Yearning filled her. Oh, to have Xandros’s baby! To know that she could stay with him for ever! Make a family with him!
Longing possessed her, fierce and urgent—urging.
You could do it—it would be easy...so easy...
And totally unforgivable.
* * *
Xandros grinned at the antics of Panos and Maria’s young grandchildren, who were visiting with their mother. It had been an impulsive notion for him and Rosalie to head to Kallistris this morning, after last night’s dinner-dance, but well worth it—as it always was.
His eyes went to her now, warming as they did so. She, like him, was smiling at the two toddlers, the older one petting Panos’s dogs, the younger stalking a chicken. Xandros made an admiring comment to the doting grandparents, and offered his congratulations on being informed that their daughter was expecting once again.
His glance went to the children’s mother, now rescuing the chicken from her daughter’s attentions. Her pregnancy didn’t show yet, but then Maria’s daughter had inherited her mother’s fuller figure. His glance travelled on to Rosalie. She was so slender that pregnancy would show immediately...
He caught his thoughts. The very idea of Rosalie pregnant—
‘Shall we head down to the beach for a swim?’ he asked her, to push away a thought that had no business being there.
They took their leave and padded down the trackway to the villa companionably, hand in hand. He’d half expected Rosalie to make some comment about the cuteness of Maria and Panos’s grandchildren, but she was silent. He glanced at her sideways. Her face was slightly drawn...as if she were lost in thought. Perhaps she wasn’t making any remark about the toddlers for the same reason as he. Because pregnancy, babies, children were absolutely nothing to do with themselves...
He felt the thought move in his head, found himself squeezing her hand more tightly, as if not to let her go
.
But I’m going to have to let her go sometime, aren’t I? Once the merger is done.
A frown formed on his brow and his glance went to her again. From Panos and Maria’s smallholding he could still hear the gleeful laughter of the toddlers. The sound tugged at him. Thoughts came unbidden...
What if they were ours? Mine and Rosalie’s? What if we were making our lives together, making a family together for ever?
The questions hung in his head. Motionless. Unanswerable.
His gaze slipped across to the blue horizon over the sea. Gulls were swooping and hovering, borne aloft on the air currents. Suddenly, one folded its wings and dived, plunging down into the water as if it had seen something it wanted. Something invisible to Xandros but there beneath the surface.
All he had to do was do as the gull had done and find what he was seeking. The answer to his wondering question...
* * *
Rosalie was staring into thin air, her hands clenched in her lap. Tonight—she must tell Xandros what her father had said tonight! She must. Before the unforgivable temptation that had swept over her as she’d danced in his arms and that had kept on coming back over and over again all through the weekend became too overwhelming to resist. A temptation made even more powerful by seeing Maria and Panos’s grandchildren...so adorable, so enviable!
He has to know! He has to!
But, oh, she did not want to tell him! She wanted to go on as they were for just a little longer...a little longer...
One more weekend on Kallistris...and another...and another...
How can I bear to ruin what we have? To end it so much sooner than it has to end by telling him how impossible it is to complete the merger he’s set his heart on? The merger we married to achieve. The sole purpose of our marriage...
Unless...
The word hung in her head again, testing her to the utmost—tempting her to the utmost. She felt anguish fill her, her hands clenching again in her lap.
A sudden sound distracted her hopeless thoughts. The phone was ringing. The apartment’s landline, not her mobile.
She frowned. If it was Xandros, he’d use her mobile number. He’d flown up to Thessaloniki for the day, to meet with some of her father’s senior managers based there to discuss the staffing implications of the merger when it happened.
But it can’t happen, can it? Not now.