“I wasn’t sleeping.”
“While you were resting, then,” he said, with another of those heart-stopping little smiles. “Here. Let me—”
He leaned closer. All she had to do was turn her face a fraction of an inch and her mouth would find his.
Ivy jerked back. “Don’t you ever get tired of giving orders?”
“Don’t you ever get tired of ignoring good advice?” He shifted his weight. The little distance she’d put between them disappeared. “We have hours left before we land.”
“So?”
“So, you’re exhausted.”
“And you know this, how? You read cards? Palms? Crystal balls?”
His smile tilted. “Unless I’m mistaken, you slept as little as I did last night.”
She wanted to ask him why he hadn’t slept. Was it because he was sorry he’d demanded she go with him? Or was it—was it because he’d lain in the dark, imagining what it would be like if they had made love? If, together, they’d made the baby growing inside her?
Did what she’d just thought show on her face? Was that why his eyes had suddenly darkened?
“And,” he said, very softly, “you’re pregnant.”
Amazing. They had discussed her pregnancy in excruciating—if not entirely accurate—detail. Still, the way he said the word now, his husky whisper intimate and sexy, made her heartbeat stumble.
“I see. Now you’re an expert on pregnant women.” She spoke quickly, saying the first thing that came into her head in a desperate effort to defuse the situation, and knew in an instant she’d made a mistake.
A mask seemed to drop over his face.
“What little I know about pregnancy,” he said, drawing away from her, “comes courtesy of Kay. Your sister used endless ploys to convince me she was carrying my child.”
“Kay wasn’t my real sister,” Ivy said, and wondered why it suddenly seemed important he understand that.
“Yes. You said you were stepsisters. The same last name…Then, your mother married her father and he adopted you?”
Why had she brought this up? “Yes.”
“How old were you?”
“It’s not important.”
She turned away from him but he cupped her jaw, his touch firm but light.
“I have the right to know these things.”
She supposed he did. And he could learn them easily enough. Anything more than that, she had no intention of sharing.
“I was ten. Kay was fourteen.”
“She told me her father died when she was sixteen. Another lie?”
“No.” Ivy laced her hands in her lap. “He died two years after my mother married him. They both died, he and my mother. It was a freak accident, a helicopter crash in Hawaii. They were on vacation, on a tour.”
“I am sorry, glyka mou. That must have been hard for you.”
She nodded.
“So, who took care of you then? What happened?”