by Lynne Graham
Ellie lay awake for a long time, but Dio didn’t put in an appearance to persuade her back into his arms.
Dio’s manservant brought her breakfast in bed the following morning. Then Dio called her on the internal phone to tell her that he had made a provisional appointment for her with a consultant gynaecologist willing to see her at noon.
‘Nathan Parkes is a personal friend. If you feel uncomfortable with that fact, I’ll make other arrangements,’ Dio asserted with scrupulous care and tact.
‘I don’t care who I see,’ Ellie responded flatly, worn down by her sleepless night and thoughts that overflowed with regret and self-loathing.
She was impervious to Dio’s every impossibly smooth conversational sally on the drive across London. A pretence of polite cool was beyond her. She might love him, but just then she hated him for succumbing to her moment of weakness the night before. Succumbing with enthusiasm and then making her feel ten times worse. She wished she had never met him. She wished it so hard that she said it out loud just as she climbed out of his fabulous sleek black Ferrari.
‘I don’t wish that,’ Dio delivered grittily as he strode up onto the pavement beside her, six foot three inches of aggressive masculinity. ‘And neither do you.’
‘What do you know about how I feel?’ she demanded shakily. ‘And why have you got out of your car?’
‘Naturally I’m coming in with you—’
‘Like heck you are! This is one thing I do on my own!’
Twenty minutes later, Ellie’s suspense came to an end.
‘You’re pregnant,’ Nathan Parkes informed her levelly.
‘Definitely… That is, without any room for doubt?’ Ellie prompted jerkily.
‘Definitely. No room for doubt.’
Ellie dropped her head and studied her tightly linked hands. Why had she even bothered to question his diagnosis?
‘At this stage, feeling a little sick is normal,’ the lanky blond man continued. ‘But I’m not entirely happy with your weight. You’re quite thin.’
‘I’ve been skipping meals recently,’ Ellie admitted grudgingly.
‘Nausea does tend to kill one’s appetite,’ he allowed. ‘But try to eat small meals regularly. That often helps.’
Pining for Dio had killed Ellie’s appetite, but she kept that demeaning truth to herself.
‘You are planning to continue with this pregnancy?’
Hearing the edge of concern in that query, Ellie nodded in immediate agreement, but she still didn’t look up. She had honestly believed that she was prepared for the news that she was pregnant. Now she was discovering that she hadn’t been prepared. She felt shocked, and very scared of the future.
‘Excellent,’ Nathan Parkes pronounced approvingly.
Ten minutes after that, Ellie stood in the empty waiting room and took several deep breaths to calm herself. From the window, she could see the roof of Dio’s Ferrari. As she emerged onto the street, Dio climbed out and strode round the bonnet. His dark, deep-set gaze instantly locked to her pale, strained face.
Ellie stared back at him.
‘So we celebrate,’ Dio announced, pulling open the passenger door and tucking her back inside his car with hands that brooked no argument.
‘Can’t you just for once say something honest?’ Ellie condemned in a tight, taut undertone.
Dio leant in to fix her seatbelt for her. ‘We’re going to be parents. Personally, I feel that the conception of my first child is a very special event. If you have nothing positive to say right now, keep quiet.’
A ragged laugh was dredged from Ellie. Dio swung in beside her and immediately fired the engine into a throaty roar.
Ellie worried at her lower lip. ‘How do you really feel?’ she whispered.
‘Shattered…kind of smug…sentimental,’ Dio enumerated with husky sibilance, closing his hand over her clenched fingers as they waited at traffic lights.
Her tense fingers loosened beneath the enveloping warmth of his. ‘I just feel all shook up.’
‘You look very tired. I’ll take you back to the apartment and you can sleep.’
‘No, I promised Mr Barry that I’d come in as soon as possible…anyway, I need a change of clothes,’ she muttered uncertainly.
As the lights changed, Dio released her hand. ‘I’d prefer you to remain at the apartment. I have to fly over to Paris this afternoon,’ he imparted rather grimly. ‘I doubt if I’ll make it back before tomorrow evening.’
Dismayed by that unexpected news, Ellie stole an anxious glance at him from below her lashes. His lean, hard profile was taut. But then he had frankly admitted that he was shattered, and he was distinctly pale beneath his Mediterranean dark skin. If she was in shock at the idea of having a baby, why shouldn’t he be in shock too?
‘I think I’d be more comfortable at home,’ she said more firmly.
‘When you’re my wife, I’ll expect you to do exactly as you’re told at all times,’ Dio murmured without any expression at all.
A stark little silence fell. Ellie’s eyes had widened to their fullest extent. She couldn’t believe that he had said what he had just said.
‘Most especially when I am considering your welfare,’ he added gently.
Ellie trembled and compressed her bloodless lips. ‘You’re not seriously asking me to…marry you?’
‘Very seriously,’ Dio asserted.
‘But we hardly know each other—’
‘We know enough. I like you. I respect you. I desire you. What more is there?’
‘What about…love?’ she prompted, striving for a detached tone.
‘What about our child?’
Ellie lost colour.
‘I want to marry you,’ Dio told her with quiet emphasis.
‘Not really, you don’t. People don’t get married these days just because of an accidental pregnancy,’ Ellie protested unsteadily, her heart beating very fast.
‘People like me do.’
Ellie swallowed hard. ‘Dio, I—’
‘You know it makes sense.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘We’ll get married as soon as I can arrange it,’ Dio incised with finality.
‘I’ll think about it,’ she returned unevenly.
Dio shot the Ferrari to a halt in front of the bookshop. Unsnapping her seatbelt, he reached for her, black eyes glittering. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, yineka mou,’ he told her. ‘Just think about it? Yet only last night you couldn’t wait to—’
‘Dio!’ Ellie gasped, with a sound between an embarrassed laugh and a shaken reproach.
‘So either you’re a wanton hussy who shamelessly used me for sex…or a decent woman with a delightful inability to resist me.’
Ellie went pink, but she was wholly mesmerised by his proximity. Involuntarily, she raised a hand, and with her forefinger traced the surprisingly forbidding curve of his wide, sensual mouth. ‘I can’t…you know it too,’ she acknowledged, utterly desperate for him to kiss her.
But, in spite of their proximity, Dio held back. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’
As he freed her again, Ellie blinked in a daze. Dio wanted to marry her? Dio was willing to marry her, she rephrased. ‘I can’t let you marry me!’ she said abruptly.
‘I won’t marry an argumentative woman.’
‘Don’t tease about something so serious,’ she pleaded.
His strong bone structure set hard. ‘You and I…it would work,’ Dio intoned, his accent thickening.
‘Yes…but could you be happy?’ Ellie pressed, her whole being centred on the awful wounding necessity of asking that question when all she really wanted to do was drag him off to the nearest church.
Dio groaned in frustration. ‘Obviously I should have proposed over a romantic dinner, with flowers and a ring—’
Ellie winced. ‘No, that sort of stuff isn’t important.’
‘Then my proposal must’ve been excessively clumsy.’ Gleaming black eyes rested on her taut, anxious face.
‘I want to marry you, Ellie. The only word I need to hear now is yes.’
‘Yes…’ Agreement escaped from Ellie before she could bite it back.
‘Now that wasn’t difficult, was it?’ His shadowy smile rocked her heart on its axis, and then he turned away and glanced at his watch. ‘Now I’m afraid I have to head straight for the airport. I’ll be in touch tomorrow.’
‘What’s wrong with tonight?’ Ellie heard herself ask as she climbed out of the car.
‘I’ll be tied up all evening.’
Hot-cheeked, Ellie nodded, closed her hands together to stop them reaching out to him and forced a smile. ‘OK…I understand,’ she said, when she didn’t really.
His departure seemed so incredibly low-key that she could not quite believe that he had asked her to marry him and that she had agreed.
Concentrating with a mind in a giddy whirl was far too much of a challenge that afternoon. In the space of an hour she had learned that she was expecting a baby and she had gained a bridegroom. It was too much to take in all at once…
Dio wanted to marry her. Did fairy tales come true? All right, so her father had been a creep, and on that basis she had judged the whole male sex. Only not Dio. Dio had taken her by storm. He didn’t love her. But love could grow, she told herself urgently, determined not to pick holes in her own happiness. Happiness was a fragile thing, and Ellie hadn’t known much of it. Dio liked, respected and desired her, she reminded herself. All that plus their baby would be enough to build on. She would make him happy. Whatever it took, she would make him the very best wife he could imagine…
At one the following afternoon, a limousine with tinted windows pulled up outside the shop. Ellie grinned, assuming that Dio had got back from Paris sooner than he had thought.
She immediately asked Horace Barry if it would be all right for her to take her lunch break. But a split second later she stiffened in confusion when a female figure emerged from the limousine. A tall svelte brunette sheathed in a pill-box-red suit. Helena Teriakos, she registered in bemused recognition, just as the other woman entered the bookshop.
The Greek woman focused on Ellie with cool dark eyes, her beautiful face expressionless. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk in private?’ she enquired.
Disconcerted by that disdainful demand, Ellie flushed. ‘Sorry, what is—?’
‘We can talk in my car.’ Spinning round, Helena Teriakos walked back out of the shop, evidently expecting Ellie to follow her.
Ellie hesitated. She didn’t like being taken by surprise. Even less did she like being addressed as if she was a medieval serf. But Helena Teriakos was related to Dio, wasn’t she? Certainly she had been swanning about that palatial villa on Chindos like a family member of no small importance. There had been that family photograph in Dio’s apartment as well. And if Helena had suddenly taken the trouble to seek her out, it could only be because she knew that Dio had proposed and she had something to say on the subject.
Ellie lifted her jacket, slid into it and went outside. The chauffeur ushered her into the rear of the opulent vehicle. Ellie was very tense.
Helena Teriakos studied her with narrowed eyes and slowly shook her beautiful head in apparent wonderment. ‘A shop assistant and a cleaner! Dio really must have been distraught that night on Chindos! I confess that I wasn’t pleased when he showed up with you at his father’s funeral, but in the circumstances, I was prepared to overlook that small social indiscretion—’
‘Social indiscretion…?’ Ellie queried flatly, her skin reddening beneath that derisive attack. She lifted her chin. ‘Why should you have to overlook anything Dio does?’
The Greek woman elevated a brow. ‘Men will be men. I’m fond of Dio, of course, but I don’t have a jealous temperament. I’m not a sexually possessive woman either. I have always expected Dio to have a mistress after our marriage—’
‘Your marriage?’ Ellie interrupted incredulously.
Helena Teriakos appraised her bewildered face and shaken eyes and laughed with sudden amusement. ‘You really didn’t know, did you? Dio and I were practically betrothed in our cradles. We have known all our lives that we would eventually marry—’
‘No…’ Ellie broke in shakily. ‘No, it’s not true! Dio would have told me….’ And then her voice just faded away into nothingness as she recalled that conversation on the beach.
‘Why should he have told you? You were just one more in a long line of little amusements, none of whom were destined to be of any lasting importance in Dio’s life,’ Helena retorted drily, watching all the remaining colour drain from Ellie’s face. ‘Had you belonged to our social circle, you would have been aware that our friends and families have been awaiting an announcement of a formal engagement for some time now.’
The mists of sheer disbelief had now cleared from Ellie’s mind. She was absolutely gutted, her sense of betrayal immense. Helena Teriakos, whom she had foolishly assumed to be a mere relative! She felt sick with pain and mortification. An arranged marriage. Only Dio had termed it, ‘picking one’s life partner with intelligence’. Of course Spiros Alexiakis had had a bridal candidate in mind when he’d urged his son to marry! And Dio had said, ‘I’m not ready yet.’ Too busy having a good time with a variety of gorgeous willing women to settle down into matrimony at the age of twenty-nine. But throughout Helena had been waiting patiently in the wings.
‘I just don’t understand how you could accept Dio b-being with other women…’ Ellie stammered helplessly.
‘Dio and I have bonds that you could never hope to understand. We share the same background, status and expectations. We are a perfect match,’ Helena informed her with supreme superiority. ‘Unfortunately Dio rejoices in a rather touching but very destructive sense of humour. He believes that he has to marry you for his child’s sake.’
Aghast that Dio had evidently admitted that she had fallen pregnant, Ellie felt horribly exposed and shamed. ‘Dio told you—?’
‘He flew over to Paris yesterday and spent the entire evening with me. Weren’t you aware of that either?’ A small scornful smile tilted the brunette’s lips. ‘Believe me, he was quite devastated by his over-active conscience. However, I am a very practical woman. How much will it cost me to persuade you that an abortion would be in your best interests? Five hundred thousand pounds?’
Ellie gazed back at Helena Teriakos in appalled disbelief.
‘One million? I am an extremely wealthy woman and I’m prepared to be generous,’ Helena spelt out with icy calm. ‘You can always tell Dio you had a miscarriage. I won’t even insist that you get out of his life. You can still be his mistress. Believe me, you won’t last five minutes as his wife!’
‘I don’t want your money…and I’m not getting rid of my baby,’ Ellie asserted strickenly, unnerved by the other woman’s total lack of emotion.
‘But you can’t possibly marry him! Can you imagine the headlines? “Dionysios Alexiakis marries a cleaner”?’ Helena suggested with a little shudder of revulsion. ‘He’s a very proud man. You’ll be nothing but an embarrassment to him. And by the time the newspapers have finished hauling out the sordid circumstances of your birth and all your former lovers, Dio will have begun to hate you.’
‘What do you know about the circumstances of my birth?’ Ellie demanded with a raw edge to her strained voice.
‘I know everything there is to know about you, Ellie. Money buys information.’ Helena dealt her stricken face a pitying appraisal. ‘You’re in love with Dio. Thankfully I have never felt the need to indulge myself with such messy emotions. Well, make your choice. If you marry Dio, it’ll end in the divorce court. True, you’ll get the kudos of being his first wife, but you’ll lose him completely.’
‘I’m not going to marry him,’ Ellie framed numbly.
‘Now you’re being sensible.’ The other woman awarded her a cool smile of satisfaction. ‘When you trap a man into marriage, it can only end with him hating you. As for the child—you should learn by your own foolish
mother’s mistake. It didn’t do her much good bringing you into the world, did it? All those pathetic years of loyalty, only to be rewarded by the sight of your father marrying a secretary half his age the minute he was free!’
Savaged by that cruel attack out of the blue, Ellie scrambled dizzily up and started to get out of the car. ‘I’m not listening to any more of this—’
‘The door’s locked. I’m not finished yet. I do not want you to have this child—’
‘My child is my business!’ Ellie exclaimed in angry distrust. ‘Now open this door and stop threatening me!’
With a languid hand, Helena Teriakos signalled her chauffeur. ‘Think about what I’ve said. I make a very bitter enemy, and you will discover that Dio has tremendous respect for me.’
Ellie practically fell out onto the pavement in her eagerness to escape. She hurried through the shop and upstairs to her bedsit. But when she got there the tears didn’t come. Instead, the kind of outraged and inexpressible pain which Ellie hadn’t felt since her mother’s death began to mount inside her.
Dio had not been honest with her. She had been dragged into a situation in which she had no defence but that of her own ignorance. She was pregnant by a man who had been virtually engaged to another woman. She had unwittingly poached on another woman’s territory and was now being blamed for the entire ghastly mess which had resulted. As for Dio…as for Dio, with his wretched sense of honour and his cold, malicious witch of a future wife—well, Helena Teriakos was welcome to him! And the sooner Ellie told him that, the better she would feel!
CHAPTER SEVEN
ELLIE heard Dio come home. She listened to him exchanging a handful of terse words with his manservant, no doubt learning that she was waiting to see him. Having come over to his apartment the instant she finished work, she had been awaiting his return for almost two hours.
And Ellie now felt like unstable gelignite. The more inconsistencies she recalled in Dio’s past behavior, the more she understood, and the deeper her frustrated pain stabbed.