Even as he said it his eyes flicked over her again doubtfully. Even putting aside her unprepossessing appearance, Marcos’s taste had been for curvy blondes—not thin brunettes. But her reaction told him that she must indeed be the person he was looking for so urgently—she had instantly recognised Marcos’s name.
And not favourably...
Her expression had changed. Hardened. ‘So he couldn’t even be bothered to come himself!’ she retorted scornfully.
If she’d sought to hit home with her accusation she’d failed. The man who’d declared himself Marcos Petranakos’s cousin stilled. In the dark eyes a flash of deep emotion showed and Lyn saw his face stiffen.
‘The situation is not as you suppose,’ he said.
It was as if, she realised, he was picking his words carefully.
He paused a moment, as if steeling himself to speak, then said, ‘I must talk to you. But the matter is...difficult.’
Lyn shook her head violently. She could feel the adrenaline running through her body. ‘No, it’s not difficult at all!’ she retorted. ‘Whatever message you’ve been sent to deliver by your cousin, you needn’t bother! Georgy—his son!—is fine without him. Absolutely fine!’
She saw emotion flash in his dark eyes again, saw the shadow behind it. Out of nowhere a chill went through her.
‘There is something I must tell you,’ Anatole Telonidis was saying. His voice was grim, and bleak, as if he were forcing the words out.
Lyn’s hands clenched. ‘There is nothing you can say that I care about—!’ she began.
But his deep, sombre voice cut right through hers. ‘My cousin is dead.’
There was silence. Complete silence. Wordlessly, Anatole cursed himself for his blunt outburst. But it had been impossible to hear her hostility, her scorn, when Marcos lay dead in his grave...
‘Dead?’ Lyn’s voice was hollow with shock.
‘I’m sorry. I should not have told you so brutally,’ Anatole said stiffly.
She was still staring at him. ‘Marcos Petranakos is dead?’ Her voice was thin—disbelieving.
‘It was a car crash. Two months ago. It has taken time to track you down...’ His words were staccato, sombre.
Lyn swayed as if she might pass out. Instantly Anatole was there, catching her arm, staying her. She stepped back, steadying herself, and he released her. Absently she noticed with complete irrelevance how strong his grasp had been. How overpowering his momentary closeness.
‘He’s dead?’ she said again, her voice hollow. Emotion twisted in her throat. Georgy’s father was dead...
‘Please,’ Anatole Telonidis was saying, ‘you need to sit down. I am sorry this is such a shock to you. I know,’ he went on, picking his words carefully again, she could tell, his expression guarded, ‘just how...deep...you felt the relationship was between yourself and him, but—’
A noise came from her. He stopped. She was staring at him, but the expression in her face was different now, Anatole registered. It wasn’t shock at hearing about Marcos’s tragic death. It wasn’t even anger—the understandable anger, painful though it was for him to face it—that she’d expressed about the man who had got her pregnant and then totally ignored her ever since.
‘Between him and me?’ she echoed. She shook her head a moment, as if clearing it.
‘Yes,’ Anatole pursued. ‘I know from your letters—which, forgive me, I have read—that you felt a strong...attachment to my cousin. That you were expressing your longing to...’ He hesitated, recalling vividly the hopelessly optimistic expectations with which she had surrounded her announcement that she was carrying Marcos’s baby. ‘Your longing to make a family together, but—’
He got no further.
‘I’m not Georgy’s mother,’ Lyn announced.
And in her bleak voice were a thousand unshed tears.
For a moment Anatole thought he had not heard correctly. Or had misunderstood what she had said in English. Then his eyes levelled on hers and he realised he had understood her exactly.
‘What?’ His exclamation was like a bullet. A blackening frown sliced down over his face. ‘You said you were Linda Brandon!’ he threw at her accusingly.
His thoughts were in turmoil. What the hell was going on? He could make no sense of it! He could see her shaking her head—a jerky gesture. Then she spoke, her voice strained.
‘I’m...I’m Lynette Brandon,’ Anatole heard her say.
He saw her take a rasping breath, making herself speak. Her face was still white with shock with what he’d told her about Marcos.
‘Lindy...Linda—’ she gave her sister’s full name before stopping abruptly, her voice cutting off. Then she blinked.
Anatole could see the shimmer of tears clearly now.
‘Linda was my sister,’ she finished, her voice no more than a husk.
He heard the past tense—felt the slow, heavy pulse of dark realisation go through him. Heard her thin, shaky voice continuing, telling him what was so unbearably painful for her to say.
Her face was breaking up.
‘She died,’ she whispered. ‘My sister Linda. Georgy’s mother. She died giving birth. Eclampsia. It’s not supposed to happen any more. But it did...it did...’
Her voice was broken.
She lifted her eyes to Anatole across a divide that was like a yawning chasm—a chasm that had claimed two young lives.
Her mind reeled as she took in the enormity of the truth they had both revealed to each other. The unbearable tragedy of it.
Both Georgy’s parents were dead!
She had thrown at Anatole Telonidis the fact that his uncaring, irresponsible cousin wasn’t wanted or needed by his son, but to hear that he had suffered the same dreadful fate as her sister was unbearable. As unbearable as losing her sister had been. Tears stung in her eyes and his voice came from very far away.
‘You should sit down,’ said Anatole Telonidis.
He guided her to a chair and she sat on it nervelessly. His own mind was still reeling, still trying to come to grips with what he had just learnt. The double tragedy surrounding Marcos’s baby son.
Where was he? Where was Marcos’s son?
That was the question he had to have answered now! A cold fear went through him. Newborn babies were in high demand for adoption by childless couples, and a fatherless baby whose mother had died in childbirth might have been just such a child...
Had he been adopted already? The question seared in Anatole’s head. If so, then he would have a nightmare of a search to track him down—even if he were allowed to by the authorities. And if he had already been adopted then would his adoptive parents be likely to let him go? Would the authorities be likely to let him demand—plead!—that they accede to his need for Timon to know that he had an heir after all?
He stood looking down at the sister of the woman who had borne his cousin a child and died in the process. He swallowed.
‘Where is my cousin’s son?’ he asked. He tried not to sound brusque, demanding, but he had to know. He had to know!
Her chin lifted, her eyes flashing to his.
‘He’s with me!’ came the answer. Vehement, passionate.
Abstractedly Anatole found himself registering that when this drab dab of a female spoke passionately her nondescript features suddenly sharpened into life, giving her a vividness that was not drab at all. Then the sense of her words hit him.
‘With you?’
She took a ragged breath, her fingers clutching the side of the chair. ‘Yes! With me! And he’s staying with me! That’s all you need to know!’
She leapt to her feet, fear and panic impelling her. Too much had happened—shock after shock—and she couldn’t cope with it, couldn’t take it in.
Anatole stepped towards her, urgency in his voice. ‘Miss Brandon, we have to talk—discuss—’
‘No! There’s nothing to discuss! Nothing!’
And then, before his frustrated gaze, she rushed from the room.
Lyn fled. Her mind was in turmoil. Though she managed to make her way into her next lecture she was incapable of concentrating. Only one single emotion was uppermost.
Georgy is mine! Mine, mine, mine!
Lindy had given the baby to her with her dying breath and she would never, never betray that! Never!
Grief clutched at Lyn again.
‘Look after Georgy—’
They had been Lindy’s final words before the darkness had closed over her fevered, stricken brain and she had ebbed from life.
And I will! I will look after him all my life—all his life—and I will never let any harm come to him, never abandon him or give up him!
‘Just you and me, Georgy!’ she whispered later as, morning lectures finally over, she collected him from the college crèche and made her way to the bus stop and back home for the afternoon.
But as she clambered on board the bus, stashing the folding buggy one-handed as she held Georgy in the other, she completely failed to see an anonymous black car pull out into the road behind the bus. Following it.