One Night to Risk It All(22)

The thing that was so unsettling about that prospect was the fact that it might have worked. That if she hadn’t found out she was pregnant, if he’d walked in and kissed her, and told her that he hadn’t stopped thinking about her for the past month, that he loved her, she would have probably dropped everything and run away with him.

Because she had feelings for him. Feelings that she couldn’t quite understand or deal with, but they were definitely feelings. Stupid, stupid feelings.

Feelings that should be utterly choked out by this most recent revelation.

“I don’t understand. Even if the past that you share—that you say you share... Even if it’s true I don’t know why you would want to destroy him so badly.”

“Of course you don’t,” he said, walking in front of her, toward the house, “because you live in a dream world, little girl. You don’t know anything about the way the world works. And you should be thankful for that.”





CHAPTER SIX


RACHEL LAY DOWN on the white down-filled blanket and stared at the ceiling. She would ask for him to take her home if she wasn’t such a coward. If she wasn’t so afraid she didn’t have a home to go back to.

Even if she did, it would be crawling with reporters, ready to get the juicy dirt on why she’d left Ajax at the altar. And the lame thing was there was tons of juicy dirt. If the bride being pregnant with another man’s baby wasn’t a great scandalous headline, she really didn’t know what was.

Society wedding of the century became farce just that quickly and the press would absolutely adore it.

There was a knock on the door. Not Alex, (A) because he wouldn’t have knocked, and (B) because it was soft, a woman’s hand, she was almost certain.

“Yes?”

The door opened a small woman with dark hair came in. “Mr. Alex has requested that you join him for dinner out on the terrace.”

“Oh, has he now?”

“Yes,” the woman said, either not picking up on Rachel’s annoyance, or choosing not to acknowledge it.

“When does he expect me?”

“Ten minutes, miss.”

“Tell him it will be twenty—I need to dress for it. And tell him not to let that go to his head.”

The woman nodded and backed out of the room. Rachel felt like a shrew. A sweaty, mean one. She was hot from the walk, still, and in a foul mood.

A quick shower did wonders for the sweaty part, but the meanness still seemed to be simmering beneath the surface, even while she slipped into a simple black shift dress and a pair of black heels. She fastened a string of pearls around her neck and looked at her side profile. Her hair was neat, in place as it should be. Her makeup looked good.

She looked normal. Like the Rachel she was accustomed to seeing in the mirror every day.

Which was so strange because she didn’t feel like normal Rachel. She hadn’t. Not since that day she’d locked eyes with stupid Alexios Christofides.

She let out a harsh breath and exited her room to find the maid standing there waiting for her.

“I will take you to Mr. Alex.”

“Thank you,” Rachel said, even while she thought that he was only sending her an escort to make sure she didn’t bribe his pilot to get her off the island.

That was when she realized how stuck she was. With each step across the white marble floor and out toward the terrace, she felt a rope tightening around her neck, her pearls suddenly feeling heavy, like they were choking her.

She reached up and unfastened them as they walked, wadding them up in her shaking hand, holding them down at her side.

“Miss Rachel,” the maid said, announcing her as though she were a duchess of some kind.

Alex stood and her heart squeezed. No matter how angry she was, he never failed to leave her utterly speechless. He was wearing a simple white button-up shirt, unfastened at the collar, the sleeves rolled up past his forearms.

His skin looked a deeper bronze in that color, a glimpse of chest hair visible through the open neck. He looked so effortless. So ridiculously sexy.

It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair that her body was drawn to a man like this. A man who had tricked her, used her and basically had her held captive on an island. What the ever-loving heck was wrong with her? Was she punishing herself for past sins? Or was there something that drew her to men who wanted to...use her?

She sat down, and he took his seat.

“I trust you had a nice rest?” he asked.

“I don’t think you really trust that. I’m sure you know I spent the past hour quietly freaking out in the privacy of my bedroom.”

“I suppose that’s only fair.”

“I’ve just found out I’m having a baby, on top of everything else, so yes, it is only fair.”

“That is why I proposed marriage,” he said. “Not to get Holt away from Ajax, but for the sake of the baby.”

“Great. Fine. But please know that I will not marry you. Not for the baby, not for anything. At the very least not until my sister is married and I am certain, one hundred percent certain, that you won’t get Holt because of my indiscretion. I will not allow you to hurt Ajax or my family in that way.” A startling thought occurred to her. “And if you go after my sister I will be forced to remove your male member from your body with a very dull pocketknife, and don’t think I won’t do it. I might have been spoiled from birth, but I’m also from New York, and we don’t mess around over there.”