She didn’t care about Bastien in the smallest way, Lilah assured herself agitatedly. Bastien Zikos was simply the man she’d slept with to fulfil her side of their agreement to be his mistress. That was all he wanted from her. And all she had ever wanted from him was that he reopen the factory and re-employ her father.
Honesty urged Lilah to admit that she was lying to herself. Two years earlier, when she had first met Bastien, she had very quickly begun developing deep feelings for him—but his sole reaction to her had been superficial and sexual. And nothing had changed since then, she reminded herself doggedly. Even if she was pregnant—even if she agreed to marry him—nothing would change between them. If she hadn’t got to Bastien on a more meaningful level when they first met it was extremely unlikely that anything more would develop the second time around.
But how dared he simply assume that if she had conceived she would automatically want to consider a termination? He had no right to make that assumption—no right to try and take control of that decision either.
Too tired to lie awake agonising about what might never happen, Lilah ultimately dropped off to sleep.
The next morning that entire conversation with Bastien about getting married seemed surreal to Lilah. She was still deep in her bemused thoughts when she went downstairs for breakfast.
Bastien watched Delilah cross the terrace, a lithe, slim figure in a turquoise playsuit that showcased her tiny waist and long slim legs. She looked very young, with her black curls rippling loose round her shoulders. He watched her sit down and settle anxious sapphire-blue eyes on him.
Clad in tailored cream chinos and a black T-shirt, Bastien was casually seated on the low wall bounding the terrace, with a cup of coffee in his hand. His bronzed sculpted features smooth shaven, his lean, powerful body fluidly relaxed, he exuded poise, sophistication and an absolute charisma which stole Lilah’s breath from her lungs.
A tiny muscle low in her pelvis clenched and her face coloured hotly as she became uncomfortably aware of the damp flesh between her thighs.
‘I’ve been thinking, and I believe you’re worrying about something that’s unlikely to happen. It’s not always that easy to get pregnant,’ Lilah told Bastien quietly, keen to distract him from looking at her too closely because Bastien was far too astute at reading women. ‘It took my stepmother months to conceive.’
‘I’m not about to change my mind about marriage as a solution, Delilah,’ Bastien warned her, secretly amused and impressed that she lacked the avaricious streak that would have made many women grab at the chance to marry him. ‘While the arrangements are being made—there’s a lot of paperwork involved in getting married in France—we’ll continue here as normal. My lawyers are drawing up a pre-nup as we speak—’
Lilah poured her tea and groaned. ‘You’re really serious about this...’
‘It may not seem immediately obvious to you in our current relationship,’ Bastien remarked in a roughened undertone, watching her nibble at a croissant with unconscious sensuality and gritting his teeth as he hardened in response, ‘but if you do prove to be pregnant I have a lot to offer as a husband and a father...’
Who was she? Lilah immediately wanted to know. Who was the evil witch who had made Bastien feel worthless at the age of twenty-one when he had been little more than a boy?
‘I know that, Bastien,’ she said quietly. ‘Who was the woman who had the termination?’
Bastien grimaced. ‘This long after the event, there is no need for us to discuss that.’
Lilah tilted her chin. ‘If you want me to marry you in these circumstances I have a right to know the whole story.’
‘Her name is Marina Kouros. She’s the daughter of a wealthy businessman.’
‘Greek?’
‘Yes. She hung out with my half-brother, Leo. I knew she had a thing for him, but he saw her only as a friend.’
Lilah winced when he described that connection. ‘Complicated...’
‘Nothing I couldn’t handle at the time, I thought. I was very confident with women even at that age,’ Bastien admitted bleakly. ‘Too confident, as it turned out. Of course I was infatuated with Marina. We had a one-night stand but I wanted more. I didn’t see it at the time, but she was using me to try and make Leo sit up and take notice of her.’
‘You were brothers. It was wrong of her to come between you like that,’ Lilah opined.
‘To be fair, Marina didn’t intend to cause trouble, and Leo and I have never been close. I also know why she went for the termination behind my back,’ he admitted tautly. ‘I was illegitimate and penniless—hardly a winning package for a wealthy socialite. Unfortunately when Leo heard the rumours that I had got her pregnant she lied to save face with him and pretended that I had bullied her into the abortion clinic. He’s held that against me ever since.’
‘That’s so unfair,’ Lilah breathed angrily.
Bastien shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘Very little in my life has been fair,’ he derided softly. ‘That’s why I prefer to make my own luck and my own fortune. I don’t owe anyone anything and that’s how I like it, glikia mou.’
‘But I would prefer not to risk having an unnecessary marriage and divorce in my relationship history,’ Lilah told him quietly. ‘I think we should wait and see if we have anything to worry about first.’
His dark golden eyes hardened. ‘Not this time.’
‘Even if I have conceived I don’t think I’d choose a termination,’ Lilah added.
Bastien sprang upright and set down his coffee cup, an aggressive edge to his movements. ‘We’ll do this my way. We’ll get married.’
Lilah stood up. ‘It’s not the course of action I would choose, Bastien.’
‘I don’t care. This is an amendment to our original agreement,’ he declared without hesitation. ‘Deal with it.’
Lilah turned away from him, angry and stressed.
‘You’ll have a few days to think your position over,’ Bastien told her. ‘I have to make a trip to Asia, to check out some trouble at one of my manufacturing plants.’
Taken aback, Lilah turned. ‘How long will you be away?’
‘About a week.’
Lilah had a second cup of tea while Bastien talked on the phone in a foreign language. Deal with it, he had told her. An amendment to their original agreement? Was he threatening her? Would continuing refusal to marry him on her part be treated as a breach of that agreement? Did she dare push it?
What, after all, was she planning to do should Bastien’s fears prove correct and she found herself pregnant? Her skin turned clammy with anxiety. If she was pregnant she would want Bastien’s support every step of the way, she reflected ruefully. Maybe, just maybe, she was fighting the wrong battle...
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS A beautiful dress. Exquisitely simple in shape, it flattered Lilah’s slender figure, with long tight lace sleeves, a boat-shaped neckline and a slimline skirt. Her wedding gown, she acknowledged in lingering astonishment as she studied her reflection. It was her wedding day, and she still couldn’t believe that she was actually about to marry Bastien Zikos.
The whole of the previous week had been taken up with marriage-orientated activity. Accompanied by one of Bastien’s personal assistants, a fluent French-speaker, she had undergone an interview at the local mairie—the mayor’s office, where the ceremony would take place. A whole heap of personal documents had been certified and presented on her behalf to fulfil the legal requirements, and forty-eight hours later, following a meeting with a lawyer at the chateau to protect her interests, she had signed a pre-nuptial agreement. Bastien had made liberal provision for her in the event of a divorce, offering a far more generous settlement than she thought necessary.
‘Look on it as compensation,’ Bastien had advised her on the phone, when she had protested the size of that settlement. ‘You didn’t want to marry me, but you’re doing it.’
It wouldn’t be a real marriage, she told herself soothingly as she clasped the diamond pendant round her throat. And wasn’t that just as well? Bastien had been away for seven days and she had missed him almost from the moment of his departure. How was that possible? How could she miss the male she had believed she hated, who had persuaded her into a morally indefensible sexual relationship?
Lilah walked to the window and breathed in slow and deep, struggling to calm herself. She had not become attached to Bastien, and she had not fallen for him. She was just wildly attracted to him. She had also begun to understand him better as she’d come to appreciate his tough childhood and the experiences which had made him the hard, aggressive character that he was.
She wasn’t excusing anything he had done, was she? No—she remained fully aware of Bastien’s every flaw, and was therefore completely safe from getting attached to him, she assured herself soothingly.
A knock sounded on the bedroom door. It was time for her to leave. Manos smiled at her as she emerged from the room, rich fabric gliding in silken folds round her legs. Bastien had had a whole rack of designer wedding gowns sent to her and she had been taken aback, having assumed that they would be bypassing all such frills.