AllFreeNovel
Share Us
As she walked past the hotel’s boutique, she caught sight of herself in the glass shopfront and her steps slowed. Was the drab-looking woman with her hair scraped off her face really her? Her skirt was unfashionably long, and her cardigan that she’d pulled around her shoulders because the air-conditioning was chilly added years to her. Lissa had criticised her clothes for being frumpy. Far worse had been when she’d overheard Jace’s opinion of her.
Unremarkable.
It still hurt, and tears pricked her eyes. But as Eleanor stared at her reflection she acknowledged that Jace had been right. She was old before her time and weighed down with the responsibility of running Gilpin Leisure. Long hours in the office back in Oxford meant that she never had time to shop for clothes or visit a hair salon, and her social life was non-existent.
Seeing Jace again had reinforced how jaw-droppingly handsome he was. How could she have believed that he had been attracted tohera year ago? Her beautiful sister was much more Jace’s type. Eleanor bit her lip. During her childhood, she’d often felt lonely. When she’d met Jace it had felt like a fairy tale and she’d been flattered by his attention.
The truth was that she’d been desperate to be loved. But he hadn’t loved her. He had made a fool of her and now she hated him.Hated him!But Jace was pulling all the strings and tomorrow she would have to throw herself on his mercy.
Pride stiffened Eleanor’s backbone as much as the metal rods supporting her spine. She turned her gaze from her reflection in the shop window to the mannequin displaying a figure-hugging scarlet dress. Jace had likened her to a timid sparrow, but tomorrow he was going to get the shock of his life when he discovered that she would not give up a share of the Pangalos without a fight. And before she went into battle, Eleanor decided, stepping into the boutique, she needed some armour.
‘Do you remember the parties in the ballroom, Jace?’
‘I do.’ Jace smiled at his mother. ‘Every week you and Bampás hosted a party for the guests who were about to return home at the end of their holiday.’
The food and drink had been provided free of charge by his parents. It was a way of thanking the guests for choosing to stay at the Pangorakis hotel and to encourage them to return the following year, his father had said.
‘The children had so much fun. I used to love seeing their happy faces.’ Iliana sighed softly. ‘They were good times, before we lost the hotel. Your poor father never came to terms with what happened.’ Her voice faded and she closed her eyes, the lashes making dark fans against her sallow skin. ‘I wish...’
Jace leaned closer to the daybed in the orangery at his house in Thessaloniki where his mother spent much of her time these days. ‘What do you wish, Mamá?’
‘To go back just once more before... I leave this world.’
‘The specialist thinks you could live for a year or more. He is confident the drugs will slow the spread of the cancer.’
Jace’s throat felt constricted and he swallowed hard. He picked up his mother’s hand and raised it to his lips to kiss her bony fingers. Her hands had scrubbed floors and done all sorts of menial work so that she could earn money to feed them both after his father had died.
Hatred of Kostas Pangalos festered like poison inside him. But he was close now to avenging his father and reclaiming the hotel. When he remembered how greatly his mother had suffered in the years since his father’s death, Jace assured himself that his ultimate goal to seize complete control of the Pangalos so that it would no longer be Kostas’s legacy was justified.
‘Very soon I will take you back to the Pangalos and we will rename it the Zagorakis. Will that make you happy, Mamá?’
‘How can you do that? Kostas...’
‘Is dead. Today I intend to secure a deal which will see the hotel returned to us.’
Jace frowned when he thought of Eleanor. He had backed her into a corner, and he knew she had no choice but to give him a fifty per cent share of the Pangalos to save her brother’s neck. She would only have turned to him as a last resort, which meant she had failed to raise enough money to pay off Mark Buchanan’s debts.
Taking back the hotel had been his driving force for the whole of his adult life, but Jace did not feel as satisfied as he’d expected. Eleanor had made it clear that she despised him. When he’d asked her to marry him a year ago, he had deliberately not spoken of love. But guilt tugged uncomfortably in his gut when he remembered how unworldly Eleanor had been. She had made an unexpected impression on him and he’d found himself thinking about her often since she had broken off their engagement.
He forced his mind away from the memory of Eleanor’s tears when he’d sprung a visit on her in England a week ago, and realised that his mother was speaking.
‘You are a good son, Jace. When you were sent to prison I cried every night because I could not afford lawyers to fight your case. It was a travesty of justice.’
Jace’s jaw clenched. Prison had been hell, and he still felt bitter that he’d been found guilty of a crime because of a rich man’s lies. There were parallels between what had happened to him and how Kostas had employed corrupt lawyers to seize control of the Pangalos from his father. A few years ago, Jace had bought out the company owned by the man who had been responsible for him going to prison and immediately fired him. Now he was poised to reclaim the Pangalos, but in another twist of fate his mother was terminally ill.
‘I take my own justice,’ he murmured. There was steel beneath his soft voice. ‘My business interests have made me very wealthy and you do not have to worry about me, Mamá.’
‘I do worry about you though. When I am gone, you will be alone. I wish I could live long enough to see you married and settled with a woman who you love as much as your father and I loved each other.’
‘None of us knows what the future holds,’ Jace said diplomatically. There was no point upsetting his mother by telling her there was zero chance of him marrying for romantic reasons. He had believed he was in love once, but Katerina had proved that real love, the selfless, unconditional kind that his parents had shared, was a rarity.
An odd thought came into his mind. If his engagement to Eleanor has lasted for longer than a day, he was certain his mother would have liked her and approved of her as his future wife. But he could not turn the clock back.
Before he left for his office he had a quiet word with Anna, his mother’s nurse. ‘Try to persuade her to eat something. She needs to build up her strength.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ the nurse promised, ‘but she has a poor appetite.’
The day dragged. Jace told himself that the hours passed slowly because he was impatient to finalise the deal to reclaim the Pangalos that had been his goal since he was fifteen. It definitely had nothing to do with the prospect of seeing Eleanor again. His edgy mood was exacerbated by the oppressive atmosphere. A storm had been forecast, and outside his office window sullen grey clouds were mustering in the sky.
