She felt suddenly very alone.
* * *
Xandros sat back in his seat. For a moment, just before she’d walked up the steps, he’d had to suppress an impulse to get out and go in with her. Not to let that hapless girl face Stavros Coustakis all on her own.
He drew a breath. She wasn’t his concern, and she certainly wasn’t his responsibility. Rosalie Jones had entered his life briefly and now she had left it again. He would keep it that way and get back to his own life.
He lightened his expression determinedly. After Ariadne’s rejection he’d felt a sense of freedom. He should heed it. He hadn’t wanted to tie himself down—not in his heart of hearts—and now he wasn’t going to.
As the car headed back into central Athens he let his mind play with pleasurable anticipation upon just how...and with whom!...he would celebrate this happy new freedom, enjoying the kind of affairs he was used to enjoying—the kind that never lasted and never led to anything longer than a few months.
His mind drifted over various females of his acquaintance, each of them a beauty, each of them, he knew from long experience, not averse to any sign of interest from him.
He felt an unwelcome frown form on his forehead, and his fingers started to tap impatiently on the armrest. There was one problem he was encountering in his mental parade of willing beauties. Not a single one of them held any allure for him whatsoever. And into his mind’s eye was intruding one that did.
A showstopping figure, a cinched-in waist, endless legs, long, waving blonde hair...and grey-green eyes.
He slammed his thoughts shut. No—that was not going to happen...
Definitely, definitely not.
CHAPTER FOUR
ROSALIE LOOKED ABOUT HERSELF. It was a bedroom. She’d been shown up to it by the manservant, followed by two maids who’d started to unpack her suitcases until Rosalie had halted them. She was not comfortable with people waiting on her hand and foot.
She turned now to the manservant. ‘When will I be seeing my father?’ she asked in what she hoped was a casual fashion, hoping he spoke English.
He did, with a strong accent, but his words filled Rosalie with surprise and dismay.
‘Kyrios Coustakis is out this evening,’ he informed her in lofty tones. ‘You will see him in the morning.’
She opened her mouth to speak, but now more maids were coming in, bringing in a dinner tray and coffee. The manservant bowed, and took his leave along with all the maids.
Rosalie stared at the door he’d shut behind him and felt a headache coming on. Tiredness snapped at her. Maybe, she thought, it was better that she postpone her all-important first encounter with her father till the morning, when she’d be fresher.
But the flatness that had assailed her since landing did not abate, even after she went to have a shower in what proved to be a highly opulent en suite bathroom, with gold taps and shower fittings and patterned marble on the walls.
Padding out into the bedroom, wrapped in a bath towel, she could see the room’s opulence was just as lavish—there was gilding everywhere, from the bedframe and bedside table lamps to the gold-threaded drapes an
d massive chandelier.
The effect was... She puckered her brow. Oppressive.
With a sigh she sat herself down to pick at the food on an equally gilded tray. Lifting the silver dome revealed chicken in a very rich sauce, fried potatoes and beans. Though she felt bad about it, she couldn’t face any of it, and soon replaced the dome, settling for just a bread roll and some strange-tasting butter. The coffee was strange, too—very thick, full of grounds, and there wasn’t enough milk.
A wave of homesickness swept over her. Not for the festering bedsit she’d lived in till yesterday, but for the council flat where she’d grown up, where it had been just the two of them—she and her poor, frail, ill mum, all that each other had had, the two of them against the world, alone in the little flat. It had been small and shabby, and paying the bills and putting food on the table had always been a grim challenge, where every penny had done the work of two, but it had been home...
But this is home now. My father’s home. My home.
The word hung strangely in the centre of her consciousness. Home? Was that what this huge, over-opulent, servant-staffed house was to be for her now?
She felt a heavy sigh escape her. One that should not have. For surely coming here, to her father, would be the best thing that had ever happened to her?
As she went to climb into the huge too-soft bed, with its satin sheets that were too slippery, she made herself imagine their meeting tomorrow. Made it vivid in her mind.
He’ll sweep me into his arms! Hug me close! Tears in his eyes and mine! And it will be wonderful! Oh, so wonderful!
As sleep closed over her she wanted to dream of it—dream of the magical meeting that awaited her. But the dreams that came were not of her unknown father. They were of the man he’d sent to fetch her. Who meant nothing to her—nothing at all.