A Ring For The Greek's Baby
MELANIE MILBURNE
From no-strings…Notorious playboy Loukas Kyprianos cannot forget his wild night with sweet, innocent Emily Seymour. But when he arrives in London to offer a no-strings arrangement, Loukas uncovers a surprise consequence of their passion—Emily is expecting!To wearing his ring!Despite their exquisite encounter, Emily knows Loukas can’t give her the fairytale she dreams of—so when he insists they wed, she agrees for their child’s sake alone. But their engagement fuels their hunger, and when the irresistible Greek’s protection turns to seduction it’s only a matter of time before Emily succumbs to his touch!When one night…leads to pregnancy!
From no strings...
Notorious playboy Loukas Kyprianos cannot forget his wild night with sweet, innocent Emily Seymour. But when he arrives in London to offer a no-strings arrangement, Loukas uncovers a surprise consequence of their passion—Emily is expecting!
To wearing his ring!
Despite their exquisite encounter, Emily knows Loukas can’t give her the fairy tale she dreams of—so when he insists they wed, she agrees for their child’s sake alone. But their engagement fuels their hunger, and when the irresistible Greek’s protection turns to seduction it’s only a matter of time before Emily succumbs to his touch!
‘Tell me you want me.’
‘I want you, but there’s—’
Emily stepped back from Loukas with what little willpower she had left, but she stumbled over the pedal bin behind her left foot and it tipped over and spilled its contents in front of his Italian-leather-clad feet.
An unpinned grenade would have had a similar effect.
Loukas’s face drained of colour as if he was the one with morning sickness. He stood frozen for a moment. Totally statuelike. As if someone had pressed the ‘pause’ button on him.
Emily watched as if in slow motion as he bent to pick up not one but seven pregnancy test wands. He examined the telltale blue lines, clanking the wands against each other like chopsticks.
His eyes finally cut to hers—sharp, flint hard with query. ‘You’re...pregnant?’
One Night With Consequences (#u030d4e62-3430-5e1a-93da-9d0b1dcc7f04)
When one night…leads to pregnancy!
When succumbing to a night of unbridled desire it’s impossible to think past the morning after!
But, with the sheets barely settled, that little blue line appears on the pregnancy test and it doesn’t take long to realise that one night of white-hot passion has turned into a lifetime of consequences!
Only one question remains:
How do you tell a man you’ve just met that you’re about to share more than just his bed?
Find out in:
The Greek’s Nine-Month Redemption by Maisey Yates
Crowned for the Prince’s Heir by Sharon Kendrick
The Sheikh’s Baby Scandal by Carol Marinelli
A Ring for Vincenzo’s Heir by Jennie Lucas
Claiming His Christmas Consequence by Michelle Smart
The Guardian’s Virgin Ward by Caitlin Crews
A Child Claimed by Gold by Rachael Thomas
The Consequence of His Vengeance by Jennie Lucas
Secrets of a Billionaire’s Mistress by Sharon Kendrick
The Boss’s Nine-Month Negotiation by Maya Blake
The Pregnant Kavakos Bride by Sharon Kendrick
Look for more One Night With Consequences stories, coming soon!
A Ring for the Greek’s Baby
Melanie Milburne
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
MELANIE MILBURNE read her first Mills & Boon novel at the age of seventeen, in between studying for her final exams. After completing a master’s degree in education she decided to write a novel, and thus her career as a romance author was born. Melanie is an ambassador for the Australian Childhood Foundation and a keen dog-lover and trainer. She enjoys long walks in the Tasmanian bush. In 2015 Melanie won the HOLT Medallion—a prestigious award honouring outstanding literary talent.
Books by Melanie Milburne
Mills & Boon Modern Romance
The Temporary Mrs Marchetti
Unwrapping His Convenient Fiancée
His Mistress for a Week
Wedlocked!
Wedding Night with Her Enemy
The Ravensdale Scandals
Ravensdale’s Defiant Captive
Awakening the Ravensdale Heiress
Engaged to Her Ravensdale Enemy
The Most Scandalous Ravensdale
The Playboys of Argentina
The Valquez Bride
The Valquez Seduction
Those Scandalous Caffarellis
Never Say No to a Caffarelli
Never Underestimate a Caffarelli
Never Gamble with a Caffarelli
Visit the Author Profile page
at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/) for more titles.
To my darling father, Gordon Luke, who passed away during the writing of this novel.
You were an amazing father, grandfather and great-grandfather, brother, uncle and friend. You have touched so many lives with your funny stories, your generous spirit and strong work ethic. I will always treasure the memories I have of our relationship. The world would be a better place if everyone could have a dad like you.
Rest in peace. xxx
Contents
Cover (#u9a8491c7-d797-5f7e-855e-58a45cb741a8)
Back Cover Text (#u8a7b1602-7aa7-59d3-a2e0-951e2a211a15)
Introduction (#u9cfac1b4-3838-5725-9e34-d474f20d4306)
One Night With Consequences (#u90975998-26c0-514f-8752-cf0b040e4a53)
Title Page (#u72529c63-ca1b-56a1-b0f1-cfd6a28bc4b7)
About the Author (#u4afe0bf6-627b-5c09-9f96-3f72877035ba)
Dedication (#ud4ec9ac7-bfbf-5690-ac74-4b3edbfc72b1)
CHAPTER ONE (#u9f6d57b7-2a49-54fb-8fbd-82dc55158fc0)
CHAPTER TWO (#ud3f528f4-bd07-5cbc-8443-344990561cd3)
CHAPTER THREE (#u114f1321-f123-57f6-b063-930df2b4c86c)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u030d4e62-3430-5e1a-93da-9d0b1dcc7f04)
WHEN THE SEVENTH TEST came back positive, Emily knew it was time to face the truth. Face it or spend a fortune on pregnancy tests until there wasn’t a pharmacy she could walk into in the whole of London without blushing with an ‘it’s me again’ grimace. She’d thought buying a jumbo box of tampons was embarrassing, but a basket full of pregnancy tests was way worse. There was no avoiding it. Those little blue lines weren’t lying even if she wished they were.
She. Was. Pregnant.
Not that she didn’t want to have a baby. Some day, with some nice guy who was madly in love with her and had married her at a big, white wedding first.
Her first ever one-night stand and look what had happened. How could she be so fertile? How could condoms be so unreliable? How could she have slept with a man so out of her league? Emily was all for aiming high in life, but a Greek billionaire? And not one of those short, fat, balding middle-aged ones, like those in her local deli, but a six-foot-four heart-stoppingly gorgeous man who had eyes so brown you could lose yourself in them.
Which she had promptly done. Completely and utterly lost herself in a sizzling sexual encounter unlike anything she’d experienced before. Which, truth be told, was not saying much, because her experience could hardly be described as extensive given she’d wasted seven years with her ex-partner Daniel. Seven years. Argh! Why couldn’t the number seven be lucky for her like everyone else? For seven long years she’d waited for a proposal. It had got so bad that every time her ex had bent down on one knee to pick something up off the floor she would get all excited thinking this was it—the moment she’d been waiting for.
It had never happened.
What had happened instead was she’d got cheated on. The ignominy of being betrayed was bad enough, but to be left for a male lover was a whole new level of humiliation. How could she have been the last to know Daniel was gay?
But it wasn’t the betrayal that hurt her the most. It was the loss of being a part of a couple; the shock of being single for the first time in so long she had forgotten how to be single. Going out at night without a partner by her side felt weird, like going out with only one shoe on. Or eating in a restaurant on her own, working her way through a meal, wondering if everyone was speculating if she’d been stood up or something.
She used to love going out to dinner with Daniel, who was a bit of a food and wine connoisseur. They would try different restaurants and cuisines and sit for hours over a meal, discussing the food, the presentation, the wine and even the other diners. She used to love coming home from work knowing she had someone to talk to about her day. Daniel had been her ‘guess what happened to me today’ person, her sounding board, her back-up, her anchor. The person who’d provided the stability she’d craved since she was a child.
She hadn’t had much luck since with dating. Her New Age relationship-therapist mother said it was because she was subconsciously sabotaging her male relationships because of her father issues. Father issues. And whose fault was it she didn’t have a father? Her mother hadn’t managed to get his name and number when she’d had sex with him under a rain-soaked tarpaulin at a music festival.
Emily looked at the pregnancy test again. No. She wasn’t having a nightmare. Well, she was. A living nightmare. A nightmare that involved fronting up to commitment-phobe Loukas Kyprianos and telling him he was going to be a father.
Oh, joy.
Such a task would be a whole lot easier if he had called her in the month since their night of bed-wrecking, pulse-throbbing sex. Or sent a text message. Or an email. A carrier pigeon, even. Given her some tiny thread of hope he might want to see her again.
Although, come to think of it, she hadn’t exactly done herself any favours in that department. She could write a book on how to get a guy to lose interest in one date. When she was nervous she talked too much. Way too much. When she gushed like that, she didn’t just wear her heart on her sleeve but on every visible part of her body. A couple of drinks down and she’d mentioned her dream of marriage, four kids and a dog—an Irish Retriever, no less. To a man who had a reputation as an easy come, easy go playboy.
What was wrong with her?
Emily walked out of the bathroom and picked up her phone. No missed calls. No text messages...apart from four from her mother with links to her prescribed daily meditation and yoga practices. It was easier to let her mother think she used the links than to argue why she didn’t. She had learned a long time ago that arguing with her mother was a pointless and energy draining exercise.
Emily didn’t have Loukas’s number even if she could summon up the courage to call it. She could get it from her friend Allegra, who was married to Loukas’s best friend, Draco Papandreou, but somehow telling Loukas over the phone didn’t seem quite the way to go. Hey, guess what? We made a baby! would probably not be such a great opening gambit.
No. This called for a face-to-face conversation. She needed to gauge his reaction. Not that he was an easy person to read. He had one of those faces that gave little away in terms of expression. His facial muscles were into energy saving or something. It was like trying to see what was behind a curtained stage. But he had an aura of quiet authority she’d found overwhelmingly attractive. His aloofness had intrigued her at the wedding. He didn’t seem to need people the way she did. She was like a too-friendly puppy at a garden party, moving from group to group, trying to win approval.
He, on the other hand, was like a statue.
Emily’s phone rang and she almost dropped it in surprise. She didn’t recognise the number and answered it in her best legal secretary voice. ‘Emily Seymour speaking.’
‘It’s Loukas Kyprianos.’
Her heart kicked her ribcage out of the way, leapt to her throat and clung there with hooked claws.
He’d called her. He’d called her. He’d called her.
The words were beating in time with her panicked pulse. She needed more time. She wasn’t ready for this conversation. She needed to rehearse in front of the mirror or something, like she used to do as a kid with a hairbrush as a pretend microphone. She tried to calm herself but her breathing was so choppy it felt as though she was having an asthma attack.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
She could do with some of her mother’s mindfulness techniques right about now. ‘Erm...hi. How are you?’
‘Fine. You?’
‘Erm...good, thank you. Great. Super. Fantastic.’
Apart from a little morning sickness.
There was a tick-tock of silence.
‘Are you free this evening?’
Emily swallowed. Free for what? Hook-up sex? She didn’t want to sound too available. A girl had her pride and all that. But she had to tell him about the baby. Maybe over dinner would be the best way to do it. No. No. No. Not in a public place. She would have to do it in private. Private was best. ‘I’ll have to check my diary. I seem to remember I have something...’
He gave a soft sound that could have passed for an amused chuckle. ‘You don’t have to play hard to get with me, Emily.’
Yes, well, it was a little late for that, she had to admit. The way he said her name with that subtle Greek accent made the base of her spine go all squishy. Em-il-ee. It wasn’t a name when he said it. It was a seductive caress, as if he had circled each and every bump of her vertebrae with a slow-moving fingertip. ‘Look, I think you should know, I’m not usually like that...like I was the night of the wedding. I don’t normally drink so much—’
‘Have dinner with me.’
Emily took umbrage at the way he said it, like a command instead of an invitation. Did he think she’d been sitting by her phone waiting for him to call? Well, she had, but that was beside the point. She wasn’t going to let him think he could call her out of the blue and get her to drop everything to have dinner with him—even if she had nothing to drop. ‘I’m not free this evening so—’
‘Cancel.’
Cancel?
What the hell? Why should she cancel something at his say-so? ‘I don’t think so.’
She was quite proud of the haughty I-haven’t-been-Superglued-to-my-phone-waiting-for-you-to-call tone in her voice.
‘Please?’
Emily let a small silence pass. Let him sweat it out, as she’d been doing for the last month.
‘Why do you want to have dinner with me?’ she finally asked.
‘I want to see you again.’ His voice was rough and smooth. Gravel dipped in honey.
He wanted to see her again? Why? He had a reputation as a playboy, perhaps not as wild and loose-living as some rich men, but he hadn’t had a relationship lasting longer than a few days.
Or, at least, none the press knew about. Since his best friend’s marriage, the media interest had shifted from Draco to Loukas. Before that, Loukas had been able to fly below the radar but now everyone was speculating on whom he would date next. Emily privately had been dreading seeing him with another woman in the weeks since the wedding. If he were involved with someone else then the task of telling him he was to be a father would be even more difficult.
‘Is that code for “sleeping with me”?’ she asked. ‘Because, if so, I think you should know I’m not that sort of girl. I’ve never had a one-night stand before and I—’
‘It wouldn’t be a one-night stand if we did it again.’
It was a good point. But she couldn’t sleep with him before she told him the result of their last encounter. Even thinking about that night in his arms made her insides do cartwheels of excitement. Listening to his voice was as good as foreplay. If he kept talking to her, who knew what might happen? ‘Just dinner, okay?’
‘Just dinner.’
‘Will I meet you somewhere?’
‘I’ll pick you up. What’s your address?’
Emily gave it to him while part of her mind was worrying about what to wear. Little black dress or colour? No. Not too much colour. Not red. Definitely not red. Red was too ‘come and get me’. Pink was too girl-next-door. Did she have time to do her hair? Should she wash and blow-dry it or just scoop it up and hope for the best? Not too much make-up. Subtle and classy was best. Which heels? She needed heels because he was tall—a pair of stilts, even. A night of craning her neck to maintain eye contact would send her muscles into spasm.
‘I would’ve called you before this but I was away on business.’
You still could have called me.
Was his ‘business’ a svelte blonde like the one she’d seen hanging off his arm when she’d searched him online? ‘Really?’
‘Yes. Really.’
Emily chewed at one side of her lower lip. Why had he called her? Hadn’t she put him off with her ‘marriage and kids’ manifesto? Why had she blurted that out anyway? It was a first date no-no. Although, strictly speaking, it hadn’t been a date at all. It had been a chance hook-up. An impulsive act she still couldn’t explain. ‘Why? I mean, it’s not as if I’m your type.’
‘Given your relationship with Allegra and mine with Draco, I wanted to make sure there wasn’t any uncomfortableness about that night, in case we run into each other again because of our connection with them.’
There was going to be a whole heap of uncomfortableness when Emily told him what had resulted from that night. ‘Right...good thinking.’
‘I’ll see you at seven.’
Emily didn’t get a chance to say anything in reply for he ended the call. She stared at her phone, wondering if she should press redial, but then she realised he had a withheld number.
Her mother would say it was a sign.
* * *
Loukas clicked off his phone, placed it on his desk and leaned back in his office chair. He was breaking a rule by contacting Emily Seymour but he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind, or the memory of her touch out of his body.
One-night stands were meant to be exactly that.
One night.
He had occasional relationships but he always kept things casual. Casual worked for him. Casual meant no emotional investment. Casual meant no promises he couldn’t keep. He kept his relationships short, simple and based on sex.
But the sex didn’t get much better than what he’d had with Emily. He wasn’t sure what it was about her that had got him so worked up that night. She was cute in a girl-next-door way, with her petite frame and wavy shoulder-length hair that was neither blonde nor brown but a combination of the two. ‘Bronde’ she’d laughingly called it.
Her eyes were like a fawn’s. Bambi eyes. Toffee-brown and dusted with dark spots that looked like tiny iron filings sprinkled over pools of honey. Her skin was peaches-and-cream and silk, with a scattering of freckles over the bridge of her retroussé nose that reminded him of a dusting of nutmeg. She had a sunny smile, bright and cheery with an endearing little overbite, and well-shaped lips built for kissing...and other things. Those other things had just about blown off the top of his head.
It was true she wasn’t his type. But in another lifetime she might have been. In a parallel life where he didn’t carry guilt like convict’s chains. A life where every day he didn’t relive the stomach-churning moment that had changed everything for his half-sister Ariana and had made him even more of an outcast in his family than he had been before. Even after seventeen years, every time he saw a child’s bike his breath would stop and his guts would turn to gravy. If he heard the sudden squeal of brakes his heart would bang against his sternum like a wrecking ball. The siren of an ambulance sent his pulse sky-rocketing. He still lay awake at night hearing the crunch and crumple of metal and the piercing scream of a critically injured child...
Loukas knew he shouldn’t be seeing Emily again. He shouldn’t have hooked up with her in the first place. But, after having gone straight to the wedding from visiting Ariana in hospital after her latest bout of orthopaedic surgery, those chains of guilt had dug in with a cruel bite. He couldn’t undo the past. It didn’t matter how many times he relived that day. He had ruined his sister’s life and destroyed his mother’s second marriage in the process.
Emily’s smile had been like a bolt of sunshine at the wedding. Her creamy cheeks had blushed when she’d first met his gaze. It had been a long time since he had been with a woman who blushed when he looked at her. He avoided that type usually. But something about Emily had drawn his interest, with her dancing eyes, neat little ballet dancer’s figure and her cute clumsiness. Not to mention her adorable little bunny rabbit twitch where her nose would wrinkle up as if she had an invisible pair of glasses on and was trying to hitch them back up on the bridge of her nose.
He wasn’t going to offer her anything but a temporary fling. He was only interested in the here and now. He was in London for a week working on some software for one of the government’s security agencies. It was too good an opportunity to waste. A week-long fling to enjoy a little more of what they’d experienced that night. He would be upfront and honest about it. He wouldn’t dress it up as anything other than what it was. He would offer her a no-strings, no-promises fling and leave it at that, just as he did with any other woman he took a fancy to.
And he had taken rather a fancy to Emily.
His mind kept going back to that night like a tongue going back to a niggling tooth. Loukas still wasn’t sure why he’d taken her back to his room after Draco and Allegra’s wedding. Emily had been staying on the same floor of Draco’s private villa and he could easily have left her at her door after accompanying her back from the reception. But somehow the impersonal ‘it was nice to meet you’ kiss he’d intended to plant on her cheek had turned into something else. It was as if his lips had had their own agenda. They’d moved from her cheek to her lips like a missile finding a target.
Wham.
One kiss hadn’t been enough. Her soft lips opening under his unleashed a ferocious desire from somewhere deep inside him. A desire that had swept away to some far-off, unreachable place every reason not to sleep with her.
They hadn’t talked much—or at least, he hadn’t. But then, that was his way. Talking had never been his currency in relationships. He was the strong, silent ‘get on with the job’ type. Emily, on the other hand, had talked of her fairy-tale dreams as though he’d been auditioning for the role of handsome prince.
As if that was ever going to happen.
But once it might have...
Loukas pushed out of his chair and turned to look out of the window to the motherboard-like grid of London’s streets below. Crowds of people bustled about like busy ants. He was content with his life as it was...more or less. He had more money than he knew what to do with, a career that was global and a lifestyle that was enviable. It wasn’t like him to leave it a month between lovers, but he hadn’t been with anyone since Emily. He’d been over-the-top busy, certainly, but that didn’t usually stop him from engaging in a bit of sex to relieve the tension with someone who was agreeable to his terms. Terms that didn’t include anything long-or even mid-term. Short-term suited him because he could leave before things got too intense.
However, he didn’t care for the term ‘playboy’ the press labelled him with because it suggested he was shallow and exploitative with women. In reality it was because he wanted to spare his partners unnecessary hurt. He wasn’t like his father who moved from woman to woman with no regard for their feelings, promising them everything and then leaving them with nothing.
Loukas was the opposite. He promised them nothing and left them with generous gifts to soften the end of the affair.
But now the press’s interest in him had gone up a notch. With his best friend now off the market the focus had switched to him. Everywhere he went he had to be mindful of who was watching. The paparazzi were bad enough, but everyone had a camera phone these days, hankering after the money shot, so it was harder and harder to escape the intense interest in his private life.
Was it risky to see Emily again? Probably. But it was only for a week while he was in London. Seven days of sex without strings. The sex had been so damn good that night after the wedding. Good was an understatement. Everything about that night still reverberated in his body like a plucked cello string. He had only to think of her soft little hands with their butterfly touch to feel an aftershock roll through him. Just hearing her voice gave him goose bumps along the flesh of his spine. The soft breathlessness of it, the way she talked too much when she was nervous. The way she chewed at her lower lip and shielded her gaze with those spider-leg-long lashes. The way her cheeks pooled with pink as delicate as the blush of a rose.
He normally steered clear of sweet homespun girls like her. He always kept his head in relationships. Always. But just this once he wasn’t listening to his head. His body was telling him to go for it.
And just this once that was exactly what he planned to do.
CHAPTER TWO (#u030d4e62-3430-5e1a-93da-9d0b1dcc7f04)
EMILY WAS JUST ABOUT to put her lip-gloss on when the doorbell rang. She grimaced at the state of her bathroom counter. Nearly every item of make-up or skincare treatment she owned was strewn about, some with the lids still open. Her bedroom was even worse. Clothes were on just about every surface, including the floor. It looked as if her room had been ransacked by an addict in frantic search of a fix.
She closed her bedroom door on the way past and opened the front door with a smile that fell a little short of the mark. ‘Hi.’
Loukas’s deep-brown gaze met hers in a look that sent a current of awareness through her body like a lightning strike on metal. ‘Hello.’
How could a one-word greeting create such havoc with her senses? How could one man have such a potent effect on her? He was dressed in dark-blue trousers and a white shirt with a silver-and-black-striped tie and a navy-blue blazer, giving him an air of sophisticated man about town that was lethally attractive. Her pulse skipped and tripped at the mere sight of him. She opened the door wider, inching her feet back against the wall of the narrow hallway to give him more room. ‘Would you like to come in for a bit? I’m not quite ready.’ A hundred years wasn’t enough time to get ready.
He stepped through the door without touching her but Emily felt as if he had. Her body tingled when he moved past her in the doorway, as if he had sent out a radar signal to every cell of her flesh. His tall frame shrank her hallway, the carriage-light fitting only just clearing the top of his head. The citrus notes of his aftershave swirled around her nostrils, the clean, sharp scent taking her back to that night in his arms. She had smelt him on her skin for hours afterwards. Felt his hard, male presence in her tender muscles for days. Every time she moved her body it reminded her of the glide and thrust of his body within hers.
The intimacy they’d shared that night was like a presence hovering. The air was charged with it. Electrified by it. Humming with it.
His bottomless brown gaze moved over her body like a caress. ‘You look beautiful.’
Emily wished she didn’t have such a propensity to blush. She could feel it crawling over her cheeks like a spill of red wine on a cream carpet. She tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear. Shifted her feet. Smoothed her hands down the front of her dress. ‘Would you like a drink or...?’
He stepped closer, placing his hands on her waist and bringing his mouth down to within a breath of hers. ‘Let’s get this out of the way first.’
With a willpower Emily hadn’t even known she possessed, she placed her hands against his chest and took a faltering step backwards. ‘Can we have dinner first? It’s just, it’s been a month, and I feel a little...’
He gave one of his rare smiles. It was little more than an upward movement of his lips but it made something quiver on the floor of her belly like autumn leaves rustling in a playful breeze. ‘You don’t need to be nervous.’
Yes, I flipping well do.
Emily couldn’t quite meet his gaze and focussed on the knot of his tie instead. ‘Would you like to sit down? I just have to get my...my bag.’
And my courage, which seems to have left the building. Possibly the country.
‘Take your time. The booking isn’t till eight.’
‘Right, well, then, I’ll just be a moment.’ She backed away but bumped into the lamp on the table behind her. ‘Oops. Sorry. Won’t be a tick.’
Emily dashed back to the bathroom and gripped the edge of the basin.
You can do this. You can do this. You can do this.
She glanced at her reflection and stifled a groan. Was it her imagination or did she look a-vampire-just-left-me-for-dead pale? Maybe a bit more make-up would help. A bit of bronzer or something. She reached for her bronzer pad and brush but her hand knocked her bottle of perfume to the tiled floor with a glass-shattering crash. She looked at the shards of glass for a split second before she bent down to scoop them up, slicing one of her fingers in the process. Blood oozed down over her hand and wrist as if she was on the set of a horror movie. Footsteps sounded outside the bathroom, each one of them stepping on her flailing heart.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
‘Are you okay in there?’ Loukas asked, opening the door.
Emily grabbed the nearest hand towel and wrapped her hand in it. The smell of honeysuckle and vanilla was so strong and cloying it was nauseating. His nostrils quivered as if he thought so too. ‘I—I broke my perfume bottle.’
He stepped closer and gently took her hand. ‘Let me have a look. You might need stitches.’
She watched with one eye squinted while he carefully unpeeled her makeshift bandage. He held her hand to the light, his eyes narrowed in focus, his strong eyebrows drawn together in concentration. ‘No stitches needed, but I think there’s a sliver of glass in there. Do you have some tweezers?’
What a question to ask a girl with eyebrows that grew faster than weeds. ‘In the cupboard above the basin.’
He opened the cupboard and took the tweezers from the bottom shelf next to her jumbo pack of tampons.
Won’t need those for a while.
He rinsed the tweezers under the hot tap and then ran some antiseptic he’d found on the middle shelf over them.
Emily braced herself for the sting but his touch was so gentle she barely noticed anything except the way he was standing close enough for her to feel his body warmth. Close enough to smell the sharp notes of citrus in his aftershave, redolent of sun-warmed lemons and limes. Close enough to see the pinpricks of dark stubble peppered over his lean jaw, hinting at the potent male hormones surging in his blood.
Stop thinking about his surging blood.
I can’t help it!
He glanced at her. ‘I’m not hurting you too much?’
‘No...’ Emily looked at his mouth, the way it curved around his words, the way the stubble surrounded it, making her fingers ache to reach up and trace it.
He went back to work on her finger, gently removing the shard of glass and cleansing the wound with another wash of antiseptic. He reached back to the cupboard for a plaster and a small crepe bandage, which he placed on her finger. ‘There you go,’ he said with another heart-stopping, upward movement of his lips. ‘Good as new.’
Emily was so dazed by his almost-smile and his closeness she didn’t register what he was doing for a moment. It was only when he stepped past her to place the plaster and bandage wrappings in the metal pedal bin next to her that her heart came to a screeching standstill. She quickly blocked him from accessing the bin, as if she were guarding the Hope Diamond. ‘D-don’t put it in there.’ She held out her good hand, not one bit surprised it was shaking. ‘I’ll take it and put it in the bin in the kitchen.’
One of his eyebrows rose like a question mark. ‘Why not this bin?’
She forced herself to hold his gaze, her heart beating so hard it was as if there were panicked pigeons and a handful of hummingbirds trapped in her chest. ‘This one’s...erm...full.’
His eyes moved back and forth between each of hers. ‘What’s wrong? You seem a little jumpy.’
‘I’m not jumpy.’
Probably shouldn’t have answered so quickly.
He reached out his hand and trailed the backs of his bent knuckles down the slope of her cheek, making every nerve fizz and whizz. His eyes went to her mouth, lingering there as if he was reliving every time he had kissed her that night a month ago. ‘Why do I make you so nervous?’
Emily swallowed loud enough to hear it. ‘I’m n-not nervous...’
Loukas inched up her chin, the pad of his thumb moving in slow mesmerising circles, his eyes holding hers. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about that night. How good it was between us.’
She sent her tongue out to moisten her lips that were as dry as the crepe bandage on her finger. ‘Isn’t it always good between you and your lovers?’
He gave a shrug but there was no hint of arrogance about it. ‘Mostly. What about you?’
Emily tried but failed to suppress a snort. ‘I can count my previous lovers on half a hand. My mother’s had more sex than me. She’s still having more than me.’
He continued to look at her without speaking, his eyes holding hers as if he found her fascinating. But then, maybe a twenty-nine-year-old almost-virgin was something of an enigma to him.
‘She’s a relationships therapist,’ Emily said into the silence. ‘She teaches people how to have better relationships by working on their sex lives. Ironic that her daughter’s sex life is practically non-existent.’
Here you go again. Telling him all your stuff.
So? I need to break the ice a bit. I can’t just tell him he’s going to be a dad without a bit of a lead up.
You are so unsophisticated!
His hands came to settle on her waist, his eyes sexily hooded. ‘Maybe I can help you with that.’
The warmth of his hands seemed to be travelling right through her clothes, through every layer of her skin, sending electric pulses down her nerves until they were twitching in excitement. Her inner core registered his proximity like a scanner recognises a code. It was as though she were micro-chipped for him and him alone. Her intimate muscles were clenching, contracting, wanting.
‘I haven’t had a lot of luck with men,’ Emily said. ‘I had one lover before my ex, but it hardly counts, as it was over before I blinked. I was with Daniel seven years so it’s left me a little out of the game, so to speak.’
Argh! What are you doing? You’re making yourself sound like some sort of relationship tragic.
But I don’t want him to think I’ve been jumping every man I meet.
His hands went from her waist to skim up her arms and rest on her shoulders. His eyes had a lustrous depth to them that reminded her of a bottomless lake. ‘You haven’t had a lover since Daniel? Apart from me, I mean?’
‘No. I dated a few times but it never came to anything. I suspect that was why I was so...so enthusiastic when you kissed me outside my room,’ Emily said. ‘I hope I didn’t shock you.’
Loukas brushed his thumb over her lower lip. ‘You delighted and surprised me.’
That’s me. Full of delightful surprises.
She stretched her lips into a rictus smile. ‘Erm...there’s something we need to discuss...’
‘I’m not in this for the long haul, Emily.’ His mouth had an intractable set to it. ‘I want you to be clear on that right from the outset. I’m only here in London this week, so if we have a fling that’s all it will be. A fling. Nothing else.’
‘I understand that. It’s just there’s some—’
‘I want you.’ His voice hummed in her core as deep as a bass chord.
Emily placed her hands flat against his chest, her hips bumping into his, sending a shockwave of tingly awareness through her body. She couldn’t think when he was this close. Her body went on autopilot. Wanting. Craving. Hungering. Her breasts tingled with the memory of his touch, the heat and fire of his lips and tongue and the sexy scrape of his teeth. He was so magnetic. So irresistible. So tempting her inner core was contracting with little pulses of lust, as if recalling the sexy thrust of his body within hers.
How could she possibly be thinking about sex at a time like this? But it seemed her body could only think about sex when Loukas was within touching distance. His chest was hard and warm under her hands, the clean, laundered scent of his shirt filling her nostrils. The length and strength of his thighs so close to her own reminded her of how those muscle-packed legs had entrapped hers in a tangle of sheets, taking her to a sensual heaven she hadn’t known existed. Her body remembered everything about that encounter. Remembered and begged for it to be repeated. The drumming of her pulse echoed in her core, making her aware of every inch of her body where it was in contact with his, as though all the nerves on those spots had been supercharged.
His mouth came down to hover above hers, his warm, minty breath sending her senses reeling. ‘Tell me you want me.’
‘I want you, but there’s...’ Emily stepped back from him, using what little willpower she had left, but she stumbled over the pedal bin behind her left foot and it tipped over and spilled its contents in front of his Italian-leather-clad feet.
An unpinned grenade would have had a similar effect.
Loukas’s face drained of colour as if he were the one with morning sickness. He stood frozen for a moment. Totally statue-like—as if someone had pressed a pause button on him. Then he swallowed.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Each one of them was clearly audible in the pregnant silence—no pun intended. Emily watched as if in slow motion when he bent to pick up not one, but seven test wands. He examined the tell-tale blue lines, the wands clanking against each other like chopsticks.
His eyes finally cut to hers, sharp, flint-hard with query. ‘You’re...pregnant?’
He said the word as though it was the most shocking diagnosis anyone could have. Up until a few hours ago, she had thought so too.
Emily wrung her hands like a distraught heroine from a period drama, wincing when her damaged finger protested. ‘I was trying to tell you but—’
‘Is it mine?’ The question was a verbal slap.
She double blinked. ‘Of course it’s yours. I—’
‘But we used condoms.’ The suspicion in his voice scraped at her already overwrought nerves.
‘I know, but condoms sometimes fail, and this time one must have—’
‘Aren’t you on the pill?’ His brows were so tightly drawn above his eyes it gave him an intimidating air.
‘I—I was taking a break from it.’ Emily could feel tears welling up. The concentrated smell of her spilt perfume was making her feel queasy. Her fingertips were fizzing as if her blood were being filtered through coarse sand. The tingling sensation spread to her arms, travelling all the way up to her neck, making it hard to keep her head steady. The room began to spin, the floor to shift beneath her feet as though she were standing on a pitching boat deck. She reached blindly for the edge of the bathroom counter but it was like a ghost hand reaching through fog. Every one of her limbs folded as if she were a marionette with severed strings. She heard Loukas call out her name through a vacuum and then everything faded to black...
* * *
‘Emily!’ Loukas dropped to his knees in front of her slumped form, his heart banging against his chest wall like a bell struck by a madman. Her face was as white as the basin above her collapsed form, her skin clammy. He brushed the sticky hair back from her forehead, his mind still whirling with the news of her pregnancy.
Pregnant.
The word struck another hammer-like blow to his chest. A baby. His baby. How had it happened? He was always so careful. Paranoid careful. He never had sex without a condom. He never took risks. Never. How could he have got her pregnant? It had been a bit low of him to suggest it wasn’t his, but panic had blunted his sensitivity.
A father?
Him?
Why hadn’t he asked her about contraception? If he’d known she wasn’t on the pill, or using a hormone implant device, he would have taken extra caution. He couldn’t be a father. He didn’t want to be a father. He had never planned to be a father. Panic drummed through him like wildebeests in stampede. He tried to picture himself with a baby and his mind went blank, his chest seizing with dread, vice-like. His intestines knotted as though they were being sectioned by twine.
No. Not him. Not now. Not ever.
He looked at Emily’s slumped form and another dagger of guilt jabbed him. Hard. He had done this, upsetting her to the point of collapse. She had been trying to tell him something but he’d been so intent on squaring up their fling he hadn’t given her a chance. No wonder she had acted so nervous and on edge.
She was pregnant.
With his baby.
What was he going to do? What was the right thing to do? Hands-off provision for his child seemed a little tacky somehow. There was no way he could walk away from this. He would have to be involved with his child as he wished his father had been for him. He would have to be responsible for the child. To provide for and protect it. The thought of protecting a child was enough to make Loukas break out in another prickly sweat.
How could he keep a child safe?
He had got Emily pregnant. Some would call it an accident, a freakish trick of fate, or destiny or whatever, but he blamed himself. He had slipped up. He had done what he had sworn he would never do.
He was to become a father, unless she chose to get rid of it.
He allowed the thought some traction, but as escape hatches went it wasn’t one he felt comfortable with. It would be Emily’s decision, certainly, but he hoped she wouldn’t feel pressured into it because of their circumstances. He would have to make it clear he was okay with her keeping it. More than okay, even if he harboured more doubts than a sceptics’ conference. Not doubts about keeping the baby—doubts about himself as a father.
His own father had insisted a recent partner have an abortion after she’d fallen pregnant, and when she’d refused he’d summarily dumped her. The young woman had subsequently attempted suicide and lost the baby as a result. She had recently been paid a large sum of money by a gossip magazine for a tell-all interview about how Loukas’s father had caused her so much distress. The interview, by association, had put the spotlight on Loukas and the way he conducted his relationships, especially now he was attracting more media attention than ever before.
But there was no way he would ever put that sort of pressure on any woman. Emily’s pregnancy was a shock, a surprise and an inconvenience, but there was a tiny human life in the making, and he would not do or say anything to compromise that development, nor the mental health of its mother.
He was angry with himself for putting Emily in this situation. Furious. Ashamed. Deeply, thoroughly ashamed that he had acted on impulse and slept with her when normally he would have steered clear of an unworldly woman like her. He’d been the one to make the first move. He hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off her, much less his hands. He had foolishly thought he could have a one-night stand and walk away. He should have walked away from her at her bedroom door at Draco’s villa—that was what he should have done.
What had he been thinking, sleeping with a cute little homespun girl like her? She wasn’t his type and he certainly wasn’t hers. He wasn’t a rake, but he was no altar boy either. It had been a night of out-of-character madness and now it had come to this. A life had been created that would link them together for ever.
How could he walk away from this? This was his doing and he would have to face it even though it was like facing his worst nightmare. Panic wrapped steel cords around his chest, squeezing the very breath out of him. Sweat broke out over his brow. The roots of his hair prickled as if ants were playing hide and seek on his scalp.
Why couldn’t he press replay on his life and do everything differently? How many times had he wished that? Every time he saw his sister’s damaged body he wished he could turn back time. Now he had another regret to hang on his conscience. But, unlike with his sister and mother, whom he kept at a respectful distance, given the dreadful impact he’d had on their lives, he could not so easily distance himself from his own child.
A child who would grow up and call him Daddy. A child who would look up to him. A child who would expect certain things of him—things he wasn’t capable of giving. How could he be trusted with a child’s welfare when he had already ruined one innocent child’s life?
Emily groaned and slowly opened her eyes. She looked at him blankly for a moment and then she captured her lower lip with her teeth and lowered her gaze. ‘I’m sorry...’
‘No.’ His voice caught on the word and he had to clear his throat to continue. ‘I’m the one who’s sorry. Are you okay? Shall I get you a glass of water?’
She made to get up and Loukas helped her into a sitting position to allow time for her blood pressure to go back to normal. ‘I’m fine. I just need a minute.’
‘Should I call a doctor?’ He began to reach for his phone but she put a hand on his arm.
‘No, I’m fine, really.’ Her hand melted away from his arm and went back to her lap. The sound of her fingertips flicking against each other made him realise how nervous she was.
‘Have you seen a doctor at all?’
She shook her head. ‘Not yet. I wanted to do a few tests first.’
Loukas glanced at the seven test wands, wondering how many more she’d planned to take.
When he looked back at her she gave him a self-deprecating grimace. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Overkill.’ After a moment she added, ‘We can do a paternity test if you’d—’
‘No,’ Loukas said, surprising himself with the strength of his conviction. ‘That won’t be necessary.’
Her eyes shimmered and her throat rose and fell over a swallow. ‘Thank you for believing me. It means...a lot...’
He brushed his hand over her hair and then tucked a couple of strands back behind her ear as if she were six years old. She gave him a tremulous movement of her lips that loosely could have been described as a smile. ‘You can’t be very far along,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it too early to be sure one way or the other?’
‘The tests are pretty accurate these days. They can pick up the slightest change in hormonal activity within a few days of conception.’
‘What do you plan to do?’ As soon as he asked it he wished he hadn’t phrased it quite that way. It sounded as if he considered the baby to be a problem to be removed. Eradicated. Deleted like an incorrect digit in a code.
Her eyes took on a determined spark, her normally plump mouth now a tight line. ‘I’m keeping it, so please don’t try and convince me otherwise, because I don’t need your help. I’m perfectly able to do this on my own. I just thought you should know, that’s all.’
‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t suggesting you should get rid of it,’ Loukas said.
She angled him a look that reminded him of a detective nailing a suspect. ‘Weren’t you?’
He released a jagged breath. ‘I can’t deny I’m a little shocked by the news. More than shocked. If I’m not acting with the sensitivity and enthusiasm of a normal father-to-be, then you’ll have to forgive me. I never planned to be a father.’
Emily clambered to her feet, brushing off his offer of assistance. ‘Then why haven’t you had a vasectomy? Then you could rule a line under the subject permanently.’
He’d thought of it. Several times. He hadn’t avoided it out of cowardice, or squeamishness, or out-dated notions on masculinity. He didn’t know what it was but something had made him shy away from the decision to render himself infertile. ‘I haven’t got around to it yet.’
‘Maybe you should before someone else ends up pregnant.’
Loukas was ashamed he hadn’t yet thought of what this was like for her. Sure, she’d said she wanted marriage and kids, but he’d got the impression she wanted them in that order. Marriage first. Kids later. Having a child was a huge responsibility for a woman under any circumstances—a life-changing responsibility. ‘Emily...are you okay with this? With being pregnant?’
Her eyes fell away from his as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. ‘I wasn’t at first. I was in denial until I did the seventh test. I didn’t want to be like my mother. Pregnant outside of marriage to a guy she had a one-night stand with. It was like a nightmare.’
‘And now?’
Her good hand crept to her abdomen, resting on it as though she were protecting a baby bird. ‘It’s not the baby’s fault it wasn’t planned. I’ll cope. Somehow.’
‘I’ll support you in any way I can. You know that, surely? You and the baby will want for nothing.’
‘I’m not after your money, Loukas.’ Her eyes came back to his. ‘I just wanted our baby to know its father. I’ve never met mine. I don’t even know who he is and he has no idea I even exist. Even my mother isn’t sure who he is.’
Loukas could hear the regret in her voice. He wasn’t close to his own father but at least he knew who he was and he shared his surname. Which brought him up against another huge stumbling block. Marriage. The only way his child could legally have his name would be for him to marry Emily. He wasn’t against marriage per se. It was an institution he believed in—for other people. People unlike him who didn’t have the sort of baggage he was lugging around. Baggage that still gave him sweat-slicked nightmares. Baggage he couldn’t get rid of because his half-sister Ariana lived with the consequences of what he’d done every single day of her life.
A sharp-clawed fist clutched at his gut.
Marriage?
To a girl he had only met a month ago? A girl who was now carrying his child? A girl he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind because she was sweet, clumsy and shy.
Could he do it? Could he sacrifice his freedom for the sake of a child he had never planned to have?
He had a responsibility towards his child. He wasn’t the sort of man to shirk responsibility. That was what his father was like, but not him. He faced up to problems. Assessed them. Dealt with them. Conquered them.
He could provide money without marriage, plenty of money, although having contact with the child would be tricky if he wasn’t living under the same roof. He wanted to be involved but had no idea how to go about it without marrying Emily. He had seen too many fathers, including his own, who provided everything money could buy but gave nothing of themselves. He didn’t want to be that sort of father, but he didn’t know how to conduct a relationship—any relationship—except at arm’s length.
‘We should marry as soon as possible.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Emily said. ‘No one has to get married because of pregnancy these days. Even couples in love don’t always get married when they have a child together.’
‘I want to be a part of my child’s life,’ Loukas said. ‘I want him or her to have my name.’
‘They can still have your name. But I’d only like you to be involved if that’s what you want. A child can tell if its parent wants to be around them or not.’
Loukas wondered about the dynamic between Emily and her mother. There seemed a subtext to her words that hinted at some tension. ‘I’ll do whatever I can to support you, Emily. You can trust me on that.’
Her gaze met his. ‘Will you publically acknowledge the baby as yours when it’s born? Or would you prefer me to keep it a secret to protect your privacy?’
Loukas frowned. There was no way he was going to disown his own flesh and blood. Not like his father, who had insisted on a paternity test and then, when it had come out positive, still insisted the poor woman get rid of his baby. ‘Of course I’ll acknowledge it. This is my mistake, not the child’s. I accept full responsibility for it.’
‘Then please don’t insult me by asking me to marry you,’ she said with a look hard enough to crack a nut.
Loukas wondered what had happened to the girl who couldn’t wait to get married and have babies. Four kids and an Irish Retriever, if his memory served him correctly. Why then wasn’t she grasping at this chance to land herself a rich husband? Though he hadn’t taken her for a gold-digger. That was what had most appealed to him about her the day of the wedding. She had a guileless innocence about her. She reminded him of a friendly puppy who wanted to be loved by everyone.
But what was insulting about his proposal of marriage? He could think of hundreds, possibly thousands, of women who would jump at the chance of a proposal from him. The more he thought about it, the more he felt that marriage was the best option all round. It would give him the best chance of supporting her and the baby. It wasn’t as if it would have any of the toxic elements of his parents’ marriage. Emily and he were not in love with each other, so the marriage could be drawn up as a parenting contract. A formalised parenting contract that gave them the benefits of marriage without the emotional baggage of a normal relationship.
He would broach the topic again once she was feeling a little better, but this time he would lay out what was going to happen: a convenient mid-term marriage to parent their child. Perfect solution. ‘Do you need anything now? Some money to buy baby stuff or—’
‘No, I haven’t needed to buy anything yet...’ The colour drained out of her face again and she wobbled on her feet as if the floor was uneven. She put a hand to her forehead. ‘I—I think I might have to give dinner a miss. I’m going to lie down for a bit...’
Loukas lunged forward and caught her before she hit the floor. Emily folded like a rag doll in his arms, her chalk-white face lolling to rest against the wall of his chest. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Feeling a bit faint...’
He reached for his phone with his free hand, the other keeping her close. ‘I’m going to call an ambulance.’
She pushed back against him, her eyes troubled. ‘No, please don’t do that. I’ll be fine in a minute or two.’
What about in half an hour? Later that night? The following morning? Who was going to take care of her, to watch over her, to make sure she didn’t faint and hurt herself? He couldn’t leave her like this. What if she had a fall? She could end up with a brain injury or worse. She was his responsibility now. The knowledge cemented his decision to marry her. How else could he keep a close eye on her if he lived in another country, or even a few streets away? No. This was the only way forward. ‘Do you want to lie down? Here, I’ll carry you.’
He scooped her up and carried her to her bedroom. It looked like someone had ransacked the room or got dressed for a night out in the middle of a hurricane. The wardrobe was open and a variety of clothes strewn about, some on the end of the bed, others draped over a chair and more on the floor. The dressing table was scattered with make-up detritus: brushes, pots, hair products and a hair straightener. He laid her slight figure on the bed.
She lay back, folded her bandaged hand over her forehead and closed her eyes. ‘I’m so sorry about this.’
Loukas took her good hand and stroked her slender nail-bitten fingers. ‘Don’t be silly. It’s not your fault.’
It’s mine.
CHAPTER THREE (#u030d4e62-3430-5e1a-93da-9d0b1dcc7f04)
IN THE END Loukas decided against calling an ambulance. But, as soon as Emily’s dizziness passed, he insisted on taking her to hospital. Hospitals were not his favourite places, with their palpable sense of urgency. The lights, the sounds, the smells, and the nerve-jangling scream of sirens as the ambulances came rocketing into the receiving bay, made his heart threaten to beat its way out of his ribcage. It brought back the memory of the afternoon when his sister had been rushed to hospital, clinging to life.
But he wanted Emily checked out.
She, however, was not so keen on the idea.
She stood with her arms folded and her heels dug into the carpet beside her bed as if someone had glued her to the floor. ‘But I don’t need to go to hospital.’
‘You fainted twice in the space of half an hour,’ Loukas said. ‘I’m not leaving you on your own until I get you checked out. What if you fainted in the middle of the night and hit your head and got a brain injury?’
She pouted like a small, obstinate child. ‘You’re being ridiculous. First suggesting marriage and now a trip to the emergency department. The staff will think I’m crazy. Pregnancy isn’t a disease, you know.’
‘I want that finger checked out,’ he said, trying another tack. ‘It needs to be looked at under ultrasound in case there are any fragments in there. If you got blood poisoning it would be disastrous for the baby.’
Her face suddenly fell. ‘Oh...’
He held out his hand and she silently slipped hers into it. He closed his fingers around her hand, privately marvelling at how small it was compared to his. But everything about her was tiny. He felt like a giant next to her. She barely made it up to his shoulder in heels and he could just about span her waist with his hands. Not that he would be able to do it once her pregnancy started to show. He still couldn’t get his head around the fact she was pregnant. Inside her womb his DNA was getting it on with hers and making a baby.
His baby.
The thought of bringing a child into the world that he would be totally responsible for made his head pound with dread. What if he screwed up? It wasn’t easy being a parent even when you planned to be one. He had no idea how to be a father. He was hopeless at familial relationships. He kept people at a distance. Even the people who mattered to him he kept at arm’s length.
That was why casual relationships worked so well for him. There were no emotional expectations. No closeness. No bonding. No one got hurt. What if he hurt his child? Not physically, but emotionally? Didn’t kids need close emotional bonds with their parents to thrive and reach their full potential? He had been close to his mother until his father got sole custody of him in a bitter divorce, only to dump him in an English boarding school when he got tired of being a single parent. After years of living so far away from his mother, Loukas hadn’t been able to rebuild the relationship to the way it had been before. He knew it hadn’t been his mother’s fault. She had done everything in her power to make him feel loved and wanted.
It was he who was the problem.
He’d never wanted to be that vulnerable again. To need someone so much, only to have them ripped away from you. He had taught himself not to need. These days the only needs he had were physical, and he dealt with them efficiently and somewhat perfunctorily, which was probably why the sex with Emily had stood out in a long list of impersonal hook-ups. Stood out so much he could still feel it in his body, the erotic echo of it moving through his flesh like aftershocks if he so much as touched her.
But, while marrying her would solve one problem, he was too well aware it could stir up others. He would offer commitment but not love. The concept of loving someone made all those childhood demons come back to haunt and taunt him: you love them, you lose them. You love them, you hurt them. He would be committed for as long as their marriage lasted but he would not—could not—promise anything else.
Loukas tucked Emily into his car and made sure she was comfortable before he took his place behind the steering wheel. ‘I haven’t finished with the topic of marriage,’ he said, glancing at her as he turned over the engine. ‘It’s the best option going forward.’
She flicked him an irritated glance. ‘You know what? I’m going to ignore that. I did not hear you say the M word.’
Loukas had never felt more serious about something. It was the perfect solution and he wasn’t going to back away from it. ‘We’ll make a formal announcement after we get you checked out.’
‘You can’t force people to marry you, Loukas. You just can’t do that.’
Don’t be so sure about that.
* * *
Emily was embarrassed about turning up at Accident and Emergency when there was essentially nothing wrong with her. The waiting room was full of sick and injured people much worse off than her, but Loukas had insisted, and had all but bundled her into his top-of-the-range hire car, casting her worried glances all the way to hospital as if she was going to expire right there in front of him. Not only had he insisted on taking her to hospital, but he’d also returned to the subject of marriage with a steely determination that was a little terrifying, to say the least. Surely he wasn’t serious? She hadn’t had the energy to argue with him back in the car. The nausea and dizziness had made it impossible for her to string two lucid thoughts together, and the thought of marrying Loukas Kyprianos was a thought a long way from being lucid.
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