Greek Bachelors: The Ultimate Seduction: The Petrakos Bride / One Night...Nine-Month Scandal / One Night to Risk it All

Maddie went red, because she knew she wasn’t practising what she had preached to Giannis or herself. She shouldn’t have asked; where Giannis was and what he might be doing was nothing to do with her any more. At her urging, Nemos took the hamper away again.

She slept badly that night, and woke up at dawn. The smell of someone frying food had drifted into her room and curdled her tummy. Her period was due today, and she was desperate to have her fears set to rest. Might stress and a guilty conscience have made her imagine that she felt dizzy and sick? She was pleased when the agency phoned and told her that she would be temping for the week in a big insurance company. And then her neighbour, Mrs Evans’s daughter, asked if Maddie could spend a couple of hours with her mother while she went out. Glad of a distraction from her worries, Maddie went downstairs to sit with the old lady.

Mrs Evans enjoyed the benefit of cable television, and told Maddie to pick a programme from a multitude of channels. Skimming through the many options in the magazine she had been handed, Maddie stiffened in surprise when she saw a photo of Giannis above a few lines about a documentary on his love-life. The programme had already started, but she put it on in time to see an incredibly beautiful blonde girl stepping on board a giant white yacht. From that moment Maddie was hooked, and yet nothing had ever hurt her more than watching that programme.

She made tea for Mrs Evans at a run during the commercial break, so that she didn’t miss anything. She was so ashamed of her painful curiosity to know who Krista was, and what she found out only wounded her more.

Set next to Krista Spyridou, with her platinum hair and supermodel looks and gloss, Maddie could only see herself as a plain Jane with a weight problem. She marvelled that the exquisite Krista was not enough to satisfy Giannis. Was he just a rat in the fidelity stakes? Perpetually addicted to the novelty of fresh faces? It was no consolation to see innumerable shots of him with an endless procession of gorgeous high-profile women. But as Maddie watched, learning that Giannis had known Krista since childhood and seeing pictures of them together overlaid with a commentary about how much the couple shared, her heart twisted inside her. They did look like a perfectly matched couple. Both of them were Greek, beautiful, rich, sophisticated and fashionable. Maddie knew that she was none of those things, and she wondered how she had contrived to tempt Giannis. Although it hurt her to acknowledge it, she also accepted that Giannis had to genuinely care about Krista. Why else would a guy with so much choice and so much experience have decided to marry her?

As soon as Maddie had finished work the following day, she went straight to a pharmacy and bought a pregnancy testing kit. Her nerves worn thin, she sat in her bedsit and read the instructions over and over until she knew them by heart. When she could no longer put off the moment of truth, she did the test and the result came through very quickly.

She was going to have a baby.

Right on cue she felt light-headed again. She was in shock. In spite of Giannis’s immovable belief that there would be no repercussions from the condom accident, she was pregnant. Yet he had almost managed to convince her that she was worrying needlessly. Had that been his wishful thinking? A sob convulsed her throat. Suddenly she felt very young and very scared. She had managed to do everything wrong. She had conceived during a casual sexual encounter. Giannis Petrakos cared nothing for her and would certainly not want her to have his baby. Nor, quite naturally, would Krista Spyridou. What would such news do to Giannis’s intended bride?

Maddie wept long and hard with guilt and unhappiness. She knew how gutted she would feel if the man she was about to marry got another woman pregnant. Krista, who was innocent of all blame, would be hurt and humiliated. It might also be a very public humiliation, Maddie conceded sickly. Until she had glimpsed the Petrakos lifestyle on television she had really not appreciated just how newsworthy and wealthy Giannis was. If the press were to discover that he had fathered a child by a lowly office temp, the story would almost certainly be front-page news. And what role would be assigned to Maddie in such an unlikely triangle? Most probably that of gold-digging tramp, she reckoned painfully. For she was not a beautiful pedigreed golden girl like his photogenic bride-to-be.

And what good would such a scandal do any one of them? Particularly her poor child, who would have to look back on it all some day in the future? When the contraception had failed Giannis had compared the risk of pregnancy to a disaster. And, unless she was very much mistaken, he had made no further reference to that possibility precisely because it was his worst-case scenario come true. In all likelihood he would hope that Maddie would agree to a termination—but she was not prepared to consider that option.

A wave of bitter pain and regret scythed through Maddie. Was it really her duty to pin a chance pregnancy on a man who didn’t want to know? A man planning to marry the gorgeous Krista Spyridou? Hadn’t Giannis Petrakos trampled enough on her pride? Did she really have to lower herself to that extent?

So tired that she felt as though she was sleepwalking, Maddie went back into work at the insurance company again the next day. She got wet walking from the bus stop, and shivered in her damp skirt and shoes while she sorted through ancient dusty filing cabinets in a cold, grim basement room. Every few minutes she would remember afresh that she was pregnant, and she would start fretting again.

How would she live? She barely earned enough to feed herself as it was. Babies needed a lot of equipment and clothing. Childcare was very expensive. How would she hold down a job? And if she couldn’t manage to stay in employment the baby would not have much of a future to look forward to because they would be living on the poverty line.

Mid-morning, she was called to an office on the ground floor and asked to wait there by a senior manager, who seemed rather nervous and uncomfortable. While she was worried that she had done something wrong, she was grateful to have the chance to sit down in comparative warmth and comfort.

When the door opened, she rose to her feet in an uncertain motion. An almost inaudible gasp parted her lips when Giannis appeared.

‘What are you doing here?’ Maddie shook her bright head in disbelief.

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_35e6afd3-288b-53fc-be52-658c24f1c506)

GIANNIS ran brilliant dark golden eyes over Maddie’s pale, shaken face. He was disconcerted by the change in her. She had bluish-grey shadows below her eyes, and the triangular fragility of her face had taken on a pinched quality that suggested she had lost weight in only the few days since he’d last seen her. His black brows drew together in a frown.

‘You look terrible.’

Pained colour seared her cheeks. No, she had no inner glow like his very beautiful fiancée—no glistening straight blonde hair, no thinner-than-thin perfect body to offer. Of course he must have seen Krista again while he was in Greece. Of course he was now comparing her to Krista, possibly without even knowing he was doing it. Her already laden conscience urged her to stifle such inappropriate thoughts. She was jealous, downright horribly jealous, of a woman she had wronged! The shame of that awareness cut through her, and she hated Giannis for bringing her down to such a level.

‘Are you ill?’ Giannis demanded.

‘No, of course I’m not!’ Maddie spun away, turning her back on him while she struggled to rescue her composure.

In her mind’s eye she could still see him, and her heart was racing and pounding as if she had run up a hill. One glimpse of his lean, darkly handsome face, one scorching encounter with his gilded bronze eyes, and she wanted to throw herself at him. For a split second, a wicked moment in time, it didn’t matter what he had done. She just wanted to forgive him so that she could be with him again. The coiled knot of heat in her pelvis was radiating a wanton physical awareness that shook her. Her breasts were heavy, the rosy tips swollen.

Affronted by her weakness, she forced herself to concentrate, and turned back to him. ‘What are you doing here? How did you manage to walk into this office?’ she asked in an accusing rush. ‘How did you even know where I was?’

‘I own this company.’ Giannis spread long brown fingers in a stylish gesture of dismissal. ‘I wanted a meeting, and it was arranged with discretion.’

‘You actually own this business?’ Maddie prompted, half an octave higher. ‘Is that why I was offered the chance to work here this week?’

‘If you must work—and I would prefer that you did not,’ Giannis murmured with silken stress, ‘why not work for me?’

‘Why? Does it give you a kick, pushing people around? Like I’m some piece on a chessboard and this is a game?’

His keen gaze narrowed and glittered. ‘I want you back, pedhi mou. I very much regret the distress I have caused. This is definitely not a game for either of us.’

‘And would you still feel the same way if I was pregnant?’ Maddie heard herself throwing that provocative challenge, and was startled by her daring. She was toying with the truth that she was not yet ready to voice, testing the water. But the instant she finished speaking she realised that now she would have to tell him she had conceived.

The answering silence yawned like a frightening abyss. Her fingers clenched into her palms and etched little purple crescents. She wanted—no, needed a positive response. All her hopes were laid out in a pathetic line in front of her, vulnerable and defenceless.

His lean, strong face had shuttered. His beautiful smart dark eyes, semi-screened by his dense black lashes, narrowed to grim points of light. ‘Are you pregnant?’

That single demand came with the telling speed and precision of a bullet to the heart. The chill factor in the air turned her to pure ice, and pain threatened to crack her down the middle. ‘No,’ she heard herself say cheerfully, hiding her true feelings behind all the pride she could muster.

Only ferocious self-discipline prevented Giannis from swearing out loud. What a question to throw at him! His perfect white teeth were gritted. The fall-out from such a development would rock the foundations of his world. Why the hell had she asked him that? What a stupid, tasteless question! As if a pregnancy could be anything other than a major catastrophe that would require handling. Babies and mistresses didn’t go together.

Maddie hated him at that moment. She wanted to wrap her arms protectively round her still-flat stomach. She wanted to shout that her baby would do just fine with her, and would never, ever need a selfish and heartless rat like him as an uninterested father. Instead she said flatly, ‘I’d like to go back to work. Please don’t approach me again.’

‘How long are you planning to keep this up?’ Giannis growled with furious impatience and growing frustration. Once again she was behaving differently from all the other women who had preceded her. ‘I won’t be back in London for at least two weeks.’

A humourless little laugh escaped Maddie. ‘Why are you telling me that? Didn’t you hear me? I’m asking you to leave me alone.’

Before she would work out his intention, Giannis strode forward, closed his hands over hers and claimed her luscious mouth with a devouring, driving heat that left her giddy and breathless. ‘Let’s not talk,’ he breathed in a heartfelt plea. ‘Let’s go back to my apartment.’

Maddie peeled herself off him again. It was quite an operation: she was leaning into him, with her fingers clenched on his shoulder, her other hand splayed across his shirt-front, her palm warmed by his body heat and the steady thump of his heartbeat. Another few seconds and she knew she would have been inside his jacket with him. No wonder he was inviting her back to his apartment. She was a slut—a total slut, she told herself in disgust. That one passionate kiss had set up a chain reaction of craving that made her entire body melt and quiver.

‘No. I—’

Giannis curved long fingers round her wrist to halt her steady retreat towards the door. ‘What do you want me to do? Beg?’ he ground out.

With a mighty effort of will, Maddie yanked her fingers free and stepped back from him. ‘You’re engaged—’

‘That’s business…You’re very much in the pleasure category,’ Giannis murmured in a roughened undertone.

Her green eyes glinted pure emerald, and defiance was written in every rigid line of her shapely figure and stance. ‘But I don’t want to be with you now. You’re wrong for me.’

‘There aren’t many old-style heroes out there.’ His golden eyes challenged her.

Maddie was trembling. ‘Perhaps not…but I’m sure there are a few decent, trustworthy guys left. Maybe even one with principles, who doesn’t think his money entitles him to do as he likes. Some day I’ll meet someone I can respect—and, believe me, he’s not you!’

His face saturnine in cast, Giannis had fallen very still, for he was not accustomed to being insulted. A forbidding light had entered his piercing dark eyes. ‘Regardless of what it takes, you will learn to respect me. I can wait. I will be patient. In the end I always get what I want.’

‘But I won’t ever be with you again,’ Maddie vowed vehemently. ‘Now I’m going back to work.’

She returned to the filing room in the basement. For several minutes she stared into space and tried to still the inner trembling affecting her. She felt cold inside and out, and utterly bereft. Hating him and wanting him was threatening to tear her apart. But now there was a kernel of fear edging her responses. For how long would she be able to withstand the dangerous combination of his strength and determination pitted against her own longing?

Sensible people moved on from mistakes, and perhaps she needed to move on in a literal sense, she reasoned feverishly. She had no ties in London, and it was a very expensive place to live. If she moved away now she would be able to make a fresh start well in advance of her baby’s birth. If Giannis did not know where she was he would have to leave her alone, and she would not be tempted back into a relationship that would destroy her. While she might have little money in her bank account, she did have a post office savings nest-egg which contained the fifteen hundred pounds that her grandmother had left her. It would cover the expense of any move.