Andreas had not come, and Carla’s difficult pregnancy had ended with an even more difficult labour that had left her with postnatal depression, brought on, Ann was sure, by Andreas’ rejection of her. To Ann had fallen the task of looking after baby Ari—for Carla, it seemed, had failed to bond, sinking deeper into depression, refusing all treatment.
The cure, when it had come, had been dramatic. A knock at the door—a young man, handsome, but with a strained, uncertain manner.
‘I—I am Andreas Theakis,’ he’d told Ann.
That was all it had taken. Carla had flown to him, her face transfigured. Her life transfigured. Or so she had believed. In reality it had been a little less romantic than Ann had hoped. Andreas had wanted a paternity test done.
‘I have to convince my brother…’ he’d said uneasily to Ann. But Carla had been viciously triumphant.
‘Oh, Ari is Andreas’, all right! And Mr Almighty Nikos Theakis is going to get his comeuppance! Andreas will marry me now—he’s promised me, because he wants his son—and there isn’t a thing his damn brother can do about it!’
Had Carla been tempting fate, to be so triumphant? Ann wondered, with a bitter twist of misery. It had not taken the malign will of Nikos Theakis to keep his brother from marrying her sister. It had taken a moment’s misjudgement by Andreas, whisking Carla away—glamorous once more, vibrant once more—in his powerful hire car on unfamiliar British roads. Nothing more than that.
And two lives snuffed out.
Ann had been at home with Ari, looking after him willingly while Andreas and Carla went off for the day together. He had been orphaned at a stroke.
Ann knew that the horror and grief of that day would never leave her. Andreas’s body had been flown back to Greece. None of his family had come near Ann. Ann had been left to bury her sister on her own. Left to look after baby Ari, all alone in the world now, except for her. She had made no attempt to contact Andreas’ family. They had clearly never wanted Carla—never wanted her child. Whereas she…
Ari was all the world to her. All she had left. Her one consolation in a sea of grief. Grief for her sister and for the man she had so desperately wanted to marry. Anger for his brother—who had stopped them doing so. The brother who was now standing in her own hallway, eyes like lasers.
Demanding to take Ari from her.
Getting no answer, Nikos glanced into the empty room beside the front door, then strode down the narrow hallway to the kitchen at the end. His expression hardened even more. The place was a mess. There was a sink full of washing up, a plastic covered table with food debris on it. But it was the pram that drew him. He strode up to it and looked down. Emotion knifed through him. Andreas’ son! Out of this night¬ mare, one shining miracle. He gazed down at the sleeping baby, his heart full. Slowly, he reached a hand towards him.
‘Don’t touch him!’ The shrill whisper made him halt, whipping his head round.
Ann Turner was in the kitchen doorway, one hand closed tightly around the jamb. Nikos’s brows snapped together. Did the girl think he was going to take the boy there and then? Obviously he was not. He would return when he had all the papers drawn up, a suitable nanny engaged, and then make an orderly removal of his nephew. He was here now simply because he had had to come. He had had to see for himself, this baby who was the only consolation in the nightmare that had closed over the Theakis family with Andreas’s death.
His eyes rested a moment on the figure in the doorway, his mouth tightening as his gaze flicked over her. She suited the place. Shabbily dressed, with her hair tied back, an unkempt mess, and baby food on her shapeless T-shirt. She couldn’t have looked less like the girl who had got her avaricious claws into his brother. Carla Turner had been a gilded bird of paradise. This sister of hers was a scrawny street sparrow.
But Ann Turner’s appearance was irrelevant—only the baby in her care was important.
She was standing aside from the door now. ‘Mr Theakis, I want you to leave. I’ve nothing to say to you, and I don’t want you disturbing Ari.’ Her voice was sharp. Hostile.
For a moment he said nothing, just went on looking at her. Ann could feel the colour run into her cheeks. The shock of seeing him was still jolting through her and she was fighting for composure. And losing. That soul-searching gaze of his was transfixing her. Then, without a word, he started towards her. She pulled aside swiftly as he brushed past her, striding down towards the front door. But her relief was short lived. He merely wheeled into the living room.
She hurried after him, heart thumping. ‘Mr Theakis, I asked you to leave—’ she began, but he cut her short with a peremptory lift of his hand, as if she were a servant who had spoken out of turn.
‘I am here merely to see the child for myself, and to inform you of the arrangements that have been made to take him home.’
Ann stared. ‘This is his home.’
Nikos Theakis glanced around him. The sagging sofa, the worn carpet and faded curtains were encompassed in his condemning glance. ‘This, Miss Turner,’ he said, his eyes coming back to her, resting on her as if she were a cockroach, ‘is not a home. It is a slum.’
Ann coloured. Poverty wasn’t a crime! But Nikos Theakis clearly thought otherwise. His eyes were pinning her as if she were on a dissecting board. Instantly she became conscious of her messy, drab appearance and unwashed hair—conscious, inexplicably, of a feminine shame that she should be caught looking so absolutely unappealing in front of a man as expensively and physically drop-dead gorgeous as Nikos Theakis. Angrily, she broke her gaze away. What did it matter what she looked like? Or him? This was a man who’d just announced to her his intention of stealing the baby she loved more than anyone in the whole world. Her only living family.
Then suddenly he was speaking again, and this time his tone was quite different from the curt, condemning one with which he’d informed her she was living in a slum.
‘But how could it be otherwise?’ he said smoothly, as Ann’s eyes flew to him again. ‘It is very hard, is it not, Miss Turner, to have the unwelcome burden of a small baby? What girl your age could want that?’
His smooth words backfired. Instinctive rage reared in Ann. Yes, it was hard work looking after a baby. But Ari was never a burden. Never.
Nikos Theakis was speaking again, in the same smooth voice. ‘So I shall relieve you of this unwanted burden, Miss Turner, and you may return again to the life of a young, idle and carefree girl.’
She stifled down the rage that his unctuous words aroused in her, trying to keep her voice steady.
‘Mr Theakis, you rejected Ari’s existence from the moment he was conceived,’ she shot at him witheringly. ‘Why the sudden concern about him now?’
Nikos’s eyes darkened. ‘Because now I have the DNA results forwarded to me from the laboratory. I know that he is indeed my brother’s son.’ There was no trace of smoothness in his accented voice now.
‘My sister said so right from the beginning!’ Ann protested.
The sculpted mouth curled contemptuously. ‘You think I would trust the word of a whore?’
It was spoken in such a casual way Ann blanched. ‘Don’t speak of Carla like that!’ she spat furiously.
His
