by Pippa Roscoe
And for the first time, she wondered how many charities she would need to help in order to pay off the taint on her soul. To compensate the damage done by her naïve technical designs. Ones she had hoped would help, but instead had been used for destruction. By her father. The man whose name she no longer bore. The man she had not seen in five years.
‘Are you—’
Whatever Loukis had been about to say, as the limousine pulled out into the busy night-time traffic, was cut off by the ringing of his mobile phone.
‘Nai?’
Before he could press on, Célia felt the temperature in the back of the town car drop to below freezing. A stream of urgent Greek poured into the space, causing her to shift and shiver in concern. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.
Loukis leant forward, pounding on the screen to the driver, and seemed to be directing words both to him and down the phone.
Célia wrapped her arms around her waist, sensing that it would be impossible for her to interrupt and ask what was going on. As Loukis continued to bark words into the phone, his free hand went to his hair, shoving it back from his face in desperation. He looked as if he wanted to tear it from his head.
The limo pulled around in a shocking U-turn, sending her sprawling against him, her hand landing against his thigh and her chest pressing against the stiff outline of his shoulder. He reached to settle her, his hand against her forearm, holding her until the car had righted itself, and finally hung up the phone, staring ahead of him as if he had just seen a ghost.
Célia bit down on her lip, stopping the questions running through her mind.
‘We have to... I...’
She had never seen Loukis stuck for words and could not even begin to imagine what had happened to cause him such...panic.
‘We don’t have time—’
‘It’s okay,’ she assured him.
‘I—’
‘Loukis, it’s okay,’ she repeated, pulling herself from his grasp, knowing that they were no longer going to her hotel room, and very much hoping that what she had said to him was the truth.
CHAPTER THREE
LOUKIS LAUNCHED HIMSELF from the car before it could even draw to a halt. His blood was pounding so loudly in his ears that he barely heard Célia follow him from the car and up the steps of his Athens estate. The door swung open before he could grab the handle and the terrified face of the usually competent American nanny loomed in the doorway.
‘Have you found her?’ he demanded.
Her tear-stained cheeks trembled as she shook her head in denial. Tara had been with them for the three years since Meredith had deposited his sister on his doorstep, a seven-year-old who had spoken not even a word of Greek and had since found the language deeply difficult to master.
He bit out a curse and ran his fingers through already tousled hair. He stalked to the bottom of the staircase in the hallway and shouted, ‘Annabelle,’ as loudly as he could. Hoping that if she were somewhere in the house, the sheer ferocity of his tone would draw her out. That she would sense his fear and come running. But only silence met his call.
He spun round on the poor upset woman just as Célia reached the entrance to the estate, staring confusedly between him and Tara. He didn’t have time for this, didn’t have time—or words—to explain to Célia what he’d brought her into.
‘What happened?’ he demanded.
‘I don’t know... She had been upset all afternoon. She didn’t want to go...’ At this, Tara cast a look towards Célia, clearly unsure about what she could and couldn’t say in front of this stranger. Loukis waved a hand—he’d deal with that later. Now, he just needed to find Annabelle. Tara took a deep breath. ‘She doesn’t want to go to her mother. I’d put her to bed at seven this evening, just like always, and when I went to check on her, she....’ Tara’s eyes welled and a half-wail threatened to undo him.
She could be anywhere. Panic, like he’d never known before, reached into his chest and pulled at his breath. His hands began to tremble as if he no longer had control over his own body.
‘How old is she?’ Célia asked, continuing in English, clearly grasping the situation from the brief conversation.
‘Ten,’ replied Tara.
‘And did you go somewhere this afternoon, or are there any favourite hiding places she had?’
Loukis’s mind flashed back to his own childhood. His own favourite hiding places and the many, many times that he’d run away himself. Christos, Meredith had been back in her daughter’s life for only six months and the effect on Annabelle was already devastating. She had never run away before. She had never run from him.
He eyed a vase on the table stand in the hallway and wanted to throw it against the wall, anything to expel some of this fear, this anger, this rage.
‘Did you check the pool house? I’m going to check the pool house.’
‘Should we call the police?’
Tara’s question stopped him in his tracks. Should he? He hated the fact that the first place his mind went was not the immediate safety of his sister, but the long term. If he called the police, it would be on record, and it would desperately affect the custody battle—no matter that Meredith would have been the main cause of it. But if something had happened to Annabelle...
‘Do you think that she could have left the estate?’ Célia questioned. ‘Would she have been able to leave through the front door—or anywhere from the garden?’
Tara shook her head. ‘I’ve been in the sitting room, so would have known if she’d passed me to get out through the front door. And the garden is walled and gated...’ but she shrugged her shoulders helplessly.
Célia rubbed Tara’s arm a little—a gesture of consolation and support for a complete stranger that struck him deeply for just a second, before all the fears and thoughts crashed through his painfully chaotic brain.
‘Then we give it an hour, I think, before calling the police. But perhaps you could ask the driver to check the surrounding streets, or any parks she liked to visit?’
Tara cast a hopeful look towards Loukis, who nodded his assent. The nanny disappeared out into the night while thoughts of Annabelle being alone out there in the dark shook him to the core.
‘Why don’t you go and check the pool house, as you said, and perhaps any other places in the garden. In the meantime, I’ll head to the top of the house and work my way down. Perhaps fresh eyes might help.’
He was as thankful for her calm efficiency as he was irritated by it. He was usually the calm head in the crisis, he usually knew what to do. But this?
‘If I find her...’
‘She speaks English fluently,’ he said, before heading out into the night himself, his only thought to find Annabelle.
As Célia made her way up the large sweeping marble staircase, she struggled for some of the calm she had somehow been able to project on two people who seemed absolutely terrified beyond their wits. Had she made the right suggestion not to call the police? Was it actually the height of stupidity not to do so?
But that was only one path her mind took. The other was that Loukis had a ten-year-old child. He must have been quite young when she was born, not that that mattered. But the fact that he had apparently been living a playboy lifestyle while his child had been in nappies? Was it possible he had not known about her then? Indignation about his playboy lifestyle all the while he had a child reared in her mind. Could he have done that knowing he had a daughter? Her mind was spinning with all the unanswered questions.
As a child Célia had never run away. It had simply never occurred to her to disappoint her father even more than he already had been. She had grown up with impossible wealth, but the cost of it had been loneliness and emotional distance. Célia’s birth was traumatic for her mother, who had then been unable to carry another child, thus failing to provide her father with the heir he had so desperately wanted.
And so he had simply removed himself from her life, long before she could do and had done the same. She would spend hours trying vainly to catch even a glimpse of him when he finally returned from his office, or the few days he might be home at the same time as her boarding school holidays. All that hope, all that yearning still ran through the pain and anger she’d drawn around her in the last five years.
But she forced those aside as she came to the top of the large estate, sighing at the sheer number of rooms and spaces that a ten-year-old could hide in and not even knowing where to begin.
She walked along the hallway all the way to the end and opened the door to a master bedroom. Instantly she was hit by a familiar scent—Loukis’s aftershave. Lit only by the moon, the room was cast in shadow, but she could make out an impossibly large bed with dark sheets, perfectly made. Everything about the room was neat and tidy, and Célia struggled with the feeling of imposing, of trespassing where she should not. But she did have a missing girl to find, so she quickly and efficiently looked wherever she thought this Annabelle might be able to hide. Beneath the bed, the deeply impressive walk-in wardrobes, the en suite bathroom. All the while unable to shake the sense of him around her. Having thoroughly investigated the space, she left, quietly closing the door as if somehow that could excuse the intrusion she felt she had made.
The next room down on the left was...completely different. The lights had been left on, so the beautiful soft pink walls seemed to glow. White, fluffy fairy lights hung against the wall beside another impossibly large bed with a princess canopy. Célia couldn’t help but smile, thinking it close to every little girl’s dream. Unlike the near ruthless tidiness of Loukis’s room, Annabelle’s was strewn with open books, stickers, pens and cut pieces of paper. Clothes were scattered on the floor, stuffed toys in various heaps marked the edges of the room, shoes and a dressing gown discarded lazily by the wardrobe.
Célia frowned. Surely if Annabelle had run away from the house, she would have taken her shoes and even the coat that still hung on the back of the door. Not knowing what could have set the girl off, aside from Tara saying that she hadn’t wanted to go and see her mother, it was hard to say just how far she might have wanted to run. But Célia didn’t think that she really would have gone far.
As she made her way out into the hall, she thought she heard something. A sniffle, perhaps? But not from the room she had just left. She glanced up and down the hallway, seeing several doorways that could lead off into more rooms. She was about to leave when she heard the sound again.
Torn between not wanting to scare the girl and letting Loukis know that she might have found the child, she realised that even Loukis would want Annabelle to be the priority. Célia popped back into the girl’s room and retrieved the stuffed toy that took pride of place on Annabelle’s bed and returned to the hallway, folding herself into a cross-legged position on the floor.
‘Well, Mr Bear. It’s very nice to meet you. But I wondered if you could help me, because I’m looking for a little girl called Annabelle. You see, Loukis is very worried about her...’
She held the toy to her ear, hoping that this would work. Otherwise, she really was going to look quite foolish.
‘I know,’ she said replying to nothing. ‘It’s very hard for an adult to be so scared.’
A crack appeared in a doorway a few metres from where Célia was sitting. It was just a sliver of darkness, but it was enough to give Célia hope.
‘I’m sure it’s hard for a bear to be scared too,’ she pressed on, asking whoever it was out there to forgive her for laying such a guilt trip on a ten-year-old child.
The door widened a bit more and Célia was sure that she could make out a little foot at the bottom. Perhaps even a flash of pink pyjamas.
‘But I am sure that Annabelle is okay, Mr Bear.’
‘His name is Alfred,’ came a voice from behind the door.
‘Alfred,’ Célia exclaimed. ‘What a truly marvellous name. It is very nice to meet you Alfred. My name is Célia.’ She shook the little bear’s paw all the while studiously ignoring Annabelle and instead focusing on the bear as if he were the most important thing in the world. Célia’s heartbeat had risen dramatically the moment she sensed Annabelle, but now she knew she was safe in the house, her pulse slowed even as she was desperate to call out to Loukis.
‘Is Loukis very scared?’
‘A little,’ she said, finally turning to take in the girl. ‘But nothing he won’t get over,’ she said with a smile at the little dark, curly-haired girl with tears shimmering in her eyes.
‘I didn’t want him to be scared.’
‘I know, ma chérie.’
Annabelle came to sit beside her on the floor of the hallway. ‘Why am I a cherry?’
Célia smiled, a true, wide glorious smile. ‘Well, you are deliciously pink, and sweet and I think...yes, I can most definitely see a stalk growing from the top of your head.’
‘No, you can’t.’ Annabelle giggled.
‘Yes, I can,’ Célia insisted, grasping nothing but air just a few inches above the girl’s head. ‘See?’
She couldn’t help but laugh as Annabelle craned her neck to try and look above her head and was delighted when Annabelle joined in.
Through the bannisters, just over Annabelle’s shoulder, she caught sight of Loukis, who immediately pressed a finger to his lips, clearly not wanting to interrupt. She saw him lean back against the wall, and inhale a silent, but shaky breath of relief.
And as the adrenaline crashed down through her body, Célia was torn between an irascible fury that he was foisting this sweet adorable little girl on a mother who she clearly did not want to see, presumably so he could go about his playboy ways, and the swipe of her conscience reminding her that it was none of her business either way.
‘I think that Alfred is a little tired after all this evening’s excitement. What about you?’ she said to Annabelle.
Loukis closed the door to Annabelle’s bedroom, putting the phone he’d just checked back into his pocket and heaving the deepest sigh of relief that he had ever breathed. The moment he had heard Annabelle’s giggle from the floor above, he’d wanted to sweep her up in his arms and never let go. And it was precisely that which made him surer than ever that he could not let Meredith gain custody. Not even for a second. Annabelle had been so devastated by the return of her absent mother she had run away. She could have been...
He stopped his mind from reaching all the dark places that had nearly consumed him in the last two hours. She was safe. And he would do whatever it took to keep her that way. Especially in light of the press’s recent and most devastating blow. He stalked down the stairs and into the living area where Célia was sitting having a drink with Tara, who was still looking deeply upset.
‘Mr Liordis, I’m so very—’
He cut off her words with a slash of his hand through the air. ‘It’s fine. She’s safe. You may go,’ he instructed. He certainly didn’t need a witness to his next conversation with Célia.
Tara put down her drink, casting a watery-eyed glance at each of them, before retreating upstairs to her room.
As Célia moved to do the same with her glass, he took a seat opposite her, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. She seemed to realise that the gesture spoke of a future conversation and pulled the glass back to her as if unsure of what was going to happen next.
‘I...’ He stalled, trying to order his thoughts. Knowing what needed to be done and yet somehow wanting to put it off, if only for a moment. ‘Thank you. For this evening.’
Célia nodded, but said nothing. He could sense a storm brewing behind that burnt amber gaze. It vibrated from her, lashing against his skin from across the space between them. Her cupid’s bow lips had thinned, emotion had painted rose-coloured slashes on her cheekbones, and he welcomed it. Welcomed the fight he desired as much as she seemed to. An
ything to release all this pent-up, unspent adrenaline.
‘Out with it,’ he commanded.
‘It has absolutely nothing to do with me, Mr Liordis.’
He gave her a look that communicated the exact thought of, Oh, come on.
‘Fine. Really? You leave a deeply distraught ten-year-old girl with a nanny who, by all accounts, was on the phone to her boyfriend for half the bloody night, while you were out there schmoozing with celebrities for what? Restoring your all-important reputation?’
‘If you’ll remember, one of your conditions about holding the event in the first place dictated my presence.’
‘Not to the detriment of the peace of mind of a child.’
‘Yet when I did do precisely as you ask on the night of the Kinley charity event, I was lambasted by both the press and you,’ he ground out, barely able to keep the frustration from his tone.
Brows furrowed, Célia seemed to take in this new piece of information.
‘Why not just say it was because of your daughter?’
‘She’s not my daughter.’ He’d known that would have been her conclusion. It would have been anyone’s conclusion. Especially for someone with his reputation. ‘She is my sister.’ He took a deep breath, knowing that he had no other choice but to come clean with the entire story—something he hadn’t done with his closest friends, let alone a stranger. Though he couldn’t really say that Célia felt like a stranger as such. But if he was to get her to agree to his plan, he would have to explain.
‘My half-sister,’ he clarified. ‘Meredith, our mother,’ he said, barely able to say the words without scorching disdain dripping from every syllable, ‘had her five years after my parents had divorced.’
‘Who is...?’ Célia trailed off, appearing to regret her interruption.
‘The father?’ He shrugged. ‘If Meredith knows, she’s never said. I would imagine that he’s not an option, otherwise Annabelle would never have ended up with me. Three years ago she was dropped off on my doorstep, with no belongings, clothing, books, toys or otherwise and I was told by Meredith, as she practically leapt into the waiting car, to “take care of her”.’