The Mills & Boon Sparkling Christmas Collection. Kate Hardy

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СКАЧАТЬ him not to fritter away time. But that was probably how he’d managed to become a consultant at such a young age.

      His dark good looks were attracting second glances from more than a few women in the vicinity. Hardly surprising. Theo Petrakis was gorgeous. If only, she thought, suppressing the surge of longing.

      ‘What’s this, squeezing in some extra work?’ she teased when she reached him.

      ‘Of course.’ He closed the journal, rolled it up and stuffed it in his pocket. ‘Good day?’ he asked.

      ‘The best.’ She beamed. ‘I had two babies.’

      He laughed. ‘People are giving you funny looks. You might want to rephrase that.’

      She laughed back. ‘All right. I helped deliver two incredibly gorgeous babies. And I had a cuddle with both of them. Satisfied?’

      ‘Satisfied.’ His eyes glittered with amusement. ‘Let’s go see the T. rex.’

      They wandered around the Natural History Museum, enjoying the animatronic dinosaurs. But then they came to a display of spiders, and Madison shuddered. ‘Do you mind if we give this bit a miss, Theo?’

      ‘You’re scared of spiders, kardia mou?’

      ‘Big ones that drop down on you in the shower and threaten you?’ She shivered. ‘Of course I am.’

      ‘Don’t you think that the spiders are more likely to be scared of you?’

      ‘Scared? Of me? You’re talking about big hairy things with legs they wave at you in a threatening manner.’ She shook her head. ‘They’re not scared in the slightest. They’re warriors—and they see me as their prey.’

      He wrinkled his nose at her. ‘Sounds as if you need distracting. Let’s go and have dinner. I’ll cook.’

      ‘Then I’ll provide pudding. We’ll need to stop at a supermarket on the way back to your place.’

      ‘Maddie, you don’t need to do that. You’re my guest.’

      She put her hands on her hips. ‘I’m not going to cook for you in return. So either you let me contribute in the form of wine and pudding, or I don’t have dinner with you. Your choice.’

      ‘And you’re bossy,’ he said with a smile. ‘All right. If you insist.’

      ‘I do.’

      ‘Then thank you.’

      They stopped off at a supermarket so Madison could buy wine and some panna cotta. Back at Theo’s house, he cooked them a simple meal of grilled lamb with herb butter, new potatoes, carrots and broccoli spears, clearly making up for the richness of the pudding she’d chosen. Strange, Madison thought, how in such a short space of time he’d come to know her far better than her ex-husband had in the whole time they’d been together. If only…

      She suppressed the thought. ‘So what will you do when Doug comes back?’ she asked. ‘Are you going back to Greece or applying for a senior consultant’s post in England?’

      ‘I haven’t really decided yet.’ He lifted one shoulder. ‘You know, this panna cotta is excellent. Good choice.’

      Yet again he’d switched the subject away from himself. In a nice way and with a smile, but Madison was starting to wish that he’d let her close. That he’d trust her. He’d claimed that he hadn’t been hurt in a previous relationship, but why else would someone put up all those barriers and keep their work and their emotional life so compartmentalised?

      He was making coffee when the phone rang. ‘I’ll let it go through to the answering-machine,’ he said.

      But after the beep, there was a pause. Then a formal, ‘Kalispera, Theo,’ followed by rapid Greek.

      He frowned. ‘Do you mind if I take this?’ he asked.

      ‘Of course not. I’ll just be nosy with your bookshelf,’ she said with a smile.

      The little Greek she knew was nowhere near enough to follow his end of the conversation—which was also conducted in rapid Greek. She caught the occasional ‘ohi’, which she remembered from a holiday phrasebook meant ‘no’, but that was about it.

      ‘Ne. S’agapo,’ Theo said. ‘I love you too.’ And then he replaced the receiver.

      Was he going to tell her who had called? Madison wondered.

      Not that it was any of her business. The caller’s voice had definitely been female—but she could have been one of his three sisters, or his mother, or an aunt he was close to. And given that she and Theo were just friends, she had no right to feel jealous.

      The fact that she did feel jealous…well, that was just ridiculous.

      Theo flung himself onto the sofa beside her. ‘One of these days, I am going to strangle my parents.’

      She blinked. ‘Any particular reason why?’ she enquired mildly.

      ‘I just wish they would stop trying to fix me up with someone.’

      She smiled. ‘Tell them you’re a big boy and you can do it yourself.’ The fact it wouldn’t be with her…She pushed the thought away.

      ‘Do you have any idea what a Greek family is like?’ He stood up again, raking a hand through his hair, and started to pace from one side of the living room to the other. ‘Apart from the fact that we give our older generation rather more respect than you do here in London, there’s this relentless pressure to settle down, and when I lived in Greece they were forever setting up big dinner parties where I was introduced to some suitable girl.’ He shook his head. ‘I thought maybe moving countries would give me some space but, no, they have the daughter of a friend arriving in London and would I be so kind as to show her around?’

      ‘Maybe they just thought it would be nice for her to hear a familiar voice in a strange land,’ Madison pointed out.

      ‘More like they’re shoving yet another potential bride at me. They’ve been trying to marry me off for years.’ He was still pacing. ‘I told them, no, I’m a doctor and I have responsibilities—and although I might not actually be at the hospital all the time, I could be on call and have to go in if there are complications. I cannot let my patients down. I love my family,’ he continued, ‘but they drive me crazy.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘I suppose I should be grateful that they let me off being in the family business. As the eldest son I should have followed in my father’s footsteps.’

      Was he actually going to tell her something about his family? ‘What does he do?’ Madison asked carefully.

      ‘He’s in the leisure industry.’ He shrugged. ‘But I always knew what I wanted to be and my parents never stood in my way.’

      ‘So maybe they don’t really expect you to settle down.’

      He smiled thinly. ‘Unfortunately, they do. Hence the string of potential brides. If I’m not going to be in the family business, the next best thing is that I marry someone who’ll be in the family business in my stead.’

      She СКАЧАТЬ