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Clutching him, crushing him.
He took a ragged breath now, the phone clamped to his ear.
‘We have received a contact address,’ came the reply.
‘Finally!’ breathed Xandros, relief flooding through him.
Five minutes later he’d booked a flight to London—into whose anonymous millions Rosalie had simply...disappeared.
Despite his urgent efforts there had been no trace of her. Not at the dive she’d used to live in, nor at the cleaning agency she’d worked for. She’d just...vanished.
But now—at last—she’d shown up!
He punched in the number for Ariadne and she answered immediately, anxious to hear from him.
‘She’s got in touch! Told the lawyer how to reach her,’ he announced. ‘So I’m flying straight off to London now.’
But his buoyant relief did not last beyond his hot-footed arrival at the hotel she’d given as her contact address. Where she awaited the paperwork that she expected him to send her so as to expedite the divorce she was initiating.
He stared disbelievingly at the reception desk clerk.
‘But she must be staying here—she’s given this hotel as her address!’
It wasn’t the same hotel he’d taken her to that first night he’d found her, because he’d already checked there. And now she didn’t seem to be at this one either.
Frustration knifed in him—and anxiety, too. The credit card he’d given her when they’d married hadn’t been used—so how was she paying for whatever accommodation she was in? The last thing he wanted was her resorting to her own meagre finances... Especially after what she’d told his lawyer—
He snapp
ed his mind away—back to what the hotel clerk was repeating to him.
‘I am so sorry, Mr Lakaris, but there is absolutely no record of Mrs Lakaris as a current or recent guest.’
Nor had she booked in under her maiden name—or the Coustakis name.
Grim-faced, he checked into the hotel himself, going up to his room with a heavy frown. He shrugged off his jacket, threw himself down on the bed.
Where is she?
The question burned in him, finding no answer.
Where to look next?
She could be anywhere! Anywhere at all!
A discreet knock sounded on the door. Irritated at the disturbance, he got up, strode to the door and yanked it open. It was Housekeeping. The turn-down service.
Except the chambermaid who stood there gasped in shocked dismay.
It was Rosalie.
* * *
The blood was draining from Rosalie’s face, and faintness drummed in her ears.
She could not move...was frozen to the spot with shock.
With dismay.
