She hadn’t taken long, emerging ten minutes later lugging a battered suitcase and climbing back into the car.
His eyes flicked over her now. She was looking marginally better, having changed into cheap faded jeans and a sweatshirt. Her hair was neater, and she had a strong odour of deodorant now—not stale sweat from a day’s cleaning. Her skin was still pallid and blotchy, though, her features tired and drawn. Only her luminous grey-green eyes gave her beauty...
He snapped his gaze away, getting out his phone. What was it to him what Stavros Coustakis’s English daughter looked like? His impulsive decision to take her to Athens had been motivated solely by his anger at the callous way Stavros had so obviously abandoned her to abject poverty.
Maybe Stavros will be shamed into supporting her now! Or she can hire a lawyer to make a claim—even take her story to the tabloids. How one of Greece’s richest men left his own flesh and blood to live in squalor...
One thing that would not be happening, though, was Stavros’s crazy idea that he might actually substitute this wretched, ill-treated English daughter—a total stranger to him!—for the missing Ariadne.
Xandros’s mouth tightened. And if that meant he had to walk away from any hopes of the business merger he wanted—well, damnable though it would be to abandon a project he’d been determined on, so be it.
No way would he consider saving the merger by marrying Rosalie Jones...
He wouldn’t give the thought the time of day.
CHAPTER TWO
ROSALIE SAT CLUTCHING her worn tote bag, staring out of the tinted window. She’d never been in a car with tinted windows—never been in a chauffeur-driven car. And she’d never sat next to a man like the one she was sitting next to now.
She pulled as far away from him as she could. He was checking messages on his phone now—a seriously flash model, she could see—and paying her no attention at all. She didn’t care. She didn’t want his attention anyway.
Alexandros Lakaris. That was what he’d said his name was. But who he was was not important. Nor was the fact that he was the most fabulous-looking male she’d ever seen in her life, let alone that she’d been looking a total mess when he’d first set eyes on her.
Those incredible, dark, long-lashed eyes had looked at her so disdainfully...
But why should she care what he thought of her? All that was important was what he’d told her.
She felt excitement rush through her again.
My father—he exists! He’s real! And he’s found out about me! He wants to meet me! My father!
The words were running through her head, storming through her like a torrent, overwhelming her, and she was only hanging on by a thread.
Everything was a daze.
In a daze she’d rushed up to her dive of a bedsit, grabbing what clothes she could, stuffing them into her suitcase. She’d riffled through the room for her passport—acquired so hopefully, yet never had there been an opportunity to use it—then hastily stripped off, washing in cold water at the tiny sink in the rickety kitchenette in the corner. Her hair was filthy, but there had been nothing she could do about that—nor the fact that she badly needed a shower. All she’d been able to do was spray herself with deodorant and put on clean clothes.
She hadn’t impressed Alexandros Lakaris much, she thought now, with a twist of her mouth. She’d still got that disdainful flicker from his eyes when she’d clambered back into the car, depositing her battered suitcase in the footwell.
Oh, who cared what he thought of her? He didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the amazing, fantastic thing that was happening to her.
She felt a tearing at her heart.
Oh, Mum! If only you could have lived to see this—to see the man you fell for finding me! How wonderful that would have been!
The car was stopping and she frowned. They were going down Piccadilly, nearing Hyde Park Corner, and she’d assumed they were heading out towards the M4 and Heathrow. But they were pulling up outside a flash hotel.
Alexandros Lakaris was putting away his phone.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t we going to the airport?’
‘The flight is tomorrow,’ came the answer. ‘I only arrived in London this morning. You’ll stay at my hotel tonight.’
‘I can’t afford this place!’ she exclaimed, horrified.
‘But your father can,’ Alexandros Lakaris informed her.
Rosalie saw his mouth tighten in a fashion that was becoming familiar. And his eyes were raking over her again in that disparaging way of his.
‘He can also afford some new clothes for you before you fly out.’
She thought she saw a sudden unholy glitter in those incredible dark eyes she was so conscious of, try as she might not to be.
‘You should go shopping,’ he was saying, and there was a strange quality in his voice—a kind of smoothness that overlaid something quite jagged and pointed. ‘There’ll be time tomorrow morning before our flight.’
His eyes flickered over her, doing things to her they shouldn’t but did all the same. Now they weren’t disparaging. More like...assessing. She felt a sudden rush of ultra-self-consciousness that seemed to be heating her from the inside.
‘And you might also want to take advantage of the facilities here at the hotel,’ he went on in that same smooth voice. ‘Hair salon, nail bar, beauty room—that sort of thing.’
Rosalie looked at him doubtfully. Surely that would be hideously expensive?
Alexandros Lakaris’s expression had changed again. ‘Charge it to the room,’ he said now, as if seeing her reservations.
She swallowed. ‘I don’t want to cost my father too much,’ she said.
That unholy glitter was there once more. As if something were amusing him. She didn’t know what.
‘Believe me...’ his voice was as dry as desert sand ‘...he can afford it.’
Rosalie frowned. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked uncertainly. She could feel her stomach starting to churn. She pressed her hands together. ‘Mr Lakaris, all I know about my father is what my mother told me—that he was foreign and was working on a construction site. A brickie—nothing more than that. So—’
He cut across her. ‘Let’s just say he’s moved on since then. Now he has others to work for him.’
Her frown did not fade. Could what he was telling her be true? Belatedly she started to join up the dots she hadn’t yet joined. Alexandros Lakaris—with his flash suit and gold tiepin, his polished handmade shoes and chauffeured car—was obviously a Mr Rich. And why would a Mr Rich have been sent as messenger boy to fetch her if not by another Mr Rich?