‘You?’ he said.
There was total disbelief in his voice.
The dark eyes skewered hers. ‘You are Rosalie Jones?’ His mouth tightened to a thin line. ‘Impossible,’ he said.
For a moment he just stared at her, that look of disbelief still upon his ludicrously good-looking face, and Rosalie found herself going ramrod stiff at the way he was looking at her. Because there was more than just disbelief in his face... There was something that suddenly made her burningly conscious of the way she was looking. Of what he was seeing.
Me, looking a total fright after cleaning this pigsty all day...
Then, suddenly, he stepped indoors, and another spike of apprehension shot through her, cutting off that burning self-consciousness.
‘What the—?’ she began indignantly.
But he had closed the front door, turning to her. That look of disbelief was still on his face, but he was modifying it, she could tell. Now it was a grim look, as though he were steeling himself to talk to her.
‘You are Rosalie Jones?’ he echoed. Incredulity flattened his voice.
She stared. Why did he sound disbelieving?
She tilted her face—he seemed very tall and overpowering in the small hallway, which was ill lit and shadowed now that the front door to the street was closed. It made her supremely conscious of the visceral impact of the man, from his immaculately cut sable hair to his polished handmade shoes, via his planed and outrageously magnetic good looks and those amazing long-lashed dark eyes, which were raking over her as if he found her assertion outrageous.
‘Yes,’ she ground out again. And this time she got out the question she needed to ask—right now! ‘Who are you, and what can you possibly want with me?’ she threw at him.
With a visible tightening of his mouth, he answered her. ‘My name is Alexandros Lakaris, and I am here because of your father,’ he said.
Xandros saw the girl’s expression go blank—and then pale with shock. His own feeling was not dissimilar, and had been ever since Stavros Coustakis had dropped his bombshell.
He could still hear the man’s voice echoing in his head, and the exchange that had followed.
‘Your other daughter?’
Xandros’s stupefied repetition of what Stavros had announced had fallen from his lips and the older man’s expression had not changed.
‘Yes. I have another daughter. She lives in London. I am expecting you to go there and bring her here.’
He’d paused, and that unholy glint had come into his eyes again.
‘Assuming, of course, you still wish to proceed with the merger you are so set on...’
Xandros’s face had tightened, as if turning to set plaster.
‘Tell me a little more, if you please, Stavros,’ he’d replied.
His voice had been neutral...unlike the emotion scything in his chest. But he had determined he would deal with those emotions later. At that moment he’d simply needed information.
Stavros had supplied it, still speaking in that deliberately unconcerned way that Xandros had known was a wind-up—one he was equally determined not to react to.
‘Her name is Rosalie Jones. She lives with her mother...or did until recently. I knew her mother...let me see, now...over twenty-five years ago, when I was working in the UK. It was a fleeting affair and we went our separate ways. However, I have always known of my daughter’s existence, and now I think it is time she came here to Athens.’
He’d smiled, and Xandros had not cared for that smile with every atom of his being.
‘In order to replace my errant former daughter, Ariadne.’
He had smiled again—that same mocking smile.
‘I look forward to her arrival.’
And that had been all Xandros had got from the man. That and the knowledge, both galling and enraging, that he had been both outplayed and outmanoeuvred. Stavros Coustakis still, it seemed, had a mind to be father-in-law to a Lakaris...
Well, he would not succeed! Anger bit into Xandros hard, aggravating his ill humour. There was one reason and one reason only why he’d come to London. And that was to confront this hitherto totally unheard-of daughter of Stavros Coustakis and disabuse her of any expectations that her father might have put into her head.
Marrying Ariadne, whom he’d known for years, would have been one thing—marrying her unknown English half-sister was an absurdity he wouldn’t even give the time of day to! The very last thing he wanted was for the wretched girl to turn up in Athens and plague him!
Just remembering Stavros’s unholy taunt to go and fetch his ‘other daughter’ made anger spear through him. But now there was a different cause for it. A completely different one he could scarcely bring himself to credit.
His laser gaze rested on the female standing frozen in front of him. He was still unable to believe she was who she said she was. Because it was impossible—just impossible!
Whoever Stavros’s hitherto totally unknown other daughter was, she just could not be the woman standing here!
However brief the liaison Stavros might have had with the girl’s mother, his child would have been amply provided for. Stavros Coustakis was one of the richest men in Greece! So his daughter would obviously be the London equivalent of Ariadne, living somewhere appropriate for having so wealthy a father! Somewhere like Chelsea or Notting Hill or Hampstead—
But the contact address that had been supplied to him by Stavros at his hotel a short while ago had made him frown. What would Stavros Coustakis’s daughter be doing in this tatty, rundown part of London? Was she into property redevelopment, perhaps? Seeing financial opportunities in clearing semi-derelict sites and here merely to scope out potential projects?
The actual truth, forcing itself upon him now as he stared incredulously at the figure in front of him, was...unbelievable.
He felt shock resonate through him again now, and his gaze skewered her, taking in every dire detail of her appearance—the stained tee, the baggy cotton trousers covered in damp patches, the hands in yellow rubber gloves, clutching a floor mop and a bucket reeking of disinfectant. Her hair was screwed up on top of her head in a kind of topknot from which messy tufts protruded. And as for her face—
His expression changed. He’d been so negatively impacted by the grim first impression she’d made that it had been all that had registered. But now...
His eyes narrowed in automatic male assessment. Okay, so her complexion was pallid and blotchy, lined with fatigue, and there was a streak of dirt across her cheek, but other than that...
Fine-boned features, a tender mouth, and beautiful eyes that, despite the dark hollows beneath them, are—
Grey-green.