CHAPTER SIX

‘IT’s A blob,’ Alexius pronounced, frowning at the sonograph machine, striving and failing to see and feel the same response that had made Rosie’s big green eyes well up with sentimental tears.

‘It’s a baby,’ his friend Dmitri contradicted while the nurse wiped the gel from Rosie’s still-flat stomach. ‘Your son or daughter.’

‘Alex hasn’t got that much imagination,’ Rosie commented, sliding down off the examination couch with relief. She hadn’t wanted Alexius present during the scan and had agreed purely on the strength of the conviction that if he was to feel that this was his baby she had to involve him in her pregnancy whenever it was possible. So much for that. It’s a blob! she reflected in despair.

‘Well, there’s nothing much to see yet,’ Alexius countered defensively, wishing he hadn’t bothered to ask to be present, wishing he had just stayed out of the whole damned debate. He was at a total loss when people got slushy and emotional. That had never been his thing.

They adjourned to Dmitri’s office where his friend pointed out that the blob looked big for a woman of Rosie’s small proportions and that a Caesarean delivery might be necessary. Instantly, Alexius felt queasy and guilty as hell as in his mind the blob became a serious threat to Rosie’s survival. Suppose she died, he thought suddenly, the shock of the concept whipping up a melodramatic storm of deathbed scenes inside his mind that proved he had far more imagination than Rosie would ever suspect. He studied her, engaged as she was in animated chatter with the obstetrician he had first met as a medical student at university. Delicate colour warmed her small face, enthusiasm lifted her usually quiet voice and sparkled in her eyes. She wanted the blob, she really, really wanted the blob, he registered in amazement. Pregnancy might have messed up her life and her plans but even so she was prepared to go with the flow and make room for his baby now. As a male whose parents had never made room for him in their lives, he was deeply impressed by her unselfishness and willingness to adapt to the new order.

‘Didn’t you feel anything … even when you heard its heartbeat?’ Rosie pressed hopefully, moving back to the limo at the kerb. ‘I found that really exciting!’

Shrewd gaze screened, Alexius glanced at Rosie. The most exciting part of his day had happened when she emerged from her home, clad in a short black stretchy skirt and a fitted top that outlined her sleek little body to perfection. He was still enjoying the view of her long shapely legs, well, they were long in proportion to the rest of her, he reasoned, and that sweet little swell of her bottom when she bent over right in front of him to fix her shoe was downright indecent. He only had to think of sinking into the hot, wet, velvet welcome of her and he was hard as a rock and feverishly hungry to enjoy what he had enjoyed only once before. And that wasn’t like him. In fact, more and more he was feeling uneasy inside his own skin around Rosie. He should be moving on to pastures new. Rosie was already the past and, even though she would essentially be part of his future as well once she had the blob, he should be delighted that she wasn’t trying to nail him down to fully committed partner and parenting duties and promises of everlasting fidelity: he was still free as a bird, he reminded himself doggedly, disappointed when no spark of anticipation ignited at the prospect of his next lover. Of course, he was thirty-one years old and he had had an active sex life from around the age of sixteen when one of his mother’s friends had seduced him. When it came to women, he had had more freedom, experience and choice than most men enjoyed and it was possible that he was currently a little jaded.

Rosie was deeply disappointed by Alexius’s lack of a warm response to the sonogram picture of their future son or daughter. She wondered why he had bothered to come and she had noticed how squeamish he had been when Dmitri Vakros mentioned the possibility of a Caesarean. Alexius had turned a grey shade, his look of horror unhidden. He was such a bloke. She already had an emotional connection with the child she carried but possibly she was expecting too much too soon from a guy who had only known for a week that fatherhood was on his horizon. Did it loom like a black cloud, she wondered, or as something new and different?

Alexius breathed in deep. ‘I’m taking you to get measured for a new wardrobe.’

Rosie settled disbelieving eyes on him. ‘You’re … what?’

‘You need to dress up for Greece and you haven’t got the clothes for it. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable in your grandfather’s home,’ Alexius admitted.

Rosie was enraged at his confident assumption that he knew how she would feel about anything. ‘I don’t care about stuff like that!’

‘You think you don’t but you will,’ Alexius forecast, reckoning that she was planning to be as stubborn about the clothes as she was about everything else. Everything was a battle with Rosie: she hated him calling the shots but all his life he’d been a dominant personality and he had no plans to change.

‘And how the heck do you make that out? Is my grandfather as wealthy as you are?’ she suddenly demanded.

‘No, but he is a multimillionaire,’ Alexius revealed for the first time. ‘And he and his family enjoy a comfortable lifestyle.’

‘A multimillionaire?’ Rosie gasped in panic. ‘Truthfully?’

‘Truthfully,’ Alexius confirmed.

Rosie was silenced, irritated that she had not suspected that reality for herself. After all, how likely was it that someone as rich as Alexius would have a godfather who was an ordinary man on a middling income? Suddenly she felt intimidated by what might await her in Greece.

‘I don’t want you to look and feel like a poor relation when you meet your father’s family,’ Alexius admitted.

‘Even if it’s the truth?’ she fielded between gritted teeth. ‘Why should I care about what I look like? That’s superficial.’

‘I agree but that’s how the world is,’ he responded with irrefutable logic. ‘Appearances are important.’

Her thin shoulders hunched. ‘I don’t want you spending any more money on me, and I can’t afford a new wardrobe,’ she pointed out flatly.

‘The cost is nothing to me,’ Alexius retorted with a grimace.

‘But not when it came to fixing up Bas?’ she queried sharply, thinking with relief of how well the little dog had recovered while studying Alexius, wishing he were not so beautiful that he kept on ensnaring her attention. No matter how desperately hard she tried not to look at him her gaze repeatedly swerved back to him. Her entire body tingled as she remembered the raw sensuality of his mouth on hers and the air in her lungs shortened as if she were zooming down too fast on a roller-coaster ride.

‘I would have covered the dog’s needs no matter what you did,’ Alexius countered levelly, his libido reacting to the buzz of sexual energy in the atmosphere so that he had to fight the urge to simply grab her. All those years of sexual practice and sophistication, he thought grimly, and all he wanted to do was flatten her to the seat like a marauder and have her any way she would let him. For the first time ever with a woman he was being cautious.

‘But I didn’t know that!’ Rosie yelled back at him furiously in one of the sudden explosions of temper that always took him by surprise. ‘How was I supposed to know that?’

‘I’m not a monster … You’re carrying my baby—’

‘You mean, the blob?’ Rosie snapped nastily.

Slight colour tinged his exotic cheekbones and his handsome mouth folded. ‘It did look like a blob. Was I supposed to lie to the woman who told me she valued honesty?’

Out of nowhere a surge of stinging tears assailed Rosie’s eyes and she blinked them back hurriedly and reached spontaneously for the hand braced on the space between them. ‘No, I don’t want you to feel that you have to lie or pretend for my sake … I don’t ever want you to feel like th-that!’ she stammered.

‘You’re crying!’ Alexius noticed, aghast at the development.

‘No, it’s OK … OK!’ Rosie exclaimed, frantically grabbing at and stroking his hand in apology. ‘Remember what Dmitri said? My hormones are all over the place at the moment … The tears just come for no good reason—’

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Alexius pronounced, logical to the nth degree and hooking his hand into hers to draw her onto his lap without even thinking about it. Getting his arms round her tiny body at last felt amazingly good. ‘I’m sorry I called the baby a blob and hurt your feelings.’

Rosie twisted to look at him with big, round green eyes. ‘Are you feeling all right?’

In surely the most awkward position ever allotted to a man on the make, Alexius caught her chin and claimed the delicious moistness of her mouth and kissed her with devouring urgency. Rosie shivered in eager response, feeling her body light up on all systems go inside her skin. As she twisted, Alexius lifted her and brought her round sideways, pushing her bottom into stirring contact with his healthy erection. Her eyes opened even wider as a deft hand travelled up her skirt and slid between her thighs to cup the heart of her where she ached. ‘Alex!’ she gasped.

He wrenched up the skirt and fought with her panties to access the warm, welcoming wetness of his fantasies, and he groaned with satisfaction against her swollen mouth as he got there and discovered that she was as ready as he was. His thumb circled her clitoris and set off a chain reaction through her pelvis that she could not control. She writhed, she moaned, made not the smallest attempt to escape, intoxicated as she was by the way he was teasing her overexcited body. She buried her mouth against his strong brown throat, kissing him, drinking in the glorious hot male scent of his flesh like an addict, all of her senses up and away on a magical tour of reacquaintance. With one finger, he slid inside and she ground down her bottom onto the thrust of his arousal, helpless in the grip of the most driving need she had ever experienced, feeling the gathering storm at the heart of her, rising up through her like an unstoppable force of nature. She splintered from the inside out with the intensity of the pleasure, her body jerking in the successive spasms of ecstasy, her head falling weakly against his shoulder in the aftermath.

‘Feel better, latria mou?’ Alexius prompted thickly, wanting so much more but satisfied to have smashed the platonic barriers she had set up between them.

‘Like I’ve died and gone to heaven,’ she whispered honestly, daring to open her eyes, catch a glimpse of the busy city street the limo was traversing and shocked by the sight. ‘I can’t believe you just did what you did.’

Alexius released his pent-up breath slowly above her head and held on tight to her with both arms, sealing them both into the intimacy she had sought to deny. He had been tempted to whip off that last barrier and sink deep into her but in fact he could hardly believe he had gone as far as he had in the back of a limo either. It wasn’t him—he was a conventional guy. He didn’t do stuff like this. There was something about her that made him more spontaneous, not that he thought that was much of an excuse for behaving like a horny teenager. She lifted her tousled head and gave him a guilty but sunny smile of appreciation. It made him feel ten feet tall and the painful throb of his own unsated body receded in receipt of it.

‘Oh, my goodness,’ Rosie mumbled, lifting her arms to break his hold and scramble off him again. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so selfish … I didn’t do anything for you—’

‘It’s not a problem,’ Alexius drawled.

But Rosie could see from the cut of his trousers that there was a problem, a very big problem from his point of view. It was, however, a decidedly positive revelation for Rosie to realise that he could still summon up that amount of desire for a body she had always regarded as not that desirable on male terms. ‘You know I could … I mean, I haven’t done that before but I’m sure you could give me directions—’

In receipt of that offer, Alexius was startled when he found himself laughing out loud and he gave her a heart-stopping smile that welded her embarrassed eyes to him. ‘Not in the back of a car in broad daylight. Some other time … I’ll survive. Touching you again was worth it,’ he told her huskily.

Hot colour washed Rosie’s face and she suddenly felt incredibly shy and unsure of herself.

‘Come home with me after we do the wardrobe thing,’ Alexius urged.

It was the key for confusion and indecision to engulf Rosie like a tidal wave because she suffered instantaneous cold feet. ‘Wouldn’t it be wiser to write off what just happened as a little slip?’

The last glimmerings of his smile died away. He stared steadily back at her, his gorgeous eyes pained. ‘A mistake and a little slip? Is that the sum total of what we have?’

‘You’re the best judge of that,’ Rosie whispered, knowing she was already in so deep with him she might as well have been buried alive. The raw sexual attraction between them was undeniable but were there any other layers for him beyond her conception of the blob?

On her side of the fence, layer was piling onto layer with regard to her feelings about Alexius Stavroulakis. She couldn’t look at him—even when he was being difficult—without wanting him. She couldn’t look at him without thinking that he was beautiful. He was absolutely never out of her thoughts. He had insisted on accompanying her to pick up Bas when he was released from the animal clinic and had turned up with a plush new basket for her pet. He also unfailingly phoned her every day to check that she was all right, although he never seemed to have much to say when he did call and the silences gnawed on her nerves until she learned to fill those awkward moments with inconsequential chatter. She was falling in love with Alexius and had no idea how to call a halt to that seemingly inevitable process, even though she knew that she was only storing up trouble for the future.

A svelte stylist took Rosie’s measurements and questioned her about her clothing preferences. Rosie made no objection and she was very much ashamed of her change of heart. But after what had happened in the limousine with Alexius she was ridiculously reluctant to argue with him again. She had noticed that he had told her very little about her grandfather and his family yet clearly he knew them all. She was convinced that if Alexius was advising her to dress up there was probably a good reason for it and she cringed at the suspicion that her grandfather might well be embarrassed by a cheaply and casually clad granddaughter who clearly came from a much poorer background. Could she come to care for people who were willing to judge her purely on her appearance?

The limo drew up outside the building where she lived and Alexius gave her a look, an ebony brow slanting up in wicked question, and she knew exactly what he was silently asking, wished she didn’t, wished even more that her treacherous body didn’t leap at the prospect of going to bed with him again. It would just be sex, no doubt fantastic sex, but it would only complicate things. It was, she acknowledged, a great shame that she had slept with Alexius before she got to know him, but what was done was done and if they did become intimate again she wanted her brain rather than her body to make that decision for her.

One last exam and then Greece, she told herself encouragingly. Her mind would be clearer then, her instincts less prone to her present horrendous desire to lean on Alexius for support. That wasn’t a good idea because he might not be there for the long haul … only time would tell. But what if he was already prepared to phone some other woman to satisfy the need she had stirred up? That fear kept Rosie awake half the night as she finally accepted that she couldn’t have it both ways, no matter how much she wanted to. Either she slept with Alexius or accepted that he would eventually and maybe even sooner sleep with someone else.