GREEK HUSBAND

Chapter 18

'Yes.' Bella almost shrugged because she knew words were cheap. Edward was saying the right things but only he and his conscience could know how reliable he would be in such trying circumstances as those of an unplanned pregnancy. After all, her own father had talked her mother out of the termination she had decided on when she had fallen pregnant as a student. Bella's father had promised her mother that he would marry her and help her raise their child and then he had run off with another woman and left Keira Donovan literally holding the baby. That had been in the days when being an unmarried mother had still been a real stigma and a source of family shame.

Edward settled a notepad and pen down on the table beside Bella. She printed her address and phone number and returned the pad to the table. As she did so, she yawned. 'I'm sorry, I'm very sleepy...'

'It's late...go to bed,' he murmured quietly.

Bella thought of the hassle of arriving back at the marina before dawn, finding her way back to the apartment block, and then sitting in Reception until Stuart took his leave. 'I'll stay...at least you have a bed.'

'A bed?' Edward queried, recognizing her exhaustion in her pale face and heavy eyes.

Bella climbed into the bed still clad in the robe.

'I wasn't going to touch you again,' Edward remarked drily.

'Obviously, I've offended your ego and I'm sorry,' Bella mumbled.

As she closed her eyes Edward peeled off his own clothing, although he retained his boxers, and slid into the other side of the bed, dousing the lights. 'What did you mean about having a bed?'

'Our apartment is only one bedroom and my cousin met a man the first day,' she whispered. 'I've been sitting up in Reception most nights so that she can be with him—'

'That's outrageous!' Edward cut in.

'No, it's not. Jenna's family paid for her to go on holiday with her best friend.' Briefly, she explained. 'Now that she's met Stuart, I'm surplus to requirements.'

'Surely her parents would be furious if they knew how she was treating you?'

'What Jenna wants, Jenna gets,' Bella muttered drowsily, her voice trailing down in volume. 'It's always been that way. She's the daughter, the little princess...I'm the niece they took in out of the kindness of their heart.'

'But to make such distinctions between two children in the same family!' Edward began angrily until it dawned on him that Bella had fallen asleep.

A moment later, the echo of his own words still ringing in his ears, he realized that there were remarkable similarities between Bella's situation with her cousin and his own non-relationship with the half-brother he hated. Yes, in his home too, the same distinction had been made in favor of the legitimate firstborn son, Edward. For the first time, Edward was recognizing an angle that he had never even considered before: Bastien's side of the story. Was it really so surprising that Bastien had always seemed to seethe with resentment as a child and had matured into a fiercely competitive and aggressive male? He was sobered by the unfamiliar thoughts afflicting him, and it was a long time before Edward fell asleep.

'NO, PLEASE DON'T tell me it's been great!' Bella urged Edward with a rueful laugh as, ever gracious, he saw her into the speedboat that would whisk her back to the real world, rather than the fantasy in which she had ordered her own personal perfect breakfast directly from Edward's personal chef.

'Why not?' Edward demanded, strangely unsettled by her apparent good humor at leaving him.

'Because you know it's been a disaster for you from start to finish but you're too polite to say it. I was absolutely not what you expected,' Bella pointed out bluntly, taking a seat in the launch.

Edward rarely put out of countenance, felt heat sear his cheekbones, and thought that she really was extraordinarily unusual for herself, when she said exactly what she thought and felt without chagrin, revealing not an iota of the vanity he had believed that every woman possessed. 'I will be in touch—'