Expectant Bride

'It was important to me,' Dio confided softly. 'Are you hungry?'

'Not really.'

'I can't remember when I last ate,' Dio muttered reflec¬tively.

'Not very sensible,' she told him.

Releasing her, Dio rolled over and reached for the internal phone by the bed to order some food. Then, reaching for her hand, he pulled her out of bed with him. Her arms wrapped round herself as if she was freezing cold, Ellie hovered in the bathroom, watching him switch on the power shower. All of a sudden she felt so horrendously shy. She was being thrown into the deep end of sexual intimacy.

Dio tugged her into the shower with him, either not notic¬ing or deliberately ignoring her discomfiture. 'You really are tiny,' he sighed.

She could feel him staring down at her. 'I'm five foot one inch,' she muttered—adding the inch.

'You looked so funny in that coat at the airport...like a little girl dressing up.'

Ellie couldn't think of anything witty to respond with.

'Why have you gone so quiet?' Dio demanded with sudden force.

‘I’m not wearing any clothes and I'm not used to holding conversations in a shower.'

A reluctant laugh of appreciation was dredged from Dio. He lifted her up into his arms like a doll, and hooked her arms round his shoulders. Holding her level with him, he stared into her eyes, his own dark and deep and curiously unguarded. 'Are you on the contraceptive pill?'

Ellie frowned and reddened, wondering why he was asking such a question when she knew that he himself had protected her. 'No...'

'I didn't think you would be. The condom broke,' Dio admitted with unflinching exactitude.

'No...' The warm colour drained from Ellie's complexion as the implications of that admission sank in. Cold fear snaked through her.

'If anything happens—which I think unlikely—we'll deal with it together.' Dio's breath fanned her parted lips and he slowly, gently kissed her again with incredible expertise.

Snatched in the nick of time from the pessimistic image of having her life ruined by an unplanned pregnancy, as her mother had, Ellie clung to his clearly more optimistic outlook and hurriedly pushed the matter out of her mind. Reality for her had evaporated well over an hour ago, and she was in no hurry for it to intrude again.

'I have plans for you,' Dio shared teasingly between drug¬ging kisses that made Ellie tremble. 'You're going to enjoy being with me.'

They picnicked on the bed. They ate deep-fried courgette, followed by lobster and a Greek salad. Ellie had never eaten lobster in her life, and just about died when she saw it on her plate. She kept on sipping her wine until Dio got around to his, and then copied what he did with it. Her own igno¬rance embarrassed her, reminded her of what vastly different worlds they inhabited, and that was not something she could bear to be reminded of.

"Thank you for what you said on the beach earlier,' Dio murmured levelly. 'It helped me to put the situation into per¬spective. If either I or my father had once suspected that he had so little time left we would have been instantly recon¬ciled. The biggest irony is that I was already working in that direction.'

'How?' she prompted.

"That conversation you overheard,' Dio reminded her wryly. 'That company I plan to buy out in a few hours' time. My father lost it a long time ago. The reacquisition was to have been a subtle olive branch.'

'Oh, Dio,' Ellie sighed in sympathy. 'So that's why it was so important to you.'

‘I’ll toast his memory instead. He was a strong, vital man who lived life to the full. He would not want me to remember him with sadness.'

'Explain to me the significance of what I overheard in that office,' Ellie invited, to drive away the vulnerable darkness in his eyes and distract him.

'Let's say we have company A and company B,' Dio re¬sponded. 'You buy company A stock, and start a rumour that you're interested in acquiring it. The stock price rises. You resell that stock at a major profit. Then, without warning, you pounce on company B, where the stock price has not risen, and you stage a company buy-out at a good price.'

Ellie shook her head. 'Pretty devious.'

Dio was anything but insulted by that assessment. 'I have that reputation in business. If word of my true intentions were to escape, the stock price of company B would rocket and I wouldn't buy.'

Innately tidy, Ellie couldn't relax until she had removed all the dishes from round the bed. When she returned to the bedroom, Dio had fallen asleep. Her heart, which felt as soft as melted caramel, lurched all over again at the sight of him. He looked exhausted, but rather more at peace than he had looked at the outset of the day when she had woken him up on board the jet. Just for once in her life she was going to go with the flow, she told herself. As a rule she was very, very cautious, preferring to see everything etched in clear black and white before she risked herself. But it was too late for that now...