by Lynne Graham
‘It’s gloves-off time. The best thing for both you and Alfie would be to get as far away from Jordan as you can because if you don’t, he’ll rob you blind like he did me.’ Eloise sighed. ‘I’m sorry to be that blunt, Pixie, but Jordan left me broke. Although I could never get the truth out of him, money was always disappearing, and I didn’t believe the stories he told me. I suspected he was gambling but he laughed in my face when I accused him, and I couldn’t prove anything. If Alfie’s father gives you financial help, grab it with both hands and step away from your brother.’
‘Gambling?’ Pixie whispered, aghast.
‘What else could he be at? Where do you think the debts he’s always complaining about are coming from?’ Eloise prompted in an undertone, mindful of the diners at tables nearby. ‘He doesn’t live the high life or smoke or use drugs. The money has to be going somewhere and, if you’re not careful, you and Alfie will end up on the street because when I moved out that mortgage was already in serious arrears.’
Pixie frowned. ‘But I give him most of the money to cover it every month.’
‘Check it out for yourself. Your name’s on the mortgage too,’ Eloise reminded her drily. ‘Stop trusting Jordan to take care of the budget because I suspect he’s been pulling the wool over your eyes as well.’
‘You think he’s dishonest. That’s why you dumped him,’ Pixie finally grasped and that new knowledge made her feel grossly uncomfortable. ‘But if he was that kind of cheating, lying person, why would he have looked after me for so long?’
The brunette rolled her eyes ruefully. ‘Everyone’s a mix of good and bad. But you had better believe that your brother dumped your son on his rich father’s doorstep because he decided that there was something in it for him!’
‘I wish you’d told me what you suspected sooner,’ Pixie admitted heavily, having been given a lot to think about. It was an empty wish, but she found herself wishing that her parents were still alive because she would have turned to them for advice. She felt gutted by the suspicion that Jordan might have been up to no good behind her back and that he could not be trusted with money.
‘Jordan and I split up and bad-mouthing him to his sister afterwards struck me as bitchy and unnecessary because I’ve moved on now.’
After that conversation, it was a struggle for Pixie to concentrate on work and when she was leaving the hospital, with her brain buzzing with conjecture, she was dismayed to see Jordan waiting for her outside the door because she still wasn’t ready to deal with him. At the same time, though, she knew it was necessary.
Her brother gave her a sad-eyed sideways glance. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said awkwardly as he walked by her side. ‘But I didn’t have a choice—’
‘There’s always a choice, Jordan!’ Pixie cut in thinly.
‘No, on this occasion there truly wasn’t,’ Jordan told her, dropping down onto a stone bench that overlooked the busy car park. ‘You ignored all my advice. You refused to go to a solicitor and apply for child support.’
‘I know but—’ Pixie deemed it too early in the conversation to admit that she now accepted she had leant too heavily on him for support.
‘The house is about to be repossessed,’ Jordan told her heavily.
Pixie turned bone white. ‘That’s not possible. There would have been letters.’
‘I’ve been hiding the letters. I hoped that I could stop it happening, but I can’t, and I had to force you to deal with Sarantos some way, so that he could be there to look after you and Alfie. I didn’t want you ending up in some homeless shelter because I’ve been stupid!’
Pixie’s knees finally gave way and she sat down beside him, plunged deep into shock by that blunt confession. ‘But I’ve been giving you money towards the payment every month.’
‘It’s all gone. I’m sorry but we’re going to lose the house,’ Jordan muttered heavily.
As he confirmed Eloise’s misgivings, Pixie was reeling in horror and disbelief at such a betrayal of her trust. ‘But how could that happen?’
Her brother sprang up again, refusing to meet her stricken gaze. ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said again and he walked away at speed.
Pixie splurged on another taxi to return to Tor’s town house. She was in a state and her exhaustion wasn’t helping. Worry about her brother’s state of mind and the fear of impending homelessness had overloaded her brain. Only a couple of days ago she had been secure and now all of a sudden, and without warning, her life was falling apart. Once again she craved parental support. Jordan had lied to her and could no longer be trusted. In the aftermath of that acknowledgement, walking into the gracious luxury of Tor’s home gave her a surreal feeling and, more than ever, the sense that she did not belong in such a setting.
She went straight upstairs and found Emma bathing Alfie. That reunion got her very damp, but she insisted on taking over because early mornings had always been her fun time with Alfie, and she treasured those moments when he was fresh for the new day and full of energy and nonsense.
She took him downstairs for breakfast, wincing at the formality of the dining room and the prospect of Alfie’s mealtime messiness, but Mrs James, the housekeeper, did at least have a smile for her as a high chair was brought in—complete, she was amused to see, with a protective mat for it to sit on.
Tor, it seemed, was already long gone from the house, which was a relief for Pixie in the mood she was in.
After she and Alfie had both eaten their fill from an array of breakfast dishes that would not have shamed a top-flight hotel, she handed her son back to Emma and retired to the beautiful room next door to them, smothering a yawn.
Nothing would seem so bad after she had had a decent sleep, she soothed herself as she climbed into the wonderfully comfortable bed and set the alarm on her phone. Perhaps some solution would come to her while she slept, she thought hopefully, striving not to stress about the future but knowing in her gut that she did not want to be dependent on Tor.
She could share Alfie with him, but she wanted any other connection between them to be remote and unemotional and most definitely not physical. The last thing she needed was to get attached to a man still in love with his dead wife, even though she had cheated on him. She hoped she had more sense than that, but a hot, sexy Greek like Tor Sarantos played merry hell with a woman’s common sense. She had made a huge mistake once with Tor, but she had no intention of repeating that mistake, she assured herself firmly.
The results of the DNA testing had been delivered to Tor at his office, but he resisted the urge to rip open the envelope. On another level, he knew he didn’t really need to open the envelope to know that Alfie was his child. That truth had shone out of Pixie when he’d realised that she had no doubts about who had fathered her child, but, even more potently, Tor had felt the family connection the instant he saw Alfie’s smile and was reminded of his little brother. The preliminary file he received on Pixie and her brother, however, posed more of a problem. The contents bothered Tor and while he also appreciated that those same facts would make Pixie more reliant on him for assistance, Tor didn’t really want to be the bearer of such bad news when his relationship with Alfie’s mother was already strained and difficult. On the other hand, he couldn’t see that he had much of a choice on that score.
He went home at lunchtime, needing to be within reach of the child he believed to be his, before the results confirmed it. Telling a flustered Mrs James, taken aback by his sudden appearance, that he didn’t need lunch, only coffee, he strode into his home office. He tore into the envelope then, and breathed in deep before he looked down at the page in his hand.
Ninety-nine point nine per cent likelihood that he was Alfie’s father. Ironically, the shock wave of confirmation left him light-headed and then galvanised him into heading straight upstairs. He glanced down at his immaculate city suit and silk tie and frowned, striding into his bedroom to change.
&
nbsp; He was a father, genuinely a father, for the first time. It shook him how much that meant to him. Of course, the first time around he had taken fatherhood for granted. He hadn’t realised that until the night Katerina and Sofia died.
Katerina had put the little girl into the car against his wishes while informing him that he had no right to object because Sofia wasn’t his daughter, but her lover’s. Rage had burned in Tor’s gut like a bushfire. Never again would he allow a woman to put him in so powerless a position, he’d sworn to himself.
He was a father, and fathers had rights...didn’t they? He was an unmarried father, though. That was a different situation. He needed to talk to his legal team to find out exactly where he stood.
But that wasn’t an immediate priority, he told himself impatiently, heading straight off to see his son.
Frustratingly, however, Alfie was sound asleep, his little flushed face tucked up against a battered rabbit soft toy, his bottom in the air. Tor studied the slumbering child intently, wanting to pick him up, wanting to hold him, knowing he could not. Phone the lawyers, his ESP was urging as the recollection of his own family history returned to haunt him.
His elder brother, Sevastiano, had grown up outside Tor’s family circle because his Italian mother, Francesca, had changed her mind about marrying Tor’s father to marry another man instead. Tor’s father, Hallas, had moved heaven and earth to try to gain access to the child he had known Francesca was already carrying, but he had failed because a child born within marriage was deemed to be the husband’s child and DNA testing had been in its infancy back then. Without evidence that there was a blood tie, the law and an antagonistic stepfather had excluded Hallas from his son’s life. That sobering story in mind, Tor phoned his lawyers and, from them, he learned facts that startled him. In the UK, an unmarried father had virtually no rights. He had no right to either custody or even visitation with his child without the mother’s consent.
Pixie was emerging from the en suite bathroom wrapped in a capacious towel when a knock sounded on the bedroom door. She had slept like a log but the instant she wakened her mind began seething with anxiety again. If the house was to be repossessed, where was she going to live? How was she going to manage to work without Jordan to rely on for childcare? Checking the towel was secure, she opened the door a crack.
‘It’s Tor...can we talk?’
‘Right now?’ Pixie muttered doubtfully, stepping back a few feet without actually meaning him to take that retreat as an invitation.
Tor strode in without skipping a beat. ‘Give me five minutes,’ he urged.
His gorgeous black-lashed dark eyes locked to her, golden as heated honey, and she froze, scanning his appearance in faded jeans and a black top with almost hungry eagerness. He looked so good in denim he stole her breath from her lungs, the jeans showcasing lean hips and long powerful thighs. She dredged her attention from him again with pink spattering her cheeks and said uneasily, ‘I need to get dressed.’
‘You’re pretty much covered from head to toe,’ he pointed out gently.
It was true. The large towel stretched from above her breasts to her feet and she sank down on the side of the bed and endeavoured to relax and behave less awkwardly around him.
‘I got the DNA results,’ he volunteered. ‘And as you said, Alfie’s my son.’
‘So?’ Pixie prompted.
‘We have a lot to talk about.’
‘I suppose we have...that is if you’re planning to play an active part in his life,’ Pixie responded.
‘So far I may not have made much of a showing in the father stakes, but I plan to change that,’ Tor swore with impressive resolve.
‘I believe that would benefit Alfie,’ Pixie commented quietly.
‘I hope that it will benefit both of you,’ Tor countered with assurance, his attention welded to her because she was so tiny and dainty in the towel, her curls damp from the shower, bare pink toes peeping out from beneath it. Impossibly pretty, incredibly cute and sexy. All of a sudden, this tiny blonde was becoming the most fascinating woman he had come across in years. It was because she was Alfie’s mother, he reasoned with himself, nothing at all to do with the fact that he wanted to rip the towel off her and spread her across the bed. That was just lust, normal, natural lust. It didn’t relate to anything more complex.
Colouring at the tenor of his appraisal, Pixie shifted uneasily. ‘I’m not sure I understand what you mean...obviously we can learn to be civil to each other,’ she murmured. ‘It’s probably a blessing that we were never in an actual relationship. We’ve got none of the baggage that can go with that scenario. That’s a healthy start.’
Tor didn’t agree at all. He didn’t want to be reminded that they had never been in a relationship. Nor did he want to be held at arm’s length like a stranger.
‘I’d like to have my name put on Alfie’s birth certificate, but I understand you have to fill in forms and go to court to achieve that.’
‘Then you already know more than I do,’ Pixie admitted, stiffening a little at that reference to going to court, nervous of that legal step without even knowing why. ‘I only know that when I registered his birth I couldn’t put your name on the certificate without you being there and agreeing to it.’
‘We’ll look into it.’
‘Look, can I get dressed now?’ Pixie pressed. ‘I’ll come downstairs straight away.’
Tor departed, thinking about the contents of that file and the brother she semi-idolised for his supposed sacrifice in becoming her guardian. What he had to tell her would hurt, but he could not conceal the truth from her when her safety and his son’s could be at risk.
Pixie got dressed, pulling on ankle boots, a flouncy skirt and a long loose sweater. She was off work for a few days and she liked to make the most of her downtime, usually commencing her break with a trip to the park with Alfie and a fancy coffee somewhere. But she didn’t have the money to cover fancy coffees any longer, she reminded herself, feeling guilty about the taxis she had employed in recent days. Now she had to carefully conserve what money she had because she had to be prepared to find somewhere else to live. And there and then, the whole towering pack of cards on which her life and security were built began to topple, she acknowledged with a sinking in the pit of her stomach. Her salary was good, but it wouldn’t stretch to cover both rent and childcare.
Tor awaited her in the opulent drawing room, which had oil paintings on the walls and sumptuous contemporary seating. A tray sat on the tiered coffee table. ‘We’ll serve ourselves,’ he told the housekeeper smoothly.
Tor scanned the outfit Pixie wore, which was eclectic to say the very least, his gaze lingering on her slender, shapely legs and then whipping up to her flushed face beneath the curls she had haphazardly caught up in a knot on top of her head, the hairstyle accentuating her brilliant blue eyes. Natural, artless, everything he had never looked for in a woman, everything he had never guessed he would find appealing.
Pixie dished out the coffee, remembering that he took his black and sweet and handing it to him. She sank down into the depths of a capacious sofa, one knee neatly hooked over the other, her legs slanted to one side while tension thrummed through her, making her small body rigid while she wondered what he wanted to say and what demands he might try to make of her. His name on the birth certificate? She saw no reason to object to that.
‘As soon as I realised that you were saying that I was the father of your child yesterday I asked my head of security to have your background investigated—’
‘Investigated?’ Pixie repeated, cutting in, her dismay unhidden.
‘I’m sorry if that annoys you, but I needed to know more about you. It’s standard in my life to take that sort of precaution,’ Tor proffered unapologetically.
Pixie forced an uneasy little smile. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide.’
‘No, but unfortunately your
brother did,’ Tor revealed ruefully.
‘If you’re about to tell me that the house is about to be repossessed because of Jordan’s debts, I already know. He came to see me after I finished work at the hospital today. It was a major shock because I wasn’t aware that there was even a problem. He had hidden that from me.’
‘His web of deception goes much deeper than that, I’m afraid,’ Tor told her reluctantly.
Fully focused on his tall, powerful figure by the fireplace, Pixie sat forward with a frown. ‘What do you mean?’
‘When your parents passed away, your mother’s house was left entirely to you.’
‘No, the house was left to both Jordan and me,’ Pixie corrected.
‘Obviously, it was in your brother’s interests to make you believe that, but that house, which originally belonged to your mother’s parents, was left solely to you. In fact, so keen was your mother to ensure that the house went to you only that she wrote her will soon after she married Jordan’s father, in the event that they should have any children. Social services were aware that the house belonged to you but at the time that Jordan applied to become your guardian he was decently employed and would have seemed to be a fine upstanding citizen, capable of taking care of his little half-sister...’
Her brow furrowed in growing surprise. ‘Jordan didn’t get a share of the house too?’
‘No. But by taking on caring for you he gained access to a free roof over his head and as soon as you were old enough he got you to sign documents which enabled him to take out a large loan against the house.’
Pixie frowned. ‘The bathroom and kitchen were badly in need of an update. We both had to sign for the loan.’
‘I suspect he gave you forged documents. You were young, inexperienced. I doubt that it took much effort for him to fool you, and at the same time he got you to put him on the mortgage, which enabled him to do a great deal behind your back.’
Pixie blinked rapidly. What he was telling her was much worse than anything she could have dreamt up because he was suggesting that her brother had defrauded her, had taken advantage of her ignorance and used her to try to steal her inheritance. ‘The loan was honest. There was nothing questionable about it,’ she argued tightly, seeking a strand of comforting truth to cling to in her turmoil. ‘The work needed to be done and there was no other way of paying for it.’