the desperation I felt at the thought of losing you. It horrified me and when I am afraid, I act. I lashed out at you and I lost you.”
“I waited a week for you,” she said helplessly. Not wanting him to feel worse than he already did, but wanting him to know she’d loved him enough to stay even after he had her evicted from the apartment. “I didn’t leave until I saw the announcement of your engagement to Phoebe.”
His eyes closed and his head went back, his jaw taut. “I knew I’d made the biggest mistake of my life when I let my grandfather put the announcement in the paper. It all hit me. How wrong everything was. How wrong everything would continue to be if I didn’t get you back, but you were gone, pethi mou.”
There was a wealth of pain
in those words.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I could not find you,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken, “I had my detectives looking everywhere, but you had disappeared as if you didn’t even exist. When I slept, I had nightmares of you falling down a deep hole and vanishing forever.”
His skin broke out in sweat at the memory.
She stepped forward and laid her hand against his heart. “Losing you hurt so much, I thought I was going to die.”
He crushed her to him. “I’m sorry.”
Two words sincerely spoken, words she had never heard him say in all the time they had known each other. And they healed wounds deep in her heart.
“I love you, mon cher.”
He kissed her with a passion that seared her soul. She was lost in the beauty of his kiss when he pulled away abruptly.
“Ouch.”
She looked up, dazed. “What?”
“Something poked me.”
She looked down at her left hand where the hatpin protruded from her tightly clutched fingers. She lifted her hand and opened it to reveal the two objects she held. “I think it was the hatpin.”
“Hatpin?” he asked as if he didn’t know what one was. Maybe he didn’t. Not many women had them anymore, but her mother was old fashioned. She still carried starched hankies.
“Yes.”
“You planned to wear a hat?”
She laughed softly. “No. It was to pick the lock.”
“But I did not lock the door.”
“I wanted to be prepared.”
“You know how to pick a lock?” he asked, a smile tugging at his mouth.
She shook her head. “I wasn’t going to let that stop me.”
He laughed and pulled her back into his arms, this time with more caution. “Alexandra Petronides, you are my dearest treasure and I will love you forever.”
She gulped back tears and pleaded, “Say it again.”
He cupped her face between the solid warmth of his hands. “I love you whether you are the independent career woman, Xandra Fortune, the spitting kitten, Alexandra Dupree or any other persona you choose to take on. You are the wife of my heart.”
“Show me, Dimitri.”
And he did. Beautifully. Erotically. Thoroughly. Then he carried her back to their bed and showed her again. She fell asleep in his arms.
“So, what was the pregnancy test for, agapi mou?”
Dimitri had convinced Alexandra to redon the shimmery nightgown from the night before and she sat curled in his lap in a chair on their private terrace a little after sunrise.
“Just a minute. Let me show you.” She jumped off his lap and went in search of the small white stick. She found it with the hatpin on the floor of the guestroom. She went back out onto the terrace and couldn’t help smiling at the picture her husband presented in nothing but a pair of black silk boxers.
Her gown covered more of her body with fabric, but none of it with modesty and his eyes gleamed their appreciation at her as she approached him.
She knelt down on the tile by his knees and presented the pregnancy test to him. “I’m pregnant with your baby, Dimitri.”
His eyes widened, then narrowed in understanding. “You are giving me a second chance.”
“Love can erase the mistakes of the past.”
Something profound moved across his features and he reached for the stick. “I can think of nothing greater in life than to have you carry my child.”
They were the words she had wanted to hear so much five months ago and she smiled with a radiance she made no effort to hide. “I love you, mon cher.”
She’d said it so many times over the past hours, the words should have lost their impact, but she knew they never would and the expression on his face told her he felt the same.
“I love you, Alexandra. Never leave me again.”
“Never,” she agreed fervently.
He leaned down and kissed her softly before lifting her back into his lap.
“I still feel bad about your grandfather,” she admitted.
“Why should you feel this?”
“All those awful news stories. They must have devastated him.”
Dimitri tilted her chin so they were looking into one another’s eyes. “It was not the tabloid gossip that upset Grandfather so badly he had another attack.” Guilt chased across Dimitri’s features. “I am fully to blame.”
“But…”
“Grandfather didn’t even see the news stories until after coming out of the hospital.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I told my grandfather I couldn’t marry Phoebe and then I told him why.”
“Because I was pregnant with your baby.”
He shook his head, his eyes warming her. “Because I love you. He had the heart attack when he started yelling at me for being a fool after I admitted I’d evicted you from the apartment and could not find you.”
She couldn’t take it in. “You already knew you weren’t going to marry Phoebe before the tabloids ran the gossip about us?”
“I knew I wasn’t going to marry Phoebe the day you told me you were pregnant, but I was insane with unreasonable jealousy, angry at myself, angry at my grandfather. I went off the rails and didn’t get back on them until I saw you standing next to your sister that first night in New York.”
“I don’t know. You acted pretty derailed then too.”
“She told me you had died! Do you have any idea what that did to me?”
She was beginning to have an inkling. If he had loved her, and now she knew he had, such news would have been soul destroying. “I’m sorry, Dimitri.” She leaned forward and kissed him, wanting to heal the hurts of the past.
He kissed her back with enough passion to leave her gasping for breath a minute later.
“I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself for what I did to you.”
Her eyes misted, but she smiled. “Please. You have to. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking back. My present is glorious now that you are in it, now that I know you love me!”
“I saw the paparazzi outside the restaurant in New York and did nothing,” he said with the air of a man who felt he had to admit everything.
She tried to figure out what he was saying. “Are you saying you wanted them to make the connection with my Xandra Fortune identity?”
He did his best to look humble, but it didn’t come naturally. “I realize this was wrong.”
“But you would do it again.”
“I was desperate,” he defended.
Dimitri desperate. Her heart just melted. “That’s really sweet, mon cher.”
“You are not angry with me?” he asked warily.
She snuggled closer, curling her fingers in his chest hair. “No. It’s flattering to think of my Greek tycoon so desperate he stooped to nefarious means to win me,” she said cheekily.
“I will never let you go again,” he growled against her temple and then did something truly amazing with his tongue to her ear.
She shivered with the excitement only he could generate. “You’re stuck with me for life, Dimitri Petronides.”
“Count on it, agapi mou.”
The baby kicked and they both laughed.
She rubbed the taut skin over the protruding little foot. “He approves.”
“He’s already brilliant,” said the proud papa.
“Mmm…” she agreed, feeling contentment clear to her toes.
Dimitri shifted under her and she felt another protruding member, but this wasn’t infantile at all.
“You look very sexy in that nightgown, even more sexy than you did when I first bought it.”
“Over six months pregnant and you think I’m sexier than I was when we first met?” she mocked, secretly thrilled by the compliment.
He didn’t smile at her joke. “Yes. Sexier. More beautiful. More everything because now you are mine and I know you are mine.”
“For the rest of my
life,” she affirmed.
And then she set about showing him the kind of love she planned to give him for all that time: a passionate, unconditional, without limits kind of love.
Dimitri stood in the doorway of the Dupree Mansion nursery watching his wife tuck their small son into his cot. Little Theo, named after his great-grandfather, was nine months old. He had loved the excitement of Christmas, but had been ready for bed a good hour before Alexandra had been able to prize him from his fond grandmother’s arms.
Cecelia had been in her element hosting Christmas for her family and Dimitri’s besides in her New Orleans home. Alexandra had asked him to let her mother do it and as with so many things related to his wife’s desires, he hadn’t even considered saying no. She was the love of his life and he would do anything to make her happy.
He’d learned to appreciate the difference between that and the obsessive love his father had suffered from toward his mother. Alexandra had shown him by wanting only the best for him in return. It was a heady sensation.
Alexandra laid her hand on Theo’s back and sang a soft French lullaby. Far from letting a nanny raise their son, she had insisted on seeing to all his needs, including midnight feedings, three-in-the-morning feedings and dawn wake-up calls to change Little Theo’s nappy for the first few months. Dimitri hadn’t minded. He liked getting up with Alexandra and watching his son nurse. It was a sight so beautiful, it transfixed him.
She was an amazing mother and an even more incredible wife. He thanked God daily for second chances.
She finally felt all was well with their son and turned to leave the nursery. She smiled up at him, her face soft with love. It was a look he would never take for granted again.
“He’s out for the count.”
Dimitri put his arm around her and drew her next door to their bedroom. “I have something for you.”
“Dimitri.” She drew his name out like it had six syllables. “You’ve already given me a mountain of gifts today. It’s worse than last year.”