The Carides Pregnancy
Kim Lawrence

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

COMING NEXT MONTH

CHAPTER ONE

CARL STONE’S control over his financial empire was total, whereas the weather in the Home Counties, for the moment, remained outside his dominion.

It was the day of his only daughter’s wedding, and the Met Office had predicted an early snowfall across the country. The ominous clouds overhead suggested that promise would almost definitely be fulfilled.

Sure enough, as a sprinkling of early guests began to arrive, making their way through the tight security cordon around the Cathedral, the first thick white flakes began to fall.

A few snowflakes, however, were not about to dampen the spirits of these guests. Most would have happily struggled through a total white-out, weighed down by their understated—in some cases overstated—elegance, their designer hats, fur coats, and jewels, to attend what was extravagantly being billed as the society wedding of the year!

Only one person appeared not to appreciate his good fortune at being there. The tall, lean figure stood a little apart, with one hand thrust negligently into his trouser pocket, his broad back set against the gnarled trunk of an ancient yew. He was apparently oblivious to the biting cold wind, and the snow that had begun to dust his dark hair and the shoulders of his well-cut morning suit.

If the expression on his dark, startlingly handsome face suggested anything it was intense boredom. This sombreness of expression was lightened occasionally when he responded in kind to a greeting from a friend or family member as they passed by.

One impressionable young lady, gasping as she witnessed such a moment, was heard to declare fervently that she would happily sell her soul to be on the receiving end of that smile. Her more literally-minded sister retorted bluntly that she would like to be on the receiving end of more than his smile!

‘Jocasta…India…Behave, girls.’ Herding her sulky daughters ahead of her, their mother—a long way from indifferent herself to the attributes of the tall, enigmatic figure with the fallen angel features and the dangerous sexy aura—gave a slightly wistful glance in his direction before following her offspring inside the splendid Gothic edifice.

If others present had been unaware of his identity, his colouring would have immediately placed him on the groom’s guest list. Typically Greek, they would have said, observing his jet-black hair, warm olive skin, and a profile that could have come straight from an ancient Greek statue. But those better acquainted could have told them that this man wasn’t typically anything!

The question of identity didn’t arise, however, because of course there was hardly a soul amongst the socially prominent guests who wasn’t aware of his identity. Any number, if asked, could probably list his star sign, his shoe size, and hazard an educated guess at his bank balance.

Christos Carides, head of the Carides Empire, was actually as instantly recognisable to his fellow guests as was their host, and according to some sources he was even more disgustingly rich! And, it went without saying, much better looking.

Despite outward appearances Christos was feeling the cold, having spent the last month enjoying warm Australian sunshine, he was keenly aware of the chill in the air. A chill that was very nearly as bone-biting as the one between him and his cousin—the groom.

A spasm of contempt briefly distorted the perfect contours of his sensually moulded lips as his thoughts touched on the subject of his cousin Alex.

At that moment a shortish, cherubic-faced and fair-haired young man emerged from the side of the building. He gave a relieved sigh as he immediately spotted the person he was looking for. Breathless, his jacket flapping open to reveal a striped silk waistcoat, the harassed best man belted along the path, narrowly avoiding several collisions with startled-looking guests.

‘I’m Peter,’ he blurted out as he skidded to halt in front of the tall, commanding figure of the Greek financier.

‘Yes, I remember. You’re Carl’s godson, aren’t you…?’

Peter nodded. ‘I’m the best man after…’ He stopped, looking uncomfortable.

Christos helped him out. ‘After I refused.’

‘Yeah, well, you don’t know how glad I am to see you.’

‘Always glad to make someone happy,’ Christos observed drily. ‘Can I help you?’ he prompted, when the younger man didn’t respond.

‘You’ve got to come with me!’

In response to this dramatic statement Christos flexed his shoulders and levered himself with effortless elegance from the tree trunk. ‘I have…?’ he murmured politely.

The sardonic inflection and the cold light in the dark, deepset eyes that rested on his face caused the breathless younger man’s hopeful smile to gutter and fade. This was not a promising start.

‘He’s asking for you. Please…Mr C-Carides,’ he stuttered. ‘I don’t know what to do. He’s a total mess, and if Uncle Carl sees him like this there’ll be hell to pay,’ he predicted gloomily. ‘He drank enough to sink a battleship last night. He really isn’t himself.’

Christos did not display surprise—because he wasn’t surprised. He would have been more surprised if his cousin hadn’t fallen off the wagon. At times of stress—and presumably marrying the heiress of one of the richest men in Britain came under that title—his cousin always reached for a crutch.

‘I think you’ll find, Peter, when you have known Alex a little longer, that he is being himself.’

He would learn, as people generally did, that underneath the charm Alex possessed in abundance his cousin was essentially weak and, like many insecure men, inclined to be spiteful and manipulative when thwarted.

The younger man looked a little nonplussed by the languid response. ‘I don’t think you understand. He can hardly stand up and he keeps…’ He paused and glanced over his shoulder. ‘Crying…’

It was clear to Christos that in the young Englishman’s eyes these masculine tears were the most embarrassing feature of this situation. ‘And this should concern me because…?’ he enquired, in his deep, accented drawl.

The younger man’s expression betrayed his shock and revulsion at this casual response. ‘You’re not going to help?’

The reply, when it came, was unambiguous. ‘No.’

Under normal circumstances the younger man would not have dared speak his mind to the likes of Christos Carides, but the realisation that he was going to have to sort out the mess himself made him recklessly outspoken.

‘When Alex said you were a cold, callous bastard I gave you the benefit of the doubt!’

Christos smiled, revealing even white teeth and zero warmth. ‘Your mistake, I think,’ he observed mildly. ‘If you want my advice, for what it’s worth, I’d shove his head in a bucket of ice water, fill another with black coffee and force-feed it to him.

‘Don’t worry too much,’ he added. ‘He has the constitution of a hospital superbug. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m waiting for someone.’ With a slight inclination of his dark head he dismissed the younger man.

The stressed best man retreated a few feet, then turned back, his resentment roughening his young voice as he yelled back, ‘Uncle Carl is right. You and the rest of Carides family may think you’re a cut above everyone else, but when it comes down to it you’re no better than a damned pirate. No morals, no scruples and no manners.’

Peter saw that, rather than being offended by the insulting tirade, Christos was grinning, in that instant looking every inch a swashbuckling buccaneer—one, furthermore, likely to cut his throat on a whim!

‘Is that a direct quote?’

Peter was not a physical young man, but the mockery gleaming in the Greek’s dark eyes filled with him with an uncharacteristic desire to resort to physical violence. Not that he did, of course. He was angry, not insane! This was no sedentary businessman he was talking to. Christos Carides was only in his early thirties, and besides, he had to be six five if he was an inch—and he definitely worked out!

Cooling down slightly, Peter became belatedly aware that people were staring. And, being much less comfortable with this attention than his adversary, the young man gritted his teeth and stalked off with as much dignity as he could muster.

He would have been comforted to know that there was someone close by who would have applauded his reading of the Carides character—and added a few choice observations of her own!

Becca Summer, mingling with guests, was approaching the security cordon. At that moment her throat was so dry with nerves she probably couldn’t have strung two words together, and if she had she wouldn’t have been able to hear what she said above the heavy thud of her pounding heart. Six weeks earlier she hadn’t been similarly hindered.

Six weeks earlier she had been uncharacteristically vocal!

‘People like these Carides,’ she had declared, snarling the name contemptuously. ‘They make me sick! They think that just because they have money and power they can do anything they want.’ She’d looked at her sister, Erica, and swallowed past the emotional lump in her throat. ‘Regardless of who they hurt.’

‘You know, Becca, there’s not much point being mad,’ Erica had pointed out defeatedly.

‘You mean don’t get mad, get even?’ The old cliché had never made more sense to her than it had at that moment.

‘Get even?’ Erica had exclaimed with a laugh. ‘Are you serious? We’re talking about the Carides.’

‘So you think that people like the Carides imagine they can do anything they want?’ Becca had retorted.

‘I know they can, Becca.’

The bleak retort had made Becca’s eyes fill. She’d struggled to hold back the tears and declared fiercely, ‘One day I’ll teach them that they can’t walk all over people and get away with it! You see if I don’t.’

It had been said in the heat of the moment, and deep down she probably hadn’t really believed that such an opportunity would arise—but here she was, about to do her small part in balancing the scales of justice.

And she was already regretting it big-time!

Becca caught a passer-by staring at her head and quickly pulled off the knitted cloche—not the sort of head gear that people wore to posh weddings—crammed over her tangled titian hair. Pulling a not quite steady hand through her Pre-Raphaelite curls, she shook her hair back, letting it fan over the dark material of her coat.

Don’t give up the day job, Becca. Undercover work is definitely not for you, she told herself, repressing a worried grin.

Part of the problem was that she was not just scared out of her mind, she was exhausted. Hardly surprising, considering that the previous evening she had jumped in her ancient Beetle and driven through the night, halfway across the country, to get here.

Adrenaline and outrage—and seeing the newspaper article concerning the ‘society wedding of the year’ had given her a double dose of both—could, she discovered, take a protective big sister a long way.

Cars, on the other hand, needed petrol—which was why she had had to walk five miles along a lonely road to the nearest service station at three in the morning. A terrifying experience. And then, just to add to her misery, it had started to snow.

Snow in early November—how unlucky was that?

She had a blister on her right heel to bear witness to her trek, and a suspicion that spontaneity wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. After this was over it would be a relief to go back to her normal sensible, cautious, consequence-considering self!

Reckless just wasn’t her. It wasn’t in her nature to throw caution to the wind. In fact, her inability to be spontaneous had been one of the reasons Roger had cited for the failure of their relationship.

Her family and friends had been suitably supportive when the announcement—the very week following their break-up—of Roger’s engagement to a bubbly blonde had appeared in the local paper. Becca, uneasily aware that as the dumped fiancée she ought to be feeling more traumatised, had received their sympathy with a degree of guilt. After a few weeks the role of pathetic victim had begun to get wearing.

When she had said as much to her sister, Erica had said, ‘Don’t worry—in a few weeks’ time they will have a new juicy scandal to talk about.’

Neither of them had suspected at the time that it would be Erica who supplied the scandal!

Erica had told her family about her unplanned pregnancy the same day the ambulance had been called, its sirens ringing, to the neat Edwardian semi where Becca and Erica had grown up

But it had been too late to save the baby.

Later, back home, with the promise that—all being well—their youngest daughter could be discharged the next day, the Summers family had sat down in the sitting room, staring mutely at one another.

Recognising her elderly parents were still in shock—her father was ten years older than her mother, and Elspeth Summer had been forty-five when her younger daughter had been born—Becca had done the only thing she’d been able to think of: she’d made tea.

‘She’s only eighteen,’ her mother had been saying when she’d come back in, carrying the tray.

‘Well, maybe this was for the best.’

‘For the best…? For the best! How can you even suggest that losing a baby is for the best!’ Elspeth had demanded, rounding furiously on her startled husband.

‘Dad didn’t mean it that way,’ Becca had soothed. ‘Did you, Dad.’

‘No, of course not,’ her father had said, looking intensely grateful for the intervention.

‘I was just thinking that, knowing our Erica, it would have been you and Becca who ended up looking after the baby,’ he’d observed, with an affectionate watery smile.

His wife had given him a reassuring smile back and said huskily, ‘I know you didn’t mean it, love.’ She’d reached across and clasped his hand. ‘I’m just thinking if we’d been stricter with her…’

And that had been the start of a predictable orgy of self-recrimination. Recrimination! Their kind, loving parents were the very last people in the world who had anything to reproach themselves over. Going over that conversation in her head made Becca ashamed that she had almost turned back when she saw the scale of this wedding she intended to crash and disrupt. Her soft lips thinned. She just hoped that plenty of people had their video cameras handy!

Head up, she pinned on a confident smile and, picking up a corsage that someone had dropped on the floor she tucked it at a jaunty angle into her buttonhole. She intended to see to it that the society wedding of the decade didn’t go without a hitch.

CHAPTER TWO

CHRISTOS watched the irate best man vanish around the side of the building and suppressed a twinge of guilt. For a second he was tempted to follow him, but instead he blew on his fingers to revive the circulation. It struck him as faintly ludicrous that even after all that had happened his first instinct was to bail his cousin out.

What Alex needed was not someone to hold his hand and wipe his nose—he needed to take responsibility for his own actions. Christos’s attempt the previous year to instil a sense of responsibility into the younger man had failed spectacularly.

When he had spelt out the new rules to his cousin, the younger man had laughed.

‘This is a wind-up. You’re bluffing.’

Christos had shaken his head. ‘Turn up at the office more than once every six months, and when you’re there do more than drink coffee and chat up female staff.’

‘I delegate,’ Alex had protested.

‘No. I delegate; you sponge. Work, cousin—or the very healthy cheque that’s credited to your bank account every month won’t be there.’

Christos hadn’t been bluffing.

There were a number of family members who had called him a heartless monster for refusing to be swayed from his decision—though naturally not to his face. Interestingly, there had been an equal number who had said, About time too!

But Alex’s response to the challenge had not been what he’d hoped. In fact it had been something he could not have predicted.

Christos had never decided if Alex had wanted him to find out, but there was no similar ambiguity when it came to his ex-fiancée’s intentions. Melina had known Christos was coming to her flat that evening, to return the keys and pick up the laptop he’d left there.

‘Don’t be silly—there’s no reason we can’t be civilised. We have history,’ Melina had said when he’d rung to say he would send someone round with the keys. ‘You come, darling, and we can have a drink to the good times.’

The look of spiteful triumph in her eyes when he had walked in and found her and Alex naked on the floor, amidst a pile of discarded clothes and several empty wine bottles, had removed any lingering guilt Christos felt about ending their short-lived farcical engagement the previous week.

Mild disgust and contempt were not the responses a man was meant to have when he found the woman he had briefly contemplated spending the rest of his life with making love to another man!

He’d felt no desire to take violent retribution, no desire to wipe the supercilious smirk off his cousin’s face—just a compelling urge to walk away from the sordid and tasteless spectacle.

And that was what he had done. He had slung the keys on the table and left. His only regret being that he had ever been insane enough to think all right and workable were thoughts a man should have as prerequisites for marriage.

Before Christos succumbed to frostbite, or to the austerity of his own grim reflections, his great-aunt, whom he had been delegated to escort, arrived. Christos heard her before he saw her. Her bony frame was swamped by several layers of motley fur, and her grey hair was crammed into an ancient shapeless hat, but her voice was not similarly fettered. It was loud and penetrating.

‘It is not civilised. I shouldn’t be surprised if this British weather kills me!’ she was telling a fellow guest.

‘I should be very surprised.’

A smile illuminated the lined, leathery face as Theodosia Carides identified the tall figure who had materialised at her side.

‘So you did come,’ she grunted, offering her rose-scented withered cheek for her great-nephew’s respectful salute.

‘Seeing you, Aunt Theodosia, makes the effort worth while.’

‘Don’t try your charm on me,’ the old lady recommended, repressing a pleased grin as she accepted the arm her tall handsome nephew offered. ‘I’m immune.’

The still-upright septuagenarian, who did not even reach his shoulder, did not see the need to lower her voice as her favourite nephew escorted her into the hushed, vaulted interior of the Cathedral.

‘I thought you were in Australia, Christos?’

‘I was.’ Christos saw Melina, looking as stunning as ever, seated a few feet away. They nodded in a civilised manner to one another.

‘Did Alex really ask you to be best man?’

‘Yes, he did.’

‘And you said no?’

Christos’s expression didn’t alter as he inclined his dark head in agreement—which, considering the mental picture of his ex, naked astride the groom, which was at that moment flickering across his retina, was no mean achievement.

‘I expect you had your reasons…?’

Christos did not satisfy her curiosity. ‘Can I take that for you, Aunt?’ he asked, indicating the large portmanteau his elderly relative clutched.

‘I am not an invalid.’ Despite this sharp assertion, she paused to catch her breath. ‘I suppose you know that Andrea is saying your refusal is just another symptom of your deep-seated jealousy?’

Christos’s dark brows lifted. ‘Jealousy?’

The old lady nodded. ‘According to her, you’ve always been jealous of her precious Alex.’ No longer able to conceal her amusement, she gave a loud cackle of mirth and shared the joke. ‘Apparently you never lose any opportunity to belittle him and make him look foolish. Though from what I’ve seen he doesn’t need much help—and so I told his mother. Andrea always was a very silly woman.’

‘I must remember to avoid Aunt Andrea.’

‘As if you care what she thinks. As if you care what anyone thinks.’ Her expression suggested she approved of this attitude.

Christos gave one his most charming smiles. ‘I care what you think, Aunt Theodosia,’ he promised slickly.

The old lady dismissed the comment with a derisive snort. ‘Does nobody but me care about tradition any more?’ she wondered out loud. ‘Nobody would even know this was a Carides wedding,’ she continued, in the same disapproving bellow. ‘Nobody has yet explained to me why they’re not having a proper Orthodox ceremony.’

‘Don’t look at me, Aunt Theodosia. This wedding has nothing to do with me.’ He was only here because his mother had got distressed and played the duty card. ‘They’ll think you don’t like your cousin.’

‘I don’t.’

In the event his honesty had not won him any points with his mother. She had bitterly enquired over the phone if he derived some form of malicious pleasure out of tormenting her.

‘If he gets a little loud around you it’s because you make him feel inadequate,’ Mia Carides had explained.

On the other side of the world, Christos had given a wry grin. Inadequate was one of the things a man might be excused for feeling if he found the woman he was to have married having sex with another man. Only he had never really been in love with Melina.

In truth, it had come as something of a surprise to Christos to hear the news of his own engagement!

When Melina had pulled her father to one side and whispered in his ear, Christos had had no inkling of the secret she was sharing. Not until two minutes later, when their host had called for hush and shared the news with the rest of the three hundred or so close friends who were there to celebrate the thirty years of married bliss he and his wife had enjoyed.

‘I am happy to announce that my daughter and our dear friend Christos Carides are to be married.’

Christos had had no desire to humiliate the rather drunk Melina, with whom he had enjoyed a casual on-off relationship for several years, so he had smiled through the inevitable congratulations and gone home with the firm intention of ending the engagement the next day.

That had been his first mistake!

His next had been not to agree when a very shame-faced and repentant Melina had turned up the next morning, promising to set the record straight immediately. Her remorse had appeared totally genuine, and she’d obviously been mortified—so much so that he had heard himself saying, ‘Why bother? We could give it a trial run.’

‘Do you really think so, Christos?’

‘Why not? We get on well enough, and it’s not as though either of us is waiting for love at first sight.’

Contemplating life without love did not overly concern Christos. A person could not miss what they had never had. And perhaps, as Melina had claimed in one of their many arguments, he was incapable of the emotion?

‘What do you mean, nothing to do with you? You’re head of the family, aren’t you?’ Aunt Theodosia demanded shrilly.

With a rueful smile Christos refocused his attention on the demanding little lady at his elbow. When jet lag eventually kicked in he was going to sleep for a week. ‘A title with few benefits.’

His dry observation drew a crowing little laugh from the old lady, but she added severely, ‘Don’t whine, Christos. You have been blessed with brains, looks and health—not to mention a gift for making large amounts of money without breaking a sweat.’

The unsympathetic recommendation brought a smile to Christos’s dark, expressive eyes. ‘Sorry, Aunt,’ he said, bowing his dark head meekly.

‘This girl of Alex’s has got a face like a horse,’ she observed regretfully.

‘Sally is a very nice girl,’ Christos responded, a quiver in his deep voice.

It was at that moment he saw her.

He stopped dead, and didn’t hear what Theodosia was saying—or, for that matter, anything else. She was framed in the doorway, her hair as she entered the Gothic candlelit Cathedral an incredible burnished beacon.

For a few seconds things got seriously surreal. But there was in all probability some perfectly prosaic reason for the rest of the world receding, leaving him with the impression that he and the redhead were the only two people in the place.

Christos, his jaw clenched, blinked hard, and the hum of conversation gradually filtered back into his consciousness. Jet lag, he concluded, loosening the constricting tie around his neck a little as he narrowed his gaze on the bright head of the slim, simply dressed woman.

He had never seen her before. Not that this made her exceptional. There were any number of people attending the wedding that he had never laid eyes on before. But, unlike this late arrival, those strangers had no connection with the prickle on the back of his neck. The groove between his dark, strongly delineated black brows deepened as he lifted a hand to the affected area.

With a first-class degree in pure maths, and the owner of a mind that was widely held to be brilliantly analytical and logical, he saw nothing contradictory in trusting his instincts. And there was absolutely no doubt in his mind that the slender redhead represented trouble of a major variety.

Perhaps the danger she represented appealed to him? Could that alone account for his suddenly out-of-control libido? He didn’t have a clue, and he was not in a mood to analyse his motivation, he just knew he was going to make sure—even at the risk of major disappointment—of meeting her.

At some level he recognised that even the recent months of self-enforced abstinence didn’t totally explain away the compulsion that made him unable to take his eyes off her for fear she would vanish.

Vanish? With that hair? Not likely. His eyes moved hungrily over the mass of rich auburn curls that fell down her shapely narrow back. It was extremely unlikely that she would be swallowed up in the crowd, even though that was clearly her desire. A circumstance that he would investigate at a later date, when other more urgent needs, like hearing her voice, were satisfied.

Christos met many attractive, interesting women during the course of his average day, but none that had ever immobilised him with lust. But now…He trained his eyes on the redhead, who was still trying hard to blend in, and drew a deep breath. This was a temptation he had no intention of resisting.

‘I don’t dislike horses, and from what I’ve seen the girl has got excellent child-bearing hips.’

A thoughtful expression settled on Theodosia’s lined face as she imperiously reclaimed her nephew’s attention with this outrageous observation and a sharp tug on his jacket.

‘Is she pregnant, I wonder? It would explain the unseemly haste. What do you think, Christos?’

With an air of resignation, and still conscious in the periphery of his vision of the redhead, he guided the outspoken old lady into her seat. ‘I think I should mind my own business.’

‘Not that there’s anything wrong with a pregnant bride.’

‘That is very broad-minded of you, Aunt Theodosia.’

‘I’m not a prude, boy.’

Christos’s thickly lashed eyes narrowed in affection. ‘You do surprise me.’

‘And virgins are all well and good,’ she observed generously.

The redhead, he noticed, was in danger of disappearing behind a stone column. He had established, to his satisfaction, that she definitely wasn’t with anyone, but she was too far away for him to tell if she wore any rings.

‘I’m not aware that I know any.’ In his opinion it was more important to be the last man in a woman’s life, not the first, if that woman was the one you intended to spend the rest of your life with.

Theodosia chose to ignore her nephew’s satiric insert beyond tapping him sharply across the knuckles with her cane. ‘I hardly think you’re in any position to criticise. Greek men can be so hypocritical,’ she observed tartly. ‘You’re no saint yourself, young man. At least,’ she continued, ‘when you get a girl pregnant before you put the ring on her finger you know she’s fertile.’

‘That’s very pragmatic of you.’ He cupped the old lady’s elbow as she lowered herself slowly into the pew. ‘But I’m not sure,’ he added in a soft aside, ‘that the bride’s father shares your viewpoint. Or that the modern female would enjoy being likened to a brood mare.’

Just at that moment his mother, looking flushed and breathless, appeared at his shoulder. ‘Christos—I need you.’ Under her breath, Mia Carides said with a fixed smile, ‘Don’t encourage her.’

‘What do you need me for, Mother?’ Christos asked, wondering if the glorious redhead’s hair was as soft and silky as it looked. A man could dream of falling asleep wrapped in that hair…

‘There’s a problem with security,’ Mia improvised smoothly. ‘Such a nuisance. I’m sorry, Aunt Theodosia, you’ll have to excuse us.’

Her son responded to the urgent look with a languid smile which made his mother’s diplomatic expression wobble for an instant as she clenched her teeth. Her son, as she knew, could be very vexing when he chose.

‘Aunt Theodosia and I were just discussing the blushing bride, Mother.’

‘I know—I heard you. So did half the guests,’ Mia observed, waving graciously and bestowing a serene smile on the bride’s indignant parents.

Undeterred, Aunt Theodosia continued, ‘This family needs more babies. What is wrong with you young people nowadays? When are you going to have some babies, Christos?’

Christos bent and pressed his lips in a courtly gesture to the frail, age-spotted old hand. ‘When I find someone with as much spunk as you.’ Or, failing that, red hair. He blinked, wondering where that thought had come from.

The old lady tried to hide her pleased smile. ‘If you do,’ she predicted, ‘it might well be the making of you. That other girl—what was her name?’

‘Melina.’

‘That was it. I didn’t like her. She smiled too much.’

Across the aisle, Melina wasn’t smiling at all. In fact she was looking daggers at a girl with red hair, who Christos had barely taken his eyes from.

CHAPTER THREE

‘WHY do you encourage her, Christos?’ his mother reproached him as she walked down the aisle.

While he lent an attentive ear to his mother, Christos continued to watch the troublesome redhead as she sat down, concealing all but the top of her fiery head from his view.

‘Carl looked furious,’ Mia added in a hushed tone. ‘Especially as Sally is pregnant.’

The column was situated so that in addition to the top of her head he could see her neat feet, and as she crossed one leg over the other her ankle-length coat fell back to reveal a pair of worn denim jeans.

‘What’s the problem with security, Mother?’

‘There isn’t a problem,’ Mia admitted, blissfully unaware that she didn’t have her son’s total attention. ‘I just had to get you away from Aunt Theodosia before you made her say something else outrageous.’

Christos wondered if kissing the unknown redhead, fitting his mouth to hers and parting her moist pink lips, would be considered outrageous. If not, his fertile and overactive imagination was capable of conjuring several alternatives that almost certainly were!

Aware that he was breathing too fast, Christos made a conscious effort to slow his rapid, laboured respirations—not an easy thing to do when your head was filled with imaginings about the taste and touch of a woman.

‘I doubt if anyone has ever made Theodosia do or say anything.’

‘Your voice sounds strange, Christos,’ his mother said, reaching up and touching a cool maternal hand to his brow. ‘And you’re hot,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I do hope you’re not coming down with something. I have never considered air travel healthy.’

‘Well, if I die of something airborne you will have the satisfaction of knowing it was at your instigation I flew halfway around the world to be here.’

‘You,’ his mother retorted tartly, ‘are as bad as Theodosia.’

‘Thank you. I just hope I can grow old as disgracefully as she has.’

His mother cast him a reproachful look, before pausing to be charming to someone important.

‘You know, Mother, I think you’re wrong about the security problem.’

Mia’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘There is a problem? What?’

‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ Christos said, his eyes fixed on the top of that burnished head.

He began to work his way to the rear of the church. On auto-pilot, he returned the nods and smiles he received, all the time never losing sight of the redhead.

As she pulled the collar of her ankle-length coat up around her neck, to frame her face, the breath snagged in his throat. He had never seen her face before, yet somehow he felt as though he had known it all his life.

A man could only go on blaming jet lag for so long. Then he had to take responsibility himself.

A babe in arms chose that moment to cry, its whimper of complaint magnified by the building’s impressive acoustics. By reflex her eyes—like every eye in the place—momentarily turned towards the ear-splitting sound.

He stood with his tall shoulders braced against a stone pillar and pondered the mild electric shock that had passed through his body as those eyes, the deepest and most shocking shade of blue he had ever encountered, had connected with his. He doubted the moment had been shared. He had the impression she hadn’t even registered his presence.

The irony of being ignored was not lost on a man who was used to women pulling every trick in the book to capture his attention.

As he watched, the beautiful stranger raised a hand to her throat under the heavy overcoat, and he saw her chest lift as she exhaled and, biting her lower lip, began to stare straight ahead, an expression of rigid control and ferocious focus on her softly formed fine-boned features.

He studied the strangely familiar face at his leisure. She had the pale, lightly freckled complexion of a natural redhead. Her small nose, in profile, was gently tilted at the tip, and though her wide mouth was drawn taut by the tension that held her entire body rigid, he imagined that under normal circumstances it would be soft.

He got hot as he began to think thoughts inappropriate for the inside of a cathedral. The thoughts concerned that mouth. He not been a victim of such mindless lust since his hormones went crazy in his teens—maybe not even then.

As the place began to fill up he took the seat directly behind the redhead, positioning himself so that he could see her profile. She remained unaware of his scrutiny.

By the time Becca had finally entered the Cathedral the light-headed sensation she had been suffering for the past hour had been joined by a constant low-pitched buzz in her ears. She’d had to thrust her hands into her pockets to hide the fact they were trembling.

Worrying that she might fall into a dead faint at any moment and ruin everything had made it hard for her to maintain the confident air she had adopted, working on the theory that if she looked as if she belonged it might delay the inevitable moment of discovery.

She suspected all her symptoms had a lot to do with her caffeine tolerance. The fourth cup of coffee she had drunk at the motorway services to keep her alert had been a mistake. Her trembling knees had made sitting down sometime soon a priority.

She’d been looking for a likely place to wait for her moment when she’d seen one of the uniformly handsome young men who were smoothly directing guests to their seats bearing down on her, all charm and slick efficiency. She’d frozen and looked wildly from left to right. Then, taking a deep breath and pinning on a painfully bright smile, she’d begun to wave at some invisible person in the crowd, before walking purposefully in that direction.

What am I doing?

As she had slowed to let an elderly lady in an incredibly large hat pass, the full enormity of what she was about to do had hit her. It had been like running full-tilt into a brick wall. The fact was that deep down, until that moment, Becca hadn’t expected to get this far.

Well, what were the odds? You just didn’t walk uninvited into the big society wedding joining the only daughter of one of Britain’s highest profile entrepreneurs to a scion of the fabulously wealthy Carides family.

The knot of anger lodged behind her breastbone had swelled as she’d thought of the family who imagined that money gave them the right to trample over the feelings of ordinary people. A person who had gone through life not hating anyone, Becca was now finding it surprisingly easy to hate anyone who carried the name of Carides.

Head down, avoiding eye contact she’d given a relieved sigh as she’d spotted an unoccupied pew, but as she’d taken her seat she’d realised why the spot had been avoided. A large stone pillar effectively blocked the view of the altar. Becca didn’t mind. She wasn’t here for people to see her. They just needed to hear what she had to say.

Just cause… Her wide-spaced blue eyes grew uncharacteristically hard now, as she thought about the ‘just cause’ that had brought her here. To seduce, impregnate and then dump an impressionable teenage girl was despicable enough—but to do it when you were engaged to another woman…! Well, that made Alex Carides a different class of slimy rat entirely.

An expectant hush fell as the first bars of the ‘Wedding March’ issued from the organ. Becca stiffened and drew in air through her flared nostrils. On her lap, her fingers twisted. She took a deep breath and told herself, You can do this.

But can I?

An image of her sister’s pale tragic face as Becca had driven her back from the hospital flashed into her head. It was enough to stiffen her resolve.

She had actually cleared her throat in preparation when the hand she had been expecting all afternoon finally fell on her shoulder.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘I REALLY don’t think that would be a good idea, do you?’

Good idea? Becca reflected, as the quivering tension left her body in a debilitating rush. That had never had any thing to do with this.

This had always been about standing up, if only in a small way, for Erica and for every other woman who had fallen for that slimy creep’s lies. His future wife needed to know what sort of low-life she was getting married to, and the world needed to know what sort of man Alex Carides actually was.

Who am I kidding? This is about revenge—plain and simple!

The deep, interestingly accented voice, complete with sexy rasp, seemed very close to her ear as he added softly, ‘I don’t think you want to do this.’

Which, in conjunction with the heavy hand on her shoulder, translated as I’ll carry you kicking and screaming from the building if you try. Becca decided to retreat with a little dignity intact.

Chin up, and looking straight ahead, Becca responded to the pressure of those fingers on her shoulder and smoothly rose from her seat, moving up the aisle and walking with little fuss through the metal-studded oak door just to her right which she hadn’t even noticed was there.

Christos was conscious of a slow-burning anger that had started to smoulder the moment he had realised what she intended to do. God knows what ‘just cause’ she had intended to produce, but there was only one logical conclusion to draw. The woman who was going to feature strongly in his fantasies for the foreseeable future was one of Alex’s cast-offs.

A cynical sneer twisted his mouth as he considered the opposite sex’s inability to see beyond his cousin’s winning smile and slick good looks.

The redhead had appalling taste—but she smelt very good! His eyes widened slightly as he recognised that he was angrier now than he had been when he had caught Melina with Alex.

If this wasn’t jet lag he had a serious problem!

Her captor led Becca into a small ante-room. As the heavy door closed it effectively sealed them off from the sounds of the service beyond. At that moment reaction started to set in—in a big way. Her knees began to shake, closely followed by the rest of her.

‘He’s really not worth it, you know.’

‘I know he’s not…’ As she spoke Becca turned her head, inhaled audibly, and added an unthinking and breathy, ‘Goodness!’

Which, under the circumstances—the circumstances being that she was inches away from the most sinfully gorgeous man she had ever seen—was quite restrained. If you were going to be caught, she reflected, you might as well be caught by someone breathtaking. And my goodness, she thought, still slightly stunned by the dark vision of brooding male perfection, he was gorgeous—and then some!

It was perhaps fortunate that the shaky hand she had lifted to her mouth stopped her saying something unconsidered.

Christos watched the colour rush to her cheeks and then fade quite dramatically away, leaving her marble-pale.

‘I think you could do with some fresh air.’ In his opinion that was the very least she looked as if she could do with.

Becca started, and realised that she had been staring at this stranger. Goodness knew how long she had been the prisoner of those hypnotic dark eyes and her own fascination.

She nodded awkwardly.

Her shoulders slumped as she followed the tall man with the longest eyelashes she had ever seen outside. Another minute—that was all she’d needed. She could have wept with sheer frustration. It was so unfair. Why was it that men like Alex Carides never paid the price?

Shame flooded through her. A great sister I am!

Outside, Becca sank down onto a conveniently situated bench that had been fashioned from a tree trunk. She was in no mood to appreciate its aesthetic properties as she bent forward and buried her face in her hands.

‘Later, when you’ve had a chance to think calmly about this, you’ll realise I’ve done you a favour.’

Becca’s head jerked up. ‘A favour?’ she echoed belligerently. ‘Look, I know you were only doing your job— though if you were any sort of security I wouldn’t have got as far as I did,’ she felt impelled to point out. ‘But don’t act as if your motives were altruistic.’

The tall, dark and gorgeous stranger looked startled for a moment, then gave a lop-sided sort of smile that made her undiscriminating tummy muscles quiver appreciatively.

‘I was tempted to let you do it,’ he admitted.

Tears of frustration sprang to her eyes. ‘I wanted…wanted…’

‘Calm down.’

He really was the most beautiful man she had ever seen—or even imagined! She ran the tip of her tongue across the outline of her dry lips and fixed him with a resentful glare. ‘You could have looked the other way.’

‘But then,’ he observed, ‘I’d have lost my job.’

Becca gave a distracted sigh. ‘I suppose you would,’ she agreed.

‘Did you really want to stand up and make a fool of yourself like that?’

‘This isn’t about wanting, it’s about…’ She stopped and took a shuddering deep breath as she struggled to regain control. After a few moments her darkened eyes lifted to the face of the man beside her. ‘Tell me, do you think it’s right that he gets away with ruining someone’s life?’

‘I think you should consider it a narrow escape,’ Christos observed drily.

Becca frowned at the platitude. ‘What would you know about it?’

‘I know quite a lot about Alex Carides.’

Which might, she mused, explain his expression of contempt.

‘How can you work for a man like that?’ The thought of being around such a creep made her skin crawl. The thought of being around any Carides full-stop made her skin crawl.

‘A man has to eat.’

She flickered him an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry—I didn’t mean to moralise. Goodness, I’m the last person to do that.’

Her self-deprecating remark wiped all expression from his face.

Confused, Becca watched his dark, cynical gaze drop, and wondered at the almost tangible waves of tension emanating from him. ‘Are you pregnant?’

Becca blinked, confused by the speed with which his manner had transformed from sympathy to frozen condemnation. As she read the distaste in his face twin circles of angry colour appeared on the apples of her pale cheeks.

‘You think that I—’ She bit back her hasty rejoinder. She didn’t owe a total stranger any explanation—though knowing that he believed she had slept with a Carides made it hard for her to hold her tongue. ‘Your boss makes a habit of getting women pregnant, does he?’ she countered.

‘Then there is a baby?’ he said, looking sterner than ever.

‘Not any more.’

‘A termination?’ he said bleakly.

Becca’s voice grew husky with emotion as she corrected him. ‘A miscarriage.’

The security guard drew a deep breath and, framing her face in his hands said urgently. ‘What is your name?’

The peculiarity of his manner stood out as very strange in a day that had possibly been the strangest in her life.

‘Your name?’ he repeated.

‘Becca.’

‘Don’t move, Becca. I’ll be back.’

He didn’t have the faintest idea if she had registered what he’d said. It was hard to tell from the glazed expression in her eyes if she was taking in anything much at all. He didn’t like to leave her, but the strength of his feelings meant he had to act on them.

His timing was perfect. The main participants, along with the photographer, were emerging from the vestry, their symbolic signatures having been duly witnessed. They all stopped when they saw him.

Without responding to the varied greetings directed at him, Christos grabbed his cousin by the shoulders and pulled him away from his bride.

‘What’s wrong?’

Christos smiled, and his cousin looked alarmed. ‘This is for Becca!’ he said, and landed a sharp but controlled jab on the younger man’s nose.

The groom yelled and clutched at his nose, blood oozing between his fingers. ‘Who the hell is Becca?’ he screamed indignantly. So Christos punched him again, and Alex went down.

She had moved. Cursing softly under his breath, Christos ran down a side path and saw her almost immediately.

‘I told you to stay put.’

Becca looked at the long brown fingers curled around her upper arm. Until he touched her she had been feeling a lot better. Now her sensitive stomach was quivering violently. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she said.

Considering the advice she had dished out on the subject to her sister, she couldn’t go down the road of reacting to arbitrary and dangerous sexual attraction without being a total hypocrite!

‘More to the point, what are you doing?’ he queried suspiciously.

‘Is that any of your business?’ she countered frostily. ‘And, thank you, but I can find my own way.’ Her eyes slid to the hand on her arm, but he didn’t react. ‘I don’t need an escort.’

‘The head of security might have other ideas,’ he retorted drily.

‘That’s not you?’ Her frowning regard travelled the length of his tall lean person. No reason, of course, that he had to be the boss. He wasn’t wearing a badge or anything. But he didn’t act like a man who was used to obeying orders.

On the other hand it was easy to picture him issuing them, and having people fall over themselves to obey. An accusing frown settled on her upturned face.

‘You act as if you are.’ No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t she see him slotting into any hierarchy of command. This man didn’t look like a team player to her.

‘I’m new to the game,’ he admitted glibly.

‘Which probably explains why you’re taking your duties too zealously,’ she muttered. ‘I’ve not committed a crime or anything. You’ve got no right to restrain me against my will. In fact,’ she added, ‘That—’ her nod indicated the hand on her arm ‘—is probably assault. Actually, I don’t think there’s any probably about it.’

He smiled, and Becca lowered her eyes as she experienced a spasm of sexual awareness that made her knees quiver. What is it with me? You’d think I’d never seen an attractive man before!

‘Perhaps we should let the police decide?’

The silky suggestion brought her horrified gaze back to his face. ‘You’re joking?’

He shrugged and looked infuriatingly enigmatic.

Becca couldn’t stop the quiver of doubt entering her voice as she added, ‘I’ve told you, I’ve not committed a crime or anything.’

‘You don’t think so?’

He made no attempt to prevent her as she pulled her arm free of his grasp and folded it across her heaving chest, glaring up at him defiantly.

‘I don’t think. I know.’

Despite her confident assertion Becca couldn’t prevent a shade of worry entering her voice as she reviewed her gate-crashing.

‘Unless this is a question of one law for the rich and another for the rest of us.’

His dark eyes narrowed on her scornful face. ‘You have a problem with people being wealthy?’

She lifted a hand to her aching head. ‘No, I have a problem with spoilt parasites like the Carides.’

Aware of an expression in her captor’s dark eyes that made her uneasy, she bit her lip to cut short this flow of bitter confidences.

‘It’s a little late to be discreet.’

‘I really don’t want to debate this with you. I just want—’ She broke off and winced as the bells overhead broke into a triumphal peal. Face pale and composed, she lifted her eyes to his face. ‘I just want to go home.’

‘An excellent plan,’ he said, falling into step beside her.

Becca tilted her face and studied the hard angles and intriguing hollows of his dark, lean and exasperatingly sexy features. ‘What,’ she demanded, expelling a gusty sigh, ‘do you think you’re doing now?’

‘Making sure you go home.

‘Are you going to escort me all the way to Yorkshire?’

‘I’m going to stick to you until I’m sure you can’t double back and wreak the destructive vengeance your soul craves.’ His eyes locked with hers. ‘I take it that is what this is about?’

‘I suppose you’re going to tell me revenge wouldn’t make me feel better?’

‘No, I wouldn’t say that,’ Christos responded, thinking of the groom with his bloody nose.

There were times in life when a man had to stop being cerebral and get physical—though he imagined there were a few people inside who might disagree with him at that moment. It would be a long time before he was forgiven for ruining the wedding. But it would be interesting to hear how they explained away the groom’s face…

Becca pursed her lips and looked at him with mute dislike. She saw he was smiling. ‘You have my word that I won’t crash the reception or spoil the wedding photos.’

‘Your word…’ he mused, dragging a brown hand through his dark collar-length hair. ‘You do see my problem there?’

Becca planted her hands on her slim hips and inhaled wrathfully. ‘Are you calling me a liar?’

‘Not as such. But,’ he qualified, ‘I do think you’re not thinking straight right now.’

‘Don’t patronise me.’ She gritted her teeth as she reflected on his comment. ‘Not a liar, but mentally unbalanced. Gosh,’ she observed bitterly, ‘I feel better already.’

He met her angry eyes and released a low, husky laugh. Becca regarded him with growing frustration, but could see that it might be hard to remain angry with a man who possessed a laugh that warm and attractive. Fortunately she wasn’t going to be within laughing distance long enough for it to become a real problem!

‘Go ahead—enjoy the joke.’ She gave a bleak wintry smile. ‘I can see your point. What’s a ruined life…? So long,’ she added on a bitter quaver, ‘as it isn’t your life!’

‘I know it feels like it to you now, but your life isn’t ruined.’

She looked different, but she obviously wasn’t. She was like any number of women who were willing to overlook the fact that his cousin was a total bastard.

Becca’s electric blue eyes narrowed. She had never had the sort of fiery temper that was meant to accompany auburn hair, but his confident assertion had made her see red. As she swallowed hard, trying to contain her feelings, an image of her sister’s shadowed eyes flashed into her head.

‘What would you know about it?’

Jaw taut, she allowed her hostile eyes to linger on his lean face. Actually, it wasn’t a conscious decision. The truth was that once she started looking she found it disturbingly hard to stop.

‘You have to put this behind you.’ And I have to stop talking in platitudes.

‘I’d settle for putting you behind me. A long way behind me,’ she muttered.

‘Not going to happen,’ he said, planting a hand lightly on her shoulder and directing her to the other side of an ancient gnarled yew tree that grew beside the six-feet-high wall. ‘There’s a side gate.’

There was. It was covered in ivy and easy to miss if you didn’t know it was there. On the other side of the gate, Becca found herself in a narrow cobbled side street with expensive-looking cars parked down one side.

The dark-suited figure patrolling up and down with a walkie-talkie in his pocket spotted her immediately. He advanced, his intention clearly to intercept her—until he saw the man beside her. He nodded in a manner that could only be described as deferential, and walked on to meet them.

As the two men began to speak, Becca, staring straight ahead, walked past them. The narrow lane led to the main road, where people were waiting behind barriers for a glimpse of the bride. She had not quite lost herself in the crowd when she heard a distinctive footfall beside her.

‘Look!’ she snapped, swinging back. ‘I’m not going to crash the reception, or scream abuse at the bride, so will you just back off?’ No, I’m going to sneak back home with my tail between my legs and tell my little sister I did nothing! ‘This has all been a massive waste of time and energy,’ she admitted, her shoulders slumping with weary defeat.

‘Well, most women in your situation would have contented themselves with a kiss-and-tell story in the tabloids. Though that lucrative option is still open to you,’ he admitted.

When she didn’t respond to this blatant provocation he tried another tack.

‘Have you considered what would have happened if you had stood up and done your piece—dramatically stalled the wedding?’

Becca, about to walk away, swung back and blinked in owl-like confusion up at his face. ‘What do you mean?’

‘We are talking stalled, not stopped. The wedding would have gone ahead,’ he elaborated brutally.

Becca shrugged. ‘She’s welcome to him.’

‘Yes, every time I look at you I feel great waves of indifference.’ In his experience a woman didn’t travel halfway across the country because she was indifferent.

Stung by his blatant sarcasm, Becca had opened her mouth to deliver a biting retort when involuntarily her eyes dropped over the length of his lean, striking person. Indifference, she reflected, aware of the telling leap in her pulse-rate, would not be the most predictable response this man normally excited in the opposite sex.

‘Or maybe this isn’t about revenge?’ he suggested softly.

His comment diverted Becca from the direction her own troubled thoughts had taken. The awful part was, he was right. She hadn’t thought this thing through. And now he had forced her to do so she could see that she had almost set into motion a chain of events that would have ended up with the tabloid press camped on her sister’s doorstep!

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, feeling sick when she thought of how close she’d come to making things ten times worse for Erica.

‘Maybe you thought he’d take one look at you and realise that he’d made a terrible mistake—that you were the one he wanted all along.’ As he watched her shake her head in angry denial he experienced a rush of anger. ‘It wouldn’t have happened,’ he informed her harshly. Because I wouldn’t have let it happen.

Becca took a startled step back when, without warning, he reached across and ran a long finger down the curve of her cheek. After making a moment’s startled contact with his dark, strangely compelling gaze she swept her lashes down against her cheek and stayed that way until she had taken several deep, restorative breaths.

‘You sound very sure,’ she said, feeling normal again bar the strong urge to reach up and press her own fingers to the tingling area on her cheek.

Christos was drawn by the intense china blue of her wide eyes. It occurred to him that being forced to compare this face with that of his prospective bride might have caused even his avaricious cousin to experience a stab of regret.

A muscle in his lean cheek clenched. ‘Look, maybe you were special.’

To Becca his shrug suggested he had lost interest in the subject. ‘Are you trying to make me feel better?’ she joked, her eyes hostile as she sketched a grim smile. ‘Because I have to tell you you’re not very good at it.’

Her observation made his lips quiver slightly. ‘You’re certainly not Alex’s usual type.’

‘Really? What do they have that I don’t?’

Other than no personality? Christos thought as he grimly ticked off the attributes that normally attracted his cousin on his fingers. ‘His usual types are young, low-maintenance blondes, with long legs, a lot of ambition, and virtually no talent for anything but wearing and buying clothes and spending his money.’

This cynical analysis made her eyes flash angrily. ‘It sounds like you know the boss pretty well.’ And don’t like him much, she thought, but didn’t add.

‘Boss?’

Becca looked his curling lip and couldn’t help but think he must be awfully good at what he did for any employer to put up with his disdainful manner.

‘Well, isn’t that what he is?’ she challenged. ‘Or does it hurt your macho pride to admit you’re a lackey, like the rest of us?’

‘And who are you in servitude to?’

‘I’m a primary schoolteacher.

‘I never had a teacher that looked like you.’

There was an insolent sexual quality to his appraisal that ought to have repelled her. Instead she felt a shiver of excitement slide down her spine.

‘Actually,’ he added, before she could respond, ‘Christos Carides is the head of the company which paid for the wedding security today.’

Becca shrugged. The technicality changed nothing as far as she was concerned. ‘He’s a Carides.’

His dark brows lifted. ‘So you tar everyone of that name with the same brush? Is that fair?’

‘Don’t lecture me on fairness,’ she snapped back, tired of being the voice of impartial reason.

‘Are you always this forthright?’

‘Say what you mean—you think I’m mouthy?’

The retort drew a reluctant grin from Christos. ‘You know, Alex is even more of a fool than I thought he was.’

‘If that is meant to be a compliment, save it.’ It was not good to start wondering how someone who looked like a sleek predator would kiss. ‘I have no taste for insincerity.’ Or beautiful but predatory men, she reminded herself.

His expression hardened. ‘That sounds an odd thing for someone who has been Alex’s lover to say. Insincerity is his speciality.’

The inflection in his deep voice as he said lover sent an odd, disturbing surge through Becca’s body. ‘Do you always bad-mouth your employers?’

‘I thought you put no value on insincerity?’

‘I do put value on good manners, however.’

‘Now,’ he said, ‘you do sound like a teacher. I can see you in the classroom.’ Not strictly the truth. Christos was seeing her in the bedroom!

The classroom was somewhere she really wished she had never left, Becca reflected. Perhaps she just didn’t have the right genes for revenge and retribution? She had certainly made a total mess of this!

CHAPTER FIVE

TO BECCA’S horror she felt her lip quiver as her eyes filled with weak tears. ‘Damn, damn, damn!’ she cursed under her breath, as she caught her wobbling lip between her teeth and sniffed.

‘Come on,’ he urged, taking her arm and pulling her into the doorway of a shop.

The edge of rough concern in his deep voice was tinged with impatience, and one or the other—she wasn’t sure which—made Becca’s eyes weakly fill all over again.

‘I’m not coming anywhere with you,’ she contended huskily. ‘I’m going back home.’ The thought of home did nothing to stem the flow of tears. ‘I wish,’ she added, burying her nose in a tissue, ‘that I’d never left!’ Before she lifted her head the hand he had extended towards her had fallen back to his side.

‘Compose yourself—people are staring.’

This stern comment drew a strangled laugh from Becca. ‘Of course they’re staring.’ Her watery gaze slid up and down the long, lean, masculine length of him and she started to laugh again.

He shook his head and looked at her as though she was demented.

She spelt it out. ‘They’re not staring at me.’

As she spoke a girl with a very short skirt and very high heels almost dislocated her neck doing a double-take. She caught Becca’s eye and blushed.

‘With you beside me they wouldn’t be staring at me if I were stark naked.’

‘Is this something you are planning to do?’

People probably always stared at him. Maybe after a lifetime of being beautiful and head-turningly sexy he didn’t notice. Then again, maybe he lapped it up.

The latter possibility seemed the more likely to Becca, who had noticed that good-looking men were almost always vain.

As she looked at him it occurred to Becca that she had been a bit tough on her sister—accusing her, in the privacy of her own thoughts, at least, of being a bit of a push-over and not seeing through a love-rat. But maybe it wasn’t just the glamour and slick lines Erica had fallen for. Maybe Alex also moved like a panther and oozed pheremones from every pore?

If a man who looked like this one set out to seduce her, what female would be able to resist? How many women had ever said I’m washing my hair when he suggested jumping into bed?

Her colour slightly heightened, Becca removed her eyes from the sensual outline of his mobile lips.

‘About the only way you could be more conspicuous is if you were naked.’ Then, because she didn’t want him to run away with the idea that she’d been imagining him naked, she added accusingly, ‘Are you Greek?’

He tipped his dark head fractionally in affirmation and looked faintly amused.

‘I should have known.’ Of course people like the Carides probably never left home without their own personal army.

‘You don’t have much of an accent.’ He did have a very attractive voice, though. Seductive enough too.

‘I was partly educated in America, where I have relatives.’

‘That’s where you learnt to be a security guard?’

‘Operative,’ he inserted gravely. ‘We in the trade prefer the term operative.’

‘Look, by all means defend your perimeter, or whatever—I don’t care—but will you go away and leave me alone? You’re going to look pretty silly if you’re out here stalking me and someone’s back there nicking the presents.’

‘That situation is covered,’ he assured her casually. ‘And I can’t risk you crashing the party on my watch.’

‘For heaven’s sake, I’ve already told you I’m not going to.’

‘When was the last time you ate?’

Becca ignored him and fished around in her pockets for her car keys.

‘I hope you’re not considering driving in your condition? You are clearly not capable.’

Becca, whose thoughts had been moving along the same lines, grew defensive at the note of criticism in his tone. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my condition!’ she snapped shrilly as she wiped the dampness from her cheeks. ‘My condition has not a damned thing to do with you.’

Listen to the woman, said a voice in the part of his brain still functioning.

He watched as she lifted a hand to her head.

‘You have a headache?’

‘Headache’ hardly covered the sick throbbing behind her eyes. ‘No,’ Becca lied, dropping her chin.

Christos surveyed the lines of strain around her soft mouth and wished he’d hit his cousin some more. ‘Why…?’

The anger in his voice brought her head up. ‘Why what?’

‘I suppose you think that you love him?’ They always thought that.

Becca stared at him, then lifted her chin. ‘I hate him!’ she whispered.

‘They say hate is closely related to love.’

‘Then they are as stupid as you.’ She delved again into her pockets, and this time produced a bunch of keys, which she jangled angrily at him. ‘I’ve every intention of driving.’ Her brow furrowed in concentration. ‘When I’ve remembered where I left my car.’

Above her, she heard him sigh deeply in exasperation. ‘Hand them over.’

Becca looked at the long brown fingers extended towards her and blinked. ‘What…?’

‘Hand the keys over.’

‘You make it sound as though I’m drunk and incapable!’ she protested indignantly.

‘You’re definitely incapable.’

Why am I standing here like a spineless idiot, listening to him? ‘I’m going to walk away, and there’s not a thing you can do to stop me.’

‘When did you last sleep or eat?’

She looked at him blankly.

‘We’ll buy some sandwiches on the way to pick up my car.’

‘Your car?’

He levelled a look of impatience at her. ‘Do you intend to wander around the city on foot all day, looking for your car, or do you want help?’

When he put it like that…‘All right,’ she said ungraciously, then added, ‘I really don’t know why you’re doing this.’

‘That makes two of us,’ he responded cryptically.

Becca looked around the luxuriously upholstered leather interior of the car with a suspicious frown. ‘This is a Jaguar.’

‘Call it a perk of the job,’ he suggested, slinging his beautifully tailored jacket carelessly into the back seat. His tie, which he had unfastened from around his throat, rapidly joined it. After he had unfastened the top button of a pristine white shirt to reveal a discreet section of smooth brown flesh he turned the ignition.

‘Some perk,’ Becca muttered, pressing a hand to her wayward stomach as she concentrated on not noticing the shadow of body hair on his chest visible through the fine fabric of his shirt. She had noticed that the uncomfortably visceral effect this man’s brand of sexuality had on her had got worse since she’d got into the car.

Which rather begged the question, Why the hell did I get in?

He turned his head and looked directly into her eyes and smiled. It was a sinfully sexy smile. Becca vocalised her growing irritation.

‘I don’t know what I’m doing here with you.’

‘You can thank me later.’

‘After we’ve found my car?’

‘It’s probably been clamped and towed by now,’ he predicted. ‘You really don’t have the faintest idea where you parked?’

Becca flushed. He made it sound as though she made a habit of losing her car. ‘I’d been driving all night and I ran out of petrol, and—’ She stopped, her expression brightening.

‘I bought a parking ticket from one of those pay-and-display things. The stub will be in my—’ She looked around for her bag and her face dropped. ‘Oh, no!’

‘What’s wrong now?’ This woman, Christos decided, was a walking disaster area.

‘I’ve left my handbag back in the Cathedral. At least,’ she qualified, frowning as she mentally tried, without much success, to retrace her steps, ‘I think I have.’

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