by Julia James
A sudden sound distracted her hopeless thoughts. The phone was ringing. The apartment’s landline, not her mobile.
She frowned. If it was Xandros, he’d use her mobile number. He’d flown up to Thessaloniki for the day, to meet with some of her father’s senior managers based there to discuss the staffing implications of the merger when it happened.
But it can’t happen, can it? Not now.
Everything Xandros was doing was a waste of his time.
I have to tell him—I just have to...
The landline went on ringing, despite her nerve-racking thoughts, and she got up reluctantly to answer it.
‘Parakelo?’ she said, hoping she would not get a volley of Greek beyond her capabilities from someone wanting to speak to Xandros.
But the call was for her.
‘Rosalie?’
The voice was female—and recognisable. It was Xandros’s mother.
Surprise filled Rosalie—and a sudden apprehension. ‘Kyria Lakaris?’
‘Yes. My dear...’
There was a slight pause, as if Xandros’s mother was deciding what to say, and that bite of apprehension came again. Never before had Xandros’s mother phoned her, so why...?
Something’s happened to Xandros!
Apprehension sharpened to fear...
‘I am in the lobby. May I come up?’ asked Xandros’s mother.
Fear subsided into wariness.
‘Yes—yes, of course,’ she replied.
The line went dead, and Rosalie opened the apartment door just as the lift doors opened to reveal Xandros’s mother.
Politely she stood aside, to let her enter her son’s apartment. Her mother-in-law—the very last person Rosalie had expected to see—seemed agitated. Apprehension bit at Rosalie again.
‘My dear, I need to speak to you,’ Xandros’s mother said.
She sat herself down on one of the sofas, and Rosalie lowered herself tensely to the other.
‘Has something happened?’ she heard herself ask, not able to keep the alarm out of her voice. ‘To Xandros?’
The older Kyria Lakaris shook her head. ‘No,’ she said quickly.
Too quickly, Rosalie thought. Something had happened—something that was not good.
Yet what her mother-in-law said next reversed that thought instantly.
‘My dear, Ariadne has returned!’
Rosalie’s face lit. ‘Oh, I’m so glad! I know you were very worried about her.’
Xandros’s mother nodded. But her demeanour was still agitated, and she went on speaking rapidly. ‘Yes...yes, I was worried indeed. But she has been, as Xandros thought, with her relatives in Scotland. Now, though, she is back in Greece—she arrived at the weekend. She came to me because of her...estrangement...from her father—’ She broke off.
‘He has behaved very badly towards her,’ Rosalie said, wanting to make it clear where her sympathies lay. Her face lit again. ‘I do hope so very much, though, that Ariadne will want to meet me. I’ve been longing to meet her—’
Xandros’s mother cut across her, her expression constrained. ‘That would not be...advisable,’ she said, as if searching for the right word. ‘You see...’ The expression of constraint deepened and she pressed her lips tightly for a moment. ‘Ariadne is pregnant.’
Rosalie stared. She could not think of anything to say except, ‘That’s wonderful!’
Xandros’s mother was looking at her strangely. ‘That’s a very generous thing to say...’ she said slowly.
Rosalie stared. ‘I don’t understand. Why is it generous?’
‘You are generous,’ said Xandros’s mother, ‘to be so understanding of the predicament your predecessor finds herself in.’
‘My...my predecessor?’ Rosalie’s voice was hollow.
‘Of course,’ Kyria Lakaris was saying. ‘Ariadne was engaged to my son until the moment she disappeared.’
The world seemed to tip on its axis, dislodging everything in it. Everything except one single word.
‘Engaged?’
It fell like a ton weight from Rosalie’s lips. She stared at Xandros’s mother. Shock was knifing through her.
Kyria Lakaris looked at her frowningly. ‘Did you not know?’ she was saying. ‘The wedding was all set—it was a great blow to him when she ran away...broke off the engagement.’
‘They were engaged?’ Rosalie could only echo the word again. Inside, shock was detonating, reaching all her limbs so that she was weak from it. ‘He...he told me that Ariadne refused point-blank to entertain our father’s obsession—’
But Kyria Lakaris was shaking her head in negation. ‘My dear—no. Just the opposite. She was perfectly willing to marry Xandros.’
‘But Xandros...Xandros said he would never be manipulated by my father! He came to London to tell me so!’ Rosalie was gasping, snatching at all the things Xandros had said to her.
His mother was shaking her head again, contradicting her with the gesture. ‘That was after Ariadne panicked. Pre-wedding nerves—I’m sure it was only that! Had Xandros not gone chasing to London, I am quite, quite sure Ariadne would have seen sense and come home.’ Regret was audible in the older woman’s voice as she went on, ‘They were ideally suited to each other, your half-sister and my son.’
Then, in front of Rosalie’s stricken eyes, Kyria Lakaris’s face brightened.
‘And now they can be once more!’ she exclaimed.
Rosalie stared. ‘I don’t understand...’ she said slowly, each word dragged from her. ‘You...you’ve just told me that Ariadne is...is pregnant. So how can she and Xandros ever...ever get back together?’
His mother’s expression had changed. It was filled now with a new emotion. It was pity. Chilling Rosalie to the core.
And a moment later she knew why.
‘You have been married to Xandros for less than three months,’ Xandros’s mother said. ‘And Ariadne...’ She paused for a moment, her eyes holding Rosalie’s with a painful expression. ‘Ariadne has had her first trimester confirmed. So you see...’ she took a breath ‘...there can be no question about it—your half-sister carries my son’s child.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
XANDROS THREW HIMSELF down on the hotel bed in Thessaloniki. He’d just had a brilliant idea. He would phone Rosalie, explain that he needed to spend another day here at the Coustakis offices—the managers there had been only just been briefed by Stavros, in another damn delaying tactic of the man!—and suggest she fly up here tomorrow to join him. Then, his meetings over, he would hire a car and take off with her to explore the countryside of north-eastern Greece.
Hell, if Stavros was in no rush to get the merger done, why should he be?
It would give him yet more time with Rosalie—taking the next few days to show her the resorts of the trident-shaped Halkidiki, with the extraordinary monastery atop Mount Athos. Even get to Macedonia and show her the fabulous tomb of Alexander the Great’s father, with its treasure trove of gold filigree ornaments.
He smiled at the prospect. Two days—maybe more if they felt like it!—of the non-stop company of the one person he wanted to be with!
Rosalie.
Rosalie, Rosalie, Rosalie—her very name was a delight! Just as she was a delight! All of her—all the time. In every way...
He felt emotion well up in him. The same emotion he’d felt last Sunday afternoon, when he’d imagined what it would be like if it were Rosalie who was pregnant, not Maria’s daughter. Say, just by chance...
Or even not by chance...
What then...?
The implications hovered in his head, spreading out through his consciousness, filling his mind.
We’d stay together, obviously—keep our marriage going...
Okay, that wasn’t what they’d originally planned—not what he’d intended or wanted—but that had been then.
..not now.
His expression changed. Now things were different. His time with Rosalie had changed him.
Had it changed his plans, his intentions as well?
Changed what he felt about marriage?
About Rosalie?
Into his head came what he’d said to her when she’d praised the lifestyle Panos and Maria enjoyed.
‘Sometimes when you have too much of something you enjoy it palls...’
He frowned. Was that true of his time with Rosalie? Would the time come when he had had too much of her, so that being with her palled?
It seemed an absurd question!
Do I really want our marriage to end when the merger is done?
His eyes flickered.
A baby would keep us together...
A child with Rosalie...
He turned over the thought in his mind.
Enticing. Appealing...
Perhaps, he mused, gazing up at the ceiling, lost in this strangely beguiling thought, when she joined him here he would draw her out on the subject... On the subject of not rushing to end their marriage. At all.
I need to know! To know what she feels—what she wants.
Surely he was not hoping in vain?
Memory was full within him—of the passion and desire in their lovemaking, the way her beautiful body clung to his, the heights they reached together every time! And it was more than when they were in bed—in and out of bed it was the same. Her smiles, her laughter, her kisses and her conversation... Surely it all pointed to the same thoughts, the same feelings, that were filling him more and more with every passing day...every passionate night...?
I want her with me all the time! Every day and every night! And I want her to want the same!
It was as though a light had gone on in his head, showing him things he’d never seen before...things that were now illuminated in a brilliant golden light. He reached for his phone to call her, to hear her voice, ask her to fly up here.
Before he could pick it up, it started to ring. He grinned. Was Rosalie telepathic as well as all her other manifold charms?
But as he answered, and heard the voice of his caller, his smile was wiped from his face.
‘Ariadne?’
He jackknifed upright.
Her voice came clear over the ether. Sounding fraught.
‘Xandros! I’ve got something to tell you. And it can’t wait. It just can’t!’
Everything in him froze.
* * *
Rosalie squirted cleaning fluid into the bathtub, and started to scrub the inside, her movements as automatic as they were familiar. Anguish filled her—and not just because she was right back where she’d started: in London, broke and cleaning for a living. Just the way Xandros had first found her.
That was her anguish—that single word, his name.
Xandros—the man she loved.
That was the truth of it—bitter now as gall. With every golden day she had spent with Xandros—every passion-fuelled night—the truth had been coming to her. Deny it as she had—suppress it as she’d had to.
We married to make the merger happen. But for me it became more—so much more.
How could it not? Pain shot through her. How could she not have done what she had, day after day, night after night? How could she not have fallen in love with Xandros? Weaving dreams that their brief marriage might last instead of ending?
That we might make our whole lives together—have children, a future... It was a dream I longed for so much that the temptation to make it happen was almost impossible to resist!
Cold shivered through her. Her punishment for so very nearly yielding to the unforgivable temptation to let herself get pregnant...have Xandros’s baby, bind him to her for ever...was unbearable.
It would be her half-sister who would have his baby now.
The half-sister who, far from refusing outright even to countenance marrying Xandros, had in fact been willing—as willing as Xandros had been to take Ariadne to his bed as his fiancée...
A corrosive sickness filled Rosalie, as if she had swallowed the bleach she was cleaning the bathtub with, and into her aching head came his mother’s oft-repeated words: ‘They were ideally suited to each other...’ And now they could be again. I must hope with all my heart that whatever made Ariadne run away, reject Xandros, she can now find happiness with him! The happiness they must have felt when they agreed to marry. Why should they not be happy? They will have everything—each other, their baby, even the merger...
Because her father would have got what he wanted: a Lakaris son-in-law and a Lakaris grandchild—with the daughter he’d originally wanted to have them.
Pain smote her yet again.
Ariadne would have everything.
And I will have nothing.
Only her memories. Her broken dreams. Her broken heart.
Useless tears smarted in her eyes and she rubbed them away with the back of her rubber-gloved hand. Went on with her cleaning.
After all, there was nothing else for her to do now...
* * *
The phone was ringing on his desk, and Xandros snatched it up on its first ring. It was his lawyer. The last person to have seen Rosalie the day she’d disappeared—saying she was filing for divorce.
The word still bit like a shark and he could not shake it off. Its jaws were clamped around him, drawing blood...
‘Any news?’ he demanded.
His adrenaline levels were sky-high—had been ever since Ariadne had phoned him in Thessaloniki, two weeks ago now. Ever since he’d received Rosalie’s text shortly thereafter.
Xandros, your mother has told me about Ariadne, so I’m going back to London today.
Emotion convulsed in him. It was like some bitterly ironic replay. Ariadne had texted to say she was fleeing from him. Now Rosalie had done the same.
Except that it isn’t the same at all! Not by a million miles—not by all the distance between the galaxies!
When Ariadne had fled all he had felt was relief.
With Rosalie it was...
Desperation.
As brutal as that.
Clutching him, crushing him.
He took a ragged breath now, the phone clamped to his ear.
‘We have received a contact address,’ came the reply.
‘Finally!’ breathed Xandros, relief flooding through him.
Five minutes later he’d booked a flight to London—into whose anonymous millions Rosalie had simply...disappeared.
Despite his urgent efforts there had been no trace of her. Not at the dive she’d used to live in, nor at the cleaning agency she’d worked for. She’d just...vanished.
But now—at last—she’d shown up!
He punched in the number for Ariadne and she answered immediately, anxious to hear from him.
‘She’s got in touch! Told the lawyer how to reach her,’ he announced. ‘So I’m flying straight off to London now.’
But his buoyant relief did not last beyond his hot-footed arrival at the hotel she’d given as her contact address. Where she awaited the paperwork that she expected him to send her so as to expedite the divorce she was initiating.
He stared disbelievingly at the reception desk clerk.
‘But she must be staying here—she’s given this hotel as her address!’
It wasn’t the same hotel he’d taken her to that first night he’d found her, because he’d already checked there. And now she didn’t seem to be at this one either.
Frustration knifed in him—and anxiety, too. The credit card he’d given her when they’d married hadn’t been used—so how was she paying for whatever accommodation she was in? The last thing he wanted was her resorting to her own meagre finances... Especially after what she’d told his lawyer—
He snapp
ed his mind away—back to what the hotel clerk was repeating to him.
‘I am so sorry, Mr Lakaris, but there is absolutely no record of Mrs Lakaris as a current or recent guest.’
Nor had she booked in under her maiden name—or the Coustakis name.
Grim-faced, he checked into the hotel himself, going up to his room with a heavy frown. He shrugged off his jacket, threw himself down on the bed.
Where is she?
The question burned in him, finding no answer.
Where to look next?
She could be anywhere! Anywhere at all!
A discreet knock sounded on the door. Irritated at the disturbance, he got up, strode to the door and yanked it open. It was Housekeeping. The turn-down service.
Except the chambermaid who stood there gasped in shocked dismay.
It was Rosalie.
* * *
The blood was draining from Rosalie’s face, and faintness drummed in her ears.
She could not move...was frozen to the spot with shock.
With dismay.
With something that was the very opposite of dismay...
And then Xandros was seizing her, dragging her into the room, holding her by her shoulders.
‘Rosalie? What the hell?’
She heard words breaking from him.
‘So that’s why there’s no trace of you here as a guest!’ He was staring at her, shock in his face. ‘How can you possibly be working here?’ he demanded.
‘They...they provide accommodation for housekeeping staff,’ she said falteringly. ‘I gave up my old bedsit when—’
He cut across her, an expletive breaking from him and then a volley of vehement Greek.
‘We have to talk,’ he said grimly.
He propelled her to the room’s armchair, pressing her down into it. Her legs were like jelly and she sank down heavily. It was as if a storm was breaking out in her head.
Xandros towered over her.
‘Why the hell did you leave Athens like that? Without talking to me first?’ he demanded.
His eyes were like black pits, his face stark.
‘To say what, Xandros?’ she cried in reply.