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Theo glanced sharply at his son, but with a jerky nod he left the room.
Lukas swivelled to stare out of the window. The aquamarine sea stretched flatly to an endless horizon—yet he knew that only a few miles out there would be boats. Boats disguised as fishing vessels, but filled with photographers and journalists clamouring for an exclusive shot of Lukas with his illicit family. Photographs which would then be sold to tabloids around the world, to make the Petrakides name raked through the mud and the dirt once again.
He sighed, thrusting a hand through his hair. He understood the need to avoid bad press—God knew, the Petrakides family had had enough of it.
He also understood that Rhiannon Davies would have to go. As his father had said, her presence could only complicate matters, and he didn’t want a Petrakides child—any child—attached to a woman whose motives in staying were at best uncertain, at worst suspect.
What did she want? he wondered, not for the first time. She didn’t want to leave the child; she didn’t want to stay. Lukas still wasn’t sure if she was playing a high-stakes game, or if she simply didn’t know what she wanted.
Hardly a woman to trust with a child, he thought in derisive dismissal. With a child’s love.
Still, he had use of her, as did the child. He wasn’t ready to release her just yet.
* * *
THAT NIGHT FOR dinner Rhiannon dressed in the outfit she’d worn yesterday to the reception—now slightly crumpled, but still clean at least.
She’d fed Annabel in the kitchen, under the eye of Adeia, the kindly housekeeper and cook. After giving the baby a bath in the huge tub in her adjoining bathroom, she’d put Annabel to sleep in the middle of the wide bed in her room. There were no travel cots, but Lukas had assured her one would be found by the next day.
Dinner, she’d been informed, was in the villa’s dining room, and she was expected there at half past seven.
Rhiannon drew in a shaky breath and examined her reflection.
Her hair had turned wild and curly due to the moisture in the sea air, and no amount of brushing or spray would tame it. She’d abandoned any pretence at styling it, and settled for a slick of lipstick, a dab of perfume, and her old outfit.
It wasn’t as if she were trying to impress either Theo or Lukas. Though she dreaded seeing the older man again. His words rang in her ears.
Bastard.
That was all he saw Annabel as. What would he think, she wondered with wry bitterness, if he knew she was illegitimate too?
What would Lukas think? Would he judge her an unfit mother? Damn her for the circumstances of her birth, as Theo seemed willing to do?
Rhiannon threw back her shoulders, her mouth hardening into a grim line. That wasn’t going to happen. Because she was going to stick around. No matter what they said. No matter what they did.
After checking that Annabel was deeply asleep—exhausted, no doubt, by the upheavals of the day—Rhiannon headed downstairs. The wide, sweeping staircase led to a tiled foyer flanked with mahogany double doors that led to the villa’s reception rooms.
Lukas came into the foyer from one of the rooms at the sound of her heels clicking on the tiles. He wore a light grey button-down shirt, expensive and well made, and charcoal trousers cinched with a leather belt. He looked comfortable, walking with the innate arrogant grace of someone who was used to being watched, admired, obeyed.
He swept her with a cool gaze that made Rhiannon uncomfortably aware of her unruly hair, her crumpled outfit. Her position weak, helpless.
Hopeless.
Who was she kidding? She might put on a face of bravado, but that was all it was. False courage. If Lukas didn’t want her here, there was nothing she could do to convince him to let her stay.
She swallowed, realising afresh how out of her depth she truly was.
Out of her mind.
Lukas said nothing, merely took her arm to lead her into the dining room.
The table was set, and Theo stood by the wide windows that overlooked the shoreline. The stars were just visible in a lavender sky, and a few lights twinkled on the water.
‘Are there boats out there?’ Rhiannon asked, moving closer to the window to look.
‘Journalists,’ Theo replied flatly. ‘Hoping to get a good photo. They know if they come too close we can prosecute.’ He spoke slowly, deliberately, as if she were stupid. Rhiannon bit her lip, bit down the annoyance at the man’s condescension, and turned to Lukas.
‘Have they followed you out here already?’
‘They’ve followed you,’ Theo interjected. He smiled, but his eyes were hard. ‘Something to do with what you said, I should think. My son’s baby.’
Rhiannon flushed at the condemnation in his tone. ‘I’m sorry. I was desperate, and I didn’t realise the tabloids would make such a fuss.’
Theo looked unconvinced. ‘Didn’t you? Haven’t you read the papers before? The Petrakides family has, alas, been mentioned many times before.’
‘Have they?’ Rhiannon lifted her chin, her eyes shooting amber sparks. ‘I do not read those kinds of papers, Mr Petrakides.’
Theo’s mouth hardened, and he jerked a shoulder towards the table. ‘Shall we?’
He was gentleman enough to wait to sit until she was seated, but Rhiannon didn’t like the way he so quickly and coldly assessed her. Dismissed her. Lukas, she feared, felt the same way. He was simply better at hiding his feelings.
It didn’t matter anyway. She couldn’t let it matter.
Adeia brought in the first course—vine leaves stuffed with rice and herbs, and a separate dish of olives and feta marinated in olive oil.
It looked excellent, and with an audible growl of her stomach Rhiannon realised how hungry she was.
The first course was followed by moussaka, and a rack of lamb with herbs and served with rice.
It was delicious, and by the time dessert arrived—a nut cake flavoured with cloves and cinnamon—she was so full she felt the waistband of her skirt pinch uncomfortably.
She was also aware of Theo’s disapproval of his son. He never said anything outright; in fact he spoke slowly, as if he wanted to use as few words as possible, and even chose those with care.
Still, she saw the disapproval in the tightening of his mouth, the flatness in his eyes, the biting edge of his tone.
Lukas, to his credit, remained mild and relaxed throughout the whole meal, although Rhiannon noticed how his eyes darkened, blanked. His fist bunched on the tablecloth before he forced himself to shrug, nod, smile. Dismiss.
She wondered at the tension in the relationship, what secrets the Petrakides family harboured. What secrets Lukas hid behind the neutral expression, the cold eyes.
This was Annabel’s family. Fear and uncertainty churned in Rhiannon’s stomach as she thought of giving up her ward to these people.
She couldn’t. And she didn’t have to, she reminded herself. Not yet. Maybe never.
After cups of strong Greek coffee, Theo jerkily excused himself to bed. He walked stiffly from the room, leaving Rhiannon and Lukas alone amidst the flickering candles and the remnants of a fantastic meal.
‘That was wonderful…thank you.’ She dabbed at her lips with her napkin, suddenly aware of a palpable tension.
Lukas was rotating his coffee cup slowly between strong, brown fingers, his expression shuttered.
He looked up when she spoke, smiled easily, the darkness of his eyes clearing like the sun coming from behind storm clouds. ‘You’re not going to end the evening so soon?’
‘It’s late…I’m tired…’ She should be tired, but right now her senses were humming in a way that made her feel gloriously awake and alive. She knew to stay, to linger in the dim, intimate atmosphere of the room, would be dangerous for both of them.
For some reason this attraction had sprung up between them—a powerful force that they both had to avoid…for Annabel’s sake.
And for her own.
‘Will you walk with me on the beach?’ Lukas asked. ‘There need not be enmity between us, Rhiannon.’
‘Is that so?’ Rhiannon tried to laugh; it came out brittle. ‘It’s easy for you to say that, Lukas. You’re holding all the cards.’
‘I think,’ Lukas said carefully, ‘we both want what’s best for Annabel.’
‘We might disagree about what that is.’
He nodded in acknowledgement, then shrugged. ‘It’s a beautiful moonlit night. The photographers can’t see us in the dark. A few moments…You haven’t had any fresh air since you’ve been here, and the island is beautiful.’
‘I can’t leave Annabel. If she wakes…’
‘Adeia will listen for her,’ Lukas said. ‘She’d love to.’
Rhiannon hesitated. Perhaps getting to know Lukas would help. It might soften him to her case, to her hopes for Annabel. ‘All right,’ she agreed, not nearly as reluctantly as she knew she should. ‘A few moments.’
Outside the sound of the surf was a muted roar in the distance, and the air was cool and soft. Lukas led her down a paved path to the beach, a stretch of smooth sand that curved around tumbled rocks into the unknown.
He kicked off his shoes, and Rhiannon did the same, enjoying the silky softness between her toes.
They walked quietly down the shoreline for a few minutes, the only sound the lapping of waves.
‘Has this island been in your family long?’ she finally asked, unnerved by the silence that had stretched between them.
Lukas gave a short, abrupt laugh before shaking his head. ‘No, indeed not. Only about twenty-five years or so; the Petrakides fortune is very new.’
‘Is it?’ Rhiannon had not read that in the papers, but then she’d only been looking for salient details regarding the man she’d believed to be Annabel’s father. ‘I didn’t realise.’
‘My father started life as a street-sweeper,’ Lukas stated with matter-of-fact flatness. ‘He worked his way up to becoming landlord of a tenement in Athens, before banding together with a few partners and buying a block of derelict apartment buildings. They renovated them, turned them into modest, affordable housing units. And he moved up from there. Eventually he didn’t need partners.’
‘A real success story,’ Rhiannon murmured, and Lukas acknowledged this with a brusque nod.
‘Yes.’
They walked quietly for a moment, Lukas seeming lost in unhappy thoughts.
Success wasn’t everything, Rhiannon supposed. It couldn’t buy happiness. It couldn’t buy love.
‘Your father doesn’t seem like a happy man,’ she ventured, surprised by her own candour as well as by Lukas’s swift, acknowledging glance.
‘No, he isn’t,’ he agreed after a pause. ‘If he seems in a bad temper, it is in part because he is upset over the press. My father has wanted to prove to everyone that he deserves the wealth and success he has earned. He feels any stain on his reputation is a reflection of where he came from—the street. Although…’ Lukas’s face was obscured in shadow, but there was suddenly a different darkness to his tone. ‘Things have not been easy for him lately.’
Rhiannon’s steps slowed as memories clicked into place. ‘He’s dying, isn’t he?’ she said quietly.
He stiffened, turned in surprise. ‘How did you know?’
‘I should have realised sooner,’ she admitted. ‘I’m a palliative nurse—I work in hospices. I’ve been around a lot of people in his situation.’ She shook her head. ‘I assumed he was speaking so slowly because he thought I was stupid, but it’s because he’s losing his words, isn’t he? What does he have? A brain tumour?’
Lukas nodded stiffly. ‘The doctors have given him at most a few more months. It hasn’t, by the grace of God, affected him too much yet, although he occasionally forgets things. Sometimes it is just a word, other times a whole event.’ He shook his head. ‘It is frustrating, because he knows he is forgetting.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Rhiannon whispered. ‘I know how difficult a dying parent can be.’
‘Do you?’ Lukas’s glance was swift, sharp, assessing, yet there was a flicker of compassion in those silver eyes. ‘Tell me about yourself, Rhiannon.’
She shrugged, discomfited by the turn in the conversation he’d so quickly and effortlessly made. ‘My parents died three years ago,’ she said, as if it were of no consequence. ‘I cared for them until their deaths. It is a difficult thing to do.’
‘Yes…I suppose it is. And in the time since then?’
‘I studied nursing, went into hospice care. It made the most sense after my experience with my parents.’
‘A rather lonely-sounding life,’ Lukas remarked, his tone expressionless, his face in shadow.
‘No more than anyone else’s.’ Irritation prickled at his judgement. ‘I like to think I make a difference. Help people in a time of need that most of us would prefer to ignore.’
‘Indeed, that’s too true. I only meant that spending time with people twice your age no doubt makes it difficult to find friends with whom you can socialise.’
Rhiannon shrugged. She could hardly argue with that. She didn’t have a social life—had never had one. She gazed unseeingly at the dark stretch of water, at the stars strung above in an inky sky like diamonds pricked through cloth.
‘Why did you come here, Rhiannon?’ Lukas asked after a long moment, his voice musing. ‘Most women in your position I believe would not have made such an effort. They would have sent a letter, or gone through a solicitor. But to come to the resort, to the reception, and think you could convince me I was a child’s father—!’ He shook his head, smiling slightly in disbelief, but Rhiannon was only conscious of her own prickling, humiliated response.
‘I admit it was foolhardy,’ she said in a tight voice that bordered on strangled. She was glad the darkness hid her flushed face. ‘I thought a face-to-face confrontation would be the…strongest way to present Annabel to you.’
‘To get rid of her, you mean?’
‘You have a strange way of looking at things,’ she retorted. She stopped to turn and face him. ‘I wanted to give her to her father—her family. I would have been ignoring my responsibility if I hadn’t attempted to find you. Wouldn’t I? To keep her to myself, to make no effort to find a family who might want her, love her…’ She trailed off, shaking her head. ‘That would have been selfish.’
Lukas was silent for a moment. ‘You wanted to keep her?’ he asked in a different voice.
‘Of course I did—do! She’s a baby.’
‘An inconvenience, as you said.’
She glanced sharply at him, unsure if he thought that, or if he simply thought she did. ‘All children are inconveniences,’ she said flatly. ‘If you remember, I said that didn’t mean they weren’t worth it.’
‘So you want her, but you’re prepared to give her up?’ Lukas said musingly.
‘I was,’ Rhiannon emphasised. ‘Now things are different.’ She turned to face him. ‘You should know that I won’t give Annabel up now. I may have been willing to earlier, when I believed you were the father, when I thought you would love her. But I realise now the situation is completely different. I don’t know how I can fit into the family you envisage for her—your family—but I will have some part. I’m not walking out of her life now.’
Lukas regarded her silently for a long moment. Rhiannon’s heart raced and her face flamed, but she met his gaze, stony-faced and determined, her fists clenched at her sides.
‘What about your own life?’ he asked in a mild voice. ‘Your flat, your job, your friends? If Annabel is Christos’s child, her life will be in Greece. Are you prepared to move here?’ He quirked one eyebrow in cynical bemusement. ‘To give up everything for a child that isn’t even yours…for the child of a friend you hadn’t seen in ten years? A child,’ he continued, his voice turning hard, unyielding, damning, ‘that you didn’t really want? A child with a family in place—a family with far more resources than you could ever possibly have?’
