The Stephanides Pregnancy

Colliding unwarily with scorching golden eyes, she felt dizzy but the invisible buzz in the air was wickedly exhilarating. Her skin felt prickly, hot, tight. Her breasts felt full, the pointed tips taut and tender. At the heart of her, she felt…She burned with shame when she realised that just being around Cristos Stephanides excited her in a physical way. That had never happened to her before, not even with Rory. Tearing her troubled gaze from Cristos, she became a hive of cooking activity to give her thoughts a safer focus.

‘How much food is there?’ she asked, refusing to look in his direction lest that indecent sexual longing seize hold of her again and he somehow divine how she was reacting to him.

‘Plenty…’

He watched while she made a stir-fry with staggering speed and efficiency. He was as impressed as a guy who had never even boiled a kettle for himself could be.

‘How do you think they transported us here?’ Betsy enquired when she sat down at the table to eat.

‘My bet is that we were smuggled out as cargo from a private airfield and then brought the last stage of the journey by boat. An odd way to travel home,’ Cristos quipped.

‘Home?’

‘This is a Greek island.’

‘You can’t know that for sure.’

Burnished golden eyes sought and challenged hers. ‘I know. I am Greek and the very air here smells of my homeland.’

Betsy said nothing and ate her meal. He was the sort of guy who always set her back up. He was so full of himself, so arrogant. He knew everything. He even knew things he couldn’t possibly know. Rising from the table, she said stiffly, ‘I’m going to bed.’

‘You should make the most of your rest,’ Cristos murmured equably. ‘We’ll be up at dawn. We need to gather enough wood to light a bonfire and keep it burning. If the smoke is noticed hopefully someone will come to investigate.’

It was a good idea but she didn’t say so because she had decided that he was already well aware of how clever he was. She slid into the cool of the bed, let her weary limbs sink into the comfortable mattress. Somewhere between closing her eyes and stretching out she fell asleep.

A dark male drawl that was already becoming familiar wakened Betsy again. She was deliciously warm and relaxed. ‘We should get up…’

Her lashes lifted and she focused with drowsy admiration on the darkly handsome male face above hers. His black lashes were impossibly long and lush, unnecessary enhancements to eyes of lustrous gold. He was breathtakingly good-looking and devastatingly masculine, two traits that even she recognised were rarely found in one package.

‘I want you to know this is a first,’ Cristos informed her steadily. ‘I’ve never slept with a woman before and not had sex.’

For a split second, Betsy lay there just staring up at him and then the implications of that sardonic assurance of his sank in. Eyes bright with accusation, a feverish flush on her cheeks, she hugged the sheet to her and sat up. ‘You shared this bed with me last night?’

CHAPTER THREE

CRISTOS watched with a maddening air of scientific interest as Betsy lurched out of the bed in comical haste. It shook him that she looked so good first thing in the morning. Coppery red hair flying in tousled waves round her oval face and sheathed only in his crumpled shirt, she was very sexy.

‘You don’t need to act as if you’ve never shared a bed with a man before,’ he said very drily.

‘I haven’t!’ Betsy launched back at him. ‘Nor is it something I can treat like a joke.’

Cristos had never felt less like laughing. ‘Are you saying that you’re…gay?’

Betsy froze and then shook her bright head in wonderment. ‘You really don’t know where I’m coming from, do you?’

Relaxing from his worst-case scenario, Cristos reclined back against the pillows. ‘When you said you’d never shared a bed with a guy, you were obviously exaggerating.’

Betsy folded her arms. Furious as she was with him, she was beginning in a funny way to enjoy herself. ‘And how do you make that out?’

‘I very much doubt that you’re telling me you’re a virgin.’

‘Why?’ Betsy heard herself say defensively. ‘Did you think I would be ashamed of the fact?’

Silence fell, a silence so thick and heavy it screamed at her. Cristos could not conceal his surprise. Her face burned with colour. Wishing she had kept her mouth firmly closed on the subject, she vanished into the bathroom. Why was she embarrassed by what she had just revealed? She had always been shy and Rory had been her only serious boyfriend. Two months after she had begun dating him, he had gone abroad to work for a year. Against the odds they had stayed together, but when Rory had finally returned to London Betsy had been reluctant to rush into intimacy with him. Even though he had asked her to marry him, she had felt that she needed more time to get to know him again and her caution had strained their relationship. Her sister had stepped into that breach.