Читать книгу The Balfour Legacy - Ким Лоренс, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 18

SHE should have fainted again, Mia thought later. It would have been the easiest way to get out of what took place next.

But she didn’t faint.

Instead she was forced to endure a second consultation in one day, plus a gentle lecture on consuming the right healthy diet and taking the right kind of rest, exercise and sleep.

Having presented his bomb, Nikos had withdrawn to the window again. Long back presented to the room, jacket shoved back, hands thrust into his trouser pockets. He stood like that, signalling his retreat from proceedings, and Mia could not drag her eyes away from him, the shock he had so neatly delivered on her was so great.

The doctor began a speech about the variances of early pregnancy, though she barely heard a word that he said. And even he was feeling the strain in the atmosphere because it was so suffocatingly tense. He kept on glancing at Nikos, then back to Mia’s frozen profile while she stared at Nikos too. It had to be obvious that they were not a joyously expecting couple, overexcited and overanxious about becoming parents.

As he prepared to leave, he expressed one final message. ‘The nurturing of a new life is a precious gift that should be cherished. Anything less is an offence to the child itself.’

By then even Nikos was showing cracks in his unyielding demeanour when he turned round and moved to show the doctor out.

And he did not come back.

Mia continued to sit on the sofa, still too stunned to do more than take in the fact that Nikos had somehow managed to grab complete control of the situation before she’d even had a chance to grasp it for herself.

He knew she was pregnant. His other sources had been reporting her every move back to him, and by the amount he’d already indicated she had not taken a single step anywhere during the past two weeks without it being carefully tracked.

What was she supposed to make of that?

Suddenly wondering why she was still sitting here like some cowed fool waiting for him to deign to put in an appearance, Mia shot to her feet. Her mouth felt unnaturally dry and her stomach was still not happy but she discovered that she could walk without making the walls and floor move about.

Stepping out of the living room she discovered that the apartment was a lot bigger than she’d expected it to be. A wide central hallway fed right down its middle, with doors leading off from either side of it, most of them thrown open like the doors in his house in Hampshire.

Shivering she turned in the direction of the only closed door—the door out of here. She was going to escape while she had the chance. She needed to use the loo and she desperately needed a drink of something long and cool and thirst quenching. She did not need—

‘Don’t even think about it,’ his deep voice arrived with a quiet, seriously threatening undertone to it.

Pulses leaping like mad, Mia pressed her dry lips together and closed her eyes for a second, then opened them again and, folding her arms across her front, turned to look at him.

He was poised half in, half out of a room farther down the hallway. Her guarded blue eyes connected briefly with the narrowed glint reflecting from his, then dropped almost of their own volition down the length of his long lean stance.

He’d removed his suit jacket and his shirtsleeves had been folded up his forearms. He held what looked like a tea towel in one long-fingered hand. It came to her that she was seeing yet another side to this complicated man, this one being his domesticated side.

Did it distract from the raw sexual male she’d been so fascinated by for so long? No, she admitted helplessly as her tummy flipped for a different reason. Without knowing she was doing it she covered it with a hand.

Lowering his gaze to watch the revealing gesture, Nikos had to fight not to grind his teeth together as anger erupted inside. She was barely managing to stand upright. She looked the colour of paste. She’d lost weight—too much weight going by the way her pale blue cotton dress was hanging on her. And she looked so beautiful and fragile and vulnerable he wanted to leap on her and carry her off to the nearest bed!

Where the hell had he got the idea he could just brush her off like the others?

The clue was in the question, Nikos told himself grimly. She wasn’t like the others.

She was open, emotional, temperamental and feisty, he listed. Extraordinarily beautiful and soul-destroyingly sexy without knowing that she was. Even now while she stood there trying to maintain an upright position, all he could think about was stripping off that sack of a dress so he could see how much damage two weeks of barely eating had done to her fabulous shape.

And she was pregnant with his child, he tagged on finally. What the hell was sexy about knowing she was pregnant with his child? He had never wanted children. The knowledge of one nestling somewhere inside her should be bringing him out in a cold sweat, but it wasn’t.

He had to veil his eyes so she would not see how the powerful stuff pounding around inside him was almost knocking him over while he stood here trying to play it cool.

‘I’m preparing something to eat as per doctor’s orders,’ he relayed evenly. ‘If you can walk this far without collapsing, come and join me.’

For a second, for a pin-piercing, nerve-tripping second, he thought she was going to launch a second verbal attack on him. She drew in a breath, her chin shot up, her fabulous blue eyes sparked, her gorgeously soft, full, vulnerable mouth parted and the scent for the fight filled his body with a sizzling hot charge that would have only one outlet.

And that was the reason why he must have been mad to believe he could brush her off like the others. She fired him up even when he did not want firing up. She fired him up without even knowing she was doing it! She challenged him, fascinated him—annoyed the hell out of him.

‘I need to use a bathroom,’ she said.

It was like coming down from a drug-induced high. Long fingers gripping the tea towel like it was some kind of lethal weapon, he waved it at a door to her right. ‘Second door down,’ he indicated.

With that he stepped back into the kitchen and vented some of what was gripping him by tossing the tea towel across the room the moment he knew she couldn’t see him do it.

Mia collapsed against the closed bathroom door. She had absolutely no idea what had been going on just now but she felt as if she’d just survived an attack from invisible aliens. Every nerve end she possessed was standing on end and tingling with alarm. He had not moved. He had not said anything particularly contentious. He had not been anything but absolutely casual and cool.

It was her, she told herself. She was so uptight about these other sources she was sensing things about him that just were not there. Trying to pull herself together she turned to lock the door, only to frown when she discovered there wasn’t a lock there. Since when did multimil-lion-pound apartments come with no locks on the bathroom doors?

She was washing her hands when she recalled that the bathroom attached to her bedroom in Hampshire had no lock and neither had the bedroom door. And all of the doors there had been standing wide open, as if the sheer pace of restless energy Nikos always generated meant he needed to move around his homes without the irritating restriction of having to pause to fling open doors.

And that was it, Mia recognised suddenly. All those strange sensations she had been picking up on out there just now had been the sparking trails of his restless energy screaming around the walls, trying to get out, because he had to be feeling so constrained by the appalling discovery that she was carrying his child.

He was slicing a knife through a fresh crisp salad sandwich when she presented herself in the doorway. Her unpredictable stomach immediately reacted to the delicious smell with a hungry growl.

Glimpsing her hovering there Nikos indicated with the knife to one of the high stools set by a marble-topped eating bar. ‘Sit down,’ he invited.

Reluctant to move any closer to him but too hungry to stay where she was, Mia hitched herself onto the stool.

‘Drink,’ he said, setting a tall glass of sparkling fresh orange down in front of her. Half the sandwich arrived while she was drinking thirstily from the glass.

‘I don’t know what you like so I’ve piled everything in there. Just take out what you don’t want to eat.’

In other words, eating nothing was not an option, Mia interpreted. Not that she was thinking of causing a fight about it. She was too hungry.

‘I thought you were in Busan,’ she said as she set down her glass.

‘I flew back overnight.’ Lifting up a boiling kettle he poured the water into a stainless-steel cafetière, infusing the room with the rich aroma of freshly ground coffee.

About to pick up the sandwich, her fingers stilled. ‘Because you found out I was pregnant,’ she prompted.

‘Even I cannot see into the future, agape mou. You only found out during your visit to your GP this morning.’ He sent her a wry glance. ‘Though I will admit I suspected it might be the reason for your stomach bug when Fiona relayed her concerns to me about it.’

Mia stared at him. ‘Why would you come up with such a suspicion?’ She had not thought of it so why should he?

He offered up a shrug. ‘I did not use anything.’

Did not use anything? ‘Explain this—did not use anything,’ she demanded.

To her surprise he let out a short dry laugh. ‘Innocent to the last skin cell,’ he mocked, turning around to send her a sardonic glance. ‘Protection,’ he delivered, accentuating each syllable like he was talking to an idiot. ‘Contraception,’ he added in the same mocking way. ‘The protective use of a condom, if you need me to spell it out clearer for you.’

‘I do not.’ Cheeks heating because she could not believe she had walked herself into that totally embarrassing explanation, she fired at him, ‘Why did you not use anything? Or do you treat all your one-night stands as cavalierly as you did me?’

‘No.’ Veiling his eyes, his answer was that short and gruff.

‘Then why take such liberties with my body?’

For some reason his mouth moved into a rueful twist. ‘Freudian slip,’ he said, as if that should make sense to her.

Well, it didn’t. ‘Grazie, then, for the care you took with me!’

Nikos said nothing, he just turned back to what he was doing, leaving her anger to bounce off his back. Mia sizzled where she sat for a few seconds longer, unable to absorb that a man like him could take such irresponsible risks! Then she recalled the powerful grip of their mutual passion, and she shifted restlessly on her seat. She had been too busy enjoying herself to give a thought to protection either. She could not pile the entire blame on to him.

‘The smell of that coffee is upsetting my stomach,’ she announced, and enjoyed watching his disconcerted start before he leapt to snap on an air-extractor fan, then proceeded to flush his preferred beverage down the sink.

Mia bit into her sandwich with relish, having paid him back for his crucifying explanation for not using anything. He was always way too arrogantly sure of himself. Discovering he had faults to pick at made her feel much better.

Pouring chilled water into a glass from a bottle he’d removed from the fridge, he came to sit down on the stool next to hers. That brought him too close. Tensing her spine Mia put down the sandwich.

‘So who are the other sources you referred to?’

‘Security team.’ Reaching across to pick up the discarded sandwich, he almost threatened to feed it to her until she took it from his long stubborn fingers. ‘You’ve been under discreet surveillance since the Anton Brunel incident,’ he enlightened. ‘A precaution both Oscar and I decided was necessary to your—’

‘Oscar—?’ She swung a horrified blue stare at him. ‘You have told Oscar what happened to me?’

‘I’m responsible for your safety—’

‘Sì.’ Mia heaved in taut breath. ‘I am the duty you took on at Oscar’s request. You do not have to spell that part out.’

‘Why are you angry? We were working in your best interests—’

‘By spying on me without telling me you were doing it—and I did not even notice, did I?’

‘If you had noticed, then the security team would not have been doing their job properly,’ Nikos drawled smoothly.

‘Have you been reporting back to Oscar about everything I say and do?’ Mia speared at him suddenly. ‘Do you have a special tick list for when I perform up to Balfour standards and another one for crosses when I fail to reach the required level of your expectations?’

His brown eyes cooled. ‘That wasn’t funny, Mia.’

She so agreed with him there! Had he been colluding with Oscar over every step that she took? She hoped not, thinking about the intimacy they shared that had put her in the situation she was in now.

She felt like a curiosity in a zoo, watched and discussed and picked over. ‘I wish I had never come to England now,’ she breathed, a tremor of hurt tensing her mouth. ‘I wish I had never met you.’

‘Too late for both wishes,’ Nikos said, then let out a short sigh. ‘Before you spin me into the manipulative villain here, Oscar called me. Santino D’Lassio succeeded in keeping your unplanned dip off the television screens but he was not so successful with the press. Oscar read about it and called me.’

As Sophie had called her, Mia remembered, simmering down a little.

‘Together we decided that Brunel could become—a nuisance to you, so I employed a team to watch over you in case the nasty piece of work decided to try something again—and that was all Oscar and I discussed.’

‘Oh,’ she quivered. ‘I…th-thank you.’

‘I don’t need thanking,’ Nikos discarded with frowning annoyance. ‘It was deemed necessary to your safety so it was done. Of course, I did not expect to find out you were living it up until all hours with Kat Balfour’s crazy friends!’

‘They are not crazy, and it was only one night!’ Mia fired up all over again. ‘And what business of yours is it who I see or what I do with my free time? You blew me off. You told me I was a very big mistake!’

‘For your own good.’

‘It is a very big shame it did not run to contraception too!’ Mia threw out with simmering sarcasm.

He straightened his broad shoulders. ‘Fair point,’ he acknowledged.

Mia wanted to get up and hit him! Instead she heaved in a deep breath, let it out again slowly, then put down the sandwich. ‘I can’t eat this now,’ she sighed.

‘My fault again?’ He sighed too. ‘But at least try to eat it. I promise I won’t say another word while you do…doctor’s orders,’ he reminded her.

Doctor’s orders…Because of the baby, he meant. Reluctantly she picked up the sandwich. True to his word, he did not utter another word while she ate. When she’d finished he pushed her glass towards her in a silent command for her to finish that too.

‘Tulio has nothing on you,’ she sniped, snatching up the glass.

To her surprise he husked out a soft laugh. ‘I’m beginning to like Tulio,’ he confided. ‘He sounds like my kind of guy. I’ll look forward to meeting him when we go to visit your aunt…’

Mia looked at him, deeply suspicious as to where he was leading her with that cool statement. The moment she made contact with his rich dark eyes and saw a golden light burning there, it made her shift tensely on the stool.

What was he up to—what was he thinking? Why was she reading the glint as the burn of promised complete and total possession in those eyes—so much so that she began to feel threatened?

Mia moistened her lips and felt them tingle when he lowered his eyes to watch the careful little gesture.

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘You are not going anywhere near Tia Giulia.’

He took his time bringing his eyes back up to hers. ‘Why not?’ he asked softly.

A sizzling fizz of heat began to fire deep down in her body. That there was something else going on here as well as the conversation they were involved in, made her flicker a wary scan of his face. He was leading her somewhere and she did not want to look at where that might be.

How did a man so famous for his cool self-control manage to transmit so much sexual tension without seeming to try—?

‘I would be too ashamed to present you to her,’ she said.

And hit a raw nerve. Mia watched that warm possessive golden light turn off like a switch. He leant back on the stool. It was like watching a dangerous animal take a serious blow it had not been prepared for, and she suddenly felt really bad for saying what she did.

‘Tia is going to be ashamed of me too,’ she added in what was a huskily spoken soother to the wounded beast. ‘And—and anyway, there is no reason why the two of you should m-meet.’

‘No,’ she thought she heard him utter from the deep dark recesses of his taut throat.

The atmosphere in the kitchen had suddenly gone somewhere Mia knew she did not want to follow. In fact, she decided without rhyme or reason as to why it hit her at this particular moment, she just knew she did not want to be here with him any longer.

Her slender fingers gripping the glass, she downed the rest of her orange, then put the glass down and slid off the stool. Nikos still was not moving and she was feeling distinctly threatened as she took a wary step towards the kitchen door.

‘Going somewhere?’ his deep voice questioned.

‘T-to my own apartment…’ She took another step.

‘We still have a lot to talk about,’ Nikos drawled.

Not if she could avoid it. ‘I’m—too tired to talk to you any more today,’ she said coolly. ‘We—we can talk again tomorrow.’

‘Too late then. We have plans to make before tomorrow.’

Mia nipped in a taut breath, then spun around. He’d recovered quickly enough from his wounds, was the first observation that leapt out at her, though he did still look strained around his mouth.

‘I don’t know what is the matter with you,’ she said, adding a flick of a hand to convey her helpless bewilderment. ‘What is the planning you speak about? We don’t have to plan anything! And you should be drowning your sorrows somewhere in a bottle of whisky instead of playing this silly game with me!’

‘No game,’ he denied.

‘Then where exactly do you think you are going with this?’ she burst out, asking the question she had been trying to run away from.

‘I know exactly where I’m going with it, cara,’ Nikos responded grimly. ‘Even with the crushing knock-back,’ he added with a twist of his taut mouth, ‘I am simply waiting for you to catch up with me.’

He was still seated on the stool with his long legs stretched out in front of him, looking for the world now like he was set to stay there like that for the rest of the day. But it was all just a big deception. Mia could still see that telling gleam in his eyes, a burn which reminded her of—

She took a step backwards. ‘S-stop looking at me like that—’

He arched one of his flat black eyebrows. ‘Like what?’

‘Like you…’ Running out of words she dragged in a tense breath of air and looked away.

‘Like I’m considering—other options to help you to catch up with me?’

He was thinking sex, Mia saw, though she did not want to. In the space of a few short minutes he’d gone from domestic animal to wounded animal, and now he was displaying the sexual animal.

‘This is an—improper conversation to be having in—in the middle of a crisis,’ Mia said primly.

‘I’m having improper urges,’ he came back quick as a flash.

Shocked by it, Mia gasped, her eyes widening and her pulse accelerating as he came to his feet.

‘Don’t you dare to come near me!’ She took another jerky step backwards and her spine made painful contact with the corner of the door frame. ‘Ouch,’ she jerked out.

‘Now look what you’ve done,’ Nikos murmured, walking forward to reach out to draw her towards him while Mia made a weak flailing attempt to ward him off. ‘You’re so fevered and flustered you hurt yourself. Much safer here,’ he said, folding her in against his warm hard frame.

A single night of passion with him had not prepared her for the shockingly patent physical evidence of his aroused state pressing against her. Surprised by the inner surge of heat which poured from her towards that contact, she swayed her hips away from him in sheer self-defence.

He used the flat of his hand to bring her back to him again, and smiled at her stifled gasp. ‘At last you’ve caught me up.’

‘N-no,’ she denied it.

He bent his dark head and touched the tip of his tongue to the corner of her trembling mouth. It was Mia who turned that teasing touch into a full-on kiss. It was she who pressed the already stinging tips of her breasts into his chest and floated her arms up around his neck.

His arms banded her to him. He prized her mouth open and ruthlessly deepened the kiss. If she had a single ounce of pride she would be fighting him like crazy, but hectic little whimpers of pleasure were rolling from her instead.

‘I am not going to bed with you!’ she shrilled up at him during a moment of separation when he reached up to drag her hair free of its clip.

‘The floor will do for me, amore mia,’ he countered huskily, helping her hair to tumble over his fingers. ‘The wall, the sofa, the kitchen table, even the door behind you.’

‘And stop talking to me in Italian,’ she shook out, shocked by his cool declaration and terribly excited by it at the same time.

‘You understand Italian better when you’re out of your head with pleasure,’ he confided, flaming her a hot mocking look. ‘I spent several very passionate hours loving you in Italian and you did not notice my testing efforts, did you? Shame on you, Mia. This time I will make love to you in Greek and you will wish by the time I have finished that you had bothered to learn my language!’

‘You’re mad. W-we can’t do this—’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m s-sick—’

‘With pining for me,’ he agreed. ‘Well, you’re pining is over, agapita.’ Something soft hit the backs of her knees and she collapsed onto a bed. She did not know how they’d even got here! Her arms jerked up around his shoulders on a startled shriek. ‘That’s right,’ he encouraged. ‘Cling to me, you are going to need me to keep you this close to stop from drowning.’

Her eyes fluttered open. ‘Why are you doing this?’

Lifting his dark head, Nikos looked down at her, eyes as black as midnight in his taut face. ‘Because you’ve got me, cara, even if you’re ashamed of me. Now I’m going to love you senseless before I take you somewhere and marry you.’

Marriage—did he say marriage—? ‘I’m not marrying you!’ she cried out shockingly. ‘No way!’

He took her lips with a hot driving hunger that devoured her ability to protest any more. Mia tried to hang on to her sanity but he robbed her of it as he explored her mouth with the sensuous force of a ruthless raider. She felt as if she was being consumed by his desire. She should be fighting him. She knew she should be fighting him, but the only urge flowing through her was the urge to rake her fingers through his hair and to apply pressure to his head to stop him from breaking the hot deep hungry kiss.

She didn’t even know where it had all come from. One minute they were fighting, the next minute eating, the next they were here on his bed making love with the kind of fever that should be shocking her stupid, but instead she was revelling in it. For days now she had walked around like a car accident, stunned by the way he’d enthralled her with his passion, then dumped her without a single qualm. Now here she lay being enthralled again as if all the hurt and rejection meant nothing at all!

He skimmed a restless hand down her body and located a silken slender thigh exposed because her dress had ridden up to her waist. The feather-light brush of his caress set her squirming against him and he muttered something hard and impatient, used his other hand to lift her up towards him, then without breaking the passionate seal of their lips, he ran down the zip of her dress. Cool air hit her skin and she shivered. In the next second she was breaking her mouth free on a cry of protest as he wrenched the pale blue cotton downwards, forcing her to let go of him so he could free it from her slender arms as it was trailed away.

Her lacy white bra drew the heat of his attention, and with breathtaking economy it sprang free and it too was being trailed away, revealing the firm fullness of her breasts with their twin tight peaks posing like shameless provocateurs.

‘Oh,’ Mia groaned and closed her eyes as he lowered his dark head and took one straining tip into his mouth, her fingers clawing at his shoulders when she just went wild.

As if her clutching fingers reminded him he was still wearing his clothes, he muttered something and reared back, wrenching impatiently at his shirt. Buttons flew in all directions. Opening her eyes she was shocked to see the amount of angry hot furious tension clenched in the muscles in his face.

‘Why are you so angry?’ she whispered.

‘I messed up with you,’ he answered harshly. ‘I don’t mess up.’

Rolling off the bed he stood so he could rid himself of the rest of his clothes.

‘Marriage was not on my agenda, nor were children,’ he muttered, raking his trousers off his body to display the astonishing beauty of his long tanned physique presented in its fully aroused state.

Mia touched the trembling tip of her tongue to her upper lip in sheer siren hunger. ‘I have not placed marriage on your agenda, Nikos.’

‘If I’m stuck with it, then you’re stuck with it. Theos,’ he groaned, coming back down to her. ‘I’ve been aching to do this again.’

It was like being handed a gift she had not been expecting, so Mia rewarded him with a passionate kiss. He’d wanted her. He’d flown around the world and ached for her. She was so exhilarated by that confession she forgot to continue the other subject.

The marriage subject.

Instead she let him sink her down into a deep dark well shored up with pure sensation. His touch was sheer tormenting pleasure. Clever and light, so sensually expert at driving her towards that screaming-pitch peak.

She raked his back with her fingernails. He set her sobbing with his mouth on her breasts. He made her touch him. He fed her hand down the length of his long body in a stirring trail that followed the virile line of dark curls to the velvet hard shock of his erection. He taught her how to send shudders of pleasure raking through him. When he made that first silken thrust inside her she felt the leash he had placed on himself shake his entire frame. He was hot, his skin moist with sweat, his lips trembling against hers and she clung to him, clung like she was in danger of drowning if she ever let go.

Now what? Mia wondered as she lay curled on her side, watching him move about the room. Another ruthless slap down in case she got romantic ideas about his feelings? Another grim demand for marriage she neither wanted nor was about to accept?

He had already showered but had not yet bothered to dress. A small towel rested low on his waist, hiding his tight narrow buttocks and clashing wonderfully with his deep bronzed skin.

‘When you’ve rested, you need to go and pack a bag,’ he said, lifting clean underwear out of a drawer.

‘Why,’ she asked warily. ‘Where am I going?’

‘Athens,’ he answered. ‘It’s time you saw how we run things from my main base.’

And that was it? No—go and buy a wedding dress? No return to the marriage subject at all? Curving a hand beneath her cheek, Mia said nothing, her eyelashes resting low across her eyes as she watched him move to a bank of wardrobes.

‘And it’s time you met the guy whose job you filched,’ he continued evenly, pulling a striped blue-and-white shirt on over his fabulous torso and making Mia pull a disappointed face. ‘Fortunately for Petros, he’s enjoyed staying behind in Athens, taking my place while I’ve been elsewhere.’

‘So he is not likely to want to beat me up.’

Fastening the top button on the shirt, he turned a glance on her. Belissimo, Mia thought. Sexy, she thought. Those lazy satiated love-darkened eyes should be censored—or kept right here in the bedroom with me.

‘You look like a long sleek golden cat lying there.’ He smiled at her.

Her heart tippled over, then gave a soft squeeze because he was not being cold with her, and the way he had not been looking at her while he talked had made her expect his cool detachment.

‘My hair is black,’ she pointed out.

‘I wasn’t referring to your hair, agape mou.’

Mia did not know she could blush all the way from her toes, but that was what she did. Nikos saw it and laughed as he strode across the room to the bed. He leant over her, smelling clean of soap and Nikos, and his slow intimate kiss tasted of mint.

‘No,’ he husked when she reached for him as he went to straighten again. ‘We haven’t got time for what you want us to do, little cat.’ Bending down he picked up her dress and dropped it on her. ‘You have an hour to get ready before we have to leave.’

Ignoring her disappointed pout he strode back to the wardrobes to select the pants to a navy suit. As he drew them up his legs and Mia sat up with all the reluctance of someone who did not want to go anywhere, he murmured, ‘And you will need to give me your birth certificate. Do you have it with you here?’

‘Yes, with my passport, but—’ she frowned ‘—I don’t understand why you need it.’

‘Marriage licence,’ he responded as cool as anything. ‘We will be married in Athens next week. Petros is already seeing to the arrangements.’