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CHAPTER TEN

ACTUALLY he wasn’t waiting, she was.

When Georgie arrived there was no sign of Angolos. She might have followed her first cowardly impulse and left if she hadn’t known that he would come looking for her.

With a sigh she walked through the gate into the small churchyard. Thoughts far away, she began to wander down the interwoven stone paths past the moss-covered gravestones. Georgie had never found this place at all gloomy, and had often remarked on the tranquil atmosphere.

She stopped, her eyes drawn to a lichen-covered memorial. The weathered inscription in the stone revealed the woman born over three hundred years earlier had had a long life. Georgie’s curiosity stirred; had she been happy, this woman born into another century?

There were several wars, an industrial revolution and a sexual revolution separating her from this woman. Her own life was light years away from the one this woman had lived, yet the essentials, the things deep down most people wanted, weren’t.

To love and be loved.

‘Were you loved…?’ Georgie squinted at the worn letters. ‘Were you loved, Agnes?’ she whispered softly.

If anyone had heard her they would have concluded she was crazy, and maybe, she reflected, they wouldn’t be far wrong. She had thought she had been loved; she had discovered that she hadn’t been in the cruellest way imaginable.

Georgie turned her back on the gravestone and wished her own past were so easily dismissed.

Eyes closed, she inhaled deeply. It had never crossed her mind that Angolos wouldn’t be as thrilled as she was about her pregnancy. Of course, she hadn’t known then what she did now.

Georgie had planned the evening down to the last detail. She’d wanted everything to be perfect, but from the start nothing had gone right.

To begin with the party that Sacha and Olympia had been going to attend had been cancelled at the last minute, so the romantic meal she had planned had become a family affair. Georgie had wanted to scream with frustration, especially when Angolos hadn’t turned up.

When he had arrived an hour later than he had promised, he’d seemed distracted and had even been terse with his mother, who had been unwise enough to remonstrate him on his tardiness. Georgie had caught him looking at her so strangely a couple of times that she’d started to think that he had guessed about the baby. That would have accounted for the suppressed tension emanating from him.

The meal had been a stiff, formal affair, but that hadn’t been unusual, and had seemed to last for ever. When they had finally retreated to their own suite of rooms she hadn’t known what to say. Suddenly her planned speech hadn’t seemed right.

Angolos hadn’t helped; he’d seemed strangely remote and unapproachable. She had noticed that he had drunk more at dinner than he generally did, and the fine lines bracketing his mouth had suggested he was under some strain.

‘Did you have a bad day?’ She laid a tentative hand on his arm.

His dark eyes immediately slewed in the direction of the fingers curled lightly over his arm. Though there was no discernible expression on his lean features, Georgie withdrew her hand awkwardly.

His mouth twisted. ‘You could say that.’

Hurt and bewildered by the underlying hostility in his manner, she retreated to a chair beside the bed.

She watched as he removed his tie and fell backwards onto the bed. He lay for a moment spread-eagled with his eyes closed. Then from his prone position he began to unfasten the buttons of his shirt.

The action revealed the golden skin of lean-muscled torso and Georgie’s breath snagged in her throat. He was simply stunningly beautiful.

He looked at her through heavy-lidded, half-closed eyes.

‘You were quiet tonight,’ he observed.

‘Was I?’ What would he say when she told him? She glanced wistfully towards the open double doors that led out to the balcony and adopted a coaxing tone. ‘Why don’t we sit outside? I love to look at the moonlight on the sea.’ And what could be a more romantic spot to tell him her news?

‘You sound like a tourist.’ Before she had an opportunity to respond to his dismissive comment he added thickly, ‘And anyway, I prefer to look at you. You look particularly glowing this evening.’

‘Do I?’

‘Yes.’ His long fingers closed around her wrist. ‘Tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself today. Have you missed me?’

Only every other second. ‘I’ve been pretty busy, actually.’ She had taken his recent hints about being more self-reliant to heart.

She didn’t want to become a clingy wife. It had helped that Alan had come over and had been staying in the nearby village with his friend.

Georgie willingly responded to the gentle tug on her arm and fell in a happy heap beside him. She flipped over onto her tummy and, with her chin propped in her hands, smiled at him. He didn’t smile back. ‘Alan went home today.’

‘How sad.’

‘Don’t be mean about him,’ she begged.

‘Mean…?’

‘Well, you’re—’ She gasped as he turned her wrist over and pressed his lips to the pale-skinned inner aspect; she shivered as all the fine hairs on her body stood on end.

‘Have I ever told you that you’re the most beautiful man that ever drew breath?’

‘Not recently.’

His husky velvet voice sent a shiver along her hopelessly sensitive nerve endings. ‘I suppose I have been a bit moody lately,’ she admitted. When he realised why, she hoped he would forgive her recent crankiness and mood swings. ‘I didn’t know why myself until today.’

‘Are you going to let me in on the secret?’

‘Soon,’ she promised as with her best enigmatic smile she hitched up her long skirts to her waist and straddled his body.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m just doing,’ she told him primly, ‘what any dutiful wife would.’ She frowned as she concentrated on slipping the remaining buttons of his shirt. Within seconds she had exposed all of his lean, hard torso. She ran her fingertips over the silky, hair-roughened surface and felt his stomach muscles contract. His skin was like oiled silk. She gave a voluptuous sigh of pleasure.

His hands tightened possessively over the smooth, bare skin of her thighs. ‘What has brought this on?’

‘Don’t you like it?’

‘Oh, I like it. I’m just wondering why you should decide to take the initiative tonight…’

Did that mean he found her unadventurous and boring in bed? The thought took the edge off her pleasure and dented her newly discovered confidence.

‘Tonight’s special.’

‘I think you’ll remember it.’

Georgie, rehearsing what she was going to say in her head, barely registered his cryptic response. ‘Angolos, I’ve got something to tell you.’ She leaned forward, her eyes glowing with anticipation, her cheeks gently flushed. With a grunt of irritation she pinned the strands of her hair that brushed his face behind one ear. ‘Sorry.’

‘I like your hair on my skin. It feels…’ He closed his eyes and muttered something angry in Greek under his breath.

‘I think what I’ve got to say will cheer you up.’

Considering what had followed, that was probably the silliest comment she had ever made, Georgie reflected grimly.

‘You’re going to be a father, Angolos. I’m going to have a baby.’

His eyes stayed closed—she began to think he’d not heard her—then, dark, deep and impenetrable, they flickered open.

‘Pregnant?’

She nodded, and experienced the first stirrings of fear. Something was badly wrong, but she had no idea what… Perhaps he felt it was too soon, which didn’t make sense because he was the one who had just shrugged when she had mentioned precautions…

‘I know we weren’t trying…and we didn’t discuss it, but I thought you might be happy. You are happy?’

‘Happy? I’m bloody delirious,’ he contended grimly. ‘Can’t you tell, yineka mou?’

‘I d…don’t understand…’ she stuttered.

Angolos rounded a corner in the lane and stopped. He could see her sitting on the wall, oblivious for the moment to his presence. He took the opportunity to study her undetected.

With her hair tied back in a pony-tail and her face innocent of make-up she looked more like a teenager than the mother of a child—his child. The idea still seemed strange to him. Strange as in bordering on miraculous, though he didn’t expect Georgie to share his sense of wonder.

‘You were far away.’

Georgie jumped at the sound of his voice. ‘You’re late.’

He didn’t react to her shrill, accusatory tone. ‘Have you come to a decision?’

‘I have.’ She had thought long and hard; she had thought until her brain felt as if it would explode.

One dark brow lifted. The casual observer, looking at his face, would have said her reply was in no way important to Angolos. But Georgie was not a casual observer; she knew that Angolos cared very badly about her reply.

‘And…?’ The muscle in his tense jaw continued to click steadily as he held her eyes.

Not into playing games, she replied immediately. ‘I agree that I have no right to deny Nicky his heritage. I can protect him now, but I won’t be able to always. I’ll just have to teach him to look after himself. I think you’d be good at that, Angolos. So I will come to Greece with you, on trial basis.’

She saw the muscles of his shoulders relax. ‘Thank you for that, Georgette. For my part I swear that I will do my best not to disappoint you.’

The palpable sincerity in his voice brought an emotional lump to her throat. ‘I don’t think you would, but you didn’t let me finish. There are conditions.’

‘Whatever you say,’ he said immediately.

‘Don’t you think you ought to hear what they are first?’ she asked him.

‘Bring on your demands. It doesn’t matter what they are. I will do anything it takes to develop a relationship with my son.’

‘I understand that.’

One dark brow arched in sardonic enquiry as he scanned her face. ‘But you have your doubts? You don’t think it will work out?’

This drew a reluctant laugh from her. ‘Only a couple of thousand.’ Her expression sobered as she lifted her face to his; she could almost feel his impatience. ‘It didn’t work last time.’ Feeling her control slipping, she turned and began to walk towards the church.

Angolos cursed softly under his breath as he fell into step beside her. ‘The situation isn’t the same.’

That much was true. Last time he had loved her, or professed to at least. This time there was no pretence that his feelings for her were what they once had been; this was all about wanting to be a father to his son.

‘I know that, but everything else is. You…’ She stopped and smiled at an elderly couple who walked past hand in hand.

‘Lovely afternoon.’

‘Marvellous,’ she agreed.

‘Why are the British obsessed with the weather?’ Before she could defend the national obsession he added, ‘Why are you determined to be negative about this?’

‘I’m not being negative,’ she protested. ‘I’m being realistic. We’re going back to the same house. You’re the same man, your mother will still resent me.’

‘My mother did not resent you!’

Georgie smiled and looked away. ‘If you say so.’

‘Perhaps you have left out the most significant obstacle.’

She paused and ran her fingers along the moss-covered wall beside the church gate. Her glance lifted to the tiny church with its square Norman tower. As a young girl she had spent many an afternoon imagining herself walking up the aisle here, and standing underneath the big horse chestnut having her picture taken in its shade.

The reality could not have been more different: an anonymous register office. Angolos had let it be known that he hadn’t actually wanted a big wedding. ‘Been there, done that…but, of course, if you want…?’ he added.

‘No, I hate big weddings,’ she lied dutifully. ‘It’s the next twenty years that counts, not the day itself.’

He laughed at her earnestness and called her a hopeless romantic, but she was happy because she had pleased him.

With a sigh she rested her back against the wall now. ‘And what is that?’ She stretched out her hand and languidly watched the dappled light play across her skin.

‘You’re still the same person too.’

She shook her head, but didn’t look at him. ‘You’re wrong, Angolos. I’m not the same person at all.’

‘You mean you won’t grow discontented this time.’

This time she did look up. ‘Discontented…?’

‘You never made any effort to fit in.’

‘Fit in!’ she exclaimed in heated response to this monumentally unfair claim. ‘Short of changing my identity, that was never going to happen.’

‘What are you talking about?’

As if he didn’t know.

‘Tell me, Angolos,’ she began with vibrating antagonism. ‘How long had we been married before you began regretting it? A week…two…?’ Now he was prepared to put his life on hold to be with their son; back then he hadn’t even been able to free a weekend to spend time with her! If her friend Alan hadn’t arrived she would have felt even lonelier.

‘This,’ he said heavily, ‘is getting us nowhere.’

‘Maybe someone is trying to tell us something,’ she murmured as she levered herself up onto the wall.

‘It’s not exactly constructive raking up the past every five seconds.’ Angolos’s gaze moved from the small hands folded primly in her lap to her neatly crossed ankles and his jaw clenched.

‘You look like a child,’ he accused throatily.

She continued banging her heels against the stone as he set his hands against the uneven wall either side of her. But it was an uphill battle to continue to act as if her pulses weren’t racing like crazy and she weren’t painfully aware of the proximity of his warm male body.

‘I’m not, and I’ve got the stretch marks to prove it.’ Without thinking, she moved her hand to hover above the area low on her belly, where the silvery lines were a permanent reminder of her motherhood.

‘I’m well aware you’re not a child.’ He exhaled a long shuddering breath that sucked in the muscles of his flat belly and expanded his impressive chest. He dragged a hand through his dark hair. ‘I used to know your body as well as I knew my own.’

The accusing throaty addition brought her startled glance to his face. Their eyes meshed and her insides dissolved.

‘The attraction is still there.’

‘I don’t know if Greece fell short of your expectations or I did? But it is my home and once,’ he added, ‘it was yours. I would like for my son to have the opportunity to learn to love it also.’

‘It was never my home.’ The sadness in her eyes was tinged with resentment. ‘I was always a visitor and not a welcome one at that.’ His mother, the daunting Olympia, had made sure of that.

‘That’s ludicrous. This melodrama isn’t helping anyone,’ he retorted impatiently.

Georgie didn’t respond. She knew perfectly well that he would never believe that his family had loathed her; in front of him they had been sweetness and light.

‘I don’t want to share a home with your mother and sister.’

‘Is that a fact?’

She could tell from his expression that he didn’t take her seriously. She took a deep breath. If she was going to do this, she was going to do it on her terms. ‘Let me rephrase that. I won’t share a house with your mother and sister.’

Eyes narrowed, he scanned her face. ‘You’re serious?’

‘Deadly serious.’

His expression changed. ‘You expect me to throw my mother and sister from their home?’

Georgie could see he was totally outraged by her suggestion. ‘They’re hardly going to be homeless, are they?’ His mother owned a palatial villa a few miles away and a town house in Athens and they were only the ones Georgie knew about! ‘As for Sacha, if you let her stand on her own feet instead of fighting her battles…’

‘She got married last year.’

‘Oh, that’s great.’

‘They had a falling out and—’

‘Let me guess—she came back home.’

Angolos’s expression grew defensive. ‘And why should she not?’

‘Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that she’s never going to sort out her own problems while she knows you’re always going to ride to the rescue when the going gets tough?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Do you dislike my family so much?’

She released an exasperated sigh. ‘I don’t dislike them at all,’ she protested. ‘They’re not keen on me. Actually I think they’d dislike anyone who wasn’t Sonia.’

‘That’s nonsense.’

She felt her anger mount at his dismissive attitude. ‘They still think you’ll get back together.’

‘That is totally ridiculous. We divorced years ago. Who knows why we ever got married…?’ he added half to himself.

Angolos knew from personal experience that youthful infatuation might feel intense, but was by nature a transitory thing doomed to fade as the people involved matured. Maybe it was the fact he and Sonia had both wanted out of the relationship that they had remained friends—whatever the reason, the civilised arrangement owed more to luck than good judgement.

‘It could have something to do with the fact she’s beautiful, talented, sexy and can’t keep her hands off you.’

‘Were you jealous?’

Georgie laughed. She couldn’t help it, he sounded so startled. ‘You really are not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you? Of course I was jealous. What wife wouldn’t be?’

‘One that did not have a self-esteem issue.’

When he got that smug, self-satisfied look she wanted to hit him. ‘Your ex-wife told me I was just the sort of quiet, homely wife you needed.’

‘Sonia didn’t mean anything by it, I’m sure. She just says the first thing that comes into her head. She’s very spontaneous.’

The speed with which he flew to the other woman’s defence brought a bitter smile to her lips. If he had been half as eager to defend me… She pushed aside the unfinished thought and squared her jaw.

‘If I asked the staff to do anything they checked first with your mother before.’

‘Ridiculous.’

‘It was ridiculous that I put up with it, but I was very young and naïve.’ The observation made him flinch, but Georgie was too caught up in her own recollections to notice. ‘That was bad enough,’ she recalled, ‘but when they automatically deferred to Sonia as well I felt as if I was a poor relation… No, that’s not right, I didn’t feel as though I was a relation at all.’ She swallowed and gave a grim smile.

‘You’re exaggerating.’ Despite this claim, she saw for the first time a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes.

‘How would you know? You were never there.’

‘I had been away from work for a long time. I had a lot of catching up to do and my mother went out of her way to make you feel at home,’ he told her stiffly.

Sure she did, Georgie thought as she tactfully conceded the point with an inclination of her head.

Angolos’s face was a rigid mask of constraint as he replied. ‘If I had wanted Sonia I would have stayed married to her. I wanted you.’

Georgie’s stomach flipped. Her covert glance at his hard, male, deliciously streamlined body resulted in an adrenaline surge of huge proportions. She inhaled deeply and nearly fell off the wall.

‘And you wanted me…’ Her heart was hammering so fast she could barely breathe. Her knees had acquired the consistency of cotton wool.

‘And you wanted me.’ He said it again.

A scared sound rasped in her throat and her eyes lifted. ‘Things change,’ she croaked defiantly.

Angolos studied her flushed face, lingering on the softness of her trembling lips. ‘And some things don’t.’

Silently she shook her head.

He took her chin in his hand and tilted her face up to him. There was anger in the dark eyes that moved hungrily over her delicate features. ‘Why can’t you admit it?’ he rasped.

‘Because I don’t want to feel this way…when you…’ Without warning she slid off the wall and under his restraining arm. Eyes blazing, her breasts heaving, she stood defiantly glaring at him.

‘I’m not an impressionable kid. Getting me into bed won’t change my mind.’

‘It might make you feel less frustrated, however.’ Georgie was about to respond angrily to this supremely arrogant suggestion, when he added, ‘I know it would make me feel less frustrated. Where you are concerned I’ve never had any self-control…’ He watched her eyes widen with shock and his lips twisted in a self-derisive smile. ‘You haven’t the faintest idea what it does to me to be this close to you and not touch…’ he said thickly.

A surge of heat travelled through her body. ‘Tell me…’ she demanded throatily, then almost immediately started to backtrack as though her life depended on it. ‘No…no, I didn’t mean that.’

He responded to her denial with a disturbing smile. ‘Are you sure?’ His smouldering glance dropped to her parted lips.

Georgie heard a soft moan and realised with a sense of shock that she had made it. Ashamed of the desire that drenched her shaking body in a wave of intense sexual heat, she tried to turn away, but her knees gave and she stumbled.

His arm shot out to steady her. Heads close together, their eyes meshed. ‘Do you like the idea of me wanting to touch you, Georgette?’

An image of the last time they’d made love flashed into her head. He had walked into the bedroom and she hadn’t heard him. She hadn’t known he was there until she’d turned around and found him standing with his shoulders against the door-frame, staring at her.

He’d looked so immaculate in an open-necked shirt and tailored trousers that she’d immediately wished that she had not delayed taking her shower. ‘How long have you been there?’ He didn’t reply, just carried on looking at her. ‘I was clearing out the drawers of this—’

He levered himself off the door and moved unhurriedly towards her, tall, lean and shockingly sexy. ‘There are people to do that sort of things.’

He reached her side in seconds, and since his eyes had locked onto hers his unwavering stare had not left her face for an instant.

‘I keep forge—’

The rest of her sentence remained unspoken as he bent forward and, taking her face between his hands, he fitted his mouth to hers. He kissed her with a driving desperation that bent her body backwards. She clung to him, shaking violently with need. She gasped and moaned his name as his hands slid under her skirt, pushing back the lace of her pants to touch the damp heat between her legs.

‘Whenever I touch you, you are ready for me…’

‘Georgette…?’

The sound of Angolos’s voice dragged her back to the present. Disorientated, she blinked.

‘Are you all right?’

‘You asked me if I liked the idea of you wanting to touch me…?’

The dark colour scoring his high cheekbones deepened. ‘You’re right. This isn’t the place or time—’

‘Thinking is good, doing is better.’

And Angolos had been very good at doing. When she closed her eyes she could see him above her, his skin glistening as he drove deep into her again and again. Her cries urging him on and on.

With a frightened gasp she opened her eyes. ‘What am I doing?’

He caught hold of her chin and angled her face up to his. ‘I don’t know, but if you don’t stop doing it I could end up getting arrested.’ His eyes gleamed with laughter but, under the laughter, darker, more dangerous emotions lurked. The darkness in his eyes exerted a powerful fascination for her. It always had.

As she lowered her mortified gaze she caught sight of a bead of sweat running down the brown column of his throat. She followed its progress, unable to tear her eyes from it.

‘I didn’t mean to.’ She gave a self-condemnatory groan. ‘That sounds so stupid! But I just do and say things around you that I wouldn’t even think around anyone else… I’m really sorry.’

‘Do I look offended?’

Her eyes lifted. She shook her head and restlessly twisted her hair into a knot on the nape of her neck.

Don’t even think about telling him how he looks, she cautioned herself.

‘You still want me. This is not to my mind a cause for repentance.’

‘Well, there’s no need to act as if you didn’t already know,’ she returned, centring her cross frown on his dark, devastatingly handsome face.

‘I didn’t consider it the foregone conclusion you seem to,’ he contended drily.

His eyes strayed to the exposed length of her slender throat and stayed there. Flushing, she let her hair fall and lowered her arms. Crossing them in front of her chest, oblivious to the fact the protective action pushed her compressed breasts upwards, she pursed her lips in a scornful grimace.

‘I bet you were a bundle of insecurity.’ Angolos, a victim to fragile self-esteem…? Oh, sure, that was really likely.

‘The flame that burns brightest does not always last the longest. You were very young—’

‘And stupid,’ she cut in angrily. ‘Yes, a lot of people think that, and it just goes to show that a few more years on the clock don’t necessarily make you any less stupid!’ If anything she wanted him more now than she had then.

‘So that aspect of being back with me does not fill you with disgust?’

‘The sex was always pretty fantastic,’ she grunted, avoiding his eyes as though her life depended on it. ‘It was the other stuff we were terrible at.’

‘So, we will work on the “other stuff”, and enjoy the sex,’ he announced, sounding pleased with himself, which, considering she had just told him she fancied the pants off him, was not surprising. Why did her mouth detach itself from her brain when she was around this man?

‘That remains to be seen,’ she replied as he fell in step beside her, moderating his long stride to match hers.

‘Where are we going?’

‘I’m going to pick up Nicky from Ruth’s, and then—’

‘I’ll come with you.’