The Carides Pregnancy. KIM LAWRENCE

not coming anywhere with you,’ she contended huskily. ‘I’m going back home.’ The thought of home did nothing to stem the flow of tears. ‘I wish,’ she added, burying her nose in a tissue, ‘that I’d never left!’ Before she lifted her head the hand he had extended towards her had fallen back to his side.

      ‘Compose yourself—people are staring.’

      This stern comment drew a strangled laugh from Becca. ‘Of course they’re staring.’ Her watery gaze slid up and down the long, lean, masculine length of him and she started to laugh again.

      He shook his head and looked at her as though she was demented.

      She spelt it out. ‘They’re not staring at me.’

      As she spoke a girl with a very short skirt and very high heels almost dislocated her neck doing a double-take. She caught Becca’s eye and blushed.

      ‘With you beside me they wouldn’t be staring at me if I were stark naked.’

      ‘Is this something you are planning to do?’

      People probably always stared at him. Maybe after a lifetime of being beautiful and head-turningly sexy he didn’t notice. Then again, maybe he lapped it up.

      The latter possibility seemed the more likely to Becca, who had noticed that good-looking men were almost always vain.

      As she looked at him it occurred to Becca that she had been a bit tough on her sister—accusing her, in the privacy of her own thoughts, at least, of being a bit of a push-over and not seeing through a love-rat. But maybe it wasn’t just the glamour and slick lines Erica had fallen for. Maybe Alex also moved like a panther and oozed pheremones from every pore?

      If a man who looked like this one set out to seduce her, what female would be able to resist? How many women had ever said I’m washing my hair when he suggested jumping into bed?

      Her colour slightly heightened, Becca removed her eyes from the sensual outline of his mobile lips.

      ‘About the only way you could be more conspicuous is if you were naked.’ Then, because she didn’t want him to run away with the idea that she’d been imagining him naked, she added accusingly, ‘Are you Greek?’

      He tipped his dark head fractionally in affirmation and looked faintly amused.

      ‘I should have known.’ Of course people like the Carides probably never left home without their own personal army.

      ‘You don’t have much of an accent.’ He did have a very attractive voice, though. Seductive enough too.

      ‘I was partly educated in America, where I have relatives.’

      ‘That’s where you learnt to be a security guard?’

      ‘Operative,’ he inserted gravely. ‘We in the trade prefer the term operative.’

      ‘Look, by all means defend your perimeter, or whatever—I don’t care—but will you go away and leave me alone? You’re going to look pretty silly if you’re out here stalking me and someone’s back there nicking the presents.’

      ‘That situation is covered,’ he assured her casually. ‘And I can’t risk you crashing the party on my watch.’

      ‘For heaven’s sake, I’ve already told you I’m not going to.’

      ‘When was the last time you ate?’

      Becca ignored him and fished around in her pockets for her car keys.

      ‘I hope you’re not considering driving in your condition? You are clearly not capable.’

      Becca, whose thoughts had been moving along the same lines, grew defensive at the note of criticism in his tone. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my condition!’ she snapped shrilly as she wiped the dampness from her cheeks. ‘My condition has not a damned thing to do with you.’

      Listen to the woman, said a voice in the part of his brain still functioning.

      He watched as she lifted a hand to her head.

      ‘You have a headache?’

      ‘Headache’ hardly covered the sick throbbing behind her eyes. ‘No,’ Becca lied, dropping her chin.

      Christos surveyed the lines of strain around her soft mouth and wished he’d hit his cousin some more. ‘Why…?’

      The anger in his voice brought her head up. ‘Why what?’

      ‘I suppose you think that you love him?’ They always thought that.

      Becca stared at him, then lifted her chin. ‘I hate him!’ she whispered.

      ‘They say hate is closely related to love.’

      ‘Then they are as stupid as you.’ She delved again into her pockets, and this time produced a bunch of keys, which she jangled angrily at him. ‘I’ve every intention of driving.’ Her brow furrowed in concentration. ‘When I’ve remembered where I left my car.’

      Above her, she heard him sigh deeply in exasperation. ‘Hand them over.’

      Becca looked at the long brown fingers extended towards her and blinked. ‘What…?’

      ‘Hand the keys over.’

      ‘You make it sound as though I’m drunk and incapable!’ she protested indignantly.

      ‘You’re definitely incapable.’

      Why am I standing here like a spineless idiot, listening to him? ‘I’m going to walk away, and there’s not a thing you can do to stop me.’

      ‘When did you last sleep or eat?’

      She looked at him blankly.

      ‘We’ll buy some sandwiches on the way to pick up my car.’

      ‘Your car?’

      He levelled a look of impatience at her. ‘Do you intend to wander around the city on foot all day, looking for your car, or do you want help?’

      When he put it like that…‘All right,’ she said ungraciously, then added, ‘I really don’t know why you’re doing this.’

      ‘That makes two of us,’ he responded cryptically.

      Becca looked around the luxuriously upholstered leather interior of the car with a suspicious frown. ‘This is a Jaguar.’

      ‘Call it a perk of the job,’ he suggested, slinging his beautifully tailored jacket carelessly into the back seat. His tie, which he had unfastened from around his throat, rapidly joined it. After he had unfastened the top button of a pristine white shirt to reveal a discreet section of smooth brown flesh he turned the ignition.

      ‘Some perk,’ Becca muttered, pressing a hand to her wayward stomach as she concentrated on not noticing the shadow of body hair on his chest visible through the fine fabric of his shirt. She had noticed that the uncomfortably visceral effect this man’s brand of sexuality had on her had got worse since she’d got into the car.

      Which rather begged the question, Why the hell did I get in?

      He turned his head and looked directly into her eyes and smiled. It was a sinfully sexy smile. Becca vocalised her growing irritation.

      ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here with you.’

      ‘You can thank me later.’

      ‘After we’ve found my car?’

      ‘It’s probably been clamped and towed by now,’ he predicted. ‘You really don’t have the faintest idea where you parked?’

      Becca flushed. He made it sound as though she made a habit of losing her car. ‘I’d been driving all night and I ran out of petrol, and—’ She stopped, her expression brightening.

      ‘I bought