Still he had her in his sights now and she was no match for him, he concluded arrogantly and briefly closed his eyes.Theos, he was tired, and for a man who lived to work that was some admission, but the last few weeks had been hell.
It had started when he had taken a phone call in his office at Aristides International Bank in Athens a month ago. His father and sister had been in an accident and he could remember the day in every minute detail.
He had paced the length of the hospital corridor outside the operating theatre, with a face like thunder. None of the hospital staff who had passed him had dared to speak, but they had all known he was Leonidas Aristides the international banker, with offices in Athens, New York, Sydney and Paris, as rich as Croesus, and about to be more so after the tragic events of the day.
He had stopped outside the double doors and wondered how long it had been. He had glanced at the functional watch on his wrist, and stifled a groan—a meagre forty minutes.
Not even an hour since they had wheeled the broken body of his sister Delia through the metal doors of the operating theatre. Only three hours since the telephone call he had taken at the bank informing him of the car crash that had killed his father instantly and badly injured his sister. Even as he had been informed Delia had been transferred by air ambulance from their island home to the best hospital in Athens.
He had trouble believing what had happened. They had all spent Christmas and New Year’s Eve together on the island but he had left early the next afternoon to spend a couple of weeks in New York. He had flown into Athens early that morning assuming his father and Delia had returned to their house in the city a couple of days ago and expecting to meet his father at the bank. Only to be told his father was still at their holiday home.
How the hell had it happened? he had asked himself for the thousandth time, having already demanded the same from the hospital staff and the police right up to the minister. All he had known was Delia had been driving to the harbour with their father when apparently she had lost control of the car and ended up in a ravine. As for the top team of surgeons he had demanded and got, they had been reluctant to give an opinion on Delia’s chances other than to say she was critical but they would do all they could.
He had crossed to slump down in a seat facing the theatre doors, and had laid his head back against the wall and closed his eyes in an attempt to block out the reality of the situation.
His father was dead and he had known he would mourn his passing, but his sister had been fighting for her life behind those closed doors, and he had never felt so helpless in his life.
A sense ofdéjà vu had enveloped him. A different couple, a different time, and, he had prayed, a different outcome. Four years ago in June he had sat in a private hospital very like this in New York, waiting while they operated on his wife Tina after another car crash. The passenger then had been his wife’s fitness instructor who had died instantly.
A bitter, cynical smile curved his hard mouth. Later the surgeon had told him sadly his wife had died on the operating table, but they had delivered the child she was carrying, a boy. For a moment he had felt a surge of hope until the doctor, who had carefully avoided eye contact with him, had added, ‘Although the child was full term he was badly injured and his chances of survival are slight.’ A few hours later the child had also died.
‘Mr Aristides.’ Leon opened his eyes and, silently praying this accident would have a happier outcome, he rose to his feet as the surgeon approached him. ‘The operation was a success and your sister is now in Intensive Care.’ He heaved a mighty sigh of relief, but it was short-lived as the surgeon continued, ‘But there are severe complications, she has lost a lot of blood and her kidneys are failing. Unfortunately the traces of recreational drugs in her system are not helping. But we are doing all we can. You can slip in and see her for a few moments, the nurse will show you the way.’
He was still reeling from the knowledge his sister took drugs when she died two hours later.
Opening his eyes, Leon looked around the very English-looking cosy sitting room. If he had thought the fact that his sister took drugs was the worst thing she could have done in her young life he had been proved wrong yesterday.
The intelligent, educated young lady he had imagined Delia had grown up to be had been leading a double life for years with the help of Helen Heywood. A woman he distinctly remembered his sister telling him she had virtually lost touch with when she had gone to university in London.
Even for a man as cynical as him, particularly where the supposedly fair sex was concerned, the lies and the acting ability Delia had displayed over the last few years boggled the mind. He had loved his sister though he might not have shown it as he should, and her deceit hurt. For a man who never indulged in emotion and actively disdained anyone who did, it was a galling admission and he knew exactly who to blame. His sister was gone, but Miss Heywood had a hell of a lot to answer for, and he was just the man to make sure she did.
CHAPTER TWO
HELEN STOOD INthe kitchen watching the coffee percolate, and trying to think straight. Leon Aristides was here, in her home, and he knew about Nicholas. It wasn’t too bad, she told herself. So he knew Delia had an illegitimate son, and obviously he knew that Helen looked after the child. Maybe Delia had finally told her father, and maybe he had consulted a lawyer and maybe he had told Leon. But it was all very odd and there were way too many maybes!
At the very least Delia might have warned her, she thought, miffed with her friend for putting her in such a position. Snatching her bag off the kitchen table, she took out her cell phone and tried Delia’s number again. It was still dead.
Five minutes later, after snagging a towel from the downstairs toilet, she walked back into the sitting room carrying the coffee tray. ‘Sorry it took so long.’ She placed the tray on the occasional table and held out the towel.
He took it from her hand with a brief, ‘Thank you,’ and, swiftly wiping his face, he began drying his thick black hair. In his dishevelled state the family resemblance to Nicholas was quite startling.
Realising she was staring, she quickly sat on the sofa opposite him. ‘Black or white, Mr Aristides?’ she asked coolly.
‘Black, one sugar and drop the Mr Aristides. Leon will do—after all, we are old friends.’
‘If you say so,’ she murmured, and poured the coffee, unable to get his name past her suddenly dry mouth. As for being ‘old friends,’ he must be joking. Lifting her head, she handed him the cup and saucer, and flinched slightly as his fingers brushed hers. Their eyes met and for a second she saw a gleam of something sinister in the depths of his that made her stomach clench, and then it was gone and he was raising the cup to his mouth.
Oddly flustered but determined not to show it, Helen took a much-needed drink of her own coffee, and, replacing the cup on the table, she said, ‘Now perhaps you can tell me why a lawyer informed you about Nicholas? Did Delia finally tell her father the truth, and perhaps he contacted a lawyer?’ she queried.
He drained his cup, replaced it on the table, and raised his head, his dark eyes resting on her with cold insolence. ‘By the truth, I presume you mean that my crazy sister had a child outside marriage, a son that her family knew nothing about. A son that you have taken care of from birth…Is that the truth you are talking about?’ he prompted, his cold dark eyes narrowing at the look of guilt that flashed across her pale face.
‘That my own sister could be so devious as to deprive her father of a grandson is beyond belief, and that you with the collusion of your grandfather apparently aided and abetted her is downright shameful, if not criminal—’
‘Now wait just a minute,’ Helen cut in. ‘My grandfather died months before he was born.’
‘My sympathy, I apologise for maligning the man. But it does not make your actions any less shameful,’ he said bluntly.
‘The only shameful act as far as I am concerned is your father forcing Delia into becoming engaged to a distant cousin whe
n she returned to Greece last summer. A man of his choosing, to keep the money in the family. She is not crazy, quite the reverse. Delia always knew her father would try and marry her off eventually and prepared for it,’ Helen said adamantly.
‘She tried to delay it as long as possible—that was why she changed the course she was taking at university after the first year, so she could extend her studies a year. And, for the same reason, once she did graduate she decided to take a teacher’s training course for another year.’ Helen leapt to defend her friend. She didn’t like Leon Aristides and she liked even less his derogatory comment about his own sister.
‘You know more than me, it would seem,’ he drawled sardonically his eyes narrowing on her small face, and Helen felt inexplicably threatened.
She hesitated and lowered her lashes to hide her too expressive eyes. It was not like her to let her tongue run away with her, and she had the disturbing conviction that she would need all the self-control she possessed around Leon Aristides.
‘As to that I don’t know.’ She gave a slight, what she hoped was a nonchalant, shrug. ‘But obviously Delia has changed her mind about Nicholas or you would not be here,’ she continued. ‘But I spoke to her a few weeks ago and she never said anything to me. As far as I know, she still has no intention of marrying the man and only agreed to the engagement to keep her father happy until she is twenty-five in May and comes into the inheritance her mother left her. Then she has every intention of telling the whole world she has a child when her father can no longer control her.’
‘She will never have the chance.’ He brushed aside her stalwart defence of his sister with a few cold words.
‘My God, Delia was right about you!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re as—’
‘Delia is dead, as is my father,’ he interrupted brutally, guessing her thoughts about him, and deflecting them in the bluntest way possible.
‘They were staying on the island, and Delia was driving them to the harbour when the car slid off the road and into a ravine.’ He spoke emotionlessly as if he had recited it all a hundred times before. ‘Father died instantly, Delia a few hours later in hospital without ever regaining consciousness.’
Helen stared at him in stricken silence. She could not believe it, did not want to believe it.
‘Dead…Delia dead,’ she murmured. ‘It’s not possible.’ She lifted wide, appalled eyes to the man opposite. ‘It has to be a ghastly joke.’ Not half an hour ago she had been worrying because Delia had not called; now she was expected to believe she was dead.
‘The accident was on the fifteenth of January and there was a double funeral three days later.’
Suddenly, like a tidal wave crashing down on her, the full horror of his revelation swamped her mind, and she knew Aristides was telling the truth. Her heart contracted in her chest, her eyes closing momentarily as she struggled to hold back the tears. But it was a futile gesture as moisture leaked beneath her lashes. She wrapped her arms around her middle in a physical attempt to hold herself together.
Delia, beautiful, brave headstrong Delia, her friend and confidante—dead.
She remembered the first time they had met. Theirs had been an unlikely friendship, the extrovert Greek girl and the introvert English girl.
Helen at sixteen had missed a lot of schooling owing to the accident that had killed her parents. Her father had worked as an IT consultant for a Swiss bank in Geneva and they had been on a skiing weekend in the Alps, when an avalanche had buried her parents and left Helen slammed against a tree chest-deep in snow. Rescued hours later, she had fractured her pelvis, but worse had lost her sight. Whether it had been snow blindness from exposure to the brilliant sun in the hours before she had been rescued, or a psychological reaction at seeing her parents killed, it had taken her a long time to recover.
She had returned to England to live with her grandfather, and slowly recuperate. Finally she had resumed her education as a day pupil at a boarding-school in the countryside near her home. She had been put in the same class as Delia although she had been two years older than everyone else. It had been Delia who had stood up for Helen when others in the class had teased her about the ugly tinted glasses she had worn at the time. From that day forward they had become firm friends and Helen had frequently invited Delia to her home for weekends. Her grandfather had been a classics scholar who spoke fluent Greek and the school had approved the outings.
When Helen had left school early to look after her grandfather, who had been left wheelchair-bound after a stroke, Delia had continued to visit right up until she had left school herself to go to university in London. They had kept in touch by telephone and the odd e-mail, but Helen had not seen Delia for two years until she had turned up unexpectedly one weekend looking pale and sombre. Not her usual confident self at all.
‘Obviously the news is a shock to you and I’m sorry to intrude on your grief.’ The brisk dark voice cut into her reverie, not sounding the least apologetic. ‘But I came here to see my nephew and discuss his future.’
Tight-lipped and clenching her teeth in an attempt to control her grief, Helen lifted tear-drenched eyes to Leon Aristides and shivered at the aloof glacial expression she saw on his face. If this man was mourning the loss of his father and sister it certainly did not show. He was as hard as a block of granite, and suddenly fear for Nicholas and what his future would be overrode her grief.
‘Nicholas is asleep upstairs. He attends nursery school in the morning and after lunch he usually has a nap,’ she said truthfully, struggling to gather her tumultuous thoughts into some kind of order. Instinctively she knew Delia would not have wanted her son brought up in the same mould as her father and brother, and she needed all her wits about her to deal with the situation. ‘I don’t think it is advisable to wake him up to tell him his mother is dead.’ She choked over the last word.
‘I wasn’t suggesting any such thing.’ He lifted a hand and ran it through his thick black hair, and for a moment she thought she saw a gleam of anguish in his dark eyes.
Helen began thinking maybe Leon Aristides was more upset than he appeared. Suddenly she remembered Delia mentioning that his wife and newborn child had died in an accident. This must be a double blow to him—she had lost her best friend but he had lost his father and his sister—and her soft heart squeezed with compassion.
‘But he will have to be told later and in the meanwhile—’ Aristides rose to his feet and stepped towards her ‘—I want to see some proof the boy actually exists and is here,’ he declared with a sardonic lift of an ebony brow.
Helen gritted her teeth at his cynical comment and any sympathy for him disappeared. ‘Of course.’ She stood up and found he was much too close, and sidestepped out of his way. ‘If you will follow me,’ she murmured and made for the door.
The curtains were closed against the dismal dark day and a small car-shaped night light that Nicholas adored illuminated the bedroom. The bed was also a model of a car, and lying flat on his back was Nicholas wearing white under-pants and a tee shirt. With his curly black hair falling forward over his brow, and his thick black lashes lying gently against his smooth cheeks, he was deeply asleep.
Helen smiled down at the infant, and very gently brushed a few stray curls from his brow. She heard a deeply indrawn breath, and glanced back at Aristides. She could sense the tension in every muscle and sinew of his big frame as he stared down at the sleeping boy, totally transfixed.
Helen didn’t like the man, she found him hard and cynical. If she was honest she also found him intimidating. He was not only tall, but powerfully built with wide shoulders and a broad chest, lean hips and long legs. Yet right at this moment he looked as vulnerable as the child who held his complete attention.
Silently she moved back a few steps towards the door, to give him some privacy in which to get over the shock of seeing his nephew for the first time. He was entitled to that much, but he was not necessarily entitled to sole care of the child, she reminded herself firmly.
Her eyes misted with tears as she saw again in her mind’s eye Delia’s face when she had turned up out of the blue on a day in February much like this one four years ago. She had been upset, but determined, and no amount of talking had been able to get Delia to change her mind.
Delia had been pregnant and unmarried at twenty. There had been no way she was going to tell her father, and she had asked Helen to help her take care of the baby until she came into her own fortune. Then she could say to hell with her father and bring her child up as she wished.
Personally Helen had thought it was the craziest idea she had ever heard, and had told her so. She had doubted Delia could keep the pregnancy hidden, never mind keeping a child secret, and what about the father?
The father was a fellow student who had been killed in the London train crash that had been all over the papers a few weeks earlier. But Delia had had it all worked out. She would go home for Easter as usual and return to university in London afterwards. Her father had been ecstatic at the news Leon’s wife was finally pregnant so he would pay Delia even less attention than usual.
Aristide's Convenient Wife Page 2
