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‘Krista?’ His sleek ebony brows pleated, and his brilliant eyes were suddenly keen as lasers on her strained face. ‘You have actually met Krista?’
Maddie jerked her chin in confirmation.
And that was that. Lean, strong profile set like granite, Giannis swept up the phone, punched out a number, and started speaking in Greek, fast and furious. While he conducted the conversation Maddie breathed in and out several times, in an effort to get her composure back. A couple of minutes later he replaced the phone.
‘I didn’t send Krista to visit you.’
Maddie was reluctant to believe him. Shaken up as she was, she was afraid to trust him. Was he friend or foe? She no longer knew how to tell the difference. She wanted to believe him. Of course she did. But what if he was playing a double game? It would be foolish to ignore the reality that he had to have his own agenda. Was it feasible that Krista Spyridou had been telling her the truth?
‘We’ll talk at the apartment,’ Giannis decreed, stifling his impatience to know what Krista had said during her visit. That was not a possibility he had foreseen, and he felt culpable. The idea that an external event might have spurred Maddie’s second flight mollified him a little, but he was heartily tired of being treated like the enemy.
A lift ferried them in silence up to his penthouse apartment, which was all gleaming stone and wood surfaces, with soaring ceilings that put her in mind of a public building. The reception room struck her as no more inviting. Large as a sports pitch, it was sprinkled at intervals with oddly indistinguishable items of furniture and several large pieces of contemporary sculpture.
Maddie wasted no time in getting to the heart of the atmosphere between them. ‘Krista approached me with a proposition. Do you know what it was?’
She focused on Giannis, absorbing the sleek, dark vibrance of him in a navy pinstripe business suit. It took great effort to retain her full concentration. He’s the enemy, he’s the enemy, her common sense rhymed, while the rest of her just rejoiced in his lithe, muscular male beauty, his amazing eyes and his liquid grace of movement.
‘How would I know?’ Giannis shifted a glass lounging chair a few inches in her direction, because she had sat down on the bi-level coffee table.
‘Because you must have talked to her last night,’ Maddie dared, wondering why he was shifting his works of art around. ‘She already knew I was expecting twins.’
‘When the press captured photos of us together, I knew I owed Krista a warning call.’ His response was level and unapologetic. ‘It’s one thing to end an engagement, something else to show up in public with a pregnant woman soon afterwards.’
Maddie flushed, her discomfiture pronounced at that reminder of his former ties with Krista. ‘Obviously you’re still very close to her.’
‘I’ve known her all my life. Look, what is all this about? Why did Krista want to see you?’
Maddie studied him, fighting to hide her suspicions.
‘No, I don’t know why!’ With that response Giannis startled and dismayed her. The apparent fact was that he could read her face like an open book, even when she was striving her hardest to be cunning.
‘Krista asked me to agree to you and her adopting the twins.’
Giannis grimaced. ‘I don’t believe you.’
Her teeth gritted at that unexpected comeback. ‘Well, she did. She said you and she had broken up and reconciled before, and that adoption would be the perfect solution. She believed that you’d marry her and raise my children with her.’
Giannis raked long brown fingers through his luxuriant black hair. ‘Sometimes the female mind amazes me. That was a very resourceful idea for Krista—even if it was mad.’
Listening to him, Maddie was on hyper-alert. Her need to have her worst fears set to rest was not satisfied by that infuriatingly uninformative response. She had hoped he would tell her that it was nonsense that he and Krista had reconciled before—because the existence of such a history made her feel deeply uneasy. She had hoped he would utterly dismiss the idea that he might still end up marrying Krista. When he did neither, Maddie could no longer suppress her fierce apprehension.
She flew to her feet and snapped, ‘So you’re saying you had nothing whatsoever to do with that scheme of hers?’
Giannis gave her a long, steady appraisal. ‘Do I look that crazy? I know you well enough to be aware that you wouldn’t even consider such an arrangement.’
‘How am I supposed to trust you?’
One little lie of omission, Giannis reflected in raging frustration, and he was still paying for it in spades. Her lack of faith in him was deeply offensive to his sense of honour. He studied her, now seated on his coffee table, Titian hair fanning round her vivid face. In her bright green T-shirt she should have looked remarkably like a leprechaun. Instead there was something extraordinarily sexy about the au naturel look she favoured. Her tousled copper curls framed her provocative green eyes and her ripe pink mouth, and the T-shirt was stretched to capacity over the highly feminine abundance of her full breasts. Angry as he was, that view sent an instant shaft of lust to his groin and his even white teeth clenched.
Maddie could feel his gaze on her bosom, and before she even knew what she was doing she had arched her back like a shameless temptress, so that part of her body was more than ever noticeable. She was shocked at the speed with which that wanton prompting came over her, and even more taken aback by the wild pleasure and satisfaction she experienced when he looked at her in that sexual way. He was turning her into a natural-born trollop, she thought, hating herself like poison for her weakness.
She leapt upright and stalked over to the window. Krista had been so cool, so very classy. ‘Giannis…’
‘We could just get rid of all this aggro in bed, pedhi mou,’ Giannis murmured thickly.
She folded her arms fast over her bust, terrified her prominent nipples might be showing through her cotton top. He was absolutely without shame. He had no inhibitions whatsoever. What shook her was how much she liked that earthy sexuality of his.
‘Maddie…’ he murmured silkily, slowly turning her round into the shelter of his lean, powerful body. ‘We need each other.’
He curved his hands to the swell of her behind and drew her up against him, making her madly aware of his masculine arousal. There was a slow burn of warmth and moisture flowering between her thighs, and a dulled ache of physical awareness that left her quivering.
It literally hurt her to yank herself back from the very edge of temptation. ‘I can’t do this…I can’t. It’s wrong—’
Hot golden eyes smouldering with urgent desire, Giannis gave her a pained appraisal and surrendered himself to the prospect of the only answer he saw to their plight. ‘How is it wrong when we’re going to get married?’
‘We’re going to w-what?’ she stammered, staring at him.
‘What else can we do? It’s the only rational option.’ His dark features taut, Giannis shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘That’s why you can trust me. That’s why I was furious that you could even consider running away from me again.’
Maddie was trembling with surprise and uncertainty, hanging on his every word, yet still unable to credit that he could be serious. ‘I ran away because I felt that I was being threatened. I haven’t got the power or the money it would take to fight you if you decided that you wanted to take my children from me.’
‘Theos mou…why would I do that? Does that make sense to you?’ Giannis demanded in exasperation. ‘I want my children to grow up with two parents in a secure environment.’
Maddie worried at her lower lip with her teeth. ‘But it isn’t necessary for us to get married.’
‘It is. Who but me will teach them how to be Greek? How to cope with my Petrakos relations? How to handle wealth and privilege? You couldn’t meet that challenge without living in my world.’
All of a sudden Maddie understood why Krista had approached her. The beautiful blonde knew Giannis well enough to guess that he would offer marriage to the mother of his unborn children, and she had tried to pre-empt that possibility.
‘I don’t know what to say…’ she whispered, because her thoughts were buzzing like frantic bees inside her head.
‘You say yes…and you say it in Greek.’ Giannis surveyed her with that sudden flashing charismatic smile of his that made her heart seesaw on its sadly unreliable supports. ‘Ne is the word you need.’
‘But you can’t want to marry me,’ Maddie protested tautly.
