only met the man half an hour ago yet already this scene felt so unnaturally natural, she mused as she stroked Toby’s baby-soft cheek: her sitting here feeding a baby, while he leant against the kitchen sink at the other end of the room, coolly relaying a series of instructions in what sounded remarkably like Russian to her.
A vision of domestic bliss, she mocked it, catching hold of Toby’s waving starfish hand and lowering her head to brush it with a kiss.
He finished his call, and all went quiet in the kitchen. She could hear the wall-clock ticking and soft hum of the fridge. There was tension in the air too, mostly due to the last words she had thrown at him before she’d gone to get Toby, she supposed. She should not have said it, and remorse had been eating away at her ever since. She had no right whatsoever to blame this man for being Theo Kanellis’s substitute son. She might not be sure just how old Anton Pallis was, but it didn’t take many brain cells to work out that he could only have been a child when he’d been put in her father’s place. And her father had always claimed that he’d walked away from that life of his own volition and had never felt the slightest desire to go back to it again.
For a man who had never experienced discomfort in any environment, Anton discovered he was feeling it here in the home of Leander Kanellis. Zoe’s remark about him walking in the other man’s shoes was still cutting deep, he acknowledged.
‘You and your brother could have so much more than this,’ he heard himself utter as one thought led him to another place—the natural negotiator in him, Anton recognised.
Zoe looked up at him over the back of the sofa and caught him indulging in a rueful grimace.
‘And the price?’ she asked out of sheer curiosity.
Attempting to ease some of the tension out of his shoulders without her noticing, Anton strode forward, skirting around the table to come to a halt at the armchair which matched the blue sofa.
‘May I …?’ he requested politely.
She shrugged a narrow shoulder then nodded, and he lowered himself into the chair. It was surprisingly comfortable, he discovered, though he did not relax into it but sat forward to place his forearms on his thighs.
He seemed about to open negotiations by extolling Theo’s virtues; she spoke first. ‘I’m sorry for what I said to you earlier. It was totally unfair.’
‘No, don’t do that.’ Anton frowned and shook his head. ‘Don’t apologise to me for anything you say. You have the absolute right to speak what you believe is the truth. And you know why I’ve come here.’
‘Perhaps you’d better put it in words so there will be no misunderstandings, then.’
It was not a climb down from hostilities which made her offer the invite, and Anton did not take it as one. But at least she was opening a line of discussion he was more comfortable with—business. The business side of their meeting was about to begin.
‘I am here to negotiate terms on which you will agree to hand Theo his grandson. Theo does not mind if you come with the deal, but if you want to return to your studies he’s offering to support you all the way.’
‘Well, thank him for me, but tell him no thank you,’ Zoe returned politely. ‘Toby is my brother and we stick together—here in England.’
‘And if Theo decides to push for custody of his grandson?’
She didn’t even flinch at the suggestion. ‘I am Toby’s legal guardian,’ she stated. ‘And I don’t think Theo Kanellis will risk the bad press by attempting to contest me on that.’
His eyes were intent on her. ‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Absolutely.’ She nodded.
So did Anton, and pressed his lips together and dropped the subject. ‘Theo is not a bad man.’ He tried a different tack. ‘He is tough and he is stubborn, and sometimes he is infuriatingly impossible to deal with, but he is not dishonest or corrupt or cruel to children.’
‘But he couldn’t be bothered to send a representative to his own son’s funeral.’
‘Admit it,’ Anton fired back. ‘You would have despised him for it if he had done.’
‘No-win situation then,’ she acknowledged, and brought his attention to the scrap of a thing she held in her arms when she deprived the boy of his bottle and he let out a protesting squeak.
Lifting him up onto her shoulder, she began gently patting his tiny back. The half-finished bottle of formula rested in the crook of her lap. She looked incredibly young and vulnerable suddenly—they both did—Anton observed and felt like the devil’s messenger come to steal a baby—cold, ruthless and sure of himself.
‘Your grandfather has been very ill and is unable to travel far.’
For a second he thought he detected a flicker of softening in her eyes until she said, ‘Ill for twenty-three years, at a guess.’
He did not pretend to misunderstand her. ‘Your father—’
‘Don’t!’ Suddenly, warning sparks were flying from her electric-blue eyes. ‘Don’t even attempt to heap the blame on my father because I won’t listen! He is not here to defend himself any more which makes that line of negotiation low and cheap.’
‘My apologies,’ Anton said instantly.
‘Not accepted,’ Zoe threw back, still fizzing inside with anger on behalf of her father. The baby let out a whining squeak. Settling the small boy into the crook of her arm again, she retrieved his bottle and offered it to the cherub-like mouth.
Anton watched, momentarily fascinated. He had no experience with babies, or children of any age for that matter, but the one thing he noticed about this baby was that, in every way he could see from here, he was Greek. The head of black hair, the light olive tone to his skin, even the demand for attention, said ‘typical Greek male’ to him.
‘That boy you are holding deserves the best kind of life you can offer him, Zoe.’ Tough though it was, Anton knew from experience that it was the truth. ‘To deprive him of the best because you refuse to forgive your grandfather his sins is unforgivably selfish and wrong.’
‘Why don’t you just shut up and go away?’ She launched at him in shocking full volume, making his soot-black eyelashes flicker in surprise and Toby jerk in her arms.
‘I hATE you,’ she could not resist whispering before she pulled in a deep tear-thickened breath in an effort to calm herself for the baby’s sake.
‘Because you know I am right,’ Anton persisted. ‘You know you cannot even afford to maintain this roof over your two heads, which will mean you moving into cheaper accommodation. It is a slippery road to destitution and misery, Zoe. A road you don’t have to take.’
His mobile phone started ringing. With soft curse Anton rose to his feet, retrieving the phone from his pocket before striding off back down the kitchen to take the call. It was Kostas, his head of security, calling
