'Yes,' she said.
He let go of her with an impatient hiss. 'Go to bed, get some rest and stop wishing for miracles.'
With that he strode out of the room with his dark head held high and his wide shoulders straight, leaving Nell wilting wearily back onto the bed.
Less than ten minutes later, stripped to her underwear, she crawled between the cool Egyptian cotton sheets. Feeling utterly bulldozed, she simply closed her eyes and dropped into sleep.
Pregnant, was her last memorable thought. I really am pregnant...
Pregnant, Xander was thinking as he stood in the doorway, following the streaming cascade of Titian hair spread out on the pillow until his gaze settled on her pale, pinched, sleeping face. Was he pleased?
Hell, he didn't know. He wanted to be pleased. He wanted to shout it from the rooftops. But when he looked upon the face of this impossible woman, he had a sinking suspicion that the cost he was going to pay for the pleasure of impregnating her was going to be much too high.
Smothering a sigh, he eased himself away from the doorframe and stepped back into the sitting room, pulling the door quietly shut. Time to stop playing the lovelorn idiot, he told himself, and time to play the hard-hitting, go-getting business tycoon. A role he was much more familiar with. A role he wished he felt an ounce of enthusiasm for right now but he didn't, which did not go down with his proud Greek ego very well.
Greek tycoon slain by a Titian-haired witch, he mentally wrote his own tabloid headline. Grimaced then braced his shoulders and went into his office, firmly closing that door behind him too.
Nell came drifting awake to the sound of rattling crockery. It reminded her so much of Thea Sophia that she lay there in smiling contentment, imagining herself to be on the island until a lazy voice said, 'I hope that smile means you're dreaming about me.'
She opened her eyes to find Xander standing over her, looking lean and mean in his sharp business suit, and reality came crashing in. 'Oh,' she said. 'We're in London, aren't we?'
Yawned and stretched then looked back at him. 'What time is it?'
'Refreshment time,' he said lightly, turning away then turning back again with a tray in his hands.
Nell slithered up the pillows, dragged the sheet up to cover her breasts then yawned again, rubbed her eyes then swept her tumbled hair back from her face.
'Didn't know you did Room Service,' she quipped as a tray arrived across her lap.
'Anything for you, my love,' he responded in the same light vein as he sat down on the bed and removed the cover from a plate of fluffy scrambled eggs piled on a bed of hot toast.
Nell glanced at the half-light seeping through the drawn curtains. 'Is it morning already?' she asked in surprise.
Xander smiled. 'Not quite.' He handed her a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. 'You've been asleep for hours while I've been chairing the meeting from hell. If the world were flat I would be taking great pleasure in pushing one half of a room of ten off the end of it. Is that OK?' he added questioningly as she sipped at the juice.
Nell nodded. 'Lovely.'
He sent her another smile then forked up some scrambled egg. 'Here, try this and tell me what you think.'
'It's only scrambled eggs,' she derided as she took the forkful into her mouth.
'Yes, but very special scrambled eggs, since they were prepared by my own gifted hands.'
'You?' Nell almost choked. 'I didn't think you knew what an egg looked like in its shell.'
'Shame on you.' He forked up another heap. 'I am very self proficient when I have to be. Drink some more juice.'
Nell frowned. 'Why did you feel the need to be proficient at this particular moment?'
'Because I decided to leave the ten squabbling in my boardroom and came in here to see you. You were out for the count. I noticed that you must not have woken up to get yourself something to eat and, since you haven't had anything since you threw up on the motorway, I decided that it was time that you did. You can go back to sleep when you've eaten this.'
Another forkful was offered to her. Nell looked at his smooth, lean, totally implacable, super-relaxed face, said nothing and took the fork from him so that she could feed herself. For several minutes neither spoke while Nell ate and he seemed content to watch.
Then it came, the real reason he was sitting there looking at her like that. 'Nell-what I said about your father-'
'Is he still in Australia?'
'Yes,' he frowned. 'You knew he'd committed himself to overseeing the whole project,' he reminded her.
'Yes.' Her sigh was wistful and rather sad.
'I want you to know that I gave you the wrong impression about your father's involvement in our-'
'Oh, I don't think so,' she said as she laid down the fork. 'I think you made your point perfectly. You took me as assurance for your investment. We even have a contract that says so. You also saved me from a fate worse than death.'
A frown pulled his eyebrows together across the bridge of his nose. 'I'll rip the contract up if it will make you feel better.'
'It's so sweet of you to offer,' she mocked him. 'But the gesture would only have some weight behind it if you'd offered to do that before I got pregnant.'
'I did offer once before, if you recall.'
'On my birthday?' She looked up at him. 'Before my father had managed to scoop the Australian deal and put his business back on track? Bad timing, Xander,' she said. 'Not what you're renowned for. You could have been asking to renegotiate yourself right out of the whole deal for all I knew. Still know,' she added when he opened his mouth to deny it.
The fact that he was going to have to pull rabbits out of the proverbial hat to make her believe otherwise now held him silent while he took that on board.
Nell hunted around for something trite to say to fill in the gap. But what came out was miles away from trite. 'There,' she said. 'Plate cleaned. Baby adequately fed.'
'I did it for you, not the baby!' he snapped.
That she didn't believe him showed. He uttered a sigh, his indulgent manner disappearing without a trace. 'Does it actually matter what motivated me?' he posed curtly. 'Am I not allowed to be concerned for you both?' He glanced at his watch then and stood up to remove the tray. 'I have a meeting to return to. I'll see you later.'
With that punishing slice of ice, he left. Nell threw herself back against the pillows and wished she knew how she should feel about him, but she didn't. Everything she had come to love and trust about him over the last three weeks had been shattered by a day-long series of hard knocks.
The telephone call from Vanessa being the hardest knock. Restless now, she got up, feeling an instant chill on her skin because of the difference between a hot Greek summer and a cooler English one. Rubbing at her bare arms, she wandered around the bedroom, aimlessly picking things up, putting them down again, and would have gone and done the same in the sitting room but she couldn't be absolutely sure that someone might not come in from the office and catch her half-naked, and Xander seemed to have forgotten to have her suitcase brought up.
In the end she escaped to the bathroom and decided to indulge in a long, hot soak in the invitingly huge bath. A few carefully placed candles would have been nice to help her relax, but she had to make do with selecting a couple of soft down-lighters. She found no sign of any female soapy things hanging around, which mollified her restless mood somewhat.
So Xander didn't indulge his women here, she mused as she lay submerged in hot, steamy water liberally laced with Xander-scented bath oil. Maybe he did have a purple and red velvet-lined pad in Soho. With a mirrored bed and flying cupids embroidered on the velvet, she extended with a soft laugh.
'Cheered up at last?'
'Oh!' She flicked her eyes open to find him casually propping up the doorframe. Sheer surprise had her slithering into a sitting position, causing a minor tidal wave to slosh around the bath. 'You were quick,' she said disconcertedly.
'I didn't like the company,' he drawled, dark eyes glossed by silky eyelashes as he looked her over from loose topknot to water-slicked breasts being caressed by steam.
It was stupid to feel shy after spending three weeks mostly naked around him, but telling herself that did not stop the blush from mounting her skin. Nell tried to make it look casual when she drew her knees up and looped her arms around them. The action did not change that look she knew so well on his lean, dark face.
He'd lost his jacket and his tie, she noticed. His shirt collar was undone and the shirt cuffs too. And if ever a man knew how to lounge sexily in a doorway then Xander had the pose down to a finely tuned art. Long legs relaxed, hands loosely looped in his trouser pockets, silk dark hair finger-ruffled just enough to add that extra brooding appeal.
Her body responded, breasts growing heavy, nipples peaking where she crushed them against her thighs. Even her lips felt as if they were filling and pulsing.
'You forgot my suitcase.’ To Nell, it was an inspired stab at the prosaic.
It didn't alter his hungry look one iota. 'Stashed in the sitting room five minutes after we arrived,' he said. 'Didn't you bother to look?'
'No.' She added a grimace. 'Maybe you could get it for me?'
'Why?'
'So I can put something clean on?' she suggested ever so sarcastically to what she thought a stupid question to ask.
Xander clearly didn't. He straightened up and began approaching the bath. 'You can wear me instead,' he murmured huskily and began to undo the rest of the buttons on his shirt.
'Don't you dare try to get in here!' she cried, causing a floor sloshing wave as she shifted up the bath. ‘I’m still angry with you! I don't even like you any more! I will not be your sex slave just because you need-'