For Pleasure...Or Marriage?

Her calm precision seemed to infuriate him. She saw his eyes darken. With absolute self-control she kept her emotions tightly tied down. Losing it would only upset her—and her baby.

‘This isn’t about you, Vanessa! This is about my child! And, God help me, I won’t have any child of mine born a bas—’

Her eyes flashed. ‘Don’t even say that word! You say it, Markos, and I’ll hit you! There is absolutely no problem these days in being an unmarried mother, or in a child being illegitimate. But, my God, there’d be a hell of a lot of problems for a child with you for a father!’

‘What do you mean by that?’ he ground out. ‘Any child of mine would have everything it wanted!’

Her eyes flashed with contempt.

It stung him. Stung him through the layers of anger and the rest of the vicious, seething cocktail of emotions inside him.

‘You mean money. That’s all you can think about, isn’t it, Markos? You and your precious money! Warning me off scheming to get you to marry me! Thinking I’d swan off to another rich man at the drop of a hat! Calling me your mistress like I was some kind of courtesan! Gritting your teeth while you arrogantly inform me that now I’m carrying your child you’ll do me the supreme honour of marrying me and legitimising my baby—and making it crystal-clear that the very last thing you want to do is either! Well, thanks, but no thanks. I don’t need that, and neither does my child. We’ll do a lot better without you. So go, Markos. You’re upsetting me, and I won’t have that—not any more. Just go.’

His expression was unreadable, and she didn’t waste any time trying to read it. Weariness and depression weighed down on her.

‘I don’t need you, Markos, and I don’t want you. Neither does my baby. I never intended you to know about it. I don’t know how you found out, but I wish you hadn’t.’

Each word that fell from her was as heavy as lead. Yet when they were gone from her she felt no lightness. None at all.

‘Then you shouldn’t have modelled maternity wear, should you?’ he said tightly.

She looked at him, seeing him but not seeing him. Refusing to let herself see him. Refusing to let her eyes drink him in the way they used to…

She must not let herself do that. That Vanessa was gone for ever.

‘Is that how you tracked me down? I wouldn’t have thought you’d have seen the photos. Not exactly your usual reading material, maternity magazines.’

‘It was in an in-flight magazine. And—’ His gaze hardened. ‘Can you imagine how I felt when I saw those photos? Or don’t you care?’

‘Why should I?’ she returned, in that same dispassionate, tight voice. ‘What possible reason would I have for thinking you’d take the slightest bit of notice—not after what you’d made so crystal-clear to me that last day?’

‘I said those things to stop you getting pregnant! God, Vanessa, is that what this is about? Getting your own back on me because I said I would never marry you?’ He inhaled sharply. ‘Look, I can see why you were sore at me for saying that when that damn Dimistris woman fed you her garbage about me marrying Apollonia, but now you know that isn’t true—was never true, just some ludicrous fantasy dreamed up by her and my father! So why are you still so angry?’ He gazed down at her, brow furrowing. ‘What’s happened to you, Vanessa? I thought you’d be glad to marry me!’

The weight inside her was crushing her.

‘Glad to marry you?’ she echoed. Her lips pressed together. ‘Don’t you mean grateful? Because that’s what a mistress should be when her protector offers marriage, respectability, his family name, lifelong financial security. She should be grateful. In fact—’ there was an edge to her voice now, like the sharp facet of a jewel, diamond bright and very, very hard ‘—she should be grateful just to be your mistress, let alone anything more. And you know what, Markos? I was grateful. I couldn’t believe you’d chosen me, me, out of all the beautiful women you could have picked! But you’d chosen me—and I was overjoyed, overwhelmed, overcome. Grateful,’ she repeated, and it was as if the weight of the word might break her.

She looked at him, and her amber eyes were bright and hard.

‘So grateful, Markos, that I did everything you wanted—rejoiced in the immense privilege of being the woman you wanted. And I never even imagined that all I was to you was a mistress!’

The jaggedness in her throat was scraping at her.

‘Thee mou, you’re obsessed by that word!’

Markos’s face was drawn, as if his skin was too tight for the bones beneath, but as he spoke his tone was angry.

Fire flashed in Vanessa’s eyes.

‘No, you’re obsessed by it! You hung that horrible label around my neck and strangled me with it! No! Don’t even try and excuse it! Or yourself!’ Anger was coursing through her now, released like a long-dammed tide. She should have let it out long ago, the moment he had first used the word. But she had been too much of a coward—too besotted, too devoted and adoring. She hadn’t wanted to think Markos meant it, and then she hadn’t wanted to face up to its impact on what she’d thought was between them—which had been so very different from what he had thought there was.

‘To you I was just your mistress! A pampered bed-warmer that you took around so I’d be handy for whenever you wanted me!’

‘That’s not true!’ he retorted hotly. ‘I treated you with consideration, respect—’

‘So much so you warned me off scheming to get you to marry me! You thought I might get pregnant to trap you! Well, I never asked you to marry me. I never asked for anything. Not the clothes or the jewels. I just wanted you, Markos. Only you.’ There was a catch in her voice beneath the bitterness. ‘Just to be with you.’

His cheekbones whitened, but she gave him no time to speak.