him. Young and infatuated, but love…? Had he dared put it to the test?
‘I’m sorry, Angolos.’
His startled eyes flew to her face.
Georgie was pale but composed. As he watched she pushed the hair back from her face with her forearm. It was an intensely weary gesture. The urge to reach out and take her in his arms was so strong that for a moment he couldn’t drag air into his lungs.
‘What are you sorry for, yineka mou?’
‘Well, it must have been incredibly hard for someone like you to be told that you couldn’t father children.’
‘Someone like me…?’
She nodded and as she lifted her eyes to his she caught the strangest expression crossing his face. ‘Well, any man, then,’ she moderated, tactfully not touching on his overdeveloped male pride. ‘When they told you…’ Her voice faded as she imagined him sitting in a clinical white office having the shattering news broken to him by an unsympathetic doctor. ‘You must have felt like someone had kicked you in…’ Her glance dropped and dark, fiery colour rose up her neck until her face was glowing. ‘Sorry, that wasn’t—’
‘You’re right, that’s exactly how I felt,’ Angolos cut in, taking pity on her.
‘And I don’t expect you discussed it with anyone.’
His smile faded. ‘It is not the sort of thing a man discusses.’
His stiff pronouncement was exactly what she had been talking about. ‘Point proven. You’re really into all this macho stuff in a big way. There’s no good denying it,’ she added. ‘And I know you can’t help it. I’m just sorry,’ she admitted with sigh, ‘that you didn’t feel able to confide in me, but then that was always the problem, wasn’t it?
‘You never treated me like an adult capable of making my own decisions. You always kept me out of the loop. Ours was never an equal relationship,’ she reflected, contemplating her neatly trimmed, unpolished nails with a wistful expression that unknown to her had a more dramatic impact on Angolos than the kick she had previously so accurately described.
His expression had grown increasingly shocked as he listened to her matter-of-fact analysis of their relationship. By the time she finished he had the stunned aspect of someone who had just been hit by a runaway truck.
‘I never expected you to take it this way.’
‘Well, I’m not saying I would have been happy about it. I desperately wanted to have your baby.’ She looked up and surprised a stricken expression on his lean face that cut her to the core. ‘But it wouldn’t have changed anything, not essentially,’ she added firmly.
‘You think not?’
His scepticism annoyed her. ‘Yes, I do. We could have adopted…’ Her face brightened. ‘There are a lot of babies out there who need a home,’ she told him earnestly.
‘It would seem,’ he said slowly, ‘that I underestimated you.’
‘When were you going to tell me?’
‘I honestly don’t know,’ he admitted.
Truth be told, he had been willing to ignore every precept of decency that had been instilled in him all his life in order to marry a woman he hadn’t even believed loved him, and now it seemed that woman’s feelings had been deeper and less selfish than his own.
And he had blown it big time.
‘At the moment our feelings for each other are not important,’ he began in a voice totally devoid of emotion.
She pulled herself onto her knees and brushed the sand from her skirt with slow, deliberate strokes. ‘Neither are they any mystery,’ she said dully. To her way of thinking, if he had ever felt a shred of true feeling for her, he would never have sent her away.
She experienced a sudden swell of emotion. After everything he had done she still loved him and would continue to love him to her dying breath. The injustice of it all hit her. Why should he not know what he had done to her? Why should she spare him?
‘Do you want to know how I feel about you?’
A muscle along Angolos’s taut jaw clenched. ‘We will discuss your feelings for me at a more appropriate moment, when you are less emotional.’
‘Which, roughly translated, means when you say so—no change there, then.’
The muscle clenching in his lean cheek reminded her of a ticking time bomb. Georgie supposed she ought to be grateful that his response had spared her from making a total fool of herself. All the same she couldn’t help but think that it would be an enormous relief to get it all out into the open.
‘Our son’s future is what we must decide.’
‘Nothing to decide.’ Externally at least she maintained the appearance of control.
Actually his comment had terrified her. If there was one thing she had learnt from her short time with the Constantine clan, it was not to underestimate the power of money! Angolos might never get custody of Nicky—access was another story—but he could tear her life to shreds while he was trying.
‘I beg to differ.’
‘You never beg,’ she cut back bitterly. ‘You had your chance to be a father, Angolos, and you blew it. And look at it this way—there’s nothing to stop you going out there and making babies with someone else.’
Her comment brought a gleam of pure fury to his eyes. ‘You think I’m going to leave it like this?’
Her slender shoulders lifted. ‘Why not?’
‘I don’t want babies, I want…Nicky.’
She drew her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them. ‘You don’t always get what you want, Angolos.’
‘Wake up, Georgette,’ he recommended harshly. ‘This is the real world.’
‘No, your world isn’t my reality. My world doesn’t have designer dresses and glitzy first nights, or people who judge you by how much money you have and who your parents are!’ she declared hotly. ‘My reality is making ends meet, a good day at work, a parking space in the high street, scraped knees, temper tantrums and doctor’s appointments.’ She stopped to catch her breath. The incoherent inventory of her life made it sound less attractive than it actually was.
‘All I’m asking for is a chance to be part of that world.’
It would seem Angolos hadn’t picked up on the unattractive part.
Taken aback by the intensity of his unexpected request, she stared at him warily. Perhaps I should have added sleepless nights and guilt. Guilt was a major part of parenting that all the literature skimmed over.
‘This isn’t a glamorous world we are talking here.’
‘Glamour!’ He dismissed it with a contemptuous click of his long fingers. ‘If anyone was
