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CHAPTER TWO

HELEN STOOD IN the kitchen watching the coffee percolate, and trying to think straight. Leon Aristides was here, in her home, and he knew about Nicholas. It wasn’t too bad, she told herself. So he knew Delia had an illegitimate son, and obviously he knew that Helen looked after the child. Maybe Delia had finally told her father, and maybe he had consulted a lawyer and maybe he had told Leon. But it was all very odd and there were way too many maybes!

At the very least Delia might have warned her, she thought, miffed with her friend for putting her in such a position. Snatching her bag off the kitchen table, she took out her cell phone and tried Delia’s number again. It was still dead.

Five minutes later, after snagging a towel from the downstairs toilet, she walked back into the sitting room carrying the coffee tray. ‘Sorry it took so long.’ She placed the tray on the occasional table and held out the towel.

He took it from her hand with a brief, ‘Thank you,’ and, swiftly wiping his face, he began drying his thick black hair. In his dishevelled state the family resemblance to Nicholas was quite startling.

Realising she was staring, she quickly sat on the sofa opposite him. ‘Black or white, Mr Aristides?’ she asked coolly.

‘Black, one sugar and drop the Mr Aristides. Leon will do—after all, we are old friends.’

‘If you say so,’ she murmured, and poured the coffee, unable to get his name past her suddenly dry mouth. As for being ‘old friends,’ he must be joking. Lifting her head, she handed him the cup and saucer, and flinched slightly as his fingers brushed hers. Their eyes met and for a second she saw a gleam of something sinister in the depths of his that made her stomach clench, and then it was gone and he was raising the cup to his mouth.

Oddly flustered but determined not to show it, Helen took a much-needed drink of her own coffee, and, replacing the cup on the table, she said, ‘Now perhaps you can tell me why a lawyer informed you about Nicholas? Did Delia finally tell her father the truth, and perhaps he contacted a lawyer?’ she queried.

He drained his cup, replaced it on the table, and raised his head, his dark eyes resting on her with cold insolence. ‘By the truth, I presume you mean that my crazy sister had a child outside marriage, a son that her family knew nothing about. A son that you have taken care of from birth… Is that the truth you are talking about?’ he prompted, his cold dark eyes narrowing at the look of guilt that flashed across her pale face.

‘That my own sister could be so devious as to deprive her father of a grandson is beyond belief, and that you with the collusion of your grandfather apparently aided and abetted her is downright shameful, if not criminal—’

‘Now wait just a minute,’ Helen cut in. ‘My grandfather died months before he was born.’

‘My sympathy, I apologise for maligning the man. But it does not make your actions any less shameful,’ he said bluntly.

‘The only shameful act as far as I am concerned is your father forcing Delia into becoming engaged to a distant cousin when she returned to Greece last summer. A man of his choosing, to keep the money in the family. She is not crazy, quite the reverse. Delia always knew her father would try and marry her off eventually and prepared for it,’ Helen said adamantly.

‘She tried to delay it as long as possible—that was why she changed the course she was taking at university after the first year, so she could extend her studies a year. And, for the same reason, once she did graduate she decided to take a teacher’s training course for another year.’ Helen leapt to defend her friend. She didn’t like Leon Aristides and she liked even less his derogatory comment about his own sister.

‘You know more than me, it would seem,’ he drawled sardonically his eyes narrowing on her small face, and Helen felt inexplicably threatened.

She hesitated and lowered her lashes to hide her too expressive eyes. It was not like her to let her tongue run away with her, and she had the disturbing conviction that she would need all the self-control she possessed around Leon Aristides.

‘As to that I don’t know.’ She gave a slight, what she hoped was a nonchalant, shrug. ‘But obviously Delia has changed her mind about Nicholas or you would not be here,’ she continued. ‘But I spoke to her a few weeks ago and she never said anything to me. As far as I know, she still has no intention of marrying the man and only agreed to the engagement to keep her father happy until she is twenty-five in May and comes into the inheritance her mother left her. Then she has every intention of telling the whole world she has a child when her father can no longer control her.’

‘She will never have the chance.’ He brushed aside her stalwart defence of his sister with a few cold words.

‘My God, Delia was right about you!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re as—’

‘Delia is dead, as is my father,’ he interrupted brutally, guessing her thoughts about him, and deflecting them in the bluntest way possible.

‘They were staying on the island, and Delia was driving them to the harbour when the car slid off the road and into a ravine.’ He spoke emotionlessly as if he had recited it all a hundred times before. ‘Father died instantly, Delia a few hours later in hospital without ever regaining consciousness.’

Helen stared at him in stricken silence. She could not believe it, did not want to believe it.

‘Dead… Delia dead,’ she murmured. ‘It’s not possible.’ She lifted wide, appalled eyes to the man opposite. ‘It has to be a ghastly joke.’ Not half an hour ago she had been worrying because Delia had not called; now she was expected to believe she was dead.

‘The accident was on the fifteenth of January and there was a double funeral three days later.’

Suddenly, like a tidal wave crashing down on her, the full horror of his revelation swamped her mind, and she knew Aristides was telling the truth. Her heart contracted in her chest, her eyes closing momentarily as she struggled to hold back the tears. But it was a futile gesture as moisture leaked beneath her lashes. She wrapped her arms around her middle in a physical attempt to hold herself together.

Delia, beautiful, brave headstrong Delia, her friend and confidante—dead.

She remembered the first time they had met. Theirs had been an unlikely friendship, the extrovert Greek girl and the introvert English girl.

Helen at sixteen had missed a lot of schooling owing to the accident that had killed her parents. Her father had worked as an IT consultant for a Swiss bank in Geneva and they had been on a skiing weekend in the Alps, when an avalanche had buried her parents and left Helen slammed against a tree chest-deep in snow. Rescued hours later, she had fractured her pelvis, but worse had lost her sight. Whether it had been snow blindness from exposure to the brilliant sun in the hours before she had been rescued, or a psychological reaction at seeing her parents killed, it had taken her a long time to recover.

She had returned to England to live with her grandfather, and slowly recuperate. Finally she had resumed her education as a day pupil at a boarding-school in the countryside near her home. She had been put in the same class as Delia although she had been two years older than everyone else. It had been Delia who had stood up for Helen when others in the class had teased her about the ugly tinted glasses she had worn at the time. From that day forward they had become firm friends and Helen had frequently invited Delia to her home for weekends. Her grandfather had been a classics scholar who spoke fluent Greek and the school had approved the outings.

When Helen had left school early to look after her grandfather, who had been left wheelchair-bound after a stroke, Delia had continued to visit right up until she had left school herself to go to university in London. They had kept in touch by telephone and the odd e-mail, but Helen had not seen Delia for two years until she had turned up unexpectedly one weekend looking pale and sombre. Not her usual confident self at all.

‘Obviously the news is a shock to you and I’m sorry to intrude on your grief.’ The brisk dark voice cut into her reverie, not sounding the least apologetic. ‘But I came here to see my nephew and discuss his future.’

Tight-lipped and clenching her teeth in an attempt to control her grief, Helen lifted tear-drenched eyes to Leon Aristides and shivered at the aloof glacial expression she saw on his face. If this man was mourning the loss of his father and sister it certainly did not show. He was as hard as a block of granite, and suddenly fear for Nicholas and what his future would be overrode her grief.

‘Nicholas is asleep upstairs. He attends nursery school in the morning and after lunch he usually has a nap,’ she said truthfully, struggling to gather her tumultuous thoughts into some kind of order. Instinctively she knew Delia would not have wanted her son brought up in the same mould as her father and brother, and she needed all her wits about her to deal with the situation. ‘I don’t think it is advisable to wake him up to tell him his mother is dead.’ She choked over the last word.

‘I wasn’t suggesting any such thing.’ He lifted a hand and ran it through his thick black hair, and for a moment she thought she saw a gleam of anguish in his dark eyes.

Helen began thinking maybe Leon Aristides was more upset than he appeared. Suddenly she remembered Delia mentioning that his wife and newborn child had died in an accident. This must be a double blow to him—she had lost her best friend but he had lost his father and his sister—and her soft heart squeezed with compassion.

‘But he will have to be told later and in the meanwhile—’ Aristides rose to his feet and stepped towards her ‘—I want to see some proof the boy actually exists and is here,’ he declared with a sardonic lift of an ebony brow.

Helen gritted her teeth at his cynical comment and any sympathy for him disappeared. ‘Of course.’ She stood up and found he was much too close, and sidestepped out of his way. ‘If you will follow me,’ she murmured and made for the door.

The curtains were closed against the dismal dark day and a small car-shaped night light that Nicholas adored illuminated the bedroom. The bed was also a model of a car, and lying flat on his back was Nicholas wearing white underpants and a tee shirt. With his curly black hair falling forward over his brow, and his thick black lashes lying gently against his smooth cheeks, he was deeply asleep.

Helen smiled down at the infant, and very gently brushed a few stray curls from his brow. She heard a deeply indrawn breath, and glanced back at Aristides. She could sense the tension in every muscle and sinew of his big frame as he stared down at the sleeping boy, totally transfixed.

Helen didn’t like the man, she found him hard and cynical. If she was honest she also found him intimidating. He was not only tall, but powerfully built with wide shoulders and a broad chest, lean hips and long legs. Yet right at this moment he looked as vulnerable as the child who held his complete attention.

Silently she moved back a few steps towards the door, to give him some privacy in which to get over the shock of seeing his nephew for the first time. He was entitled to that much, but he was not necessarily entitled to sole care of the child, she reminded herself firmly.

Her eyes misted with tears as she saw again in her mind’s eye Delia’s face when she had turned up out of the blue on a day in February much like this one four years ago. She had been upset, but determined, and no amount of talking had been able to get Delia to change her mind.

Delia had been pregnant and unmarried at twenty. There had been no way she was going to tell her father, and she had asked Helen to help her take care of the baby until she came into her own fortune. Then she could say to hell with her father and bring her child up as she wished.

Personally Helen had thought it was the craziest idea she had ever heard, and had told her so. She had doubted Delia could keep the pregnancy hidden, never mind keeping a child secret, and what about the father?

The father was a fellow student who had been killed in the London train crash that had been all over the papers a few weeks earlier. But Delia had had it all worked out. She would go home for Easter as usual and return to university in London afterwards. Her father had been ecstatic at the news Leon’s wife was finally pregnant so he would pay Delia even less attention than usual.

Delia had been convinced she could get through the holiday without anyone realising she was pregnant. The baby was due on the first of July and it would be simple to book into a private hospital in London to have a Caesarean delivery in mid-June. Then she could leave the child with Helen and still be able to return to Greece for the summer holidays without her family being any the wiser. Helen had thought the whole idea ridiculous, but Delia had been nothing if not determined.

A wry sad smile tipped the corners of her lips. Thinking about Delia now, she realised she had been just as stubborn and autocratic in her own way as her father and brother.

Even so Helen had flatly refused her request and with the help of her grandfather had tried to persuade Delia that she must tell her family the truth. Helen had thought they had managed to convince her to do just that when she had left two days later.

A strong hand grasped her arm shocking her out of her musings.

‘He is every inch an Aristides,’ Leon said softly, turning towards her and blocking her view of the room. ‘You and I really do need to talk.’ The pressure of his fingers on her arm and the closeness of his large frame did extraordinary things to her breathing. ‘Are you alone here?’

She gasped and tilted back her head to lift her gaze and met his intent black eyes. Her mouth ran dry and her pulse took off at an alarming rate. He saw her reaction and his dark gaze fell to her softly parted lips and then provocatively lower to linger on the proud thrust of her breasts against the soft wool of her sweater, before flicking back up again to her face. ‘You are a very attractive woman—perhaps a live-in lover?’

‘Certainly not,’ she snapped, blushing to the roots of her hair.

‘That makes it easier,’ he murmured, and settled a long finger over her lips. ‘But shh—we don’t want to wake the child.’

Her lips oddly tingling from the touch of his finger, before she knew what was happening she was out of the bedroom, the door closed behind her and halfway down the stairs.

‘You can let go of my arm now.’ Helen finally found her voice, deeply shaken by the startling effect Leon Aristides’ deliberately sensual look and touch had upon her.

He let go of her arm without a word, and walked down the stairs and into the sitting room, obviously expecting her to follow. She stopped for a moment at the foot of the stairs to gather her chaotic thoughts into some kind of order. But the resentment burning bitterly in her breast did not help. Who the hell did he think he was, treating her home as if it were his own?

Unfortunately she knew exactly who he was, she recognised with her next breath; a wealthy, powerful man who happened to be Nicholas’ uncle. Much as she would like to be rid of him, she realised it wasn’t in Nicholas’ best interest or hers to antagonise the man, and reluctantly she finally followed him into the room.

He had flopped down on a sofa, his head thrown back and his eyes closed. He had opened his jacket and loosened his tie. The top button of his shirt was undone, revealing the strong tanned column of his throat. His long legs were splayed out in front of him, the fabric of his trousers pulled tight across his thighs and graphically outlining the bulge of his sex.

Flaked out as he was, for a moment his sheer physical impact hit her like a blow to the stomach. Leon Aristides might be one very conservative banker, but there was no mistaking he was all virile male.

Her violet eyes roamed in helpless fascination over his superb body. He was probably a magnificent lover, she thought, and a shaming tide of pink coloured her cheeks.

Helen felt like a voyeur; erotic thoughts about men had never bothered her before. What on earth was happening to her? She rubbed suddenly damp palms down her thighs, and, swallowing hard, took an involuntary step back. She raised her head to find his dark, astute eyes resting on her. Oh, my God! Did he know what she had been thinking? And quickly she broke into speech. ‘Would you like another coffee or something?’

‘Something…’ His dark eyes swept leisurely over her in undisguised masculine appreciation. Suddenly she was horribly conscious of her old denim jeans and the well-washed sweater she was wearing. But even worse was the peculiar swelling in her breasts at his lingering appraisal. ‘Yes, the something has more appeal,’ he drawled huskily. ‘What do you suggest?’ and he smiled.

Her gaze dropped from the amusement in his dark eyes to the curl of his sensual lips, revealing gleaming white teeth, and for a second she stopped breathing, mesmerised by the unexpected brilliance of his smile.

Realising she was staring again, she hastily glanced somewhere over his shoulder and blurted out the first thing that entered her head. ‘Tea or wine, if you prefer? When my grandfather was alive he kept quite a lot of red wine and I don’t drink much so there are a couple of bottles around.’ She was babbling again, but nothing like this had happened to her before.

Helen wasn’t naive. She knew all about sexual attraction—she had dated Kenneth Markham for almost a year, until he had decided to go to Africa and help the starving, and she had never heard from him again. But this was different—instant and electric—and it shocked her witless.

‘I’ll go and get the wine.’ She dashed back out of the room like a scalded cat.

In the safety of the kitchen she took a few deep, steadying breaths. She was still in shock at the news of Delia’s death, she told herself. That had to be why her body had reacted so peculiarly to Leon Aristides. She didn’t even like him, and she certainly wasn’t attracted to overtly macho men. She much preferred the sensitive, caring type like Kenneth, the type one could talk to without feeling threatened in any way. It had to be the tragic news that had made her hormones go haywire. A physical anomaly brought on by the pressure of the moment. Reassured by her conclusion, she took two glasses from a cupboard, before she crossed to the wine rack and reached for a bottle of wine.

‘You’re tiny, allow me.’ She almost jumped out of her skin as a long arm stretched over her head.

She spun around to find the damn man only inches away. ‘I can do that,’ she said in a voice that was not quite steady. Disturbed by the ease with which his closeness affected her all over again.

‘It is done.’ He shrugged his broad shoulders, holding a bottle of red. ‘But you can give me the bottle opener, and something to eat would be much appreciated. I was too busy searching for this place to take time out to eat lunch.’ His dark eyes flicked down at her. ‘Sandwiches will do,’ he ordered calmly.

The ‘tiny’ and his arrogant assumption she would feed him infuriated her, but she didn’t argue. It was a relief to move away from him and, opening a drawer, she took out the bottle opener, and slapped it on the bench beside him before crossing to the fridge and extracting a block of cheese.

‘Will cheese do?’ She flicked him a glance and was further incensed to see he had moved to sit at the kitchen table, a glass of wine in his hand, the bottle of wine in front of him and another glass on the table.

‘Perfectly,’ he said calmly and took a sip of the wine.

Turning her attention to the task before her, Helen quickly made two sandwiches and put them on a plate, all the time tensely aware of the man behind her.

‘Your grandfather had good taste in wine,’ his deep voice drawled appreciatively. ‘In fact, according to the report my father had on him, your grandfather was a highly intelligent, highly moral, well respected professor.’

‘Report!’ Helen exclaimed, turning around to stare at him in amazement, the plate of sandwiches in her hand tilting precariously.

‘Here, let me take that.’ He reached across and took the plate from her unresisting grasp and, placing it on the table, picked up a sandwich and began eating with obvious enjoyment.

He was doing it again, ordering her around, and for a long moment she stared at him, stunned. ‘Your father actually investigated my grandfather.’ Her indignant gaze fixed on his hard face.

‘Yes, of course,’ he stated coolly. ‘Before my sister was allowed to visit your home my father had checked with the school and privately that you and your grandfather were suitable people to befriend her. Obviously over the years the circumstances had changed, but neither my father nor I for that matter had any idea. Delia was nothing if not inventive.’ He took another sip of wine before continuing. ‘I distinctly remember three years ago a cartoon Christmas card you sent Delia particularly amused my father. He asked after you both and suggested she invite you over for another holiday. Delia’s response as I recall was that your grandfather had suffered a stroke some years before and you stayed at home to look after him. It was unfortunate, but she had not seen you since she went to university in London, and apart from the occasional Christmas and birthday card the friendship had fizzled out.’

An ebony brow arched sardonically. ‘I am beginning to realise my innocent little sister was like all women—as devious as the devil and an accomplished liar,’ he stated witheringly and reached for another sandwich.

Helen opened her mouth to defend her friend and closed it again. What could she say? From the moment she had taken Nicholas into her home she had silently colluded with whatever story Delia had chosen to tell her family. That Delia had lied about their friendship brought the fact home with brutal clarity. But then why was she surprised? In the first few months after Nicholas was born Helen had been hoping that Delia would see sense and tell her family about the boy, while Delia had obviously been busy covering the trail that led back to Helen.

‘Sit down and have a drink. You look completely stressed out,’ he observed, his cold dark eyes narrowing on the look of guilt that flashed across her pale face.

She pulled out the chair and sat down, and picked up the glass with a hand that was none too steady. She lifted the glass to her lips and took a long swallow. Helen seldom drank; alcohol went straight to her head. But Aristides was right, she was stressed to breaking-point, the enormity of the deception she had agreed to finally hitting her. Much as she had loved Delia and wanted to help, Helen knew deep down inside her reasons had not been purely altruistic.

Before the death of her parents she had been a happy, confident teenager. She had had all the hopes and dreams of a young girl. School, college, a career, then love, marriage and children. But everything had altered the day of the accident. Her near idyllic life had been shattered and, much as she’d loved her grandfather, he hadn’t been able to replace what she had lost.

Delia had been the one bright spot in her life, but when she had first made her outrageous proposal Helen had refused, until the sudden death of her grandfather in late April had changed everything. Delia had turned up for his funeral still pregnant and with her own family still not aware of the fact.

To Helen, grieving and totally alone for the first time in her life, Delia’s request that she take care of the baby while she continued her studies suddenly had not seemed so outrageous. If Helen had been honest it was a dream come true.

‘More wine?’ He interrupted her thoughts, lifting the bottle of wine from the table.

She glanced at him, violet eyes clashing with black, and she knew the dream was about to become her worst nightmare. She lowered her eyes from his too-penetrating gaze and realised she had drained her glass. She also realised she needed all her wits about her for what was to follow.

‘No. No, thank you,’ she said with cool politeness.

‘As you wish,’ he replied, and refilled his own glass and replaced the bottle on the table, casting her a mocking glance from beneath heavy-lidded eyes, and then lifted his glass to his mouth.

Unconsciously she watched his wide, mobile mouth, saw the movement in the strong line of his throat as he swallowed. Her fascinated gaze followed the movement lower to where the open collar of his shirt revealed a few black hairs on the olive toned skin of his chest. Suddenly heat flushed through her veins and curled in her belly. Oh, no, she thought, it was happening again and it terrified her.

She raised her eyes to his face and opened her mouth to say something, anything, but she couldn’t breathe. She simply sat there, colour flooding into her cheeks, her lips softly parted, paralysed by the sexual awareness that tightened every nerve in her body.

He replaced his glass on the table and was studying her flushed face. He knew what was happening to her, and why. She saw his heavy-lidded eyes darken with sensual knowledge. She saw the hint of satisfaction in the slight smile that curved his mouth, and suddenly the air between them was heavy with sexual tension.