it hadn’t been for Andreas’s grandmother, she had a suspicion she would have done it already and stolen away in the dead of night like a thief running off with the family silver.
Also there was still Melanie to consider. Melanie who could gain so much from living this kind of luxury life—and so little from the life Claire could give her.
Not many pluses in favour of running, she heavily concluded, and she hadn’t even taken into consideration the dire threat of retribution Andreas had laid on her last night.
Inside the nursery all was quiet, the early morning sunlight diffused by the pretty apple-green curtains still drawn across the windows. Claire quietly closed the door behind her, and was about to walk over to the crib to check on the baby when a sound in the other corner of the room had her head twisting round, expecting to see Althea—only to freeze when she found herself looking at Andreas.
Dressed in what looked like a white cotton tracksuit, he was sitting in the comfortable rocking-chair in the corner, cradling a sleeping Melanie in his arms.
His eyes were closed, his dark head resting back against the chair’s cushioned back—though he wasn’t asleep. The way one long brown bare foot was rhythmically keeping the chair rocking while the other rested across its knee told her that.
He was just too lost within his own deep train of thought to have heard her arrival.
Not pleasant thoughts either, she noticed, looking at the grim tension circling his shadowy mouth. Then she had to suffer a vivid action replay of what that mouth had made her feel like last night and she unfroze with a jolt, her first instinct to turn and leave quickly before he realised she was there.
His eyes flicked open, catching her in the act of a cowardly retreat. The chair stopped rocking. They both froze this time. The fact that Andreas was as disconcerted to find her standing there as she was to find him was enough to hold them trapped as a new knowledge of each other raked through the silence in a whiplash so painful it seemed to strip Claire’s tangled emotions bare.
Neither spoke; neither seemed able to. Her heart was pounding, her throat thickening up on a stress overload that was seriously affecting her ability to breathe.
What he was feeling was difficult to define with a man so good at keeping his own counsel, but something stirred in the unfathomable black eyes.
Regret, she wondered, or even remorse? Whatever it was it managed to hurt a very raw and vulnerable part of her, and she would have continued her cowardly retreat if he hadn’t spoken.
Speaking softly so as not to awaken the baby, he said, ‘Kalimera…’ offering her the Greek morning greeting that she had grown very used to over the last few days.
Slowly she turned back to him. ‘Kal-Kalimera,’ she replied politely, not quite focusing on him.
‘You are up early. It is barely six o’clock,’ he remarked, trying, she knew, to sound perfectly normal but it was a strain and it showed in the slight husky quality of his voice.
She nodded, licked her dry lips and wished her heart would stop racing. ‘S-so are you,’ she managed, but that was all she could do.
‘I haven’t been to bed,’ he replied, glancing ruefully at the baby. ‘Melanie has had a disturbed night. Althea was exhausted so I sent her to bed around dawn and took over here.’
‘Oh!’ Instant concern for Melanie had her moving towards him on legs that were trembling with nervous tension. ‘Someone should have come for me!’ she protested as she peered worriedly at the baby.
‘I was here.’ That was all he said, yet it seemed to say it all. For he handled the baby girl as if he had been doing it all her little life. It was, in fact, the talk of the house how good he was with the baby. Claire already knew he spent time with her sister every morning before he left for Athens, and the same in the evening when he got home again.
Bonding was the modern term for it, and Claire supposed it described what Andreas had been doing since Melanie had arrived in his life.
‘What has been the matter with her?’ she asked now.
He smiled that brief smile—wry, though, not grim. ‘I have been reliably informed by the experienced Lefka that babies do have restless nights.’
Claire nodded knowingly, her fingertips already stroking Melanie’s cheek without even realising she was doing it. ‘She hardly slept at all after Mother died,’ she confided sadly. ‘You wouldn’t think someone so young could know, but I think she missed her dreadfully.’
‘As you do?’
Her throat thickened at the gentle question. She answered it with another nod. ‘I’ll take her now, if you like,’ she offered. ‘Then you can go and get some rest…’
But even as she reached out to take the baby from him Andreas caught hold of her fingers.
The very fact that he was touching her was enough to bring the panic back. Her tension suddenly soared. Yet, though he had to feel it, he grimly ignored it. ‘She is happy with us, Claire,’ he said urgently. ‘You must be able to see that?’
Which meant what? she wondered. That Melanie had never been happy with only her sister taking care of her?
As usual, he read her thoughts. ‘No.’ He renounced them. ‘You misunderstand me. You have both been grieving—both of you, Claire. And although I know you may not be prepared to accept this right now you have both been happier in my care!’
She knew what he was saying. She knew exactly what it was he was getting at. He wanted her to agree to stay without him having to exert undue pressure on her. He wanted her to go on as before as if last night had never happened.
As if nothing had changed.
‘Give this a chance,’ he pleaded huskily. ‘Give me a second chance to make this work for us—if only for Melanie’s sake…’
For Melanie’s sake. If this organ throbbing thickly in her breast was still a heart, she mused heavily, then she would have that phrase engraved on it.
I did this—for Melanie’s sake.
She gave one last nod of her head in mute acquiescence.
It was enough. He let go of her fingers and silently offered her the baby. Melanie snuffled then settled into her arms. Andreas stood up, looking taller, leaner, darker in his all-white tracksuit. He was about to step around her so that she could sit down when he paused, touched her pale cheek with a gentle finger, and murmured, ‘Thank you.’
Then he was gone, quickly, beating a hasty retreat now he had what he wanted.
Which wasn’t Claire, she told herself in dull mockery.
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS a retreat that had in fact taken him right out of the firing line, Claire discovered when she eventually emerged from the sanctuary of the nursery which had turned out to be no sanctuary at all in the end.
‘A problem with one of his latest acquisitions,’ she was told. But Claire knew the real problem was her and that he had simply taken
