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.’
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But her expression was still withdrawn.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...
