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Alexandros winced. She had overheard that?
‘The friend was a gossip. I was protecting our privacy.’
Katie grimaced through the tears threatening her. ‘No, you were telling the truth. That’s all I ever was, all I was ever meant to be…the maid warming your bed.’
‘You make it sound cheap and sordid, but it wasn’t!’ Alexandros thundered at her. ‘The first day I allowed you to shout at me without fear of retribution you were no longer the maid. You were my equal!’
Taken aback by that explosion of temper, Katie shot him a startled glance and walked on faster than ever. ‘Well, today was cheap…What did you do? Bring in decorators and stylists to set the scene for my seduction?’
‘Theos mou…’ Alexandros grated. ‘As long as I live I will never try to please you again…you are the most contrary woman!’
‘I don’t trust you as far as I could throw you. Do you blame me?’ Catching sight of the vast villa ahead, Katie spun round, hands planted on her slim hips to confront him again. ‘Where were your security guards this afternoon? Their absence is proof that you planned to get me into bed!’
Alexandros spread lean brown hands in a graceful gesture. ‘No comment…’
His obvious lack of shame outraged Katie to the brink of screaming. ‘May you rot in hell for this, Alexandros Christakis!’
‘It’s not a crime for me to want to marry you—’
‘Look, when I’m so desperate for a husband that I have to take one who just feels guilty that he got me pregnant, I’ll let you know!’
Below the pillared portico of the giant villa, Alexandros brought her to a halt by the simple method of closing a lean brown hand over hers and holding fast until she was forced to turn back to him. ‘Maybe I appreciate the existence of those little boys much more than you give me credit for,’ he bit out in a raw undertone. ‘Ianthe pursued every fertility treatment known to the human race and still failed to conceive!’
Dumbfounded by that information, Katie stared at him with wide, unblinking green eyes. Hurt and regret twisted through her, and only caused more pain. Her very first thought was that her own fertility must have struck him as a bitterly ironic blow when his late wife had had to endure repeated disappointment in her desire to bear his child.
‘And maybe I’m also aware of how much I owe to my grandparents for taking me into their home and raising me as their son,’ Alexandros completed.
‘If I ever marry, I want a more personal connection with my husband than my children,’ she told him stiltedly.
As Katie spun on her heel and hurried into the villa, Alexandros felt as if a detonator was going off inside him, and he strode through the inner doors to the marble hall like a tornado blowing in. ‘What could be more personal than what we have now?’ he roared in her wake.
Astonished by his dark fury, scorched by the blaze of his fierce golden stare, Katie stilled. ‘That’s just physical,’ she mumbled, in a tight dismissive tone.
‘And what’s wrong with that?’ Alexandros grated in a tone of naked aggression. ‘I’d fly round the globe just to spend one hour in your bed! It’s the best sex I’ve ever had. I’m happy with that—more than happy. Why can’t you be?’
A floodtide of embarrassed colour flushed her face. She could not initially credit that he had said that to her. ‘Alexandros…’
Somewhere behind her she heard a cough. It sounded very much like the sort of warning cough people employed when they were keen to draw attention to their presence. Before her very eyes Alexandros froze, his lean, darkly handsome face shuttering, his lush lashes semi-screening his stunning eyes to wary glimmers of piercing gold.
‘Alexandros…’
Slowly, reluctantly, her face very pink at the awareness that someone might have overheard a line or two of that ferocious and very private argument, Katie spun round. A white-haired older man, with her eldest son, Toby, comfortably clutched in one arm, was smiling widely at them both from the foot of the long hall.
‘Pelias Christakis,’ the old man acknowledged, in the most cheerful, friendly way. ‘And you have to be—’
‘Katie,’ Alexandros sliced in flatly, closing his hand briefly over hers to palm the bra she held and dispose of it she knew not where—for his hand was empty when she dared to glance down again. ‘Allow me to introduce you to my grandfather.’
Banding his free arm round Katie’s taut spine, Pelias urged her to precede him into the drawing room. ‘Katie…this is my wife—Calliope.’
A plump older lady, with shining silver hair and Connor cosily ensconced on her lap, greeted her in accented English.
Alexandros dismissed the nanny hovering in attendance while Katie felt that she was doing well not to succumb to an attack of hysterics. Her cheeks were certainly hot enough to fry eggs on. How long had Alexandros’s grandparents been waiting for them to put in an appearance? Did they suspect the cause of their absence? They could hardly fail to have noticed that her hair was a tangled mop and her mascara smudged, and that Alexandros, mysteriously shorn of his usual sartorial elegance, lacked a jacket and socks. Nor could Pelias and Calliope have missed out on the fact that their grandson and the mother of their great-grandchildren had just been engaged in a ghastly argument. But neither of Alexandros’s wonderfully charming grandparents betrayed the slightest hint of discomfort or disapproval.
Pelias beamed when Toby held out his arms to be reunited with Katie, and passed him back. ‘Of course he wants his mother. Calliope and I were very excited when we heard about the children. I hope you will understand that we could not wait one day longer to meet them. Time is precious at our stage in life.’
Alexandros, who realised that he had been very wrong to assume that his grandparents were devastated by the scandal of his illegitimate sons, gritted his even white teeth. To his jaundiced gaze, the older couple looked as if all their Christmases had rolled in at once. He bent down to press a kiss to his grandmother’s soft powdered cheek.
‘Your grandfather wanted to warn you of our intended visit, but you know how much I love surprises,’ she informed him chirpily.
‘It’s a wonderful surprise,’ Alexandros responded without hesitation.
Explaining that arthritis made her a little stiff, Calliope invited Katie to come and sit beside her.
‘They are wonderful little boys. Strong, healthy, full of life. You must be very proud of them,’ Calliope remarked, petting Connor, who was lying back and enjoying every minute of such keen attention.
Equally misty-eyed, Pelias patted Toby’s black curls before Katie lowered her son to the rug so that he could crawl. ‘We are overjoyed by their existence.’ He gave Katie a level look. ‘I want you to know that, no matter what happens between you and Alexandros, we will always consider you and the children as a part of our family and you will be welcome in our home.’
Katie was touched to the heart by that sweeping declaration. She watched Toby making a beeline for his father. The best sex I’ve ever had. Her face heating at the inopportune recollection, she was wildly aware of the ache between her thighs. Their renewed intimacy had taken her by storm—to such an extent that even meeting Alexandros’s eyes was a challenge.
‘You’ll stay for a few days, of course?’ Alexandros was saying quietly to his grandparents. ‘Unfortunately I have an early meeting in Brussels tomorrow, and will have to leave later this evening. But Katie would welcome your company.’
Extreme guilt assailed Katie. Was he making work an excuse because of the row they had had? She watched him scoop up Toby with an easy confidence that she could see surprised and impressed the older couple. Doubt and confusion engulfed her. The twins were already learning to love their father. Had she made the right decision? Or the wrong one? All her emotions were at sixes and sevens; all her reactions seemed to be on a razor’s edge.
Half an hour later, Alexandros insisted on helping Katie take the twins upstairs. Once they had been settled for the night—the little boys had already eaten and
been bathed—he strolled back down the corridor with her and came to a halt outside the bedroom that was to be hers for the duration of her stay. ‘I have one question I’ve been meaning to ask you…it dates back to when you were carrying the twins.’
Katie glanced at him in surprise.
‘When exactly did you make those calls to that phone number I left with you?’
Katie compressed her generous pink mouth. ‘It was the summer…late June into July.’
Alexandros surveyed her with arrested dark golden eyes. ‘And the letter you mentioned? When was it sent?’
‘About the same time.’
