Page 10 of Christmas Baby with Her Ultra-Rich Boss

Something dark sparked in his eyes. The pulse in his clenched jaw set off again. ‘You expect me to believe I am the only man you have been intimate with in six years?’

‘It’s the truth.’

His cold gaze didn’t leave hers. He was weighing her up, she realised. Judging whether or not to believe her.

All she could do was stare back and hope he recognised the truth in her eyes. If he chose not to believe her...

Her whole body trembled. She knew what the consequences would be if he decided her claims of his paternity were a lie. Destitution until the baby was born and she could force a paternity test.

Still staring intently at her, he took a long drink of his coffee before placing the china cup on the small round table to the side of his chair. ‘If you are telling the truth then answer me this,’ he said in a low growl. ‘If I am the father of your child what in hell gave you the right to hide it from me?’

CHAPTER FOUR

THESTRICKENEXPRESSIONon Lena’s face made no impression on Konstantinos. If anything, it disgusted him. He’d done the maths. She had to be five months pregnant. She must have known for four of those months; three months if he was being generous. At least three months in which she’d kept the secret of the life they’d supposedly conceived together from him.

To expect him to believe he was the only man she’d been with in six years when she’d been the one to instigate their lovemaking? Did she take him for a fool?

He’d known when he accepted her offer of a coffee in her cabin that he was making a mistake, but for the first time in his life he’d ignored his own internal warnings, too caught up in the intoxication of the woman whose spell he’d slowly fallen under the longer the night had gone on to think of resisting.

Her cabin had been cosy, only a small sofa in the living space at the foot of the bed. She’d produced a bottle of vodka and two shot glasses. Her hands had trembled as she’d poured them both a slug of it. They’d downed the shots in unison and then taken their coffees to the sofa.

He’d sat facing the small television, the beats of his heart as weighty as he’d ever known them. He couldn’t remember ever feeling such awareness, his body a tuning fork vibrating to the music of the woman curled beside him, her knees barely a centimetre from his thigh. The danger he’d been heading towards had rung loudly in his head. ‘I should go,’ he’d said. But instead of making the effort to move away from her, he’d twisted to face her.

Her head was rested against the back of the sofa, dark brown eyes on his. ‘Already?’ she’d sighed.

Under the soft lighting of the cabin he’d seen for the first time what beautiful smooth skin she had. His fingers had tingled to stroke her face. The warning in his head to leave immediately had grown louder.

But then she’d strokedhisface. Just a gentle brush of the back of a finger across his jaw. His breath had caught in his throat. The vibrations of his body had thickened. Her face had inched closer to his. The backs of her fingers had then brushed down the exposed part of his neck, trailing fire over his skin. The desire in her eyes had been stark but there had been a hint of bewilderment in her stare, too, as if she was as confused as he at the thickness of the electricity crackling between them and at what her fingers were doing.

At the first whisper of her lips against his, all the warnings in his head had been drowned in the flood of heat that had consumed him.

He severed the memories with a sharp blink.

To expect him to believe he was the only man Lena had seduced or had allowed to seduce her in the four years she’d worked here was beyond the realms of credulity. The Siopis Ice Hotel was so remote that all the staff lived in, the vast majority in special staff quarters. It was the only one of his hotels where he turned a blind eye to his staff’s licentious behaviour. So long as it didn’t affect their work then who was he to judge how they passed the long, dark nights when they were off shift?

He’d despised himself for those fleeting moments since their night together when his guts had coiled to imagine who the latest employee Lena had invited into her bed could be. They’d coiled to imagineanyonesharing her bed. Touching her. Breathing in her soft, feminine scent. Tasting her.

‘I asked you a question,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘If you expect me to believe I’m the father of your child, why hide it from me?’ Konstantinos had amassed a fortune so vast he was regularly named as one of the top three richest Greeks. Just as believing Lena had lived like a born-again virgin for six years was beyond credulity, so, too, was believing that she wouldn’t have thought she’d hit the jackpot if she’d been certain he was the father. Conceiving his child would be a lottery win for any woman, and he wasn’t deluded enough not to know that greed had been the most potent mix in his lovers’ desire for him.

He hadn’t seen that greed in Lena’s eyes, he suddenly realised, but pushed the thought away as quickly as it had formed.

Konstantinos had known since his brother’s betrayal that he would never marry or settle with a permanent partner, and if he wouldn’t marry or settle then he wouldn’t have children. Protection against pregnancy had always been paramount when embarking on an affair...or had been until he’d been naked with a woman whose every kiss and touch had fed his hunger, and he’d realised he had no protection at hand.

‘It’s okay,’ she’d whispered as her tongue traced the rim of his ear. ‘I’m on the pill.’

Hating the thrill that ran through him at the memory, he snarled, ‘You told me you were on the pill,’ before she could answer his previous question.

‘I was,’ she replied tearfully, her eyes filling up again.

‘Save your tears,’ he snapped, angry with the both of them. How could he have been so stupendously stupid as to disregard the need for proper protection because in the heat of the moment he’d thought he might die if he didn’t take possession of her?

But he wouldn’t have died. Penetrative sex wasn’t the only way to reach satisfaction. If she hadn’t told him she was on the pill they would have used other means to bring each other to...

He grabbed his skull and dug his fingers into it as hard as he could. He had to stop thinking about that night.

Wiping her eyes, she leaned forward, arms wrapped around the belly within which a baby was growing. ‘Konstantinos, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You have every right to be angry with me. I was on the pill, I swear, but it was the mini-pill and you’re supposed to take it at the same time every day and I was sloppy about taking it because I only used it to regulate my periods and not for protection, and at the time it didn’t even cross my mind that my sloppiness would result in this, but it was entirely my fault and I am so, so sorry for that, and I’m sorry for not telling you as soon as I took the test but I was terrified of how you’d react and what you’d do, and I thought—rightly or wrongly—that it was best to wait until the baby was born before telling you because I knew you’d want a paternity test before you acknowledged our baby as yours.’

‘You mean you made assumptions.’

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