It was not part of some sinister plan. I would not take your compliance to mean you’ll come back to me. And it’s not as though I was about to drag you down onto the sand. It was just a kiss…’ His attention shifted to her mouth. ‘Almost a kiss.’
The husky afterthought made her stomach muscles quiver frantically.
Her hands clenched at her sides. ‘Angolos…’
Against all the odds he responded to the anguished appeal in her voice. ‘Fine, you want to concentrate on the practical—have you considered the financial aspect of this?’
‘What do you mean, “financial”?’
‘My son will one day inherit all that I have.’
Her eyes widened; Angolos had a lot! ‘I hadn’t thought about that…’
‘He will be an extremely wealthy man,’ he slotted in quietly. ‘But he will also inherit responsibilities,’ he continued in a matter-of-fact way. ‘Wealth and power can be the ruin of some people…I’ve seen it happen. Nicky will need guidance…not heavy-handed, but loving, parental guidance.’
A stark silence followed his comments.
‘You’ve given me a lot to think about,’ she admitted. They were very powerful arguments and she couldn’t pretend otherwise.
‘Then go away and think…until tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’ She shook her head. ‘That’s not long enough,’ she protested. ‘I couldn’t possibly come to such a major decision so quickly.’
‘I’m bending over backwards to be reasonable here, Georgette, but don’t push it. Tomorrow.’
Reluctantly she shook her head. ‘I should be getting back; Ruth is looking after Nicky.’
‘He’s a beautiful child.’
Their eyes touched. ‘He takes after you.’ The moment the unthinking but heartfelt words were out of her mouth she wished she could retract them.
‘Georgette, you’ll make me blush,’ he teased, revealing a set of perfect white teeth as he laughed out loud at her visible discomfiture.
‘I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know,’ she retorted, with as much dignity as she could muster. She had touched his perfection on more than one occasion. Thinking about just how unstinting she had been with her praise made her cringe with embarrassment.
Though, in his favour, for a man who had been endowed with such incredible good looks he really wasn’t vain. In fact she had more than once seen him irritated by the attention he got, though mostly he tuned out strangers who gawped.
‘Shall I call at the house tomorrow?’
She shook her head. ‘Best not.’ Tomorrow Dad and Mary were driving Gran back up. ‘By the church, about one…’
‘I’ll be waiting.’
CHAPTER TEN
ACTUALLY he wasn’t waiting, she was.
When Georgie arrived there was no sign of Angolos. She might have followed her first cowardly impulse and left if she hadn’t known that he would come looking for her.
With a sigh she walked through the gate into the small churchyard. Thoughts far away, she began to wander down the interwoven stone paths past the moss-covered gravestones. Georgie had never found this place at all gloomy, and had often remarked on the tranquil atmosphere.
She stopped, her eyes drawn to a lichen-covered memorial. The weathered inscription in the stone revealed the woman born over three hundred years earlier had had a long life. Georgie’s curiosity stirred; had she been happy, this woman born into another century?
There were several wars, an industrial revolution and a sexual revolution separating her from this woman. Her own life was light years away from the one this woman had lived, yet the essentials, the things deep down most people wanted, weren’t.
To love and be loved.
‘Were you loved…?’ Georgie squinted at the worn letters. ‘Were you loved, Agnes?’ she whispered softly.
If anyone had heard her they would have concluded she was crazy, and maybe, she reflected, they wouldn’t be far wrong. She had thought she had been loved; she had discovered that she hadn’t been in the cruellest way imaginable.
Georgie turned her back on the gravestone and wished her own past were so easily dismissed.
Eyes closed, she inhaled deeply. It had never crossed her mind that Angolos wouldn’t be as thrilled as she was about her pregnancy. Of course, she hadn’t known then what she did now.
Georgie had planned the evening down to the last detail. She’d wanted everything to be perfect, but from the start nothing had gone right.
To begin with the party that Sacha and Olympia had been going to attend had been cancelled at the last minute, so the romantic meal she had planned had become a family affair. Georgie had wanted to scream with frustration, especially when Angolos hadn’t turned up.
When he had arrived an hour later than he had promised, he’d seemed distracted and had even been terse with his mother, who had been unwise enough to remonstrate him on his tardiness. Georgie had caught him looking at her so strangely a couple of times that she’d started to think that he had guessed about the baby. That would have accounted for the suppressed tension emanating from him.
The meal had been a stiff, formal affair, but that hadn’t been unusual, and had seemed to last for ever. When they had finally retreated to their own suite of rooms she hadn’t known what to say. Suddenly her planned speech hadn’t seemed right.
Angolos hadn’t helped; he’d seemed strangely remote and unapproachable. She had noticed that he had drunk more at dinner than he generally did, and the fine lines bracketing his mouth had suggested he was under some strain.
‘Did you have a bad day?’ She laid a tentative hand on his arm.
His dark eyes immediately slewed in the direction of the fingers curled lightly over his arm. Though there was no discernible expression on his lean features, Georgie withdrew her hand awkwardly.
His mouth twisted. ‘You could say that.’
Hurt and bewildered by the underlying hostility in his manner, she retreated to a chair beside the bed.
She watched as he removed his tie and fell backwards onto the bed. He lay for a moment spread-eagled with his eyes closed. Then from his prone position he began to unfasten the buttons of his shirt.
The action revealed the golden skin of lean-muscled torso and Georgie’s breath snagged in her throat. He was simply stunningly beautiful.
He looked at her through heavy-lidded, half-closed eyes.
‘You were quiet tonight,’ he observed.
‘Was I?’ What would he say when she told him? She glanced wistfully towards the
