Emmie swallowed hard on the pride threatening to choke her. The prospect of sleeping on a sofa for another night had little appeal and she couldn’t possibly inconvenience her friend by staying with her for much longer. Being homeless was frightening, Emmie acknowledged wretchedly. The security of a roof over her head would give her a much-needed breathing space, which she could use to decide what to do next. ‘OK, but I’m only agreeing because I don’t have any other option.’
Bastian pulled his phone out and spoke to someone at length in his own language. ‘The place will be fully stocked for your use by the time we arrive,’ he asserted. ‘Give me the address where you have been staying and I will arrange to have your belongings conveyed to the apartment for you.’
He made everything sound so easy. Although she could not help being impressed she also knew that nothing could have better illustrated the vast gulf between them—the extent of his wealth and power versus her poverty and lack of influence. Only that did not mean she had to be weak or meek, she reflected, tilting her chin. But sometimes accepting a helping hand when life was tough was the most sensible move.
* * *
Two hours later, Bastian gave Emmie a tour of the apartment he had offered her. It contained every luxury she could think of, from a stock of DVDs and a power shower to a fridge freezer stocked with every necessity. ‘I’ll be very comfortable here,’ Emmie remarked carefully. ‘But you have to promise to tell me when you need it for someone who works for you.’
Dark golden eyes accentuated by luxuriant black lashes focused on her intently and her heart hammered hard beneath her breastbone. ‘Right now, your needs are more important. Let’s face it, that’s my baby you’re carrying,’ he traded levelly. ‘Naturally you’re my first priority.’
The possessive note of that comment about the baby disconcerted her. Her soft pink lips parted. ‘Is that really how you feel? Do you like children?’
‘Never really thought about it. I don’t dislike them,’ Bastian declared pensively. ‘But the child you have, whether it’s a boy or a girl, will be my heir.’
‘Even though we’re not married?’
‘It will still be my child with my blood in its veins.’
There was something rather basic and territorial about that statement and Emmie was even more surprised. She recognised that he had not only adapted to the idea of becoming a father but had also warmed to the prospect.
‘To be blunt, I’ve never been in a hurry to get married,’ Bastian admitted drily. ‘Watching my father screw up matrimonially four times over soured me on the institution.’
‘I can understand that. So you think that having a child without having to tie yourself down to marriage might actually suit you better?’ Emmie queried, keen to understand his point of view.
‘Only time will answer that question. In the morning I’ll make enquiries and organise an obstetrician for you,’ Bastian continued. ‘You must have proper medical care.’
‘You can be very...bossy.’ Emmie selected the label with care, because in spite of the shock news she had given him he had been remarkably kind and considerate and she didn’t want to seem ungrateful.
A wicked grin that was the very essence of masculine charisma sliced across Bastian’s beautifully shaped and stubborn mouth. ‘You could say that being dominant comes naturally to me, glyka mou. Or even beware of Greeks bearing gifts,’ he teased.
‘Needs must when the devil rides,’ she quoted, her gaze compulsively welded to that grin, and she was as short of breath as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the atmosphere.
‘I’m not the devil. I only want to do what’s best for you,’ Bastian told her thickly, staring down at her with smouldering golden eyes.
Emmie felt her treacherous body react to his proximity and the husky, sexy note in his deep voice. Her nipples tingled, awareness washing through her in an exhilarating overload of sudden sexual energy. But this time, Emmie fought what she was feeling to the last ditch. She stepped hurriedly back from him, her cheeks burning as she deliberately turned her head away from him to avoid eye contact. She was hugely attracted to him but could not forget his renewed intimacy with Lilah on the night of his sister’s wedding. Although there had been no reference in the gossip columns to a reconciliation between Bastian and his former fiancée, Emmie didn’t want to risk getting more deeply involved with a man already entangled with another woman. Wasn’t it worrying enough that she was pregnant by him? The last thing she needed now was to let her overwrought emotions persuade her that she was in some way attached to Bastian Christou.
‘Emmie...’ he breathed thickly, stroking a fingertip very lightly over the back of her hand, making her quiver and long to twist round and hurl herself into his arms like a lovesick fool. But she wasn’t lovesick and she wasn’t a fool, she told herself fiercely.
‘Let’s not complicate things,’ Emmie pleaded in a charged undertone. She found him almost impossible to resist but there was such a thing as common sense and it was way past time she exerted it over her more self-destructive promptings. And going to bed with Bastian again would definitely come under the heading of destructive, she thought painfully.
Bastian closed a strong hand to her shoulder and turned her back to face him. Diamond-bright dark eyes locked to hers enquiringly. ‘We’re already complicated.’
‘Exactly, and you’re helping me out here, which I’m very grateful for,’ she said shakily. ‘But—’
His winged black brows drew together. ‘Just as you didn’t expect diamonds, I’m not expecting any kind of reward for helping out,’ he told her drily.
Discomfited at the way he had interpreted her statement, Emmie reddened. ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’
Bastian had her cornered in the hall, his lean, powerful body squarely planted between her and the front door. ‘Then what did you mean?’ he pressed.
Emmie jerked an awkward shoulder in the tense silence that had fallen. ‘I know you slept with Lilah the night of the wedding—’
Bastian lifted a frowning black brow, dark eyes widening in surprise. ‘No, I didn’t—’
‘She was in your room the next morning.’
‘But I wasn’t,’ Bastian riposted with hard emphasis. ‘I spent the night at my grandfather’s and we sat up playing poker until the early hours. I lost a packet to the wily old buzzard too. If Lilah was in my room she was there uninvited. Think about it, Emmie. Do you think I’m such a fool that I would hire you to keep her at bay and then get back into bed with her again?’
Emmie didn’t know what to think. ‘She even knew that I was leaving the island—’
‘Anyone in the house could have given her that information as I made the arrangements for your departure with my staff before I left the night before.’ Bastian frowned down at her and slowly shook his handsome head. ‘Obviously Lilah would have wanted you to think that I had been with her and she knew that I was spending the night at Theron’s. I can’t believe you fell for it.’
Mortified by that assessment, Emmie said nothing. The doorbell buzzed and Bastian yanked the door open. The suitcase she had taken to her friend’s house was carted over the threshold. ‘Is this all that you have?’ Bastian asked in surprise.
‘No, I left some stuff boxed up at my mother’s,’ Emmie admitted wryly.
‘I’ll sort that out for you as well,’ Bastian declared, carrying the case into the bedroom and then striding back to the front door with an air of relief. ‘I’ll phone you tomorrow...check that you’re all right.’