to do—secure an heir, get rid of an unwanted wife and marry where he truly loved.
Totally unwilling to greet the doctor lying like a wilting Victorian heroine on the bed, when there was not a single thing wrong with her, she grabbed fresh underwear from a drawer and a honey-coloured, gauzy cotton strappy sundress from the closet, dressed at speed, and perched herself in a brocade-covered armchair close by one of the windows, picking up a glossy magazine from a nearby table and pretending to be engrossed.
The doctor had other ideas. A serious-looking beanpole of a man, silver-haired and exquisitely dressed, he indicated the bed and carried out an examination that had her squirming with violent embarrassment—because Dimitri was still looming, taut-featured. Though what he had to be uptight about Maddie couldn’t begin to guess, and wasn’t going to try.
As he removed the blood-pressure cuff Dr Papantoniou stood up, smiling. He swung round to face Dimitri. ‘Congratulations. My best estimate is that your wife will give you a child in around seven months.’ He turned his smile on Maddie. ‘You are fit and well, kyria. And pregnant. I forbid any further treks in the heat of the afternoon. Remember, you are carrying a precious life inside you. Take gentle exercise in the cool of the day, rest and eat well, and be sure of a happy pregnancy.’
Turning to a shell-shocked Dimitri, he advised, ‘I will visit again when you return to the mainland, to arrange tests and make a referral to a top gynaecologist. I foresee no difficulties, but you will naturally demand the very best for your wife and child.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
IF DIMITRI had looked positively shell-shocked at the doctor’s announcement, then Maddie couldn’t have described what she felt. The news that there was a tiny baby growing inside her had made her feel light-headed with something she could only define as fierce protectiveness, all mingled up with the razor-sharp, icy edge of fear.
Because this was the news that Dimitri and Irini had been waiting for. The safe conception of a rightful heir, then—bingo!—get rid of the unwanted wife and marry the so beautiful, so suitably wealthy, so upper-crust love of his life!
How could she have not known? Or at least suspected? But she’d put the extremely scanty nature of her last two periods down to the stress she’d been under, and her early-morning queasiness hadn’t occurred often enough to ring alarm bells. If she’d suspected she might be pregnant he could have threatened all he liked but she would never have agreed to come back to Greece, she thought wildly.
She would fight him to the last breath in her body before she let him take her baby from her, she vowed staunchly. Then, choking as tears clogged her throat, she buried her head in the pillow. She only realised Dimitri had re-entered the room when his hand touched her shoulder.
Her heart gave a sickening lurch as she twisted round on the massive bed, sitting with her hands tightly wrapped around her updrawn knees to hold herself together, and trying to gather the coherent yet cutting words that would tell him in no uncertain terms she was aware of his sick plans, and that no way would she allow him to bring them to fruition. Even if she did come from a humble background—fit, as his ultra-snobbish aunt would have it, only to scrub his floors—it didn’t mean she didn’t know how to fight her corner, or that she wouldn’t!
But before she could formulate a single phrase, let alone anything approaching a sensible sentence from the mayhem going on inside her head, he took her hands, gently unknotting her savagely clenched fingers, and spoke with a warmth that momentarily drove everything out of her mind and left her gaping.
‘Between us we have created a precious new life. There will now be no question of a divorce. And, whatever your reasons for wanting one, I do not wish to hear them. I will not hear them,’ he stressed with fierce insistence. ‘As of the moment your pregnancy was confirmed past differences are forgotten. By both of us,’ he stressed again, this time with a blithe arrogance that literally took her breath away.
Just like that! Maddie exploded internally, her gaze narrowing to needle-points of glittering bright blue as she tried to read the golden eyes partially obscured by the thick dark sweep of his ebony lashes. She was as sure as she could be that divorce would be the first word to trip smartly off his tongue the moment his son or daughter was born!
Removing her hands from his gentle grasp, she sat on them, speedwell-blue eyes daring him to take them back. He didn’t, simply brushed the tumbling silk of caramel curls from her forehead with tender fingers and smiled that slow, devastating smile of his that always before had had the power to send delicious tingles up and down her spine. Now it just made her hate him!
‘Today we start our married life afresh, chrysi mou. For the sake of our child. And it will be good, I promise. You will want for nothing. Whatever you desire, you will have,’ he claimed with extravagant emphasis. ‘And now—’ he got to his feet ‘—I will make that belated lunch. You must eat for two now, and I am ravenous! But the food I prepared before will be unfit to eat. I left it on the balcony in my panic to find you.’
The light kiss he dropped on her cheek made her heart leap like a landed fish, and there was anger sparking in her eyes as she watched him walk to the door, turning, giving her that bone-melting smile as he invited, ‘Come down and join me.’
The silence that followed his exit was thick with her rage and pain as she vowed she would not be taken for a sucker. Not again!
He had got what he wanted.
Her pregnancy.
Of course he would sweet-talk her—he was very good at it! Brush aside her request for a divorce as the utterings of a retard. Use soft-soap by the bucketful to keep her with him until the child was born. He’d want to keep a close eye on her to make sure she didn’t take up sky-diving, get drunk every night, or in any way put his heir at risk!
Swinging her feet off the bed, she stood slowly, straightened her skirt and headed for the bathroom, sluicing her burning cheeks with cold water and dragging a brush through her tangled hair. Staring sightlessly at her reflection, she took several deep, calming breaths.
Dimitri thought he’d got her right where he wanted her. But she would prove otherwise. Always up front—what you saw was what you got—she would change the habits of a lifetime and learn to be as devious as he. She’d had a top-flight tutor in that regard, hadn’t she?
Useless to confront him now with what she knew. It was far too late. Pointless to repeat what Irini herself had told her, his aunt’s sly hints, or to remind him forcefully of the evidence of her own eyes and ears. The way when Irini was around, he’d always give her the undivided attention she routinely demanded—the way he’d dropped everything on that last morning, not hanging around even to share morning coffee with his wife as he always did. His avowal of love to the other woman would continually haunt her nightmares.
And other things—things that hadn’t troubled her one iota before—had fallen into place when she’d been forced to face the truth on that dreadful morning.
Their low-key wedding in the tiny village church, with only her immediate family invited to witness the event, for instance. As if he was ashamed of marrying so far beneath him and regarded the ceremony as a necessary evil, the tedious preliminary to a hopefully shortlived marriage that would provide him with what he really wanted.
Greeks made a great celebration of marriage, and in the normal course of events a man such as Dimitri Kouvaris would have wanted an almighty splash—with his aunt there, of course, and all the distant relatives Irini had spoken of, his large circle of friends and
