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‘She took me in and raised me—gave me everything she could,’ he said gruffly. ‘I returned that care when my grandfather died and at her insistence I kept his small fleet of fishing boats.’
‘That is why you were helping with the fishing when we met? When you couldn’t tell me the truth?’
Things were starting to fit together now, but it still didn’t explain his need to strike such a deal with her.
He nodded and walked to the balcony, but she wasn’t going to be knocked off course so easily.
‘Will your grandmother approve?’
Serena wondered about what the old lady would think of him taking an English bride—and a pregnant one at that. What would she think of the terms of their marriage?
‘She is a very wise lady.’ He looked down at her where she sat. ‘She would also tell you to rest, to look after yourself and the baby.’
Serena placed her hand over her stomach and looked into Nikos’s eyes, her heart somersaulting at the swirling desire she saw in them once more, and found herself longing for this evening. Would he take her to his bed again? Make love to her gently and yet so passionately? She knew she shouldn’t want that, but she did. She couldn’t just switch her love off—or her hope that one day he might love her.
‘Does she know about the baby?’
He shook his head and she couldn’t help voicing her concern.
‘Because you doubt the baby is yours?’
There—she’d said the words aloud, cast them out like a fisherman’s net, giving him the chance to agree, to call a halt to everything.
He didn’t. He merely looked at her. A long, cold stare that made her want to shiver, as if winter winds were suddenly being blown in off the sea.
‘I have never doubted the baby is mine, Serena,’ he said as he sat down next to her. ‘But I do doubt that you are looking after yourself. You should not have flown all the way here alone. You should have called me from London—as soon as you knew. As I asked you to.’
‘What could you have done—or what could the man I thought you were have done? He wouldn’t have been able to arrange for a private plane to fly him to England.’ Hurt smarted inside her as she remembered his deceit, but maybe after their brief talk today the reason was a little clearer.
He stepped closer, leaned down and kissed her softly on the lips, his dark mood thawing as passion took over the blue of his eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter who you thought I was when we were together. I’ve told you—I didn’t want to spoil our time with each other, a time that was special. Different.’
She searched his face and placed her palm against his cheek, feeling a fresh growth of stubble, but she knew that the special time they’d shared during the summer was over. Reality had impinged on it.
‘You could have told me the truth.’
His answer was to pull her into his arms and kiss her, engulfing them both in a desire that would have only one outcome. She kissed him back, hoping the love she had for him, a love he would never want, would be enough—for her and their marriage.
CHAPTER NINE
NIKOS WAS SURPRISED by the ease with which he had slipped into sharing his life with Serena. Each morning for the past week he’d kissed her goodbye, tearing himself from her warm body to go to the office. He’d been pleased that she’d taken the doctor’s advice and was resting, and each day she looked more radiant and more vibrant, which was having an uncontrollable effect on him.
He thought it was what a real relationship might be like, and that was something he’d become an expert at avoiding. But two weeks with Serena in the summer and one intensely passionate night had changed his life, forcing him to look his worst fears in the eye. Fear of failure and an even bigger fear of love.
This morning the deal he’d been working on had finally gone through. He was now the owner of the largest shipping company in Greece, with both cargo ships and cruise liners that would sail the seas under his name. He’d achieved his ambition. Now it was time to seal a different deal—one that would bind Serena to him for ever.
But before he could do that he had to visit his grandmother on Santorini. He couldn’t put it off any longer, and hoped the news of their engagement and the baby didn’t reach her before he did. His conscience unsettled by such thoughts, he’d ordered his plane and was now flying across a glittering sea littered with islands.
