Lynne Graham: Reluctant Mistress, Blackmailed Wife

‘The female you assumed was a homeless kid? Her name is Katie Fletcher. Don’t let your team lose her!’ Alexandros warned in rapid Greek. ‘Follow her. I want to know where she lives.’

As his efficient security chief hurried back outside to carry out his orders, Alexandros switched back into working mode. Stepping into the executive lift held in readiness for him, he was immediately immersed in a quote of the latest share prices and the final adjustments to the press release to be made about the merger. When another memory tried to surface from his usually disciplined subconscious, he rooted it out with ruthless exactitude. He was not introspective. He did not relive past mistakes. In fact he had long since accepted that on the emotional front he was as cold as his reputation.

At the end of his first meeting he discovered that he had printed a K and encircled it, and the knowledge of that brief loss of concentration, that subliminal weakness that had defied his control, infuriated him.

Taken aback by the blocking technique of the security man, who had got in her way, and then rudely crowded off the pavement by the heaving, shouting and disgruntled members of the press, who had surged past her in an effort to get at Alexandros, Katie was momentarily at a loss. Alexandros had seen her. But had he recognised her? Had he sent that beefy security guy to ward her off? Would he have spoken to her if the journalists had not been present?

She thought not. He hadn’t smiled, hadn’t shown the smallest sign that a friendly welcome might be in the offing. He was such a bastard, she thought painfully, a horrible sense of failure seeping through her. But even as her shoulders drooped, a defiant spirit of rebellion was powering her up again. She marched back round the corner and through the front doors of the bank, and right up to the reception desk.

‘I’d like to speak to Mr Christakis,’ she announced.

The receptionist who came to attend to her studied Katie fixedly, as if trying to decide whether or not she was pulling her leg. In that intervening moment of assessment Katie became uncomfortably aware of her sodden hair and shabby jacket and jeans.

‘I’ll take your name.’ The elegant young woman behind the desk switched on her professional cool. ‘But I should warn you that Mr Christakis is exceptionally busy and his appointments are usually booked months in advance. Perhaps you could see someone else?’

‘I want to see Alexandros. Someone else won’t do. Please just see that he gets my name. He knows me.’ Aware of the silent disbelief which greeted that declaration, Katie retreated with as much dignity as she could manage to a seat. She watched the receptionist commune with her two colleagues. Someone stifled a giggle, and her anxious face burned as she affected an interest she did not feel in the heavy-duty financial publications laid out for perusal on a coffee table. She was getting paranoid, she scolded herself. In all probability nobody was talking about her—just as the most likely explanation for what had happened outside was that Alexandros simply hadn’t recognised her.

She lifted an uncertain hand to her wet hair and suddenly reached round to undo her ponytail. She dug a comb out of her bag and surreptitiously began to tease out the limp damp curls, praying for her natural ringlets to emerge, rather than the pure frizz that had made her scrape her hair back so tightly when she was a teenager that her eyes had used to water. She wondered why she was bothering. He wouldn’t agree to see her.

While she sat there she finally registered a fact that should have occurred to her sooner. She had got his name totally wrong. Had Alexandros ever even received her letter telling him that she was pregnant? She had sent one to his Irish residence, and when there had been no answer she had sent a second one care of the rental company that had leased the house to him. But would a letter with the wrong name on it have been forwarded? What if Alexandros hadn’t got either?

‘Miss Fletcher?’ the receptionist murmured.

Katie stood up hurriedly. ‘Yes?’

‘I have a call for you.’

Surprise marking her delicate triangular features, Katie accepted the cordless phone extended to her.

‘Katie?’

It was Alexandros, and she was so taken aback by the sound of that dark melodic drawl of his that she almost dropped the phone. ‘Alexandros?’

‘I’m waiting for a fix on a satellite link and I’m afraid that I only have a few minutes. You’ve picked a bad day to call…’

‘The merger,’ she filled in, the receiver crammed tight to her ear as she wandered away in a preoccupied daze. His voice had an aching familiarity that tugged cruelly at her heartstrings and threatened to take her back in time. ‘But that’s why I came. I knew you’d be here, and I have to see you.’

‘Why?’ Alexandros enquired with the most studious casualness. Everything she had so far said was setting off warning bells of caution. ‘Do you need some sort of help? Is that why you asked to see me?’

‘Yes…but it’s not something I can discuss on the phone or without privacy,’ Katie told him tautly. ‘Just out of interest…er…did you ever receive a letter from me?’

‘No.’

‘Oh…’ Katie was stumped by that unhesitating negative, for if he didn’t even know that she had been pregnant he was in for a huge shock.

‘Why can’t you just tell me in brief what this is about?’ Alexandros enquired drily.

‘Because I have to see you to talk about it,’ she reminded him, feeling under unfair pressure and not knowing how to deal with it in the circumstances.

‘That may not be possible—’

Katie lowered her voice to say, almost pleadingly, ‘I wouldn’t have come here if I wasn’t desperate—’

‘Then cut to the chase,’ he cut in with cold clarity. ‘I’m not into mysteries.’

A surge of angry tears burned the back of Katie’s eyes. ‘Okay, so you won’t see me,’ she gasped. ‘But don’t say I didn’t give you the chance!’

With that ringing declaration, Katie cut the connection and marched back to the desk to return the phone. Before she could even set it down it started ringing again, and as she walked away the receptionist called her name a second time. She spun round. The handset was being offered to her. She shook her head in urgent refusal. She was uneasily conscious that quite a few people seemed to be staring in her direction, particularly a thin fair man with sharp eyes that made her colour. Without further ado she turned on her heel and headed hurriedly out of the bank.

She was furious that she had been so impulsive and naive. It had been downright stupid to try and speak to Alexandros again! He didn’t want to speak to her or hear from her, and the news that he was the father of twins would be even less welcome. She reckoned that the only way she was likely to get financial help from Alexandros now would be by approaching a solicitor to make a paternity claim. But she also knew that legal wheels turned very slowly, and would not provide an answer in the short term. So she needed to think about overcoming her scruples and approaching a newspaper, she conceded unhappily.

Alexandros would be very angry with her. A shard of all too vivid memory was assailing her. She remembered throwing a breakfast tray at him and screaming. His expression of shock would live with her to her dying day. It had dawned on her then that nobody had ever spoken to Alexandros like that before, or told him that he was absolute hell to work for and impossible to please. Her disrespect had affronted him. Only when he had been persuaded to see her side of things had he been willing to forgive the offence, and he had still ended up getting his own way. My way or the highway was a punchline that might have coined for Alexandros Christakis.