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She pressed the button to make her bed sit more upright, having given in with bad grace to his insistence on her staying overnight under a doctor's surveillance. She knew it was the right thing to do, but she had not counted on the sense of obligation she would feel toward Sebastian when she'd called him. Everything he did to take care of her made her feel like she was in his debt and she didn't like it at all.
"I'm fine. You heard the doctor. My heart would have to get a lot more stressed before we would have to worry about a heart attack or stroke."
His face turned to stone at the words and she wished she hadn't been so specific. Sebastian's complexion was the color of the ocean on a cloudy day and his slate gray eyes were bleak.
"I am sorry," he said again.
She would be willing to bet that he had apologized more in the last hour than he had in his whole adult life.
While she thought he should feel bad for kissing her when he had no right, she felt uncomfortable with his excessive guilt over her reaction to the kiss. He believed that by exciting her physically, he had set off her atrial fib when in fact, anything could have caused it.
She bit her lip and watched him, conflicting emotions tearing at her conscience.
"I wasn't doing anything more strenuous than sitting at my desk when I fainted and had to be taken to Emergency."
He looked at her as if his superior brain for once could not make out the meaning of what she was saying. She spelled it out for him. "I could have had the atrial fib attack even if all I'd been doing was sitting beside you in the car, minding my own business. It was not your fault."
"It was." Sebastian was as terrifying in guilt mode as he was when he was angry.
There was no reasoning with him.
“According to the doctor, within twenty-four hours on the beta-blockers, we don't need to be worried about another attack, even if we make love." She'd blushed the color of a red ball sunset when the heart specialist had felt compelled to share that information, but she hoped reminding him about it would derail Sebastian's guilt trip.
"This is good." His smile was shocking after the past hour of him looking so grim. "I am glad you have reconciled yourself to sharing my bed."
"I haven't," she said, horrified he'd taken her words that way.
"If you have not then why bring up the future safety of such an event?"
"I was trying to get you out of guilt mode," she said with total exasperation.
"Strange that you should care about my emotional well-being when you hate me so much."
"I never said I hated you."
He looked way too complacent at that assurance.
"I said I don't trust you and I don't."
"You trust me to take care of you and our baby."
"That is not the same as trusting you to be my lover again."
"Since you have had no other lovers, I am still your lover."
"Stop arguing semantics. I am not going to bed with you again."
"That is all right. We can make love on the couch like we did the first time, but heed this, Rachel. We will make love again. It is inevitable."
She glared at him. "It is not inevitable."
His smile said she was wrong and she wished she could be a little more certain in her own heart she was right.
Sebastian talked her into staying in the clinic for five days until her blood work showed improvement in both her conditions. Heaven alone knew how he achieved it, but the heart specialist and two EMT workers flew to Greece on Sebastian's private plane with them. When they arrived in Athens, she was given a thorough going-over by the heart specialist before being allowed to make the helicopter trip to the island.
The man was not allowed to go home until he had gone over her medical history with the doctor Sebastian had procured to stay on the island during her pregnancy. She learned from one of the maids that Sebastian had also upgraded the clinic on the island to be equipment ready for most medical emergencies.
Rachel couldn't even begin to imagine the expense he'd gone to in order to make that happen. The man was obsessed, but since knowing medical help was available if she needed it made her feel more secure, she didn't so much as tease him.
Nevertheless, the extensive preparations surprised her when he could have kept her in Athens more conveniently in regard to both his business and her medical care. She was even more shocked when three mornings after her arrival on the island, she woke to live music outside her bedroom window.
While she was still reeling from the effects of waking up in such a manner, a knock sounded on her door.
She called out permission to enter, feeling disoriented.
Phillippa came into the room, her lovely face wreathed in smiles. She must have been ferried over early that morning because she had not been on the island the night before when Rachel went to bed.
The older woman went to the window and pulled back the drapes. "It is a beautiful day for a wedding."
Rachel had barely digested that statement when one of the maids arrived carrying yards and yards of white satin. Close behind her came another maid with a shoe box under one arm and a huge bouquet of flowers in the other.
Having said not one word, Rachel sat bolt upright in bed and did what any woman would do when faced with a surprise wedding she had not agreed to. She screamed and then she jumped out of the bed and starting yelling Sebastian's name.
Phillippa and the maids stood stock-still in shock. They no doubt thought she'd lost her mind, but that was no comparison to what they were going to think when she murdered Sebastian. She rushed out of the room, ignoring the cold stone of tile on her feet out in the hall.
"Sebastian Matthias Kouros!"
When he didn't show himself, she stormed down the stairs intent on finding the rat and giving him a piece of her mind.
When she did find him he was leaning against the doorjamb of his study. He looked much too complacent for a man facing murder and mayhem.
She stomped right up to him and shoved her finger in his chest. "How dare you set up a wedding and not tell me? Do you know your mother is in my room right this minute wondering what happened to her future daughter-in-law? She's going to be upset damn it when the wedding doesn't take place."
Sebastian's eyes went over her like seeking hands and the unwelcome flutters in her stomach made her even madder.
"Stop it."
"What?" he asked in a lazy masculine drawl.
"Looking at me."
"But you are so lovely to look at."
With her hair on end and wearing an old T-shirt she'd filched from him one summer a couple of years back when she'd needed something to put over her
swimsuit when some of her mother's friends arrived unexpectedly? Not likely.
She glowered at him. "Well, don't do it like that."
"And how am I looking at you?"
"Like you own me." And regardless of her appearance, the flare of desire in his eyes was unmistakable. "Like you want me."
"But these things are true. You belong to me and I want you more than I have ever wanted another woman. Do you have any idea how arousing you are in a temper?"
She wanted to spit nails. "Sebastian!"
"What is it? I do not think this upset can be good for our baby."
"You should have thought of that before you started trying to take over my life."
He straightened away from the doorway, towering over her in all his gorgeous magnificence. "I do not wish to take over you life. I wish to share it."
Sh
e laughed, feeling and sounding pretty much hysterical. "You don't want to share my life. You want to share my baby."
Suddenly strong fingers latched around her waist and she went airborne until she came up against unyielding male flesh, her face only inches from his.
"Let us get one thing straight, Rachel. We are both parents of that baby inside your womb and I cannot share its life without sharing yours. Do you want to limit my fatherhood to occasional visits and holidays? Is that what this is all about? You want revenge for the way I treated you and you have latched onto the fact that refusing to give our baby my name and refusing me twenty-four, seven access to our child, you will achieve it. But have you considered that your revenge on me will also cause pain for our child?"
"I don't want revenge." She couldn't believe he thought that was what this was about. "I have no intention of withholding our baby from you."
