SARA WOOD – The Kyriakis Baby (страница 3)

‘He’s the Kyriakis heir, she’s the Christofides heiress,’ Taki had explained gently as he’d driven her home. ‘Our families have been linked for generations. Don’t take this personally,’ he’d said soothingly, when she’d continued to sob. ‘It’s how we do things. We need sex so we find a woman who is amenable. Then we marry a more suitable virgin.’

The humiliating words dug deep. She’d been used as a whore! Bought presents, taken out to dinner…and in return he’d pillaged her heart and soul and body!

Broken-hearted, her self-esteem at rock bottom, she’d relied increasingly on the attentive, kind Taki. His respect for her had been deeply touching. Eventually she’d succumbed to Taki’s charm offensive and married him, unaware of his fatal need to outdo his rival brother.

She gave a grimace. Incredibly, Taki had believed that Leon would be jealous of his marriage to her. But why, when she had nothing—and the elegant, shopaholic Marina had breeding, wealth and social position?

Her heart thudded in alarm. This was the woman who was now looking after her child! What, she thought with uncharacteristic sourness, did a clothes-horse on legs know about such things?

Her brows beetled together in a fierce scowl. ‘Your wife had better be the Mary Poppins of child care—or you’ll have me to reckon with!’ she muttered.

‘Marina has a daughter of her own,’ he drawled crushingly.

She felt she’d been stabbed in the lungs. Leon had a child. ‘Bully for you both,’ she cried, finding her breath again. ‘Then, you don’t need mine.’

‘Damn right, I don’t.’

Her mouth opened in astonishment. He didn’t even want her darling Lexi. ‘Then, why take her?’ she asked, aghast.

He looked down his patrician nose at her. ‘I had no choice.’

‘No…choice?’ She spluttered the words incoherently.

Leon looked grim. ‘She needs a home. She needs us.’

‘Me. She needs me. I’m her mother,’ she quavered.

‘Not much of one.’

‘I’m terrific.’

‘Matter of opinion.’

‘I’ll get out on appeal—’

‘I think not. The evidence was clear-cut and damning. Get used to this situation, Emma,’ he said sharply. ‘Serve your time—’

‘I will if I must, unfair though it is. I could bear anything if I had my baby back.’

‘Out of the question.’

Incensed, she banged the table and knocked over the glass of water which spilled onto her lap. Leon produced a handkerchief but she refused it, too caught up in her bid for her child to care that her dress was wet through.

‘If you’re a father,’ she said, hoarse with emotion, ‘then think how you’d feel if your child was taken from you.’

Astonishingly, his gaze became cynical, as if that wouldn’t be hard to bear. He has no heart, she thought bleakly. Her beloved baby wasn’t even wanted. How could he feel like that? The only Greek in the world who didn’t like children and he had to snatch her baby.

‘It’s happening all the time,’ he observed obliquely. ‘People split up, children end up with one of the parents—’

‘But I’m the remaining parent,’ she pointed out, barely clinging to sanity. Why couldn’t he understand what Lexi meant to her? She had no one else in the world. ‘You have no right to abduct my child. I could have you arrested.’

‘That would be extremely unwise,’ he said with quiet menace.

She tensed in alarm. ‘Why?’

‘It wouldn’t get your child back.’

‘Maybe not,’ she muttered bitterly, giving her wet dress a shake, ‘but it would bring a big grin to my face and play merry hell with your social life.’

His breath hissed in and he fixed her with eyes as cold as charity. ‘You’d do that to score points off me?’ he enquired softly.

Her desolation intensified. Of course not. She’d gain nothing—other than a useless, petty satisfaction—by giving Leon grief. And she’d ruin her chances of finding Lexi.

Her chest seemed to tighten with despair. ‘I’d do anything, anything to get my own child back where she rightfully belongs,’ she declared jerkily.

There was a lift of a black-winged eyebrow. ‘You’re at a slight disadvantage being in prison,’ he observed.

She flushed, a hectic colour burning two scarlet spots on her pale, bony cheeks.

‘Have you no heart? No soul? She should be with me—’

‘Alexandra might be legally yours but that’s as far as it goes,’ he said sternly. ‘You just aren’t fit to be her mother.’

‘That’s not fair,’ she seethed, outraged at the slur.

‘Fair? You dare to speak of fairness?’ he rasped, his voice shaking with barely contained fury as he struggled to keep the volume down. ‘How can you sit there claiming to be as innocent as a Madonna? You systematically defrauded members of my family and our lifelong friends and business acquaintances, and left them penniless,’ he hissed.

His big fists clenched on the table and she stared at them, suddenly frightened of his intense passion.

‘But that’s the point—I didn’t,’ she protested, her voice wobbling alarmingly. ‘It…it wasn’t me—’

‘You disgust me!’ he scathed. ‘Have you any idea of the consequences of your crime in our close-knit society? Our family bank here in London was seen as the safest place this side of Fort Knox. People relied on us. Trusted us. No wonder Taki got drunk! His own wife had destroyed his family business, his family honour and innocent lives. He’d lost his job and his own honour—’

‘Honour!’ she choked.

‘Yes! Ever heard of the word?’ he taunted.

‘You hypocrite!’ she said breathily, forgetting Taki’s dishonesty and attacking Leon’s instead. ‘How can you sit there and talk of honour when you forgot to mention your engagement to another woman while we were together?’

That went home. He recoiled as if she’d slapped him, his skin suddenly taut and sickly pale.

‘That was a matter of honour—’

‘Yes, I know. Honouring some long-standing family arrangement,’ she said scornfully. ‘You used me for sex—and you talk of honour.’

‘Don’t try to wriggle out of this,’ Leon retorted, white-lipped. ‘The truth is that Taki was appalled at what you’d done. And he got so paralytic that some bastard mugged him and left him to die in the gutter. Your actions caused his death.’

Frozen in horror at Leon’s twisted interpretation of the facts, she tried to speak. But his accusation had stunned her with its cruelty and all she could do was to slur helplessly, ‘It’s a lie! I’m…I’m…’

‘Guilty on all counts,’ Leon finished in disgust. ‘Now, I hope you understand that I feel I owe you no sympathy. My family means everything to me and you ripped it apart with your evil scheming. You destroyed my only brother—’

‘No—’

‘Are you denying,’ he went on relentlessly, ‘that you cold-bloodedly married him out of petty revenge—?’

‘I loved him—’

‘Liar! He said you’d asked for a divorce.’

Emma bit her lip hard. She hadn’t wanted to split her family up. But she’d had no choice. Leon knew nothing of the agonising that had gone before her painful decision.

‘Y-yes, but—’

‘Don’t bother to find excuses,’ Leon said, growling. ‘Taki had served his purpose. You’d seen a way to make me pay for marrying Marina and you took it. Well, congratulations. You succeeded in making my life hell.’ His eyes glittered. ‘Forgive me,’ he ground out through his teeth, ‘if I return the compliment.’

She gave a low moan and buried her face in her hands, all hope virtually abandoned. His Greek heritage made him proud and hot-blooded and deeply devoted to his family. In his eyes, she’d harmed that family. And so he wanted to destroy her. And how better than to take away the baby she adored?

Panic and despair filled her head as defeat stared back at her. But she knew she had to rouse herself and make one last attempt to convince Leon that he’d jumped to all the wrong conclusions.

‘You must listen to me,’ she begged. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of. I’m truly innocent—’

‘Sure. You, and everyone in here,’ he mocked.

‘No, I am—’

‘You knew what was happening,’ he said snarling. ‘You were the financial director—’

‘That’s the point, I wasn’t, it was in name only I swear—’