The Stephanides Pregnancy

Something in his tone made her tense. 'Are you teasing me again?'

'Yes… forgive my cruel sense of humor.' Lounging back into his comer of the limousine, Cristos tugged her back against him, encouraging her into a more relaxed and comfortable position. Kicking off her shoes, she curled up against him with a grateful sigh and that was the last thing she remembered for a long time.

When she opened her eyes again, she was in a beautiful bedroom furnished with timeless antiques and lit with gracious lamps. According to her watch, it was almost eleven at night and Betsy groaned in dismay. It certainly promised to be a wedding night to remember. Cristos had to be really fed up with her for sleeping for so long! Catching a glimpse of her tousled and crumpled reflection in the dresser mirror, she winced in even greater consternation. Her cases were sitting just inside the door.

Forty minutes later, breathless from the speed with which she had showered, reapplied a little make-up and donned her slinky midnight-blue silk nightdress, Betsy descended the sweeping staircase.

She found Cristos in the library. Jacket and tie discarded, white silk shirt open at his strong brown throat, he was staring down into the fire, a brandy goblet curled in one hand.

Her attention welded to his classic bronze profile, she hovered on the threshold. 'Cristo… '

He straightened, brooding dark golden eyes narrowing. 'What are you doing out of bed?'

It was not quite the welcome Betsy had been hoping for. 'It's our wedding night…'

'Theos mou…is that an invitation?' Cristos drawled in apparent wonderment, his intent gaze dropping from her softly parted lips down to the pouting thrust of breasts defined by the silky material of her nightdress.

'I suppose it is… ' Betsy dragged in a quick shallow breath to steady herself. She felt very self-conscious. Her body was already reacting with enthusiastic awareness to his appraisal. The rosy crests of her nipples stirred behind the lace bodice, the swollen tips tender. Her heart was thumping an upscale beat. The atmosphere had grown thick and heavy.

'A duty screw…?' Cristos lifted an ebony brow, his lean, darkly handsome features stamped with derision.

• 'Is that what you're offering me?'

Her mouth fell open. 'A… what kind of a thing is t that to say to me?'

'That if you're only offering me your body because I married you today, I can get by without it.' Cristos drained his brandy and set down the empty glass with a decisive snap. 'I'm not that desperate.'

Betsy stared back at him in shaken disbelief. 'Are you drunk? Is that why you're speaking to me like this?'

'I saw you weeping over Rory at our wedding. All that chummy hugging and pawing was a rather nauseating turn-off.'

Her troubled brow began to clear as she realized that he had misinterpreted what he had seen. 'I wasn't exactly weeping over him-'

Hard dark eyes rested on her. 'You were-'

'But not in the way you seem to mean. At the minute, a sad story could make me cry buckets. If my emotions are stirred at all, my eyes start flooding with tears. It's embarrassing but according to the doctor it's just my hormones.' While noting that Cristos was looking deeply unimpressed, Betsy was eager to explain. 'Rory was telling me that he's about to ask Gemma to marry him-'

Cristos vented a roughened laugh. 'Which is why the pair of you were tucked into a hidden dark corner in each other's arms, was it? Next you'll be telling me you were crying with happiness!'

'Why didn't you tackle me about this earlier?' Betsy prompted worriedly. 'Why did you pretend everything was OK?'

. 'Let me see…' Cristos murmured flatly. 'How many reasons would you like? Five hundred wedding guests? The fact that you're carrying my baby and shouldn't be subjected to stressful scenes? Or the simple reality that you told me you loved Rory on Mos? It's not very fair to castigate you for it now, is it?'

While he'd spoken, Betsy's color had fluctuated, and by the time he made that last statement she was embarrassed enough to instinctively turn away. What an idiot she had been ever to claim that she loved

Rory! Words employed to conserve her pride had come back to haunt her. She saw that she had no choice but to explain herself and with as much frankness as possible.

'That stuff about me loving Rory,' Betsy confided, cheeks hot, green eyes only contriving to meet his for an instant. 'It was a total fabrication. I just didn't want you getting the idea that I might be getting too keen on you, so I told what I saw as a harmless fib at the time.'

'A total fabrication…' Cristos repeated rather thickly, brilliant dark-as-midnight eyes locked to her guilty face.

'Yes… maybe it sounds a bit strange to you but you're a guy… at the time it seemed a good idea to lie,' Betsy completed awkwardly.

'I don't believe you,' Cristos asserted without the smallest hesitation.

Betsy winced, her smooth brow furrowing. She was very aware that she was not telling him the whole truth. On the other hand, she was highly reluctant to confide that at any stage of her relationship with Cristos she had genuinely believed that she was still in love with Rory. 'All right…I'll tell you the truth-' 'Wasn't that what I got a minute ago?' Cristos asked with dangerous quietness.

'It was a harmless, slightly doctored version,' Betsy muttered, horribly aware that, for someone stuck in a literal hot seat, she was not doing very well. 'The truth is that I remained very fond of Rory for quite a while after he and I broke up because I didn't get close to anyone else.' _.•.

The silence stretched.

'Is that it?' Cristos queried.

Betsy nodded jerkily, studying him with desperate intensity in an effort to read his thoughts. Right now the last thing their marriage required was his conviction that she was madly in love with another man.

'I thought there might be a version three in the pipeline…' Infuriatingly, Cristos elevated a questioning brow. 'No?'

Feeling like a child caught out in a shameful act,

Betsy compressed her lips. 'No.'

'So why did you come looking for me?' Her face flamed.

'I'm only teasing…' But there was no lightening flare of gold in his stunning gaze, no amused curve to the sculpted line of his beautifully shaped mouth. He could not even summon up a smile at the sure knowledge that he was married to a woman who lied so badly she embarrassed him.

'You do believe me, don't you? About Rory, I mean,' Betsy checked anxiously. 'It's so important that you do… I really want our marriage to work.' His incisive gaze vei1ed~ 'I believe you.'

Betsy tensed when it finally dawned on her that she was practically begging him to come upstairs and make love to her! Mortified by that conviction, she walked to the door, a tall, slender figure with a mane of copper hair that was a vibrant splash of color against her pale skin and the dark blue of her nightdress. 'Goodnight, then,' she told him rather stiffly.

On the way up the stairs, she was thinking fast and furiously. This was the same guy who had hardly been able to keep his hands off her on the island. Why was he so uninterested? Did pregnancy m

ake her seem less attractive to him? She might not have the big tummy yet but was he already looking at her and mentally endowing her with an imaginary one? Or was it possible that he mistakenly believed that sexual intimacy might endanger her pregnancy? Who knew what strange old-fashioned ideas he might be harboring?

Shedding her nightdress, because there was not the smallest sign that Cristos had ever had any intention of even sharing the same room as her, she got into bed. She was reaching out to switch off the lights when her bridegroom entered. Cristos sent her a winging golden glance, kicked the door shut with an air of purpose and began to undress. Her hand fell back needless from the light.

'r need a shower… give me five minutes, pethi mou.'.

He stripped where he stood. Out of the comer of her· vision, she was maddeningly conscious of him. She listened to the shower running and wondered what had-kept him from her earlier. Would she ever understand Cristos Stephanides? Would she ever learn to penetrate that tough facade. that could keep her as much in.the dark as a stone wall?

When Cristos reentered to the bedroom, crystalline drops of water were still shimmering on the curling dark hair that accentuated his powerful pectoral muscular 'You stayed awake for me…' he murmured lazily.

And that fast the atmosphere switched to electrifying. Her tummy tensed and flipped. Meeting his shimmering golden eyes, she was suddenly extraordinarily short of breath. 'I thought you weren't even going to sleep here,' she confided, relief making her chatter.

1Sleep is the last thing on my mind, yineka mou.' With. a rueful laugh that sent a sizzle of awareness travelling down her backbone, Cristos flicked back the sheet and lounged beside her.

His first kiss sent fire slivering through her tautness and made her melt from the outside in. Her hands coiled tight in on themselves. The silky touch of his tongue flicked the roof of her mouth. She gasped and he shifted against her, acquainting her with the bold potency of his arousal.

He let his lips travel hungrily down to the delicate skin of her throat and she rubbed against him with helpless encouragement, reacting to the tormenting pressure of his mouth in certain places. He toyed with her urgently sensitive nipples, suckled the straining pink buds until she was clutching at him and crying out helpless in the grip of her own excitement.