The Greek Billionaire's Secret Baby (Contemporary Romance) by Michele Dunaway Page A

consulting her as to her food preferences, had dinner ordered.
    Lauren suddenly felt awkward. How long had it been since she’d had dinner with Alex? The last time had been the night she’d conceived. Wine had flowed and he’d fed grapes into her mouth one by one until the two of them had succumbed to their rising passion. Hours later they’d eaten the gourmet dinner cold for having it reheated or having new food sent up would have delayed their subsequent return to bed. Had she even slept that night?
    Alex peered over at her. “Is everything okay? You look hot.”
    Pregnant women always felt hot because of the extra weight they carried, but that wasn’t the reason for her flushed face and the simmering heat traveling through her. She turned her back on Alex and grabbed her purse.
    “I have your money. Let me get it. Clarice charged everything. And you need to let me know when the bills come in. I have some money from my IBF separation agreement and can reimburse you.”
    Alex’s face clouded. He set the brandy on a nearby sideboard. “You do not owe me a thing.”
    Lauren shook her head. Here in the air-conditioned suite, the strands freely escaped her bun and fell into her face. “Perhaps not in your mind, but in my mind I do. I will not be beholden to your money.”
    “You are going to be my wife.”
    “In name only,” Lauren replied, the bitter irony panging her heart.
    Alex’s poker facade had returned. “You would have married Christopher.”
    Pain stabbed Lauren. Would she have married Christopher? Given both of their mutual circumstances, they’d discussed it once after she’d arrived in Central Mexico .
    For Lauren, marriage to Christopher would have protected her child. For Christopher, marriage to Lauren would have provided the façade he needed to continue his relationship with underclass ethnic people his family strongly disapproved of. Both had pushed the matter of marriage off for another day, a day that had never arrived.
    “It doesn’t matter now.” The words burst savagely from Alex’s mouth. He reached for the snifter and took a deep swallow. When he spoke his voice was measured, controlled. “Christopher is dead. We have to think of the future, the baby’s future and ours. I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you that a judge friend of mine has agreed to marry us this Friday afternoon in his office.”
    Her knees wobbled and she went to sit on the sofa. “So soon?”
    “I see no reason to delay the inevitable.” His laugh sounded hollow. “Who knows? Perhaps as the years go by, we will find ourselves actually liking our fate.”
    “I doubt it,” Lauren replied.
    He shrugged as if he’d rolled her barb off his back. “Once you would have died not to be with me, kouklamou . Once I was your entire world, something you could not bear to be without.”
    “That world was a lie.”
    Alex’s eyes hardened to black coal. “Don’t talk to me about lies. You return to me, live in my house for five days and on the sixth, run from my bed to my brother’s? I found you there, Lauren! All those precious declarations of love? All your promises and endearments that you swore to me? Lies, Lauren. Savage lies to play me like a fool, to take my heart and dangle it over a precipice for all to see.” 
    His words stung worse than a physical slap. She and Christopher had no chemistry; they were friends.
    Unsettled, Lauren launched the first defensive attack that entered her struggling mind. “You don’t know what love is, Alex Pappas!”
    He fingered the empty brandy glass. “If what you did to me is love, then no, I don’t have any idea what that particular four letter word means. But obviously my brother fit your trite definition. You ran to him fast enough, leaving here and following him to Central Mexico .”
    She had. When Christopher had called the IBF, he’d wrangled her a spot with him. She’d only meant to escape temporarily, but then she’d discovered she was pregnant.