Пиппа Роско – Claimed For The Greek's Child (страница 2)

Was he?

‘Just for the night.’

Her eyes assessed him, but not in the sexual way he was used to from beautiful women. It was as if she were doing mathematics—on his expensive clothes, a watch that was probably worth half a yearly intake for this place, the car outside. He wasn’t offended.

Dimitri took out his wallet and removed all the euros he had in it. What did it matter to him? He couldn’t take them where he was going. He placed the thick bundle of notes on the bar.

‘No, sir. That’s not...that’s not necessary. It’ll be sixty euros for the night, an extra five if you’d like breakfast.’

The Irish lilt to her voice was a little surprising to him. Her skin wasn’t the light, freckled complexion that had populated the racecourse back in Dublin—it was closer to his own Greek colouring, only without the benefit of the sun she seemed pale. For a moment he allowed himself to imagine this woman on a Greek island, sun-kissed and glorious, the sun’s rays deepening the natural promise of her skin tone. Long, dark tendrils of hair had been swept up into a messy ponytail that should have made her look young, rather than chaotically beautiful. Loose tendrils from a grown-out fringe played along her jawline, accentuating her cheekbones and contrasting with the lighter golden tones in hauntingly emerald-coloured eyes.

Forcing his attention away from her, he looked at the bottles behind the bar. Scanning them, he was slightly disappointed. If he’d had a choice, none of them would have been it. But beggars couldn’t be choosers.

‘No breakfast. But I’ll take a bottle of your best whisky.’

Again, her eyes were quick and assessing. Not calculating. That was it. That was what was different about her. There wasn’t anything selfish in her gaze, nothing judgemental. She was simply trying to figure him out. As if making up her mind, she slipped behind the small bar, not even looking at the obscene amount of money she was yet to touch, and she pulled down two cut crystal glasses housed in a hidden shelf above the counter. The way she resolutely ignored the money made him wonder if he’d offended her and a shadow of guilt stirred within him.

She placed the two glasses on the wooden bar top, waiting for his reaction, to see if he would object to her joining him. It was his turn to assess. She’d barely said two words to him. She looked to be in her early twenties. The white shirt she wore as a uniform was ill-fitting, as if made for someone bigger than her. The worn name tag sewn onto the shirt pocket said ‘Mary Moore’. She didn’t look much like a Mary. But he skimmed over these small details in preference of one: there was something behind her eyes. Something that called to him.

He nodded, allowing her to proceed. Instead of reaching for one of the bottles behind her, she bent beneath the bar and pulled out one that was more expensive. The good stuff saved for special occasions. Well, he supposed this was a special occasion.

She poured the amber liquid into each glass and, when finished, pushed one glass towards him and picked up the other.

‘Sláinte,’ she had said.

‘Yamas,’ he’d replied.

And they both drank deeply.

The plane banked to the right as it prepared to come in to land. Whether it was the drink from the night before, or the one from two hours ago, he could still taste whisky on his tongue, he could still taste her. As the plane descended towards the runway, images flashed through his mind. The first taste of her lips, the feel of her heart beating beneath the palm of his hand, her perfect breasts, her thigh as he moved it apart from the other. The feel of her wrapped around him and her thrilled cry as he sank deeply into her. The ecstasy he found as they climaxed together, swathed in each other. The memory of the scream he’d silenced with an impassioned kiss was drowned out by the roar of the backward thrust of the small jet engine as they came in to land at JFK.

Even the air stewardess seemed reluctant to open the cabin door. Her smile was sad as he disembarked, as if she too knew what was about to happen. But she couldn’t. Only he, and perhaps two others in the whole world, did—the lead investigator, and whoever it was who had really perpetrated the crime.

At the bottom of the small metal steps stood about twenty men in blue windbreakers with yellow initials marking them to be FBI agents. Gun belts with handcuffs and batons carefully held in place sat heavily around each man’s waist.

He stepped down towards the tarmac. Looking straight into the eyes of the lead agent, Dimitri Kyriakou, international billionaire, held out his hands before him—as he’d seen done in movies, as he’d known he would have to do long before this flight, long before last night—and as the steel handcuffs were clasped around his wrists he forced his head to remain high.

CHAPTER ONE

Present day

Dear Dimitri,

Today you found me.

DIMITRI GUIDED THE car down roads he’d travelled only once before. Headlights pierced the night, picking out slanting sheets of rain and wet shrubs lining the road. His mind’s eye, however, ran through images of his now very much ex-assistant’s horrified face as words like ‘Sorry’, ‘I didn’t know’ and ‘It was for the best...for the Kyriakou Bank’ stuttered from the man’s lips.

Fury pounded through Dimitri’s veins. How had this happened? How?

In the nineteen months since his release from that godforsaken American prison, he’d sweated blood and tears to try and find the culprit responsible for setting him up to take the fall for one of the most notorious banking frauds of the last decade. Not only that, but also to bring his—his father’s—family-owned bank back to its former glory.

And finally, one month ago, after the arrest of his half-brother, Manos, he’d thought all his troubles had ended. He’d thought he could put everything behind him and focus on the future. He thought he’d be finally able to breathe.

Until he’d received notification of unusual activity on a small personal account he’d not looked at in years. He’d set up the alerts the moment he’d resumed his position on the board of governors and had hoped that he’d never receive one.

But two days ago he had.

And he’d been horrified to discover that, unbeknownst to him, his assistant had arranged payment to a woman who had claimed Dimitri had a daughter. It had happened before, false accusations seeking to capitalise on his sudden unwelcome and erroneous notoriety after his arrest, demands for impossible amounts of money from scam artists. But this time...

Was it some perverse twist of fate that this discovery had coincided with the second leg of the Hanley Cup? That he should be drawn back to Dublin not only for the Winners’ Circle, but also because his assistant had transferred the ridiculous sum of fifty thousand euros to a money-grabbing gold-digger who had—

The sound of his phone ringing cut through his thoughts like a knife.

‘Kyriakou,’ he said into the speaker set in the car.

‘Sir, I have the information you...for...’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s...rush... So I cannot guarantee...disclosure.’

‘You’re breaking up, Michael. The signal out here is terrible,’ Dimitri growled, his frustration with this whole mess increasing. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yes, sir... Just about.’

‘Look, you can email me the file and I’ll look at it later, but for now, just top-line thoughts will do.’

‘Mary Moore...years old... One daughter—Anna, no father on the...certificate. Arrests for drunk and disorderly...disturbing the peace.’

Dimitri let out a curse. He couldn’t believe it. The woman who had come apart in his arms was a drunk? Had a criminal record? Dammit.

‘Okay. I’ve heard enough. Get me your invoice and I’ll ensure the payment is—’

‘Wait, sir, there’s...you need...’

‘The signal’s breaking up now. I’ll read the full file when I can access emails.’

With that, Dimitri ended the call, not taking his eyes from the road once. If he thought he’d been angry before, it was nothing compared to the fury now burning through his veins. He glanced at the man sitting silently in the passenger seat of the car—the only man outside of the Winners’ Circle he trusted. David Owen had been his lawyer for over eighteen years.

‘Legally, at this moment, there’s actually very little you can do,’ David said without making eye contact. ‘All you have is the request for fifty thousand euros and a grainy black and white photo of a little girl.’

And it had been enough. Enough for Dimitri to recognise that the little girl was his. He’d looked exactly the same at her age—thick, dark, curly hair, and something indescribably haunted about her large brown eyes. Dimitri acknowledged that that might have been fanciful on his part. But surely, with an alcoholic criminal as a mother, that was a given.

‘You have no actual proof that the child is yours.’

‘I don’t need it. I know it. Know that she is my blood. The timing fits, and, Theos, David, you read the email, you saw that picture too.’

David nodded his head reluctantly. ‘We could engage Social Services, but that would cause publicity and scandal.’