‘That you are the granddaughter of a genuine, filthy-rich, Greek tycoon, yet you live right next door to me in an ordinary little house smack-bang in the middle of Islington.’
‘Well, don’t start imagining this is a real-life fairy tale.’ Getting up from the table, Zoe carried their coffee mugs to the sink. ‘Cinderella I’m not, and I don’t want to be. Theo Kanellis—’ she refused to refer to him or even think of him as ‘Grandfather—is nobody to me.’
‘That’s not what this letter says, Zoe,’ Susie pointed out. ‘It says that Theo Kanellis wants to get to know you.’
‘Not me—Toby.’
Turning around, she folded her arms across the ache constantly in control of her body, unaware that she was highlighting just how much weight she had lost over the last few, awful weeks. Her hair, usually a bright and shining golden colour, hung dull and heavy from a scraped-back pony tail which emphasised the strain in charge of her face. Dark shadows circled her blue eyes and her once naturally-smiling mouth had developed a permanent down turn that only lifted when she held her brother Toby.
‘The horrible man disowned his own son! He never once attempted to acknowledge my mother while she was alive—or me, for that matter. And the only reason he’s showing some interest in us now is because he’s been shamed into it by all the negative press coverage he’s getting. And because he probably fancies moulding Toby into a better clone of himself than he made of my father.’ She sucked in a deep breath that turned out to be a suppressed sob. ‘He’s a cold and heartless, miserable old despot and he is not getting his hands on Toby!’
‘Wow.’ Susie breathed after a second of stunned silence. ‘That’s one heavy chip you carry on your shoulders there.’
You bet that it’s heavy, Zoe thought bitterly. With a bit of loving support from his thankless father, her father might not have spent the last twenty-three years tinkering with, coaxing and lovingly polishing the ancient sports-car he’d brought with him to England when he’d run away from a marriage made with the devil. It was only now, when she woke up sobbing in the night visualising the whole horrid accident, that it occurred to her that her father had needed to hang onto the stupid old car because it was his only link to home. With a more caring father of his own maybe—just maybe—her father would have been driving her mother to the hospital in something newer and more substantial. Then maybe—just maybe—the car would have protected them from the full force of the impact that had killed them both.
And she would still be in Manchester right now, studying for her post-grad and Toby, sleeping upstairs in the little room his parents had so excitedly prepared for him, would not have been robbed of the most loving parents a little boy could have.
Wow, she thought, echoing Susie as she drew the burning flood to a stop.
‘It says here that you’re to expect a visit from his representative this morning at eleven-thirty.’ Susie had returned to the letter again.
Theo Kanellis was sending a representative to deal with her because he couldn’t be bothered to come and do the job for himself.
‘That means he should be here any minute.’
Just another person in the long line of people Zoe had had walking in and out of her life over the last three horrible weeks: doctors, midwives, care workers, a hundred different departments from social services wanting to check if she was a fit carer for her baby brother, or if she qualified for any handouts. Each one of them had arrived sporting tediously long tick-box questionnaires that had intruded on her privacy but which she’d had to answer if she wanted to hang on to Toby. Yes, she had left her university studies to look after her brother. Yes, of course she was prepared to take employment if child-care facilities came with the job. No, she did not have a boyfriend she might be thinking of moving in with her. No, she was not promiscuous or irresponsible. Of course she wouldn’t leave Toby alone in the house while she went off to enjoy a girly night out. The inquisitions had gone on and on, each one of them filled with such horribly intrusive questions her skin still prickled with pique.
And then there had been the funeral people, she remembered, quiet, calm and very professional as they had walked her gently through the decisions regarding the worst arrangements a grieving daughter could ever have to make. Those arrangements had taken place three days ago and her grandfather had sent no representative to watch his only son and daughter-in-law being lowered into the ground. Had that absence been due to an awareness of the media hype, or due to sheer indifference?
Zoe didn’t know and right at this precise moment she did not care. He had not turned up. He’d stayed hidden away in his ivory tower while the press had crawled all over the funeral like feeding locusts.
Which brought her nicely to the final list of people she’d been forced to deal with these last three awful weeks—the cockroaches out there who’d crawled out of the woodwork the same day the sensational story had broken. The ones that had come banging on her door to offer her big money for exclusive rights to her story, and the ones that still camped outside her home just waiting for her to step out of the door so they could pounce. Were they out there because they cared about her and Toby’s tragic loss? No. They were there because Theo Kanellis was a recluse who hid himself away on his private island somewhere in the middle of the Aegean, and protected his privacy so well that this story was like a juicy, ripe peach they couldn’t resist gobbling up—even if the juice was messy and the centre held a nasty, crawling worm.
Even the worm had a juicy name: Anton Pallis. The tall, dark and gorgeous global sex-icon and seriously clever CEO of the heavyweight Pallis Group. Pallis wasn’t so picky about getting his name in the papers, business or pleasure. She’d often seen him making a name for himself. What she hadn’t known until this story had broken, was that he was the man who had reaped the rewards of her father’s exile.
A buzz of anger fizzed inside her like a tightly wound ball of living energy, generated almost exclusively by that name—Anton Pallis. Every so often, especially when she let herself dwell on the name, that ball of energy broke free from its restraints and totally overwhelmed her need to remain sunk inside her desperate grief. Was this the Greek side of her she had never previously known she had coming to the surface—this burning desire to feed an unforgiving hate?
The front doorbell gave a sharp double ring suddenly. The two women tensed then looked at each other.
Susie got to her feet. ‘Could just be one of the press trying their luck again,’ she suggested.
But somehow Zoe just knew it was Theo Kanellis’s representative. The letter had stated he would be calling on her at eleven-thirty and it was exactly eleven thirty as far as she could tell from the old clock hanging on the wall opposite. Wealthy men with loads of power expected their instructions to be carried out to the second, she thought grimly as she straightened up to her full five feet six inches, pushed back her narrow shoulders and pulled in a breath.
So this was it, the moment she found out what Theo Kanellis really wanted. She didn’t doubt for a second that he was about to place an utterly obscene price on Toby’s vulnerable little head.
‘Do you want me to stay?’
Heavily pregnant with her second baby, Susie sounded genuine in her offer, but Zoe could read the uncertainty in her face. For all she’d been a wonderful neighbour and friend over the last devastating weeks—sneaking in the back way so no one could catch her, refusing to speak to the press each time she left her own house to do ordinary things like shopping or collecting her little girl from her playgroup up the street—Zoe knew Susie would prefer to back out of this particular scene.
‘It’s almost time for you to go and collect Lucy,’ she reminded Susie, knowing that this was something she needed to face all by herself.
‘If you’re sure? I’ll just slip out the back way, then.’
The doorbell rang again, jerking both women into movement. Susie made for the back door as Zoe went in the other direction. She heard the back door closing behind Susie as she came to stop at the solid wood door at the front of the house. Her throat felt dry suddenly and she swallowed. Her heart had acquired a couple of extra beats. Rubbing her palms nervously down the sides of her jeans, she took a minute to school her expression into something cold and unforthcoming then finally reached out to unlock the door.
In her mind she was expecting some short and stocky middle-aged Greek, with ‘tough lawyer’ stamped all over him. So when she drew open the door and saw exactly who it was standing there, surprise rendered her frozen by shock.
Tall, dark, immaculately presented, he looked like an exotic, dark prince clothed in an Italian suit. Handsome didn’t even begin to describe his smooth, gold, angular features, or the pair of deep-set eyes the colour of midnight which held her own blue eyes trapped like powerful magnets. She had never looked into eyes like them. They made her feel slightly queasy because it felt as if they were trying to draw her in. When the noise suddenly started up as the media frenzy erupted, she still couldn’t break free of them. He was so tall, he almost blocked out everything that was happening behind him—reporters shouting questions at them, TV camera-men and photographers locked in scuffles as they vied for position in their efforts to get the best shot.