Her fingers were icy-cold and she fumbled the keys a little as she pulled them from her handbag. She slid the big old brass key into the door and then it dropped to the ground. “Shoot,” she murmured, crouching down to collect it. Only when she stood did she become cognizant of the fact she was no longer alone.
A pair of very shiny shoes and dark grey trousers led to a narrow waist and a crisp white shirt beneath a thick grey jacket. Before she’d even reached his shoulders, she knew who it was and braced herself for visual impact.
Sure enough, as she looked higher, her eyes latched to Vitalo’s and all the wind seemed to thwomp from her lungs, rushing out of her and leaving her struggling for air.
“What are you doing here?” She asked, thinking back two weeks to the way he’d showed her from his office, his obvious lack of concern something she’d never forget.
“We need to speak,” he said, the words flattened of any emotion.
But he’d made it obvious he couldn’t be bothered with her and pride had her shaking her head. “We have nothing to speak about.”
“Haven’t we?” His eyes bore into hers as though he could see all the fragments of her soul, and because she knew she was being dishonest, she hesitated for a moment, long enough for him to take the keys from her and open the door. Long enough for him to scoop up her shopping bags and precede her into the hallway of her home.
But every second that passed gave her a chance to fight for her sense of control, so that when she stepped into the corridor and flicked the lights on, she was able to meet him with at least an expression of equanimity.
“I don’t have long,” she said, feeling good to return the cold rejoinder to him. “Say what you’ve come to say and then leave.”
If he was surprised by her abruptness, he didn’t show it. “Am I the father?”
Bella had thought herself out of breath before, but now she was almost drowning. She gaped, staring at him, and then leaned back, sagging against the door, her eyes almost pleading when they lifted to his. “I…”
“It is not a difficult question.” His expression gave nothing away. “Given the timing, I presume I must be?”
Still, she couldn’t speak.
“Unless you went to bed with another man quickly after leaving me, but then, why come and see me in Athens?”
She closed her mouth, but still didn’t say a word.
“So?” He prompted, very still, very watchful. “Is it true?”
“How did you… how … who told you?” The words were croaky.
“Does that matter?”
It didn’t. Not immediately, anyway. Bella pushed off the door, straightening and mobilizing. She stalked past him, into the kitchen where she flicked the kettle on out of habit. “I tried to tell you.”
“Not hard enough.” The words contained every hint of judgement she’d thrown at herself these past two weeks.
“Harder than you deserved.” Her retort was caustic.
She glared at him then wished she hadn’t, because he was simply staring at her, and her pulse was thread, and all the air she’d lost moments earlier came rushing back, making her light-headed and woozy.
“I tried,” she said quietly, reaching for two mugs and dropping a tea bag in each.
“It is not hard to say the words: I’m pregnant.”
“It’s harder than you think. Besides, you hardly gave me a chance,” she pointed out, filling the teacups with boiled water.
“I’m pregnant. That is the only thing you should have said to me.”
“You had ‘two minutes’,” she reminded him, mimicking his tone.
“I would have cleared my schedule for the day, believe me.”
“Oh, how magnanimous of you!” Her laugh was harsh. She spun away to lift a half pint of milk from the fridge and splashed a bit into each mug, watching as the white clouded through the brown, a frown on her brow. “I didn’t expect you to be glad to see me, but at least a little warmth and welcome…”
“So you were hurt and decided to punish me by keeping our child a secret?” He prompted coolly. “I presume I am the father?”
“Yes,” she confirmed unnecessarily, and then almost wished she hadn’t when he turned whiter than a sheet beneath his deep tan.
“What?” She prompted. “You knew that, surely?”
“Yes,” he agreed, rubbing his palm over his square, stubbled jaw for a moment, his eyes glinting when they locked to hers. “And yet, there was a part of me…”
“That hoped you weren’t?” Bella expelled her breath angrily. “Well, if you’re looking to be left off the hook, I’m happy to do that. You can go away again, right now, and pretend none of this happened.”
He lifted a brow, watching her without speaking.
“I’m serious,” she said, pushing his teacup towards him and lifting her own, cradling it in hands that were still cold from the snow. “Don’t feel like you owe me any favours.”
“And what about what I owe my child?” He drawled, moving to the bench but not touching his cup. He placed his hands down on the timber top, and even though several inches separated them, Bella felt him clouding her space, his proximity sending her nerves haywire, making it hard to concentrate, much less stand up straight.
“What do you mean?” She was cautious then, hoping her expression didn’t give anything away.
“My child is growing in your belly. I’m going to be a father.” The words were suspiciously graveled and Bella’s heart ticked painfully in her chest at the very idea that he might be emotionally impacted by this development on any level. “And I have no intention of being an absent father.” He fixed her with a look of determination, a look that might well have caused his business adversaries to tremble and which was scarcely less intimidating to Bella.
“I’m glad,” she said honestly, simply, sipping her tea and taking strength from its familiar warmth and flavor. “I adored my father,” now her voice was crackled and softened by bittersweet memories. “My memories of my childhood are of this incredible, sunny, fun man. I wouldn’t be who I am without having had my dad in my life.” And spontaneously, she reached over and put her hand over Vitalo’s, her eyes latching to his. There was so much she didn’t say, so much that hurt too much to remember – her father’s diagnosis, and the things he’d said when the morphine had robbed him of his usual guardedness. Confessions she still struggled to make sense of, admissions she found easier to chalk up to incoherence rather than to believe there was any factual basis to them. “I want this baby to know the love and adoration of both a mother and father.”
Vitalo stood very still, his expression one she couldn’t fathom, but the longer he looked at her, the more the air around them seemed to thicken, and what had started as a gesture of compassion morphed into something else. Her hand on his tingled and her skin lifted with goose bumps, all over.
“I am glad to hear you say so,” he drawled finally, the words soft and gentle, spiced with his exotic accent, curling around her, flicking her nerve endings until her stomach was laced with butterflies. “I had thought you might be going to be difficult.”
“Difficult?” She blinked at him, and went to move her hand away, but he flicked his over and captured her fingers, lacing them together.
“About our marriage.”
The words made no sense. Bella stared at him, wondering if, despite his impeccable grasp on the language, he’d misunderstood somehow.
“Sorry,” she said, after several beats had past. “What?”
“Our marriage.” His eyes were like black pieces of coal in his incredibly handsome face, and she found she couldn’t look at him a moment longer – not without drowning or something.
“Pregnancy and marriage are two separate issues,” she pointed out stiffly. “And one certainly isn’t justification for the other.”
“Of course it is.” He dropped her hand but before she could rejoice in the small reprieve from physical contact, and the sanity it might offer, he’d rounded the
bench and come to stand in front of her, his hands braced on either side of her, trapping her with his much bigger, broader body. “You just said so yourself.”
“What did I say?”
“That you’re the person you are because of your father.”
“Yeah, but,” he was so close. She swept her eyes shut, hoping to blot him out. “You can still be a part of his or her life without marrying me.” She thought of her one failed marriage and everything inside of her railed against the idea of yet another marriage-of-convenience.
She’d learned her lesson.
“And force our child to grow up between our two homes?”
At that, Bella’s eyes flew wide. “What are you talking about?”
“Naturally, we would share custody.”
“No,” she shook her head, her heart twisting painfully now. “There’s nothing natural about that.”
“What did you presume we’d do?”
“I thought I’d raise our baby and you’d be… involved.”
“Like a holiday father?” He drawled, his contempt obvious. “Do you really believe that is how I would react?”
“Given that you threw me out of your office after all of ninety seconds…”
His cheeks slashed dark with colour. “I had no idea you were pregnant with my child.”
“Nor did you give me much of a chance to explain.”
“You should have needed no invitation. If you had to shout it as I walked to the door, so be it. In any event,” he changed the subject swiftly, before she could respond. “I know now that you are pregnant, and I am telling you I will settle for nothing less than fully shared custody. It is either we raise this child on separate continents, each enjoying fifty percent of the baby’s life, or we marry and truly raise the child together.”
Bella’s skin felt cold and clammy all over. “But surely you don’t want that? You’re not a … I mean… your lifestyle… you’re not exactly a family man, Vitalo.”
“Says who?” He prompted, roaming his eyes over her face.
“Says everyone and everything I know about you!”
“You know very little about me, I promise you,” he said darkly.
She clenched her jaw together. “I know you’re more at home in a five star hotel than a home, you have a revolving door on your bedroom and no doubt a billion notches on your gold-gilt bedpost. We both agreed this was just a one-night thing and my being pregnant changes nothing.”
“Don’t be so naïve, Bella. It changes everything. Everything. If you think I’ll walk away from my obligations, then you’re mad.”
She stared at him, her eyes huge, her mind at a loss for what she could say in that moment.
“I don’t want to marry you,” she muttered eventually.
His expression didn’t shift. “And marrying you wasn’t even remotely on my agenda,” he said, with such calmness it was almost insulting. “But here we are, about to become parents. Don’t you think we owe it to this baby to put aside our own selfish desires and act in his or her best interests?”
Bella wanted to strangle him, for how manipulative he was being. For their child’s best interest, she would do almost anything – what expectant mother wouldn’t? But marrying this man?
“I could fight you,” she said sipping her tea, glad to have the mug to grip to hide the way her fingers were shaking.
“Yes.” He nodded, moving his face infinitesimally closer to hers. “We could both spend millions of euro hiring expensive lawyers who would delight in dragging us through court battles to establish who gets which slice of our child’s life.”
Bella shivered at the picture he painted.
“Money is no object for me, nor is it for you.” His eyes roamed her face, his expression inscrutable. “And I would spend my entire fortune to fight for this child, Bella, make no mistake about it. I would fight with my dying breath to be a part of our baby’s future.”
Her heart turned over painfully in her chest.
“You can be a part of our baby’s future.”
A muscle throbbed at the base of his jaw. “No.”
“Vitalo…”
“You are a beautiful woman. A passionate woman. What happens when you meet a man you want to be with? Should I back off and let you raise my child with him?”
Her cheeks flushed pink, first at his praise, and then his deduction. “I could say the same of you,” she murmured. “You’re just as likely to meet someone and marry them…”
“And how would you feel about another woman playing mommy to our child?”
Her pulse tripped up a gear, and she glared at him, but in response, said only, “It happens all the time.”
His smile was laced with sardonic mockery. “Which is not an answer.”
She huffed out a sharp breath.
“And I don’t need an answer.” He lifted one hand to her chin, tilting her face so that she had no choice but to meet his eyes. “I know how you must feel.”
“Do you?” Her breath latched in her throat.
He nodded, moving closer. “And I know that marriage between us, though as unexpected as this pregnancy, would have its own… rewards.”
Heat spiraled through Bella, pooling between her legs, then spreading like chaotic little fireworks through her body. She made an enquiring noise that emerged more as a gargled, strangled sound, but he understood, and he smiled, his eyes only slightly sardonic as he bent down and caught her lips with his.
Another noise, this one of explosive passion, burst from Bella, and her lips separated, welcoming his kiss, needing his embrace.
God, how she’d been tormented with memories of this, of how his kiss felt, tasted, moved her. His hands found the waistband of her jeans, separating them before she’d even realized, and she whimpered as he pushed them apart, just enough to provide him access to her feminine core. Lower went the jeans, and his hand pushed inside her cotton briefs so his fingers brushed past the pale hair at the apex of her thighs and found her most sensitive cluster of nerves. At his first contact, she cried out, so sweet and unexpected was this touch, so perfect and right that she was trembling at the knees, almost unable to stand.
And he knew.
He brought an arm around her back, clamping her body in place, holding her upright when she might otherwise have fallen. His fingers moved against her and he watched her, his expression dark, his eyes intent, and she swept her own eyes shut to blot out all thoughts and ramifications, anything other than the intensity of this pleasure.
“Vitalo,” she cried, as pleasure exploded in her gut, and he kissed her again, tasting her impassioned pleas, her delight, tasting it and swallowing it deep down inside of himself. She exploded against him, her body weak and strong at the same time, her pleasure a mark of power and utter submission; her pleasure something she couldn’t resist.
“Marry me,” he growled into her mouth, one hand lifting to capture her hair, tangling in its ends, holding her where she was. “Marry me and I will make you feel like this every single night of your life.”
Sanity returned slowly but completely. He watched the way she shrouded herself in maturity, the way she looked at him with shock, at first, as though awakening from a dream. He saw the way she tried to arrange her face into a mask of cool disdain, when her pulse was still throbbing violently at the base of her throat and her eyes were fevered with desire, and he wanted to rail against all her attempts to sober herself up from the delirious, drunken effects of her desire.
Sensuality wasn’t something to be run from – it was a gift. And desire like this was rare – it deserved to be worshipped and enjoyed.
“Don’t do that,” she said, finally, her voice just a whispered husk.
His eyes narrowed. “When you enjoy it so much?”
Heat flamed in her cheeks.
“I mean, don’t use what I feel against me. If you want to persuade me to marry you, there are other ways than… by reminding me of what… that feels like.”
Pleasure, anti
cipation and admiration stoked inside of him. “None so effective, I think.”
Her lips twisted into a wry grimace. “Perhaps not.” She swallowed, her throat moving gently beneath his scrutiny. “So you’d expect that… to be a part of our marriage?”
His eyes were teasing when they latched to hers. “Oh, yes, agape mou. Often.” He leaned forward, so he could whisper in her ear. “I have quite an appetite…”
He felt her tremble against him and his cock jerked inside his pants. He wanted to take her then and there, against the cold timber of her kitchen bench. But not yet. First, he needed her agreement. He wanted this matter formalized before he did anything else.
And Kat? When exactly was he planning on telling Kat he was marrying her daughter? That he’d slept with her and got her pregnant?
“It’s crazy.”
“Perhaps,” he agreed, rocking his hips forward, pressing her to the bench so she could feel the strength of his need for her. “But I’ll bet many marriages are based on far less.”
She whimpered and her own hips pressed forward, and moved from side to side, as though she were trying to create enough friction to enjoy her own sexual release once more.
His arousal tightened; his body was like iron.
“Sexual infatuation is hardly a basis for a lasting relationship…”
“But a baby is,” he reminded her softly. “Think of what we could give the baby,” he said, as his hands slid under her jumper, finding the clasp of her bra and unhooking it. He kept his body hard against hers, and when the bra was looser, he curved his hands around to her breasts, his fingers and thumb tormenting her nipples. Her face was pink and she tipped her head back, staring at the ceiling, her breath coming thick and raspy from between her lips.
Internally, he swore, and then pushed at her sweater, lifting it over her head and tossing it to the floor; dispensing with her bra soon after.
His mouth dropped to take one perfect, peach nipple into his mouth and he sucked on it, rolling his tongue over its sensitive tip until her whimpering had become a steady noise in the background. His cock rolled against her and she cried out, her hands tangling in his hair.
This Christmas and Forever: A heartwarming anthology of billionaire holiday romances... Page 32