welcoming smile. ‘Rosie?’
The warmth of his greeting dispelled her worst tension and she gave him a shy smile. ‘Grandad …?’
‘And Alexius.’ The man by her side was welcomed with an open affection that seemed to make her companion’s lean darkly handsome features set in even tauter lines. For the first time, it occurred to Rosie that Alexius, for whatever reasons—and she didn’t want to think about that—had not been looking forward to this meeting in the slightest. ‘Smile,’ Socrates urged. ‘This is a day of celebration. You’ve brought my grandchild home to me.’
They were ushered into a large sunlit room and a small blonde woman, who looked to be in her forties and had sharp, not unattractive features moved forward to introduce herself as Sofia. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. Her father began to ask Rosie a stream of eager questions, his interest in her likes, dislikes and hobbies rather touching for a young woman who had never before found herself the focus of so much attention. The older man’s grasp of English was not the equal of his godson’s, however, and several times Alexius stepped in like an interpreter to clarify her answers. When she told Socrates about her studies, he beamed at her in approval, and she would have mentioned her plans to go to university had she not been thinking that with a baby in tow that might yet prove an impossible challenge. The more Socrates talked to Rosie, the more stiff and silent Sofia became until eventually she closed a determined hand to Rosie’s forearm. ‘You and I need to get better acquainted. I’ve got photos of the family to show you,’ she said, urging Rosie across the room to a sofa and settling a large album down on her lap.
‘I can’t help being really curious about this family,’ Rosie admitted, leafing through the album while Sofia put a label to innumerable faces. She recognised her own father as a teenager in a beach photograph, good-looking, smiling and surrounded by girls. It was a fair match for the faded photo that was all her mother had had to show for her affair with Troy Seferis. When Rosie’s aunt pointed out her uncle, Timon, Rosie asked if she would be meeting him as well.
Sofia frowned. ‘I don’t know. Timon is in rehab again. I’m afraid my brother has been a drug addict since he was seventeen and my father is still struggling without success to straighten him out.’
Rosie absorbed that sad news without comment, wishing that Alexius had forewarned her and desperately searching for a safer topic of conversation. ‘Can you tell me anything about my father, Troy?’ she prompted hopefully.
‘Only that with the exception of my father the men in this family are and were fairly useless,’ Sofia told her in a tart undertone. ‘Timon has two sons but while they were working in one of Dad’s hotels they set up a scam to skim off money for themselves.’
Rosie was taken aback at that admission of her cousins’ criminality. ‘My goodness …’ she remarked uncertainly just as her grandfather sprang up out of his chair on the other side of the room with surprising vigour and spat something in guttural Greek at Alexius, which sent her startled eyes flying in that direction instead. ‘What’s happened?’
Alexius’s body was rigid and unyielding, his face hard and expressionless. Rosie had never seen his innate reserve so pronounced. His godfather was ranting at him and Alexius was saying very little in response.
‘Thee mou, you might look ladylike and quiet but you’re clearly a very clever little schemer,’ Sofia commented, shooting Rosie a look of tremendous satisfaction.
Realising that her aunt understood the source of the conflict between the two men and very much afraid that she did as well, Rosie composed her face and said, ‘And why would you think that?’
‘Falling pregnant by a billionaire is a world-class coup and surely no accident on your part? Not with a mother who pulled the same stunt on my younger brother!’ Sofia jibed with a chuckle of unconcealed amusement and derision. ‘And to think I thought you were coming here to charm and impress my father. Instead, he’s shocked and furious …’
Allowing her aunt’s cheap, unfeeling sneer to roll off her, Rosie pressed urgently, ‘What’s your father saying to Alexius?’
‘This is as good as a soap opera,’ the older woman commented with enjoyment. ‘According to my antiquated father, your reputation is now ruined for all time …’
Well, we’ll see about that, Rosie reflected in exasperation, rising from her seat in a quick movement and advancing to within a few feet of the two angry men. Alexius might not be shouting but she knew by his powerful stance and the wild, stormy glitter of his eyes that he was furious and that only his respect for the older man was making him withstand the tirade in silence.
‘Stay out of this,’ Alexius breathed tautly, when he realised Rosie was at his elbow.
‘No, it’s not fair and it’s not the Dark Ages either!’ Rosie protested, fixing her attention on her red-faced grandfather and addressing him directly. ‘Please calm down. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known I was likely to cause so much trouble between you and Alexius. It can’t be good for your heart to get so worked up … and don’t say anything more to Alexius. He did ask me to marry him.’
‘You … did?’ Socrates turned back to stare at his godson in astonishment, his anger visibly falling away at that information.
‘And I said no,’ Rosie slotted in before her grandfather could get too excited about what was not going to happen.
‘No?’ her grandfather thundered back at her instead. ‘Are you insane? You’re carrying his child and you said no?’
‘I think we should let the dust settle on this and leave for now,’ Rosie suggested tightly, laying a trembling hand on Alexius’s sleeve. ‘I can come back to visit when tempers cool … if I’m still welcome, of course.’
‘Of course, you will be,’ Alexius pronounced with unbelievable cool as if nothing whatsoever had happened. ‘It is I who will not be so.’
‘If you’re not marrying him, you shouldn’t be going anywhere with him,’ Socrates Seferis delivered in a final cutting piece of advice.
Rosie glanced from her grandfather’s angry, dissatisfied face to her aunt’s barely hidden triumph at Rosie’s fast fall from grace and decided that she had had enough of the family reunion for one day. ‘I make my own decisions and I trust Alexius,’ she said quietly.
‘Why on earth didn’t you stand up for yourself?’ Rosie demanded of Alexius once they were back in the car. ‘He’s the one who told you to get to know me.’
‘I have great respect for Socrates, moli mou. He said nothing that was not deserved. I do have the reputation of a womaniser and I should, for once, have practised restraint.’ Yet even in the midst of that, Alexius was hopelessly amused and oddly touched by the manner in which Rosie had waded in like a miniature prize fighter to try and defend him to her grandfather, failing to appreciate that Socrates was probably the only man alive whom Alexius would have allowed to speak to him in such terms.
‘Maybe I should have kept my hands off you,’ Rosie muttered, irritated that he was trying to shoulder all the blame as if she were some helpless little fluttery thing with no brains between her ears.
‘No, I wanted you and I am too used to taking what I want and not counting the cost,’ Alexius breathed with a raw edge. ‘That, at least, was a fair comment.’
‘You should’ve
