Reluctant Mistress, Blackmailed Wife. Lynne Graham

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СКАЧАТЬ by that hint of a compliment, Alexandros continued to survey the two little boys with brooding force. There they were, sharing the same cot, like orphans in some squalid children’s home. His sons, his responsibility. Life as he knew it was over, he conceded bleakly. His freedom had just been imprisoned and was awaiting sentence to be hung drawn and quartered. There would be no escape from the agonies ahead. He would have to offer her marriage. It was his own fault. He had brought this punishment on himself. What a mess. What a bloody mess!

      One of the babies cried, and she bent over the side of the cot to lift the child, treating Alexandros to a provocative view of her apple-shaped derriere. Tiny and slight she might be, but she was still one hundred per cent woman in the places that mattered, he found himself thinking—until he cracked down on that inappropriate reflection.

      ‘I think you should get some clothes on,’ Alexandros told her, with the censorious air of a Puritan being tempted by a loose woman.

      Only then registering that she was hardly dressed for visitors, Katie straightened, clutching Connor, her face pink with embarrassment. ‘For goodness’ sake, I’m wearing my pyjamas.’

      ‘It’s barely nine-thirty in the evening—’

      ‘So? I sleep whenever I get the chance!’ She stuffed her son into Alexandros’s arms without even thinking about what she was doing, and turned away in a hurry to snatch up her dressing gown. Her cheeks were burning. Had he told her to cover up because he believed she was trying to tempt him with her body? Did she look that desperate? Perhaps she did, she thought painfully.

      As Katie thrust Connor into his arms, Alexandros turned to stone. Connor also froze. The little boy then reacted to his father’s extreme tension by opening his mouth and howling like a burglar alarm. Aghast, Alexandros studied the screaming child and put him straight down on the carpet. ‘No more,’ he told his son in reproving Greek, as if he was a misbehaving seven-year-old.

      As Connor’s ear-splitting cry mounted to a shriek, Katie scooped him up and hugged his squirming little body protectively close. ‘How could you just put him down like that? Don’t you think he has feelings?’

      Alexandros winced as Toby loosed a first warning squeal from the cot. ‘I’m a stranger to him. I thought I had frightened him. I have never held a child before.’

      ‘Neither had I when the twins were born. But I had no choice but to learn!’

      ‘I don’t need to learn,’ Alexandros drawled, sardonic in tone and equally dry. ‘I can afford a nanny.’

      ‘I’m thrilled for you.’

      Backing off to the door, Alexandros watched her efforts to placate the babies. With two little screeching horrors to look after, it was little wonder that she looked exhausted. He held at bay the knowledge that he had helped to create those screeching horrors now dogging her daily existence, and imposed a strict mental block on the noise of their cries while he watched Katie. He was still fiercely determined to penetrate the mystery of her attraction, since she bore not the smallest resemblance to the women he normally went for. She wasn’t tall, she wasn’t blonde, and she wasn’t ravishingly beautiful.

      Tiny and slender though she was, however, there was something about the arrangement of her delicate features and the unexpectedly lush curve of breast and hip that raised her to a seriously appetising level of desirability, Alexandros acknowledged abstractedly. He considered the reality that she had conceived and given birth to his children. All of a sudden that seemed an extraordinarily sexy achievement to him. He imagined sliding his hands under the thin camisole she wore, and the exquisite feel of the silky skin on her narrow ribcage beneath his palms before he curved his fingers up and round…

      ‘Just what is the matter with you?’ Katie launched at Alexandros in almost sobbing frustration. She could not cope when both the twins cried at once, and was enraged by his supreme detachment from the rising decibel level in the room. ‘Haven’t you got any interest in your own children?’

      Unwillingly forced from the realms of erotic fantasy, Alexandros dealt her an enquiring glance from below his luxuriant black lashes, the faintest hint of colour scoring his stunning high cheekbones. ‘I’m here,’ he fielded without expression. ‘That should tell you something.’

      ‘That you don’t want to be here!’ Katie condemned helplessly, devastated by his failure even to ask the twins’ names. ‘That’s what your attitude is telling me!’

      ‘How may I help?’ Alexandros ground out, his accent very thick.

      ‘Lift Toby…’

      Alexandros approached the cot, squared his shoulders, reached in and closed his hands round the wriggling baby. He performed that feat with the same enthusiasm with which he might have stuck his hands in a blazing fire. Toby. Alexandros sounded the name under his breath, reading the look of anxious surprise in the child’s brown eyes as he lifted him. He drew Toby awkwardly closer. More able to rate the experience the second time around, he was amazed at how light in weight Toby was—and then transfixed by the big smile that transformed the little boy’s face. That open happy grin reminded Alexandros very much of Pelias, and made Toby feel familiar.

      Engaged in soothing Connor, it was a moment or two before Katie registered that peace had fallen again. She glanced up and saw Alexandros smiling at her eldest son. That smile stopped her heart in its tracks, made her chest go all tight, rousing memories so painful that hot tears burned the back of her eyes. Once, and for a very brief period, Alexandros had looked at her like that, and she had wanted to turn somersaults and sing with the sheer joy of living. It had not occurred to her then that losing him would hurt like hell, that the world he had made seem so bright and full of promise could just as swiftly turn grey and threatening. But now, she reminded herself doggedly, she was no longer so naive and trusting. Expecting more from Alexandros Christakis than help with the rent would be asking for trouble.

      ‘What is his brother called?’ Alexandros enquired.

      ‘Connor.’

      ‘We will have to discuss the requirements of this situation.’ Alexandros utilised the business terminology that he was most at ease with.

      ‘I’m not looking for much from you. I only want us to have somewhere decent to live,’ Katie muttered with low-pitched urgency, as she settled Connor carefully back into the cot and held her arms out for his brother.

      Alexandros surrendered Toby. He straightened his broad shoulders, his wide, sensual mouth compressing. Could she really be so clueless? Or was he supposed to be impressed by her pretence of innocence? She could hardly be ignorant of the fact that the simple act of having had his children would turn out to be a highly profitable enterprise.

      ‘I’ll move you out of here as soon as possible,’ Alexandros responded. ‘Tomorrow, I should think.’

      Katie spun back to study him in wide-eyed astonishment. ‘Tomorrow? Are you serious?’

      ‘I would take you home with me now…’ Dark golden eyes rested on her for a heartbeat, with an intensity that made her mouth run dry and the skin at the nape of her neck prickle. ‘But it would be too unsettling to move the children at this hour.’

      An uneasy laugh fell from her lips, for she assumed that that reference to taking her home was a joke—and not one in the best of taste. ‘Luckily for you, I’m not expecting to go home with you. I’ll be more than happy to be placed in a position to afford a small flat for the three of us.’ Her colour СКАЧАТЬ