by Lynne Graham
Emmie swallowed hard on the pride threatening to choke her. The prospect of sleeping on a sofa for another night had little appeal and she couldn’t possibly inconvenience her friend by staying with her for much longer. Being homeless was frightening, Emmie acknowledged wretchedly. The security of a roof over her head would give her a much-needed breathing space, which she could use to decide what to do next. ‘OK, but I’m only agreeing because I don’t have any other option.’
Bastian pulled his phone out and spoke to someone at length in his own language. ‘The place will be fully stocked for your use by the time we arrive,’ he asserted. ‘Give me the address where you have been staying and I will arrange to have your belongings conveyed to the apartment for you.’
He made everything sound so easy. Although she could not help being impressed she also knew that nothing could have better illustrated the vast gulf between them—the extent of his wealth and power versus her poverty and lack of influence. Only that did not mean she had to be weak or meek, she reflected, tilting her chin. But sometimes accepting a helping hand when life was tough was the most sensible move.
* * *
Two hours later, Bastian gave Emmie a tour of the apartment he had offered her. It contained every luxury she could think of, from a stock of DVDs and a power shower to a fridge freezer stocked with every necessity. ‘I’ll be very comfortable here,’ Emmie remarked carefully. ‘But you have to promise to tell me when you need it for someone who works for you.’
Dark golden eyes accentuated by luxuriant black lashes focused on her intently and her heart hammered hard beneath her breastbone. ‘Right now, your needs are more important. Let’s face it, that’s my baby you’re carrying,’ he traded levelly. ‘Naturally you’re my first priority.’
The possessive note of that comment about the baby disconcerted her. Her soft pink lips parted. ‘Is that really how you feel? Do you like children?’
‘Never really thought about it. I don’t dislike them,’ Bastian declared pensively. ‘But the child you have, whether it’s a boy or a girl, will be my heir.’
‘Even though we’re not married?’
‘It will still be my child with my blood in its veins.’
There was something rather basic and territorial about that statement and Emmie was even more surprised. She recognised that he had not only adapted to the idea of becoming a father but had also warmed to the prospect.
‘To be blunt, I’ve never been in a hurry to get married,’ Bastian admitted drily. ‘Watching my father screw up matrimonially four times over soured me on the institution.’
‘I can understand that. So you think that having a child without having to tie yourself down to marriage might actually suit you better?’ Emmie queried, keen to understand his point of view.
‘Only time will answer that question. In the morning I’ll make enquiries and organise an obstetrician for you,’ Bastian continued. ‘You must have proper medical care.’
‘You can be very...bossy.’ Emmie selected the label with care, because in spite of the shock news she had given him he had been remarkably kind and considerate and she didn’t want to seem ungrateful.
A wicked grin that was the very essence of masculine charisma sliced across Bastian’s beautifully shaped and stubborn mouth. ‘You could say that being dominant comes naturally to me, glyka mou. Or even beware of Greeks bearing gifts,’ he teased.
‘Needs must when the devil rides,’ she quoted, her gaze compulsively welded to that grin, and she was as short of breath as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the atmosphere.
‘I’m not the devil. I only want to do what’s best for you,’ Bastian told her thickly, staring down at her with smouldering golden eyes.
Emmie felt her treacherous body react to his proximity and the husky, sexy note in his deep voice. Her nipples tingled, awareness washing through her in an exhilarating overload of sudden sexual energy. But this time, Emmie fought what she was feeling to the last ditch. She stepped hurriedly back from him, her cheeks burning as she deliberately turned her head away from him to avoid eye contact. She was hugely attracted to him but could not forget his renewed intimacy with Lilah on the night of his sister’s wedding. Although there had been no reference in the gossip columns to a reconciliation between Bastian and his former fiancée, Emmie didn’t want to risk getting more deeply involved with a man already entangled with another woman. Wasn’t it worrying enough that she was pregnant by him? The last thing she needed now was to let her overwrought emotions persuade her that she was in some way attached to Bastian Christou.
‘Emmie...’ he breathed thickly, stroking a fingertip very lightly over the back of her hand, making her quiver and long to twist round and hurl herself into his arms like a lovesick fool. But she wasn’t lovesick and she wasn’t a fool, she told herself fiercely.
‘Let’s not complicate things,’ Emmie pleaded in a charged undertone. She found him almost impossible to resist but there was such a thing as common sense and it was way past time she exerted it over her more self-destructive promptings. And going to bed with Bastian again would definitely come under the heading of destructive, she thought painfully.
Bastian closed a strong hand to her shoulder and turned her back to face him. Diamond-bright dark eyes locked to hers enquiringly. ‘We’re already complicated.’
‘Exactly, and you’re helping me out here, which I’m very grateful for,’ she said shakily. ‘But—’
His winged black brows drew together. ‘Just as you didn’t expect diamonds, I’m not expecting any kind of reward for helping out,’ he told her drily.
Discomfited at the way he had interpreted her statement, Emmie reddened. ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’
Bastian had her cornered in the hall, his lean, powerful body squarely planted between her and the front door. ‘Then what did you mean?’ he pressed.
Emmie jerked an awkward shoulder in the tense silence that had fallen. ‘I know you slept with Lilah the night of the wedding—’
Bastian lifted a frowning black brow, dark eyes widening in surprise. ‘No, I didn’t—’
‘She was in your room the next morning.’
‘But I wasn’t,’ Bastian riposted with hard emphasis. ‘I spent the night at my grandfather’s and we sat up playing poker until the early hours. I lost a packet to the wily old buzzard too. If Lilah was in my room she was there uninvited. Think about it, Emmie. Do you think I’m such a fool that I would hire you to keep her at bay and then get back into bed with her again?’
Emmie didn’t know what to think. ‘She even knew that I was leaving the island—’
‘Anyone in the house could have given her that information as I made the arrangements for your departure with my staff before I left the night before.’ Bastian frowned down at her and slowly shook his handsome head. ‘Obviously Lilah would have wanted you to think that I had been with her and she knew that I was spending the night at Theron’s. I can’t believe you fell for it.’
Mortified by that assessment, Emmie said nothing. The doorbell buzzed and Bastian yanked the door open. The suitcase she had taken to her friend’s house was carted over the threshold. ‘Is this all that you have?’ Bastian asked in surprise.
‘No, I left some stuff boxed up at my mother’s,’ Emmie admitted wryly.
‘I’ll sort that out for you as well,’ Bastian declared, carrying the case into the bedroom and then striding back to the front door with an air of relief. ‘I’ll phone you tomorrow...check that you’re all right.’
And that fast he was gone and Emmie was left blinking at the space he had occupied and guiltily suppressing a strong sense of disappointment. Her bringing up the subject of Lilah and falsely accusing him had evidently stifled any desire on his part to make their relationship more intimate, she registered ruefully. Had he truly spent that night at his grandfather�
�s house?
* * *
‘There are two heartbeats,’ the obstetrician informed Emmie. ‘You’re carrying twins.’
‘Twins?’ Emmie listened transfixed to the galloping pace of her babies’ heartbeats. She was only eight weeks into her pregnancy and was amazed at how much could already be seen on a scan.
‘I think this is why you’ve been feeling so sick. Severe nausea is more common with a twin pregnancy,’ the older man informed her.
Emmie rested her head back down and wondered how Bastian would react to the news. The prospect of two babies unnerved her, raised as she had been on horror stories of how hard her mother had found it to cope with twins. Her heart sank as a rather more practical concern struck her: how many years would it be before she could hope to earn enough to afford childcare for two children? And if she couldn’t earn enough, how would she ever get her independence back? Was she destined to live off Bastian’s largesse for years to come?
For the present, Bastian was keeping her and Emmie wasn’t comfortable with that arrangement, no matter how often he pointed out that the baby that was putting her out of commission with nausea was as much his responsibility as hers. During the past two weeks while Emmie struggled to cope with the almost constant sickness, which even medication had failed to banish, Bastian had become a surprisingly regular visitor. He would call in to check up on her on his way home, sometimes he would order in food for them both and stay a while and on two occasions he had sent the limo to pick her up and bring her back to his penthouse to enjoy a meal cooked by his housekeeper. The new relationship they had forged had limits though, Emmie acknowledged tautly. Bastian would ask her how her visit to the obstetrician he had engaged had gone but he wouldn’t accompany her or make his questions too personal. In the same way he had made no further attempt to renew the intimacy they had so briefly enjoyed.
Spending time with Bastian on a platonic basis, however, was torture for Emmie and she was thoroughly ashamed of that truth. It was as though, having been programmed to react to him once, her body could not learn how to block the signals of attraction. She had to consciously will herself not to stare at him, not to lean closer, indeed not to touch him in any way. It disconcerted her that even feeling unwell couldn’t stifle the strong sexual feelings Bastian still awakened in her.
Before she could lose her nerve she texted her news to Bastian, reasoning that that was less emotional than telling him face to face.
‘Had scan. We’re having twins,’ ran her text.
And the text was sent before she could think better of using that royal ‘we’ as if they were a couple, rather than two very different people attempting to find common ground as potential parents on the strength of an accidental pregnancy.
* * *
Twins? An unholy grin of satisfaction illuminated Bastian’s lean dark features in the midst of the meeting he was chairing. He totally forgot what he had been saying while texting back a one-word response. Emmie was having two babies and he thought that was terrific news. He had been a lonely only child for more years than he cared to count but his child would have company and a sibling to play with. He left the meeting to instruct Marie to send Emmie flowers. He saw the flash of surprise in his PA’s face when she heard the name and realised where Emmie was living and frowned, wishing he could bring the relationship out of the closet. Unfortunately, Emmie didn’t want people gossiping about them and preferred to stay in the background of his life while totally ignoring the reality that a child could not be hidden indefinitely.
Bastian, however, didn’t want to stage an argument with Emmie and lay down the law. How could he when she was getting so thin he would do almost anything to persuade her to eat a decent meal? Her doctor had given her medication but it had yet to provide a cure. Before his very eyes the constant sickness was wearing her health down, stripping away her delicate curves, giving her face a pinched look. Concealing his concern, respecting the boundaries set by someone else went against the grain with Bastian, but he continually told himself that it would all be worth it for the end result.
After all, all his life he had dreaded the idea of getting married, fearing that he would somehow repeat his father’s mistakes. He had deemed Lilah a safe choice, only realising what a nightmare she could be after they had parted. Conversely, Bastian choosing to stay single and childless would devastate his grandfather, who was obsessed with the continuation of the family tree. But, quite unexpectedly, Emmie was giving Bastian the best of both worlds: a child without the risk and the restrictions of marriage. Theron would be shocked that Bastian’s children were illegitimate but Bastian was convinced that however he felt the old man would not ignore his great-grandchildren’s arrival into the world.
‘Fantastic...’ ran Bastian’s text and it came back too fast in response to Emmie’s announcement to be a polite fiction.
CHAPTER EIGHT
EMMIE SMILED WITH pleasure at Bastian’s very positive reaction and on impulse texted him back again inviting him to join her for dinner. She wasn’t a versatile cook but she could manage a decent steak. She was even more pleased when Bastian’s flowers arrived. Having set the table in the alcove off the lounge, she changed into the dress she had worn the night before Nessa’s wedding. Although it was a much tighter fit over her enlarged breasts, the rest of her was as slender as ever and the zip went up easily.
Bastian was punctual and she hurried to answer the door. His brilliant dark-lashed eyes roamed over her leggy figure in the fuchsia-pink dress and she blushed furiously, embarrassed that she had gone to so much trouble to make the most of her appearance.
‘Are we celebrating?’ Bastian enquired, studying her with hungry intensity. ‘I love that dress.’
‘You seemed pleased about the twins,’ Emmie pointed out awkwardly, feeling painfully self-conscious with his full attention trained to her. Her nipples prickled and lengthened, the sensitive tips scraping against the lace cup of the bra cupping the full mounds. A clenching sensation low in her pelvis made her press her thighs together and squirm with shame. Without even trying Bastian lit her up like a bonfire inside, she acknowledged in fierce mortification.
Something primal flamed and smouldered in the depth of Bastian’s dark deep-set eyes and without warning he reached for her, pulling her into the hard, unyielding heat of his lean, powerful body. His mouth plunged down in hot, urgent demand on hers. Excitement exploded through Emmie and she couldn’t breathe for the wild clamour of her thundering heart and the heightened effect on her senses.
‘Tell me yes...’ Bastian growled into her hair as she snatched in a quivering breath, struggling not to shudder in reaction as he ran lean fingers up a slender thigh below the hem of her dress, roving tantalisingly close to the source of the intimate ache making her so tense. ‘Yes, you want this as much as I do.’
The solid ridge of his arousal was potent and compelling against her stomach, and that he could hunger for her that much made desire leap inside her while moisture gathered in readiness at the heart of her. Weak as a newborn as that wild surge of yearning engulfed her, her fingers biting into his shoulders, she leant into him. ‘Yes...’ she whispered, no longer able to suppress her natural inclinations, frantic to feel him moving inside her again, awakening her to a level of sensation she had never known possible. ‘Yes...’
And Bastian required no further invitation. He lifted her up into his arms and carried her through to the bedroom, sinking down on the mattress with her across his lap as he unzipped her dress. ‘I feel like I’ve waited for ever for you, glyka mou.’
Emmie lifted her fingers to rest them gently against his stubborn, wilful and utterly beautiful mouth, trembling as he parted his lips and sucked on her fingertips. ‘You’re not used to waiting, I’m not used to giving.’
And it was true, for she had too often played safe simply to protect herself from the risk of hurt and rejection
, but something about Bastian destroyed her defences, blew her heart wide open, made her want to give instead. She met eyes ablaze with sexual hunger and marvelled that she had the power to make him feel that way. Another kiss and he was stripping off her dress, peeling away her bra to curve gentle caressing fingers to her swollen nipples, his every touch sending fire to her aching core.
Emmie twisted against Bastian, fingers clenching into his luxuriant hair to hold him close while she kissed him with all the passion she had repressed for so long. Quick to get the message that speed could be an advantage, Bastian kissed her fervently back while also hauling off his jacket, ditching his tie and embarking on his shirt buttons. She spread reverent fingers across his hard-muscled bronzed torso, appreciating the lithe strength and raw masculinity of his powerful body. He lifted her off him, disposed of his well-cut pants and stretched out beside her on the bed, but he lay still for barely a second before he sat up again to study her semi-naked length with burnished eyes of appreciation.
‘I want you so much it’s painful to hold back,’ Bastian groaned, a fingertip toying teasingly with the shallow indentation of her belly button, and then straying down over her mound to more responsive territory and skating over the taut, damp triangle of material stretched beneath.
Emmie’s back arched and her hips writhed as he touched her, fierce hunger pounding through her like a pagan drum beat that filled her ears and her thoughts so that she was aware of nothing beyond the wicked skill of his hands on her unbearably tender flesh. He whisked away the last barrier and, parting the delicate pink folds, he thrust a finger into her aching core. She gasped, twisted and turned, wanted him so much it physically pained her to withstand such teasing.
‘I want to watch you come this time,’ Bastian confided thickly, sliding down the bed to caress the engorged buds of her nipples with his mouth and his tongue while at the same time he drove her crazy with every plunge of his fingers.
Emmie couldn’t stay still. She was on fire for him, quivering with excitement and a level of need that came close to torment. ‘Bastian, please,’ she whimpered.