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Immediately the familiar too-sweet scent of sick-room flowers filled her nostrils, making her stomach churn. The intense, distinctive quiet that accompanied the gravely ill enveloped her.
For a long, awful interval the memories of her mother’s deathbed rose to swamp her. Bitter nausea made her reel, her hand outstretched to the door behind her for support. Her skin prickled hotly and she swallowed down bile.
Then she blinked and the déjà vu eased. The resemblance between this suite and her mother’s spartan room were few. Every inch here attested to a luxury unlike anything the Paterson family had been able to command.
But despite that it was a hospital room. The nearby oxygen tank, the drip, the panel of emergency buttons and dials beside the bed—they were all familiar.
Despite Petros Liakos’ wealth, he was as powerless against illness as her mother had been.
There was complete silence as she concentrated on getting her breathing under control.
A curtain hid the head of the bed. Was he even awake? There was no movement, no rustle of sheets.
But the nurse had said he’d see her. He must be lying there now, waiting for her. Perhaps guessing she was too nervous to face him.
Sophie tilted up her chin and clenched her fists at her sides. If Petros Liakos could bear to look her in the eye, she wouldn’t deny him the opportunity.
Slowly she paced towards the bed. Ridiculous to feel so nervous. She had nothing to be ashamed of!
The bedcovers shaped feet, long legs, a thin body. A big, gnarled hand lay on the coverlet, curled into a claw.
Tingling heat seared her skin as she paused, imagining how the owner of a hand like that, once strong and capable, could bear his body’s incapacity. It must be hell.
She walked closer, to the end of the bed, and then she saw him. Petros Liakos, her mother’s father. Patriarch of the Liakos family.
The man who’d disowned his flesh and blood because he’d refused to relinquish control over his daughter’s life.
Glittering dark eyes met hers and she felt the force of his willpower, the surge of energy, even from where she stood. His heavy brows jutted low in a ferocious scowl. His nose was a prominent, commanding beak, just what you’d expect of a power-hungry tyrant.
Thank heaven she hadn’t inherited that nose, Sophie thought hysterically, her mind shutting down against the turmoil of desperate emotion deep within.
Movement caught her eye. A clumsy, abrupt gesture from that useless fist on the bedclothes. She heard the hiss of his indrawn breath, recognised the savage sound of pure frustration. A man as proud as him would hate being seen like this.
Sophie looked up to his face again. This time she saw the rest, not the power she’d looked for and found the first time, but the frailty. The old man’s cheeks were sunken, the skull too prominent beneath his skin. His mouth was distorted into a lopsided grimace.
A twist of sympathy knotted her stomach.
‘Come to … gloat.’ His voice was laboured, barely intelligible with its slurred consonants. She had to lean forward to hear it.
‘No.’ She stared straight back into his eyes. They seemed the only thing about him still alive.
He drew a deep, shuddering breath that racked his frail body and scoured her conscience. Maybe she should leave. He was in pain.
‘Come … for my … money,’ he mumbled.
‘No!’ She stood straighter, anger driving out unwilling sympathy.
She glared at him, feeling the hurried beat of her pulse as long moments passed.
‘I was curious,’ she said at last when she could control her voice.
Again that stifled gesture with his useless claw of a hand.
‘Closer,’ he whispered. ‘Come closer.’
Sophie stepped up to the head of the bed, looking down at her grandfather propped against the mountain of pillows. This close his eyes looked febrile, glittering. It took her a moment to realise it was moisture that made his eyes so bright. Tears.
She stared, dumbfounded at the thought of this man crying. He must have seen the shock on her face, for he blinked and turned his head away, towards the window.
