by Julia James
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.
Shock ripped through him again. For all his protest that this appallingly attired, rubber-gloved female with her mop and bucket just could not be Stavros Coustakis’s daughter, those eyes—so incredibly distinctive—proved his denial and disbelief wrong.
Thee mou—she really is his daughter.
Shock stabbed him again—and he saw the same emotion intensify in her frozen face as well.
‘My father?’ she gasped.
* * *
The mop clattered from Rosalie’s suddenly nerveless grip. Her vision seemed to be blurring, the world turning fuzzy...
She had heard the man who had just spoken say what surely to God he could not have said...
Because I don’t have a father. I’ve never had a father...never...
He was saying something in a foreign language. She didn’t know what—didn’t know anything except that the world was still turning fuzzy and she seemed to be falling...
Then, like iron, his grip seized upon her arm and she was bodily steered into the kitchen, forcibly propelled down on to the chair by the rickety table. At last the falling sensation stopped, and the world became less fuzzy, and she found herself blinking blankly.
The man was now standing in front of her, towering over her, and she was staring at him with that weird, blurry gaze. He was speaking again, and she forced herself to hear him.
‘Your father—Stavros Coustakis,’ he was saying.
She mouthed groggily. ‘Stavros Cous... Cous...?’ She tried to say the foreign-sounding name, but couldn’t make her throat muscles work properly.
The man was frowning down at her, and with a part of her brain that should not have been working she registered how
the frown angled the sculpted planes of his face, darkening those incredible dark eyes of his to make him even more ludicrously good-looking than ever, doing things to her that were utterly irrelevant right now, at this moment when he had told her what she had never expected to hear in all her life...
‘Stavros Coustakis.’
She heard him repeat the name in the accented voice which went, she realised, with the foreign-sounding name he’d said—just as it went with the air of foreignness about him.
She blinked again, staring at him. ‘I’ve got a father?’
The question sounded stupid, because he’d just told her she had, but she could see it had an effect on the man, because his frown deepened even more, drawing together his arched brows and furrowing his broad brow, deepening the lines scored around his mouth.
‘You didn’t know? You didn’t know Stavros Coustakis was your father?’
There was incredulity in the man’s voice, and Rosalie looked at him blankly. ‘No,’ she said.
The man seemed to be staring down at her as if not believing anything about her. Not believing she was who she’d told him she was. And not believing she didn’t know this Stavros Cous-something-or-other was her father.
Her father...
The word rang in her head. A word she never used—for what would have been the point? It was a word that was utterly nothing to do with her, because he didn’t exist—hadn’t existed except for those pathetically few short weeks in her poor mother’s life, when he had seemed to bring romance before departing for ever.
But suddenly now, at this very moment, he did exist.
She felt shock ricochet through her at the realisation, and it made her voice thready as she asked the question burning fiercely in her head. ‘How did he find me?’
It came out in a rush, a blurting question, and she gazed hungrily at this man who had come here and dropped this amazing, incredible, unbelievable bombshell into her life—a life that had suddenly, out of nowhere, changed for ever.
My father knows about me! He’s sent someone to find me!
Emotion leapt within her, distracting her from the fact that the dark eyes looking down at her had suddenly veiled.
‘That is something you must ask him yourself,’ was his clipped reply, but she leapt onwards to the next question.
‘Where is he?’ Her voice was avid, hungry, the words tumbling from her.
‘He lives in Athens.’
‘Athens?’ Rosalie’s eyes widened. Her father was Greek?
In her head her mother’s voice echoed...
‘He was foreign—so romantic!—working in London...’
‘Yes.’
The man’s voice was curt. She saw his face tighten, as if he were shutting her out of something.
‘As for any other questions you may have, they can wait.’ He glanced around himself. She could see his expression tighten even more. ‘Get your things and we’ll leave.’
Rosalie stared. ‘What do you mean?’
That tight-lipped, angry look was back in his dark eyes.
‘I’m taking you to Athens,’ he said. ‘To your father.’
* * *
Xandros glanced sideways at his passenger in the chauffeured car. She still had that blank expression on her face, as if she was not really taking in what was happening.
Make that two of us, Xandros thought grimly.
He’d come to London with no intention other than to warn Stavros’s English daughter against her father’s scheming. But now his anger at Stavros had found a new cause. Hell, he’d always known the man was ruthless—his disowning Ariadne was proof of that!—but what he’d done to this wretched other daughter of his was...unforgivable.
Keeping her in ignorance about her father—keeping her in abject poverty...
Emotion roiled in him, and there was a dark, angry glitter in his eyes. Stavros wanted his English daughter delivered to him in Athens? Well, Xandros would be glad to oblige! No way could he just walk away from her, leave her there in that slum...
She’d come eagerly enough—but then, why wouldn’t she? She’d just discovered she had a father she’d never known about—of course she’d want to meet him! And why delay? There was obviously nothing for her here in London! Not if she was reduced to cleaning for a living!
So he’d waited as she abandoned her bucket and mop, shed her yellow rubber gloves, shrugged on a cheap, worn jacket, picked up a shabby tote bag and left with him—just like that. She’d put the house key back through the letterbox and climbed into Xandros’s waiting car.
She hadn’t asked any more questions and Xandros had been glad of it. Answering them would have been difficult—especially any about how her father had found out about her existence.
His mouth set again. Let Stavros tell her that to her face.
There had been practical issues about getting her to Athens that had required immediate intention. Most importantly, did she have a passport? The answer had been an affirmative, and she’d told him it was in her bedsit. The car had stopped there—on another rundown street not far from the place she’d been cleaning—and Xandros’s frown had deepened. The terraced house was peeling, its railings broken and rusty. Empty bottles and litter lay on the steps, and there were sagging curtains at the window. A total dump.
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.
