body. Full of joy at the wonder of being with him again, she felt her eyes flood with tears and she kept her head buried in his shoulder. But she succumbed to the temptation of pressing tiny little kisses against his damp, bronzed skin, tickling him and making him laugh.
Grinning, Andreas closed both arms round her and breathed in the fresh herbal scent of her hair, revelling in the return of the harmony and satisfaction that had eluded him for months. He smoothed possessive hands over the smooth, soft curves of her highly feminine derrière. He wondered if it would seem uncool and if she would be offended if he examined the tantalising swell of her formerly flat stomach. He decided not to chance it and dropped a kiss down on the crown of her head. The unwelcome recollection of Ben Campbell’s jacket slunk into his mind like a depth charge from the deep.
Had she slept with Campbell in the same bed? What do you think, Andreas? A snide, cynical inner voice mocked. Don’t the guy’s relatives part-own the property? His sleek muscles drew taut. Suddenly a tidal wave of doubts and unease was assailing him. How could he ever trust her again? All men were vulnerable to false paternity claims. Even if DNA testing were to prove the child was not his, wouldn’t she still be able to plead that she had made a genuine error? After all, how could she know for sure that it was his baby? At best she was probably hoping like mad that it was his. The last thing she was likely to do was admit anything that might reawaken his worst suspicions.
In the course of seconds his mood had dive-bombed from the heights to subterranean-cellar level. He had dragged her off to bed as if the past few months could be wiped out. But the bitter memory of betrayal remained. Could he really be contemplating the concept of forgiving her? How could he ever forgive her for what she had done? He knew there were sad guys who did do stuff like that. Sad, weak men who let their even sadder dependency on a lying, deceitful woman overpower their brains and their pride. But he wasn’t one of those guys. His only weakness around her was lust, Andreas reasoned. That was sex, though; that was allowable. He would sleep with her as and when he liked. That was harmless. But forgiveness was impossible.
‘If you pack now, I’ll take you back to London with me,’ Andreas murmured flatly, hauling his long, powerful frame up against the pillows while at the same time shifting her off him onto the mattress. ‘The apartment already has a buyer. I’ll have to find you somewhere else to live.’
His cool detachment was as shocking to Hope as a bucket of icy water drenching her overheated skin. He had cut short the affectionate aftermath of their intimacy, Hope registered with a stark sense of panic and loss. Had she really believed that a nightmare could be eradicated and their former relationship reinstated? Why on earth had she fallen back into bed with him again? After all, she was now painfully aware of the deficiencies of what she had once mistakenly seen as a wonderfully happy relationship. Would she really sink so low as to accept being his mistress?
‘I’m not that fussed about diamonds,’ Hope pronounced grittily.
Halfway out of bed, for he was determined to remove Hope from her present accommodation as fast as he possibly could, Andreas stilled with a frown. ‘Say that again?’
Hope shot him a pained glance. ‘A mistress is supposed to have diamonds but I don’t want any. I never wanted any.’
Andreas deemed silence the best response to those incomprehensible statements. Nor did he see it as the best moment in which to confess that some of the charms on her bracelet were ornamented with diamonds of the very highest quality.
‘You never ate a grain of food in that apartment that I did not pay for…does that make you a kept man?’ Hope enquired curtly.
Stark naked, Andreas swung back at that facetious question. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I bought all the food. My small contribution to our shared life,’ Hope informed him, her turquoise eyes overbright. ‘But you thought you had bought me.’
‘No, I never thought that.’ Andreas frowned. ‘Did you buy the food? I had no idea—’
‘I wish I’d poisoned you when I got the chance!’ Hope hissed and, grabbing up her nightdress, she pulled it over her head, leapt off the bed and vanished into the en suite.
Andreas listened to the bolt shooting home on the other side of the door and swore under his breath while looking heavenward in vague hope of divine intervention. She had seemed perfectly happy, but he was learning that he could no longer depend on that superficial calm. She could fly from apparent tranquillity to screeching fury with him now in the space of seconds. Was that his fault? Campbell’s fault? Was she only back with him because Campbell had rejected her? He could not afford to take anything for granted this time around, he reminded himself harshly.
Hope could not bear to meet her own anguished eyes in the vanity mirror. She had acted like a slut and his coolness afterwards had ensured that she felt like one too. She really hated herself. As long as she behaved like that she would never win his respect. Once again she had been too easy. How could Andreas have sunk so low as to take advantage of her again? And how could she have allowed that to happen?
She had to forget that she loved Andreas. Her baby should be her only priority now. She should never, ever have got back into bed with him again. All that was likely to do was complicate things. Andreas still believed she had slept with Ben. No affair with Andreas had the faintest hope of a promising future. He would not make any commitment to her. Such a relationship would be doomed to failure and their child would also suffer in that breakdown. Sleeping with Andreas had been a serious mistake, but it was not a mistake she had to go on repeating, was it?
Hope emerged from the en suite.
Fully dressed, only his tousled black hair revealing that he had not spent the last hour in the average business meeting, Andreas surveyed her. ‘All I want to do is take you out of here and back to London where you belong.’
‘But I don’t belong there. I always preferred the country and that’s where I’d like to live if I get the chance. Look…’ Hope shifted an awkward hand, inhibited by the need to conceal her true emotions from him with a show of indifference. ‘We slept together and we shouldn’t have. I regret it very much.’
‘You didn’t regret it while you were doing it, pedhi mou,’ Andreas spelt out with dangerous bite. ‘So, what’s changed?’
‘I’m trying to be sensible for the baby’s benefit. I don’t want to be your mistress and I don’t think you’re facing how complicated things could get with a child in the midst of it all.’
Andreas pinned smouldering golden eyes of censure on her and proved that he was not listening. ‘This is about Campbell, isn’t it?’
Hope winced, for with that one question he fulfilled her every fear. ‘It’s not even me you want—’
‘What on earth is that supposed to mean?’
‘I think you just want to take me away from Ben to prove that you can do it. And, yes, you can do it. I’m no good at saying no to you…but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how dangerous you are to my peace of mind,’ she confessed gruffly.
Andreas dealt her a look of stark and savage impatience. ‘This is all nonsense. You fell into my arms…you came back to me—’
‘No…I had sex with you,’ Hope rephrased in a mortified undertone, her face reddening as she pushed out that contradiction.
Andreas studied her in angry disbelief. ‘Don’t be coarse—’
