Surely, he thought, that must give her the reassurance that would finally get her to make long-term plans for the infant’s upbringing?
But her expression was still withdrawn. Anatole felt determination steal through him. Whatever it took— whatever!—he would ensure that his Georgy was reunited with his father’s family.
Whatever it took.
He took a breath, looking down at the baby and at the aunt who held him.
‘I will see myself out,’ he told her. ‘Do not disturb yourself.’
Then he was gone.
In the silence that followed his departure the only sound was Georgy contentedly chewing on his plastic keys. Lyn’s arms tightened unconsciously around him. She felt weak and shaky and devastated. As if a tsunami had swept over her, drowning her. Her expression was stark.
An overwhelming impulse was coursing through her, imperative in its compulsive force.
The impulse to run. Run far and fast and right away! Run until she had hidden herself from the danger that threatened her—threatened her beloved Georgy! The danger that was in the very person of the tall, dark figure of Anatole Telonidis.
Fear knifed through her.
* * *
Anatole threw himself into the back of his car and instructed his driver to head back to the hotel. As the car moved off he got out his mobile. It was time—most definitely time—to phone Timon and tell him what he had discovered.
Who he had discovered.
He had kept everything from Timon until now, loath to raise hopes he could not fulfil. But now—with or without DNA testing—every bone in his body was telling him that he had found Marcos’s son.
The son that changed everything.
As his call was put through to his grandfather, and Timon’s strained, stricken voice greeted him, Anatole began to speak.
The effect was everything he’d prayed for! Within minutes Timon had become a changed man—a man who had suddenly, miraculously, been given a reason to live. A man who now had only one overriding goal in his life.
‘Bring him to me! Bring me Marcos’s boy! Do anything and everything you need to get him here!’
Hope had surged in his grandfather’s voice. Hope and absolute determination.
‘I will,’ Anatole replied. ‘I will do everything I have to do.’
But as he finished the call his expression changed. Just what ‘everything’ would need to be he did not fully know. He knew only that, whatever it was, it would all depend on getting Lyn Brandon to agree to it.
As the boy’s closest living relative—sister of his mother—his current caregiver and foster mother, with the strongest claim to become Georgy’s adoptive mother, it was she who held all the aces.
What would it take to persuade her to let Marcos’s son be raised in Greece?
Whatever it was—he had to discover it.
As his mind started to work relentlessly through all the implications and arguments and possibilities a notion started to take shape within his head.
A notion so radical, so drastic, so...outrageous that it stopped him in his tracks.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘ARE YOU SURE he is not cold?’ Anatole frowned as he looked down at the infant sitting up in his buggy.
Lyn shook her head. ‘No, honestly, he isn’t. He’s got lots of layers over him.’
She glanced at the tall figure sitting beside her on the park bench they had walked to. It was a drier day than previously, but spring was still stubbornly far off and she could see why someone used to warmer climes would think it very cold. But it was Anatole Telonidis who had suggested that they take the baby outdoors. Probably, Lyn thought tightly, because a man like him was not used to being in a place as shabby as her flat. Not that this scrappy urban park was a great deal better, but it had a little children’s play area where Georgy liked to watch other children playing—as he was doing now.
Even though they had the bench to themselves, it seemed too small to Lyn. She was as punishingly conscious today of Anatole Telonidis’s physicality as she had been the day before.
How can he be so devastatingly good-looking?
It was a rhetorical question, and one that every covert glance at him confirmed was unnecessary. It took an effort of will to remind herself brusquely that it was completely irrelevant that she was so punishingly conscious of just how amazing-looking he was.
All that matters is that he wants Georgy to go to Greece...
That was all she had to hold in her mind. Not how strange it felt to be sitting beside him on a chilly park bench, with Georgy’s buggy pulled up beside them. A flicker went through her. Others would see a man and a woman in a children’s park with a baby in a buggy.
As if they were a family.
A strange little ripple went through her—a little husk of yearning. She was being the best mother she could to Georgy, her beloved sister’s son, but however much she tried to substitute for Lindy there was no one to do the same for Georgy’s father.
She pushed the thought away. He had her, and that was what was important. Essential. Vital. Whatever Anatole wanted to say to her this afternoon, nothing on earth would change that!
‘Have you given any more thought to what we spoke of yesterday?’ he opened. ‘Bringing Georgy out to Greece to meet his grandfather?’ He paused minutely. ‘I spoke to Timon yesterday.’ Anatole’s voice changed in a moment, and Lyn could hear the emotion in it. ‘I cannot tell you how overjoyed he is to learn of Georgy’s existence!’
Lyn’s hands twisted in her lap. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I just don’t know.’ Her eyes went to the man sitting beside her, looking at him with a troubled expression. ‘You talk about it being just a visit. But that isn’t what you said initially! You said you wanted Georgy to be brought up in Greece! What if you simply don’t let Georgy come back here with me? What if you try and keep him in Greece?’
He could hear, once again, the fear spiking in her voice. Resolve formed in him. ‘I need you to trust me,’ he said.
‘How can I?’ she cried wildly.
Anatole looked at her. Was it going to be like this the whole time? With her doubting everything, distrusting him, fearing him—fighting him? Because he didn’t have time for it—and nor did Timon. Timon had undertaken to talk to his oncologist, to find out whether he was too weak to try the strong drugs that he would have to take if he wanted to keep death at bay, even for a little while. For long enough to see his great-grandson and make him his heir, as Anatole so fervently wanted him to do.
He took a deep, scissoring breath that went right down into his lungs. He had promised he would do whatever it took to get Marcos’s son out to Greece, to ensure his future was there. But with the baby’s aunt resisting him every step of the way, so it seemed, was it not time to take the radical, drastic action that would dispose of all her arguments? All her objections?
It would surely disarm her totally. Yet he was balking at it, he knew. The idea that had sparked in his mind the afternoon before was still alight—but it was so drastic that he still could hardly credit that it had occurred to him at all!
But what else would it take to get her to stop fighting him all the time on what had to happen?
‘I understand your fears,’ he said now, keeping his voice as reassuring as he could. ‘But they are not necessary. I told you—there must be a way to resolve this impasse that does not entail conflict.’
Her eyes were wide and troubled. ‘I don’t see how!’ she exclaimed. ‘You want Georgy to be brought up in Greece, with his father’s family. I want to keep him here with me. How can those two possibly be resolved?’
Anatole chose his words with care. ‘What if you came with Georgy?’ he asked.
She stared at him blankly. ‘Brought him out to visit your grandfather?’
He gave a quick shake of his head. ‘Not just to visit—to live.’
‘To live in Greece?’ she echoed, as if she had not heard properly. ‘Georgy and me?’
‘Why not?’ Anatole’s eyes were studying her reaction.
‘But I’m British!’ she replied blankly, because right now it was the only thing that occurred to her.
The corner of his mouth curved, and irrelevantly Lyn thought how it lightened his expression—and sent a pulse of blood around her veins. Then he was replying.
‘Many British people live very happily in Greece,’ he said dryly. ‘They find the climate a great deal warmer!’ he said pointedly, glancing around at the bleak, wintry landscape.
‘But I haven’t got any accountancy qualifications yet, and even when I do I probably wouldn’t be able to practise out there. And besides, I don’t speak any Greek! How could I make a living?’
Anatole’s eyebrows rose. Had she really just asked that question?
‘It goes without saying,’ he said, and his voice was even drier, ‘that there would be no necessity for you to do so.’