Securing the Greek's Legacy

by Julia James

  She gave herself a mental shake. She couldn’t stand here gawping. The other woman obviously wanted her to vacate the room, as she was still standing there expectantly. Lyn took a step forward, wavering slightly on the high heels she wasn’t used to, and saw the woman step towards her as well.

  As if her brain cells were ungluing painfully, the truth dawned on her.

  Oh, my God, it’s me!

  She stopped dead, frozen and motionless. Just staring. Her reflection—because of course, as her brain cells had belatedly worked out, that was what it was—stared back.

  The stylist was by the door, holding it open for her, and numbly Lyn walked through and went out into the reception area.

  Anatole was there, leaning over Georgy in his buggy, but he straightened as she emerged.

  Then, in front of her eyes, he too froze. And stared.

  ‘Lyn?’ The disbelief in his voice was evident—he couldn’t hide it—but it was impossible to believe what his eyes were telling him. That the woman walking up to him had once been the drab, badly dressed female he’d handed over earlier. That woman was gone. Totally gone.

  And she is never coming back!

  The thought seared unbidden through his brain. Unbidden, but undeletable. That old version of Lyn was gone for ever! But this one—oh, this one could stay as long as she liked!

  From deep inside him came an ancient, powerful emotion. Whatever it was that was calling it from him—the lissom lines of a figure he’d never had the faintest idea was underneath her old shapeless clothes, or the silky swing of freshly styled hair that had been released from its customary straggly knot and now skimmed her slender shoulders—his eyes narrowed infinitesimally as his masculine assessment moved to her face. Quite extraordinarily, the skilfully applied make-up now finally revealed her features—no longer muted but defined, enhanced...

  Her eyes! Clear, wide-set, luminous. With delicately arched brows and their sockets softly deepened, the lashes richly lush. And her mouth—yet again Anatole felt all his male hormones kicking in powerfully—her mouth was as tender and inviting as a budding rose.

  He murmured something in Greek. He didn’t even know what it was, but it was repeating itself in his head as he finally gelled into movement. He stepped towards her and reached for her hand—the one that wasn’t clutching a soft leather handbag as if it were a life-preserver—drew her towards him.

  ‘You look fantastic!’ he breathed.

  His eyes worked over her. And over her again. Disbelief was still not quite dissipated. He took a step back again, and looked again still keeping her hand in his, trying to take in what exactly had been done to her. It was...everything! That was all he could think. Just...everything.

  And yet it must have been there all along...

  That was the most remarkable aspect of all. That underneath that wouldn’t-look-once-let-alone-twice image there had been this waiting to be revealed.

  He went on staring—oblivious, for now, of the fact that the expression on her face had reverted to the kind of stiff, self-conscious, tense awkward one she had had right at the beginning, when she hadn’t been able to relax in his company even an iota.

  Then, breaking into his studied scrutiny, he heard Georgy demanding attention.

  Dropping Anatole’s hand, Lyn jerked forward. Thank God for Georgy! Thank God for her being able to escape that jet-powered, laser-intense gaze focused on her like that...

  She hunkered down beside Georgy and started to make a fuss of him. Behind her Anatole finally surfaced and, with a start, stepped towards the counter to settle up. As he handed over his credit card it came to him that never had his money been better spent. He turned back to Lyn and another wash of disbelief hit him—followed by a very strong male response.

  ‘Time for lunch, I think,’ he said as he took the buggy handles and executed a neat turn of the wheels. His voice was warm with satisfaction.

  * * *

  They lunched at the same swish restaurant they had before. Anatole reckoned that Lyn would probably prefer a familiar place. Though this time she looked like a totally different woman! His feeling of satisfaction intensified. Yes, he had done the right thing—absolutely the right thing—in insisting on her having a makeover. To think that this elegant, soigné woman he could not take his eyes off had been there all along! He still found it hard to credit. What he did not find hard, however, was having her sitting opposite him like this. It meant he could study her in detail, take in every last dramatic improvement.

  The only problem, to his mind, was that she seemed so ill at ease. He wondered why, and asked her right out.

  She stared at him as if he had asked a really stupid question. Which, to her mind, he had. Of course she was feeling awkward and self-conscious! She’d felt that way when she’d looked awful—badly dressed and shabby—and now she felt that way when she looked the exact opposite! For exactly the same reason.

  Because he makes me feel excruciatingly self-conscious all the time! Because I’m just so punishingly and constantly aware of how devastating he is! Because I just want to gaze and gaze at him, but I can’t, because that would be the most embarrassing thing in all the world!

  The stark truth blazed through her: Anatole Telonidis the man—not the millionaire, nor the man who was Georgy’s father’s cousin, nor the man she was marrying so she could keep the baby she adored—who sat there, effortlessly devastating from the top of his sable-haired head right down through the long, lean length of his body, was a man who could have an effect on her senses no other man had ever had.

  That was why she could only sit there, quivering in every limb, unable to make eye contact, feeling so totally and utterly aware of him on every female frequency any woman could possess!

  His sloe-dark expressive eyes were resting on her, expecting some kind of answer to his question. She had to say something. Anything.

  ‘Um...’ she managed, fiddling with her cutlery with fingers whose tips were now beautifully shaped with varnished nails. ‘I guess I’m just getting used to being all dressed up like this.’

  And to being stared at. Not just by you, but by everyone as I walked in here. And not just because we’ve got Georgy with us. This time they are staring at me, too, and I’m not used to it. It’s never happened to me in my life before and I feel so, so conspicuous!

  ‘You are not used to being beautiful,’ Anatole answered, his expression softening. ‘Don’t poker up again. I said beautiful,’ he told her, ‘and I meant it.’

  And he did, too. Her beauty, so newly revealed, was not flashy or flaunting. No, it was subtle and graceful. He wanted to gaze at it, study it.

  Enjoy it.

  But it was clear she was finding that difficult. Goodness knew why, but she was.

  Ever mindful of her sensitivities, he made an effort to stop gazing at her, but it was almost impossible. Thoughts rippled through his head as he made that realisation, eddying and swirling out of the depths of his consciousness. Something was changing, something about the way he was thinking about her—but he couldn’t give time to it. Not right now. He would think about it later. Right now he wanted her to feel comfortable. To enjoy lunch with him.

  He gave her a smile. The kind he was used to giving her. Kindly and encouraging.

  ‘What do you think you’d like to eat today?’ he asked.

  He started to go through the menu with her, and the exercise gave them both some time to regroup mentally. So did Georgy’s requirements. He’d already had his lunch, in the children’s café in the store’s toy department. He’d relished it with enthusiasm—if rather more messily than Anatole had been prepared for. But he’d mopped up Georgy—and himself and the tabletop—manfully, and then purchased another top for him to wear, which he was now sporting colourfully. Spotting it, Lyn remarked upon it, and their conversation moved on to an account
of Georgy’s entertainment that morning.

  ‘Sounds like you coped really well,’ said Lyn. It was her turn to be encouraging. Having sole care of an infant could be quite a challenge, but Anatole was not shy of undertaking it.

  ‘It’s a delight to be with him,’ Anatole said frankly.

  He smiled, catching Lyn’s eyes in mutual agreement, and a little rush went through her. Oh, Anatole might look like a Greek god, and be a high-powered millionaire business tycoon from a filthy-rich top-shelf Greek dynasty, but his loving fondness for his baby second cousin shone through! It was the one indisputable shared bond between them.

  ‘A delight,’ he repeated. ‘But definitely full-on!’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Lyn meaningfully, glancing down at Georgy in his carrier, snoozing peacefully after all the excitement of the morning.

  Anatole closed the leather-bound menu with a snap. ‘After lunch,’ he announced, ‘we shall attend to the rest of your new wardrobe. There is a great deal to buy.’

  She looked startled. Anatole reached across the table to take her hand. The delicately varnished nails glowed softly, and her skin was soft and warm. It felt good to hold her hand...

  ‘Do not look so alarmed,’ he said. ‘It will be fine. I promise you. Trust me.’

  She gazed at him. She was trusting him with so much already. Trusting him to ensure she could keep Georgy. Trusting him to sort out all the legalities. Trusting him to know the best way to ensure Georgy would never be wrenched from her.

  With a little catch in her throat, she nodded. ‘I will,’ she said.

  For a moment their eyes met, gazes held.

  Then, with an answering nod, Anatole released her hand.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly what I want to hear.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘IT’S A BEAUTIFUL day. Since we can’t leave for Greece yet, let’s go for a drive in the country,’ Anatole announced.

  His mood was good—very good. It had been good ever since Lyn had walked out of the beauty salon looking so totally unlike the way she had looked before that he had scarcely been able to credit the transformation.

  Now, as he smiled at her across the breakfast bar in the kitchen of the apartment, he still could hardly credit it. She was wearing one of the outfits they’d purchased the previous afternoon after their leisurely lunch, and it emphasised her amazing new look.

  His eyes rested on her warmly. Georgy, securely fastened in his throne-like highchair, was waving a spoon around and blowing bubbles. But for once Anatole’s primary concern was not Georgy. It was wondering just how Lyn had got away with looking so drab for so long when she could have looked the way she did this morning.

  Her hair was clasped back into a loose ponytail, but the new style with its flattering colour tint made all the difference. So did the subtle, understated make-up she was wearing—little more than mascara and lipgloss, but all that was needed to turn her face from a collection of blank features into a face that had contours and depths. As for the sweater she was wearing—well, it was a million years away from the baggy items she’d used to hide herself in. The soft lambswool jumper she had on, a light caramel, shaped her beautifully.

  His eyes slid to her breasts. Before her makeover he’d never even noticed she had any.

  But she does—she has beautiful rounded breasts. Slight, but well shaped...

  Unbidden, the thought slid between his synapses.

  What would she look like bare? Her slender body revealed to me? The sweet mounds of her breasts beneath my touch?

  Joltingly he grabbed at his coffee. It was inappropriate to think in those terms.

  Up till now he never had. But since her makeover those thoughts, questions, speculations had made themselves conscious in his head.

  He pushed them aside.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ he said. ‘Shall we get out of London today? Take Georgy out for the day?’

  Lyn busied herself getting Georgy out of his highchair. The way Anatole was looking at her was making her colour.

  I didn’t know that was going to happen—I didn’t think!

  It was confusing—disturbing—to have his sloe-dark eyes resting on her like that. As if he was seeing her for the first time—for the first time as a woman...

  Confusing—disturbing—making her blood pulse in her veins...

  She forced her mind to focus on what he’d said—not on the effect his gaze was having on her, making her so self-conscious, making her body feel alive, somehow, in a way it never had been. Making her breasts feel fuller, rounder.

  ‘That would be lovely!’ she said brightly. ‘Whereabouts do you want to go?’

  ‘Heading south sounds good,’ said Anatole.

  And so it proved. Once across the girdle of the M25, the North Downs behind them, the Weald stretched before them. With Georgy safely secured in his car seat, Lyn was seated in the passenger seat next to Anatole. She could feel her eyes drawn to the way his strong hands were shaping the wheel, his eyes focused on the road ahead. She wanted to gaze at him, drink him in.

  Instead, she made herself tell him what she knew about this part of the country.

  ‘It’s called the Weald—from the Saxon word for forest— like the German Wald,’ she said. ‘It’s completely rural now, but it was actually the industrial heartland of England for centuries.’

  ‘How so?’ Anatole asked, glancing at her. He wanted to go on looking, because in profile she was well worth looking at, but he had to keep his eyes on the road—which he was finding a nuisance.

  ‘The wood was used for charcoal, and that was used for iron smelting,’ she explained. ‘And many of the trees were cut down for shipbuilding as well.’

  She went on to talk about some of the more notable events in English history that had taken place in this part of the country.

  ‘Including the Battle of Hastings?’ Anatole said knowledgeably.

  ‘Yes.’ She sighed. ‘The end of Anglo-Saxon England. The Norman Yoke was harsh to begin with, imposed on a conquered people.’

  ‘Ah...’ said Anatole, commiserating. ‘Well, we Greeks know about being conquered. We spent nearly four hundred years being ruled by the Ottoman Empire.’

  The conversation moved to the subject of Greece’s history as the powerful car ate up the miles. From the back seat Georgy gazed contentedly out of the car window, but when they pulled over at a pleasant-looking pub for lunch he was ready to get out. The weather had warmed significantly, and they decided to risk eating in the garden—helped in their decision by the presence of a children’s play area complete with sandpit.

  ‘Don’t let him eat the sand!’ Lyn warned as Anatole lowered him onto its fine, dry golden surface.

  ‘Georgy, a sensible boy never eats sand!’ Anatole admonished him, as the baby rashly prepared to break this wise edict.

  Memory stabbed at Lyn. In her head she heard Anatole similarly admonishing Georgy not to eat his watch, that first time he’d been with him.

  How totally and irrevocably her life had changed since then!

  I had no idea then that I would do what I have—that I would be here, now, like this, with him!

  How far she had come since those first excruciatingly painful and awkward days as her life changed beyond recognition. Her eyes rested on Anatole now, hunkered down by the sandpit, engaging with his infant second cousin. Emotion went through her—and not just because of the sight of him and Georgy playing so happily, so naturally together. So much at ease.

  She was at ease with him too now. Finding his company not fraught or awkward. Well, not in the same way, at any rate, she amended. Having her makeover had set off that intense awkwardness again, but she was getting used to her new look now. Finding it easier to cope with.

  Enjoying it...

 
Because it was good to know she looked good! The novelty of it had lost its terror for her, leaving only pleasure. She’d caught sight of herself in the mirror in the ladies’ here and a little ripple of pleasure had quivered through her. The designer jeans hugged her hips and thighs, the ankle boots, soft and comfortable, lengthened her legs, and the caramel lambswool jumper warmed and flattered her.

  One of the young male servers came out and took their drinks order. His eyes, as he smiled down at Lyn, told her that she looked good to him too. That little ripple of pleasure came again.

  From where he sat, Anatole watched Lyn interacting with the young man. It was good to see her being chilled about the effect she was having on the male population.

  If she gets used to it from other men, she will get used to it from me too....

  The words slid into his head and he busied himself with Georgy again, who was taking another lunge at the enticingly crunchy sand.

  Lunch passed enjoyably, and afterwards they resumed their drive, finally reaching the South Downs. An airy walk on the high chalk expanse, with Georgy hoisted high on Anatole’s shoulders, his little fists impaling his hair, laughing heartily, gave them some exercise. They paused at a viewpoint to look out and down over the blue glittering Channel beyond. Lyn tried to make out the coastal geography, hazarding some guesses as to what they were seeing.

  ‘Do you know this part of England?’ Anatole asked her.

  ‘It has special memories for me,’ she admitted.

  Her gaze went out to the coast, and he saw a faraway look in her face—a look that was taking her back down the years.

  ‘We came here on holiday once,’ she told him. ‘It was just about the only happy holiday I can remember. We stayed on a caravan park, right on the seashore, and Lindy and I were set loose to head down onto the beach every day. It was wonderful! We were so happy, I remember—so carefree! There were some beautiful houses at the far end of the bay, where the gardens opened right out onto the beach, and Lindy and I used to walk past them all and discuss which one we’d live in when we were grown up and had pots of money and no worries and cares.’