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CHAPTER ONE

WHEN THE SEVENTH TEST came back positive, Emily kneas tinancy tests until there wasn’t a pharmacy she could walk into in the whole of London without blushing with an ‘it’sa junancy tests orse There was no avoiding it Those little blue lines weren’t lying even if she wished they were

She Was Pregnant

Not that she didn’t want to have a baby Souy as , white wedding first

Her first ever one-night stand and look what had happened How could she be so fertile? How could condoms be so unreliable? How could she have slept with a h in life, but a Greek billionaire? And not one of those short, fat, balding ed ones, like those in her local deli, but a six-foot-four heart-stoppingly gorgeous man who had eyes so brown you could lose yourself in them

Which she had pro sexual encounter unlike anything she’d experienced before Which, truth be told, was not saying much, because her experience could hardly be described as extensive given she’d wasted seven years with her ex-partner Daniel Seven years Argh! Why couldn’t the nu years she’d waited for a proposal It had got so bad that every ti up off the floor she would get all excited thinking this was it—thefor

It had never happened

What had happened instead was she’d got cheated on The ignoh, but to be left for a male lover was a whole new level of humiliation How could she have been the last to know Daniel was gay?

But it wasn’t the betrayal that hurt her thea part of a couple; the shock of being single for the first ti out at night without a partner by her side felt weird, like going out with only one shoe on Or eating in a restaurant on her oorking her way through aif she’d been stood up or

so

She used to love going out to dinner with Daniel, as a bit of a food and wine connoisseur They would try different restaurants and cuisines and sit for hours over athe food, the presentation, the wine and even the other diners She used to love co she had souess what happened toboard, her back-up, her anchor The person who’d provided the stability she’d craved since she was a child

She hadn’t had e relationship-therapisther male relationships because of her father issues Father issues And whose fault was it she didn’t have a father? Her et his name and number when she’d had sex with him under a rain-soaked tarpaulin at a music festival

E a nightht up to co to be a father

Oh, joy

Such a task would be a whole lot easier if he had called her in thesex Or sent a text eon, even Given her soain

Although, come to think of it, she hadn’t exactly done herself any favours in that departuy to lose interest in one date When she was nervous she talked too ushed like that, she didn’t just wear her heart on her sleeve but on every visible part of her body A couple of drinks down and she’d —an Irish Retriever, no less To a o playboy

What rong with her?

Emily walked out of the bathrooesapart from four from her a practices It was easier to let her ue why she didn’t She had learned a long tiy draining exercise

Emily didn’t have Loukas’s nue to call it She could get it frora, as married to Loukas’s best friend, Draco Papandreou, but so Loukas over the phone didn’t seeuess what? We ambit

No This called for a face-to-face conversation She needed to gauge his reaction Not that he was an easy person to read He had one of those faces that gave little away in ter or so to see as behind a curtained stage But he had an aura of quiet authority she’d found overwhelued her at the wedding He didn’t seem to need people the way she did She was like a too-friendly puppy at a garden party,to win approval

He, on the other hand, was like a statue