‘You’ll love it,’ he promised as he walked towards her. ‘Sizzling hot days and delightfully warm nights. Though you will have to protect your fine white skin from the sun,’ he warned. ‘But Melanie’s skin will love it. Whatever nationality her father was, he gifted her with the rich olive skin of a true Mediterranean.’
‘Spanish,’ Claire inserted. ‘Her father was Spanish.’ Then a sudden thought had her glancing sharply at him. ‘Is that why you want her?’ she asked. ‘Because she has the right skin tone to be passed off as your daughter?’
But he shook his dark head. He was standing so close to her now that she could actually see the wry humour hovering in his dark eyes. ‘With a golden-haired, pale-skinned English wife, my child could have been blessed with her colouring,’ he pointed out.
Looking away again, Claire frowned, the conundrum behind his reason for wanting them beginning to irritate her like an itch she couldn’t quite reach. ‘Well …’ She gave a small shrug of one narrow shoulder as if the itch were situated
there, and turned away from him yet again. ‘I’ll …’
‘My family is trying to make me marry again, and produce an heir to my fortune.’
He caved in so suddenly and produced the information that for a moment Claire couldn’t believe that he’d actually done it! It went so against what she’d believed she’d already learned about his calculating nature!
‘They have my proposed bride already picked out for me,’ he went on. ‘And the pressure is mounting because my grandmother is ill. She wants to hold her great-grandchild before she dies. And since I am the only grandson she has it is up to me to grant her that wish.’
‘How ill?’ Claire asked gently.
‘Very.’ The shadowy outline of his mouth flicked out that grim brief smile again. ‘She is ninety-two years old and has just suffered her second stroke. She does not have long left on this earth.’
And he loves her and is going to miss her dreadfully, Claire realised as she saw a darkness come down over those unfathomable eyes, and felt her heart give a pinch of well understood sympathy.
‘I don’t have time to play around with alternatives,’ he admitted. ‘So your arrival in my life was a piece of good fortune I could not afford to dismiss. As I have told you before, I respond to my instincts. And my instincts tell me that we three could make a good team.’ His eyes flicked up, clashed with her eyes and Claire suddenly felt as if she were falling again. ‘When my grandmother is no longer here to see it happen, you can leave whenever you are ready to …’
No hearts compromised, no feelings touched. ‘More like a temporary job, in fact.’
‘For you, yes,’ he agreed, with a small shrug. ‘But not for Melanie …’ he made firmly clear. ‘Melanie will be my daughter in every way I can make it so. I want her, Claire,’ he added huskily. ‘I need her.’
‘But will you love her?’ she challenged.
‘As my own and all my life,’ he vowed. And he meant it; Claire could see that in the fierce glow of a powerful intent that suddenly lit his eyes.
I wish somebody wanted me like that, she found herself thinking wistfully. ‘And when I decide to go—what happens to Melanie?’
‘She goes with you,’ he said—but only after a hesitation that hit a warning button inside her head. ‘So long as you will promise to respect my rights as her legal father, we will agree on an affable arrangement which will suit both of our needs where she is concerned. For Melanie’s sake alone, it has to be her best chance in life, don’t you think?’
For Melanie’s sake, Claire repeated silently, knowing exactly where she had heard those words before, and not liking the sensation that trickled down her spine at the connection.
But, despite that nasty sensation, one important thing she did know for sure was that, having once lived in privileged comfort herself—though not anywhere near the style he was offering Melanie here—and having gained tough experience at the poorer end of the scale, Claire knew which end of that scale she preferred to be.
‘I’ll do it,’ she heard herself say. ‘For Melanie’s sake.’
And only wondered as she did so whether this hadn’t been a case of him caving in first, but simply a very astute man knowing exactly when to play his final card.
‘Thank you,’ he murmured. ‘I will promise you, Claire, that you will never have cause to regret this decision.’
But she was already regretting it as early as the next morning when she came down the stairs ready to tell him that she had changed her mind.
At which point she discovered that Andreas Markopoulou had pulled yet another tactical move on her, by going abroad on business for the next frustratingly long week.
Melanie, in the meantime, was beginning to bloom with all the tender loving care both Lefka and Althea were ladling upon her. Claire didn’t hear her cry once!
Secretly she found it hurtful. For, under Claire’s exclusive care, the little girl had hardly ever stopped crying since their mother had died.
Then, most hurtful of all, was the way her aunt hadn’t once bothered to get in touch with her. Whether that was her aunt’s own indifference or Andreas Markopoulou’s doing she didn’t know. But, knowing Aunt Laura as well as she did, if she’d wanted to contact Claire then she would have done, no matter what her big tycoon boss might say.
But, as the week slid by, at least her body began to heal; the bump on her temple disappeared altogether and her bruises began to fade. Even her hurt feelings had given way to a dull acceptance—along with her acceptance that she could no more take Melanie away from what she was receiving here than sprout wings and fly.
So it was that she was sitting in the solarium at the back of the house, gently pushing Melanie’s pram to and fro to rock the baby to sleep, when a voice murmured to one side of her, ‘You look a lot better …’