The Stephanides Pregnancy. Lynne Graham

‘Then join me.’

      Unyielding as a stone pillar, she sank down. He took her taut silence in his stride and filled it with the story of a society wedding he had recently attended at the hotel. He was very amusing. She sat there enthralled, unable to take her eyes from his lean, devastating features. Indeed the excuse to watch him was a conscious pleasure and a release from the deprivation of not being able to look. Everything about him fascinated her.

      She drank her coffee without tasting it. At his request she took her cap off and coloured at the intensity of his scrutiny. She answered his few questions. She was twenty-five, single, had worked at Imperial for three years, had always wanted to work with cars. That he was not that interested in her answers was not something she judged him on for she initially assumed he was merely making polite conversation. Slowly, very slowly, for she had always held a very modest opinion of her own looks, she realised that Cristos Stephanides actually appeared to be attracted to her and was seeking a response.

      At the point where she could no longer mistake his motives and without any hesitation whatsoever, Betsy lifted her cap, replaced it on her head and rose to her feet. ‘I’m your driver,’ she said bluntly. ‘I’m not interested in anything else.’

      In fierce disconcertion at that sudden bold assurance, Cristos sprang upright, brilliant dark eyes cool as black ice. ‘That’s a lie.’

      Mortified colour stained her fair skin at that direct contradiction but Betsy still lifted her chin. ‘I can admire a painting without wanting to buy it—’

      ‘This situation may be unconventional—’

      ‘There isn’t a situation and if there were, it would be tacky.’ Betsy was infuriated by his attempt to excuse his behaviour. ‘This isn’t a social occasion and I wouldn’t risk my job for you. I drive limos for a living and you do whatever you do to afford to hire people like me…and that’s it—’

      ‘I’m not a snob—’

      ‘No?’ A delicate auburn brow rose, questioning that assertion, green eyes scornful and furious. ‘But then you don’t need to be. You weren’t asking me out on a date, were you? The only invite I was going to get was a sleazy sexual one. Well, no, thank you!’

      Cristos wanted to rip the cap off her again and…? His lean brown hands coiled into savage fists. And then do all the sleazy sexual stuff until she was on her knees with gratitude that he had honoured her with his interest. Her attack on him was out of all proportion to anything he had said or done and he was outraged that she had chosen to spring such a scene on him in a public place where he could not freely respond. Across the room, Dolius and his second-in-command were studiously avoiding looking anywhere near him, which told Cristos that they had not missed a single second of the drama. Seething with injured pride and a fierce sense of injustice, Cristos Stephanides watched Betsy Mitchell stalk out of the hotel.

      What a smooth, calculating, utterly ruthless bastard, Betsy thought tempestuously, slamming her way into the driver’s seat of the limo and still shaking with fury. Had he really believed that he could sweet-talk her into going upstairs to a hotel room with him? For when he’d insisted she join him for coffee that had surely been his intent! Did she look stupid enough to make a mistake of that magnitude? Or so cheap and easy he had assumed she would be a pushover? Had he planned to reward her with an extra large tip? Or his magnificent body? When she saw him approaching in the wing mirror, she sat tight.

      Hard jaw line at a stubborn angle, Cristos refused to open the door for himself. He stood there challenging her and, had it been necessary, he would have continued to stand there through thunder, lightning and a force-ten gale to make his point. Clumsy with resentful haste, Betsy finally scrambled out and wrenched open the passenger door for him.

      ‘Thank you,’ Cristos breathed, smooth as glass.

      She did not believe that she had ever hated another human being so much as she did him at that instant. She drove for an hour with a fierce concentration that shut out every thought. The limo left the motorway for quiet country roads and speed was no longer possible. With scant warning a tractor pulled out of a lane. As the slow vehicle forced a passage out in front of the bodyguards’ car Betsy almost smiled at the thought of the annoyance it would cause.

      The partition between driver and passenger buzzed down. ‘For the record,’ Cristos Stephanides breathed with sardonic bite, ‘I’m not into sleazy sex.’

      ‘If you want an argument, come back and see me when I’m no longer working for you and forced to be polite,’ Betsy snapped.

      ‘Back at the hotel…that was you being polite?’ Cristos stressed in a derisive tone of wonderment that made her want to stop the limo, leap into the back seat and beat him up.

      ‘You were out of line,’ Betsy snapped at him furiously. ‘What sort of a guy tries to pull his chauffeur?’

      ‘One who has just become a convert to total snobbery,’ Cristos spelt out with maddening assurance.

      It was at that point that Betsy saw a male figure crouched down by the side of the road just ahead. That was the only warning she had before something that gleamed metallic and grey in the sunlight was thrown at the car. The wheels ran over it. A tyre blew out and then another, sending the powerful vehicle out of her control into a dangerous swerve. The limo hit the ditch with a thunderous jolt that rattled every bone in her body. Almost simultaneously the door beside her was yanked noisily open.

      In disbelief, Betsy saw Joe Tyler peering in at her and momentarily wondered if she was coming round after having been knocked out, for she could not understand how otherwise he could have been there on the spot. ‘Joe…?’ she framed uncertainly, still reeling from the impact of the crash.

      ‘Have a nice sleep, Betsy.’

      Too late she noticed that he had what looked like a gun clutched in his hand. She did not even have time to panic. A tingling pain hit her midriff and she gasped because without warning her limbs seemed to turn to jelly. Joe thrust her aside with no more care than he would have accorded a sack. Just before she passed out she heard him speak again, but what he said made little sense to her.

      ‘Imagine a bloke like you fancying my girlfriend…well, you both deserve a surprise!’

      The black claustrophobic cloud of oblivion rolled in over Betsy and her body slumped down on the seat. Within seconds her passenger was in the same condition.

      CHAPTER TWO

      CRISTOS recovered consciousness first.

      Instantly he came alert and defied any awareness of physical discomfort to spring off the bed on which he had been lying. His keen dark eyes took on a dazed aspect as he struggled to get a handle on his unfamiliar surroundings. He studied the unconscious woman still on the bed with scorching intensity. The ubiquitous cap had gone and straying strands of bright Titian hair feathered her brow. Her skin was white as snow. Like Mary’s little lamb in the nursery rhyme? A harsh laugh escaped Cristos but there was nothing of humour in it.

      What a very dangerous distraction Betsy Mitchell had proved to be! There was nothing more galling to Cristos than the awareness that he had allowed a woman to lead him into a prearranged trap. It was poetic justice however that she had been double crossed by her partners in crime and abandoned to the tender mercies of their victim. No doubt she would learn the hard way that Cristos would choose death over victimhood any day.

      Fierce thirst brought Betsy out of her stupor. Even before she opened her eyes, she knew she felt dreadful. Her limbs felt as heavy as leaden weights. She was also incredibly hot and it was that awareness that first roused her to register that something was wrong. She was wearing clothes and she never lay down fully dressed. In the same moment as she lifted her lashes on an unfamiliar room, she remembered Joe attacking her. She pressed a hand to her midriff, felt a slight soreness there and tore off her uniform jacket to lift her shirt and touch the tiny red puncture wound. A sense of complete unbelief enveloped her. He must have shot her with some sort of tranquilliser dart because she had passed out. But why would Joe have done such a thing? Cristos!