adopted in the first moments she’d seen him—was it really only a couple of hours ago?
‘Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Everyone’s gone home…’ She indicated the empty room with a wave of her hand, taking a step back and half turning, so that his path to the door was completely free, totally unobstructed. ‘And so should you.’
Once more those narrowed eyes seared over her face, then flicked away to look at the open door, before coming back to lock coldly with her uneasy blue gaze.
‘I think not,’ he said firmly, his tone making it plain that he was not prepared to tolerate any argument. ‘There’s no way I’m going anywhere.’
‘But…’
Jessica glanced swiftly round, looking for Peters, but the butler had disappeared. And she had to wonder whether the older man would be able to manage to eject the powerful Greek whose imposing shoulders spoke of an impressive strength. The way that Angelos’s powerful legs and feet were planted so firmly made her think of a commanding tree that would never be easily uprooted.
Her head felt as if it were spinning, but whether from panic or anger she had no way of knowing.
‘Mr Rousakis, I have to tell you to leave!’
‘Miss Marshall, you are not in a position to tell me to do anything,’ he tossed back, the bite of cold anger making her breath catch in her throat. ‘Not any more.’
‘I—’ Jessica began when she heard a soft step behind her.
‘Mr Rousakis…’ It was Simeon Hilton’s voice and when she spun round it was to find the lawyer standing close behind her. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived. I trust you had a comfortable journey.’
To Jessica’s total consternation, Simeon was holding out his hand towards the Greek, a smile on his face.
‘Mr Rousakis was just leaving…’ she managed but much of the strength had gone out of her voice as her confidence started to seep away. She had forgotten that Simeon had told Peters to wait for Angelos. That he had been expecting him.
Beyond the window, the rain had stopped but the slow, ominous passage of a dark cloud across the face of the weak, struggling sun made her tremble in sudden uncertainty. There was something going on. There were undertones here that she didn’t understand.
‘Shall we get started?’
To her horror, Simeon was addressing Angelos, not her, and there was something in that that was more than just a bond between the two men in the room. Simeon’s approach was—respectful—professional.
‘I have all the papers in the library.’
‘But…’ Somehow Jessica found the strength to speak even though a growing sense of fear and apprehension was threatening to close off her throat. ‘But this is a private matter between you and me, Simeon.’
She’d got that wrong, she knew as soon as the words were out. She could read her mistake in Simeon’s face, in the coolly knowing expression in Angelos’s eyes. This was not just between herself and Simeon. Angelos was somehow involved, though she had no idea how and why.
‘Just what is going on?’
It was Angelos who answered her.
‘I suggest you join us in the library,’ he declared with cool arrogance. ‘You’ll find out everything there.’
And, without even a second glance at her face, he turned and walked from the room, Simeon at his side, their long strides taking them across the room, away from her, while she stood and stared in blank bewilderment. It was almost, Jessica thought anxiously, as if Angelos was the owner of the Manor House, when everyone knew that she was the nearest thing that Marty had had to living family. Forcing her legs to move, she hurried after them, the sound of her heels tapping on the polished floorboards beating out the same sort of staccato tattoo as the uneven, jerky beat of her heart.
‘I thought you wanted to talk to me about my—about Marty’s will!’ she declared as she burst through the door into the library after them. Her noisy arrival made Angelos glance up from the tray on a table set in the wide bay window where he was pouring himself a drink from the jug of water that stood there too. ‘That is surely none of Mr Rousakis’s business.’
‘It is now.’
Angelos’s tone was quiet but so definite it was almost like a slap in the face, making Jessica’s head go back sharply as he watched her.
She was definitely rattled now, he noted with grim satisfaction, seeing how her blue eyes had widened in her pale face. They were huge, dark pools above suddenly ashen cheeks and, though she tried to cover up her concern, he could see the anxiety that clouded her eyes. Even the sleek chestnut hair had tumbled from the clips that she had used to hold it back and was now falling loose around her neck, a stray strand catching on her cheek.
She looked so much more like a real woman than the ice queen who had greeted him on his arrival and who had just tried none too subtly to eject him from the house. But he knew that the image was nothing but an illusion. The lady of the manor mask might have deserted her at the moment but as soon as she gathered breath it would be back in place—temporarily at least. But he had news for her that would soon shatter her belief in the way her life was going to work out, the role she was destined to play. The plans she had.
He was going to enjoy stripping them from her once and for all.
‘Mr Rousakis needs to be here for this,’ the lawyer put in carefully, grimacing as he saw the glare that Jessica directed at him.
‘And are you going to explain why?’
‘Would you like a drink?’ Angelos inserted smoothly, lifting a bottle of wine from the tray.
The look she turned on him should have shrivelled him into dust where he stood—or, at least, he knew that was what she wished for. He took a particular satisfaction in not shrivelling at all but meeting her blazing eyes head-on.
‘Do I need one?’ she shot at him and he felt his mouth curl into a smile in response to her angry question. She looked like nothing so much as a small, elegant cat hissing and spitting at an unwelcome intruder into her territory.
The smile incensed her further, he noted as her teeth actually snapped together in an attempt to hold back the fury she wanted to let loose.
‘You might find it easier to relax.’
And, to emphasise the point, he flung himself down into one of the big, squashy tan leather chairs and leaned back, stretching out his legs in front of him and crossing them at the ankles. Taking a long swallow of the water he had poured, he allowed himself another small smile behind the glass.
She caught it of course. He heard her breath hiss in between her teeth in response as he nodded to the waiting lawyer, indicating that Hilton should go ahead.
‘Would you like to…?’ the other man began but Angelos shook his head firmly.
He knew that there was no likelihood that Lady Jessica would believe anything he told her. She would need the legal facts spelled out to her by someone she trusted, someone she had to believe. And that had to
