LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER FIVE

      ANDREAS saw the artistic photo of the three handbags first. The shot was part of a feature in a Sunday magazine devoted to Vanessa Fitzsimmons’s deeply trendy photographic exhibition. There was a miniature silver-on-black Hope label in the seam of the tiny lime-green bag and it was a dead giveaway to Andreas. Courtesy of Vanessa, the handbags had been arranged against a rough stone wall as though they were works of art. His handsome mouth curled. He wondered why he was even looking at such superficial rubbish.

      Flipping the page, however, Andreas was wholly entrapped by a shot of Hope sitting on a rock by a river. Several other faces that were far more well known on the social scene featured in the same study, which was called simply ‘My friends’ but Andreas initially saw only Hope. A multicoloured gypsy-style top open at her creamy throat, her face bathed in golden sunlight and her turquoise eyes luminous, she looked knock-down stunning. A tiny muscle jumped at the corner of his clenched jaw line. His brilliant dark gaze slashed from Hope to the male standing to one side of her: that smug-looking bastard, Campbell, who had a proprietary hand resting on her shoulder.

      A boiling tide of rage filled Andreas. He wanted to smash something. Instead he poured himself a drink. It was only ten in the morning. Self-evidently, he was on edge because he had been working too hard for too long, he reasoned grimly. Rage had no place in his disciplined world. All emotion, irrational and otherwise could be controlled, suppressed and ultimately nullified by intelligence. He drained the glass and smashed the crystal tumbler in the Georgian fireplace. The deed was done before he was even aware of his intention.

      Hope emerged from the doctor’s surgery on rather wobbly legs.

      Vanessa leapt up and groaned. ‘You are, aren’t you? I can tell by your face!’

      Hope nodded and did not speak until they reached the street. She had been told that she was more than five months pregnant and she was in complete shock. ‘The oddest thing is,’ she mused helplessly in the fresh air, ‘I’m a healthy weight for a pregnant woman. I’m not too heavy. Can you believe that?’

      ‘Andreas Nicolaidis has ruined your life,’ her friend lamented in a tone of unconcealed resentment. ‘You’ve just started seeing Ben, you’re just about to look for business premises and then it all goes pear-shaped on you. How could you be so careless?’

      Hope went pink and cast down her eyes. She had not been careless; Andreas had been, though. Several different types of contraceptive pill had failed to agree with her and Andreas had been concerned that she would be damaging her health if she persisted. For that reason, about nine months earlier, he had said that he would take full responsibility in that field. Unfortunately he had been rather forgetful on at least a couple of occasions that came to mind. Certain methods of birth control could put a breaker on spontaneity and Andreas was a very spontaneous guy, she reflected with a pained stab of recollection.

      ‘So how far along are you?’ Vanessa enquired gloomily.

      Hope sucked in her tummy guiltily, for she could see that the sight of her changing shape depressed her friend. ‘I’ll be a mother in just over three months.’

      Vanessa stopped dead in the middle of the street and surveyed her in wonderment. ‘But you can’t be that pregnant!’

      ‘I am…’

      ‘But how could you not have noticed?’ The redhead gasped, standing back to subject Hope’s stomach to a distinctly embarrassing appraisal. ‘I mean, give your brother a medal. You do look pregnant and yet none of us noticed!’

      ‘I’ve been wearing loose clothing,’ Hope pointed out. ‘And people only see what they expect to see.’

      When she had first fallen pregnant, her life had been incredibly busy and she had been so wrapped up in Andreas that she had failed to notice that her menstrual cycle had come to a mysterious halt. The other signs of pregnancy had also passed her by. Her health had never given her cause for concern and she had shrugged off the slight nausea and the dizziness she had experienced, believing neither symptom worthy of a visit to the doctor. In more recent months her personal woes had acted like a cocoon that had blinded her to everything outside her own thoughts and feelings, she acknowledged ruefully.

      ‘What are your plans?’

      ‘I have to tell Andreas.’

      Vanessa pulled a sour face. ‘Let Ben know first.’

      But Hope did not fall for that suggestion. For the first time in two and a half months, she rang Andreas on his mobile phone and left a message on his voicemail asking if she could see him to discuss something important.

      It was three hours before he returned her call. ‘What is it?’ he breathed coldly without any preliminary greeting.

      ‘I need to see you and I can’t talk about it on the phone. Where are you?’

      Somewhere close by, a woman giggled and muttered something in a low, intimate voice. ‘In the UK and busy,’ Andreas said dryly.

      She squeezed her aching eyes tight shut. She did not want to speak to Andreas and hear his dark, deep drawl and she especially did not want to listen to another woman speaking to him in the teasing tone of a lover. In fact she really could not bear that torment at all.

      ‘I’m also leaving for Athens tomorrow morning,’ Andreas informed her coolly. ‘This is your one chance to speak to me. Use it or lose it.’

      ‘No, I have to see you in person and in private,’ Hope countered tautly. ‘I don’t think that’s such a huge thing to ask.’

      ‘Perhaps not but the prospect is not entertaining,’ Andreas fielded, smooth and sharp as a shard of glass cutting into tender skin. ‘In short, I don’t want to see you.’

      ‘Do you expect me to beg you for five minutes of your time?’ Hope demanded painfully, angry, humiliated tears clogging

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