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Alexandros Lakaris was striding past her, walking in as if he owned the place, going up to one of an array of reception desks, obviously as at home in this five-star hotel as he’d been out of place in that rundown house she’d been cleaning.
This was his world—the world of expensive luxury...
She hurried after him, staring about her, clutching her tote and knowing how totally underdressed she was for such a plush hotel. Swish, elegant people were everywhere and her gaze swept over them. For a moment she quailed. Then she rallied, her chin going up.
I hate being poor—but I’m not ashamed of it! Why should I be?
But maybe...maybe all that was over now.
Maybe I’m done with poverty! Done with it for ever!
Her eyes lit with excitement, anticipation and a pleasure and thrill she had never known in all her impoverished life. She looked around the spectacular atrium, drinking it in.
Oh, boy, was she going to enjoy this!
‘Your room key—you’re on floor five.’
Alexandros Lakaris was holding out a piece of folded card that contained a plastic key pass. The frown that was becoming so familiar to her was back on his face.
Well, what did she care about his disapproval? He was nothing to her—just her father’s messenger boy.
She kept her voice cool as she took her key. ‘Thanks,’ she said in a careless fashion. ‘Let me know when I need to be ready tomorrow.’
She didn’t wait for an answer—surely he could relay it to her through the hotel staff—and sauntered off towards the elevator banks.
Whatever Mr Oh-So-Handsome-and-Rich Lakaris, with his disapproving frown whenever he looked at her, was going to be doing till tomorrow, she couldn’t care less. As for herself—she knew exactly what she was going to be doing.
She stepped inside a waiting elevator, and jabbed the number five, rolling her shoulders. They were stiff from her day’s hard work. The overused muscles in her arms and legs were tired, and her hands felt like soggy sandpaper. The small of her back was aching, her knees knobbly from kneeling.
The elevator slowed, its doors slid open, and she stepped out into a lushly carpeted corridor, heading down towards her room on feet that were as tired and aching as the rest of her, but suddenly light as air.
Her drab and dreary life had been utterly transformed! Tomorrow she’d be flying to Athens—her first ever trip abroad!—to meet the father she had never known, who had now, like a miracle, discovered her existence! How fantastic was that? And for today—tonight—she was here in this amazing hotel and she was going to have a fabulous time, enjoying every last bit of what was happening to her!
Totally!
She couldn’t wait...
* * *
Xandros checked his appearance in the en suite bathroom’s mirror, minutely adjusting his bow tie. He was dressed for a formal dinner at one of the City’s livery companies which he’d decided to attend that evening while he was here in London. It might prove a useful occasion to start what he would now, inevitably and annoyingly, have to undertake: prospecting for an alternative merger target.
His mouth thinned with displeasure and exasperation. His hopes for the Coustakis merger looked to be totally scuppered by his point-blank refusal to give the slightest attention to Stavros’s outrageous scheming.
Did the man really think I would just swap from Ariadne to this other, totally unknown daughter?
It was ludicrously unrealistic—distasteful, even, for both himself and her—for Stavros to think that either of them would go along with it.
His thoughts strayed to the fifth floor...to Stavros’s worn-down, shamefully neglected English daughter whom he’d so impulsively brought here. He knew what was behind that impulse—and it wasn’t just his anger at Stavros. His face shadowed. Poverty was always frightening—even just the thought of it.
Memories from his own precarious childhood plucked at him. His parents, talking to each other in low voices, their expressions tense, talking about what further economies might next be made. His mother bewailing the fact that they might even lose the Lakaris family home. His father working long, punishing hours at the office, trying to salvage the wealth his own father had squandered.
The fact that he had done so—triumphantly—could not take away the stress and uncertainty—and outright fear—that had dominated his youth and childhood even all these years later. So much so that the luxury he now enjoyed—and enjoy it he did—was appreciated to the hilt. It might so easily have been otherwise...
And hopefully now Stavros’s English daughter, having known nothing but poverty all her life, condemned to cleaning filthy houses for a living, could look forward to an easier life, too.
He was glad he’d recommended that she do herself up, get some beauty treatments, buy some decent clothes, before she flew to Athens. After all, she was the daughter of o
ne of the richest men in Greece—she should start looking as if she was!
