MADDIE winced at that direct hit. ‘Yes, but—’
Giannis focused on her with a fierce intensity that made her feel horribly like a condemned prisoner in the dock. ‘Is this the lie you mentioned?’
Maddie nodded reluctant confirmation.
Giannis lifted a strong hand and brought it down again in a compelling motion. A warning flare of gold was glimmering in his gaze. ‘You are not forgiven.’
‘I realise that this is a shock for you…’
Outrage was roaring through Giannis, who prided himself on his control of his temper. It was bad enough that she had disappeared, but that she should have done so when she carried his child incensed him. All those wasted months when they might have been together. ‘It is a great deal more than a shock—’
Coppery red curls streamed back from her oval face as her chin came up. ‘A disaster? That is how you labelled the possibility of me conceiving.’
‘That is unjust. You’re rewinding right back to the first day we met to quote a casual comment?’ Giannis shot back at her, fast as the speed of light.
‘What was casual about it? It wasn’t casual for me,’ Maddie protested painfully. ‘I may not have known it that day, but you were engaged. Yes, I accept that it was casual for you, and of course you didn’t want me to have your child. Why can’t you just admit that me falling pregnant is the worst situation you can imagine?’
His lean, darkly handsome face hardened. ‘Do not tell me how I think or how I feel,’ he intoned in sizzling disdain. ‘Don’t make excuses for yourself either!’
Maddie dealt him a defensive glance. ‘I’m not—’
‘You are—and it makes what you have done even more unacceptable. So I didn’t think you would conceive?’ Giannis flung up his hands and contrived to shrug his indifference to that angle of argument. His Greek heritage had never been more apparent to her. ‘But you did conceive and the instant that occurred everything changed for both of us.’
‘How?’ Maddie realised that she had very much underestimated the depth of his anger.
Stunning eyes fiercely intent, Giannis studied her. He moved away a little to get a better view. The lush mound of her once flat stomach was fast becoming a source of fascination to him. He could not recall ever looking at a pregnant woman before. He had not had the slightest interest. But this was different—she was different in that starring role. Somewhere deep within his male psyche a primitive glow of satisfaction burned with his every fresh appraisal of her altered figure. He was fertile. She was carrying his seed in her belly.
‘The child is mine,’ he pointed out. ‘From the first moment I had a right to be involved in every decision you made.’
Maddie was squirming, wishing he would stop glancing at her tummy as if he expected her to expand in girth before his very eyes, like Jack’s beanstalk. ‘That’s not how I see it.’
‘Then you had better learn to see it my way. Look at what a hash you have already made of things!’ Giannis launched in sudden fierce accusation. ‘How dare you go away without telling me you were expecting my child? What am I? Such a tyrant that you exclude me from what I should have known from the outset?’
‘I have not made a hash of things!’ Green eyes bright emerald with defiance, Maddie screwed her hands into fists. ‘I thought I was doing you and your fiancée a favour.’
‘Nonsense!’ Giannis raked back at her with lethal derision. ‘You took off without telling me because I was engaged. That was my punishment and your revenge—’
‘That’s an awful thing to accuse me of…As if I’d be so petty and selfish and downright spiteful!’
‘The first thing you can do is tell me where you have been all these weeks,’ Giannis informed her grimly.
Her brow was tight with tension and she rubbed it with her fingers. ‘I moved to Southend, but I had trouble with the landlord so I had to move on again—’
‘What sort of trouble?’
Her soft mouth compressed. ‘He kept on calling in to see me and it gave me the creeps.’
‘I would soon have dealt with him,’ Giannis growled, inflamed by that admission. ‘Why did you not phone me then?’
‘It wasn’t any big deal. But…’ Maddie worried at her lower lip and sighed unhappily, feeling ashamed that she had not managed the business of surviving more efficiently. ‘That second move left me broke, and it was hard to get work. With me in this condition, not every job was suitable either.’
Dragging his smouldering gaze from her, Giannis stood by the window, his tall well-built frame rigid, his broad shoulders straight as an axe handle. He was deeply aggrieved by her failure to approach him for support. Every word she spoke increased his displeasure. No woman had ever denied him his proper place in her life. No woman had ever behaved as though he could not be trusted.
‘Where are we?’
‘A private clinic. I want you checked out.’
‘But I saw a doctor this morning,’ Maddie argued.
‘He didn’t do you much good,’ Giannis told her forcefully.
‘I haven’t eaten since breakfast, which was stupid of me,’ she groaned. ‘Put me down, for goodness’ sake. I can walk perfectly well!’