GREEK HUSBAND

Chapter 34

'I only want you to think about what you're doing. If you have that baby...' Marina breathed with unmistakable bitterness, her well-mannered mask slipping without warning '...you're wrecking all our lives!'

'But that's my decision to make,' Bella pointed out with wooden precision as she battled her churning inner turmoil to walk back to the door Marina had closed. She opened the door again in unapologetic invitation. 'If you're finished, I don't think we have anything else to say to each other right now.'

* * *

Across the city, Edward said a very bad word under his breath when he read the warning text from Marina. For the first time ever he was really furious with his ex, his quick and clever brain instantly envisaging the potential fallout from what Bella had just discovered about him. Bella already had quite enough on her plate without that and Marina had absolutely no right to interfere. Had Marina hit out at Bella in revenge? Having always trusted his oldest and most loyal friend, Edward was taken aback by the suspicion, but the timing of Marina's visit spoke for itself and could hardly be deemed an accident. His handsome mouth twisted and he stood up at the board table to excuse himself from the meeting; he had to see Bella before she did something stupid.

That was the most surprising thing about Bella, which he had quickly registered. She might have a very clever brain and a steel backbone of independence but both were combined with an alarming tendency to make very sudden decisions and execute moves that were not always wise. It was that deeply buried vein of spontaneous passion and adventure in Bella that worried Edward the most. How else did he explain that night on his yacht? After almost twenty-five years of being a***, she had just picked him like a rabbit out of a hat. A man about whom she knew nothing? Edward was still appalled by the risk she had taken on him that night until it occurred to him that he had never expended a similar amount of anxiety on any other casual partner. Only then did he crack down hard on his undesirable feelings of concern and the vague suspicion that Bella was much more fragile and vulnerable than she liked to pretend.

Well, once they were married, he wouldn't need to worry about her any longer. He would know where she was, and what she was doing...in short, once he had control of Bella, full control, the horrible sense of apprehension that had gripped him since he first learned of her pregnancy would die a natural death. His anxiety was undoubtedly focused on the baby, he told himself consolingly. The baby was only a speck barely visible to the eye at this stage of his or her development—Edward had looked it up on the Internet—but it was his future son or daughter and he knew that baby was virtually defenseless and utterly dependent on the health and well-being of its mother's body for survival. What the hell had Marina been thinking of when she had deliberately approached a woman in Bella's condition to break such bad news? Hadn't she appreciated how dangerous that could be?

* * *

Bella was stacking her luggage in the hall when the front door opened again. She had been frantically struggling to get herself out of the apartment as fast as possible while accepting the demeaning truth that she could not afford to call a taxi to ferry her and her possessions away in one go. No, she would have to leave stuff to be collected at a later date. But most threatening of all was the awareness that she had absolutely no place else to go because a return to Matt's flat, Matt, who had been constantly texting her with revealing urgency since her departure, was definitely not an option.

As Bella straightened Edward stepped through the door and snapped it shut behind him without removing his glittering dark eyes from her once. 'Going somewhere?' he asked shortly.

Bella hadn't seen Edward leave earlier. In a navy pinstripe suit that screamed designer elegance and a plain white shirt teamed with a jazzy red tie, Edward looked absolutely stunning. Her heartbeat quickened as she remembered running her fingers through his black hair the night before and the unforgettable taste of his mouth. The heat was beginning to stir when she shut down hard on that response, fighting that potent physical pull with all her might, reminding herself of what he was and denying it until she was back in control again.