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  ‘Better?’ he murmured into her ear. ‘Perhaps we should go upstairs, lie down on the bed. Altogether more satisfactory for what I have in mind, now that I have been browbeaten into marrying you, you beautiful witch.’

  ‘Okay, but first there’s something else I have to tell you.’ She sat up and looked him straight in the eye. What she saw was a tiny, black-eyed infant with a mop of curly dark hair and a gummy smile. ‘If we get married, it might be an idea for it to be sooner rather than later.’

  Comprehension took a matter of seconds. She could see it dawning in his eyes and then he grinned with radiant, unchecked joy. ‘You are pregnant?’

  ‘I did the test this morning. I…it happened the first time we made love, when we didn’t use any protection. If you don’t want to marry me now that you know, then I’ll understand. It’s a big responsibility and it’s just been dropped on your lap like a bombshell.’

  ‘Not want to marry you?’ He placed his hand on her stomach, still flat and toned. ‘There is no way I would not marry you, and the fact that you are pregnant with my child, our child, is the icing on the cake.’ He stroked her stomach in slow circles and Laura’s breathing quickened, a little fact that did not escape his notice.

  ‘Perhaps we should go upstairs,’ she murmured, catching the satisfied expression on his face and blushing.

  ‘Oh, yes? And what did you have in mind when we get there?’

  ‘You know exactly what I have in mind!’ She led him up the stairs, holding his hand, and only paused to look at him when they were on the threshold of the bedroom. ‘I shall lose my figure,’ she warned him and he nodded.

  ‘So perhaps I ought to explore you thoroughly now, mmm? Before our baby starts pushing out your stomach and making those breasts of yours heavy and big with milk? I find the thought of you pregnant very erotic, as a matter of fact…’

  And he then proceeded to show her how erotic he found her. But nothing could be as erotic as the thought that at long last the dream of happiness had become reality and that from here onwards their steps forward would be taken together…for ever.

  EPILOGUE

  ‘GABRIEL, darling…’ It was three-seventeen in the morning. Laura could glimpse the illuminated hands of the clock on the table next to her beloved husband, whose naked body was warm next to hers. She brushed her lips against his cheek and then grimaced as another contraction hardened her stomach.

  Nearly two weeks overdue and a girl, Gabriel was forever telling her with a grin, because only a female would keep everyone waiting for as long as she had done.

  ‘Gabriel, don’t panic, but…’

  It must have been the word panic that did it because his eyes flicked open and the first words he uttered were a heartfelt, ‘Dios!’

  ‘I’m only just beginning,’ Laura said soothingly, gritting her teeth together as another contraction ripped through her, and watching with amusement as Gabriel leapt out of the bed and began flinging on his clothes, only switching the light on as an afterthought.

  ‘Laura, my sweetest, God, you are in pain.’

  ‘It happens around this time of the pregnancy.’ She began edging herself off the bed and he raced to her side, half tripping over his trousers, which were not fully on.

  ‘You’re wincing. You’re trying to be brave but you’re wincing. I am not blind! I can see!’

  ‘Calm down.’

  ‘How can I calm down? Your bag. I’ll get your bag. Where is your bag? Of course I know where your bag is! Stay calm, Laura, don’t panic!’

  He had solicitously helped her pack her bag over a month ago, insisting on adding so many unlisted items to the contents that in the end she had warned him that he might have to buy a trunk to hold it all.

  ‘I’m not…’

  ‘And do not get dressed!’ he ordered from their en suite dressing room, from which he was fetching the bag as well as jumpers and coats for them both. ‘I will help you!’

  ‘I think I can manage.’ Sometimes she wondered why she bothered to say certain things when she could always so accurately predict his responses. As she expected, he completed the job of getting her nightdress off, his voice laced with frantic panic as he demanded to know whether she was up to changing or whether they should just fling a coat over her and hurry to the hospital. Maybe, he fulminated, they should take the helicopter.

  ‘I don’t think the hospital has anywhere for helicopters to land,’ Laura said lovingly.

  ‘I’ll carry you to the car.’

  ‘I can walk, you idiot. Just support me a little.’

  Seven months of wedded bliss and she was still awe-struck at the love that could so easily have eluded her, a love that seemed to grow with each passing minute. Their wedding had been simple and attended only by his closest family members and their mutual friends and she had enjoyed every second of it, basking in his tenderness and adoration, which he made no attempt to hide.

  She could sense his frustration as he navigated the dark lanes, and finally the wider, better-lit roads, that he couldn’t take the pain away from her. By the time they reached the hospital, he was far more jittery than she was and she had to murmur softly that there was no need to worry, that everything was perfectly straightforward and, really, the staff there knew how to deal with women in labour.

  ‘How can you be so calm?’ he accused, seething with annoyance at the seemingly languid manner in which they were checked in whilst he tapped his foot and glowered.

  ‘One of us has to be.’

  ‘I am calm.’

  ‘Oh, yes, as calm as someone on the verge of a nervous breakdown.’ Their eyes met and Gabriel felt his heart swell with love, then finally things started happening. They were shown to the labour ward and after a brief examination, from which he was excluded by some very decisive drawing of curtains around the bed, the next few hours raced by with the terrifying speed of a runaway train.

  And there was nothing he could do! Only be with the woman he loved, hold her hand, mop her brow and try to remember all those pearls of wisdom he had read in the various pregnancy books he had devoured, much to his wife’s amusement, and most of which he had now comprehensively forgotten.

  ‘She’s doing fine, Mr Greppi,’ one of the two midwives told him at some point in the proceedings, ‘but you look as though you could use a cup of tea. She’ll be here for at least another couple of hours. Why don’t you go down to the canteen and have something hot to drink?’

  ‘I’m here for the duration.’

  ‘Well, just don’t go fainting on me.’

  ‘I never faint. Shouldn’t there be a consultant in here?’

  ‘I’ve delivered more babies than you’ve had hot dinners, young man.’ But the middle-aged woman grinned and winked at him. ‘She’ll be fine.’

  Never in his life had Gabriel felt more racked with nerves and never in his life had he ever been so reduced to speechless awe than when, an hour and a half later, he glimpsed his baby as one final push expelled his son. Eight pounds, eleven ounces and groggily unaware of his surroundings until he drew in his breath and released an outraged shriek.

  ‘It’s a baby boy,’ the midwife said, bustling with him and then handing him wrapped in a blanket to Laura. ‘What a lot of hair.’

  Laura looked down at the small bundle lying against her, fists closed and eyelids fluttering, and smiled.

  ‘We have a son.’ Pride and joy threatened to make his eyes water. ‘Didn’t I tell you that it would be a boy?’ He stroked Laura’s blonde hair away from her face, which was still glistening with perspiration, and she glanced up at him with a tender smile.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Of course I did,’ Gabriel said gruffly. ‘And look at that mop of black hair. He looks just like his father.’ He bent to kiss his wife and then the small, warm cheek of his baby and watched in fascination as the little bundle wriggled and stretched and then settled back into position.

  ‘My family,’ he said with a lump in his throat. ‘My perfect fami
ly.’

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-8327-9

  THE MILLIONAIRE’S REVENGE

  First North American Publication 2003.

  Copyright © 2002 by Cathy Williams.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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