One Night...Nine-Month Scandal

In the interests of self-preservation Alekos decided that this probably wasn’t a good time to point out that the baby wasn’t even born yet. ‘I wasn’t softening you up so that I could have sex with you. If that was all I was interested in, then I would have just kissed you.’

‘And that would have reduced me to rubble, is that what you’re saying? Because you think you’re such a sex god?’ Her rage bubbled higher. ‘You’re arrogant, egotistical—’

‘Kelly, you need to calm down.’

‘Do not tell me to calm down!’ She was literally shivering with emotion, her eyes bright and feverish in a face that was ghostly pale. ‘This relationship ends now. This is not what I want for my child, and it isn’t what I want for myself. I’m going home, and don’t bother following me.’ Her hands shaking, she tugged the ring off her finger and stuffed it into his hand. ‘That’s it. It’s over. I want to go back to Corfu tonight because I can’t bear to spend a single night under the same roof as you. Babies can sense things, you know. I’ll fly back to England in the morning.’ Barefoot, her head held high, she stalked towards the entrance of the restaurant without bothering to look over her shoulder.

Sodden with misery, Kelly lay alone in the middle of the huge bed in the villa in Corfu, drifting in that hazy place between sleep and wakefulness. Somewhere in the background there was a clacking sound which she assumed to be the ceiling fan. She pulled the pillow over her head, feeling too low and exhausted to summon the energy to do anything about it.

By the time Alekos’s pilot had flown her back to the island and the car had taken her back to the villa, it had been the middle of the night—not that it had made a difference, because she hadn’t slept anyway.

Her eyes were sore with crying and there were too many thoughts bouncing around her head for her to have any hope of sleep.

The distinctive tread of male footsteps in her bedroom made her freeze with horror. Peeping from under the pillow, Kelly gave a horrified squeak.

Alekos stood there wearing the same dinner-jacket he’d worn the night before, only now the collar of his shirt was undone and the bow-tie was looped around his neck. His arms were loaded with packages and he stopped dead, apparently transfixed by the sight of her on the bed.

Still groggy, Kelly rubbed her eyes and tried to concentrate, but already her heart was racing, as it always did when he walked into a room. ‘What are you doing here? And why are you still wearing your dinner-jacket? You look as though you’ve been up all night.’

‘I have been up all night.’ His dark eyes glittered with raw sexual appraisal and she remembered, belatedly, that she was naked.

‘Stop staring at me.’ Her face scarlet, she made a grab for the silk bed-cover, but she was lying on it and the process of extracting it turned into a writhing wrestling-match between her and the sheets that brought a sheen of sweat to Alekos’s brow.

‘Enough!’ Depositing the parcels on the nearest chair, he strode across the room, yanked the bedcover free and threw it over her. ‘Theé mou, do you do this on purpose?’

‘Do what on purpose?’

‘Torment me.’ He stepped back with his hands in the air as if touching her had scalded him; Kelly, awash with hormones and hideously overtired, exploded with emotion.

‘Don’t blame me! You’re not even supposed to be here. I wanted to be on my own.’ Too late, she realised that the clacking sound hadn’t been the fan—it had been his helicopter landing.

‘Tough.’ Alekos shrugged off his jacket and threw it across the bottom of the bed. ‘Our deal was that I was supposed to tell you what I’m thinking, so I came here to tell you what I’m thinking.’

‘That was before, and—’

‘Are you going to let me speak or do you want me to silence you in my favourite way?’ His silky tone made her stiffen defensively and Kelly held the cover to her chin like a shield.

‘I don’t want you to touch me. Just say what you need to say and then go. I’ve booked myself on a flight at eleven o’clock.’

His eyes fixed on hers, Alekos drew in a deep breath. ‘Last night at the restaurant you accused me of denying the existence of the baby. But that wasn’t what I was doing.’

Kelly didn’t give an inch. ‘Well, it sounded like it from where I was sitting, and if you’ve come here to m

ake excuses then you’ve wasted your time.’

‘Kelly, you know I am a private man,’ he said in a raw tone. ‘I don’t find it easy spilling my thoughts to everyone, that isn’t what I do. I am fully aware that our relationship is at an extremely delicate point—do you really think I was going to risk destabilising that by announcing your pregnancy to a bunch of strangers? Is that really what you wanted me to do?’

Too upset to consider a different point of view, Kelly sat stiff in the bed. ‘You’ve been denying this baby ever since the moment I told you I was pregnant. I know you didn’t want this. I know this is probably the worst thing in the world that could have happened to you, and pretending that isn’t the case is just kidding yourself, Alekos. You’re just hoping that the whole electric, sex-chemistry thing will somehow get us through this whole tangled mess.’

‘That is not what I’m thinking. And it’s true that finding out that you’re pregnant has been difficult for me—I’m not denying that.’ His voice was thickened, his accent more pronounced than usual. ‘And I probably haven’t coped with it as well as I should have done, but I have been trying. I readily agreed to your request that we sleep in separate rooms because part of me agreed with your reasoning.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes, oh.’ Visibly tense, he removed his cufflinks and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. ‘I admit that the sex between us does cloud judgement. I know I hurt you four years ago, but I am determined not to do it again, which is the other reason I agreed. I am trying to do as you asked and respect the boundaries you set for our relationship.’

‘It’s very unfair of you to suddenly start being so reasonable just because you know I’m angry,’ Kelly muttered. ‘And don’t think for a moment that it changes anything. Even if you’re behaving like a reasonable person on the surface, I know you’re still trying to pretend this whole baby thing isn’t happening.’

He threw her a shimmering glance. ‘I thought that the idea was that we focus on the relationship. You told me you didn’t want to be with me just because of the baby—that it had to be right for us. I agreed. So I’ve been focusing on us. I bought gifts for you because I wanted to spoil you, but you interpret that as me ignoring the baby. If I’d bought gifts for the baby, you would have said that I was only trying to fix things because you were pregnant.’