With a rough imprecation, Alekos looked away, trying to apply logic to a situation that required none.
A baby. All his life he’d avoided this exact situation.
And now.
Why had he been so careless?
But he knew the answer to that. One look at Kelly had driven rational thought from his head. Every time he went near her, he behaved in a way that was totally at odds with his ruthlessly structured life.
Yet it wouldn’t have been possible to find a less suitable woman if he’d tried.
She wanted four children.
Alekos broke out into a sweat. Just get your head round one, he told himself. That would be a start.
One baby. One baby depending on him. One baby whose entire future happiness was in his hands.
Alekos lifted his fist to his forehead, his knuckles white. Until this moment he’d never known what it was like to be truly afraid. But right now, right at this moment, he knew fear.
Fear that he’d let the child down.
Fear that he’d let Kelly down.
If he got this wrong, if he blew this, a child would suffer. And he knew only too well how that felt.
‘Theé mou, what are you doing on your feet? You should be lying down, resting.’ His hoarse voice came from the doorway and Kelly quickly scrubbed away her tears, feeling a rush of pure relief that he was still in one piece.
He hadn’t gone and done something stupid like driving off a cliff. He was still alive; she didn’t have his death on her conscience. Now she could be angry without worrying.
She pulled her nose out of the suitcase she was packing and turned.
Alekos was standing in the doorway to the bedroom, looking like someone who had just dragged himself from the wreckage of a car accident.
Alarmed, she scanned him for signs of injury. Maybe he had driven his car off a cliff.
She was the one who had bumped her head, but he was obviously in a far worse state. The moment she’d delivered the news that she was pregnant, he’d sprang from the bed like a competitor in an Olympic sprint, and he’d been out of the starting gates before anyone had said ‘go’.
But now he was back. And in a complete state, if his appearance was anything to go by.
His usually sl
eek hair was ruffled and his shirt was crumpled, but the resulting effect was one of such potent masculinity that the frantic crashing of her heart threatened to fracture her ribs.
If anything, Alekos was even more spectacularly attractive when he was feeling vulnerable than when he was strong and in control.
Kelly fought back an impulse to comfort him, reminding herself that this situation was already more than complicated.
This whole thing would have been easier if he hadn’t come back.
She hated the way he made her feel. This was a man who had walked out on their wedding day. A man who had just told her he didn’t want children.
So why did she just want to hug him?
‘I wasn’t expecting you back so soon. Normally it takes you four years to reappear after one of your avoidance sessions.’ Not trusting herself not to cry again, Kelly turned her back on him and stuffed the final items of clothing into her suitcase. It didn’t seem to matter what he said or what he did, he was still the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen, and just being in the same room as him was enough to send her pulse into overdrive. ‘Jannis said you’d taken the Ferrari.’ She snapped her mouth shut, remembering too late that she’d been determined not to let him know she’d been worried enough to check on him. Recalling the desperation in her tone when she’d asked Jannis if there were any steep cliffs close by, she blushed. ‘What are you doing back here?’
‘I live here.’ He sounded impossibly Greek. He kicked the door shut with his foot and strode across the bedroom towards her. ‘About the baby…’
‘My baby, not the baby.’ Her heart tumbled and Kelly tried to ram a shoe into her case. ‘Why won’t this stuff fit?’