He’d smiled, and Xandros had not cared for that smile with every atom of his being.
‘In order to replace my errant former daughter, Ariadne.’
He had smiled again—that same mocking smile.
‘I look forward to her arrival.’
And that had been all Xandros had got from the man. That and the knowledge, both galling and enraging, that he had been both outplayed and outmanoeuvred. Stavros Coustakis still, it seemed, had a mind to be father-in-law to a Lakaris...
Well, he would not succeed! Anger bit into Xandros hard, aggravating his ill humour. There was one reason and one reason only why he’d come to London. And that was to confront this hitherto totally unheard-of daughter of Stavros Coustakis and disabuse her of any expectations that her father might have put into her head.
Marrying Ariadne, whom he’d known for years, would have been one thing—marrying her unknown English half-sister was an absurdity he wouldn’t even give the time of day to! The very last thing he wanted was for the wretched girl to turn up in Athens and plague him!
Just remembering Stavros’s unholy taunt to go and fetch his ‘other daughter’ made anger spear through him. But now there was a different cause for it. A completely different one he could scarcely bring himself to credit.
His laser gaze rested on the female standing frozen in front of him. He was still unable to believe she was who she said she was. Because it was impossible—just impossible!
Whoever Stavros’s hitherto totally unknown other daughter was, she just could not be the woman standing here!
However brief the liaison Stavros might have had with the girl’s mother, his child would have been amply provided for. Stavros Coustakis was one of the richest men in Greece! So his daughter would obviously be the London equivalent of Ariadne, living somewhere appropriate for having so wealthy a father! Somewhere like Chelsea or Notting Hill or Hampstead—
But the contact address that had been supplied to him by Stavros at his hotel a short while ago had made him frown. What would Stavros Coustakis’s daughter be doing in this tatty, rundown part of London? Was she into property redevelopment, perhaps? Seeing financial opportunities in clearing semi-derelict sites and here merely to scope out potential projects?
The actual truth, forcing itself upon him now as he stared incredulously at the figure in front of him, was...unbelievable.
He felt shock resonate through him again now, and his gaze skewered her, taking in every dire detail of her appearance—the stained tee, the baggy cotton trousers covered in damp patches, the hands in yellow rubber gloves, clutching a floor mop and a bucket reeking of disinfectant. Her hair was screwed up on top of her head in a kind of topknot from which messy tufts protruded. And as for her face—
His expression changed. He’d been so negatively impacted by the grim first impression she’d made that it had been all that had registered. But now...
His eyes narrowed in automatic male assessment. Okay, so her complexion was pallid and blotchy, lined with fatigue, and there was a streak of dirt across her cheek, but other than that...
Fine-boned features, a tender mouth, and beautiful eyes that, despite the dark hollows beneath them, are—
Grey-green.
Shock ripped through him again. For all his protest that this appallingly attired, rubber-gloved female with her mop and bucket just could not be Stavros Coustakis’s daughter, those eyes—so incredibly distinctive—proved his denial and disbelief wrong.
Thee mou—she really is his daughter.
Shock stabbed him again—and he saw the same emotion intensify in her frozen face as well.
‘My father?’ she gasped.
* * *
The mop clattered from Rosalie’s suddenly nerveless grip. Her vision seemed to be blurring, the world turning fuzzy...
She had heard the man who had just spoken say what surely to God he could not have said...
Because I don’t have a father. I’ve never had a father...never...
He was saying something in a foreign language. She didn’t know what—didn’t know anything except that the world was still turning fuzzy and she seemed to be falling...
Then, like iron, his grip seized upon her arm and she was bodily steered into the kitchen, forcibly propelled down on to the chair by the rickety table. At last the falling sensation stopped, and the world became less fuzzy, and she found herself blinking blankly.
The man was now standing in front of her, towering over her, and she was staring at him with that weird, blurry gaze. He was speaking again, and she forced herself to hear him.
‘Your father—Stavros Coustakis,’ he was saying.