“I love you, Alexandra. Never leave me again.”
“Never,” she agreed fervently.
He leaned down and kissed her softly before lifting her back into his lap.
“I still feel bad about your grandfather,” she admitted.
“Why should you feel this?”
“All those awful news stories. They must have devastated him.”
Dimitri tilted her chin so they were looking into one another’s eyes. “It was not the tabloid gossip that upset Grandfather so badly he had another attack.” Guilt chased across Dimitri’s features. “I am fully to blame.”
“But…”
“Grandfather didn’t even see the news stories until after coming out of the hospital.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I told my grandfather I couldn’t marry Phoebe and then I told him why.”
“Because I was pregnant with your baby.”
He shook his head, his eyes warming her. “Because I love you. He had the heart attack when he started yelling at me for being a fool after I admitted I’d evicted you from the apartment and could not find you.”
She couldn’t take it in. “You already knew you weren’t going to marry Phoebe before the tabloids ran the gossip about us?”
“I knew I wasn’t going to marry Phoebe the day you told me you were pregnant, but I was insane with unreasonable jealousy, angry at myself, angry at my grandfather. I went off the rails and didn’t get back on them until I saw you standing next to your sister that first night in New York.”
“I don’t know. You acted pretty derailed then too.”
“She told me you had died! Do you have any idea what that did to me?”
She was beginning to have an inkling. If he had loved her, and now she knew he had, such news would have been soul destroying. “I’m sorry, Dimitri.” She leaned forward and kissed him, wanting to heal the hurts of the past.
He kissed her back with enough passion to leave her gasping for breath a minute later.
“I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself for what I did to you.”
Her eyes misted, but she smiled. “Please. You have to. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking back. My present is glorious now that you are in it, now that I know you love me!”
“I saw the paparazzi outside the restaurant in New York and did nothing,” he said with the air of a man who felt he had to admit everything.
She tried to figure out what he was saying. “Are you saying you wanted them to make the connection with my Xandra Fortune identity?”
He did his best to look humble, but it didn’t come naturally. “I realize this was wrong.”#p#分页标题#e#
“But you would do it again.”
“I was desperate,” he defended.
Dimitri desperate. Her heart just melted. “That’s really sweet, mon cher.”
“You are not angry with me?” he asked warily.
She snuggled closer, curling her fingers in his chest hair. “No. It’s flattering to think of my Greek tycoon so desperate he stooped to nefarious means to win me,” she said cheekily.
“I will never let you go again,” he growled against her temple and then did something truly amazing with his tongue to her ear.
She shivered with the excitement only he could generate. “You’re stuck with me for life, Dimitri Petronides.”
“Count on it, agapi mou.”
The baby kicked and they both laughed.
She rubbed the taut skin over the protruding little foot. “He approves.”
“He’s already brilliant,” said the proud papa.
“Mmm…” she agreed, feeling contentment clear to her toes.
Dimitri shifted under her and she felt another protruding member, but this wasn’t infantile at all.
“You look very sexy in that nightgown, even more sexy than you did when I first bought it.”
“Over six months pregnant and you think I’m sexier than I was when we first met?” she mocked, secretly thrilled by the compliment.
He didn’t smile at her joke. “Yes. Sexier. More beautiful. More everything because now you are mine and I know you are mine.”
“For the rest of my life,” she affirmed.
And then she set about showing him the kind of love she planned to give him for all that time: a passionate, unconditional, without limits kind of love.
Dimitri stood in the doorway of the Dupree Mansion nursery watching his wife tuck their small son into his cot. Little Theo, named after his great-grandfather, was nine months old. He had loved the excitement of Christmas, but had been ready for bed a good hour before Alexandra had been able to prize him from his fond grandmother’s arms.