One Night...Nine-Month Scandal

‘Not even once.’ His hot, brooding gaze dropped to her mouth. ‘But I seem to remember that I embarrassed you most of the time.’

Kelly turned scarlet. ‘Only when we did it in broad daylight. Why do they call it that—why broad daylight? Why not narrow daylight?’ Chattering nervously, she broke off as he ran his hand over his face and shook his head in exasperation.

‘I’m trying to tell you something, and it isn’t easy.’

‘Well, please just get on with it! It’s honestly not good for you to have this much stress. It furs up your arteries.’ Her palms were sweating and her stomach was churning. It was like waiting for an exam result, she thought anxiously, her mind still jumping ahead. Perhaps it was the age thing that had caused him to walk away. Maybe he had been worried that she was too young to know her own mind. Or maybe he’d thought their relationship was too much of a whirlwind. If it had been the age thing, that was now fixed, wasn’t it? She was older. The kids in her class thought she was positively ancient. She was probably less inhibited. Thinking of their steamy encounter on her kitchen table didn’t do anything to alleviate the heat in her cheeks. She was definitely less inhibited.

All she had to do was assure him that she’d matured, that she knew her own mind. He’d apologise. She’d be hurt, but forgiving. Her mind sprinted ahead again, weaving happy endings from the threads of disaster.

Alekos breathed in deeply. ‘The morning of the wedding I read an interview you’d given to a celebrity magazine. You’d spilled your guts about what you wanted. It was all there on the page.’

Still enjoying a fantasy about their future, Kelly tried to remember exactly what she’d said in that particular interview. ‘The press were all over me. Apparently the fact that you’d never shown any interest in marrying anyone before suddenly made me interesting.’

He was going to be really pleased about the baby, she thought dreamily.

They’d live happily ever after. She’d ask him to buy a house in Little Molting; she could still teach her class in September, and once the baby was born they’d come back to Corfu and raise the child here, among the olive groves.

She smiled at Alekos, but he didn’t smile back.

Instead his features were hard, like an exquisitely carved Greek statue. ‘You said that all you’d ever wanted was a family. You said you wanted four children.’

‘That’s right.’ Kelly wondered whether this would be a good moment to tell him that they already had one on the way. ‘At least four.’

Muttering something in Greek, Alekos lifted his hand to the back of his neck, visibly struggling with what he had to say next. ‘When I saw that article I realised that we had plunged into this relationship with no real thought to the future. It was all about the present. We hadn’t discussed what either of us really wanted. I didn’t know what you wanted until I read it in that magazine.’ His voice was raw. ‘It was only when I saw your interview that I realised we didn’t want the same thing.’

‘Oh?’ Still bathing in her own little bubble-bath of happiness, Kelly gave an understanding smile. ‘Honestly, I just wish you’d said something right away. I sort of forgot you were Greek. You always have big families, don’t you? Four kids probably seems like nothing to you. We can have more. I’m not worried. I teach thirty back home! How many did you have in mind?’

Alekos closed his eyes briefly and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. ‘Kelly…’

‘It doesn’t worry me. I love kids. And I don’t even expect you to do the nappies, as long as you help with all the other stuff.’

‘Kelly.’ He closed his hands over her shoulders, gripping tightly as he forced her to listen to him. ‘I don’t want a big family.’ He waited a moment, apparently allowing time for those momentous words to penetrate her thin veneer of happiness. ‘I don’t want a family at all.’

Somehow, Kelly managed to make her mouth move. ‘But—’

‘I’m trying to tell you that I don’t want children. I never did.’

Chapter Five

‘THEÉ MOU, do something!’ His tone dark and dangerous, Alekos glared at the local doctor. The guy had to be almost seventy and appeared to have two speeds—slow and stop. Fingering the phone in his pocket, Alekos wondered how long it would take to fly a top physician in from Athens. ‘She banged her head really hard!’

‘Was she knocked unconscious?’

Vibrating with impatience, Alekos thought back to the hideous moment when Kelly’s head had made contact with the glossy tiles. ‘No, because she called me a bleep several times.’

‘A bleep?’

‘Never mind. But she wasn’t knocked out. I carried her up to the bedroom and she’s been lying here unconscious ever since.’

Glancing at him thoughtfully, the doctor touched the bruise on Kelly’s forehead. ‘Why did she fall?’

Alekos felt the tension trickle down his spine. This had to be the most uncomfortable conversation he’d had in his life. ‘She slipped on the tiles when she was running.’

‘And why was she running?’

Two hot spots of colour touched his cheeks and guilt squeezed tight. ‘Something had upset her.’ Alekos ground his teeth, wondering why he was explaining himself to a doctor so ancient he had undoubtedly known Hippocrates personally. ‘I upset her.’

Apparently unsurprised by that confession, the doctor reached into his bag and removed some pills. ‘Nothing much changes there, then. I was called to see Kelly on the day of her wedding: the wedding that never happened.’