into the bedroom again.
Andreas was sitting on the end of her bed, slumped over with his face buried in his hands. In all her life she had never seen anything so wretched as this proud Greek man reduced to this.
Without a second thought, she went over there, climbed onto the bed behind him then simply wrapped her arms around him as tightly as she could.
‘She lied to me,’ he murmured hoarsely.
‘I know,’ Claire softly replied.
‘She knew even before she married me that she was not able to conceive, yet she put me through all of that—torment. Month after month.’ He laboured the point, dragging his hands away from his face so he could use them to help him. ‘She made me feel useless and helpless and…’
It all came pouring out then. While Claire knelt behind him and held onto him tightly, Andreas drew a vivid picture of what it had been like to live with a woman whose obsessive need to bear a child had turned both their lives into a living nightmare. Not once had Sofia suggested the fault could be hers. Loving him and living in fear of losing him, she had created a web of deceit that involved cruel tricks and lies which kept him balanced on a knife-edge of failure and despair. By the time he had been driven into taking a fertility test himself, the sheer stress of it all must have lowered his count.
‘She took a terrible risk, allowing you to take that test,’ Claire pointed out soberly.
‘Not really,’ Andreas contended. ‘Either way, the torment would have continued. With a strong count she would have merely increased her efforts to conceive. A low count gave her a similar excuse to—be lucky one day—as she loved to say to me.’ A shudder ripped through him; Claire tightened her hold on him. ‘In the end I couldn’t bring myself to touch her, I felt such a pitiful failure,’ he admitted. ‘I think my withdrawal from her bed was what finally tipped her over the edge.’
And left him with yet another sense of failure he had to learn to live with, Claire realised sadly.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she murmured.
His shoulders flexed. ‘What have you got to be sorry for?’ he demanded. ‘It should be me apologising to you for the way I behaved before!’
‘I understood.’
‘You’re pregnant…’ he husked suddenly.
‘Mmm,’ she softly confirmed. ‘Are you pleased?’
He rubbed his hands over his face. ‘Shell-shocked, I think,’ he admitted, but some of the tension began to ease out of him.
‘I have something for you,’ she said, and, taking the pen-shaped tester out of her pocket, she gravely handed it to him over his shoulder. ‘Our baby,’ she confided. ‘What do you think—boy or girl?’
She tried to keep it light, but she could feel the emotion come roaring up inside him as he sat there staring down at that silly little indicator that had been such a source of pain to him before now.
When he moved, he did it with a throaty growl as he twisted around and tumbled her onto the bed. ‘From the moment you opened your lovely blue eyes on a dusty road back in London, I knew you were going to mean something special to me,’ he told her deeply. ‘But I never dared to so much as dream of anything this special.’
‘Here,’ Claire invited. ‘Feel for yourself just how special…’ And, taking hold of his hand, she fed it between their bodies so she could press his palm against her womb. There was nothing to show for the miracle taking place inside her, of course—it was much too soon—but the gesture itself was enough to have her drowning in the intense darkness of his wonderful eyes.
‘I am going to love you until the day I die,’ he vowed. ‘And I am never going to let you go.’
‘I’ve been trying very hard not to get away, please note,’ she pointed out gently.
‘Stubborn,’ he accused her softly.
‘In love,’ she amended.
For that, he kissed her. Kissed her long and deep and with a heart-stirring tenderness that told her more than anything else could do just how much he loved to hear her say that.
Timo Markopoulou arrived in the world very early on a bright and hot summer morning.
His mother was exhausted, but she couldn’t allow herself to fall asleep. She was too busy observing the way Andreas was sitting in the chair by her bed, with Melanie seated on one half of his lap while his small son occupied the other.
He was introducing them to each other, his voice softly reassuring though both babies were too young to understand. Yet, sitting there on his lap, gazing solemnly at her new brother who looked remarkably like herself when she was born, Melanie seemed to understand something of what her papa was saying, because she reached out with a small hand and touched the baby’s cheek in just the same way Claire had always done to her.
The incredibly gentle act from one so young had a lump forming in Claire’s throat. It affected Andreas too; she saw the waves of love and pride go washing through him as he caught the little girl’s hand and carried it to his lips.
Lifting his head, he caught her watching them, and Claire sent him a soft, understanding smile, but he didn’t smile back. There was just too much emotion at work inside him for him to smile right now.
‘My cup runneth over,’ he murmured deeply.
That was all; his feelings at that moment required no further explanation. Needing to make a physical link with those feelings, Claire reached out to rest a hand on one of his wide shoulders. He acknowledged it by brushing it with his cheek as his attention returned to his children.
And that was the image Claire took with her as she drifted into slumber. Her love. Her life, encapsulated in that one special moment. Her own cup of happiness was overflowing too.
The Purchased Wife
Michelle Reid
CHAPTER ONE
GETTING from flight arrivals to the airport’s main exit was like taking a long walk through hell. The whole route was lined with baying reporters, flashing light bulbs and a cacophony of questions aimed to provoke an impulsive response.
Xander kept his mouth clamped tightly shut and ignored provocations like, ‘Did you have anything to do with your wife’s accident, Mr Pascalis?’—‘Did she know about your mistress?’—‘Did she run her car off the road to kill herself?’—‘Is there a good reason why you withdrew her bodyguard last week?’
With his eyes fixed directly ahead Xander just kept on going, six feet two inches of mean muscle power driving long legs towards the airport exit with no less than three personal-security men grouped around him like protective wolves guarding the king of the pack.
Through it all the questions kept on coming and the camera bulbs flashed, catching his severely handsome dark features locked in an expression of blistering contempt. Inside, his fury was simmering on the point of eruption. He was used to being the centre of media interest, speculation—scandal if they thought they could make it stick. But nothing—nothing they’d said about him before
