The Carides Pregnancy
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.