what, Dad?’ she asked. ‘Teach him a lesson? Do you really think you could? Sorry.’ She bit her lip. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I know you have my interests at heart, but this is my life. This isn’t an impulse, you know. I’ve given it a lot of thought.’
‘Well, in that case there’s no more to be said.’
Georgie heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Thank you, Dad. I really appreciate this.’
Robert looked at the hand extended to him and deliberately ignored it as he walked to his wife’s side and placed an arm around her shoulder. ‘You go to Greece with your so-called husband if that is what you want, but if you do you are no longer my daughter.’
‘You can’t mean that, Dad,’ she said, even though she knew he did.
‘Robert!’ her stepmother protested. ‘You can’t make her choose this way… He doesn’t mean it, Georgie, dear.’
‘I do mean it. You go to Greece and I wash my hands of you.’ He patted his wife’s hand. ‘Sometimes tough love is called for, Mary. This is a matter of loyalty.’ Face set in stone, he turned to his daughter. ‘What is it to be, Georgie? Your family or this man who cares so much about his son that he’s been too busy for the last three years to notice he’s alive?’
‘I’ve made my decision, Dad.’
An expression of blank amazement spread across Robert Kemp’s florid face. ‘You’re going to Greece?’
Her grandmother, who had been watching proceedings from her armchair, reached for her walking stick and rose majestically to her feet. ‘You ungrateful child.’
‘Please, Gran…’ She slid an anguished look in her father’s direction. ‘I know what it’s like not to see a parent. I don’t want Nicky—’
‘You think your father stopped your mother seeing you?’
‘I don’t blame Dad. I know Mum hurt him badly.’
‘Your father is too soft to tell you. He didn’t. The fact is she didn’t want to. My daughter-in-law didn’t care about you at all,’ the old lady spat contemptuously. ‘The only thing she cared about was her pretty-boy waiter and he didn’t want a baby. I think,’ she added, her normal strong voice quivering, ‘this could be called history repeating itself.’
Shock had drained the colour from Georgie’s face. Her eyes darted from one person to the other without really seeing them. Silly, really. She knew that if her mother had wanted to contact her she would have, but like any child she had nursed her fantasies. And those images had persisted into adulthood: her mother a victim of cruel fate, separated against her will from the daughter she loved.
‘I wouldn’t leave Nicky, not ever, not for anything.’
‘Of course you wouldn’t, Georgie,’ her stepmother soothed. ‘You’re a marvellous mother.’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’ Angolos waited until every eye in the room was fixed on him before continuing. ‘Georgette has been doing the job of two parents for three years. I think it’s time she was relieved of some of the load.’
Georgie turned towards the sound of that deep, confident voice. She experienced a wave of inexpressible relief as their eyes connected.
‘Angolos, I…’ How much had he heard?
‘I think this young man needs a clean-up.’ Acting as if there weren’t an atmosphere you could cut with a knife in the room, Angolos slanted an amused look at the grubby figure in his arms. The love in his face was so palpable that Georgie couldn’t believe she was the only one who could see it.
That was why she was doing this.
Angolos shared his smile between the three other occupants of the room. ‘I will wait here.’
‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea,’ Georgie said dubiously as he transferred their restless son to her arms.
‘You’ve got him?’
She nodded. ‘I think it might be better if you just went. You can ring me later.’ He simply couldn’t be oblivious to the hostility aimed at him, but from his manner you’d never have known it.
Her father, apparently sharing her view, muttered under his breath, ‘He’s got a nerve.’
‘You haven’t changed a jot, Robert—are you working out?’ While the other man pressed a hand to his expanding middle and turned dark red with incoherent rage, Angolos turned calmly to Georgie. ‘Go on,’ he urged. ‘It will be fine.’
Throwing a last worried frown over her shoulder Georgie mounted the staircase.
Angolos’s smile lasted until he heard the sound of a door opening and closing upstairs. ‘Right, you can’t stand the sight of me—I can live with that. I have an incredibly thick skin and I am not at all sensitive,’ he admitted. ‘The only person your insults hurt is Georgette and I don’t actually think you want to do that…?’ He arched a dark brow and levelled a questioning look at his father-in-law, who glared at him with venomous dislike.
‘In your place,’ Angolos admitted, ‘I would probably feel the same way. You would like me to disappear from your lives. It isn’t going to happen, so I suggest you get used to it.’
‘Never!’ Robert Kemp grunted.
‘I have no particular fondness for you either, but I am prepared to tolerate you for Georgette’s sake. You are my son’s grandparents and I hope you will remain an important part of his life. I realise that you spoke in the heat of the moment and you have no wish to disown your daughter or grandson, so I think it will be best all around if we forget you ever said it.’
‘You…you think…?’ Robert blustered, ignoring his wife’s agonised aside to leave it be. ‘What makes you think I give a damn what you think?’
‘I don’t. But I think you care about what Georgette thinks. Perhaps we should concentrate on what we have in common.’
‘And what would that be?’ Robert sneered.
‘We both want Georgette to be happy. I can make her happy.’ With that he walked out of the room leaving a stunned silence behind him.
Though his approach had been silent Georgie sensed his presence at her shoulder. ‘He fell asleep.’
‘So I see,’ Angolos said, looking at the sleeping child. ‘Amazing,’ he breathed softly. ‘How are you?’ he added, not taking his eyes from Nicky’s cherubic face.
‘As well as could be expected considering my family have cast me off.’ Despite the tough words, he could feel the waves of hurt emanating from her.
‘And that would bother you…?’
Narrow shoulders hunched, she picked up a stuffed toy from the floor and tucked it in beside the sleeping child. ‘Do one thing for me,’ she husked, not turning around.
‘It’s possible I might do one thing for you.’
‘Please
