His hands tightened on hers. ‘Thank you,’ he said. His eyes were expressive. ‘And I can tell you with absolute certainty that when he knows that we are to be a real family now he will be overjoyed!’
A little choke escaped her. ‘Oh, God, Anatole—is it true? Is any of this true? I walked in here and my heart was breaking—breaking in two. Breaking at giving up Georgy, breaking because I love you so much and I thought you’d only used me and thrown me away! I can’t believe this now—I can’t believe this happiness I’m feeling! I can’t believe it!’
Did she dare? Did she dare believe what Anatole was saying to her? Did she dare believe in the love pouring from his eyes...?
Believe in the love pouring from her heart...
There was only one answer he could give her. Only one answer, and she heard him say the words she had heard him speak so often.
‘Lyn, I need you to trust me on this!’ He took a ragged breath. ‘I need you to trust that I will love you for the rest of my days! Just—I beg you!—trust me!’
As he spoke, with his love for her pouring from his eyes, she felt the dam of her fears break—and all those hideous, nightmare fears that had convulsed and crucified her flowed away, emptying out of her, never to return.
And in their place blossomed the sweet and glorious flower of her love for Anatole—love given and received, each to the other.
Anatole! Her Anatole. And she was his—his! And she always would be. She would trust him now—for ever, in everything!
He kissed her again, sealing that love in tenderness and passion, with Georgy cradled in her lap, their arms around him. It was an endless kiss...interrupted by the sound of someone clearing his throat from the doorway. She and Anatole sprang apart.
‘Oh,’ said a surprised voice. ‘Ah...’ It fell silent.
Lyn bit her lip, looking down at Georgy, unable to look anywhere else. But Anatole got to his feet, slipping Lyn’s hand from his but standing beside her, his hand resting on her shoulder warmly. Possessively.
The room was bathed in sunlight—which was odd. Because outside he could see that it was mizzling with the doleful rain of an English summer. Yet the air inside the room seemed golden with the sun...as golden as the happiness flooding through him.
He looked across at his lawyer. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘we’ve just reached an out of court settlement.’ His voice was very dry.
His lawyer’s was even dryer. ‘Well, I’ll just leave you, then, to...ah...hammer out the details, shall I?’
‘That,’ said Anatole, and his hand pressed down on Lyn’s shoulder, ‘might take some time.’
He glanced at Lyn and his gaze was as warm as the love he felt for her. Her answering gaze was just as warm.
‘It might take a lifetime,’ he said.
EPILOGUE
LYN SETTLED BACK into the padded beach chair beneath a striped parasol. Beside her Timon, resplendent in a very grand wheelchair, sat smiling benevolently. A little way in front of both of them, on the beach in front of Timon’s villa, was Anatole, in shorts and T-shirt in the late summer heat, sprawled on the sand with Georgy, showing him how to use a bucket and spade. Georgy, recklessly waving his own plastic spade in a manner likely to engage hard with Anatole’s tousled head, was happily thumping at his upturned plastic bucket with enthusiastic dedication and muscular vigour.
‘I thought you were supposed to be building a sandcastle,’ Lyn called out, laughing.
It was good to see Anatole relaxing, having more time to do so. His dedicated attentions to the Petranokos empire had been successful, and it was on a much surer footing now, with all the employees’ jobs secure, which allowed him to ease back significantly on his work schedule. Giving him far more time with his family.
With his adored Georgy.
And his adored bride.
They had married as soon as they had returned to Greece. Timon, enthroned in his wheelchair, had proved a benign and approving host for a wedding followed by a luxurious and leisurely honeymoon—with Georgy!—on a tour of the Aegean in the Petranakos yacht.
The honeymoon had been followed by a journey back to England to take possession of the seaside house in Sussex that Anatole had bought for Lyn. It would be their UK base for future visits and holidays. And they had attended, hand in in hand, their closeness and unity and their devotion to Georgy visible to the family court judge, the hearing of their application to adopt the baby they both loved as much as they loved each other. Their application had been approved, and now Georgy was theirs for ever.
Every day Lyn spent a considerable amount of time with Georgy and his great-grandfather—a lot of it here, on the beach that Georgy loved, with Timon’s wheelchair shaded by an awning.
‘We’ll start on the sandcastle any minute now,’ Anatole riposted. ‘Once Georgy’s got bored with hitting things!’
A low rumble of laughter came from Timon. Lyn glanced at him. He was looking healthy, considering... He was still doing well on the drugs, and it was buying him some time. The precious time he so desperately wanted.
As if he could sense her looking at him, Timon reached to take Lyn’s hand and pat it affectionately with his own gnarled one. He turned his head to smile at her.
Though she had had some trepidation, they had made their peace.
‘I wronged you,’ he had told her. ‘And from the bottom of my heart I apologise to you. It was fear that made me harsh—fear that you would take Marcos’s son from us. But I know now that you would never do such a thing. For you love him as much as we do.’ His voice had softened. ‘And you love my grandson too. You will both, I know, be the parents that Marcos and your sister could not be. I know now,’ he’d said, ‘that Marcos’s son is safe with you and always will be.’
It had been all she’d needed to hear. Just as now all she needed in the world was to be here, with her husband and their son, a family united in love. Tragedy had reached its dark shadows across them all, but now sunlight was strong and bright and warm in their lives.
Timon turned back to look at his grandson and Georgy.
‘The years pass so swiftly,’ he said. ‘How short a time it seems since it was Anatole and Marcos playing on the beach. But I am blessed—so very blessed—to have been granted this, now.’
She squeezed his hand comfortingly. ‘We are all blessed,’ she said.
Unconsciously she slid a hand across her still-flat stomach. Timon caught the gesture. They had told him as soon as they had known themselves of Lyn’s pregnancy. Timon needed all the reasons they could find to keep on fighting for his life. Another great-grandchild could only help that.
‘A brother for Georgy,’ he said approvingly.
‘It might be a sister,’ Lyn pointed out.
Timon shook his head decisively. ‘He needs a younger brother,’ he said. ‘Someone he can look out for, just as Anatole looked out for Marcos. Someone to encourage him to be sensible and wise.’
She smiled peaceably—she was not about to argue. Whether girl or boy, the new baby would be adored, just as Georgy was, and that was all that mattered.
As if sensing he was being discussed, and in complimentary terms, Georgy ceased his thumping and grinned at all of them.
‘Right, then, Georgy,’ said Anatole briskly, ‘this is how we build a sandcastle.’
Georgy turned his eyes to his new father, gazed at him with grave attention and considerable respect—then hit him smartly on the head with his plastic spade, chortling gleefully as he did so.
‘Oh, Georgy!’ exclaimed Lyn ruefully. ‘You little monster!’