by Lynne Graham
Dio flung back his head, brilliant eyes burning like fire now as he scanned her bemused face. ‘You do bring out the animal in me, pethi mou,’ he husked, backing her indoors again and setting her back down on her own feet. ‘Where’s the alarm system?’
Ellie was still in another world entirely, her body throbbing with the pangs of denial. ‘The…alarm?’
Dio located it for himself, set it, and doused the lights. Stuffing her bag into her hands, he tugged her outside again and locked up. ‘What are you doing?’ Ellie finally muttered in bewilderment.
‘We’re going to have dinner and talk.’
‘But I’m not dressed—’
‘You’ve got clothes on, haven’t you?’ Dio cut in with very male impatience.
Ellie frowned down at her skinny-rib cardy, long black skirt and flat boots.
‘You look great,’ Dio told her without looking at her as he pressed her into the Ferrari.
Their corner of the quiet, exclusive restaurant was so peaceful and so empty it was as if an exclusion zone had been set around their table. There didn’t seem to be any other diners. Ellie lifted her glass of wine.
Dio looked at her, transfixed. Then he reached across the table and literally snatched the glass right out of her hand. ‘You can’t have that!’
Ellie gazed back at him in total bemusement. ‘Why not?’
‘You’re pregnant. It’s safest to stay off alcohol. Don’t you know that?’ Dio demanded.
‘Why should I know that?’
‘You’re a woman—’
‘So?’
‘You’re supposed to know about that sort of stuff,’ Dio told her with a frown.
‘Well, I don’t! I’m twenty-one, single and goal-orientated…at least I was,’ Ellie muttered darkly. ‘Why would I ever have been interested in knowing what a woman should and shouldn’t do when she’s pregnant?’
‘As it happens…Nathan dropped this book for expectant fathers in with me.’ Dio shrugged, and then shrugged again with exaggerated cool to combat her now widening eyes full of wonderment. ‘I just flicked through it.’
Ellie could tell he had read every sentence, down to the fine print. She was touched. He had made more effort than she had and she worked in a bookshop. Maybe he wasn’t as squeamish as she was.
‘I thought there were things I should know—’
‘You really do want this baby, don’t you?’ she conceded grudgingly.
His dark, deep-set eyes narrowed warily. ‘Only if you come as part of the package.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘That the way you’ve been behaving I don’t know what to expect any more. You don’t want to be pregnant. You don’t want to be with me…except in bed,’ Dio outlined with a sardonic look of challenge.
An unexpected surge of tears stung the backs of Ellie’s eyes. She blinked furiously. ‘That’s not true…I do want the baby…’ she sniffed. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, why am I crying?’
Dio reached for her coiled fingers. ‘Your hormones are all over the place right now. It’s making you very emotional.’
Ellie reddened furiously and yanked her hand out of his, no longer touched by the prospect of the knowledge he had imbibed on her behalf. ‘Did your book tell you I was a brick short of a full load?’
‘No, it told me to be understanding and supportive,’ Dio imparted piously.
‘You haven’t got the tact,’ Ellie informed him dulcetly.
A slashing smile of amusement curved Dio’s beautiful mouth.
Her heart skipped an entire beat. He was so gorgeous she couldn’t take her eyes off him.
‘I still want to marry you,’ Dio delivered. ‘But if you’ve got a better solution, run it by me…just as long as it doesn’t entail my baby in a basket behind a shop counter.’
‘No, it won’t entail that.’
‘Leaving him or her to go out to work?’
Ellie squirmed. ‘Well—’
‘Denying my financial support?’
‘Dio, I—’
‘No, you listen to me,’ Dio asserted forcefully. ‘If we don’t marry, this child will be an outsider to my family. He won’t be a secret. But he’s not likely to thank you for making him different from the children I will eventually have within marriage with someone else.’
Ellie subsided like a burst balloon. For someone else read Helena. Helena, who would loathe Ellie’s child if he or she came visiting. Helena, who would be the ultimate wicked stepmother, determined to humiliate and denigrate the illegitimate outsider. Ellie’s tummy curdled, all appetite vanishing. She reckoned even the baby was taking a panic attack at the threat of such a future.
‘Something I said finally clicked with you?’ Dio murmured silkily.
Dredging herself from that nightmare series of visions, pressing a trembling, apologetic hand to her tummy in newly maternal protectiveness, Ellie muttered between gritted teeth, ‘Maybe I was a bit hasty saying I wouldn’t have you as a gift.’
‘That was beautifully put, yineka mou. So we’re getting married again, are we?’ Dio enquired smoothly.
Ellie swallowed hard, humble pie beckoning, and took off defensively on another tack. ‘You won’t believe what I told you about Helena Teriakos.’
‘No,’ Dio conceded levelly. ‘I could lie to you for the sake of peace, but I won’t. Naturally I understand that you were pretty upset that day. You didn’t know about Helena but she didn’t realise that. Had she been aware of it, she would never have approached you.’
Ellie compressed her wobbly mouth. It was obvious he was never going to believe her version. He had known Helena all his life and his trust was absolute. How would she live with that?
‘Ellie…the night before you found out that you were pregnant, I made the wrong decision. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to start telling you about Helena.’
‘You might never had had to tell me.’
Dio left that speaking comment alone, black eyes semi-screened. ‘You were under sufficient strain. In any case, Helena was an issue I had to deal with alone.’
‘You feel very guilty about her,’ Ellie breathed tautly.
Dio frowned. ‘How else could I feel?’
Ellie averted her eyes. ‘Do…do you love her?’ she dared in a driven whisper, and then sat there in mute terror of his response.
‘What does love have to do with it?’
That silenced Ellie. It told her so much and yet it told her nothing. Whether he loved Helena or not, he would marry Ellie because she was expecting his child. But how long would he stay with her? Would Helena be proved right? But what did she herself have to lose? She would be Dio’s wife, for a while at least. Their child would be born legitimate. These days a lot of people didn’t seem to set much store by that, but it meant a great deal to Ellie, whose own father had refused to own up to her very existence.
‘We put the baby first. Then we worry about us,’ Dio spelt out then, with finality.
It sounded like a leading recipe for disaster to Ellie. But the bottom line for her at that moment was that she loved him, and when he got that brooding darkness in his eyes it scared her and made her feel shut out.
‘I’d like to get married in a church,’ she announced breezily. ‘In a totally over-the-top dress. So if you’re planning on a register office, you’ve got no hope!’
Dio’s wide, sensual mouth eased into a smile. She felt like a performing clown, but that smile warmed her like the sunshine and she was defenceless against it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SIX weeks later, Ellie walked into her local church, where she was a regular worshipper, to become Dio’s wife.
She wore an elegant, fitted, off-the-shoulder dress in palest cream, the superb fabric exquisitely beaded and embroidered. In one fell swoop she had virtually emptied her bank account of five years of savings. It had been like an act of faith in their marriage. She had used one of the credit cards Dio had given her to buy the matching shoes and all
the other trappings.
She walked down the aisle alone, and quite unconcerned.
‘Someone has to give you away,’ Dio had told her on the phone from Geneva, where he had been attending a conference.
‘Forget that…what do you think I am? A commodity?’ Ellie had demanded. ‘I’m almost a twenty-first-century woman!’
‘Why did twenty-first-century woman say no to me the night before last?’ Dio had enquired silkily.
A squirming silence had fallen at her end of the line.
‘I want our wedding night to be special. You said you understood,’ Ellie had reminded him uncomfortably, her face burning.
‘When I was standing under a cold shower at two that morning, aching like the very devil,’ Dio had growled back in charged response, ‘I changed my mind.’
It was with that memory foremost in her mind that Ellie smiled with sheer brilliance on that walk down the aisle towards Dio. She was blind to the assembled guests crowding out the church, impervious to everyone but the very tall, very dark and very, very gorgeous guy waiting for her at the altar with his best man. This was her day, her moment, her guy. Mine, she thought fiercely. Well, she adjusted then, for as long as she could hold onto him.
The ceremony was beautiful. Ellie drank in every word, required no prompting when it came to taking her vows, indeed got in there fast. Why? At the back of her mind lurked a no doubt ridiculous but nonetheless enervating image of Helena Teriakos somehow stopping the ceremony in its tracks at the eleventh hour. ‘I make a very bitter enemy,’ Helena had warned. And even as the wedding ring went on her finger, Ellie’s skin chilled at that memory.
Unfortunately, it hadn’t occurred to Ellie that Dio would invite Helena to their wedding. So it was a shock when she saw the beautiful Greek woman approaching them outside the church.
A vision of perfection in a stunning white suit, Helena glided up, grasped both their hands and murmured with a rather sad smile, ‘I am very happy for you both.’ Then she paused. ‘Ellie, I hope you don’t mind, but I have something I really need to ask Dio.’
That touching air of plucky feminine vulnerability which had taken Ellie entirely by surprise worked like a magic charm on Dio. He was drawn off to speak to Helena and Ellie was left alone on the church steps. As the minutes ticked past, Ellie got paler and paler, her tension rising. Their guests were noticing, stealing covert glances at Dio and Helena, commenting. Ellie just wanted to die of humiliation.
The society photographer finally called, ‘Mr Alexiakis…please!’
And only then did Dio return to Ellie’s side.
‘She did that deliberately!’ Ellie condemned helplessly when the photographer had finished.
Dio raised a questioning brow. ‘Who? What are you talking about?’
How could he be so obtuse? Ellie was so furious she could have shaken him. ‘Helena!’
A silence as thick as concrete spread.
Dio breathed in deep.
‘Helena remains a close friend, a very close friend,’ he spelt out with what sounded like twenty-five generations of aristocratic ice and breeding backing up his chilling drawl.
‘Oh, I believe I’ve got that message all right,’ Ellie whispered tightly.
‘Then understand this too. I will not allow you to embarrass either myself or her in public. That’s my last word on the subject. Get used to the idea before I lose my temper!’
And with that blunt warning Dio turned away to speak to his best man, Nathan Parkes. Ellie quivered with sheer rage. She couldn’t believe that Dio had had the nerve to speak to her as though she were a misbehaving child threatening to cause a scene. For goodness’ sake, he’d got the ring on her finger and then he’d started acting like some medieval tyrant! Hadn’t he seen how utterly inappropriate and unnecessary it had been for the brunette to demand his attention in the midst of their wedding photographs being taken? Evidently not.
As Dio swung back to her again, Ellie threw back her slim shoulders and lifted her chin. ‘You can’t talk to me like you just did, Dio—’
‘Ohi…no?’ Dio countered with dangerous quietness, his tone trickling down Ellie’s rigid spine like the gypsy’s curse. ‘You’ve got a lot to learn about Greek men!’
Frankly, at that moment, Ellie felt she had already learnt quite sufficient. She was fizzing with fury. But before she could respond in kind, Meg Bucknall appeared a few feet from them. ‘Freeze!’ she begged, and eagerly lifted her camera to take a picture.
‘You look just gorgeous, Ellie,’ the older woman sighed appreciatively. ‘You didn’t have to invite me but I’m so glad you did. I’m having a great time.’
‘The pleasure is ours, Mrs Bucknall,’ Dio responded with a charismatic smile.
‘The pleasure has just gone out of my day,’ Ellie confided as they climbed into the limousine that would take them to the reception at the Savoy Hotel.
‘When you’re in the wrong, I’ll tell you,’ Dio countered without a shade of regret.
But I wasn’t in the wrong, Ellie almost snapped, and then conscience spurred her into questioning that conviction. This was their wedding day. Helena’s smooth little power play had embarrassed rather than injured. Possibly in allowing her own insecurity full rein, she herself had overreacted.
‘Dio,’ she murmured ruefully, green eyes very clear, ‘This isn’t a very easy occasion for me…’
Dio dealt her a questioning, wary look, her change of approach disconcerting him.
‘I didn’t realise there would be so many guests and I hardly know anybody here,’ Ellie pointed out. ‘And all your friends and relatives were expecting you to marry Helena.’
Dio tensed. ‘Yes, but—’
‘Dio, they wouldn’t be human if they weren’t wondering why you are suddenly marrying me instead…’ Ellie coloured. ‘And if they’re thinking what people usually think at times like this, well, they’re dead right where I’m concerned, aren’t they? I am pregnant! Naturally I feel touchy and self-conscious today.’
Dio closed an unexpected hand firmly over hers, black eyes no longer cool and distant. ‘I am proud that you are carrying my baby,’ he cut in with roughened sincerity.
‘So maybe I went over the top about Helena—’
‘No,’ Dio sighed. ‘Once again I was too quick to judge you, and I apologise. I honestly didn’t appreciate how you were feeling.’
It was wonderful what difference a little explanation could make. Ellie watched in wonderment as Dio lifted her hand and pressed his mouth softly to the centre of her palm. Her heart seemed to swell inside her chest and her pulse-beat accelerated. A simply huge wave of happiness whooshed up inside her, dispelling all anxiety and unease.
‘Even worse, you have no family here of your own to support you,’ Dio conceded grimly.
‘Mum would have loved all this…’ Ellie’s smile of acknowledgement was rather tremulous at that emotive thought.
With a rueful groan, Dio pulled her all the way into his arms. ‘When you said I had no tact, you hit the target!’
Ellie knew better than to remind him of his father. She hadn’t the slightest doubt that the late Spiros Alexiakis would have been anything but happy to see his only son marrying someone as ordinary as she felt herself to be. On the face of it, she conceded painfully, Helena would have been so much more suitable. She rested her cheek against his broad shoulder, the warm, intimate scent of him doing the wildest things to her senses.
Dio glanced down at her, dark, deep-set eyes burning gold. ‘Have you ever made love in a limo?’ he enquired thickly.
Ellie gave him a helpless grin. ‘Oh, yeah, Dio…of course I want to walk into the Savoy and greet all these important people with my make-up half off and my hair all messed up!’
‘I could persuade you—’
‘But you won’t. You’re going to be a miracle of restraint…until tonight,’ she told him unsteadily, her cheeks warming.
Met by Ellie’s determined smile as the bridal couple greeted th
eir arriving guests at the hotel, Helena bent to kiss her cheek with cool familiarity, exchanged a light word with Dio and moved on past. The brunette’s supreme confidence and control still daunted Ellie.
Dio watched the smile drop right off Ellie’s expressive face again. ‘Try to appreciate how difficult this must be for her.’
Ellie nodded and flushed, feeling herself rebuked although she had done her utmost to look calm and friendly. She had never been very good at hiding her emotions. And it looked as if she was stuck with the stigma of having lied about what had passed between her and the older woman at their first meeting. But then wasn’t it possible that in the heat of the moment Helena had acted totally out of character that afternoon? Helena might now regret her behaviour, Ellie thought with sudden hope, resolving to be more generous herself.
Nathan Parkes introduced her to his wife, Sally. She was a bubbly redhead with freckles and a friendly, easy manner. ‘I wish I’d got the chance to meet you before the wedding. I did think of asking Dio for your number and calling you. But I knew you’d be frantically busy and I didn’t want to seem too pushy.’
‘I’d have been delighted,’ Ellie told her warmly, since she was beginning to appreciate that the tall, softly spoken gynaecologist was a much closer friend of Dio’s than she had initially realised.
‘Great. I’m not much good at standing on ceremony,’ Sally confided cheerfully. ‘And I was really hoping you wouldn’t be like—’ As she bit back what she had been intending to say, she reddened like mad. ‘What I meant to say was…was…we, well—’
Nathan stepped in to rescue his wife from her discomfiture. ‘Sally hopes you’ll come and stay with us in the country some time soon. We warn our guests in advance—we have a muddy yard, three noisy kids and a manic dog!’
‘I’m not a cordon bleu cook or anything,’ Sally warned rather anxiously.
‘I’m not a fussy eater, and I’d be happy to help out,’ Ellie said quickly, thinking that their home and family sounded delightful.
Dio glanced at Ellie with a raised brow. ‘Can you cook?’ he asked in surprise.
Nathan shot his friend a helplessly amused look and laughed outright. ‘Dio, that says it all, it really does! Are you aware, Ellie, that Dio didn’t even know how to switch on a kettle when he first came to stay with us?’