The Billionaire's Pregnant Mistress(29)

Her gown covered more of her body with fabric, but none of it with modesty and his eyes gleamed their appreciation at her as she approached him.

She knelt down on the tile by his knees and presented the pregnancy test to him. “I’m pregnant with your baby, Dimitri.”

His eyes widened, then narrowed in understanding. “You are giving me a second chance.”

“Love can erase the mistakes of the past.”

Something profound moved across his features and he reached for the stick. “I can think of nothing greater in life than to have you carry my child.”

They were the words she had wanted to hear so much five months ago and she smiled with a radiance she made no effort to hide. “I love you, mon cher.”

She’d said it so many times over the past hours, the words should have lost their impact, but she knew they never would and the expression on his face told her he felt the same.

“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.”

“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.

Cecelia had been in her element hosting Christmas for her family and Dimitri’s besides in her New Orleans home. Alexandra had asked him to let her mother do it and as with so many things related to his wife’s desires, he hadn’t even considered saying no. She was the love of his life and he would do anything to make her happy.

He’d learned to appreciate the difference between that and the obsessive love his father had suffered from toward his mother. Alexandra had shown him by wanting only the best for him in return. It was a heady sensation.

Alexandra laid her hand on Theo’s back and sang a soft French lullaby. Far from letting a nanny raise their son, she had insisted on seeing to all his needs, including midnight feedings, three-in-the-morning feedings and dawn wake-up calls to change Little Theo’s nappy for the first few months. Dimitri hadn’t minded. He liked getting up with Alexandra and watching his son nurse. It was a sight so beautiful, it transfixed him.

She was an amazing mother and an even more incredible wife. He thanked God daily for second chances.

She finally felt all was well with their son and turned to leave the nursery. She smiled up at him, her face soft with love. It was a look he would never take for granted again.

“He’s out for the count.”

Dimitri put his arm around her and drew her next door to their bedroom. “I have something for you.”

“Dimitri.” She drew his name out like it had six syllables. “You’ve already given me a mountain of gifts today. It’s worse than last year.”

He smiled in remembrance of their first Christmas together. They’d spent it with his grandfather in Greece. She’d cried when he gave her an eternity ring. He’d almost died from pleasure when she gave him his gift later that night…herself wrapped in a see-through red nightgown that had made her look like a very sexy, but pregnant elf.

Her eyes were soft with a love. “You’re spoiling me.”

“It is impossible to spoil perfection.”

She shook her head. “I’m far from perfect.”

She always said things like that, as if she wanted to remind him she was flawed and he always reminded her he would love her forever regardless. Which he did again and she smiled her contentment and love back at him.

They reached the bedroom and he pulled her to sit on the edge of the antique four-poster. Then he pulled a small gift wrapped in red foil and topped with a tiny gold bow from his pocket. “Happy Christmas, agapi mou.”

With a smile on her beautiful lips, she carefully tore the paper from the white jeweler”s case.

She remembered it.

He could tell because just for a second, she looked uncertain and then her eyes glowed undying love at him. Her fingers trembled a little as she opened it, then she gasped.

He withdrew the bracelet from the box and attached it to her wrist. When he looked in her beautiful golden eyes, she was crying. “Are you all right, yineka mou?”

She nodded, but had to swallow before she spoke. “Is it the same bracelet?”

“Yes.”

“If I had opened this, I would never have left Paris. It would have taken a crane to get me out of the apartment.”

She understood. He breathed a sigh of relief. Finally this last ghost laid to rest.

The bracelet sparkled on her wrist, the intertwined hearts studded with diamonds glistening in the light.

It was not the parting gift of a man to his mistress. It was not even merely a gift of affection from one lover to another. The bracelet bespoke a deeper emotion than he had been willing to acknowledge or verbalize at the time, but she understood.

“You loved me then.”

“I loved you from the morning after I made you mine. You smiled so sweetly, offering no recriminations to me for seducing you from your innocence.”