go and stare grimly out of the window. ‘But I did not know who the woman involved was,’ he went on. ‘Or the fact that she had borne him a child, until almost a year after Timo’s death and I was in London on business when your aunt came to see me.’
Claire’s eyes flicked open, the blue bright with a derision she speared at his profile. ‘You mean you went to see my aunt,’ she corrected him. ‘To get her to bargain with me for possession of Melanie!’
‘Is that what she said?’ His dark head turned. ‘Then she lied,’ he declared, holding her sceptical gaze with a grim demand that she believe him. ‘Your aunt Laura approached me, Claire,’ he insisted. ‘It was she who told me that my brother’s mistress had given birth to his daughter. It was she who wanted to bargain—not for Melanie,’ he made succinctly clear, ‘but for your silence about the affair. Your silence, Claire,’ he sombrely repeated. ‘Your aunt placed herself in the role of mere mediator between myself and her niece—the niece she swore had been my dead brother’s mistress!’
‘M-me?’ she stammered in shocked confusion. ‘My aunt told you that I was your brother’s mistress?’
Her sense of horror and dismay was obvious. Andreas acknowledged her right to feel like that with a tight-lipped grimace. ‘Apparently you were threatening to sell the story to the papers if I did not pay for your silence,’ he explained.
‘But how could you think such terrible things about me?’ Claire cried.
‘I had not met you then,’ he reminded her. ‘So I gained an impression of a grasping young woman who saw her child’s wealthy Greek relatives as a pushover for a bit of lucrative blackmail.’
It made a kind of sense. Claire felt sick suddenly. Sick with shame at her aunt’s mercenary cunning.
‘I could not afford to risk such a scandal breaking in the press when my grandmother was so frail,’ he continued, whilst, white as a sheet now, Claire stared blindly at the floor. ‘The one thing your aunt could not have known was my grandmother’s dream to hold her great-grandchild before she died. But it was only a dream,’ he sighed, turning back to the window. ‘Both she and I knew she didn’t have a chance of fulfilling it…’
He meant because his grandmother’s days had already been numbered, Claire realised sadly. ‘Learning about Melanie must have seemed like a heaven-sent opportunity, then.’
The dark head nodded. ‘I offered to take the child off your hands for a—certain amount of money,’ he told her. ‘Your aunt led me to believe that you would not be averse to the idea of giving up the burden of caring for Melanie—for the right price.’
Nice of her, Claire thought bitterly. The whole thing was a macabre circle of deceit, betrayal and greed, she acknowledged with a terrible shudder.
‘So you drove her over to my flat then sat outside it in your big limousine, and waited for her to buy your brother’s child for you,’ she concluded, beginning to feel more than a little sick now as the rest fell into place without needing to be dragged out and pawed over.
She’d come running out of her flat and got herself knocked over in front of him. He had then been given the opportunity to see where she lived and how she lived, and eventually learned that not only was she innocent of any charge of extortion, but that he would have a hell of a job convincing her to give her sister up to him!
So then came the next round of lies, she continued while he remained silently staring out of the window, perhaps doing the same as she, and replaying the whole thing scene by miserable scene! The proposition, the coercion, the sob story gauged to tug at her tender heartstrings about a grandmother who wanted to hold her only great-grandchild before she passed away.
The only bit of truth in among all the lies, she noted cynically.
‘Did your grandmother know whose child Melanie is?’ she asked huskily.
He didn’t answer for a moment, and there was something very—odd about his hesitation. It smacked at another lie on the way, Claire judged, eyeing him suspiciously.
‘She—guessed,’ he said in the end.
Truth or lie? Claire wondered. ‘You devil,’ his grandmother had said to him, she recalled, and got to her feet as an icy chill went washing through her.
What a waste of all his efforts, she mused acidly. For by then the wedding had taken place, otherwise he could have saved himself a whole lot of inconvenience. Then she remembered that Andreas had still needed to acquire legal control of his brother’s illegitimate child. So—not such a waste of his time.
‘Did you pay my aunt to keep away from me?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘The reason why she started this was because she had lost her job, was in a terrible amount of debt, and she saw me as a quick way to get herself out of trouble. But she then proceeded to lose the money trying to double it by speculating on the markets.’
‘So she came to your office today wanting more.’
‘I kicked her out,’ he stated flatly. ‘She took her revenge. I should have expected it—being a ruthless rat myself dealing with one of my kind.’
Which seemed to round it all off pretty well, Claire thought as the pain in her breast eased to a dull ache.
‘I never did any of this to hurt you, Claire,’ he murmured, as if he could sense what she was feeling. ‘Though you probably find it impossible to believe right now, I acted with your interests at heart also.’
It was impossible, she agreed. People who had your interests at heart did not lie, cheat and plot to steal from you.
‘Your aunt intended to give me Melanie, take the money and run,’ he told her. ‘I could not have done that to you,’ he added huskily. ‘I only had to know you for half an hour to realise I could not have done it. So I lied,’ he admitted. ‘I gave you what you seemed to need then, which was a reason worthy of you staying within my protection. Think about it,’ he urged. ‘When has anything I’ve done—lies or truth—actually been done to deliberately hurt you?’
Silence met that. The kind of silence that throbbed and pulled and prodded at the self-control she was having to exert over herself not to break down and cry all over him.
‘Stay,’ he fed gently into that silence. ‘Don’t let yourself be manoeuvred by a cold and embittered woman who has never done anything but hurt you…’
‘I can’t think straight,’ she whispered, pushing a hand up to her aching eyes. ‘I need time to come to terms with all of this before I make a decision as to whether I stay or go.’
Andreas seemed to draw himself up. ‘Fair enough,’ he agreed, and his tone altered, cooled, and became businesslike. ‘Take your time,’ he invited. ‘There is no rush.’
With that he began to walk away. Making the tactical retreat, Claire recognised as she watched him with the tears already splitting her vision into a million fragmented parts.
Halfway to the door the toe of his shoe caught something that lay on the floor amongst the debris of her recently discarded clothes. Through the blur of tears she watched him pause and glance down, watched him go still for a moment before be bent to pick something up. It never occurred to her what that something was—until
