Rebecca Winters - Irresistible Greeks - Dark and Determined

‘My apologies,’ Anton said instantly.

‘Not accepted,’ Zoe threw back, still fizzing inside with anger on behalf of her father. The baby let out a whining squeak. Settling the small boy into the crook of her arm again, she retrieved his bottle and offered it to the cherub-like mouth.

Anton watched, momentarily fascinated. He had no experience with babies, or children of any age for that matter, but the one thing he noticed about this baby was that, in every way he could see from here, he was Greek. The head of black hair, the light olive tone to his skin, even the demand for attention, said ‘typical Greek male’ to him.

‘That boy you are holding deserves the best kind of life you can offer him, Zoe.’ Tough though it was, Anton knew from experience that it was the truth. ‘To deprive him of the best because you refuse to forgive your grandfather his sins is unforgivably selfish and wrong.’

‘Why don’t you just shut up and go away?’ She launched at him in shocking full volume, making his soot-black eyelashes flicker in surprise and Toby jerk in her arms.

‘I hATE you,’ she could not resist whispering before she pulled in a deep tear-thickened breath in an effort to calm herself for the baby’s sake.

‘Because you know I am right,’ Anton persisted. ‘You know you cannot even afford to maintain this roof over your two heads, which will mean you moving into cheaper accommodation. It is a slippery road to destitution and misery, Zoe. A road you don’t have to take.’

His mobile phone started ringing. With soft curse Anton rose to his feet, retrieving the phone from his pocket before striding off back down the kitchen to take the call. It was Kostas, his head of security, calling to warn him that trouble was brewing outside the house.

‘The neighbours are out in force, and they are not happy,’ Kostas told him. ‘Their lives have been turned upside down by what’s going on here. They want it to stop.’

Another phone started ringing. Anton turned to watch as Zoe uncurled from the sofa and went to answer it. He watched her face go pale as she listened to whoever it was doing all the talking, and witnessed the slump of her narrow shoulders as if someone had dumped a heavy weight on them.

‘OK, Susie,’ she mumbled. ‘Yes. Thanks for warning me.’ ‘It’s been coming for days, Zoe,’ Susie told her. ‘We can’t even park on our own street. Our doorbells are constantly ringing. They accost us if we dare to step outside. Lucy started crying when we came home this lunchtime because we were jostled as we tried to get into our own house.’

Toby sighed against her shoulder. Zoe felt the tremors of a helpless weariness take control of her legs. Eyes stinging, heart stinging, she tried to think of something reassuring to say but she just didn’t have anything. And in the end she was actually glad when the phone was removed from her trembling fingers by a long-fingered hand.

‘Go and sit down,’ Anton Pallis instructed quietly.

She didn’t even argue. It seemed pointless to try when she was barely managing to stand on her own two feet. Coiling back down on the sofa, she hugged Toby to her shoulder and listened to the deep voice speaking quietly behind her. He sounded like her father again. He was using the same even, mellow tones of a natural mediator.

The tears began to flow. This time she didn’t bother to try and stop them. She’d never felt so miserable or so alone in her entire life. She missed them. She missed her father coming home from working at the local garage and stripping off his grease-stained mechanic’s boiler-suit. No matter how tired he was, his handsome face had always broken into that wonderful, charismatic grin. She missed her mother, her soft, gentle mother—plump because she loved baking—walking down the kitchen and straight into his waiting arms. She missed the warmth, the homeliness and the laughter, the way they’d all squeeze onto the sofa to watch the current reality-TV show and argue constantly over who was the best contestant.

And she missed the love, the all-over, all-encompassing shelter of love they had surrounded themselves with here in this modest, always slightly untidy little house.

A love Toby was never going to know now.

The sofa sank as Anton came to sit down beside her. He passed an arm around her shoulders and drew her against his side like a coiled foetus. Toby was fast asleep. He was oblivious to everything.

‘Listen to me, Zoe,’ Anton urged her deeply. ‘You must know you cannot continue to stay here. The situation out there is impossible for everyone concerned.’

‘Make them go away, then,’ she sobbed into his shoulder.

‘I wish I could but I don’t have that kind of power.’

‘It’s only got worse because you came here.’

‘Then let me offer a way to make amends. I have a house with big secure gates and a high fence all around it. I can have you transported out of here and on your way there within the hour if you will agree. No strings attached,’ he added when she pulled away from him, keeping her head down to hide her tear-blotched face. ‘Think of it as a bolthole away from all of this. Somewhere to stay while you give yourself a chance to catch your breath and recover, build your strength up before we start negotiations again.’

Anton could see that she was listening, fighting back the tears while keeping her head tucked down over the boy’s sleeping head.

‘Think about it,’ he urged, piling on the pressure while producing a neatly folded handkerchief from his pocket and handing it to her. She took it from him, which felt like a mild triumph. ‘This has nothing to do with Theo. This is just me offering you what I believe you need right now—a sanctuary, if you like, set in pleasant surroundings. I will not be living there. I have business to attend to overseas for the next few weeks anyway, so you will have the place all to yourself.’

Anton knew he was not telling the absolute truth here. He knew that his killer instincts had kicked in and taken control the moment Zoe Kanellis had revealed her weakened state.

Zoe was trying to talk herself out of Anton’s offer of a bolthole. She hated it that she had burst into tears in front of him too. He was a shark by nature and he knew when to circle his prey. She wasn’t fooled by his ‘no strings attached’ offer. She knew the pulse of concern he was giving off was probably false and that what he was really doing was inching control of the situation over to himself.

But she also knew he was right about it being impossible for her to stay here while the press were still so interested in their story. Just thinking of little Lucy crying because she had been frightened by those awful people out there made her want to start weeping all over again.

‘I want you to promise that you won’t try to pressure me.’ She sniffed into the handkerchief.

‘You have my word.’

‘And you won’t tell my grandfather where I am.’

Did she know she’d just used the forbidden word ‘grandfather’? ‘That is a tough one, but I will try my best to keep him out of the loop.’

‘And when I’m ready to come back home you won’t try to stop me.’

‘Scouts’ honour,’ Anton said.

It startled her into glancing up at him through her tear sparkling eyelashes. Anton responded to the glimpse of electric-blue suspicion by raising a black eyebrow and she released a tear-thickened laugh. He liked Zoe Kanellis, he realised. He liked her courage in the face of all this adversity and her— Well, he liked her in other ways that were totally inappropriate, given the situation.

Still, he could not resist daring another gesture by reaching up to brush a damp strand of hair from her cheek. She did not flinch away. In fact she didn’t do anything. It was really quite weird, he decided, how they’d ended up sitting here staring at each other without either seeming to want to look away.