Greek Bachelors: The Ultimate Seduction. Sarah Morgan

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.

      That evening, Maddie began going through her things and sorting out what could be recycled through a charity shop and what should have been dumped long ago. Travelling light would make relocating less of a challenge.

      And would you still feel the same way if I was pregnant?

      The ultimate high jump, Giannis conceded in vexation, an austere cast to his wide handsome mouth. It had been a test, however, and he had failed it. Until he had met Madeleine Conway, Giannis had believed that a luxurious lifestyle and extravagant gifts were sufficient to tempt any woman into pleasing him. But Maddie was complex, challenging, and yet in many ways more basic. What did Stone Age Woman want from Stone Age Man? Giannis asked himself grimly. Stone Age Woman expected her guy to supply protection, food and shelter. In much the same way, Maddie wanted a guy she could depend on to look after her in all circumstances. So she had thrown the pregnancy loop and he had bombed. Why? Like most very rich men, he was accustomed to dealing with avaricious scheming women and ceding nothing, calling in his lawyers to clean up and ensure that the press never got wind of it.

      Maddie, however, had been asking a simple question to establish the level of his commitment to her. What if? And, cynical, guarded and astute as he was, he had been too clever for his own good. She had expected an honest response, but he could not recall when he had ever answered a leading question from a woman with simple candour. He avoided relationship discussions. He dumped women prone to striking up such conversations. But Maddie occupied a class of her own, and she required more painstaking management and support. She had needed to hear that, whatever happened, he would take care of her. Regrettably, she had given him insufficient time to work out the reality that only forthright sincerity would win him a hearing.

      ‘Mr Petrakos…?’ one of the Greek board members murmured. For the silence had lasted and lasted, and everyone round the massive table was getting very nervous.

      Giannis shot him a chilling glance. ‘Don’t interrupt me. I’m thinking.’

      What the hell had Maddie been playing at? Giannis wondered in seething frustration. Where did she get the nerve to tell him that he was not decent, honourable or worthy of respect? Surely only the most severe distress could have provoked her into such base accusations? She should have had the sense to appreciate that a guy with as much money as he had could not possibly afford to ignore or deny the potential time-bomb that would arise from the existence of an illegitimate child. Just because he had never felt any great need to reproduce it did not mean he did not know what was right and proper, either. Some day, after all, he might have children with Krista.

      Without warning he was assailed by the image of a spoilt, imperious little girl with a bored, petulant expression, who only cracked a smile when she looked in the mirror. It was closely followed by an equally daunting image of an ignorant, idle son with the same sulky vacant look that Krista wore when the conversation went above her head. If her genes triumphed, what would happen to the Petrakos power-base in the next generation? Giannis was unable to repress a shudder. At that precise moment he knew that he would not marry Krista. He could not work out how he had ever believed that he could.

      Forty-eight hours later, Giannis flew out to Paris to break off his engagement. Since their betrothal Krista had been using all his properties, and was currently staying in his townhouse there while she visited friends. He did not give advance warning of his arrival, and when he strode into the hall Krista was screaming like a virago at a cowering maid.

      ‘Giannis…’ Tiny spots of colour adorning her perfect cheekbones, Krista dismissed the tear-stained member of staff with an imperious wave and turned