The Balfour Legacy. Кэрол Мортимер

look like a long sleek golden cat lying there.’ He smiled at her.

      Her heart tippled over, then gave a soft squeeze because he was not being cold with her, and the way he had not been looking at her while he talked had made her expect his cool detachment.

      ‘My hair is black,’ she pointed out.

      ‘I wasn’t referring to your hair, agape mou.’

      Mia did not know she could blush all the way from her toes, but that was what she did. Nikos saw it and laughed as he strode across the room to the bed. He leant over her, smelling clean of soap and Nikos, and his slow intimate kiss tasted of mint.

      ‘No,’ he husked when she reached for him as he went to straighten again. ‘We haven’t got time for what you want us to do, little cat.’ Bending down he picked up her dress and dropped it on her. ‘You have an hour to get ready before we have to leave.’

      Ignoring her disappointed pout he strode back to the wardrobes to select the pants to a navy suit. As he drew them up his legs and Mia sat up with all the reluctance of someone who did not want to go anywhere, he murmured, ‘And you will need to give me your birth certificate. Do you have it with you here?’

      ‘Yes, with my passport, but—’ she frowned ‘—I don’t understand why you need it.’

      ‘Marriage licence,’ he responded as cool as anything. ‘We will be married in Athens next week. Petros is already seeing to the arrangements.’

      Chapter Ten

      ‘DON’T sulk,’ her tormentor chided coolly.

      Mia unclenched her tightly clenched teeth. ‘I have told you before, I do not sulk,’ she denied stiffly.

      ‘Then look at me.’

      Twisting her face around, Mia did as he commanded, only to feel the unwanted pull of his sexual magnetism descend on her like a stifling hot weight. He was just so—bello, she thought helplessly, his luxurious black hair, his liquid dark eyes, his firm sensually moulded mouth. The barely leashed power of his fiercely masculine physique clothed in a sense-stirringly casual iron-grey silk lounge suit and gorgeously body-moulding black T-shirt.

      How was she supposed to continue to fight with him when even his long lounging posture in the plush leather limo seat next to her wound up her sexual cravings for him to the extent she hardly dare breathe in case she gave herself away.

      ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I am looking. Say what it is you want to say so I can look away again.’

      His sensual mouth moved to a slow mocking tilt. ‘Why, when you love looking at me?’

      The pounding throb of her stubborn refusal to take up that goading remark sparked from her blue eyes like electricity. She’d maintained the same stance since they left London. Now they were driving across Athens on their way to dinner at some fancy restaurant when she would much rather have locked herself away in her bedroom.

      Only Nikos’s Athens apartment had no locks on the bedroom doors, did it? Mia thought as she seethed.

      They’d maintained an armed truce while they’d dressed to go out again—she shut away in her allotted bedroom, Nikos shut away in his. And that arrangement in itself made a complete laughing mockery of what it was they were warring about.

      The marriage thing, being the bone of contention. He refused to take no for an answer and she refused to say yes.

      ‘Will you just explain to me why you are being so stubborn about this,’ he demanded heavily.

      Mia had at least a dozen reasons why, but the only one she was prepared to give him right now needed just two words. ‘Lois Mansell,’ she said, and waited for him to squirm.

      But he did not squirm. He did not do anything other than to sustain steady eye contact with her like a smooth rat caught in a trap who arrogantly did not believe he had anything to squirm about!

      ‘Lois has nothing to do with us,’ he dismissed that line of argument.

      ‘The newspapers told it differently.’

      ‘You know all about newspapers, cara. They lie—or at the very least they tamper with the truth.’

      ‘You left that nightclub with her clinging to you like a limpet.’ Mia was unimpressed by his line of defence.

      ‘I delivered her home. I did not sleep with her.’

      ‘The way I see it, Nikos, you don’t sleep with any of your women.’

      As a stab at their current sleeping arrangements Mia knew she’d hit her mark when his dark eyes shuttered and his mouth went tight.

      ‘No response?’ she sniped at him. ‘No smart comeback aimed to put me in my place?’

      ‘No,’ he murmured, looking away from her altogether.

      ‘Well, there you are, then.’ She looked away too. ‘You and I do not have the same view as to what marriage is supposed to be about.’

      ‘You’re pregnant with my child,’ he clipped out. ‘Such an event does not require mutual insight, it requires damage control.’

      ‘Damage control—?’ So hurt by that comment, she could not hold in her choked gasp. ‘And you wonder why I won’t say yes to you when you can come out with a cold statement like that?’

      ‘I’m trying to be practical—’

      ‘As you have been with our sleeping arrangements?’ She could not resist saying it, then yanked in a tight breath. ‘You get me pregnant. You expect me to marry you. But you don’t want to sleep in the same bed as me,’ she shook out. ‘I suppose you will also expect to continue to live your life as you have always done while I sit at home alone getting fat!’

      ‘So what do you want?’ he angled back at her.

      A man who wants to marry me because he cannot live without me! Mia screamed inside her head. ‘Not a man who thinks of marriage as damage control,’ she muttered. ‘I would rather return to Italy and bring my child up alone than throw my life away on a man like that.’

      ‘Our child,’ he gritted out. ‘And you are going nowhere with or without the marriage. I will bring up my own child, Mia,’ he stated very grimly. ‘I will not let your silly stubborn truculence push me out of the frame over some—crazy issues you have about the quality of my commitment.’

      The problem was there was no quality about it! Hurt tears clogged her throat. ‘Can we go back?’ she husked. ‘I don’t think I can eat anything.’

      His growling sigh was driven. ‘You are such damn high maintenance—!’ he raked out.

      Mia widened her blue eyes in simmering astonishment. ‘I don’t believe that you dared to say that!’ she choked. ‘I have cost you nothing! Not even the price of accommodation since the flat I used in London was yours anyway and was already standing vacant!’

      ‘I did not mean—’

      ‘Shut up!’ she heaved out. ‘You know what you are, Nikos?’ she hit back at him shakily. ‘You are an arrogant, selfish—cheapskate!’ Almost tumbling over the word because she was not certain she had said it correctly, she knew she’d hit the word exactly right when he tensed like a board and pushed up his aggressive chin.

      ‘So I f-fancied you—big deal,’ she railed on an angry high now. ‘So you condescended to take what I was putting on offer—Great, thank you, grazie tanto, amore mia—not! For what did it cost you? A reasonably priced dinner and a few hours of listening to me bore you to death, followed by a posh party and a swift bit of pleasure in your bed before you turned on me like an ice man and threw me out! If that makes me high maintenance, then may God forgive you for what you usually shower on to your women! No wonder they say beware of Greeks bearing gifts!’

      ‘Have