‘In two days, we’ll know what we’re having,’ Aristide proclaimed with unconcealed awe at the blood test that would eventually reveal all facts to them. ‘Boys, girls, a mix…’
‘New tech is amazing,’ Tabby agreed, shaken once again by his attitude, so foreign to her every expectation of him. It occurred to her that it was almost as though Aristide Romanos would welcome the birth of a child in spite of his manwhore reputation. Of course, the one did not automatically exclude the other, her brain warned her. Hecouldbe a playboy who loved children, couldn’t he be?
‘You’ll have to move into my London apartment,’ Aristide told her without stopping to draw breath.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Tabby queried with a dropped jaw as she clambered into the limo awaiting them.
‘Well, obviously, you’re not likely to be in a position where you can manage alone,’ Aristide countered.
‘The consultant didn’t say anything like that,’ Tabby protested.
‘He said you were likely to suffer more severe side effects to being pregnant than other women,’ Aristide reminded her. ‘Which means that you will need more support to remain healthy and you haven’t got any support right now with both your mother and your sister out of the country. Naturally, as the father of the children, it is my responsibility to help—’
‘No, I don’t see it that way at all,’ Tabby argued vehemently as she fastened the seat belt he had helpfully threaded round her as if she couldn’t find the belt for herself. ‘I don’t need anyone’s help. I have a job and a home—’
‘Your sister’s home,’ Aristide slotted in grimly.
‘Yes, my sister’s homeanda job. I don’t needanyone—’ least of all you, went tactfully unsaid ‘—to take responsibility for me. I’m completely content managing alone.’
‘But you’re underweight and sick all the time—’
‘Heavens, I shouldn’t have let youbein the same room with the consultant!’ Tabby told him in complete exasperation. ‘You sucked all that info in and swallowed it like it was the Holy Grail or something! Let’s be realistic here. Some women breeze through pregnancy like it’s nothing, others have it less comfy—’
‘Yes, but there are valid reasons for you to be less comfy, as you put it…you are carryingtwobabies, not just one. And you are more at risk of complications as well,’ Aristide overruled without hesitation.
‘But that’s nothing to do with you!’ Tabby shot back at him furiously. ‘Me and my body are not your business!’
‘You are going to be the mother of my children,’ Aristide contradicted with his perfect measured diction, guaranteed to set her teeth on edge. ‘How can that be none ofmybusiness?’
‘Well, it’s not!’ Tabby assured him in fierce rebuttal. ‘We’re not a couple, we’re not in a relationship—’
‘If not a relationship, what is this?’ Aristide cut in heatedly to demand.
Tabby pondered. ‘A hate fest,’ she pronounced with satisfaction. ‘We don’t even like each other, Aristide. So please do not ever refer to me again as the future mother of your children.’
‘I do not hate or dislike you,angelos mou.’ Aristide breathed in deep and long and resisted the temptation to admit that right now she was irritating the hell out of him. She was being insulting. Of course, she would be the mother of his children. That was going to happen whether she liked it or not and he wasn’t going anywhere. Was her outlook tit for tat? He had accused her of unsavoury behaviour that one and only night,thatnightthat had been the hottest experience of his life, they had been together. All he had wanted to do since then was repeat the experience, an idea that logic warned him would be as welcome as a rockfall on her in the mood she was in.
‘Well, I’m afraid I can’t say the same,’ Tabby bit out, feeling the backs of her eyes sting with tears, hating the surging hormones that seemed to be making her so uncharacteristically touchy, short-tempered and overly emotional. It was an irony to accept that she could have dealt with Aristide much better without those extra hormones.
Aristide breathed in deep and slow a second time. ‘I owe you an apology for the manner in which I behaved that night. We had, I thought, moved past that but I can see that was far too optimistic a belief in these circumstances—’
‘Or maybe you just don’t like saying sorry,’ Tabby cut in before she could bite her tongue and swallow that unnecessarily provocative response. Couldn’t she even allow him to apologise?
‘You’re correct. I don’t. But I am sorry about what I said and how I behaved,’ Aristide conceded grimly, sounding as if the very words were strangling in his throat.
‘Shut up,’ she muttered. ‘You’re just annoying me more—’
‘That would seem to be a mutual affliction,’ Aristide framed, suddenly closer than ever, leaning over her, evidently having released his seat belt.
He lifted a lean long-fingered brown hand and slowly tucked a hank of pale blonde hair behind her ear, fingertips grazing the top of her delicate ear. And it shouldn’t have felt erotic but somehow itwaserotic, particularly with those smouldering dark golden black-fringed eyes locked to hers. ‘Aristide?’ she mumbled unevenly, her heart pounding like crazy inside her, liquid heat pushing up between her thighs.
His sensual mouth came down on hers like a silencer that burned her alive with passion. It wasn’t like the other kisses he had given her weeks earlier, it was infinitely more hungry, urgent andfierce. A flame seemed to spark low in her belly and suddenly, literally, between one moment and the next, she couldn’t get enough of him. Her hands clutched at him on a frantic surge of feeling that pushed out everything that had happened before it. There was only that moment, her fingers spearing into his luxuriant black curly hair, a fever beat of insane responses thumping inside her head.I want you, I hate you, I want you.And yet the whole time, she was aware of nothing but the sheer burning glory of his mouth on hers, his body weighting hers down, the thrill of that connection setting every nerve ending and skin cell alight.
With an effort, his breathing fractured, Aristide wrenched himself away from her again and flung himself back to his corner of the seat. He didn’t have sex with women in the middle of an argument—he didn’thavearguments with women, didn’t get involved enough for that. Yes, he was lost and adrift in this entirely new scenario and it wasbrutal, he decided, awesomely aware of the throbbing pressure behind his zip, the tightness of the constraining fabric. Angry conflict consumed him and plunged him into brooding silence.
Tabby blinked like a sleepwalker roused without warning and only then registered that she was lying full length along the limo passenger seat. How had he achieved that without her noticing? Did it matter? Why was she acting like the sort of woman who said yes and then changed her mind when shehadn’tchanged her mind? For several moments—and she didn’t know how many—she had wanted Aristide with every bone and sinew in her body.Nother brain. In fact her brain had had nothing whatsoever to do with it, she conceded in dismay.
‘That wasn’t a good idea,’ Aristide murmured tautly.
