‘So you bring him at last,’ she announced like a reprimand, then took an eager step forward as if to grab the baby right out of his arms. Alarm went tumbling through Zoe; impulsively she made a move to halt the old woman but Anton got in first.
‘Behave, Dorothea,’ he censured mildly. ‘This is not the moment for snatching babies from their loved ones.’
Flushing a little, the old woman drew back again, then turned around and walked back into the house. They followed, Anton standing back to allow Zoe and Melissa to precede him into a surprisingly large square-shaped hallway which must have been the main room of the original house.
‘You had better go in before he blows a fuse. He is in there.’ Dorothea waved a hand at a door leading off to the left of them. ‘I will bring coffee.’
‘After you have shown Miss Stefani somewhere she can sit and be comfortable while she is not needed,’ Anton countered evenly.
He was pulling rank on the housekeeper and it did not need special powers to recognise that the two of them sparred like this as the norm. The old woman flashed him a look then gave a huff and walked off, with poor Melissa reluctantly trailing behind.
‘Dorothea has worked for Theo for so long she sometimes forgets her role in his house. She is harmless, however, if stood up to.’
Great, thought Zoe. So Dorothea was just another person she had to stand up to. That made two of them, and that was before she even got to meet Theo Kanellis.
Stepping up to the door the housekeeper had indicated, Anton waited for Zoe to catch him up. She watched him run his eyes over her as she walked towards him and knew he would see the nervous tension in control of her body inside the apricot dress she was wearing.
‘OK?’ he asked softly when she stopped beside him.
I wish, thought Zoe, taking a moment to breathe in and out a couple of times before she turned to him and lifted her arms up. ‘I will take Toby now.’
She felt him wanting to say something, felt his hesitation inch her stress levels up another whole notch. Perhaps he knew how she was feeling because he released a small sigh then lifted the sleeping boy from his shoulder and transferred him into her care. Toby uttered a quivery sigh and curled in against her as he usually did, and Zoe lifted up her chin then turned to face the door. ‘Taking him on, agape mou?’
You bet, Zoe thought. ‘I am ready for what’s coming next if that is that you’re asking me,’ she returned, then tensed up her spine when he reached out to gently ease a trapped lock of her hair out from beneath her brother’s resting cheek.
‘I won’t let him eat you,’ he promised.
Pressing her lips together, Zoe nodded her head.
On another small sigh—because it must be obvious to him that she was trying her best to shut him out right now—Anton reached for the handle and pushed the door open. She found herself staring down the length of the large, bright airy room with the sunlight softened by the creamy blinds lowered across the windows.
She saw him then and her heart gave a heavy thump against her ribs. He was standing in front of a thick stone fireplace, and that shocked her, because sickly and fading Theo Kanellis was not. He stood tall and proud, emitting a kind of inner strength that rolled into her, even if he was standing there leaning heavily on the walking stick he held clamped close to one long elegantly suited leg.
It was like looking at her father. Or how her father would have looked if he’d had the chance to reach his seventh decade, she amended, feeling that low ache of grief she carried around with her make itself felt. He was the same height and had the same-shaped eyes as her father, the same rapier-thin nose and striking bone structure—though there was no resemblance in this man’s head of thick silver hair or the unsmiling mouth.
He was staring at her with a fierce and fixed intensity that warned her he was not about to cower if she turned the hostility on. ‘Well, don’t just stand there as if you want to turn around again and run,’ he bit out.
The deep rasp of his voice made Toby jerk against her shoulder. As she soothed her brother with the stroke of her hand, the light touch of Anton’s fingertips came to rest low on her back as if in reassurance, and the nerve endings there tingled in response.
She was glad he was here. At this precise moment while she was a mixed-up mess of conflicting feelings about this meeting; it was comforting to feel his presence like a protective wall at her back. When those fingertips urged her forward, she moved on legs that felt as if they had turned to sponge.
Theo Kanellis watched her every step. He took in her hair flowing free around her shoulders, the simple cut of her apricot dress and the long, slender length of her legs. When she pulled to a halt four feet away from him, he flicked his gaze up to take in the electric-blue steadiness of her gaze. They continued to stare at each other for what felt like minutes, facing off like wary adversaries waiting to see which one of them broke first.
It would not be her, Zoe told herself. She was determined to keep silent until he said something worthy of an answer.
It came. ‘You look like your mother,’ he growled, his mouth turning downwards as if in contempt.
‘Thank you,’ Zoe replied smoothly.
‘And very English,’ he added like a prod in the chest.
‘I am very English,’ she confirmed with studied composure.
Curiously, he still had not looked at Toby. In fact the next person he turned his fierce gaze upon was Anton. ‘I suppose you think you’ve pulled off a great coup.’
‘Depends on the coup you are referring to,’ the man standing tall and steady as a rock behind her responded. ‘How are you, Theo?’
At last, someone had tried to inject some normal manners into the proceedings. Not that it was a hit with Theo Kanellis. ‘You can cut out that rubbish,’ he snapped, then lifted up the hand clenched around his walking stick. ‘Sit down over there, where I can see you,’ he instructed Zoe, waving the stick at one of two wing-backed chairs standing either side of the fireplace. ‘You,’ he said to Anton, ‘Can make yourself scarce.’
‘I will leave when your granddaughter indicates to me that she wants me to leave,’ Anton came back smooth as silk to her grandfather’s grating rasp.
It was like the clash of the Titans, thought Zoe, every one of her senses alert to the fact that she was in the presence of two very powerful male personalities here. Theo Kanellis continued to glare at Anton while he maintained his solid stance behind her with his fingers still in contact with her back.
Yet there was something about the older man’s demeanour—Zoe wasn’t sure what it was—that made her decide to break the pulsing deadlock between the two men. Moving over to the chair her grandfather had pointed at, she lowered herself down on its edge, which freed Anton from his protective stance without her needing to say anything.
Because she did not want him to go. It came as a small shock to realise how reliant she felt on his presence right now. What he did was to wait until Theo Kanellis had lowered himself into the other chair, then he walked across the room to stand by the window as if he was taking the middle path by staying in the room while withdrawing to the edges of the fray.
‘So, you had better let me have a look at him.’ Theo Kanellis fired his first look at Toby.
Experiencing a stab of over-protectiveness for her brother which made her want to hug him all the closer to her front, she forced down the impulse, lifted the baby off her shoulder and brought him to rest in the cradle of her arms, then twisted slightly on the chair so his grandfather could see his tiny sleeping face.
Tension plucked at the silence again while grandfather stared at grandson. Zoe couldn’t tell if he was impressed or unimpressed by what he saw, but the growl in his voice thickened slightly when he looked back at her and said, ‘At least he looks Greek.’
She had no argument with that observation. Her brother did look very Greek. ‘Yes,’ she agreed.
‘Tobias …’ he growled next. ‘What kind of name is that for a Greek boy?’
<
br /> ‘It is the name my parents chose for Toby before they …’
Zoe let her voice trail to a muffled standstill when she realised what she had almost said. Lowering her eyes from the ones watching her so intently, she swallowed tautly and just hoped that the sudden pang of grief she’d suffered had not showed on her face.
But her grandfather had seen it. He shifted restlessly where he sat. ‘I am—sorry for your loss,’ he murmured uncomfortably. ‘It is unfortunate that we should meet for the first time under such—tragic circumstances.’
Unable to find a single thing to say in response to this offer of sympathy, from the man who had cut his own son out of his life twenty three years ago, all Zoe could do was nod.
Anton had told her that her grandfather had regrets about the past and she could feel those regrets pulsing in the space between them right now. Was it wrong of her to feel bitter about that? Because she did feel bitter, and angry on her father’s behalf; hurt for her mother who had lived those same twenty-three years knowing she was not an acceptable wife for this man’s son. And, yes, she was hurt on her own behalf that she too had not been worthy of his notice.
‘OK,’ growled that rasping voice. ‘I can see that you don’t want to talk about my son, so we will get down to business instead. Anton tells me you are prepared to marry him to help stop your inheritance from going down the drain with my stock.’
Zoe lifted her chin to look at him, ‘I have no interest in your money,’ she informed him.
‘So you are agreeing to throw your life away on this ruthless devil out of the kindness of your heart?’
‘No.’ She felt the heat of temper attempting to flood her cheeks at his assessment of what she was doing as mercenary. ‘I’m doing it for my brother and his future.’
‘You mean you fell into bed with him and, like a lot of females before you, could not bear the idea of having to crawl out of it again?’
The remark was scathing enough to make her lose control over the blush. It did not help that he was more or less telling it exactly how it was. She had fallen into bed with Anton—dragged him there in her own wretched eagerness. ‘I am not answerable to you for anything I do, Mr Kanellis,’ she said icily. ‘So you might as well stop—’
‘Mr Kanellis, heh?’ he interrupted then let out a short laugh. ‘And not answerable to me … Well, let us just try testing that, missy. For here is my counter offer: marry Anton, and neither you nor your brother will get a single penny from me. Drop Anton and come here to live with me, and I will leave the lot to you and your brother when I die.’
Zoe stared at this man she was supposed to call her grandfather. There was fire in his eyes, shot through with unholy amusement because he believed he had thrown her into a loop. Somewhere on the periphery of her vision she was aware that Anton stood like a dark silhouette against the light of the slatted window. He continued to remain silent as if he too was waiting to hear how she was going to respond to this challenge her grandfather had thrown down at her feet.
‘Think about it,’ Theo Kanellis urged. ‘Think about the power I am offering you to avenge the man I put in your father’s place. You can cut him out of this with a simple yes to my offer and scupper his plans for revenge on what Leander did to—’
‘That’s enough.’ Anton suddenly stepped forward, his voice sounding hard, like the crack of a whip. ‘We are supposed to be trying to mend fences here, Theo, not draging the ugliness of the past up again.’
‘But—what is he talking about?’ Twisting round on the chair; Zoe looked up at Anton, whose hard profile was fiercely clenched.
‘He is talking about nothing,’ he clipped out. ‘Your grandfather is just testing you while trying to make mischief for me at the same time.’
‘But …’ Zoe stopped to moisten her trembling lips, her mind spinning backwards to the actual words Theo Kanellis had said. ‘He m-mentioned revenge. Why would he say that unless—?’
‘Gomoto!’ the older man burst out in surprise. ‘She does not know, does she?’
He went off into sudden great roars of laughter. Toby woke up with a start and began sobbing like mad. At the exact same moment the baby started crying, her grandfather stopped laughing and started coughing, the sound scored by violent wheezes as he struggled for air and sent Anton striding over to him squat down at his feet.
‘Now look what you’ve done, you crazy old fool,’ he muttered with an odd kind of roughness as he closed a hand over one of the older man’s shoulders while reaching from something dangling over the arm of the chair.
It was a panic button. Recognising it instantly, Zoe shot to her feet. She was trying desperately to soothe the wailing baby while she watched in growing horror her grandfather fight to squeeze air into his congested lungs.
Then everything turned dizzyingly chaotic when the door flew open to allow a young man to rush in. He had the intent look and the manner of a nurse the way he strode down the room and bent over Theo Kanellis, almost knocking Anton out of his way in the process. Both men went in a huddle over Theo. Toby kept on crying. Dorothea appeared, puffing and panting, with an anxious-looking Melissa hurrying in her wake.
Standing up, Anton threw the nanny a glance. ‘Take Toby away from here and calm him,’ he instructed. Without quite knowing how it all happened, Zoe found herself relieved of her brother, Anton was hustling her out of the room. She caught a glimpse of Melissa disappearing towards the back of the house and she could hear Dorothea scolding Theo. Then Anton pulled the door firmly shut behind them, and was trailing across the hall with one of his hands clamped around her hand while his other hand threw open a door.
It led to a study with heavy dark furniture. Anton pushed her down onto a big red-velvet sofa. ‘Wh-what just happened to him?’ she whispered, still so shaken up she couldn’t stop trembling.
‘You thought that his health had taken a sudden upturn due to you agreeing to come here?’
Sardonic though he sounded, Zoe could see from the angles in his face that he had been no less affected by what had just taken place.
‘I hadn’t got as far as thinking anything about the state of his health except that he looked so—strong.’ She swallowed the last word on a blameworthy gulp, for she’d been so involved in protecting her own line of defence she had not thought to question her grandfather’s show of strength until it had collapsed.
‘Which is exactly how he wanted you to see him.’ Turning away to walk across the room, Anton opened what turned out to be a drinks cabinet. ‘He is a stubborn old fool who wanted to meet you standing on his own two feet. You just witnessed the result of his damn stupid folly.’
Pouring a splash of brandy into two glasses, Anton turned and walked back to sit down beside her and handed her a glass. ‘Drink it,’ he instructed when all she did was stare blindly down into the glass.
Zoe shook her head. ‘And—and the other stuff?’ she asked. ‘The revenge thing that started him laughing like that in the first place?’
Anton knocked his brandy back like a veteran. ‘He was trying to wind us both up. There are so few occasions when he gets the opportunity to exercise his razor-edged cunning these days, seemingly he could not miss this chance.’
But that wasn’t the only reason. Zoe could see he was pale beneath his tan and there were score lines of tension grooving his mouth. ‘Don’t fob me off with more lies, Anton,’ she said on a seething breath of impatience. ‘He thought it hilarious that I did not know something he clearly expected me to know. I want to know what that something is!’
Throwing himself back against the sofa cushions, Anton let out a sigh and closed his eyes. He should have seen this coming. Why had he not seen it coming? He had known within ten minutes of meeting her that she had no idea why Theo and his son had never attempted to mend the rift between them. Zoe believed that Theo was the unforgiving despot who’d cut his son out of his life because Leander had dared to humiliate him by jilting the bride Theo had picked out for him.
He
wished it could have been that simple. He wished even more that he had not let his normal common sense take a hike in favour of lusting after Theo’s granddaughter to the point that he’d convinced himself everything was going to turn out just fine in the end.
Take her to bed. Enjoy her. Put the marriage deal on the table. Appeal to her sympathetic side to get her to agree. Bed her again, over and over, then make this magnanimous gesture by bringing her here to heal the family rift before you take her as your wife. Theo was supposed to be virtually on his death bed. He was supposed to play his role as deeply regretful father struggling with guilt because his son had died before he’d had a chance to try and put things right.
‘You are in this for the money, aren’t you?’ Zoe fired at him tautly.
Anton winced as the accusation cut him deep. ‘No,’ he denied. ‘I don’t need Theo’s money. I have plenty enough of my own.’
‘Well, open your eyes and look at me while you repeat that!’ Slamming her untouched glass down, Zoe lurched to her feet on a quiver of trembling limbs.
He did it. He lifted up his heavy eyelids and looked at her. Zoe tensed up on a protesting gasp. ‘How dare you look at me in that way right now?’
Easy, thought Anton, watching her quiver with fury inside the apricot-coloured dress. One swift move on his part and he could take her away from all of this, here, right now, on Theo’s couch. It was a much more tempting prospect than allowing this particular conversation to drag out to its miserable conclusion. Hot sex on the crest of a tidal wave of wild emotions; he could even taste the pleasure of it inside his mouth. And he could read from her body language that she was struggling not to let herself respond to it from the warm cheeks, the shivering heave of her breasts, the hands curled into tight fists at her sides.
She looked him in the eyes and she wanted him. It had always been like that from the start.
The Kanellis Scandal Page 14
