Lynne Graham: Reluctant Mistress, Blackmailed Wife

After spending her first night there, Katie rose heavy-eyed, but driven by a new and fierce determination. She had decided that she was willing to do whatever it took to give Toby and Connor a secure roof over their heads. The prospect of public embarrassment and humiliation and further rejection should not deter her. Right now she was letting her kids down by acting like a wimp, she told herself squarely. Leanne had been right to speak up. More vigorous action was definitely required.

With that in mind, Katie went to the library to use the internet and see if she could discover any new information about Alexandros. She had tried and failed several times before, and quite a few months had passed since her last effort. But this time the search offered her the option of trying an alternative name, and when she tried that link she stared in shock as the screen filled with potential sites. A recognisable photo of Alexandros folded down on the very first she visited.

It only then dawned on Katie that her previous searches had been unsuccessful because she had spelled his name as Crestakis, not Christakis. She had got his name wrong. She was stunned. That crucial yet simple mistake had ensured that she hadn’t found out that Alexandros was the chief executive of CTK Bank, which had a substantial office in London. All the time that she had been engaged in a desperate struggle for survival, Alexandros had been making regular trips to the UK!

For a while she just surfed, seeing him variously described as brilliant, beautiful, arctic-cool, impassive. This was the guy she had fallen crazily in love with, all right, although she had refused to accept back then that she was on a highway to nowhere. The nape of her neck prickled when she read a newspaper report about a merger announcement expected from CTK the next morning. If something big was in the air, Alexandros was almost certain to be putting in an appearance. If she got up early, she could go to the City, wait outside the bank, and try to intercept him when he arrived.

Of course she could also go the more normal route and ask for an appointment with him, couldn’t she? Her soft mouth down-curved at that idea. She was convinced that he wouldn’t agree to see her. After all, he had given her a useless phone number on which to contact him at their final meeting, and had also ignored her letter asking for his help. No, perhaps it would be wiser not to forewarn Alexandros. An element of surprise might just give her the edge she badly needed; she was no longer naive enough to believe that she could easily hold her own with someone that clever and callous.

Katie left the twins with Leanne at a very early hour the next day.

‘Now, don’t you take any nonsense off this guy,’ her friend warned her anxiously. ‘He’s got more to lose than you have.’

‘How do you make that out?’ Katie lowered Toby and then Connor into the playpen already occupied by Leanne’s daughter, Sugar. As always, she was looking around herself and wishing she was in a position to afford similar accommodation. Although her friend’s home was tiny, the rainbow pastels she favoured made the rooms feel bright and welcoming even on a dull day. Helped by a family support network that Katie lacked, Leanne worked as a hairdresser. Her mother often looked after her grandchild in the evenings, and her ex-boyfriend paid maintenance.

‘I bet you anything he won’t want a scandal,’ Leanne declared. ‘According to what I’ve read, bankers are supposed to be a very conservative bunch…anything else makes the punters nervous!’

Conservative? That adjective danced around in the back of Katie’s mind when she was on the bus. On first acquaintance, Alexandros had struck her as conservative—indeed, icily reserved and austere. She hadn’t liked him, hadn’t liked being treated like a servant, and had hated the innate habit of command that was so much a part of his bred-in-the-bone arrogant assurance. But not one of those facts had snuffed out the wicked longing he had stirred up inside her. Her response to him had shocked her, and shattered all her neat, bloodless little assumptions about her own nature. His sizzling passion had shocked her even more. He had just grabbed her up and kissed her, and then carried her off to bed without hesitation or discussion. She cringed at that recollection, which she rarely let out of her memory-bank. She had acted like a slut and—not surprisingly, in her opinion—he had treated her like one.

CTK Bank was situated in the heart of the City of London, an impressive contemporary edifice with a logo hip enough to front a top fashion brand. She stared up at the light-reflecting gleam of ranks of windows, marvelling at the sheer size and splendour of the office block. Anger flared through her nervous tension, making her restless. Alexandros Christakis was, she finally appreciated, a very wealthy and powerful man. She positioned herself at the corner of the building so that she could watch both the front and the side entrances. Employees were starting to arrive. Rain came on steadily, quickly penetrating the light jacket she wore and drenching her. With her head bent to avoid the downpour, she almost missed the big car purring to a discreet halt in the quiet side street.

Straightening with a jerk, she began to walk very fast towards the limo—if the VIP passenger was Alexandros she didn’t want to miss him. Two other cars had also pulled up—one to the front of the luxury vehicle, the second to the rear. Several men emerged and fanned out across the street. Katie’s scrutiny, however, was glued to the tall dark male descending from the limousine. The breeze ruffled his luxuriant ebony hair. Without warning, a painful sense of familiarity, sharp as a knife-blade, pierced Katie. She would have known him anywhere just by the angle of his imperious head and the economic grace with which he moved. The chill of sudden shocked recognition engulfed her. Her attention locked to his lean, powerful face, marking the straight slash of his black brows, the dark, deep-set allure of his brilliant gaze. Her tummy flipped and she was dazzled.

‘Alexandros…’ She tried to speak but her voice failed her. Because even though he could not have heard her, for she was still too far away, he did seem to be looking her way.

Alexandros had picked up on the alert stance of his security team and zeroed in on the source. But the instant he saw the small slender figure approaching him he knew her, and he was so surprised he stopped dead in his tracks. The wet gleam of her wine-red hair and her pale heart-shaped face struck a haunting chord that plunged him into an instant flashback. He remembered sunshine streaming through a rain-washed window over that amazing hair, lighting up eyes of an almost iridescent green. It had been a stark moment of truth in an interlude that he was reluctant to recall. One of his bodyguards blocked her path with practised ease, just as a posse of paparazzi came charging down the street behind her, waving cameras.

‘Inside, boss,’ Cyrus, his head of security urged as Alexandros hesitated. ‘Paparazzi and a homeless kid…could be a set-up!’

In one long stride, Alexandros mounted the steps and vanished into the building. A set-up? A homeless kid? Cyrus could only have been referring to Katie. Why was she still dressing like a scruffy student? And why had she come to see him? He could not believe that her sudden appearance after so long would be a coincidence. What did she want from him? Why would she try to approach him in a public place? Had the paparazzi been waiting and watching to see if he acknowledged her, ready to spring some kind of a trap in which he was the target? Hard suspicion flaring in his shrewd gaze, he told Cyrus to watch Katie’s every move.

It took a lot to surprise Cyrus, but that instruction achieved it.