AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Do you know her? My sister?’
The artless question was unanswerable. Not without explanations he had no intention of giving. So he only nodded, and to his relief realised his phone was ringing.
With a murmured ‘Excuse me...’ he answered it, grateful for the reprieve.
It was a reprieve he kept going till they arrived at Heathrow. Wading into the grim details of Stavros Coustakis’s Machiavellian machinations was not something he was prepared to do.
He glanced sideways at the daughter Stavros had summoned to take the place of the daughter he’d disowned.
She’ll cope with the situation when she discovers it—she’ll have to!
And whether she would cope or not—whichever it was—it was not his problem and not his business. Because, for all his impulsive decision to take Rosalie Jones out to Greece to claim what she could of the heritage she’d been denied all her life, on one thing he remained adamant. Nothing—absolutely nothing—would induce him to fall in with her father’s ludicrous plan for him to marry Ariadne’s sister just to achieve the merger he was set on.
However stunningly beautiful she’d turned out to be...and however hard it was to drag his eyes from her...
* * *
Tiredness was lapping at Rosalie. Though it had been absolutely fantastic to enjoy her very first plane flight in first class, where champagne and a gourmet dinner had been served, and she’d loved nestling into her soft, capacious leather seat, flicking through complimentary high-fashion magazines as if to the manor born, the flight had been long and they’d landed in near darkness.
Greece, she’d discovered, was two hours ahead of the UK, and it would be nearly another hour before they arrived at her father’s. He lived, so Alexandros Lakaris had informed her when she’d asked, in one of the most exclusive suburbs of Athens.
She couldn’t wait to get there! To finally meet her father! But even all her excited anticipation couldn’t stop her energy levels dropping away as they drove away from the airport. She felt flat, suddenly, and out of nowhere apprehensive.
‘We’re nearly there now.’
The voice at her side made her turn her head from peering out of the car window, though there wasn’t much to be seen outside. It was so strange to think that she was in a foreign land.
But it isn’t foreign! That’s the whole point! It’s the land of my father, and I’m as much Greek as I am British!
Yet as she made out the road signs in Greek lettering, and all the shopfronts, the traffic driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, it all seemed very alien.
The car was turning off the busy main road now, nosing down quieter roads that became spacious and tree-lined and less brightly lit by street lamps. At either side high walls girded the mansions hidden behind them, glimpsed only through steel gates. The car turned again, down yet another wide avenue, and then slowed in front of a pair of steel electronic gates. The driver spoke into a grille, and the gates swung open.
Rosalie felt her nerves tauten, her hands clutching at her handbag on her lap. The car moved slowly forward, over a crunching gravel carriage sweep, to pull up at the entrance to a white-fronted mansion, with wide steps leading up to huge double doors. The driver was getting out, opening her door.
She turned to the man who had brought her here, lifting her out of her grim, grinding, cheerless life in the East End of London to deposit her here at her father’s house.
‘Thank you for bringing me,’ she said.
She made her voice bright, though she didn’t feel bright. She felt nervous, but she wouldn’t let it show.
Just like I didn’t let it show that I could see, when I sailed out of the restaurant at the hotel, that he was finally changing his mind about me! That I finally wasn’t invisible to him!
It had been a good moment, a gratifying one, and she had relished it. But it seemed a long time ago now.
Besides, what does it matter whether I’m invisible to him or not? Or that he’s so incredible-looking? So what? It’s my father I’ve come here for.
With a movement as graceful as she could make it, she got out of the car, gazing up at the imposing frontage of the house.
My father’s home.
She tried to feel the excitement she should be feeling, but the nervous flatness that had come over her since landing was still paramount. She could hear the driver extracting the suitcases with all her expensive new clothes in them. The front door was opening—was this her father coming out to greet her? The father whom she had never known, who had never known about her...
But it was just a manservant in a white jacket, ushering her indoors with a murmur in Greek she didn’t understand. Rosalie cast a look back at the car, where the driver was resuming his seat, and raised a brief hand in farewell to the man who had brought her here... Alexandros Lakaris.
Did he respond? The tinted windows made it impossible to know. And then the car was moving off around the carriage sweep, disappearing through the gates.
She turned and went inside her father’s house.
