Expectant Bride

Dio smiled, slumbrous dark gold eyes scanning her with appreciation. 'I like this,' he said softly. 'I like it that we can l laugh even in bed. I've never had that before.'

Ellie woke up around dawn. Wandering sleepily back from the bathroom, she paused to study Dio where he lay on the bed, her eyes soft with tenderness and love. The white sheet was tangled only partially round one long, lean, powerful thigh. For a split second she just couldn't believe that he was her husband. And then she tossed her silvery fair head back and smiled. The fears she had harboured the night before now seemed remote and rather hysterical.

Right now, her body ached from the hunger of his. He wanted her, not just the baby. He wasn't turned off by her pregnancy either. And if he had been feeling trapped into marriage by his own sense of honour, he would surely have been a less keen lover. But Dio had spent the night demonstrating over and over again that he found her very desirable. He had restored her confidence in herself.

Pregnancy had shattered that confidence and hurt her pride. For a while, the status quo had changed, she acknowledged. She hadn't liked that. She had made some mistakes too. Her innate need for reassurance had made her feel dependent and weak, no longer his equal. Now those uneasy feelings were gone and she felt more secure. Sliding back into bed beside tern, she sighed. She felt incredibly happy.

A smiling young maid woke Ellie later that morning by open-•g the curtains. It was after eleven. Dio had gone and she couldn't credit that she had slept so late. Her breakfast ar¬rived on a wicker bed-tray complete with a bud vase. Gosh, is fun, she decided, resting back against her banked-up pillows feeling like a queen.

After she had eaten, one startled glance at her tousled appearance sent her rushing to the shower. When she had finished drying her hair and had applied a little light make-up, she found that her clothes had already been unpacked and tidied away in the capacious dressing room. She had bought several casual outfits before the wedding, and she put on a cool cotton shift dress in misty pastel shades of mauve.

As she descended the stairs, she heard Dio. Dio...his distinctive voice raised in ...anger! A short dark young man erupted like a bullet from a doorway at the back of the hall. Awarding Ellie a startled look, he flushed and paused to proffer a strained greeting in Greek before he hurried on past. Ellie frowned in surprise.

Dio was talking harshly on the phone in his own language. He was in an elegant room furnished as an office. His short-sleeved linen shirt and tailored chinos in pale natural colours were a superb frame for his black hair, bronzed skin and sleekly powerful physique. He looked so stunning that for a foolish moment Ellie just hovered on the threshold, watching him stride back and forth like a caged tiger, his every lithe, restive movement screaming ferocious tension.

Ellie's scrutiny finally roamed from the husband she adored to the crumpled tabloid newspaper spread out across the desk. An English Sunday newspaper, she noted, flown out already. Her curiosity was roused as she moved closer.

Slinging aside the phone, Dio swung round and belatedly noticed her. 'Cristos...what are you doing in here?' he thun¬dered in disconcertion.

But it was already too late. Ellie had got close enough to recognise first a photograph of their wedding and then the people in the other smaller photos. Both her parents! There was her father, Tony Maynard, clambering out of his Mer¬cedes, looking hunted and furious. It was the first time Ellie had seen him in over five years. She was paralysed to the spot, the colour draining from her shattered face.

Dio released his breath in a stark hiss. 'I don't think you should read that stuff. It's only going to upset you.'

Ellie stared down at the pages. There was a picture of the shabby street where she had lived as a child. The caption beneath ran,  'From poverty...to wealth beyond avarice. How? The billion-dollar baby!'

'Oh, no...' Ellie mumbled strickenly, her tummy lurching with nausea at the crude shock of such humiliation, in print for all the world to see.

CHAPTER NINE

'SCARCELY the way I would have chosen to announce the advent of our first child,' Dio commented in a charged undertone that fairly screeched with restraint.

'No...' Ellie agreed, trembling.

'But, had you warned me how much scandal there was in your past, I might have been able to bury some of the evi¬dence and protect you.'

Ellie flinched from the censure she could hear in his clipped drawl. And as she read what was in that newspaper article she didn't blame him; she really didn't. It was lurid stuff. The barest bones of the truth were there, but sunk be¬neath a wealth of lies and exaggerations.

'For a start, I had no idea that you and your mother were virtual outcasts in the town where you grew up.'