Securing the Greek's Legacy

by Julia James

  You were nothing to him—Georgy is everything!

  And that was what she must cling to now. That and that alone. It was the only way to survive what was happening. What was going to happen.

  ‘I thought,’ he bit out, ‘you might have gone to the house.’

  She frowned. ‘House? What house?’

  A strange look flitted across his face. ‘The house by the sea—the house I gave you.’

  She stared. ‘Why would I have gone there?’ Her voice was blank.

  ‘Because it’s yours,’ he riposted flatly. But the flatness was the flatness of the blade of a knife...

  ‘Of course it isn’t mine! Nothing’s mine, Anatole. Not even—’ She closed her eyes, because the truth was too agonising to face, then forced them open again. ‘Not even Georgy.’

  There—she had said it. Said what she had to say. What she should have said right from the start.

  If I had just admitted it—admitted the truth—then I would have been spared all this now! Spared the agony of standing here, seeing Anatole, knowing what he came to mean to me!

  Dear God, how much heartache she would have saved herself!

  She took another breath that cut at her lungs, her throat, like the edge of a razorblade.

  ‘I’ll sign whatever paperwork needs to be signed,’ she said. ‘I can do it now or later—whatever you want. I’ll have an address at some point. Though I don’t know where yet.’

  As she spoke she made herself stand up. Forced her legs to straighten. She felt faint, dizzy, but she had to speak—had to say what she had come to say.

  She took a breath. Forced herself to speak.

  ‘I’ve brought his things—Georgy’s. There isn’t much. I didn’t take much with me. And I’ve only bought a little more here in the UK. It’s all in those bags.’ She indicated the meagre collection on the floor by the chair. ‘The buggy isn’t very good—it’s from a jumble sale—but it’s just about useable until you get a new one. Unless you brought his old one with you... Be careful when you unfold it, it catches—’ She pointed to where it was propped up against the wall.

  She fumbled in her bag. Her fingers weren’t working properly. Nothing about her was working properly.

  ‘Here is his passport,’ she said, and placed it on the little table. There was the slightest tremble in her voice, but she fought it down. She must not break—she must not... ‘I hope—’ she said. ‘I hope you can take him back to Greece as quickly as possible. I am sure...’ She swallowed. ‘I’m sure Timon must want to see him again as soon as he can.’

  Her voice trailed off. She picked up her bag, blinked a moment.

  ‘I think that’s everything,’ she said.

  She started to walk to the door. She must not look at Anatole. Must not look at Georgy. Must do absolutely nothing except keep walking to the door. Reach it, start to open it...

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  The demand was like a blow on the back of her neck. She turned. Swallowed. It was hard to swallow because there was a rock the size of Gibraltar in her throat. She blinked again.

  ‘I’m going,’ she said. ‘What did you think I would do?’

  He said something. Something she did not catch because she was looking at his face. Looking at his face for the very last time. Knowing that it was the very last time was like plunging her hand into boiling water. But even as she looked his expression changed.

  ‘So he was right.’ The words came low, with a lash that was like a whip across her skin. ‘Timon was right all along.’

  Slowly he set Georgy down on the thickly carpeted floor, pulling off his tie to keep him happy. Lyn found her eyes going to the strong column of his neck as he unfastened the top button of his shirt now that he was tieless. Felt the ripple in her stomach that was oh, so familiar—and now so eviscerating.

  ‘Timon was right,’ he said again. His voice was Arctic. ‘He said you only wanted money out of all of this! I didn’t believe him. I said you’d turned down cash from me to hand over Georgy. But he read you right all along!’ His voice twisted. ‘No wonder he set his private investigators on to you—and no wonder you took his money to clear out!’

  She didn’t answer. Only picked up Georgy’s passport. Thrust it at him.

  ‘Open it,’ she said. Her voice was tight. As tight as the steel band around her throat, garrotting her.

  She watched him do as she had demanded. Watched his expression change as he saw Timon’s uncashed cheque within, torn into pieces.

  ‘I took it from him to give me time to make my escape. Because I could think of nothing else to do.’ She took a ragged shredded breath. ‘I never wanted money, Anatole,’ she told him. ‘I never wanted anything except one thing—the one thing that was the most precious in my life.’

  Her eyes dropped to Georgy, happily chewing on Anatole’s silk tie.

  She was lying, she knew. Lying because she’d come to want more than Georgy—to want something even more precious to her.

  You! You, Anatole—I wanted you so much! And a family— you, and Georgy and me—I wanted that so much! So much!

  That had been the dream that had taken shape in Greece—that had made her heart catch with yearning! Anatole and Georgy and her—a family together...

  She lifted her eyes to Anatole again. To his blank, expressionless face.

  ‘I kept telling you Georgy was mine,’ she said. ‘I said it over and over and over again. As if by saying it I might make it true.’ She stopped. Took a razoring breath that cut at the soft tissue of her lungs. Then said what she had to say. Had to say.

  ‘But he isn’t mine. He never was.’

  She looked at Anatole—looked straight at him. Met his hard, masked gaze unflinchingly as she made her damning confession.

  ‘Not a drop of my blood runs in his veins.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ANATOLE’S FACE WAS stark. Hearing Lyn say what he now knew...

  ‘I know that now,’ he said. His voice was strange, but he kept on speaking all the same. ‘I know that Lindy wasn’t your sister. She wasn’t even your half-sister. She was nothing more than your stepsister. Timon showed me what his investigators found. She was the daughter of your mother’s second husband, who left her with your mother and you when he abandoned the marriage—and his daughter.’

  He shook his head as if he were shaking his thoughts into place—a new place they were unaccustomed to.

  ‘When he told me it made such sense. Why Georgy doesn’t look like you. Why your name is so similar to Lindy’s—no parent would have done that deliberately—and why I sometimes caught that look of fear in your eyes. Like when you didn’t want a DNA test done.’ He paused. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Lyn? You must have known I would find out at some point?’

  She gave a laugh. A bitter, biting laugh.

  ‘Because I wanted to be married to you before you did!’ she cried. ‘I was scheming to get your ring on my finger—the ring you never intended to put there!’

  His expression changed. He opened his mouth to speak but she ploughed on. ‘Timon told me! He told me that the whole damn thing had been nothing more than a ruse! All that stuff about getting married to strengthen our joint claim to adopt Georgy between us! All that was a fairy tale! You never meant a word of it!’

  ‘What?’ The word broke from him explosively.

  She put her hands to her ears. ‘Anatole—don’t! Please—don’t! Don’t lie to me now—we’re done with lies! We’re done with them!’ That brief, bitter laugh came again. It had no humour in it, only an ocean of pain, and she let her hands fall to her sides. ‘Timon threw it at me that I deserved everything I was ending up with because I’d lied to you by not telling you tha
t Lindy was only my stepsister. I knew perfectly well that your claim to Georgy would be stronger than mine ever could be! Because you were a blood relative and I wasn’t! I was trying to trap you into a marriage you never needed to make!’

  She threw her head back.

  ‘When he tried to give me money to leave, told me he knew I only wanted to marry you because you were rich, I was angry! I’ve never wanted your money—never! I only wanted Georgy!’

  She took a shuddering breath, shaking her head as if the knowledge of what she had done was too heavy a weight to carry. ‘But none of it matters now. It’s over. I know that—I’ve accepted it. I’ve accepted everything. And I’ve accepted most of all that I have to do what I am doing now.’

  Her eyes went to Georgy again, so absolutely and utterly unaware of the agonising drama above his head.

  ‘I called him mine,’ she whispered. The words would hardly come, forced through a throat that was constricted with grief. ‘But he never was. He was never mine. Only my stepsister’s baby. Your cousin’s son. Which is why...’

  She lifted her eyes again, made them go to Anatole, who was standing like a statue, frozen. She felt her heart turn over. Turn over uselessly in her heart.

  ‘Which is why,’ she said again, and her voice was dead now, ‘I’m leaving him. He isn’t a bone to be fought over, or a prize, or a bequest, or anything at all except himself. He needs a home, a family—his family. Your family. You’ll look after him. I know you will. And you love him—I know you love him. And I know that Timon loves him too, in his own way.’ She took a heavy razoring breath that cut into her lungs. ‘I should have seen that from the start—that I had no claim to him. Not once you had found him. He’s yours, Anatole—yours and Timon’s. It’s taken till now for me to accept that. To accept that I should never have put you through what I have. I see that now.’

  She picked up her bag. It seemed as heavy as lead. As heavy as the millstone grinding her heart to chaff.

  ‘I won’t say goodbye to Georgy. He’s happy with you. That’s all that counts.’ Her voice was odd, she noticed with a stray, inconsequential part of her brain.

  She turned away, pulling open the door. Not looking back.

  An iron band closed around her arm, halting her in her tracks. Anatole was there, pulling her back, slamming the door shut, holding her with both hands now, clamped around her upper arms.

  ‘Are you insane?’ he said. ‘Are you completely insane? You cannot seriously imagine you are just going to walk out like that?’

  She strained away from him, but it was like straining against steel bonds. He was too close. Far, far too close. It meant she could see everything about him. The strong wall of his chest, the breadth of his shoulders sheathed in the expensive material of his handmade suit, the line of his jaw, darkening already, see the sculpted mouth that could skim her body and reduce her to soft, helpless cries of passion.

  She could see the eyes that burned with dark gold fire.

  Catch the scent of his body.

  See the black silk of his lashes.

  She felt faint with it.

  She shut her eyes to block the vision. Stop the memories. The memories that cut her like knives on softest flesh.

  ‘What else is there to do?’ she said. Her voice was low and strained. ‘You don’t want to marry me—you’ve never wanted to marry me—and Timon doesn’t want you to marry me. He made that clear enough! And now you’re not marrying me I can do what Timon told me to do—clear off and leave you alone. Leave Georgy alone, too. Because he doesn’t need me. He’s got you, he’s got Timon, he’s got everything he needs. The nanny will look after him while you’re at work. She’s very good, I’m sure. He doesn’t need me and he won’t remember me—he won’t miss me.’

  ‘And Georgy is the only person you’re concerned about? Is that it?’ There was still something odd about Anatole’s voice, but she wouldn’t think about that. Wouldn’t think about anything. Wouldn’t feel anything.

  Dared not.

  She opened her eyes again, made herself look at him. ‘No,’ she said. She stepped back and this time he let her go. She took another step, increasing the distance between them. The distance was more than physical—far, far more. ‘There’s you, too,’ she said.

  She made herself speak. ‘I’m sorry I put you through so much anxiety—running away from Greece as I did—but at the time I was still...still in denial. Still thinking I had a right to Georgy. And that made me so...so angry with you.’ She picked the word angry because it was the only safe one to use. Any of the other words—anguished, agonised, distraught—were all impossible to use. Quite impossible! ‘Because I trusted you—just like you kept telling me to trust you—when you said you would make it all work out. That if we married we’d have a much better chance of adopting Georgy.’

  She took another heaving breath, and now the words broke from her.

  ‘But all along you were just telling me that in order to get me to agree to bring Georgy out to Greece. Because with me as his foster-carer it was the quickest way to get him there—me taking him—rather than going through the courts for permission on your own behalf. You knew I was fearful of bringing Georgy to Greece, so you spun me all that stuff about marrying and then divorcing. And to keep me sweet—’

  She heard her voice choke but forced herself to speak, forced herself to say it all to voice every last agony.

  ‘To keep me sweet you...you... Well, you did the obvious thing. And it worked—it worked totally. I actually believed you really were going to marry me—and I desperately wanted that to happen, because marrying you gave me my best chance to adopt Georgy!’

  The words were pouring from her now, unstoppable.

  ‘It’s because I’m not a blood relation that that the authorities have always wanted him to be adopted by someone else! But then there was you—a close relation to his father—and being your wife would have been my best chance as well! That’s why I did it, Anatole—that’s why I agreed to marry you. And I’ve been well served. I have no claim to him and that’s what I’ve finally accepted. Georgy isn’t mine and never was—never will be!’

  As her gaze clung to the man standing there—the man she had given herself to, the man who meant so much to her, who had caused her such anguish—she heard her mind whisper the words that burned within her head.

  And nor are you mine! You aren’t mine and never were—never will be! I’ll never see you again after today—never! And my heart is breaking—breaking for Georgy... Breaking for you.

  It was breaking. She knew it—could feel it—could feel the fractures tearing it apart, tearing her apart as she spoke, as she looked upon him for the very last time in her life... The man she had fallen in love with so incredibly stupidly! So rashly and foolishly! She had fallen in love with him when to him she was only a means to an end—a way to get hold of the child he’d so desperately sought with the least fuss and the most speed!

  She took another harrowing breath. ‘So I can finally do what I know I have to do—walk away and leave Georgy to you. Because you love him and you will care for him all his life. He won’t need me—I can see that clearly now...quite, quite clearly.’

  ‘Can you?’ Again he seemed only to echo her words.

  She nodded. Her eyes were wide and anguished, but she made herself say the words she had to say. Say them to Anatole. The man who would be Georgy’s father—she would never, never be his mother!

  ‘Like I said, I accept now that he d
oesn’t need me. He has you, Anatole, and that is enough. You’ll be a wonderful father! You love him to pieces, and he adores you. And your silk ties,’ she added.

  But she mustn’t attempt humour—not even as a safety valve. Emotion of any kind now was far too dangerous. Being here in this room, with Anatole and Georgy, was far too dangerous. She had to go now, while she still could...

  ‘You can’t see straight at all! You can’t even see what’s right in front of you!’

  Anatole’s harsh voice cut across her. Then it changed.

  ‘But I can understand why.’ He took a ragged breath. ‘I can understand everything now.’

  He reached forward, took her wrist. Drew her away from the door towards the group of chairs. He sat her down in one, and himself in the other. She went without resistance. Her limbs were not her own suddenly.

  Georgy, still on the carpet, seeing her close by, started to crawl towards her, a happy grin on his face. He reached her leg and clung to it with chubby arms. Her face worked.

  ‘Pick him up, Lyn,’ said Anatole.

  She shook her head.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I mustn’t—he isn’t mine.’

  Her throat was aching, as if every tendon was stretched beyond bearing.

  Anatole leant down, scooped up Georgy, put him on Lyn’s lap.

  ‘Hold him,’ he told her.

  There was something wrong with his voice again. It was harsh and hoarse.

  ‘Hold him and look at me. Tell me again what you’ve just said. That you are going to walk out on Georgy. Abandon him.’

  A vice closed over her heart, crushing it. ‘I’m...I’m not abandoning him. I’m...I’m doing what is right. What has to be done. What I should have done from the moment you first found him. He isn’t mine. He never was mine....’

  Her throat closed again but she made herself go on, made herself lift her stricken gaze to the dark eyes that were boring into her like drills...