Читать книгу The Mistresses Collection - Оливия Гейтс - Страница 15

EMMIE STEPPED BACK and Bastian stalked through the front door, slamming it shut in his wake with an imperious hand.

‘I wasn’t planning to invite you in,’ Emmie snapped.

‘Given enough rope you really will hang yourself, won’t you?’ Bastian riposted with derision. ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain why I only qualified for one sentence of explanation when you staged your disappearing act. In fact, what exactly was “This isn’t working for me” supposed to convey?’

Emmie stiffened, acknowledging that while she hadn’t wanted to go emotionally overboard in her goodbye note she had perhaps tried a little too hard to play it cool. ‘I don’t want to discuss it.’

Bastian threw back his wide shoulders and stared down at her with blistering force, his handsome mouth a hard ruthless line. ‘We’re going to discuss a lot of things before I leave here, glyka mou.’

Emmie stared at him, unwillingly captivated by the sheer gorgeous potency of Bastian in the flesh. Radiating masculine energy and buckets of authority, Bastian towered over her, scanning her appearance in a red roll-neck sweater, apron and jeans. ‘You’ve put on weight…’

‘Duh! You noticed?’ Emmie shot back at him witheringly, turning on her heel to march back towards the kitchen.

As she stood briefly sideways Bastian focused on the swell of her pregnant belly pushing out the apron and stared, taken aback by the size of her. ‘I meant…you haven’t lost any more weight, so I assume the sickness wore off—’

‘Weeks ago,’ Emmie confirmed, turning back to face him again with open reluctance, blonde hair tumbling round her flushed cheeks.

‘And yet you didn’t think to get in touch with me and tell me that?’ Bastian fired back at her furiously. ‘Didn’t it occur to you that I’d be worried about you? When I last saw you, you were far from well!’

‘I thought with you it would be a case of out of sight, out of mind,’ Emmie admitted truthfully, straightening her slender shoulders and standing her ground in the kitchen doorway lest he get the idea that she was intimidated by him.

‘Those babies are half mine!’ Bastian launched back at her wrathfully. ‘When did I ever give you the impression that I was so irresponsible?’

Emmie pretended to think deeply. ‘Oh, maybe it was when you warned me not to get worked up about having sex with you…I didn’t, by the way.’

A feverish veil of colour highlighted his spectacular cheekbones and his dark golden eyes blazed like the heart of a hot fire. ‘Maybe I was playing safe.’

‘Playing safe?’ Emmie queried, all at sea.

His beautiful wilful mouth hardened. ‘Ne…yes, you blow hot, you blow cold, and you run away. That’s twice you’ve done that to me now.’

Emmie took an angry step forward. ‘I do not blow hot and cold and I do not run away!’

‘You do,’ Bastian contradicted with maddening assurance. ‘I offended you the night before Nessa’s wedding and you went from hotter than hot to cold as charity and ran away from the attraction between us. You may be an adult but you suffer from the same emotional overreactions as a teenager!’

‘How dare you?’ Emmie snapped, fit to be tied at that slur being cast on her maturity.

‘I dare because I’m honest and I have always been honest with you,’ Bastian declared with impressive emphasis. ‘We had a disastrous misunderstanding the very first night we were together—I apologised—you refused to accept my apology. But at least I was willing to admit that I had made a mistake but was still attracted to you. We would never have been apart had you had the courage to be equally honest with me…’

‘It’s not about honesty, it’s about sensitivity, and you are the guy who told me that what we had was just sex!’ Emmie slammed back at him emotively.

‘At the end of the day, sex is only sex and I stand by that statement!’ Bastian growled back at her unapologetically. ‘But in every way that mattered I demonstrated that I cared about what happened to you and I cared about the welfare of those babies you carry.’

Emmie struggled to be fair while her deep sense of having been insulted still rankled. ‘Yes, you did,’ she allowed, tight-mouthed at having to concede that point.

‘I didn’t deserve that you walked out on me and didn’t tell me where you were going.’

‘I would have got in touch with you after the birth,’ Emmie protested.

‘I want to be a lot more involved than that,’ Bastian informed her with unconcealed hostility.

Emmie lifted her chin, refusing to back down. ‘Well, I’m sorry if you don’t like it but perhaps I didn’t feel that you being more involved in my pregnancy was appropriate in the circumstances.’

‘If that’s how you felt you should have discussed it with me,’ Bastian argued fiercely. ‘Walking out and vanishing the minute I was safely out of the country was childish and cowardly!’

‘I wanted to avoid a big confrontation like this!’ Emmie pointed out.

‘How are you doing with that ambition?’ Bastian derided, making her teeth grind together in frustration.

‘I am not childish and I am not cowardly,’ Emmie returned resentfully to his determination to blame her for walking away from a difficult relationship.

‘No? Well, at the very least you have some strange hang-ups,’ Bastian condemned, interrupting her without hesitation as he dug a magazine out of his pocket and slapped it down aggressively on the hall table. ‘She’s your sister, your twin, and presumably the reason you go around dressed in a frumpy disguise most of the time! But did you think to mention her existence to me even once?’

Emmie froze in consternation as she found herself gazing down at a magazine photo of Saffy and Zahir’s wedding day. Laughing and smiling with happiness, Saffy looked fantastic and Emmie’s heart constricted at the sight, regret belatedly stabbing her that she had avoided playing a role at her sister’s nuptials. ‘How did you find out?’

‘Nessa saw it and put it in front of me. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,’ Bastian admitted with angry dark eyes. ‘At first I thought it was you marrying royalty and then I saw her name…she’s Sapphire, you’re Emerald, so it was obviously no coincidental likeness. I did some research and that’s when I realised how much you had been hiding from me.’

‘There was no need for you to know.’

‘I couldn’t believe she was your sister.’

Emmie lost colour at that admission. ‘I understand that. We may be identical twins but she still looks very different from me.’

‘Yes, even though it was only photos I was merely fooled into thinking it was you for about five seconds,’ Bastian spelt out.

Unsurprised by the assertion but dreading the comparison he had to be making between her and her gorgeous sister, Emmie lowered her head, her face shadowing. ‘Yes—’

‘You have a beauty spot on one cheekbone and your eyes are a lighter blue,’ Bastian contended, sharply disconcerting her for few people were that observant. ‘I also suspect that you’re smaller—’

‘By at least an inch. Even after the surgery on my leg I never quite caught up with Saffy in height,’ Emmie conceded. ‘I don’t wear a disguise though—you don’t understand…I just don’t like being mistaken for Saffy and, believe me, it happens a lot if I dress up and go out and about in London. She’s a celebrity, after all. I’ve also found it’s just easier not to mention that she’s my sister to the people I meet.’

‘I can imagine that but you’re not the same—you’re not carbon copies of each other.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘I don’t quite understand it but when I look at her, she does as much for my libido as a blank canvas on the wall, but when I look at you I have an instant reaction,’ Bastian confessed in a husky undertone.

Emmie wasn’t quite sure she could believe that, for she was much more accustomed to thinking of her sister as a vastly superior, more sophisticated and sexier version of herself—in every way a supermodel-perfect creature. But then Saffy had always been the prettier, livelier, more talented twin, Emmie the sickly, shy one, who was boringly academic, not that she had had much choice on that score when her disability had meant she couldn’t go out and about like her twin. She glanced up at Bastian, her lovely face pink with self-consciousness, wondering if it could possibly be true that he found her more sexually appealing than her sister. After all, all her life she had been second-best to Saffy.

‘It happens every time I look at you,’ Bastian imparted thickly, his dark deep drawl vibrating down her spine, his stunning dark golden eyes hotly pinned to her in a smouldering look that created an atmosphere of shocking intimacy. ‘Because while I know it’s just sex, it’s still the most freakin’ fantastic sex I’ve ever had with a woman!’

A surge of responsive heat flooded Emmie’s pelvis, swelled her breasts, tightened her nipples and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t suppress that wave of physical awareness. Bastian was attempting to turn an insult into a compliment and failing abysmally, she told herself firmly. She wasn’t going to pick him up on it; she wasn’t going to go there at all. Talking about sex with Bastian was a bad idea because talking about it made her think about it and she was determined to keep the door closed on that kind of misleading intimacy.

Breathing in deep, she turned her head away to duck his direct gaze and said tautly, ‘So how did you find out where I was living?’

‘Once I had linked you to your celebrity sister I had enquiries made and discovered this place,’ Bastian told her, his handsome mouth compressing with annoyance. ‘I drove up here straight away but you weren’t here and the house was locked up.’

‘Oh…’ Emmie was surprised he had come to the farmhouse on a previous occasion and couldn’t hide it. ‘Did you come here at the weekend? I must have been staying with Kat.’

Bastian was frowning down at her. ‘Your eldest sister? The one married to the rich Russian, who owns this house?’

Emmie studied him in surprise at the level of his knowledge. ‘You have been doing your homework about my family.’

‘Enough to know that you shouldn’t be living here, forced to rely on the generosity of another man.’

‘That other man happens to be my brother-in-law—’

‘It doesn’t matter. You’re in this situation because of me and I’m the one who should be taking care of you.’

Emmie threw her head high, her lovely face taut with strain as she shifted her weight onto her one leg while rubbing at the thigh of the other. ‘I don’t need anyone taking care of me when I can do that for myself.’

‘But I want to do it,’ Bastian grated in a raw undertone, watching her massage her leg. ‘Your leg’s hurting you right now. Why don’t you sit down? I want to look after the mother of my children. Is that so wrong?’

Emmie was disconcerted by that blunt declaration and that he had actually noticed that her leg was beginning to bother her. ‘No, not wrong, but maybe a little surprising after some of the things you’ve said.’

‘Why don’t you forget what I’ve said in the past and look to the future instead? I think right now that would be a lot more useful,’ Bastian countered with ringing confidence, striding into the cosy living room where a log fire had burned low in the grate.

Emmie followed him at a slower pace. ‘What future?’

‘Yours and the twins’,’ Bastian specified, gazing back at her with challenging intensity. ‘I want you to come back to Greece with me and meet my family.’

Her eyes widened in astonishment. ‘Er…I’ve already met your family,’ she protested.

‘Not as the future mother of my kids. You can’t keep us in the closet with two babies on the way,’ Bastian informed her with dark eyes glittering with amusement. ‘You’re part of my life now and that’s not going to change.’

‘I still don’t think that there’s any need for you to take me back to Greece with you and make some sort of formal announcement,’ Emmie contended.

‘I think it’s important.’ Bastian’s stubborn jawline clenched his face taut as he stared back at her. ‘Family connections mean a great deal to me. It’ll be easier for you to make that connection now before the twins are born.’

‘I’m not interested in visiting Greece right now,’ Emmie declared, throwing her shoulders back.

‘I want the time to see if we can work this relationship out,’ Bastian admitted in a driven undertone. ‘I shouldn’t have to spell that out to you.’

Her troubled eyes widened a little and remained glued to his stunning dark eyes as if she was seeking answers there. ‘Oh, I think you do…speaking as the guy who told me that all we had going for us was sex.’

‘Are you ever going to let me forget I said that?’ Bastian slammed back at her furiously.

‘Probably not,’ Emmie admitted waspishly. ‘It’s still screaming in my memory banks. Now all of a sudden you’ve changed your tune and you’re talking about us working out this relationship when before you wouldn’t even admit we had a relationship!’

In thunderous silence Bastian ground his teeth together. Like salt on an open wound she picked up every mistake he made and flung it at him with an aggression he was unaccustomed to meeting with in a woman. ‘So I’m not perfect,’ he bit out grudgingly.

‘And you have hang-ups too,’ Emmie added sweetly. ‘Particularly when it comes to commitment.’

‘I was engaged,’ Bastian reminded her darkly.

‘But funnily enough you never made it to the altar,’ Emmie remarked.

‘Lilah took offence at the pre-nuptial contract she was presented with and I wouldn’t marry her without it.’

‘I don’t want your money,’ Emmie told him baldly.

Bastian flattened his passionate mouth into a hard line and lowered his attention to her stomach. ‘But your children will be entitled to a good deal of my money. That’s a fact of life.’

Emmie coloured uncomfortably, not knowing what to say to that that wouldn’t sound facetious, for in all likelihood when the babies she carried grew up they would want and expect access to their father’s privileged lifestyle.

‘I’ll stay here tonight. We’ll leave in the morning,’ Bastian told her forcefully.

‘You can’t just bully me into travelling to Greece with you!’ Emmie exclaimed, not knowing whether to laugh or cry at his attitude.

‘I’m not trying to bully you. I’m asking you to put the needs of our children first. At the very least we need to establish a more civilised connection.’

There was a lot of truth in that statement, Emmie acknowledged uneasily. Having a contentious relationship with the father of her children was a very bad idea but she did not know if she could change the way she felt about Bastian or forgive him for not feeling the same way about her. She wanted too much and he wanted too little, she conceded unhappily.

‘All right, I’ll think about Greece,’ Emmie muttered tightly.

‘I’ll make the arrangements—’

‘Look, when the heck did “I’ll think about it” turn into agreement?’ Emmie stormed back at him, out of all patience with his arrogance.

Bastian stared broodingly back at her, the full intensity of his aggressive temperament in that charged appraisal. Electric heat sizzled through Emmie and she flushed, mortified by the way he affected her even when he was demonstrating his least attractive traits. On the other hand maybe if she gave a little, he would as well, because she didn’t think that with the twins on the way it was wise to be at odds with him. After all, mightn’t her attitude have a bad effect on his future relationship with her children? That, she acknowledged hollowly, was a major responsibility to carry, particularly when she was all too well aware how wounding she had found her own father’s indifference to her existence. She definitely didn’t want her children to undergo the same paternal rejection because she had created a problematic relationship with Bastian. Hadn’t her mother done that with her father? Her parents had had a very bitter breakup and divorce and that reality had poisoned her father’s attitude to his daughters as well. He had found it easier to walk away from all of them, not only his ex-wife.

‘OK, I’ll go to Greece,’ Emmie agreed abruptly on the back of that final depressing thought. ‘I’ll show you up to your room.’

His room, not hers. Bastian watched the ripe curve of Emmie’s hips going up the stairs, unwillingly allowing that his hopes of an immediate dropping of all barriers had been rather too optimistic. She wanted him to work at things, relationship things, and Bastian had never worked at anything like that in his whole life. Women had always worked to please him, to fit his expectations, not the other way round. He gritted his even white teeth at what seemed like a memory from the far distant past for he could see that pleasing him was not even on Emmie’s agenda. It bothered him that he didn’t even know what she wanted from him. He was doing his best but so far he had not got any points for trying, he reflected angrily. She hadn’t noticed one blasted positive thing he had done so far, so why was he bothering? The answer to that question came fast: he didn’t know, he just knew he couldn’t leave her alone.

Emmie showed Bastian into one of the guest rooms her sister Kat had always kept prepared for guests. She studied his bold bronzed profile from below her lashes, reckoning there was no escape from feeding him as well while wondering why he brought out such a mean streak in her. Did she want him to go hungry? After all, it wasn’t his fault that he hadn’t fallen madly in love with her, was it? That was something that either happened or didn’t happen. And unlike her estranged father, Bastian was already determined to make a major effort to be a parent from the start, well, before the twins were even born.

‘There’s hot water if you want a shower,’ Emmie told him, belatedly wondering if she was trying to be hostess of the year a little too late. ‘You can join me for dinner in an hour. It’ll be a change to have company. My younger sister is only here for school holidays. She stays with Kat and Mikhail in London now if she leaves school to come home for the weekend.’

Bastian supposed she was offering him an olive branch of sorts and had a sudden recollection of that written apology on her hand way back at the start of their acquaintance. He almost smiled but the strained look in her bright blue eyes made him tense up instead.

‘What did you say?’ Emmie prompted Bastian in a nervous whisper, her cheeks burning after he had finished addressing his household staff, who had assembled in the big hall to greet their arrival. The official line-up struck her as incredibly Edwardian in style and thoroughly intimidated her. To be fair, she thought unhappily, it was embarrassing enough to reappear on the island on Bastian’s arm while toting an enormous pregnant stomach, but it was even worse when absolutely everyone else was pointedly avoiding looking in that direction.

‘Why?’ Bastian asked shortly as he guided her up the main staircase with a firm hand at her back. Emmie wondered if he feared that she was so big upfront that she might over-balance and fall over backwards like a beached whale, and then scolded herself for being so self-critical. You’re very pregnant with twins, get over it, she told herself in exasperation.

‘I’m curious,’ Emmie admitted.

‘I told them that you’re in charge here now—’

‘You did…what?’ Emmie stopped dead to exclaim in astonishment.

Bastian frowned. ‘I didn’t want anyone wondering about what your status was here and I want you to receive the very best attention possible from my staff.’

‘But I’m not the mistress here…or wife or whatever!’ Emmie argued.

‘Do we need a label for you? To all intents and purposes you are the most important woman I’ve ever had in my life,’ Bastian countered. ‘You’re expecting my children.’

‘I can’t possibly be the most important woman…I mean, what about your mother?’

‘Apart from the fact that I’d have a problem if she was still the most important woman at my age,’ Bastian quipped, ‘what about her?’

‘Is she still alive?’

‘Yes. She lives in Italy and I only see her if she wants money.’

Emmie’s brow furrowed. ‘That’s sad, Bastian. Are you sure you’re not misjudging her?’

‘Remind yourself of what your mother was willing to do to you in the name of profit,’ Bastian commented with considerable cynicism. ‘As the son of a woman even more mercenary than Odette, I know what I’m talking about.’

That reminder about Odette’s greed struck home but Emmie gave him a troubled look, dismayed by his outlook. ‘Why do you think your mother’s like that?’

Bastian sighed as he threw wide the door of the room where Emmie had stayed on her previous visit to his home. ‘Why are you interested?’

Emmie thought fast and hard, desperate to come up with an unemotional angle to conceal her revealing hunger for every detail she could glean about Bastian and his background. ‘Your mother will be my children’s grandmother.’

‘But Cinzia will never visit your children. Even when I was a little boy she found the idea of being seen with a child as “too aging”,’ he retorted drily. ‘She’s very vain and will never accept being a grandparent. She was a film star when my father met her but her earning power was fading because she was getting older. She married him because she needed a meal ticket and when she got tired of him, she divorced him in a process that took half of everything he possessed.’

Emmie winced as a servant settled her cases down in the beautifully appointed bedroom and withdrew. ‘Nasty.’

‘His ego battered, my father found comfort in the arms of his secretary instead,’ Bastian continued even more drily. ‘The secretary got pregnant and he married her within weeks of his divorce from my mother being granted.’

‘Oh dear,’ Emmie remarked a good deal less securely as she wondered if he saw a dangerous parallel in that development between past and present: his father had married a woman because she fell pregnant by him and clearly it hadn’t worked out.

‘She was Nessa’s mother and the only decent woman my father ever married,’ Bastian explained wryly. ‘But because my father wasn’t in love with her…’ contempt edged his tone as he voiced that particular word ‘…he thought it was acceptable to start an affair with the woman who became his third wife.’

‘Then I gather that Nessa’s mother didn’t last long?’

‘Two years.’

Emmie recalled Nessa telling her that her mother had been the only stepmother who was kind to Bastian and, considering his own mother had not set a good example of maternal affection, she found it sad that his father’s marriage to Nessa’s mother had been so brief. ‘And wife number three?’

‘Had one affair after another. My father hit the bottle hard before he finally got shot of her.’

‘He sounds—’

‘Foolish?’ Bastian scorned.

‘I was going to say vulnerable. I mean, he kept on trying so hard to find a happy relationship.’

‘Only the grass on the other side of the fence was always greener and he couldn’t content himself,’ Bastian completed grimly. ‘Wife number four spent most of her time trying to get me into bed because younger men gave her a buzz.’

That revelation made Emmie turn pink. ‘That must have been ghastly.’

‘While that marriage went on, I spent a lot of time at my grandfather’s house—I was only eighteen,’ Bastian admitted flatly, staring out of the bedroom window, broad shoulders rigid. ‘Tragically my father’s fourth marriage literally killed him. He came home unexpectedly one day and overheard his wife trying to seduce me. He got back into his car and crashed it into a tree a few miles down the road. The happy widow got what was left of my father’s estate, which wasn’t much. His marriages had virtually bankrupted him.’

‘With a family history like that I’m surprised you were even considering getting married,’ Emmie confided truthfully.

Bastian turned away from the window, tall, darkly handsome and intensely charismatic. His dark eyes glittered like gleaming gold ingots in sunlight. ‘But unlike my father I didn’t have any stupid ideas about love having anything to do with marriage…’

Emmie was relieved to think that Bastian had not been in love with Lilah, but his words and his attitude certainly didn’t offer her much room for hope that he might develop such feelings for her in the future. ‘Have you ever been in love?’ she asked baldly, reasoning that subtlety was wasted on Bastian.

‘In lust many times,’ Bastian quipped. ‘In love…never. I’m probably too practical.’

So, at the very least he must have been in lust with Lilah, Emmie assumed uneasily, and she certainly couldn’t blame him for that because his ex-fiancée was exquisitely easy on the eye. ‘I fell in love when I was at university,’ she heard herself admit.

Unaccustomed to such personal conversations with a woman, Bastian dealt her a disconcerted look.

Emmie compressed her lush mouth. ‘It turned out that Toby was only with me because he had a poster of my sister the supermodel on his bedroom wall—she was his fantasy and I was just the closest he could get to her,’ she related ruefully.

‘What a fool when you’re even more beautiful,’ Bastian breathed huskily.

‘I’m not more beautiful than Saffy,’ Emmie protested.

‘I think you are,’ Bastian admitted, his dark gaze roaming over her lovely face. ‘You’re more natural, not all made up and artificial like your sibling.’

Without warning and for the first time in her life, Emmie found herself laughing at a comparison being made that could not leave her feeling inadequate. ‘Well, I’m certainly not anywhere near as well groomed as my sister,’ she conceded with a smile. ‘She always looks perfect.’

Bastian rested lean brown hands on her slim shoulders, gazing down at her with smouldering heat in his heavily fringed dark golden eyes. ‘I don’t want or need perfect, khriso mou.’

Emmie stiffened, suddenly unsure of what should happen next, wanting him with every skin cell in her treacherous body but conscious that intimacy would plunge her deeper into a relationship that had no safe boundaries to protect her from hurt. ‘Bastian…er—’

Long brown fingers brushed her cheekbone in a lazy caress and he kissed her with hungry driving urgency. Her heart hammered so fast she was scared it would burst out of her chest. The glorious swell of emotion and sensation that only he could give her was waiting in the wings like a terrible temptation, making nonsense of her firm conviction that she could take care of herself. For a split second she wanted Bastian so much it was terrifying, her body kindling like dry twigs touched by a flame, senses awakening with a surge of slumberous intensity. Her breasts stirred beneath her clothing, full and swollen and ripe for his touch, an ache biting deep in her pelvis to leave a sense of hollowness in its wake.

‘I should unpack,’ she said breathlessly, drawing back in a movement that demanded every atom of her self-discipline while her glance briefly skimmed over the door that led into Bastian’s bedroom, and she wondered how long she could possibly keep her distance from him.

In a rare act for a male in the grip of fierce arousal, Bastian backed off several steps, lean, strong face taut and flushed. Emmie was in Greece, on the island of Treikos, safely beneath his roof, and that was enough for one day, he reflected ruefully, apprehensive for the first time ever of making a wrong move with a woman.

Conscious of the tension in the air, Emmie coloured and turned aside to her luggage. Her legs were shaking, her rebellious body screaming with tight, strained nerve endings and she was ashamed of her weakness. Somehow it had not occurred to her that Bastian might still exert that much physical power over her even when she was several months pregnant. Where he was concerned, she badly needed an off switch.

Four days later, Nessa arrived for the weekend and mortified Emmie straight away by walking out to the terrace where Emmie and Bastian were having lunch and saying cheerfully, ‘So, when’s the wedding?’

Bastian frowned. ‘What wedding?’ he queried, standing up to pull out a chair for his sister.

Nessa simply laughed. ‘Your wedding, of course,’ she said teasingly, studying the pair of them with amused brown eyes.

‘We’re not getting married,’ Emmie declared with red cheeks hot enough to fry eggs on.

Nessa raised a brow as though that was an extraordinary statement and responded, ‘Grandpa is going to be very disappointed.’

Initially relieved by Nessa’s arrival because the presence of a third person would surely stifle the shocking level of sexual tension Bastian roused inside her, Emmie could now only feel appalled at the brunette’s lack of tact.

‘I don’t think so,’ Bastian countered smoothly, seemingly unembarrassed, Emmie noted with some relief.

‘Trust me.’ Nessa grinned. ‘Grandpa’s expecting to hear wedding bells and just waiting on you making the announcement. Don’t say you weren’t warned.’

‘Excuse me,’ Emmie breathed, rising to her feet.

‘Where are you going?’ Bastian demanded as if he was entitled to know her every move.

‘It’s hot and I’m a little tired…thought I’d lie down for a while,’ Emmie told him disjointedly, taking refuge in being pregnant in her eagerness to escape sitting in on a humiliating dialogue between brother and sister.

Upstairs she lay down on her bed, dully recalling what entertaining company Bastian had been since their arrival. They had picnicked on the beach, wandered through olive groves on lazy walks and eaten in the taverna down by the harbour where Emmie had suspected that all the other diners were staring at her. Even so, apart from that one kiss on the first day, Bastian hadn’t touched her again. She was never going to understand Bastian, she reflected in frustration. Why had he kissed her if he had no plans to follow up on it? And why, when she knew that intimacy would only fire them into dangerous territory again, was she even wondering?

Her cell phone pinged on a message and she snatched it up, surprised to see that it was from Saffy, who rarely made direct contact with her.

‘I’m in the pudding club too,’ Saffy texted jokily, and Emmie gasped and before she could even consider what she was doing she was phoning her twin. It struck her as extraordinary that both of them should contrive to be pregnant at the same time.

Saffy was audibly disconcerted to hear Emmie’s voice on the line but the warmth of her response soothed any awkwardness Emmie might have felt. When Saffy startled Emmie by freely admitting that she had conceived her baby before marrying Zahir, Emmie was captivated and touched by her honesty and the barriers really came down between the sisters as Emmie shared the history of her relationship with Bastian.

At one point, Saffy interrupted her twin. ‘Odette lied to you. She didn’t pay for your surgery, Kat did!’

‘Are you sure? But where did Kat get the money from?’ Emmie questioned in amazement.

‘Kat took out a loan to cover the cost. Our mother is a dreadful liar.’ Saffy groaned. ‘As for this escort agency stuff, we’ll have to prevent Topsy from visiting her or she’ll be trying to set her up next! Topsy’s so trusting and I bet Odette milked our kid sister for every bit of useful info about us that she could get.’

‘Probably,’ Emmie conceded, shocked at the news that her mother had deceived her but at the same time semi-stunned that she was managing to have such a friendly conversation with her twin when they had been estranged for so long. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come to your wedding, Saffy. It’s no excuse but I was feeling pretty down and I just couldn’t face it.’

‘I’ll forgive you if you promise…to stay in touch with me,’ her sister responded hesitantly.

Her heart lifting at that request, Emmie was quick to agree.

‘You said you were in Greece—what’s happening between you and Bastian right now?’ Saffy finally asked.

‘I think that for the sake of the future, we’re trying to be friends,’ Emmie told her heavily.

‘And you want more?’ Saffy asked perceptively. ‘I felt the same way with Zahir. I didn’t want him to stay with me only because I was pregnant.’

Emmie’s eyes stung at the depth of her twin’s understanding. She blinked back tears and a little while after that the groundbreaking conversation concluded with Saffy promising to phone again the next day. Afterwards, Emmie sat still dumbfounded by the discovery that she could talk easily again to her twin and she was so grateful that neither of them had dared to broach any topic that might be controversial. That both sisters were pregnant, however, had provided them with a bridge that spanned the challenges of their shared past. In addition, Emmie acknowledged wryly, Bastian had somehow contrived to lift Emmie’s confidence so that she no longer felt that she was a poor, disappointing copy of her glamorous and vibrant twin.

‘You should invite Saffy and her husband to visit,’ Bastian remarked when she volunteered the news over dinner that she and her sister were talking again. Nessa had gone to visit her in-laws, who lived in the village.

Emmie tensed. ‘That’s very kind of you but obviously I don’t know how long I’ll be staying here in your home.’

Bastian raised an ebony brow, brilliant dark eyes bright as diamonds in his handsome face. ‘At least until the twins are born,’ he supplied without hesitation. ‘I want you to stay, and when I return to London to work, I’ll want you to accompany me there as well.’

Taken aback by that sweeping statement, Emmie studied him with shaken blue eyes. ‘I had no idea that’s what you were planning. I thought I was only here for a short visit.’

Across the table, Bastian stared steadily back at her. ‘Naturally you’re free to do whatever you want and live where you choose…but speaking on my own behalf I want you to stay with me.’

Emmie was hugely touched by that assurance even though she still had no real idea of what he meant by his words. Did he believe that simply being pregnant was so hazardous that he had to keep a careful watch over her? Did he feel guilty that he had got her pregnant? Was that why he was so determined to look after her? Or was there a more personal element than that? As she bent over her delicious dessert, she was insanely conscious of his attention locking to the rather low neckline of her top. She glanced up quickly and tracked the path of his hot golden gaze locked to the plump swell of her cleavage. She reddened and thought, Yes, it’s definitely personal.

‘Does that invite of yours include sharing a bed?’ Emmie enquired baldly.

A sudden grin flashed across Bastian’s stubborn mouth. ‘I’m yours any time you want me, khriso mou. I don’t play hard to get.’

Emmie didn’t know where to look because when she met his stunning eyes after that admission she felt intoxicated and dizzy. Unable to think straight, she savoured the sweetness of her dessert, the tip of her tongue sliding out to lick a drop of chocolate mousse from her full bottom lip.

Following that process, his attention locked to her succulent pink mouth, Bastian groaned out loud. ‘You’re killing me.’

Emmie froze. In the condition she was in she found it quite impossible to view herself as seductive in any way, but when she looked across the table to see Bastian’s molten golden gaze welded to her, her heart skipped a startled beat. He thrust back his chair and sprang upright, approaching her to stretch down a lean brown hand and grasp hers to tug her to her feet.

‘Bastian…?’ Emmie framed uncertainly.

‘I want you so much,’ he growled. ‘I’ve been working so hard to keep my hands off you.’

Emmie had only felt her own tension and had not appreciated that he was exercising restraint as well. ‘You find me attractive like this?’ she murmured wonderingly.

Bastian looked down at her with smouldering dark eyes. ‘I don’t really understand it but I find your pregnancy an amazing turn-on.’

‘OK,’ Emmie marvelled while nodding dumbly, entranced by the hunger etched in his face and the very slight yet revealing tremor in his hands as he raised them to gently cup her cheekbones.

And then there was no more talking and the last barrier crashed down between them while he kissed her breathless. He took her upstairs to lift her into his bed, where he made slow sensual love to her until she cried out her pleasure in wondering wanton delight.

A long time later, he lay with his arms wrapped round her and the most glorious sense of peace settled over Emmie. She loved it when he held her close and wanted to swarm all over his long, lean, powerful body like a flock of bees savouring pollen. Self-discipline, however, kept her still and unadventurous because she was terrified of revealing too much emotion or enthusiasm. Sex was sex, as Bastian had told her unforgettably, and she didn’t want to begin kidding herself that it was anything more. While they were living together, they might as well be sharing a bed, she bargained desperately with herself. She didn’t have to have a relationship all set out in stone steps in front of her to be happy, did she? And why shouldn’t she settle for being happy for now and letting the future take care of itself?

‘I have a charity ball to attend in Athens tomorrow evening,’ Bastian told her when she had almost drifted to sleep. ‘You’re welcome to accompany me.’

‘Nothing to wear, truly nothing to wear!’ Emmie exclaimed, eyes flying wide in dismay in the darkness. ‘But thanks for asking…er, appearing in public this pregnant with you would be kind of making a really loud statement, wouldn’t it?’

‘It would,’ Bastian agreed with a curious lack of expression. ‘Perhaps you’re right and it’s too soon.’

Emmie hadn’t said or meant that but she didn’t argue, reasoning that he would have tried harder to persuade her to go with him if her presence had really mattered to him. Thirty-six hours later those same thoughts came home to haunt her with a vengeance.

The morning after the Athens ball, Bastian had still to return to the island and Emmie was having a leisurely breakfast on the terrace overlooking the beach when the morning newspapers were brought out and settled on a nearby table for her convenience. Emmie got up to browse through the pile of papers, automatically flipping past the Greek editions only for her fingers to falter as she stiffened in consternation at the sight of a photograph adorning the front page of one of the local tabloids.

It was a photo of Bastian and Lilah drinking champagne and laughing together. Lilah looked tiny and ravishing in a romantic pink chiffon gown, like one half of a matched couple on intimate and friendly terms, while Bastian smiled down at her. The bitter hurt of jealousy pierced Emmie deep. In fact Emmie felt as sick as though she had been punched because she was already recalling that Bastian really hadn’t made that much effort to persuade her that he wanted her with him in Athens. And was this why? Had he known beforehand that Lilah would be attending the same event? And was it any wonder that the papers were probably speculating as to whether or not the formerly engaged couple had reconciled?

Feeling shaken, scared and angry with herself for being scared, Emmie sank back down on her chair, eyes blank as she stared out unseeingly at the beautiful view she had been admiring only minutes earlier. Was Bastian still attracted to Lilah? To be fair, what man wouldn’t be? And what could Emmie possibly do about it, if he was? Retreating with dignity when she was already virtually living with Bastian would be a challenge in the circumstances, she thought painfully.