‘Very funny.’ No doubt tonight’s events would be regurgitated for the amusement of his glitzy friends—with suitable witty additions—for many weeks to come. ‘I suppose you ride around in gold-plated limousines.’
‘No, as a matter of fact I fly my own helicopter when possible. So do you really think I have a pretty face?’ he continued seamlessly.
Talk about anything you say being used in evidence!
‘That was a figure of speech.’ Actually his was not a pretty face, it was a formidably beautiful face. She didn’t need to look to see his dark, fallen-angel features or be transfixed by the brooding sensuality of his sexy eyes and mouth—they were etched in her mind.
How, she puzzled, could something as basic as the arrangement of planes and angles of a face make it so…? She struggled for a term adequate to describe it—unforgettable was a term casually bandied about, but in this instance it was fully deserved. Her memory would never be free of the image, she acknowledged, looking down at her hands tightened into fists on her lap.
‘If you continue to breathe like that the professionals—’ Nikos glanced towards the uniformed figure who had left his seat opposite and was now talking to the driver ‘—will assume that you need oxygen.’
Katie was disconcerted to discover that his eyes were contemplating the rapid rise and fall of her breasts…actually, disconcerted didn’t really cover the things that were happening to her body. Nikos had to have noticed at least one of them as his attention was riveted in one of the areas in question; her breasts felt tense and tender and her nipples were active in a pleasurably painful way.
It had reached the point where she couldn’t be sure what shocking surprise her body was going to spring on her next. Even the things coming out of her mouth seemed to be bypassing her brain.
‘Why did you tell them I’m you’re wife?’ she asked in a desperate attempt to divert his attention from her aching, brazen breasts.
‘You are my wife.’
Her inability to dispute this made Katie scowl. ‘Only when it suits you,’ she pointed out tartly.
Somehow she doubted Nikos would have been so eager to recognise their relationship if she’d turned up at his place of work declaring to all and sundry that he was her husband! What she couldn’t figure was why he’d carelessly gone public, in this admittedly limited way, now. The last thing he struck her as being was a careless man; quite the contrary, she was pretty sure he never did anything without a reason, but what reason?
Possibly his actions were simply designed to wind her up?
For the past seven years he had successfully managed to forget he had a wife so she could strike the possibility that he’d decided she was the perfect bride for him.
No, he was up to something.
‘We may have gone through a ceremony and signed on the dotted line, but it takes more than a signature on a piece of paper to make me your wife!’ she told him scornfully.
‘So, what does it take…?’
Katie shuffled away to lessen the contact of his heavy thigh against her own. The action only increased the worrying air of smug triumph she sensed in him.
‘It takes…oh, for goodness’ sake, will you stop that?’
‘Stop what?’
‘Will you stop looking at…you know?’
‘No.’
Katie gave a snort of exasperation; the innocent look sat very uncomfortably. ‘Well, how would you like it if I kept looking at your…?’ Content she’d made her point, and deeply embarrassed into the bargain, she decided it would be expedient to move quickly on.
Nikos, however, seemed in no hurry to do so. ‘I think I would find it quite stimulating,’ he said.
Taking a deep steadying breath, Katie gritted her teeth and doggedly refused to allow him to distract her. ‘It takes…’ she began.
‘What does it take?’ he prompted, his curiosity genuinely aroused by the wistful expression he saw flit across her delicate, fine-boned features.
Katie shook her head; she was not about to expose her idea of an ideal marriage to his cynical scorn.
‘Do you think they might let us a share a room at the hospital?’
‘I suppose in Greece that passes for a sense of humour?’ She gave a disdainful sniff and tried to stop herself coughing. ‘Just for the record, I’m not sharing a room with you and I’m not staying in any hospital.’
Nikos shook his head. ‘Did nobody ever tell you it’s dangerous to tempt fate?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘MARRIED?’ the on-call radiographer, or Clare, as she had introduced herself, glanced towards Nikos. ‘Yes, of course you are,’ she said, not without a hint of envy. ‘Date of birth…?’ Katie gave it and the older woman checked the details on the form and nodded. ‘Is there any possibility you are pregnant?’
She stood with her pen in her hand waiting for Katie’s response. Katie, aware of Nikos’s very interested presence beside her, felt her face flush. After a lengthy pause she shook her head and mumbled an indistinct, ‘No, there isn’t.’
The radiographer obviously misunderstood her hesitation. ‘If you’ve any doubts?’
‘I’ve no doubt at all,’ Katie responded firmly. ‘I can’t possibly be pregnant. I haven’t…’ she choked.
‘Oh, I see…’ The radiographer nodded understandingly and shot a speculative look in Nikos’s direction. ‘So long as you’re sure.’
‘We have been living apart,’ Katie was dismayed to hear him suddenly volunteer glibly. Equally suddenly he picked her hand up from where it lay twisted with its partner on her lap. With a tender smile he raised it to his lips. ‘We are only recently reunited.’
His words and the fervent kiss he planted on her open palm managed to hint at a lovers-parted-and-reunited story of epic proportions.
The radiographer was clearly a big fan of a happy ending. ‘Oh, isn’t that lovely?’ she sighed soulfully. ‘You just wait here a moment, Mrs Lakis, and I’ll be right back.’
The instant she was gone Katie snatched her tingling hand away and wiped it across her lap vigorously, as though she could wipe his touch away.
‘Was that charade really necessary?’ she enquired icily. It seemed he couldn’t resist any opportunity to provoke and embarrass her. Or maybe, she mused scornfully, he just couldn’t let the implied slur on his manhood stand. Yeah, that would be right.
‘So you’re not sleeping with Tom?’
Katie stiffened defensively as his question took her off guard. ‘That’s none of your business, but if I was,’ she added confidently, ‘I certainly wouldn’t be stupid enough to get pregnant.’
Though she wasn’t as a rule a judgmental person, she had always found it hard to understand how in a day and age when contraception was so readily available people still fell pregnant unintentionally—though the falling was part of the self-deception as far as she was concerned; there was nothing accidental about it.
‘Maybe, maybe not…people in the grip of passion do not always think logically.’
‘Rubbish.’ One dark brow lifted at her forceful denunciation. ‘There’s absolutely no excuse for neglecting to take basic precautions.’
Katie frowned to hear herself sound so self-righteous and dogmatic…it was the sort of uncharacteristic response he brought out in her. He said night and she was almost falling over herself to screech day.
An