Imperceptibly, she felt a tiny amount of the tension racking her easing. Then, into the brief silence, a deep voice spoke.
‘So, what are we to do?’
CHAPTER THREE
LYN’S EYES FLEW upwards. Anatole Telonidis was looking at her, and as he did so she knew for sure that something had definitely changed between them. She was still wary, yes—wariness was prickling through her every vein—but that wash of rage and outrage against him had gone. His tone of voice was different too. It was more—open. As if he were no longer simply dictating to her what must happen. As if he were truly asking a question of her.
A question she could give no answer to other than the one she had hurled at his head five minutes ago. She could not—would not—ever give Georgy up!
She gave an awkward shrug, dropping her eyes again. She didn’t want to look at him. Her self-consciousness had soared suddenly, and whereas before she might have found refuge in animosity and resentment and rage against him and his autocratic demands, now she felt raw and exposed.
Anatole watched her sitting there, with the baby on her lap, her attention all on the infant who was busily chewing on his keys and chuntering away to himself. Emotion poured through him, powerful and overwhelming. Even without the formality of DNA testing his heart already knew that this was Marcos’s son. And already he felt a powerful urge to protect and cherish him.
Which is what she feels too! That is what is driving her!
Her obduracy, her angry outburst, were both fuelled by the deepest of emotions—emotions that he understood and recognised.
Love and grief.
She could not give up the child. Not now. Not like this. It was impossible for her to conceive of such a thing. Impossible for her to do anything other than what she had done—rage at the very notion of it! A flicker of a different emotion went through him—one he had not envisaged feeling. One that came again now as he let his eyes rest on her while her attention was on the baby in her lap.
There was something very moving about seeing her attend so tenderly to the tiny scrap of humanity she was engaged with. Her face seemed softer somehow, without that pinched, drained, defensive look that he’d seen in it. The contours of her profile, animated by her smiles of affection for the infant, were gentler now.
He found an irrelevant thought fleeting through his head. If she had her hair done decently, took some trouble over her appearance, she would look quite different—
He reproached himself. What time or funds did she have to pay any attention to her appearance? She was studying full-time and looking after a baby, on what was clearly a very tight budget. And it was obvious, too, from the circles under her eyes, that she wasn’t getting enough sleep.
A sudden impulse went through him.
I could lighten her burden—the load she is carrying single-handed.
But not by taking from her the baby she was so devoted to.
He heard himself speaking. ‘There must be a way we can reach agreement.’
Her eyes flew to his. Back in them, he could see, was the wariness and alarm that he was so familiar with.
‘You’re not taking Georgy from me!’ Fear and the hostility raked through her voice, flashed in her eyes.
He held up a hand. His voice changed, grew husky. ‘I can see how much Marcos’s son means to you. But because he means so much to you I ask you to understand how much he means to his father’s family as well.’ He paused, his eyes holding hers, willing the wariness and resistance to dissolve. ‘I need you to trust me,’ he said to her. ‘I need you to believe me when I say that there has to be a way we can resolve this impasse.’
She heard his words. Heard them reach her—strong, fluent, persuasive. Felt the power of that dark, expressive gaze on her, and the power, too, of the magnetism of the man, the power of his presence, the impact it had on her. She felt her senses stir and fought them back. But she could not fight back the intensity of his regard—the way those incredible eyes were holding hers, willing her to accept what he was saying to her.
He pressed on. ‘I do not wish,’ he said, making his words as clear as he could, ‘for there to be animosity or conflict between us. A way can be found. I am sure of it. If...’ He paused, and now his eyes were more intense than ever. ‘If there is goodwill between us and, most importantly, trust.’
She felt her emotions sway, her resistance weaken.
As if he sensed it, saw it, he went on. ‘Will you bring Georgy to Greece?’ he asked. ‘For a visit—I ask nothing more than that for now,’ he emphasized. ‘Simply so that his great-grandfather can see him.’
His eyes searched her face. Alarm flared again in her eyes.
Lyn’s hand smoothed Georgy’s head shakily. ‘He hasn’t got a passport,’ she replied.
‘That can be arranged,’ Anatole responded promptly. ‘I will see to it.’
Her expression was still troubled. ‘I...I may not be allowed to take him out of the country—?’ she began, then stopped.
Anatole frowned. ‘You are his aunt—why should he not travel with you?’
For a second—just a second—he saw in her eyes again that same emotion he had seen when he had challenged her as to whether she had adopted Georgy or not.
‘You said that the process of adoption is not yet finalised,’ he said. ‘Does that affect whether you can take him out of the country?’
She swallowed. ‘Officially I am still only his foster carer,’ she replied. There was constraint in her voice, evasiveness in the way her gaze dropped from his. ‘I...I don’t know what the rules are about taking foster children abroad...’
‘Well, I shall have enquiries made,’ said Anatole. ‘These things can be sorted.’ He did not want her hiding behind official rules and regulations. He wanted her to consent to what he so urgently needed—to bringing Marcos’s son to Greece.
But he would press her no longer. Not for now. Finally she was listening to him. He had put his request to her—now he would let her get used to the idea.
He got to his feet, looking down at her. ‘It has been,’ he said, and his voice was not unsympathetic now, ‘a tumultous day for you—and for myself as well.’ His eyes went to the baby on her lap, who had twisted round to gaze at him. Once again Anatole felt his heart give a strange convulsion, felt the pulse of emotion go through him.
There was so much of Marcos in the tiny infant!
Almost automatically his eyes slipped to the face of the young woman holding his infant cousin. He could see the baby’s father in his little face, but what of the tragic mother who had lost her life in giving him life? His eyes searched the aunt’s features, looking for an echo of similarity. But in the clear grey eyes that were ringed with fatigue, in the cheekbones over which the skin was stretched so tightly, in the rigid contours of her jaw, there was no resemblance that he could see.
As his gaze studied her he saw colour suffuse her cheeks and immediately dropped his gaze. He was making her self-conscious, and he did not want to add to her discomfort. Yet as he dropped his gaze he was aware of how the colour in her cheeks gave her a glow, making her less pallid—less plain. More appealing.
She could be something...
The idle thought flicked across his mind and he dismissed it. He was not here to assess whether the aunt of the baby he’d been so desperately seeking possessed those feminine attributes which drew his male eye.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, his voice contrite. ‘I can see my cousin so clearly in his son—I was looking to see what he has inherited from his mother’s side.’
He had thought his words might reassure her that he had not been gazing at her with the intention of embarrassing her, but her reaction to his words seemed to have the opposite effect. He saw the colour drain from her face—saw, yet again, that emotion flash briefly in her eyes.
Fear.
He frowned. There was a reason for that reaction—but what was it? He set it aside. For now it was not important. What was important was that he took his leave of her with the lines of communication finally open between them, so that from now on they could discuss what must be discussed—how they were to proceed. How he was to achieve his goal without taking from her the baby nephew she clearly loved so devotedly.
He wanted his last words to her now to be reassuring.
‘I will leave you for now,’ he said. ‘I will visit you again tomorrow—what time would be good for you?’
She swallowed. She had to make some answer. ‘I have lectures in the morning, but that’s all,’ she said hesitantly.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then I will come here in the afternoon. We can talk more then. Make more plans.’ He paused, looking into her pinched face. ‘Plans that we will both agree to. Because I know now that you will not give up Georgy—you love him too much. And you must surely know that since he cannot be taken from you without your consent, for you are his mother’s sister and so the best person to adopt him, that you have nothing to fear from me. Whatever arrangements we make for Georgy’s future it will be with your consent and your agreement. You have nothing to fear—nothing at all.’