by Julia James
I thought we were making a family together! I thought he was happy to be with Georgy and me, happy for us to be together.
Being with her when Georgy slept...
Anatole’s arms around her, his mouth seeking hers, his strong, passionate body covering hers, taking her to a paradise she had never known existed! Murmuring words to her, cradling her, caressing her...
But it had meant nothing at all—only as a means to lull her, to deceive her as to his true intentions. She heard his voice tolling in her head. Over and over again he’d said those words to her.
‘Trust me—I need you to trust me...’
Bitter gall rose in her. Yes, he’d needed her to trust him! Needed her to gaze at him adoringly and put her trust in him, her faith in him.
Like a fool...
She heard his words again, mocking her from the depths of her being. She had meant nothing to him. Nothing more than a means to an end—to get Georgy out here the quickest and easiest way.
To get him here and keep him here.
Keep him here without her.
He lied to me...
But he had not been the only one to lie.
Like a crushing weight the accusation swung into her, forcing her to face it. She did not want to—she rebelled against it, resisted it—but it was impossible to deny, impossible to keep out of her head. It forced its way in, levering its way into her consciousness.
The brutal accusation cut at her. You lied to him too—you lied to him and you knew that you were lying to him.
And it was true—she had lied...lied right from the start...
Sickness filled her as she heard Timon’s scathing denunciation of her—heard him telling her that she had got nothing but her just deserts...
A ragged breath razored through her as she stared out to sea, the wind buffeting her face, whipping away her tears even as she shed them. But even as the wind sheared her tears away they fell faster yet. Unstoppable.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ANATOLE RAISED A weary hand—a gesture of acknowledgement of what the union rep had just said. He was exhausted. His whole body was tired. He’d gone without sleep all night, going over and over figures and facts with the management team at the Thessaloniki plant, trying to find a viable alternative to the redundancies. Then he’d gone straight into meetings with the union representatives, trying to hammer out something that would preserve jobs.
At least he was making some kind of impact on the union. They were listening to him, even if they were still disputing with him. His approach was not that of the former manager, or his autocratic grandfather, issuing to the employees lofty diktats that had resulted in an instant demonstration outside the plant and ballots for full strike action. Instead he had disclosed the true finances of the division, pulled no punches, inviting them to try and find a way forward with him.
He sat back, weariness etched into his face. There was still muted discussion around the table. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep, but sleep could wait. It would have to. Would the deal he was offering swing it? He hoped so. Strike action would be costly and crippling, benefitting no one. Worse, in the terrifyingly volatile Greek economy it was likely to spread like wildfire through the rest of the Petranakos organisation, possibly even beyond, to other companies as well, with disastrous consequences.
To his intense relief the union reps were looking thoughtful, and a couple of them were nodding. Had he swung it? He hoped to God he had—then maybe he could get some sleep finally.
But not before speaking to Lyn. It was imperative he do so! He’d managed to find the time to text her about the cancellation of the wedding, but that brief text was utterly inadequate. He had to see her, talk to her, explain to her...
Frustration knifed through him. He had to sleep, or he’d pass out, but he had to talk to her too. Had to get back to her...
‘Kyrios Telonidis—’
The voice at the door of the meeting room was apologetic, but the note of urgency in it reached him. He looked enquiringly at the secretary who had intruded.
‘It is Kyrios Petranakos...’ she said.
He was on his feet immediately. ‘Gentlemen—my apologies. My grandfather...’ He left the sentence unfinished as he strode from the room. It was common knowledge how very gravely ill Timon was. In the outer office he seized the phone the secretary indicated. As he heard his grandfather’s distinctive voice his tension diminished. He had feared the worst. But then, as he heard what his grandfather was saying, he froze.
‘She’s gone! She’s gone—taken the boy! She’s taken the boy!’ It was all his grandfather could say, over and over again. Totally distraught.
* * *
‘What did you say to her? Tell me what you said to her!’
Anatole’s voice was harsh, but he needed to know what it was that had sent Lyn into a panic, making her flee as she had. Taking Georgy with her...
Since the call had come through to him in Thessaloniki life had turned into a nightmare. He had flown straight back to Athens, raced to Timon’s villa, stormed into Timon’s room.
His grandfather’s face was ravaged.
‘I told her what you’d done!’
Anatole’s eyes flashed with fury. ‘I told you to let me tell her! That I would find the right way to say it! I knew I needed to—urgently—but with that damn strike threatening I had to tell her to wait for me to talk to her! Why the hell did you go and do it?’
He wasn’t being kind, he knew that, but it was Timon’s fault! Timon’s fault that Lyn had bolted. Bolted with Georgy! He felt fear clutch at him. Where were they? Where had Lyn gone? Where had she taken Georgy? They could be anywhere! Anywhere at all! She’d taken her passport, and Georgy’s, but even with his instant alerting of the police at the airport there had been no reports of them. His face tightened. Athens Airport was not the only way out of Greece—there were a hundred ways she could have gone...a hundred ways she could have left Greece!
‘Why?’ Timon’s rasping voice was as harsh as his. ‘This is why!’ He seized a piece of paper from his desk, thrust it at Anatole.
Anatole snatched it, forcing his eyes to focus, to take in what he was reading. It was Latin script, in English.
As he read it he could feel ice congeal in his veins. He let the paper fall back on the desk, staring down at it with sightless eyes.
Beside him he could hear his grandfather’s voice speaking. Coming from very far away.
‘She lied to you—she lied to you and used you. Right from the start! So I told her—I told her exactly what you’d done.’
* * *
Lyn was pushing Georgy around a park. The buggy was not the swish, luxury item Anatole had bought. This one was third-hand from a jumble sale, with a wonky wheel, a stained cover and a folding mechanism that threatened to break every time she used it. But it was all she could afford now. She was living off her savings. Getting any kind of work was impossible, because it would never be enough to cover childcare.
She’d found a bedsit—the cheapest she could get—a single room with a kitchenette in a corner and a shared bathroom on the landing, so cramped and run down it made the flat she’d lived in while at college seem like a luxury penthouse! Whenever she stared round it, taking in every unlovely detail, a memory flashed into her head.
The beautiful colour photo from the estate agent that had come with the title deeds to the seaside house in the Witterings in Sussex...
Her expression darkened. She had thought in her criminal stupidity that it was a gesture of Anatole’s generous sensitivity to her plea that Georgy should not lose his English heritage...
She knew now what it really was—had known from the moment Timon had destroyed all her stupid dreams.
It was my payoff.
Well, she wouldn’t touch it! Wouldn’
t take it! Would take nothing at all from him! She’d left all her expensive new clothes in the wardrobe in Timon’s beach house, leaving Greece in her own, original clothes. Clothes that were far more suited to the place she lived now.
Yet even taking the cheapest bedsit she’d been able to find was eating into her funds badly. She could not continue like this indefinitely. She knew with a grim, bleak inevitability that a time of reckoning was approaching—heading towards her like a steam train. The knowledge was like a boot kicking into her head. She could not go on like this...
And not just because she would eventually run out of money.
But because she’d run off with Georgy.
Run from the man who was trying to take him from her! The man she had trusted never to do that.
Pain knifed her. Pain that was so familiar now, so agonising, that she should surely be used to it? But it was still like a stab every time she felt it—every time she thought of Anatole. Every time she remembered him.
Being with him—being in his arms! Being with him by day and by night! All the time we spent together—all the weeks—all that precious, precious time...
She closed her eyes, pushing the buggy blindly around the little park that was not too far away from the shabby bedsit she’d taken here in Bristol, which had been the destination of the first flight out of Heraklion. As she walked, forcing one foot in front of the other, memories rushed into her head, tearing at her with talons of sharpest steel. Memories of Anatole walking beside her in another city park like this, in the cold north country spring, sitting down by the children’s play area. She heard his voice speaking in her head.
‘There is a way,’ he’d said. ‘There is a way that could solve the entire dilemma...’
Her hands spasmed over the buggy’s push bar. Yes, there had been a way to solve it! A way that he’d had all worked out—in absolute detail. Totally foolproof detail...
He had known—dear God—a man like him must have known from the off that she would be putty in his hands! That he could persuade her, convince her into doing what he wanted her to do!
‘I need you to trust me...’
The words that she had heard him say so often to her burned like fire in her head.
And what better way to win her trust, keep her doting and docile, than by the most foolproof method of all...?
He took me to bed to get me to trust him. Just to keep me sweet.
Until he did not need to any more.
Her heart convulsed and she gave a little cry, pausing in her pushing and hunkering down beside Georgy. He turned to look at her and patted her face, gazing at her. She felt her heart turn over and over.
I love you so much! I love you so much, my darling, darling Georgy!
Yet as she straightened again, went on pushing forward, she felt as if a stone inside was dragging at her. She could not go on like this.
The harsh, brutal truth was that, though she had panicked when Timon had smashed her life to pieces, had followed every primal instinct in her body and fled as fast and as far as she could with Georgy in her arms, she was now on the run.
Hiding not just from Anatole and Timon but from the authorities in whose ultimate charge her sister’s son still was...
It could not go on. She knew it—feared it—must face it.
Face, too, against the resistance that had cost her so much to overcome, that she was also hiding from the truth. The truth of what she’d done...
I used him too.
That was what she had to face—what Timon had thrown at her. Her own lie—her own deceit to get from Anatole what she wanted so desperately.
But it had all fallen apart—everything—and now she was reduced to this. Fleeing with Georgy—on the run—with no future, no hope.
It could not go on. There was only one way forward now. Only one future for Georgy.
If you love him, you must do it. For his sake!
In her head she heard the words she had cried out so often.
I can’t do it! I can’t—I can’t! Lindy gave him to me with her dying words...Georgy is mine—mine!
But as she plodded on through the scruffy urban park that was a million miles away from the Petranakos mansion, with its huge private grounds and pristine private beach, her eyes staring wildly ahead of her, her face stark, she could feel the thoughts forcing their way into her tormented mind as desperately as she tried to keep them out.
They would not be kept out.
You must not think of yourself—your own pain, your own feelings! What you must think of is Georgy! If you love him, then do what is best for him!
He could not go on living like this, in some run down bedsit, hand to mouth. Hiding and on the run. Being fought over like a bone between two dogs in a cruel, punishing tug-of-love.
Slowly, as if she had no strength left in her, she wheeled the buggy around and headed back out of the park.
She had a letter to write.
* * *
Anatole walked into the air-conditioned building that housed the London offices of his lawyers. It hardly needed air-conditioning, because the London summer was a lot cooler than the Greek summer, but the temperature was the last thing he was thinking of. He had only one thought in his mind—only one imperative. He gave his name at the desk and was shown in immediately.
‘Is she here?’ was his instant demand to the partner who handled his affairs as he greeted him in his office.
The man nodded. ‘She’s waiting for you in one of our meeting rooms,’ he said.
‘And the boy?’
‘Yes.’
The single word was all Anatole needed to hear. Relief flooded through him. It flushed away the other emotion that was possessing him—the one he was trying to exorcise with all his powers, which had possessed him ever since that fateful call from Timon.
‘Do you wish me to be present at the meeting?’ his lawyer enquired tactfully.
Anatole gave a curt shake of his head. ‘I’ll call you when I need you. You’ve outlined my legal position clearly enough, so I know where I stand.’ He paused, not quite meeting the man’s eyes. ‘Did she say anything to you?’
The lawyer shook his head.
Anatole felt another stab of emotion go through him. He tensed his shoulders. ‘OK, show me in.’
He blanked his mind. Anything else right now was far too dangerous. He must focus on only one goal—Georgy.
Nothing else.
No one else.
* * *
Lyn was sitting in one of the leather tub chairs that were grouped around a low table on which were spread several of the day’s broadsheet newspapers, a copy of a business magazine and a law magazine. Georgy was on her lap, and she was nuzzling him with a soft toy. It was one of the ones that she and Anatole had bought for him in London, at the very expensive department store and with Aladdin’s Cave of a toy department. It seemed they had bought it a lifetime ago—in a different universe.
She wondered what she was feeling right now and realised it was nothing. Realised that it had to be nothing—because if it were anything else she could not go on sitting there.
Waiting for Anatole to walk in, as she knew he would at any moment now.
There was a clock on the wall and she glanced at it. Time was ticking by. In a few minutes she would see him again, and then she would say to him what she must say.
But she must not think about that. Must only go on sitting here, absently playing with Georgy, while the minutes between her and her endless empty future ticked past.
The door opened. Her head jerked up and he was there. Anatole.
Anatole.
Here—now—in the flesh. Real. Live.
Anatole.
As overwhelming and as overpowering to her senses as he always had been, ri
ght from the very first...
The nothing she had been feeling shattered into a million fragments...
Like a tidal wave emotion roared into her, the blood in her veins gushing like a hot fountain released from a cave of ice. Her sight dimmed and her eyes clung to him as he walked in.
On her lap, Georgy saw him too—saw him, recognised him, and held out his chubby arms to him with a gurgle of delight.
In two strides Anatole was there, scooping him up, wheeling him into the air, folding him to him and hugging him, a torrent of Greek coming from his lips. Then, as he nestled Georgy into his shoulder, he turned to Lyn.
For a moment—just a moment—there was a flash of emotion in his eyes. It seemed to sear her to the quick. Then it was gone.
He stood stock-still, Georgy clutched to him, his face like stone. But she could feel his anger coming off him. Feel it spearing her.
‘So you brought him. I did not think you would.’ His voice had no expression in it.
She made herself answer. ‘I said in my letter I would.’ Her voice was halting. As expressionless as his. It was the only way she could make herself speak. Say the words she had to say.
He frowned a moment, his eyes narrowing. ‘So why did you? Why did you bring him here? What are you after, Lyn?’
She heard the leashed anger and knew that she had caused it. But his anger didn’t matter. She gave a faint, frail shrug. ‘What else could I do? I ran, Anatole, because I panicked. It was instinct—blind, raw instinct—but once I was back here I realised there had been no point in running. No point in fleeing.’ She looked at him. Made herself look at him. Made herself silence the scream inside her head against what she was doing. What she was saying. What she was feeling...
What you feel doesn’t matter. Seeing Anatole again doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because you never mattered to him—you were just an impediment, in his way, a stepping stone towards his goal. It wasn’t real, what happened between you. You were nothing to him but a means to an end. An end he has now achieved.
She looked at him holding Georgy, the baby sitting content in Anatole’s arms. She had seen them like that a hundred times—a thousand. She felt her heart crash.