The Pregnant Mistress. Sandra Marton

her.

      “Have you heard a thing I said?”

      His faint accent, so softly sexy a little while ago, had thickened. Sam blew her hair back from her forehead.

      “This is all your fault. If you were any kind of gentleman—”

      “Ah. I see. You wish to pretend you had no part in this.”

      “I’m not the one who dragged me into this—this barn.”

      “One,” he said coldly, “it is a stable. Two, if I were not a gentleman, there might be some debate as to who dragged who.”

      “Whom,” Sam snapped.

      “Three,” Demetrios said, his voice cutting across hers, “we are only here because you refused to go into the house.”

      “Yes. Yes, I did. I, at least, have some sense of propriety.”

      “That is surely the reason you climbed all over me at the gazebo.”

      He wasn’t just arrogant, he was insufferable. Sam thought about slapping him but really, he wasn’t worth the effort. Exhaustion, she thought furiously, as she pushed past him and headed for the stable door. It was all a case of exhaustion.

      “You have my jacket,” he said sharply. “Or are you in the habit of taking souvenirs?”

      She swung towards him and flung a string of curses she’d just learned in Egypt in his face. Demetrios glowered; a horse in a nearby stall gave a soft whinny and looked on with interest.

      “What did you say?”

      “I said,” Sam replied, smiling brightly, “that I hoped your descendents would all be carrion-eating jackals, and that you’d lose all your teeth and go bald by the time you’re thirty-five. Good night. I’d say it’s been a pleasure, but it hasn’t.”

      “You’re right. It hasn’t.”

      “As for your precious jacket…” She shrugged the item in question from her shoulders and held it out in a two-fingered grasp. Demetrios looked from her face to the jacket to the horse in its stall…

      “No,” he said, but it was too late. The jacket dropped. The horse snorted. And the woman he’d been fool enough to have thought he wanted strode towards the door.

      “Good night,” Sam said pleasantly, and batted the door open with her hand.

      A single, harsh word floated out into the night. It was Greek, but she didn’t have to be a genius to figure out what it meant. Sam dusted her hands off as she strode towards the house. The jacket had, undoubtedly, found its hoped-for target, something that was the inevitable product of horses and stables.

      There was justice in this world after all.

      Demetrios glared at the closed door. Then, teeth clenched, he leaned into the stall and carefully retrieved his jacket. He carried it as the woman had, by two fingers, until he reached the door where he dropped it into a trash container.

      He had never learned her name, but it wasn’t necessary. As far as he was concerned, it might as well be Circe. She was a sorceress. A tease. Hell, she was a bitch…And yet, as he stepped out into the warm night and thought of the curses she’d uttered, his lips began to twitch.

      Descendents that were jackals were bad enough, but that he should be toothless and bald in another two years? He began to chuckle, and then to laugh out loud. She was not the first woman to have cursed him, though it had always been because he was the one heading for the door. Certainly, none had ever done it so creatively.

      As for Nick and Rafe…Demetrios sighed. He was going to have to come up with some kind of explanation. He was sure they’d be waiting for him. They’d want details, the name of the woman, why he’d taken her to the stables instead of to his bedroom…

      Why he’d had to dump his jacket in the trash.

      Well, they were in for a disappointment. He wasn’t going to tell them much of anything. The assignation—the almost assignation—had begun as passion and ended as farce, but he had no wish to share it, not even for the good-natured laughter it would surely bring. It had been far too private.

      As for Circe…whoever she was, she was quite a woman.

      Whistling softly, even smiling—which, he had to admit, was an odd thing to do, considering the less than satisfactory end to what had begun as a fascinating evening—Demetrios tucked his hands into his pockets and strolled towards the house.