Rags To Riches: Hired For His Satisfaction: A Ring to Secure His Heir / Nanny for the Millionaire's Twins / The Ties that Bind

‘Sorry to dump it on you like that but, although I was taking the contraceptive pill as I told you, I had a stomach upset that same week and my doctor thinks that the sickness probably wrecked the level of my protection,’ she extended in a jerky rush.

Alexius continued to study her much as though she had landed in a parachute in front of him without warning. He had lost colour beneath his bronzed complexion and he was very tense, his brilliant eyes veiled, his hard jaw line clearly delineated. ‘You’re pregnant? Are you sure?’

‘Of course, I’m sure. Tests can tell very early these days,’ she muttered uneasily.

‘And you’re sure it’s mine?’

‘You know there wasn’t anyone else before you and I can assure you that there’s not been anyone else since,’ Rosie proclaimed curtly, resenting that he had asked that question even if logic suggested he had the right to ask it. ‘It’s your baby.’

A baby. The very concept of a baby blitzed Alexius’s brain. Adrenalin pounded through him, powering aggression that had no hope of escape because with her words she had fulfilled his worst fear. She had trapped him as he had always sworn he would never be trapped. He had friends who had put themselves in the same position and it hadn’t worked out happily for any of them. All his adult life he had been careful not to take that risk and yet with her, for no more reason than the fact that his jacket was lying halfway across the room, he had had sex without adequate precautions. As the more experienced partner, he could only blame himself for accepting that threat of consequences without real thought of what it might mean if things went wrong. And they had gone wrong, horribly wrong, he registered harshly.

‘You’re shocked,’ Rosie breathed, stiff with discomfiture at the acknowledgement. ‘I was shocked too but I’m afraid I don’t want a termination—’

‘I wouldn’t ask you to have one,’ Alexius cut in smoothly. ‘We’re adults. We will deal with this.’

‘Babies aren’t so easy to deal with,’ Rosie remarked helplessly, thinking of the heavy round-the-clock demands of the babies she had come across in the foster-care system. A baby was almost a full-time job, she thought fearfully. It couldn’t be left alone for a minute. It needed constant care and might not even sleep through the night. The birth of a baby would blow her life apart and wreck all her plans for the future.

‘I could have done without this right now,’ Rosie added ruefully. ‘I have my exams to sit in two weeks. I’m in the middle of my revision and now I can’t concentrate—’

‘You’re studying for exams?’ Alexius emerged from his black cloud of foreboding to enquire.

‘Yes, I want to go to university in the autumn.’

Alexius thought about the giant holes in the investigation Socrates had had done on her. Just as the photo had not shown her beauty, the basic facts, right down to her current address, had been outrageously inaccurate. She was not content simply to clean offices for the rest of her life; clearly, she had drive and ambition and had he asked a few more personal questions he might have discovered that for himself. But in the long run, who she was, what she was, no longer mattered in the face of the fact that she had conceived his child. Socrates deserved better than that embarrassment at his hands. He dragged in a shuddering breath and braced himself to make the ultimate sacrifice of freedom and self-will. ‘I’ll marry you …’

Rosie laughed and frowned simultaneously as though he had cracked a rather off-colour joke. ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said, staggered by the suggestion.

Alexius gritted his teeth because marriage was the only acceptable solution he could see to the problem, loathe that reality though he did. ‘I’m serious. I’ll marry you. It will give the baby my name and I will support you so that you do not suffer in any way.’

Belatedly appreciating that he was completely serious in his offer, Rosie stared at him wide-eyed. ‘You would do that? You would actually marry me?’ she pressed in helpless fascination.

‘It is what I should do for your sake … and the child’s.’ Cool silvery-grey eyes enhanced by startlingly black lashes met hers unflinchingly. ‘I cannot leave you to raise my child alone.’

‘You’re worried about what my grandfather might think,’ Rosie assumed. ‘But people don’t get married now just because there’s a baby on the way.’

‘It’s still the right thing to do,’ Alexius responded flatly. ‘The most practical approach.’

‘I disagree. You don’t want to marry me, Alex. I wouldn’t marry you on that basis. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us,’ Rosie countered quietly. ‘But I suppose I should thank you for asking—it was a nice thought.’

Alexius stared back at her in stunned silence, unable to believe that she was actually turning him down and with the barest minimum of deliberation. ‘A “nice thought”?’

‘You taking the old-fashioned approach even though it’s not what you personally want,’ Rosie extended in rueful clarification of her thoughts. ‘No, you’re quite safe on that score. I don’t want to marry you either. Please be honest with me—’

Alexius compressed his handsome mouth hard. ‘I am being honest, Rosie—’

‘Alex, you don’t want me as a wife and you don’t want to be a father either. I can feel that reluctance in you,’ Rosie muttered with emphasis, her wide green eyes troubled but open. ‘You don’t need to pretend otherwise with me. I’m just as shocked as you are about the baby but we don’t have to get married to do the right thing.’

‘Your grandfather will very much disagree with you.’

‘Well, should I ever meet him, we’ll have to agree to differ. I don’t want a reluctant husband or an unwilling father for my child and that’s sensible, not silly,’ Rosie pointed out with conviction. ‘For a start I couldn’t fit into your world. Your friends would laugh at me. I’d embarrass you. I’m a cleaner, for goodness’ sake!’

‘Nobody would laugh at you while I was around,’ Alexius ground out forcefully, his accent thickening his vowel sounds to send a quiver of awareness running down her spine. ‘I would make a real effort to be a good husband and father—’

‘But you don’t love me … and to have you trying all the time would be very hard on my self-esteem,’ Rosie protested.

Alexius threw her a derisive look that stung. ‘Love is lust, nothing more, and I can assure you that in that department I’m unlikely to disappoint you.’

Confronted by that amount of cynicism, Rosie was more than ever convinced that she was making the wisest decision. ‘I don’t agree that all love between men and women is lust and if I ever marry, I want love.’

His strong jaw line hardened. ‘I can’t give that to you.’

‘And that’s fine since I’m not going to marry you,’ Rosie replied, stifling the wounded feeling that he could be so very certain that she could never inspire such finer feelings in him and then angry with herself for even thinking that way. ‘Maybe you should concentrate your “trying” on trying to love our child when it’s born.’

A thunderous aspect had clenched his strong features and his eyes were bright as diamonds in a dark night sky. ‘You’re being foolish, Rosie.’

Rosie folded her arms. ‘I’m the best judge of that.’

‘To turn down my offer of marriage without even properly considering it is stupid,’ Alexius informed her harshly.

‘We had a one-night stand, not a relationship!’ Rosie slung back at him hotly, temper surging up through her like lava breaking through rocks to the surface. ‘You don’t know me, you don’t know or care what I need or want and you walked away after that night, making it quite clear that you didn’t even want to see me again!’

A very faint line of colour delineated the high arc of his exotic cheekbones. ‘But I knew I would see you again when I took you to Greece to meet your grandfather,’ he reminded her crisply.

‘I don’t know if I’ll ever agree to that. Right now with the baby I’ve got enough to be getting on with in my life,’ Rosie admitted, tight-mouthed.

Alexius stared at her. The luscious pink mouth that had melted beneath his had now compressed into a tough little line of obstinacy. Frustration leapt through every line of his body. He wasn’t used to defiance or opposition. He wanted to bundle her up and stuff her on a plane, regardless of how she felt about it, because he knew that in this instance he knew best. ‘Are you planning to continue cleaning every night while you’re pregnant?’ he asked with unconcealed scorn.

Her face burned below that derisive appraisal. ‘What do you think?’

‘That you need my support right now so that you can stop working … and concentrate on your exams instead,’ he added reflectively, happier to picture her with books rather than a giant floor polisher almost too heavy for her to lift. ‘You can hardly need to be told that the sort of work you’re doing at present is too strenuous for a woman in your condition.’

Rosie had paled. ‘That’s nonsense. I’m managing fine—’

‘You fainted,’ Alexius reminded her stubbornly. ‘How is that fine?’

Her fingernails bit into her palms as she clenched her hands tight on the wave of antipathy gripping her, which rose higher every time he spoke. ‘Do you want to know why I fainted? I’m getting morning sickness and I can’t face eating first thing so trekking over here on a nerve-racking trip to confront you was a major strain on an empty stomach. I got light-headed, that was all.’

‘And if you get light-headed on a set of stairs, you will very probably fall and get injured. Am I supposed to accept that and just let you get on with it?’ Alexius blasted back at her. ‘What sort of man would simply accept that state of affairs without interfering?’

‘The same man who had sex with me and walked out in the middle of the night without a word of explanation,’

Rosie supplied without hesitation. ‘Let’s not pretend that you are Mr Sensitive, Mr Caring, because you’re not.’

That condemnation still ringing in his ears, Alexius snatched up the apartment phone to communicate with his housekeeper and order breakfast for his disruptive guest. He was in a rage, a rage such as he had not felt since his teenaged years of hormonal turmoil. He was getting nowhere with her. She didn’t listen. She had no respect. She had not even agreed to meet Socrates yet. The temper he always contained was like a wildfire seething inside him, struggling to escape the bonds of his rigid self-discipline.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Rosie demanded unevenly, suddenly breathless at the effect of those stunning liquid mercury eyes beating down on her. ‘I can look after myself, Alex. You don’t need to worry about me.’

‘You can look after yourself so well that you let me into your bed the first night!’ Alexius hurled back at her in a lion’s roar of intimidation.