Expectant Bride (10 page)

Ellie noted the finality of that statement, but she was past caring. With the slamming of a door, the car moved off a
few minutes later. Only when mind over matter appeared to be winning and her stomach had settled back to normality did she risk opening her eyes again. Dio was lounging back in one corner, surveying her with slumbrous dark eyes filled with satisfaction.

‘Don't look at me like that!' she told him thinly.

‘What way am I looking at you?' he murmured huskily.

The same way she had once seen a man study his new car. With the proud possessiveness of ownership. ‘Nothing's changed,' she warned him feverishly.

‘Sometimes,' Dio responded with indolent cool, ‘you are incredibly naive.'

‘On the island.
Not
any more,' Ellie qualified with deliberate acidity. ‘And if naive is what you like, well…with your money I'm sure you'll find plenty of takers.'

A slow-burning smile curved his wide, sensual mouth. ‘Where would I find a woman with the courage to be as scathing as you?'

‘If I were you, I'd be getting worried about what you find attractive in a woman!'

Dio loosed an appreciative laugh. ‘You challenge me. I enjoy the fact that you're not impressed by who I am and what I possess. You have no idea how rare a quality that is in my world.'

Ellie tore her attention from the devastating magnetism of his lean dark features, her mouth running dry at the effort even that small amount of self-denial took. She remembered the deference of his relatives at the villa, the invisible boundary line which had enabled him to mix without once being challenged by a more personal approach. His icy reserve had held them all at a polite and formal distance. Only
not
her. Her pride had demanded that she be treated like an equal.

Yet, had she been awestruck and silent around Dio Alexiakis, she would not now be facing potential disaster, Ellie conceded heavily. If she
was
pregnant, how on earth was she
going to cope? Ellie's careful plans for her future had not catered for the possibility of a child. Indeed, those plans had revolved round the necessity of working very long hours well into the foreseeable future. Servicing a large business loan would swallow up a good deal of the income the shop brought in; increasing profit margins would take both time and further investment. Ellie breathed in shakily and struggled to suppress her growing apprehension. Until she had confirmation one way or the other tomorrow, it was foolish to get herself into a state.

‘All of a sudden you're a thousand miles away,' Dio drawled.

Ellie blinked and looked back at him, only then realising that the limo had drawn to a halt.

‘Of course, you're exhausted,' he conceded grimly.

‘No, I think I might be pregnant.' Ellie blurted out that admission without the slightest forethought.

Dio froze in shock. Indeed ‘shock', she noted, was not an excessive word to describe his reaction. Stunned black eyes clashed with hers. His strong bone structure clenched hard and he turned pale beneath his bronzed skin.

‘Maybe…maybe I should've worked up to saying it…somehow,' Ellie mumbled, although she couldn't imagine any way in which such a bombshell could be delivered gently. She hadn't meant to tell him, hadn't even toyed with the idea of telling him, but the level of her stress had betrayed her.

In the enervated state she was in, she had left the car and allowed herself to be pressed across an imposing entrance hall and straight into another lift before she actually registered that she was not where she had expected to be.

Ellie frowned in bemusement. ‘You
said
you were taking me home…'

‘I thought we'd be more comfortable at my apartment,' Dio imparted.

‘You called
me
sneaky. I don't know where you get the nerve,' Ellie remarked brittly.

All of a sudden every silence simply screamed. She didn't want to think about what she had impulsively blurted out in the limo. She definitely
didn't
want to talk about it. What had she expected from Dio? In this scenario a trouble shared would not mean a trouble halved.

Dio lived in the penthouse apartment. A Greek manservant ushered them in to the high-tech interior. Seeming acres of space ran in every direction. The furniture was stark and elegant, an effective backdrop for what appeared to be an extensive and fabulous art collection. She focused on one canvas. It looked like a Picasso she had once seen in a book. She realised that it might well be the real thing. Swallowing hard, she looked away again, suddenly utterly intimidated by her surroundings.

‘I want to get changed,' she said stiltedly.

Dio showed her into a luxurious guest room. Ellie peeled off her overall and her canvas shoes. She freshened up in the bathroom, noting in disgust that her hands were trembling. She tipped her clothing out of the bag which Demitrios had removed from her locker. After wriggling into her stretchy short black skirt and fine short-sleeved sweater, she hauled on her knee boots. She left the overall lying in a heap. No way would she ever be walking back into work at Alexiakis International again. There were plenty of other evening jobs available…only few of them would be suitable for a pregnant woman.

On her reluctant passage back to rejoining Dio, Ellie noticed a large gilded photo on prominent display on a cabinet in the hall. The photo was of three people. Dio with a tall, older man, so like himself that he simply had to be his late father, and Helena Teriakos, all of them wearing evening dress. The Greek woman had signed it across one corner.

Realising that she was only putting off the inevitable con
frontation, Ellie breathed in deep, smoothed down her skirt and walked back into the airy drawing room. She started speaking before Dio even got to turn round to face her.

‘I didn't mean to tell you. It was stupid. I'm going to do a pregnancy test tomorrow,' she shared tautly.

Dio swung round. ‘You've made an appointment with your doctor?'

‘No—'

‘I'll make one—'

Ellie stiffened. ‘That's not necessary.'

‘I think it is,' he contradicted steadily. ‘A medical examination would give a more reliable result.'

Ellie folded her arms in a defensive motion. ‘But I—'

‘I'm as much involved in this as you are,' Dio spelt out stubbornly.

No, she thought strickenly, he
wasn't
. She could feel the distance in him already. He was saying the right things, going through the motions of being decent and supportive, but naturally he was praying hard for a negative result and probably wishing he had never set eyes on her. ‘It's very stuffy in here,' she said tautly. ‘Can I go out on the balcony? I could do with some fresh air.'

‘It's very cold tonight.'

‘So shut the doors after me!' Ellie advised sharply.

Dio swept up a remote control. The wall of glass glided back. Ellie headed out with alacrity and was totally unappreciative of his magnificent view of the Thames. She gripped the rail girding the parapet until her knuckles showed white. All she could see in front of her still were Dio's cloaked dark eyes. Those beautiful midnight-dark eyes that haunted her dreams. She heard him behind her.

‘Oh, go inside, for heaven's sake!' she urged without turning her head. ‘I know you're freezing.'

‘I'm not—'

‘Look, I boiled alive when you switched off the air-
conditioning at the beach house in the middle of the night! We don't even match temperature-wise,' Ellie completed accusingly, swallowing back the thickness in her throat.

‘Ellie…' Dio released his breath in an audible hiss and closed his arms round her, easing her slight body back into the lean, hard strength of his.

Every fibre of her longed to luxuriate in that physical contact, but she gritted her teeth and held herself rigid, refusing to give way to her own weakness. She loved him; she really,
really
loved him. It was a waste of time hoping that those feelings were about to magically go away and leave her free of pain and vulnerability. He wasn't in love with her. At most all Dio had wanted was a casual affair, and now he probably didn't even want that. Unlike Cinderella, she had blown it. She hadn't gone home alone at midnight.

‘You feel like ice.' Dio ran long gentle fingers down over her bare arms. ‘Come inside.'

‘I just want to go home,' she enunciated with great care.

‘Not tonight. You shouldn't be on your own.'

‘Don't be wet. I've been on my own for a long time.' She hesitated. ‘I really shocked you again, didn't I?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘What I said to you on the beach that night. You just
don't
expect bad things to happen to you.'

‘That is not at all how I would describe this situation.' Losing patience, Dio closed a determined arm round her and urged her back indoors. ‘You need something to eat.'

Pulling free of him, Ellie sank down on a sofa. ‘I'm not hungry.'

Dio sent the wall of glass gliding shut again in the teeth of the wind. He tossed the remote aside and studied her with black fathomless eyes. ‘What happens happens,
yineka mou
,' he murmured wryly.

‘You still didn't think it was going to happen to you.' Ellie
felt like a dog with a bone she had to keep on digging up, even though she knew she ought to leave it buried.

His expressive mouth quirked. ‘I have to admit that I am so accustomed to more experienced women who protect themselves from pregnancy that I didn't quite compute the true level of risk we faced.'

‘Why do you keep on saying
we
? It leaves me cold,' Ellie told him thinly. ‘After all, we don't have a relationship.'

‘You are
very
angry with me.'

Colliding with far too perceptive dark eyes, Ellie flushed and squirmed. There was a kind of rage inside her desperate to break out, but he had recognised it before she had.

‘Come here…' Dio urged with the sort of rueful exasperation an adult employs with a difficult child.

Ellie could feel a giant well of tears gathering behind her eyes. Instantly she scrambled upright. ‘It's late, and if I'm staying, I might as well go to bed…it's not like you're going to make a move on me
now
, is it?'

‘Not without a whip and a chair,' Dio agreed with dulcet cool.

Ellie moved a couple of steps away and then paused, discovering that she was oddly reluctant to leave him. ‘I thought you'd be punching walls and swearing by now,' she confided without turning round.

‘Public school followed by so many years in business teaches a reasonable amount of self-control,' Dio advanced with gentle irony.

‘Well, the Mr Smooth and Cool act really annoys me. You haven't given me one genuine emotional reaction since I told you!' she condemned grittily.

But even as Ellie voiced that accusation she saw how foolish it was. How could he give her a genuine reaction? Did she really want him to show her the volatile flipside of that cool, controlled façade which he had donned like armour?
Yes
, she acknowledged. She needed a good excuse to hate
him. Everything would be so much more bearable if she
hated
him.

Closing his hand over her knotted fingers, Dio spun her back to him. Ellie dropped her head, struggling desperately to control her emotions. Dio turned her face up to his and met defiant green eyes that shimmered with unshed tears.

A roughened groan escaped him. ‘You're panicking. Why? You are not alone with this. Trust me.'

‘How do I
trust
a guy who asked me to be his mistress?' Ellie demanded with raw, incredulous force.

‘What has that got to do with this?' Dio asked with a frown.

‘Everything!' Ellie condemned unevenly. ‘You were thinking of what suited
you
…you certainly weren't thinking about my wellbeing! Do you honestly think I'm stupid, Dio? How could I possibly trust you? If I'm pregnant, your solution will be a discreet termination…exactly what my loving father planned for
me
!'

His hard, bronzed features froze. As a ragged sob broke from Ellie's throat, her vision of him mercifully blurred and she twisted away. With a stifled expletive in his own language, Dio closed his arms round her. She made a frantic effort to pull free, but he was so much stronger she might as well have been trying to break through solid steel bars.

Ellie finally subsided against him, weak as water after that outburst which had come from the very depths of her. Crushed against his chest, she listened to the solid, reassuring thump of his heart and drank in the achingly familiar scent of him. She shut her eyes tight and wished the world could stop for ever at that moment.

‘I can promise you that I will not suggest
that
as a remedy,' Dio breathed, his Greek accent very thick.

The tight knot of fear inside her began to uncoil. ‘I just don't want that pressure put on me…it's not fair,' she muttered shakily.

‘At least your mother withstood that pressure—'

A humourless laugh was dredged from Ellie. ‘Only because she was terrified of what the procedure might involve.' She snatched in a jagged breath. ‘She didn't even
see
that my father just didn't want me to be born. He told her that he couldn't bear the thought of her having to live as an unmarried mother and she believed him.'

‘You never did tell me the rest of that story.'

‘There was no happy ending.'

‘So?' Dio challenged, his deep-pitched drawl reverberating through his chest, making her quiver in reaction.

Ellie lifted her head and looked up at him. It was a long way up, but those stunning black eyes of his could have gripped and held her at a hundred yards. She fought to concentrate. ‘Mum was his mistress for sixteen years…'