She’ll be devastated...
The words were in his head and he could not stop them. Nor could he stop himself suddenly pushing back his chair and getting to his feet. He flicked the intercom and told his secretary he was heading out for a while, that she should cancel his scheduled meeting with his finance director.
Reluctance warred with his conscience. No, he did not want to have anything more to do with that toxic set-up, and, no, Stavros Coustakis’s English daughter was not his concern, let alone his responsibility, but for all that...
I can’t just abandon her like that.
That was the brute truth of it. Like it or not, he should have given her some warning of what to expect, and not let her indulge herself in illusions of some kind of heavenly reunion. He should at least check that she was...well, coping with the situation.
Ten minutes later he was in his car and heading out of central Athens. His plan was vague, but it focussed on calling at the Coustakis mansion...enquiring after the girl. Just checking that she was okay...salving his conscience.
And most definitely he would not let his eyes rest once more on the astonishingly revealed beauty that had so unexpectedly emerged from behind that wretched bucket and mop image of his first sight of her. He crushed the thought instantly, before it could take any shape at all.
No, that was not the reason he was checking up on Rosalie Jones. Not at all...
Rosalie was walking. Rapidly, blindly and with one purpose only: to find some kind of public transport—a bus, a tram, a train...she didn’t care what—to get her to the airport. Where she would raid her meagre savings to buy the cheapest possible ticket back to the UK.
Because anything else was impossible. Just impossible!
Emotions knifed in her, anger and misery, both of them stabbing and slicing away at her. Hot tears stung her eyes as she hurried, head down, clutching the handbag that held her precious passport and wallet. She was oblivious to everything except her need to reach the main road. Oblivious to the low, lean car suddenly pulling up beside her at the kerb.
She saw it only when a figure suddenly vaulted in front of her, tall and blocking out the morning sunshine. She stopped dead, her head jerking up.
Alexandros Lakaris was striding towards her, catching her arm.
‘What’s happened?’
His voice was sharp and she stared blindly at him, the hot, stinging tears in her eyes making him misty. She saw him frown, heard him say something in Greek just as sharp.
‘I’m going back to England!’ she bit out. ‘I need to get to the airport! There has to be a bus, or a tram, or—’
He cut across her. His expression was grim. ‘We need to talk,’ he said.
Violently she yanked her arm free. ‘No, we do not need to talk! I’ve had my talk! And my father—’ she said the word with a twist in her voice that was like swallowing acid ‘—has explained everything to me! So, Mr Alexandros Lakaris, we do not need to talk! I am having nothing to do with my father’s total insanity! And nothing to do with him!’
She heard Alexandros Lakaris take a harshly incised breath. Alexandros Lakaris—the man who, so her monstrous father had just informed her, had brought her to Athens solely and specifically for the purpose of marrying her, so he could do some kind of lucrative business deal with the foul, despicable man who had said such cruel things about her poor mother, who had treated her so callously—the vile pig of a man who she was now ashamed to call her father.
‘Just what has he said to you?’ Alexandros Lakaris bit out, his face dark, his eyes darker. He took another heavy breath, his mouth tightening, shaking his head. ‘I should have warned you—prepared you—’
Words burst from Rosalie, exploding from her. ‘He said he’s always known about me! He’s known about me from the very start! He’s known about me and he has done nothing! Nothing at all! He left my poor, poor mother to cope all on her own! He didn’t lift a finger! Just left us to rot!’
Her voice was broken, choking on what she was saying, facing up to. It was as if she couldn’t stop the words pouring from her—couldn’t stop the hot, stinging tears streaming down her face.
‘He let her live on child benefit, grateful for a council flat! He let her and he didn’t care! Not even when he got rich! He could have sent money, made some maintenance payments for me—he could have helped her!’ The sobs were tearing from her now, and her voice was choking and broken. ‘He has so much and we had nothing! But he didn’t care—he just didn’t care!’
She couldn’t say any more. Her face was convulsing, her shoulders shaking with emotion. All those years of struggling and making do, of her poor, sick mother coughing up her lungs in their damp flat, eking out every last penny, dreading every bill that arrived until finally the end had come and she had died in poverty and bleakness. And she herself, homeless after the flat had been repossessed by the council, reduced to living in that stinking dive of a bedsit, working every hour of the day cleaning up other people’s filth, studying into the small hours of the night to get the qualifications she’d need to lift herself out of the grinding poverty she’d lived in all her life.
And her father had known and done nothing—nothing—to lift a finger to help either of them!
It burned in her like acid and she could not bear it—she just could not bear it.
She was shaking like a leaf, choking and trembling, sobbing out hot tears...
CHAPTER FIVE
AND THEN ARMS were coming around her. Arms that were holding her, cradling her, letting her sob and sob for all the sadness and bleakness of her mother’s life, of her own...sob for the cruelty and callousness of the man she had to call her father when she would have torn every shred of his DNA from her body if she could.
She sobbed until there were no more tears in her, barely conscious of the hard chest she was collapsed against, of the strong arms around her, holding her. The same hands that were now carefully, slowly, setting her back on her feet as her anguished sobs died finally away. A handkerchief was being handed to her, fine cotton and huge, and she took it, blowing her nose and wiping away the remnants of her tears, blinking to clear her blurred vision.
Alexandros Lakaris was speaking, and his voice held something she’d never heard in it before. It was the last thing she’d expected from him after the impersonal brusqueness he’d treated her with in London.
Kindness.
‘Come, let me give you a lift—it’s the least I can do.’
He ushered her towards the car and she sank down into the low leather seat, her legs weak suddenly, her whole body exhausted. She was drained of all emotion. Barely aware of what was happening.
He got into the driver’s seat, pulled her seat belt across and fastened it. Then he turned to her. When he spoke the kindness was there in his voice again, but now she could also hear apology.