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‘Grandfather...’ Andreas began warningly.
* * *
LATER, AFTER A celebratory lunch and rather more vintage champagne than had perhaps been wise, Saskia made her way with solemn concentration back to her room. Andreas was with her, as befitted a loving and protective fiancé.
Outside the room Andreas touched her lightly on her arm, so that she was forced to stop and look at him.
‘I’m sorry about what happened in Athens,’ he told her, his brusqueness giving way to anger as he added, ‘My grandfather had no right to subject you to—’
‘In his shoes you would have done exactly the same thing,’ Saskia interrupted him quietly, immediately leaping to his grandfather’s defence. ‘It’s a perfectly natural reaction. I can remember still the way my grandmother reacted the first time I went out on a date.’ She laughed, and then stopped as she saw that Andreas was shaking his head.
‘Of course she would be protective of you,’ he agreed flatly. ‘But didn’t my grandfather realise the danger you could have been in? What if he had mistimed his “accidental” meeting with you? You were alone in an unfamiliar city. He had countermanded my instructions to your driver by telling him to keep out of sight until he saw him return to his own car.’
‘It was broad daylight, Andreas,’ Saskia pointed out calmly. But she could see that Andreas wasn’t going to be appeased. ‘Well, at least your grandfather won’t be trying to convince you that you should marry Athena anymore,’ she offered placatingly as they walked into the bedroom. She came to an abrupt halt as she saw the new cases Andreas had bought her for their trip in the middle of the bedroom floor. ‘What...?’ she began unsteadily but Andreas didn’t let her finish.
‘I told Maria to pack for both of us. We’re booked onto the first flight in the morning for Heathrow.’
‘We’re leaving?’
Even as she spoke Saskia knew that showing her shock was a giveaway piece of folly. Of course they were leaving. After all, there was no need for Andreas to keep her here any more. His grandfather had made it very plain during lunch that Athena would no longer be welcome beneath his roof.
‘We don’t have any option,’ Andreas replied flatly. ‘You heard my grandfather. Now that he’s been given a clean bill of health he’s itching to find something to occupy him. Organising our wedding and turning it into something between a lavish extravaganza worthy of a glossy magazine and a chance to gather as many of his business cronies under one roof as he can isn’t going to be an opportunity he’ll want to miss out on. And my mother and sister will be just as bad.’ He started to scowl. ‘Designer outfits, a wedding dress that could take months to make, plans to extend the villa so that it can accommodate the children my mother and my grandfather are so determined we’re going to have...’
Greedily Saskia drank in every word. The mental image he was creating for her, the blissful pictures he was painting were becoming more alluring with every word he said. Mistily she allowed herself to dream about what she knew to be impossible—and then Andreas’s next words sent her into shocked freefall.
‘We need to get married immediately. We just don’t have the time for that kind of delay. Not after... If you are already carrying my child then...’
‘What are you saying?’ Saskia protested, white-faced. ‘You can’t be serious. We can’t get married just because...’
‘Just because what?’ Andreas challenged her bitterly. ‘Because you were a virgin, an innocent who had never known a man before? I...I am Greek, Saskia, and there is no way I would ever abandon any child I had fathered. Under the circumstances there is nothing else we can do.’
‘You’re only half-Greek,’ Saskia heard herself reminding him dizzily, before adding, ‘And anyway I may not even be pregnant. In fact I’m sure I’m not.’
Andreas gave her a dry, almost withering look.
‘And you’re an expert on such things, of course. You, a woman who hasn’t even...’
‘They say you don’t always...not the first time...’ Saskia told him lamely, but she could see from his face that he had as little faith in that particular old wives’ tale as she did herself.
