The Stephanides Pregnancy

'Any day of the week, I'd choose to be bored rather than humiliated!'

'How does having my baby inside you humiliate you?' Cristos enquired, pulling her up against him and without warning splaying a bold hand across her stomach, lean brown fingers striking warmth and intimacy through the fabric that separated him from her skin.

Betsy found herself backtracking. 'I didn't mean it precisely that way. But 1 think it's really embarrassing that people should know that 1 slept with you so soon after meeting you… they'll all think I'm a slut,' she pointed out in a stifled undertone.

Cristos flipped her round and gave her a wholly unrepentant grin that radiated his natural charisma.

That grin made her want to hit him but it also sent her heart racing in a dual response that was becoming all too familiar to her in his radius.

'I'll take out full-page ads in all the major newspapers announcing that you were a virgin when we first shared a bed,' Cristos suggested levelly. 'Would that make you feel better?'

Thrusting herself free of him, Betsy studied him aghast. 'You're not serious?'

Glittering dark eyes gazed steadily back at her. 'I'm rather proud of the fact 1 was your first lover… I'd need very little encouragement to go public with the news. If you truly feel so humiliated-'

Betsy was pink to the roots of her hair. 'I don't feel that humiliated… you don't tell people stuff like that!’ Cristos closed an assured hand over hers, flung back his darkly handsome head and laughed with rich enjoyment.

Betsy launched herself back up against him and looked at him with a combination of chagrin, relief and grudging respect. 'You were teasing me!' she gasped, mortified that he had succeeded in fooling her.

Cristos folded an arm back round her and suddenly she twisted round and pressed into him to wind her arms tight round his neck. The feel of his lean, muscular body and the wonderfully familiar scent of his skin made her weak with longing. 'Sorry, I've been acting the diva,' she muttered guiltily. 'You're right… nothing should be allowed to cloud our day.'

In response, hard fingers tipped up her face. He drove her soft lips apart in a sensually savage kiss that brought her body alive with almost painful enthusiast. 'I'm burning for you, pethi mou,' he growled with roughened urgency.

They had arrived at the hotel where the reception was to be held. The passenger door opened. Dolius' craggy face split into a smile at finding the bridal couple in each other's arms and then went poker-straight again.

Betsy had never met so many people in her entire life as she met at the wedding reception. Her head whirled with names and snatches of conversation. She was seated with Cristos before it dawned on her that she had yet to meet her bridegroom's closest relative, Patras Stephanides.

'Where's your grandfather?' Betsy asked in an urgent whisper. 'Didn't he want to sit at this table?'

'It may have passed your notice but my grandfather

is not among our guests,' Cristos said stonily.

Betsy flushed. 'He's not here… why? Is he ill?' 'He chose not to attend.'

'For goodness' sake, why didn't you tell me?' Betsy whispered back in dismay. 'What an awful thing to do to you when you're so close! I'm so sorry-'

'It was my grandfather's right to choose not to be here. I won't have him criticized for it.' Grim dark eyes reproved her. 'His decision does not lessen my respect for him in any way.'

Betsy had lost color. She tried not to feel hurt because she knew that she had touched a raw wound. Cristos was very attached to the older man. Naturally he was feeling the sting of his grandfather's decision to absent himself from so important a milestone in his grandson's life. At the same time Betsy could only feel as though she had been tried and found wanting. In opting out of their wedding, Patras Stephanides was expressing his uncompromising disapproval of the woman whom Cristos had decided to marry. Her heart sank because his grandfather's refusal to accept her was anything but a promising start to their marriage.

Later, after they had eaten and done a lot of socializing, which made any personal conversation impossible, Cristos drew her onto the dance floor. 'Stop brooding about Patras,' he instructed, demonstrating a dismaying ability to read her thoughts. 'He's as set in his ways as most men of his age and, in time, he'll come round.'

. 'Was he terribly fond of Petrina?' Betsy asked in a rush.

Cristos released his breath in a slow, measured hiss. 'It's not that simple. An engagement is a serious commitment in Greece. Having given my word that I would marry Petrina, I then asked to be released from it. Patras was devastated. The Rhodias family are out~ raged and Patras believes that I have dishonored him.

'And I bet he's blaming me for it.' Betsy sighed into his jacket, feeling more responsible than ever.

'There was no easy solution to our predicament,' Cristos murmured wryly, lean, strong face reflective. 'We have to be realistic. When you injure other people, there is always a price to pay.'

'But I don't want you to have to pay a price…' Betsy confided, disturbed that he had yet to make even the smallest reference to his own feelings regarding his broken engagement."

But then what on earth would be the point of Cristos confessing that he still cared about Petrina? It would change nothing and only make Betsy feel like an albatross round his neck. Having married her for the sake of their child, Cristos was the sort of guy who would make the best of their marriage. In fact he had already begun to act like a husband. He had tried to protect her from the hurtful intrusion of the press into their private lives. In a similar vein, he had not rushed to inform her that his grandfather was boycotting their wedding because he had known that that news would only upset her.

'I hope that a year from now you'll be able to look back and think that all this was worth it,' Betsy whispered earnestly.

'A year from now I'll be a father… I have no regrets now and I will have none then.' His beautifully shaped mouth quirked. 'Don't look for problems that aren't there.'

It was an excellent piece of advice but hard to follow. If he had loved her, she would have felt much stronger. It took two to make a baby, she thought unhappily. He had kept his promises to her because he was standing by her. For her sake, he had ended his engagement and as a result he was now estranged from his grandfather. He seemed to be the only one of them paying that price he had mentioned. After all, she loved Cristos and could hardly look on becoming his wife as being in any way a punishment.

Early evening, Cristos told her that they would soon have to leave. She went off to get changed in the hotel room set aside for that purpose and wondered where they were going on their honeymoon. Garbed in a funky pale blue tweed jacket teamed with a matching short skirt that was hemmed with a fringe, she was heading back towards the stairs when Rory accosted her.

'Can I have a word?' her former boyfriend asked earnestly.

'I've barely had a chance even to speak to you today.' Forced to move out of the path of a chambermaid and her trolley, Betsy backed round the comer and then shifted across into the more private seating area there.

'If you had taken the chance, Gemma would have thrown a fit.' Rory sighed. 'But I'm coming to the conclusion that that may be my fault. I haven't been fair to Gemma or you. The more she made it plain that she expected me to marry her, the more I dug my heels in. Now I'm going to make up for it…'

Betsy was hanging on his every word, a big smile building on her face..

'I've bought a ring,' he confided.

'Make sure you set the scene right… dinner out, Mum babysitting Sophie,' Betsy warned him chokily, her eyes overbright with happy tears. 'Gemma likes everything perfect. Don't just bung the ring at her and act like her acceptance is a foregone conclusion.'

'I've learned since I did that to you,' Rory confided with gentle irony.

She flung her arms round him and sniffed and, laughed almost simultaneously. 'Just promise me one thing…'

'What?' Smiling down at her, he closed his arms round her and gave her a hug.

'Tell her that

you care far more about her than you ever did about me,' she urged, wiping at her damp eyes with her fingers as she fell back from him again. 'I'd better get back downstairs… '

Rory only a step behind her, she walked round the comer and cannoned straight into Cristos. All three of them stopped dead. There was one of those horrid awkward silences.

Inclining his head with perfect civility to Rory, Cristos murmured silkily to his bride, 'Are you ready?'

Their departure was swift rather than lingering.

Within seconds of getting into the car, Betsy was smothering a yawn. It had been an incredibly exhausting day. 'I'm so tired,' she muttered apologetically.

'Then close your eyes and sleep… ' Cristos said it as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world. 'Where are we going?'

'We're spending the night at my country house.

Tomorrow, we'll fly to Greece.'

'It was a beautiful wedding,' she told him drowsily. 'Was it?'