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CHAPTER TWO

A NEW kind of silence tumbled down between them. It crackled and spat with what Zoe Kanellis was not saying, though Anton saw her contempt for him beginning to write itself on her face.

He offered a wry smile. ‘You have heard of me, then.’

The way she shot his smile a shrivelling glance killed it dead. ‘I would need to be deaf and blind not to have heard of you, Mr Pallis,’ she cut back, then just spun on her heels and walked off towards the rear of the house, leaving him to follow—or not. Her manner told him she was certainly not going to give him encouragement either way.

You are going to owe me big time for this one, Theo, Anton mused grimly as he took a moment to take in more of his surroundings. The house was tiny, a typical Victorian mid-terrace property with a steep, narrow staircase and two pine doors leading off the hall. It was all nicely decorated and a fawn-coloured carpet covered the floor. But, if he’d ever bothered to wonder how Leander Kanellis had lived since he’d walked away from one of Greece’s wealthiest families, not in a million years would he have imagined he lived like this.

Zoe had disappeared through the farthest door; pulling in a breath, Anton followed in her wake. He found her standing in a surprisingly large kitchen which seemed to double up as a sitting room, a big, blue sofa and chair forming a comfortable seating-area. A television occupied one corner. A coffee table littered with tabloid newspapers stood between it and the sofa. The other half of the room was mainly taken up by a large wooden table dominating the floor space around which cheap, pine units were fixed to the walls.

He saw the baby paraphernalia stacked up on top of one of the units, the kind of things that were completely alien to him except in a purely abstract sense. A tiny cot-like thing stood near the sofa, though he could see no baby lying in it.

‘He’s asleep upstairs.’

She’d caught him looking. Turning around to face her, Anton opened his mouth to ask if the boy was doing OK, but she got in first.

‘The media hype out there disturbs him when he’s down here, especially when they start ringing the bell. So I put him to sleep upstairs at the back of the house where the noise doesn’t carry so much.’

‘You did not contact the police to have them moved away?’ he asked, frowning.

She stared at him as if he’d just grown an extra head. ‘We are not the royal family, Mr Pallis. The police say they can’t do anything, and asking that lot to give us our privacy at this sad time doesn’t work for us. Excuse me for a moment.’

Feeling like he’d just received a slap on the wrist for being so stupid, Anton watched as she turned and let herself out through the back door. For the strangest few seconds he thought she was going to do a runner and leave him standing here like a dumped fool. But as he watched her through the kitchen window he saw her walk down the length of what looked like a flower bedecked bower crushed into a tiny space and stop at a solid-wood back gate, then proceed to slide home two heavy bolts.

Maybe he’d deserved the slapped wrist, he allowed as it hit him that she was having to virtually barricade herself in here—though the evidence that the gate required bolting made him wonder who had sneaked out the back way before she had allowed him in the front. A man? A boyfriend? Had they been forced by the media activity out there to carry on their love affair by stealth?

For some reason he did not want to delve into too deeply, the idea of Zoe Kanellis lying in her lover’s arms ten minutes before he’d arrived here did not sit well with him. He had plans for Zoe Kanellis that did not include the irritation of having to get rid of a lover.

Having secured the gate after Susie’s recent departure, Zoe used her time outside to pull herself together. To have, of all people, Anton Pallis turn up on her doorstep had been shock enough, but to hear his voice sounding so like her father’s had left her feeling weepy and faint. Could it not be enough for him that he walked in her father’s shoes? Did he have to sound like him too?

She used up another few minutes by un-pegging the clothes she had hung to dry on the washing line this morning, building up her defences at the same time. She could not afford to show vulnerability in front of Anton Pallis. She knew why he was here. It was just a case of staying strong enough to stone-wall whatever offer he was about to put on the table—while ignoring his voice at the same time.

Oh Dad, she thought helplessly, pausing to close her eyes for a second while she just wished he was here with her. Her wonderful father with his quiet, gentle ways and his oh, so understated air of pride. He would have known how to deal with the likes of Anton Pallis, especially with her beautiful mother standing by his side.

But none of this would be happening at all if they had been here, Zoe reminded herself. No, it was just her on her own left to protect Toby from the grasping clutches of Theo Kanellis—via the man standing in her kitchen right now.

Stepping back inside, she found he was still standing where she had left him, in the process of sliding a mobile phone into his pocket. He dwarfed the room with the sheer power of his personality. Everything about him was larger than life and so expensively honed and neat. His charcoal suit draped his powerful figure with creaseless silkiness; his facial features were so perfectly balanced even his high-bridged nose didn’t look out of place. Nor did the thick and glossy satin-black hair so perfectly cut to flatter the shape of his head nor the sheen to his closely shaven chiselled chin.

He glanced up and caught her staring at him, and Zoe felt those pin pricks attack her flesh again.

‘I have arranged for you to have some security to keep the media away.’

‘Oh good,’ she said, looking away from him and tipping her armload of washing onto the table. ‘Now Toby and I can go out surrounded by heavy bruisers instead of reporters. What a treat.’

Sensing a sharpening in his mood at her ungrateful tone, she began folding baby clothes.

‘Would you like me to do more?’ he enquired.

It was a serious question, Zoe recognised, cushioned with genuine concern. ‘I don’t recall asking you to do anything,’ she responded. ‘But then, hey—’ she shrugged ‘—I did not ask for any of this. Would you like a coffee or something before you begin your pitch?’

Anton narrowed his eyes. What he had seen in her as brittle and frail had been a dangerous miscalculation, he realised. For whatever the physical ravages grief had wrought on Zoe Kanellis, she was sharp-tongued and tough. In one way he supposed he should have been ready for it—she was Theo’s granddaughter, after all.

And she hated him; he’d seen that already. She probably hated Theo too. If she was as intelligent as her CV said she was, then she had also worked out exactly why he was here and was more than ready to take on the fight.

‘Your grandfather—’

‘Stop.’ Dropping the pale-blue body suit she had been folding, Zoe spun on her heels to send him a cold look. ‘Let’s get one thing clear before we start this, Mr Pallis—the person you refer to as my grandfather is nobody to me. So you will please use his proper name—or, even better, don’t mention him at all.’

‘Well, that cuts the need for conversation between us down to nil before it even gets started,’ he mocked.

Another shrug and she returned to folding the washing. Anton studied her while he contemplated the different ways he could tackle this. He had not come here expecting it to be easy, but nor had he come here expecting to find Zoe Kanellis so ravaged by grief or filled with so much bitterness for a man she had never been given the chance to meet.

‘I expected him to send a lawyer.’

‘I am a lawyer,’ Anton told her, surprised that she’d given him something with which to set the ball rolling. ‘I trained as one at least, though I rarely have the opportunity to use the skill these days.’

‘Too busy being the hot-shot tycoon?’

Relaxing slightly, he smiled. ‘Life in the fast lane,’ he conceded, ‘I am rarely in one place long enough to utilise the concentration required by the law. I believe your thing is astrophysics—much more impressive.’

‘Was,’ she replied. ‘And before you start explaining to me how easy you can make it for me to go back to my studies, I am not willing to hand over my brother to anyone, even for a pot of gold,’ she added flatly.

‘I don’t believe I was intending to offer a pot of gold,’ Anton countered. ‘Or to explain to you what you clearly already know.’

‘Which is what?’

‘That you can probably get a government grant to help you with child care while you continue your studies.’

Picking up the stack of folding washing, she moved across the kitchen to put the things down on top of another pile of washing. ‘You’ve been doing your homework.’

‘It’s the lawyer in me,’ he answered. ‘I also know that you cannot remain living here to bring up your brother and continue your studies, because the mortgage on this house was not protected by life insurance so it still must be paid.’

Zoe turned to look at him again. It amazed her how he could dare to stand there looking so relaxed while discussing her life as if it was his business!

‘Did your boss tell you to mention that?’

‘My boss?’ he arched a sleek black eyebrow.

‘Theo Kanellis. The guy who gave you your great start in life, then turned you into his messenger boy.’

At last she had the satisfaction of seeing a stab of anger flare his nostrils. ‘Your grandfather is old and sick and unable to travel far.’

He’d used the ‘grandfather’ label deliberately, Zoe noted. ‘Though not too old and sick to throw his weight around,’ she countered.

‘You are not very sympathetic to his age and his health, are you?’ he drawled in return.

‘No, not at all,’ she confirmed. ‘In fact you can take it as a given that I couldn’t care less if he sent you here to tell me had was about to drop dead.’

She turned away to click the switch on the kettle, so she missed the way Anton used the moment to narrow his eyes in grim contemplation of his foe.

‘However, in any other circumstance he wasn’t likely to bother with any message for me, was he?’ she went on as she turned back again in time to watch him lower glossy black eyelashes over his eyes. ‘It’s only that he wants Toby so he can groom him into a chip off the old block more worthy of the Kanellis name than my father was that he’s bothered to send you here at all.’

As he parted his lips to respond to all of that, Zoe watched him change his mind and clip those beautiful lips together again in a way that held her ever so slightly transfixed. How old was he? she wondered. Late twenties, early thirties? Not much more than that.

‘You are very bitter,’ he observed quietly.

‘Look around you,’ Zoe invited. ‘Does this look like the home of a Greek billionaire’s family?’

He did it. He actually dared to stand there in her cluttered kitchen and look around at the pine cupboards, cheap lino and the two mugs sitting on the draining board waiting to be washed. The pure silk of his suit slithered expensively against his long body as he moved.

Then she caught the brief twist his horribly sensual mouth gave and her offended dignity suddenly caught light. ‘If I wipe down a chair would you like to sit down?’

He swung back on her so sharply Zoe almost jumped, then wished she could take the snipe back again when she saw the sudden, hard glint in his eyes. ‘Now, that was uncalled for,’ he rebuked.

‘Well, don’t make remarks about my feelings for a man I have never met or even heard a peep out of in my twenty-two years,’ she threw back. ‘And don’t,’ she added warningly, ‘Even attempt to defend him by telling tales about how badly my father let him down or I will be showing you the door, Mr Pallis—or killing the messenger.’

She couldn’t stop the last bit—it just came out. A tight silence dropped between them. Zoe could not take her eyes off the sudden stillness in control of his face. Her heart had picked up extra beats again and those prickles were making themselves felt as she waited for him to retaliate. When he took a step towards her, she raised her chin up in defiance even as her eyes revealed that she knew that this time she had gone too far with her snipes.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she jerked out as he raised a hand then made her stiffen and drag in a breath as he closed his fingers around her wrist. It was only when he brought up his other hand to carefully prise the knife she hadn’t been aware that she was holding from her fingers that she realised what he was doing.

Maintaining his grip on her wrist, he leant past her to drop the knife back on the counter top. The move brought him close, too close, overwhelming her suddenly with his superior height and the amount of leashed power lurking beneath the suit. Her next breath feathered its way across her throat when she picked up his clean, masculine scent.

‘OK, Miss Kanellis,’ he murmured. ‘Let us take it as a given that we don’t like each other. However, heed my advice when I suggest that you stick to using words to try piercing me with; knives tend to draw blood.’

Her cheeks heated up. ‘I was not intending to—’

‘I meant your blood, Zoe,’ he whispered soberly. He held onto her eyes for a few mind-stinging seconds then let go of her wrist and took a step back.

He really confused her when he relaxed his wide shoulders and offered her a smile—or half of one. ‘I could do with that cup of coffee you offered to make me.’

Flustered by the whole macho demonstration, Zoe stared as he pulled out a chair at the table then lowered himself gracefully into it. Even that had been done as a stab at her insolent manner.

Crushing her lips together, she turned her attention to the kettle and wished the uncomfortable flush would cool from her cheeks. Half of it was there because she was so angry with herself for losing the high ground with her unwitting gesture with the knife; she hadn’t even noticed that she’d picked it up from the breadboard.

Talk about mind transference, she mocked as she poured boiling water onto instant-coffee granules.

‘Do you want milk and sugar?’ she asked him.

‘No thank you, to both.’

‘A biscuit then?’ Never let it be said that her mother had not taught her good manners; she mocked herself yet again.

There was another of those hesitations behind her before he answered, ‘Yes, why not?’

His manners were coming back out for an airing, Zoe recognised as she reached up to open a cupboard and took out a packet of digestives. She knew he didn’t really want the darn biscuit—but two ‘no thank you’s would have made him appear churlish so he’d taken the gracious route.

She placed the two coffees and a plate of biscuits down on the table then sat down on a chair opposite his. Outside the sun was shining in through the kitchen window, casting a sunbeam across the table top. As he picked up his coffee, Zoe watched the sunbeam touch the honey-brown skin of his long fingers as they curled around the mug. Her insides were churning and she knew why. Normally she avoided conflict, would run away from it if she could. Yet here she was intentionally goading Anton Pallis into a row. And really she knew she wasn’t being fair because none of this was his fault.

‘Scapegoat,’ he said, bringing her chin shooting upwards. He sent her a wry kind of look. ‘You need to grind your axe on someone and I happen to be handy. But your fight is not with me, you know. It’s with Theo.’

He really believed that? ‘Tell me,’ she countered. ‘How does it feel to walk in my father’s shoes?’

Right there he had it, Anton noted without allowing himself to react: the reason why she’d shrunk away from him at the front door earlier. Why she hated him so much. She saw his relationship with her grandfather as the sole reason her father had been left out in the cold.

A baby’s demanding cries suddenly impinged on the tension sizzling between them across the table. Perhaps it was good thing, he mused as he watched her rise to her feet. She’d gone pale again, he noticed, was maybe even a little ashamed of herself. Without saying a single word, she walked out of the room.

Left alone, he sat staring into his coffee, not frowning, not doing anything, because in truth he knew that for all its intended insult the stab about her ‘father’s shoes’ held a nucleus of truth. How was he to know what might have happened between Theo and his son if he had not been there to fill the gap left by Leander’s dramatic parting?

In the silence of the untidy kitchen, he sent another curse out to Theo for being so stubborn and making this situation what it now was.

Toby’s room was almost as tiny as the full-sized cot standing in it. But it was as pretty as a picture, all white and pale blue, with splashes of fire-engine red. Zoe had tried to convince her parents to give the baby her larger bedroom because she was away at uni most of the time, but they’d refused, insisting that the room was her room—and anyway this room was the perfect size for a small baby.

A baby they’d yearned twenty years for. Just when they had believed their chances had passed them by, this little angel had been conceived. And Zoe loved him. She loved him so much her heart swelled as she reached into the cot and picked her brother up.

He was wet and he was grizzly but he recognised her voice and opened his eyes when she said softly, ‘No one is taking you away from me, my darling.’

Taking time to change him out of his wet things, she made him comfortable then carried him downstairs. The noise outside seemed to be getting worse and she frowned as she walked down the hallway, wondering what could have excited them all to such a degree.

The reason for the increased noise stood in front of the kitchen window with his back to the room. It must have got round that Anton Pallis was here. All it would take next would be for a helicopter to land in the street and for Theo Kanellis to step out, and the press would feel like all their wildest dreams had come true.

Greek billionaires converge on tiny terrace in Islington! Zoe wrote the headline as she went to collect Toby’s bottle from the fridge.

This billionaire was talking into his mobile phone again. Something really alien curled up her tummy muscles as she looked at him. It wasn’t attraction, exactly, she told herself, though she would be lying if she did not acknowledge he was very good to look at—all height and width and long, lean elegance encapsulated in your typical million-dollar suit.

Dragging her eyes away from him, she listened to him talking in Greek as she busied herself. He was angry about something and when he heard her moving about and glanced around there was an impatient frown on his face. Finishing the telephone conversation abruptly, he rested back against the sink unit, accessed a number in his directory then the phone was back at his ear again.

Zoe stopped listening. Walking round to the sofa, she kicked off her slip-ons and curled herself cross-legged into the corner then bent her head to concentrate on coaxing Toby to accept the bottle teat.

She’d only met the man half an hour ago yet already this scene felt so unnaturally natural, she mused as she stroked Toby’s baby-soft cheek: her sitting here feeding a baby, while he leant against the kitchen sink at the other end of the room, coolly relaying a series of instructions in what sounded remarkably like Russian to her.

A vision of domestic bliss, she mocked it, catching hold of Toby’s waving starfish hand and lowering her head to brush it with a kiss.

He finished his call, and all went quiet in the kitchen. She could hear the wall-clock ticking and soft hum of the fridge. There was tension in the air too, mostly due to the last words she had thrown at him before she’d gone to get Toby, she supposed. She should not have said it, and remorse had been eating away at her ever since. She had no right whatsoever to blame this man for being Theo Kanellis’s substitute son. She might not be sure just how old Anton Pallis was, but it didn’t take many brain cells to work out that he could only have been a child when he’d been put in her father’s place. And her father had always claimed that he’d walked away from that life of his own volition and had never felt the slightest desire to go back to it again.

For a man who had never experienced discomfort in any environment, Anton discovered he was feeling it here in the home of Leander Kanellis. Zoe’s remark about him walking in the other man’s shoes was still cutting deep, he acknowledged.

‘You and your brother could have so much more than this,’ he heard himself utter as one thought led him to another place—the natural negotiator in him, Anton recognised.

Zoe looked up at him over the back of the sofa and caught him indulging in a rueful grimace.

‘And the price?’ she asked out of sheer curiosity.

Attempting to ease some of the tension out of his shoulders without her noticing, Anton strode forward, skirting around the table to come to a halt at the armchair which matched the blue sofa.

‘May I …?’ he requested politely.

She shrugged a narrow shoulder then nodded, and he lowered himself into the chair. It was surprisingly comfortable, he discovered, though he did not relax into it but sat forward to place his forearms on his thighs.

He seemed about to open negotiations by extolling Theo’s virtues; she spoke first. ‘I’m sorry for what I said to you earlier. It was totally unfair.’

‘No, don’t do that.’ Anton frowned and shook his head. ‘Don’t apologise to me for anything you say. You have the absolute right to speak what you believe is the truth. And you know why I’ve come here.’

‘Perhaps you’d better put it in words so there will be no misunderstandings, then.’

It was not a climb down from hostilities which made her offer the invite, and Anton did not take it as one. But at least she was opening a line of discussion he was more comfortable with—business. The business side of their meeting was about to begin.

‘I am here to negotiate terms on which you will agree to hand Theo his grandson. Theo does not mind if you come with the deal, but if you want to return to your studies he’s offering to support you all the way.’

‘Well, thank him for me, but tell him no thank you,’ Zoe returned politely. ‘Toby is my brother and we stick together—here in England.’

‘And if Theo decides to push for custody of his grandson?’

She didn’t even flinch at the suggestion. ‘I am Toby’s legal guardian,’ she stated. ‘And I don’t think Theo Kanellis will risk the bad press by attempting to contest me on that.’

His eyes were intent on her. ‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Absolutely.’ She nodded.

So did Anton, and pressed his lips together and dropped the subject. ‘Theo is not a bad man.’ He tried a different tack. ‘He is tough and he is stubborn, and sometimes he is infuriatingly impossible to deal with, but he is not dishonest or corrupt or cruel to children.’

‘But he couldn’t be bothered to send a representative to his own son’s funeral.’

‘Admit it,’ Anton fired back. ‘You would have despised him for it if he had done.’

‘No-win situation then,’ she acknowledged, and brought his attention to the scrap of a thing she held in her arms when she deprived the boy of his bottle and he let out a protesting squeak.

Lifting him up onto her shoulder, she began gently patting his tiny back. The half-finished bottle of formula rested in the crook of her lap. She looked incredibly young and vulnerable suddenly—they both did—Anton observed and felt like the devil’s messenger come to steal a baby—cold, ruthless and sure of himself.

‘Your grandfather has been very ill and is unable to travel far.’

For a second he thought he detected a flicker of softening in her eyes until she said, ‘Ill for twenty-three years, at a guess.’

He did not pretend to misunderstand her. ‘Your father—’

‘Don’t!’ Suddenly, warning sparks were flying from her electric-blue eyes. ‘Don’t even attempt to heap the blame on my father because I won’t listen! He is not here to defend himself any more which makes that line of negotiation low and cheap.’

‘My apologies,’ Anton said instantly.

‘Not accepted,’ Zoe threw back, still fizzing inside with anger on behalf of her father. The baby let out a whining squeak. Settling the small boy into the crook of her arm again, she retrieved his bottle and offered it to the cherub-like mouth.

Anton watched, momentarily fascinated. He had no experience with babies, or children of any age for that matter, but the one thing he noticed about this baby was that, in every way he could see from here, he was Greek. The head of black hair, the light olive tone to his skin, even the demand for attention, said ‘typical Greek male’ to him.

‘That boy you are holding deserves the best kind of life you can offer him, Zoe.’ Tough though it was, Anton knew from experience that it was the truth. ‘To deprive him of the best because you refuse to forgive your grandfather his sins is unforgivably selfish and wrong.’

‘Why don’t you just shut up and go away?’ She launched at him in shocking full volume, making his soot-black eyelashes flicker in surprise and Toby jerk in her arms.