Lynne Graham's Brides of L'Amour Bundle

‘And how violent you can be when you don’t get it.’ Removing the pillow from her fevered grasp, Andreo tossed it behind his head and stretched with the flexing, fluid grace of a prowling tiger. Angling a knowing appraisal at her, he smiled with unholy complacency.

In one furious jerk, Pippa sat up. ‘You know nothing about me—’

‘I know you kept every single flower and card I ever sent you, even the dying blooms,’ Andreo commented smooth as silk.

‘So what?’ she raked at him. ‘I hate waste!’

‘Tabby said you had been inconsolable since your arrival but trying hard to cover it up,’ Andreo added.

Ready to claw like a wildcat, Pippa launched herself at him and hissed scornfully, ‘There’s no way Tabby would say something like that to you…she’s my friend!’

Andreo took advantage of her proximity to close strong hands round her forearms and tip her down on top of him.

Sudden silence fell. Her hands had come down on his chest to steady herself, slender fingers spreading on warm, hair-roughened muscles. Her breath caught in her throat. When her startled blue eyes collided with his burning gold scrutiny, the atmosphere was electric and the fight and the anger went out of her as surely as if he had pulled a switch.

Andreo meshed a lean-fingered hand in the tumble of her cinnamon-coloured curls and stole one devastating, passionate kiss. Breathing shallowly, he freed her reddened mouth again and lifted her back onto her own side of the bed.

Excitement had seethed up in a tempestuous greedy burst inside Pippa. Her body was clamouring for the satisfaction that he had taught her to want. She rolled over, and like an iron filing drawn by a magnet, reached for him again. But Andreo dealt her a smouldering look and set her back from him in unashamed rejection. ‘I’m still too angry with you…’

‘Angry?’ she repeated, aghast and in shock from what had just happened.

Andreo settled grim dark golden eyes on her. ‘If I ever want someone else, I will tell you up front. That’s how I am. I don’t lie or sneak around. I don’t need to. To date there may have been a fair number of women in my life but none could ever accuse me of dishonesty or infidelity, cara.’

‘Lili Richards touched you…that was infidelity!’ Pippa slammed back in a ferocious surge of disagreement. ‘One finger on any part of you qualifies as infidelity!’

Andreo screened his amused gaze. ‘Is that a fact? I don’t like being pawed in public. I think it’s tasteless. Presumably you didn’t see me push her away and ask her to cool it—’

‘No, I didn’t. And before you come over all smug and think that you broke my heart and that that’s why I left London, think again!’ Pippa hauled up the sheet and turned her slim, elegant back on him. ‘Our relationship had run its course and it was time for it to end. I decided to go to France right at the start of our affair and I never once swerved from that decision!’

During the blistering silence that fell in answer to that declaration, hot stinging tears inched out from below Pippa’s lowered eyelids and slid down her cheeks onto the pillow. She knew she would not be able to sleep by his side.

CHAPTER EIGHT

HAVING lain awake for half the night, Pippa drifted off around seven and woke with a start an hour later. Her nostrils flared on the rich, aromatic smell of fresh coffee and her stomach instantly rebelled. Eyes flying wide in dismay, she threw herself off the bed, hurtled past Andreo where he stood with a laden breakfast tray and raced at all possible speed into the bathroom. She was sick but, mercifully, it was over quickly and she felt fine in the aftermath.

‘Are you OK?’ Andreo enquired from the doorway.

Her embarrassment intense, Pippa stalked across the bathroom and slammed shut the door in his face, snapping, ‘Can’t I even be ill in peace?’

After a lengthy shower, an even slower drying-off of her curls into fluffy childish bangs that infuriated her, she emerged and found the bedroom empty, which, oddly enough, annoyed her even more than a barrage of questions would have done. When she went downstairs, Tabby took her into the dining room for breakfast.

‘Andreo said you weren’t well. He’s worried about you…he’s a real hunk too, isn’t he?’ Tabby lowered her voice to add with an irreverent grin. ‘Christien gets on with him like a house on fire.’

‘I could have forecast that without a crystal ball,’ Pippa confided. ‘Where are they?’

‘Well, they made a great play about going off to talk business…but I bet you anything that they’ll end up either down in the wine cellar or having a spin in Christien’s latest new car,’ Tabby declared with her warm, contagious laugh.

‘What’s the fastest way of finding out if you’re pregnant?’ Pippa asked her friend in a rush.

Tabby blinked and breathed in deep and let the silence linger before saying, ‘I could take you to see my doctor. He’ll do a test.’

Tabby made the necessary phone call while Pippa sipped at a cup of tea but only shredded a piece of toast for she was too nervous to feel hungry. As they walked out to Tabby’s car her friend gave her a rueful appraisal. ‘Thanks for trusting me.’

‘Terror loves company,’ Pippa quipped half under her breath.

An hour later, she knew for sure: she was going to have a baby. No longer could she hide her head in the sand and hope that only nerves were upsetting her system. But she was shattered by that confirmation.

‘What are you planning to do?’ Tabby asked her friend worriedly during the drive back to the château.