‘You mean you fell into bed with him and, like a lot of females before you, could not bear the idea of having to crawl out of it again?’
The remark was scathing enough to make her lose control over the blush. It did not help that he was more or less telling it exactly how it was. She had fallen into bed with Anton—dragged him there in her own wretched eagerness. ‘I am not answerable to you for anything I do, Mr Kanellis,’ she said icily. ‘So you might as well stop—’
‘Mr Kanellis, heh?’ he interrupted then let out a short laugh. ‘And not answerable to me … Well, let us just try testing that, missy. For here is my counter offer: marry Anton, and neither you nor your brother will get a single penny from me. Drop Anton and come here to live with me, and I will leave the lot to you and your brother when I die.’
Zoe stared at this man she was supposed to call her grandfather. There was fire in his eyes, shot through with unholy amusement because he believed he had thrown her into a loop. Somewhere on the periphery of her vision she was aware that Anton stood like a dark silhouette against the light of the slatted window. He continued to remain silent as if he too was waiting to hear how she was going to respond to this challenge her grandfather had thrown down at her feet.
‘Think about it,’ Theo Kanellis urged. ‘Think about the power I am offering you to avenge the man I put in your father’s place. You can cut him out of this with a simple yes to my offer and scupper his plans for revenge on what Leander did to—’
‘That’s enough.’ Anton suddenly stepped forward, his voice sounding hard, like the crack of a whip. ‘We are supposed to be trying to mend fences here, Theo, not draging the ugliness of the past up again.’
‘But—what is he talking about?’ Twisting round on the chair; Zoe looked up at Anton, whose hard profile was fiercely clenched.
‘He is talking about nothing,’ he clipped out. ‘Your grandfather is just testing you while trying to make mischief for me at the same time.’
‘But …’ Zoe stopped to moisten her trembling lips, her mind spinning backwards to the actual words Theo Kanellis had said. ‘He m-mentioned revenge. Why would he say that unless—?’
‘Gomoto!’ the older man burst out in surprise. ‘She does not know, does she?’
He went off into sudden great roars of laughter. Toby woke up with a start and began sobbing like mad. At the exact same moment the baby started crying, her grandfather stopped laughing and started coughing, the sound scored by violent wheezes as he struggled for air and sent Anton striding over to him squat down at his feet.
‘Now look what you’ve done, you crazy old fool,’ he muttered with an odd kind of roughness as he closed a hand over one of the older man’s shoulders while reaching from something dangling over the arm of the chair.
It was a panic button. Recognising it instantly, Zoe shot to her feet. She was trying desperately to soothe the wailing baby while she watched in growing horror her grandfather fight to squeeze air into his congested lungs.
Then everything turned dizzyingly chaotic when the door flew open to allow a young man to rush in. He had the intent look and the manner of a nurse the way he strode down the room and bent over Theo Kanellis, almost knocking Anton out of his way in the process. Both men went in a huddle over Theo. Toby kept on crying. Dorothea appeared, puffing and panting, with an anxious-looking Melissa hurrying in her wake.
Standing up, Anton threw the nanny a glance. ‘Take Toby away from here and calm him,’ he instructed. Without quite knowing how it all happened, Zoe found herself relieved of her brother, Anton was hustling her out of the room. She caught a glimpse of Melissa disappearing towards the back of the house and she could hear Dorothea scolding Theo. Then Anton pulled the door firmly shut behind them, and was trailing across the hall with one of his hands clamped around her hand while his other hand threw open a door.
It led to a study with heavy dark furniture. Anton pushed her down onto a big red-velvet sofa. ‘Wh-what just happened to him?’ she whispered, still so shaken up she couldn’t stop trembling.
‘You thought that his health had taken a sudden upturn due to you agreeing to come here?’
Sardonic though he sounded, Zoe could see from the angles in his face that he had been no less affected by what had just taken place.
‘I hadn’t got as far as thinking anything about the state of his health except that he looked so—strong.’ She swallowed the last word on a blameworthy gulp, for she’d been so involved in protecting her own line of defence she had not thought to question her grandfather’s show of strength until it had collapsed.
‘Which is exactly how he wanted you to see him.’ Turning away to walk across the room, Anton opened what turned out to be a drinks cabinet. ‘He is a stubborn old fool who wanted to meet you standing on his own two feet. You just witnessed the result of his damn stupid folly.’
Pouring a splash of brandy into two glasses, Anton turned and walked back to sit down beside her and handed her a glass. ‘Drink it,’ he instructed when all she did was stare blindly down into the glass.
Zoe shook her head. ‘And—and the other stuff?’ she asked. ‘The revenge thing that started him laughing like that in the first place?’
Anton knocked his brandy back like a veteran. ‘He was trying to wind us both up. There are so few occasions when he gets the opportunity to exercise his razor-edged cunning these days, seemingly he could not miss this chance.’
But that wasn’t the only reason. Zoe could see he was pale beneath his tan and there were score lines of tension grooving his mouth. ‘Don’t fob me off with more lies, Anton,’ she said on a seething breath of impatience. ‘He thought it hilarious that I did not know something he clearly expected me to know. I want to know what that something is!’
Throwing himself back against the sofa cushions, Anton let out a sigh and closed his eyes. He should have seen this coming. Why had he not seen it coming? He had known within ten minutes of meeting her that she had no idea why Theo and his son had never attempted to mend the rift between them. Zoe believed that Theo was the unforgiving despot who’d cut his son out of his life because Leander had dared to humiliate him by jilting the bride Theo had picked out for him.
He
wished it could have been that simple. He wished even more that he had not let his normal common sense take a hike in favour of lusting after Theo’s granddaughter to the point that he’d convinced himself everything was going to turn out just fine in the end.
Take her to bed. Enjoy her. Put the marriage deal on the table. Appeal to her sympathetic side to get her to agree. Bed her again, over and over, then make this magnanimous gesture by bringing her here to heal the family rift before you take her as your wife. Theo was supposed to be virtually on his death bed. He was supposed to play his role as deeply regretful father struggling with guilt because his son had died before he’d had a chance to try and put things right.
‘You are in this for the money, aren’t you?’ Zoe fired at him tautly.
Anton winced as the accusation cut him deep. ‘No,’ he denied. ‘I don’t need Theo’s money. I have plenty enough of my own.’