I promise you.’
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, then turned to look at Anton. ‘I thought you—’
‘I know what you thought,’ he cut in grimly. ‘For all my faults, Zoe, I promise you I will never hand your brother over to anyone other than to yourself, OK?’
OK? Zoe nodded even though she was asking herself why she was allowing herself to believe a single word that he said. Yet she did.
‘He’s my whole life now.’ Pressing her wobbling lips together, she dropped her gaze to where her fingers still clutched at his jacket lapels. ‘He’s all I have left of them and …’
Zoe felt the tears well up inside her again, the rolling wave of an overwhelming sadness and grief. For three whole weeks she had kept herself together. She’d stayed calm and strong and kept her feelings all locked up inside because she’d had to if she’d wanted to appear a fit mother for her brother in front of all those people who’d lined up to check her out. Then along came this man—this one person she had actually let her guard down for—and now look at her: stuck on the plane in a middle of a field, waiting to take off for Greece!
Anton watched as the tears started flowing again—a different kind of tears. His lips clamped together and his expression turning tautly blank, he closed his arms around her and used the flat of his hand to ease her face into his chest. He did not offer comforting strokes with his fingers. He did not encourage the tears. He stared at the back of her cream leather seat and just held her as the deep well of her grief opened up and came pouring out. She let go of it all in near silence, in long, soul-wrenching sobs with words, barely distinguishable as words, winding through them. Mummy he recognised; Daddy …
His flight steward approached him cautiously. ‘You need to choose a seat and fasten in, sir,’ he said.
Anton shook his head. The plane could fall from the sky but he wasn’t moving. After a second or two the steward moved away. The engines fired into life. He felt their vibration through the balls of his balancing feet. The moment they were in the air and free to move around, he unfastened Zoe’s belt then stood up with her in his arms and headed for the bedroom at the rear of the plane. Shouldering the door shut behind them, he heeled off his shoes then used a foot to flip away the duvet so he could lay her down on the bed.
She was still clutching his lapels and he did not try to ease her fingers free. He just lay down beside her, flipped the duvet over the two of them then drew her into his embrace. He let her weep those awful sobs against him and felt every single one of them like a blow to his own cruel, thoughtless arrogance. When eventually she exhausted herself and drifted into a restive sleep, he remained where he was, aware with every fibre of his being that he had never held another human being this close to him, and that included during sex.
When slowly her fingers finally relaxed from their grip on him, he eased himself sideways and rolled out of the bed then turned to walk like a drunk into the adjoining bathroom, closed the door and slumped back against it, eyes closed, conscience riven by deserved self-contempt.
Zoe came awake to the slow, slow memory that something calamitous had happened. Shattered images of her shouting at Anton, kissing Anton, begging and pleading then weeping on Anton, floated around in her head. She stirred ever so slightly, frowning as she did so because she knew she’d totally embarrassed herself and completely lost her head. Now she was lying in a bed somewhere covered by a duvet and she still had all her clothes on, even her shoes and her jacket.
Unwilling as yet to open her eyes and check out her surroundings, she continued to lie there, using her other senses instead. It was all very quiet. She could feel the finest hint of a vibration from the plane’s engines.
Oh dear God, she thought then. She’d had a fight with Anton Pallis about going to Greece then she’d gone to pieces because she’d thought he was separating her from Toby.
‘You are awake, then,’ a smooth voice said.
With a start, Zoe flipped onto her back then flicked her eyes open as full and detailed recall rushed like a charging bull through her head. She remembered everything—all of it—from her flare of wild panic to …
‘I thought you were going to sleep through the whole flight and force me to carry you off it.’
Twisting her head on the pillow, her eyes collided with a pair of dark ones coloured by lazy mockery. Her heart started to hammer. She didn’t know why. He was stretched out beside her on top of the duvet with his head supported by the heel of his hand and everything about him screamed sartorial elegance from the grey silk trousers he was wearing now to the crispness of a pale-blue shirt.
‘Toby,’ she whispered tautly.
‘Right here.’ Arching an eyebrow as if to question where else her brother could be, he glanced down at the space between them.
And he was. Following the downward movement of Anton’s eyes, Zoe discovered her brother lying there fast asleep. He looked relaxed and angelic, his tiny face pink with contentment.
‘He drank a full bottle of that awful stuff he seems to find delicious,’ Anton informed her. ‘Then I tackled a job no man of my superior breeding should ever have to undertake.’
‘You fed and changed him?’ Turning onto her side, Zoe gathered the baby close to her and dropped a kiss on his silky dark head.
‘He suffered my first few fumbling attempts remarkably well. My suit received a—dousing,’ he drawled lazily. ‘However, since you had already drenched the jacket with your tears earlier, it was no hardship to me to remove it and change into something else.’
He did not add that he had refused plenty of offers from people out there who’d offered to take over the job for him. It had been his punishment to care for the baby, as it was his punishment to endure the frost his staff had been treating him to since he’d walked out of this room over an hour ago.
‘I—I don’t know what to say,’ Zoe mumbled. ‘A simple “thank you” will be adequate.’ Not while she still lived and breathed, thought Zoe. ‘You don’t warrant the waste of good manners. You kidnapped us.’
‘Back to hostilities already?’ Sighing heavily, he slid off the bed, rising to his full height with fluid grace.
‘You lied and you conned me and scared me out of my wits.’
‘Well, something made you lose your wits,’ Anton agreed, moving across the compact cabin to open a narrow cupboard. ‘I did wonder for a while if it was the kiss.’
The moment he mentioned the kiss, Zoe refused to look at him. Her hostility towards him only half-covered what she really felt. ‘I suppose I should have expected it from a man reared under Theo Kanellis’s influence.’ Sitting up in the bed, she lifted her brother into her arms. ‘Ruthless, heartless and a calculating bully, as well as a conscience-free rake.’
‘You summed me up quite nicely there, Zoe,’ Anton agreed again as he slid a jacket off a hanger then closed the cupboard door again. ‘Would you like me to apologise for frightening you so badly?’
‘Will you turn this plane around to take us back to England?’
In the process of shrugging into his jacket, he paused.
‘No.’
She
