The Stephanides Pregnancy

CHAPTER FOUR

WHEN Betsy wakened, she could hardly credit that it was after one in the afternoon. She felt hugely guilty about her sloth. From the window she could see that Cristos was still up on the headland working and what had she been doing? Sleeping!

Hot and sticky, she stripped off the bikini, freshened up and put on the colourful halter-neck beach dress instead. She wouldn't let herself glance in the mirror and get embarrassed about how noticeably tiny her breasts would look shorn of a bra and how very thin and giraffe like her legs appeared in too short a skirt. Instead she washed out the bikini, draped it on the rear terrace to dry and busied herself making lunch.

Were her family climbing the walls with worry about her? She winced. There was no point agonising over what could not be helped. But for how long were they likely to be living on the island? Earlier that day, Cristos had brought her up to speed on the food and fuel levels at the house, which typically he had already cheeked out and considered in depth. They had ample supplies. Although the fresh food would eventually run out, the freezer was packed. There was also plenty of fuel to keep the generator ticking over.

She would have liked to ask Cristos how his grandfather was likely to react to a ransom demand for his grandson's release. So far she had held her tongue on the topic because anything relating to the kidnapping seemed to send Cristos through the roof and awaken all his dark suspicions about her having crime connections. In any case, how could Cristos really know how his elderly grandfather might react?

She walked out to the front of the house to call Cristos but there was no sign of him. Then she saw the heap of clothes on the sand and his seal-wet dark head gleaming as he cleaved through the sunlit waves out in the bay. Even though he was a powerful swimmer, she could not stop thinking about scary stuff like undertow. With considerable relief she watched him heading for shore again and standing up to wade through the last few feet of surf. At that point she received her very first view of a naked adult male.

In dismay, Betsy retreated back into the house. But that sight of Cristos unclothed was stamped in immoveable stone within her memory. He was magnificent: wide bronzed shoulders, powerful pectoral muscles accentuated by damp black curls, a sleek six pack torso and the narrow hips and long, powerful hair roughened thighs of a male in the physical peak of condition. She blacked out any recollection of the more intimate part of him with puritanical thoroughness. After all, she was not a voyeur. She would give him five minutes to get his clothes on.

But when she went back onto the beach, Cristos was showering at the outside faucet and still naked as the day he had been born. Thoroughly fed up with his relaxed attitude to nudity, she backed off well out of view and yelled at the top of her voice, 'Lunch!'

She was standing with folded arm~ under the tree when Cristos finally came strolling towards her bare chested and barefoot, his chinos riding low on his lean hips, his shirt thrown over one shoulder. Dazzling dark eyes sought hers and a slow, lethal smile began to tug at the edges of his beautifully sculpted and highly expressive mouth.

That fast Betsy appreciated that he knew he had been seen and she turned a beetroot colour as far as her hairline. But, outraged as she was by his sheer insouciance, she still couldn't take her eyes off him. When he smiled her heartbeat went haywire and her mouth ran dry.

'You're so shy…it turns me on,' Cristos confided without shame.

'You must be hungry.' Betsy struggled to keep the lid on her responses to him by falling back on the prosaic.

'Right now… my only hunger is for· you…' Smouldering golden eyes met hers with provocative force.

'You shouldn't be saying th-things like that to me,' she stammered, taken aback by his boldness.

Cristos helped himself to a glass of iced water from the table and drank thirstily. 'I want you, pethi mou. There's no shame in the truth.'

Entrapped, Betsy stared back at him and then painfully slowly she enforced her own will and disconnected from his stunning gaze to let her eyes drop. Only then did she notice what the taut fit of fabric straining over his groin could not conceal: he was fiercely aroused. Shock thrilled through her at that visible proof of his desire. Something that had repelled her in other men had a very different effect on her when it was Cristos in the starring role. She discovered that she was indecently fascinated and had to tear her attention from him.

'If you expect me to stop wanting you, go hide under a blanket,' Cristos advised.

'I am by no stretch of the imagination that faceable!' Betsy shot back at him in angry embarrassment.

'You're so beautiful that I'm breaking my own rules and chasing a chauffeur,' Cristos informed her drily. 'You stopped me in my tracks and I don't mind admitting that when it comes to gorgeous women, I'm a connoisseur. '

Against her own will, she was captivated and madly

curious. 'Have there been a lot of women in your life?' Cristos nodded in silent confirmation.

'You really think I'm beautiful?'

Cristos read the anxious defensive look on her lovely face and wondered who was responsible for giving her such low self-esteem. 'You take my breath away,' he told her softly.

Her vulnerability touched him. She was so unlike the confident, conceited beauties that provided sexual entertainment in his leisure hours. Polished to the edges of their perfect nails, those women were as tough and cynical as he was. They traded their bodies for thrills, for status and for money. But neither his wealth nor his power had impressed Betsy. She was quite happy to shout at him and slap him and treat him as no other woman had ever dared. Was that why he found her such a distraction? Novelty value? Satisfied with that explanation, he closed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms with easy strength and unquestioning assurance.

In contact with the heat and solidarity of his big, powerful frame, Betsy trembled. You take my breath away. No man had ever said anything like that to her and it made her feel like a million dollars. She knew she ought to back off. She knew that she was dicing with danger and, in her mother's time-honoured phrase, asking for trouble. But when she looked up at Cristos and he held her close, she also knew that she would dig ditches and give at least ten years of her life to stay in his arms.

'You can kiss me…' she framed shakily.

A decent guy would walk away, Cristos reflected, forcing himself not to grab the opportunity with his usual immediacy. She was a virgin. He would be taking advantage. He did it in business all the time and never hesitated. What was the matter with him? He could make her first time special. Better him and his expertise than some drunken clumsy clod, who might string her a line and hurt her.

'I won't stop at kissing…' Cristos growled in hungry warning.

At that promise, a delicious little quiver shimmied down her spine, slivered through her belly and lodged low there in a burgeoning nest of warmth. She pushed her face into a powerful masculine shoulder, nostrils flaring on the sun warmed scent of him. She was utterly dizzy with longing and felt weak as a kitten. 'I feel all shaky,' she mumbled with a self-conscious laugh. 'What's wrong with me?'

He lifted her up into his arms and strode indoors.

The shutters in the bedroom were half closed on the heat of the day. He laid her on the bed where an arrrowing shaft of bright light flamed over her coppery mane of hair.

'Er… ' Feeling hugely awkward and in shock in many ways at her own behaviour, Betsy cleared her throat. 'No-one in your life is going to be hurt by us getting together?' she queried, having belatedly appreciated that she had never actually asked if he was single.

'Nobody…' Cristos reached down to catch her hands in his and raise her up again.

Meshing long fingers into her wonderful hair, he brought his mouth down with passionate savagery on hers. His tongue darted in a searching foray between her readily parted lips and she jerked in eager response, locking her arms round his neck to imprison him. As he plundered her mouth with an erotic finesse that mimicked a much more sexual invasion, she shivered with response. When he lifted his handsome dark head again to let her breathe, being denied continuing contact with him was an actual pain.

'I was planning to teach you to swim this afternoon,' Cristos confided huskily. 'But now I'll teach you something infinitely more enjoyable.'

Barely able to credit that she had reached such a major decision without even thinking it through, Betsy wondered if there had always been a brazen hussy hiding inside her and waiting for her chance. 'I bet I'm useless at this…'

'But no way am I,' Cristos teased with bredbone assurance.

Reaching behind her, he deftly undid the halter tie at the nape of her neck She sucked in a dismayed breath and shut her eyes tight. The mere thought of baring her body for the first time froze her to the spot. She was so skinny. Her sister had had more of a bust at thirteen than Betsy had as a grown-up and Gemma still liked to show off her lush curves in tight tops and low necklines. He would be disappointed: Of course he would be..

'Open your eyes…' Cristos urged thickly. ",'I wouldn't like you to get a fright when 1 throw you on the bed and ravish you.'

Her lashes shot up on startled green eyes.

His glorious smile slashing his lean dark features, Cristos sank down on the side of the bed and pulled her down onto his lap. He tugged the dress down inch by inch until it fell free of the weight of her long hair and tumbled. At the point of total exposure, she stopped breathing altogether. He prevented her from leaning forward in a concealing. movement, brushed her hair out of his way and bent her back over one arm to get the full effect of the petite pouting swells adorned by delicate rosy nipples. He exhaled audibly.

'Exquisite…' he pronounced raggedly, his devouring appraisal and the roughened note in his rich, dark drawl convincing proof of his genuine appreciation.

He cupped one breast and toyed with the sweet, succulent crest until it was swollen and stiff. She squirmed on his thighs, the warm, achy feeling low in her belly making her restive. He employed his mouth on her tender nipples, tasting and teasing until she moaned out loud and dug impatient fingers into his luxuriant black hair to drag his head up and find his gorgeous mouth for herself again.

'Cristos… l'

'Let's get comfortable…' Pulling free, Cristos settled her back against the pillows. He closed his hands into the hem of her dress and whisked it from round her hips to toss it aside. Clad only in the rather daring cerise lace thong she had found in a drawer with other equally adventurous panties, Betsy felt horribly naked and exposed. Angling back from her in a lithe movement, Cristos sprang upright.

'I can't believe I'm doing this,' she confided jaggedly, green eyes bright with bemusement.

'You haven't done anything yet.' Cristos slid the bedspread out from beneath her and cast it in a spill of silk across the padded seat at the foot of the bed.

But nor had she thought about what she was about to do, Betsy conceded shamefacedly. Going to bed with Cristos and surrendering her virginity had been concepts that took her by storm, not the reasoned calm decisions that were the norm for her. For goodness' sake, she was twenty-five years old and still keen on a man who belonged to her sister, she reminded herself guiltily. Why shouldn't she settle for a passionate affair? Cristos could turn her inside out with one smile and make her knees go weak with one kiss. He mesmerised her and it might be juvenile of her to get caught up in such a physical infatuation but at least she wasn't kidding herself that it was anything more.

Cristos ran down the zip on his chinos and then stilled, ebony brows drawing together in a frown. 'Are you willing to run the risk that I could get you pregnant?'

Betsy froze.

Cristos groaned out loud. 'I know… you forgot about that aspect. So did I. I can't believe that I almost overlooked an issue of that gravity but, for some crazy reason, I don't think straight around you.'

Betsy was very pale. She hugged her knees to her breasts. 'We can't do this… I would die if I got pregnant-'

Cristos winced. 'Don't be such a -pessimist. I'll be careful. I’ll withdraw.'

Betsy had turned very pink at that declaration and she was no longer meeting his brilliant dark gaze. 'It's too risky-'

'I'm a risk-taker-'

'I'm not, never have been.'

'If I get you pregnant I will be there for you every step of the way,' Cristos swore huskily. 'You don't need to worry. I don't think: it's going to happen, but be assured that if it does I will take full responsibility and support you.'

Betsy stole a glance at his devastatingly handsome face. Was he really thinking things through? She could not help being impressed.

'Trust me, pethi mou… ' Cristos added, doffing his chinos with a flourish.

His designer boxers interfered with her concentration. He shed those too with the natural grace that accompanied every supple movement of his lean, hard body. Involuntarily she stared at the rigid maleness of his bold shaft and hastily averted her eyes, thinking that she had just found another very good reason why they should not be getting together. In fact she was having very serious second thoughts.

'It's not that I don't trust you,' she began tremulously as the mattress sank beneath his weight. 'It's just that-'

'You're nervous and outrageously shy about displaying your fantastic figure.' Cristos parted her arms, spread them wide and rearranged her hair so that the tumbled strands no longer concealed her breasts. 'I'm your perfect match. I don't have a modest bone in my entire body.'

'I know that but… ' Betsy looked up at him and met scorching golden eyes that sent her heartbeat into a sprint.

'All you have to do is lie back and enjoy being seduced,' Cristos told her lazily, tipping her back so that her mane of hair spread in a vibrant fan across the pillows. 'I had several wildly erotic dreams about you before we even met on Friday. Now I have you here on this bed I intend to live the fantasy.'

'I'm not a fantasy, though,' she whispered. 'I'm just an ordinary woman.'

'No ordinary woman could exercise this much sexual power over me… I'm a tough guy to pull,' Cristos asserted, holding her hands down beneath his and feeding from the sweetness of her already-reddened mouth with burning intensity.

It was as if every skin cell in her body were throbbing into new life. He let his teeth graze her throat and her pulses leapt with almost painful enthusiasm. Electric excitement had her in its grip. His thumbs flicked over her distended nipples, lingered to torment. Even more sensitive there than she had been minutes earlier, a whimper of sound escaped her. Her hips were shifting on the cool sheet below her. A barely understood hunger was tearing at her in waves of wanting. She was unprepared for the sharp bittersweet edge of sensation that bereft her of control, leaving her capable only of yearning for the next and the next. But, somehow, not the most passionate kiss or knowing caress could answer the fever burning inside her.

'I didn’t know it would be like this…' she gasped, both exhilarated and scared by the sheer overwhelming force of her own longing.

'Layer on layer of the most perfect pleasure, pethi mou.'

He skimmed through the silken copper curls below her belly and lightly traced the thrumming heart of her. She was unbearably tender, hot and damp. She twisted. He held her still. He let his mouth trail a slow, 'smoothing passage down over her quivering body. 'Relax…'

She was boneless with anticipation. Her hands fluttered over him, discovering the bunched muscles of his shoulders, the smooth hard strength of his back. The feel of his incredibly male body against hers held her rapt. The taste of his skin beneath her lips and her tongue enchanted her. She was in a world of discovery. He explored the slick wet heat of her. She twisted and turned, the fire of her desire racing higher and higher until it threatened to consume her.

He tilted her back and shifted over her to ease into her tight, moist entrance degree by degree. Her eyes opened wide in wonderment. Where she had ached he filled her to the hilt. The sudden stark flash of pain as he powered through the barrier of her resisting flesh took her by surprise and then he thrust into her some more.

Cristos looked down at her with hot golden eyes. 'You feel awesome.'

He eased his hands beneath her hips, arched her up to him and sank even deeper into her with a groan of very male satisfaction. She had no time to catch her breath. With slow, provocative deliberation, he set a sensual rhythm that made her heart pound like mad against her breastbone. He ground down into her and wild excitement seized her. The pace quickened. She moved against him with an abandon that became more and more frenzied. Any notion of control was long gone. She was reaching for the very zenith of pleasure when – without any warning he suddenly yanked himself back from her.

'Cristos… l' she yelped in disbelief and she stretched up and hauled him back to her before he could complete his withdrawal.

He slammed back into her willing body with welcome fervour. She hit the heights in an explosion of ecstasy. He bit out something raw in his own language. His magnificent body shuddered over her and she clung to him as the shattering pagan surge of pleasure rocked them both.

In the aftermath, she hugged him close, revelling in that new intimacy and feeling incredibly content.

'As withdrawals go, that was a disaster,' Cristos muttered breathlessly, surveying her nonetheless with scorching golden eyes of appreciation and smoothing back her tousled hair to drop a kiss on her brow.

'Oh…' Too late, Betsy realised what she had done and she blamed her own mindless excitement for her lack of awareness. 'My fault.'

'But as an experience… it was the ultimate. I do hope this isn't going to be a one-night stand,' Cristos murmured teasingly, flipping over onto his back and scooping her up to arrange her back on top of him.

In rather a daze at the new state of play between them, Betsy gazed down at him. Feeling quite unlike herself and insanely happy, she smiled.

The softened light in her clear eyes disturbed Cristos. 'A word of warning,' he murmured lightly. 'Don't go falling in love with me. I'm not into all that.' "

A deep inner chill banished her sunny mood. It took effort not to betray her disconcertion and her hurt. It took even more of an effort to produce an amused laugh. 'You don't need to worry,' she told him, affronted by the warning he had considered jt necessary to give her. 'I'm in love with someone else.'

Astonished by that careless statement, Cristos went very stilt He did not think about what he did next;-he went with his gut reaction. Clamping two hands to her waist, he scooped her off him again and dumped her

back on the bed beside him with a scant lack of ceremony. 'Then why did you go to bed with me?'

Taken aback by his flagrant anger, Betsy scrambled out of the bed. Only then did she recall that she was stark naked and an immediate need to drop to her knees in search of something to wear could not have been said to cool her temper. Below the bed she found the sarong she had discarded earlier and she dragged it round herself.

'I'm waiting for an answer… ' Cristos stressed. 'Well, I don't see what you have to get all worked up about.' Betsy's ire was up and she had gone on the defensive. 'When you felt the need to tell me not to go falling for you, you should be grateful to hear that

I'm in love with another man!'.

'Who is he?' Cristos growled, furious with her, aghast at her lack of shame. To think that he had fondly imagined that she was vulnerable, naive…

'None of your business.' Betsy tied the sarong in a knot over her breasts. Her hands were all fingers and thumbs. She was upset and she couldn't understand why she had had such a violent adverse response to what he had said to her.

'You made it mine when you got into bed with me,' Cristos framed in a raw undertone. 'Who is this guy? Your boyfriend?'

Her resistance gave in the surge of bitterness that that enquiry produced. 'He was once,' she admitted tightly. 'But now he lives with my sister and they have a child.'

At that admission, the savage edge to his anger blunted. The other guy was unavailable and not a rival. 'How long since you were with him?'

'Three years.'

Cristos treated her to a derisive appraisal. 'And you still haven't got over him?'

'You are one hateful, sarcastic bastard when you want to be!' Betsy yelled at him full throttle, high spots of colour burning over her cheeks.

A symphony of bronzed flesh and powerful masculinity, Cristos lounged back against the tumbled pillows, offensive in his studied relaxation. 'Three years after this guy shacks up with your sister, you're still in love with him… don't you think that's more than a little sad?'

Betsy was in such a rage she felt light-headed. 'You don't understand what you're talking about. Rory was my best friend, my soul mate-'

'But you never screwed him,' Cristos slotted in with a blunt lack of respect for such high-flown sentiments that sent her hot temper climbing even higher. 'So he must have been a non-starter between the sheets.'

'You're disgusting… you reduce everything to a sexual level!' Betsy slammed back at him.

'I'm also the guy you gave your virginity to.'

'So you've got sex appeal… just as well, you've got nothing else!' Betsy slung at him between gritted teeth. 'You're intensive, ignorant, vain-'

'Where the hell do you get off calling me vain?' Cristos roared at her.

Hands on her slender hips, Betsy treated him to an all-encompassing look ·of scorn such as he had never before received from a member of her sex 'Suggesting that I would be thick enough to fall in love with a guy like you! And you don't think that's vain?'

Golden eyes flaming with fierce pride, Cristos sprang off the bed like a panther about to pounce on prey. 'Why wouldn't you fall in love with me?'

'It's nothing personal but you're not Rory,' Betsy told him brittly, horrified to recognise the prickling sensation behind her eyes and taking hurried refuge in the bathroom before she let herself down a bucketful.

Seething with frustration, incapable of letting the issue drop, Cristos knocked on the door. She ignored it. He opened the door. Tear-tracks marking her cheeks, she was wiping her eyes. His anger vanished. He closed his arms round her. 'This is insane. I don't even know what we're arguing about-'

'Your conviction that you're an intensely lovable person and fatally attractive to virgins,' Betsy countered somewhat snidely in punishment for his having caught her crying.

'It's the tension we're living with here…it had to find a vent somewhere,' Cristos asserted, disregarding that facetious comment.

Her rigidity gave and she collapsed into the sheltering warmth of his lean, powerful body. She didn't know why she had got so angry and distressed. She didn't know why he had a magical ability to make her so angry she was ready to explode. She didn't even know why she was ruder to him than she had ever been to anyone else. All she recognised at that instant was that she was confused, afraid of the disturbing strength of her own emotions and in dire need of comfort. She had not acknowledged that they were both stressed out and striving to make the best of a frightening situation they could not control. Cristos was like her. He didn't whinge.

Pulling her close, he scooped her up and carried her back to bed. 'You have three choices,' he murmured, stunning dark golden eyes entrapping her with charismatic ease. 'One… I give you some space.'

Betsy considered that and finally wrinkled her nose. 'Two… 1 give you your first swimming lesson.' Betsy made a rather vulgar gagging sound, which made him grin with startled appreciation.

'Three… I get out the champagne, which is probably of vinegar vintage, and come back to bed.'

'Stuff the champagne,' she told him, but hot cheeked at her own nerve she opened her arms. She wanted him. It was that simple. No need to make a production out of it, she told herself staunchly.

Five days later, Betsy flopped on the sand and punched a victory sign in the air. 'I can swim!'

'But you still don't go into the water on your own,' Cristos delivered.

Laughing, green eyes shining with mischief, she leant over him. 'Don't you ever get tired of ordering me about?'

'No, 1 really get off on it…' Cristos curled his fingers into the wet coil of her bright hair and dragged her down to him with the cool confidence of a male who knew that his attentions were always welcome. He captured her lips, c01Jducted a sensual invasion that reduced her to shivering compliancy. His beautiful dark golden eyes flared over her with sensual intent and then he sat up, carrying her with him. 'I want you again, pethi mou.'

He took her into the cool of the bedroom. He had barely touched her but already her body was ready for him. She wanted him so badly she was trembling. He unclipped her bikini bra, baring her pert breasts. His roughened growl of pleasure broke the buzzing silence and she leant back against him with a low moan of encouragement while he stroked the distended pink nipples straining for his attention.

'You're so quiet with me now,' Cristos censured, pressing her back against the bed where she rested boneless, enslaved by him.

Her lashes lowered in concealment. What was there to say when she had to be careful not to betray herself? There was not a minute in the day when she did not think of him. Initial fascination and attraction had melded into a much more dangerous obsession. She had begun admiring the flip side of his arrogant temperament: his courage, his' uncompromising strength of character and intelligence. Before she knew where she was, she had found herself lying in eager wait for his wonderful smile. In spite of all her proud assurances to the contrary, she had fallen headlong and hopelessly in love with Cristos Stephanides.

'But even your silence excites me,' Cristos confided, tugging up her shapely knees to remove her bikini pants. 'It gives me a high when you cry out with pleasure… '

He parted the damp petals of her womanhood to find the most sensitive spot of all and suddenly she was all heat and desperate need. But where she most ached for him, he touched her not at all. In a process of sensual torment he took her to a peak again and again, always denying her the fulfilment she craved. She writhed in frustration, whimpered in protest. Only when he was satisfied that she had reached the very edge of extreme arousal did he turn her over and plunge into the tender heart of her with a devastating expertise that sent her into an instantaneous and wildly exciting climax.

Afterwards, he curled her slender, exhausted body up against him and surveyed her with immense satisfaction. Sex with her was incredible but he would not have dreamt of telling her that. He could not get enough of her. He would not have told her that even under torture. He lifted her hand and planted a kiss in the centre of her palm. He wrapped his arms round her, submitted with only a very slight wince to being hugged for the first time since his childhood. He knew what she liked. He knew how to keep her happy. In return for unlimited sex, and moreover the best sex he had ever had, he made a very real effort to be affectionate. Why? He had already decided that when they got off the island he would keep her in his life as his mistress. After all, he had moulded her into -exactly what he wanted.

When Betsy emerged from the bathroom towelling her hair dry, she found herself alone again. Cristos would be checking the fire on the headland. He was impossibly energetic from dawn to midnight and she struggled to keep up with him. The old boathouse was piled high with junk and he was using it to keep the signal fire alight. So far, the fire had failed to attract attention. But then, since they had not even seen a fishing boat, it was clear that the island did not lie close to the shipping lanes. With stones they had picked out a giant SOS on the beach that could be seen from the air, but they had yet to see a single small plane of the type that would fly low enough to read their message..

It was very hot but Betsy was determined to do her share of the heavy work. She padded into the shadowy depths of the boathouse and swept up a dusty old cardboard box. Through the tom lid she could see magazines. She would cart it up to feed the fire. It was a steep climb and when she got there Cristos was nowhere to be seen; She espied him down on the beach. The fire was low and she settled the box hurriedly on top of it, reasoning that it would burn slower and last longer as fuel that way.

She had reached the dunes below when a whistling, hissing sound followed by an explosive bang brought her to an astonished halt. The seeming equivalent of a very violent firework torched through the clear blue sky above and her jaw dropped.

'Why didn't you tell me you'd found a flare? Why the hell did you just throw it on the fire?' Cristos shouted at her from about thirty feet away, his lean, darkly handsome face hard with incredulity.

Another flare shot up over the headland in a fierce bright rocket of flame and a shower of sparks. Paralysed to the spot, and it was a paralysis that Cristos seemed to share, she watched in horror as a pyrotechnic display of flares fired off in all directions. In all six had exploded and of those only one failed to make the ascent into the sky.

'I didn't know there were flares. 1 took the box out of. the boathouse. I thought it was full of magazines… that was all 1 could see!' Betsy admitted in consternation.

Glittering dark eyes pinned to her in angry condemnation, Cristos spread his lean brown hands wide. •

'You put the box on the fire without checking the contents?'

Stiff with guilt, she nodded.

'Those flares would have had a much greater chance I

of being noticed at night. Thanks to your carelessness, j

they've been wasted!' Cristos derided. j

'I thought you'd already searched through everything in the boathouse!' Betsy protested and, sidestepping him, she headed off, eyes stinging at the awful fear that she might have blown their best chance for getting off the island.

When Cristos was annoyed with her, a knot of pain formed inside Betsy and she started feeling as if she had lost a whole layer of protective skin. But in truth, she recognised ruefully, what she had lost was her independence and her peace of mind. She judged herself through his eyes. His opinions mattered. He had imposed his powerful personality on her whether she liked it or not. Her time with him had also taught her a lot about herself. The love she had honestly believed she still cherished for Rory had been composed of nothing more than fondness and her reluctance to let go of her sentimental links to the past.

Late afternoon, Cristos strode into the house and pulled her into his arms, impervious to the ice signals she was handing out. They were both hot-tempered. It was a scene that had occurred between them on several occasions. He would never discuss the argument. He would simply pretend it had not happened and even while she was soothed by the speed with which he always healed a breast that arrogant refusal to acknowledge their differences drove her crazy. But this time she had no opportunity to quibble about the silent terms of reconciliation. He kissed her with hard, hungry urgency.

Taken aback, she had no time even to catch her breath before Cristos, emanating tightly feashed emotions in a force field that she could feel, his dark eyes bright with satisfaction, turned her to the window so that she could see the blue and white fishing boat tied up at the jetty. 'We've been rescued…'

Everything from that point went at supersonic speed. The distress flares had brought the young fisherman to investigate. Within ten minutes, Betsy was being helped into the boat, still colourfully clothed in a sundress and bikini pants, her crumpled uniform stuffed in a carrier bag. While she watched the island recede into the purplish haze of ever greater distance, Cristos was talking in voluble Greek into the radio in the wheelhouse.

'Your family will be informed that you are safe,' Cristos assured her in an aside. when she hovered nearby. 'My grandfather will organise everything.'

For all the fact that they had their freedom back, Betsy felt superfluous to requirements and oddly empty and scared. Even so she did not want to hang round Cristos like a limpet. When they were within sight of land again, she asked him if he had found out the name of the island they had been on.

'Why 'would you be interested?' he asked, his surprise palpable, but he spoke to the fisherman.

'Mos…it's called. We're in the Cyclades,' he added.

They landed on the island of Sifnos, which was as gloriously green in its spring splendour as Mos had been. Again she was left alone while Cristos went off to make use of the private phone offered to him. She did not like to ask if she could accompany him and it was thirty minutes before he reappeared, his bold bronzed features grave.

'Did the kidnappers ask for a ransom? Did you find out anything about them?' she prompted then, desperate for a little information. She was feeling shut out and excluded. Cristos was back in his own world, she conceded, and already he was acting cool and detached. What they had shared on the island might as well have taken place on another planet, she thought fearfully.

His lean, strong face was expressionless. 'Nothing… but transport to take us back to the mainland should be arriving very soon.'

'I have no passport… how am I going to travel home?'

'Your embassy has been informed. They will take care of that.'

'When are the police going to question us?' Cristos shrugged. He did not know what to say to her. He had been shattered by what he had just learned from his grandfather and he was still in shock. Spyros, his own cousin, had had him kidnapped. Cristos was outraged but also ashamed that one of his own kin could have sunk so low with only greed as an excuse. And if Patras Stephanides had anything to do with it, there would be no further investigation of his grandson’s brief disappearance for it was not as though charges could be brought against those responsible.

Five days ago, Spyros and his partners in crime, Joe Tyler and two other men, had all been killed when the helicopter that Spyros had been piloting had crashed in the Aegean sea on the way back from Mos. Nothing would be gained from revealing the truth to Betsy or to anybody else. Indeed the honour of the Stephanides name and Spyros' grieving family required the protection of silence.

As the silence stretched Betsy stiffened.

Dark eyes grim, Cristos breathed in deep. 'There is something I should tell you… I'm engaged. My fiancée will be waiting to greet me in Athens, so we will be travelling separately.'

His words, for in no way could she have described that statement as either apologetic or confessional, hit her like a brick smashing through a window. In that moment everything changed and everything she had shared with him took on a far different aspect. She walked away a few steps to stare blindly out at the picturesque harbour. For long, timeless minutes she struggled to deal with the greatest pain she had ever known.

'You lied to me,' she said. 'I did not.'

'I asked you if anyone in your life would be hurt by us being together and you said no,' she reminded him in a shaking undertone while she fought not to lose her temper or cry or indeed do anything that might reveal to him just how badly she was hurting.

'I answered truthfully. Petrina does not interfere. She is not concerned by my fidelity but I respect her position and I am always discreet.'

Hatred and bitterness threatened to spread like a pool of poison inside Betsy. She hugged her arms round herself, striving to contain her tempestuous emotions.

'I want you to remain part of my life…'

An incredulous laugh empty of humour was wrenched from her and she moved away another step, terrified that she might break down into tears. 'You've got to be joking.'

'I won't give you up, pethi mou,' Cristos breathed, pale with tension beneath his olive skin, glittering dark eyes intently pinned to her every change of expression. 'Nothing is perfect. But you can still be with me.'

'You think I want you so much that I'd be prepared to share you?' Eyes witch-green with rampant loathing, Betsy rounded on him like a tigress. 'Go take a running jump, Cristos!'