And most of all it was wrong—totally wrong—that a man like that should be asking for her...
His expression had tightened, as if he wasn’t used to being challenged in any way.
‘I need to talk to her.’ His reply ignored her demand. He merely sounded impatient at her delaying tactic. ‘Is she here?’
Rosalie’s grip on the door tightened. ‘I’m Rosalie Jones,’ she said. She spoke reluctantly, and was about to repeat her question as to who wanted to know, but the expression on the man’s face had changed.
‘You?’ he said.
There was total disbelief in his voice.
The dark eyes skewered hers. ‘You are Rosalie Jones?’ His mouth tightened to a thin line. ‘Impossible,’ he said.
For a moment he just stared at her, that look of disbelief still upon his ludicrously good-looking face, and Rosalie found herself going ramrod stiff at the way he was looking at her. Because there was more than just disbelief in his face... There was something that suddenly made her burningly conscious of the way she was looking. Of what he was seeing.
Me, looking a total fright after cleaning this pigsty all day...
Then, suddenly, he stepped indoors, and another spike of apprehension shot through her, cutting off that burning self-consciousness.
‘What the—?’ she began indignantly.
But he had closed the front door, turning to her. That look of disbelief was still on his face, but he was modifying it, she could tell. Now it was a grim look, as though he were steeling himself to talk to her.
‘You are Rosalie Jones?’ he echoed. Incredulity flattened his voice.
She stared. Why did he sound disbelieving?
She tilted her face—he seemed very tall and overpowering in the small hallway, which was ill lit and shadowed now that the front door to the street was closed. It made her supremely conscious of the visceral impact of the man, from his immaculately cut sable hair to his polished handmade shoes, via his planed and outrageously magnetic good looks and those amazing long-lashed dark eyes, which were raking over her as if he found her assertion outrageous.
‘Yes,’ she ground out again. And this time she got out the question she needed to ask—right now! ‘Who are you, and what can you possibly want with me?’ she threw at him.
With a visible tightening of his mouth, he answered her. ‘My name is Alexandros Lakaris, and I am here because of your father,’ he said.
* * *
Xandros saw the girl’s expression go blank—and then pale with shock. His own feeling was not dissimilar, and had been ever since Stavros Coustakis had dropped his bombshell.
He could still hear the man’s voice echoing in his head, and the exchange that had followed.
‘Your other daughter?’
Xandros’s stupefied repetition of what Stavros had announced had fallen from his lips and the older man’s expression had not changed.
‘Yes. I have another daughter. She lives in London. I am expecting you to go there and bring her here.’
He’d paused, and that unholy glint had come into his eyes again.
‘Assuming, of course, you still wish to proceed with the merger you are so set on...’
Xandros’s face had tightened, as if turning to set plaster.
‘Tell me a little more, if you please, Stavros,’ he’d replied.
His voice had been neutral...unlike the emotion scything in his chest. But he had determined he would deal with those emotions later. At that moment he’d simply needed information.
Stavros had supplied it, still speaking in that deliberately unconcerned way that Xandros had known was a wind-up—one he was equally determined not to react to.
‘Her name is Rosalie Jones. She lives with her mother...or did until recently. I knew her mother...let me see, now...over twenty-five years ago, when I was working in the UK. It was a fleeting affair and we went our separate ways. However, I have always known of my daughter’s existence, and now I think it is time she came here to Athens.’