Oh, who cared what he thought of her? He didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the amazing, fantastic thing that was happening to her.
She felt a tearing at her heart.
Oh, Mum! If only you could have lived to see this—to see the man you fell for finding me! How wonderful that would have been!
The car was stopping and she frowned. They were going down Piccadilly, nearing Hyde Park Corner, and she’d assumed they were heading out towards the M4 and Heathrow. But they were pulling up outside a flash hotel.
Alexandros Lakaris was putting away his phone.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t we going to the airport?’
‘The flight is tomorrow,’ came the answer. ‘I only arrived in London this morning. You’ll stay at my hotel tonight.’
‘I can’t afford this place!’ she exclaimed, horrified.
‘But your father can,’ Alexandros Lakaris informed her.
Rosalie saw his mouth tighten in a fashion that was becoming familiar. And his eyes were raking over her again in that disparaging way of his.
‘He can also afford some new clothes for you before you fly out.’
She thought she saw a sudden unholy glitter in those incredible dark eyes she was so conscious of, try as she might not to be.
‘You should go shopping,’ he was saying, and there was a strange quality in his voice—a kind of smoothness that overlaid something quite jagged and pointed. ‘There’ll be time tomorrow morning before our flight.’
His eyes flickered over her, doing things to her they shouldn’t but did all the same. Now they weren’t disparaging. More like...assessing. She felt a sudden rush of ultra-self-consciousness that seemed to be heating her from the inside.
‘And you might also want to take advantage of the facilities here at the hotel,’ he went on in that same smooth voice. ‘Hair salon, nail bar, beauty room—that sort of thing.’
Rosalie looked at him doubtfully. Surely that would be hideously expensive?
Alexandros Lakaris’s expression had changed again. ‘Charge it to the room,’ he said now, as if seeing her reservations.
She swallowed. ‘I don’t want to cost my father too much,’ she said.
That unholy glitter was there once more. As if something were amusing him. She didn’t know what.
‘Believe me...’ his voice was as dry as desert sand ‘...he can afford it.’
Rosalie frowned. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked uncertainly. She could feel her stomach starting to churn. She pressed her hands together. ‘Mr Lakaris, all I know about my father is what my mother told me—that he was foreign and was working on a construction site. A brickie—nothing more than that. So—’
He cut across her. ‘Let’s just say he’s moved on since then. Now he has others to work for him.’
Her frown did not fade. Could what he was telling her be true? Belatedly she started to join up the dots she hadn’t yet joined. Alexandros Lakaris—with his flash suit and gold tiepin, his polished handmade shoes and chauffeured car—was obviously a Mr Rich. And why would a Mr Rich have been sent as messenger boy to fetch her if not by another Mr Rich?
‘How do you know my father?’ she heard herself ask.
‘We have a business association,’ came his reply, said in an offhand fashion. ‘I agreed to escort you to Athens for that reason.’
She opened her mouth to ask more questions, but he was opening his car door, getting out on his side. On her side a doorman came forward, opening her door and lifting out her suitcase as she stepped out on to the pavement.
Uncertainty still filled her—and confusion.
Could her father really afford all this? A hotel like this...new clothes for her? But it must be true—or why would she be here?
A wash of excitement swept over her. Had her life really been transformed like this—out of nowhere and so amazingly?
The doorman was holding a huge plate glass door open for her and Rosalie went into the hotel, staring around her. It was very modern, with a soaring glass atrium and miles of marble floor.