Buch lesen: «Irresistible Greeks: Dark and Determined: The Kanellis Scandal / The Greek's Acquisition / Along Came Twins…»

CHAPTER ONE

THE assortment of telephones currently buzzing like angry wasps on his desk earned a flaring glance of impatience from Anton Pallis as he threw himself out of his chair and paced away from them down the length of his office.

He came to a stop in front of the floor-to-ceiling wall of glass which gave him unrivalled views of London’s famous City skyline. A deep frown darkened his smooth, golden brow. Since the shock news reporting the death of Theo Kanellis’s long-lost son had hit the news this morning, the stock market had gone into meltdown, and now those ringing telephones were attempting to take him to the same place.

‘I understand the implications, Spiro,’ he incised into the only phone he had deigned to take notice of. ‘Which does not mean I am going to join in with everyone else and panic.’

‘I did not even know that Theo had a son,’ Spiro Lascaris declared in stunned incredulity that he had not been privy to such an important and potentially dangerous piece of information. ‘Like most people, I believed that you were his heir.’

‘I am not and never have been Theo’s heir,’ Anton denied, angry now that he had not bothered to scotch such rumours years ago when they had first started doing the rounds. ‘We are not even distantly related.’

‘But you lived as his son for the last twenty-three years!’

Anton threw back his dark head in a typically Greek negative gesture, because he so disliked being compelled to disclose anything to do with his relationship with Theo Kanellis. ‘Theo took charge of my upbringing and education and that is all that he did,’ he stated.

‘As well as protecting your personal wealth and ensuring that the Pallis Group held its place at the top of the investment tree until you were old enough to take control,’ Spiro pointed out. ‘You can’t tell me he did all of that out of the goodness of his heart.’

Because he did not have a heart, Spiro refrained from adding. Theo Kanellis was better known for his ruthless demolishing of other men’s empires, not nurturing them.

‘Admit it, Anton, Theo has been grooming you to take his place since you were ten years old, and everyone knows it.’

Anger flared to life inside Anton at Spiro’s disparaging tone. ‘Keep to the point of issue here,’ he retaliated coldly. ‘It is your job to work to squash any damaging rumours about the state of my relationship with Theo, not dig around in the dirt for more.’

The moment he’d finished speaking he sensed a change in atmosphere flowing down the telephone connection. He’d just pulled rank on one of his most trusted employees. ‘Of course,’ the lawyer in Spiro Lascaris came back coolly. ‘I will get onto it straight away.’

The conversation finished with a distinctly chilly edge. With a snap of exasperation at the whole situation, Anton turned to stride back to his desk so he could toss the phone down on it along with the rest. It began ringing again almost immediately which did not surprise him. Anyone who was anyone in global finance was falling over themselves to find out what the death of Leander Kanellis—Theo’s long-lost son—was going to mean to Anton’s own current power-grip on Kanellis Intracom.

That was the real alarm bell ringing out there—not Anton’s past relationship with Theo but his present relationship. He had been more or less running things for Theo since the old man had been taken ill two years ago and had retreated to his private island to live—although information about the seriousness of his illness had not yet found its way out there.

A small glimpse of light flickering in the midst of a raging storm, Anton mused grimly. Kanellis stock would not take yet another serious hit if it ever got out that Theo had been too sick to keep his finger on the pulse of his own business empire—which was the reason why Anton had allowed the general assumption to run that Theo was grooming him in preparation for the day when he would succeed him.

On a soft curse, he snatched up one of the phones again and called Spiro back to ensure his confidentiality with the information he had just imparted to him. Sounding stiff with offence that Anton had felt the need to remind him of such a basic ethic, Spiro promised that he would never divulge confidential information to anyone.

Laying the phone aside again, Anton swung round to rest his hips against the edge of his desk and frowned thoughtfully down at his shoes. He felt like a juggler, he realised with a brief, dry twist of a grimace: one ball demanded he keep Theo’s business interests spinning happily up there in the air alongside his own global group of companies, another ball demanded he defend his own integrity and pride. And now a third ball had been tossed up there in the middle of the others, a far more unpredictable ball that belonged to the late Leander Kanellis—a man Anton only had a vague memory of, who had escaped from his arranged marriage at the youthful age of eighteen and had never been seen or heard of again.

Until now, that was, when the poor guy had turned up dead. A sigh slid from him. It was not even the death of Theo’s previously forgotten son that was causing the current storm raging out there. No, it was the discovery that Leander had left a family behind him.

Legitimate Kanellis heirs.

Stretching out a long-fingered hand, Anton gathered up the tabloid that had broken the story and looked down at the photograph some bright young spark of a junior reporter had unearthed from somewhere. It showed Leander Kanellis standing with his family on what looked like a fun day out. There was a lake, trees and sunshine shimmering in the background. An old-fashioned wicker picnic-basket rested on the bonnet of an old-model sports car. In front of the car Leander Kanellis stood, tall, dark and very good-looking, and with a startling likeness to how Theo had looked several long decades ago.

Leander was laughing into the camera. Happy, Anton saw. Proud of the two women he held clasped beneath each substantial shoulder. Both women were fair-skinned blondes. The older one, Leander’s wife, was so serenely beautiful it was no wonder their marriage had remained strong throughout twenty-three years of relative hardship—relative to what they could have had if Theo had not …

Anton stopped that thought before it formed fully, aware that the tension suddenly crushing his stomach muscles belonged to a previously alien sensation—guilt. From the age of eight, he had received the best of everything Theo’s vast wealth could offer him while these people had struggled to …

Again he cut the thought short, not ready yet to deal with what it was going to mean to him.

Happy; he dealt with that phenomenon instead, because in its own way it was significant. If there was one thing that Theo’s son had enjoyed which Anton had not experienced much of, then it was the happiness he could see shining out from all three people in this photograph.

His focus moved to the other female Leander hugged into his side. Though the photograph must have been an old one, because she looked about sixteen here, Zoe Kanellis was already showing promise of turning into a beauty made in her mother’s image: the same long, slender figure and bright golden hair, the same shining blue eyes and wide sensual smile.

Happy. The word hit him again, like an ugly blow this time. There was another photograph printed alongside the first one which showed the now twenty-two-year-old version of Leander’s daughter leaving the hospital with the newest member of her family cradled protectively in her arms. Shock and grief had wiped out the happiness. She looked pale, thin and drawn.

Zoe Kanellis, leaving hospital with her new baby brother, the caption read. The twenty-two-year-old was away at University in Manchester when her parents were involved in a fatal car accident last week. Leander Kanellis died at the scene from his injuries. His wife, Laura, survived only long enough to give birth to their son. The tragedy took place on the—

The sound of a tentative knock on his door brought Anton’s head up as Ruby, his PA, stepped into the room.

‘What now?’ he demanded curtly.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Anton,’ she apologised with a fleeting glance at the still-buzzing phones. ‘Theo Kanellis is on my main line and he’s demanding to speak to you.’

A choice curse rattled around the tight casing of his ribs as he put the newspaper down then straightened up from the desk. He stood for a second, actually seriously considering turning chicken and refusing to take Theo’s call.

But, no, he could not do that—as Ruby had known he couldn’t, which was why she had interrupted him.

‘OK. Put him through.’ Anton strode around his desk and lowered himself back down into his chair, picked up the phone and waited for Ruby to connect the call.

He knew what was coming. Hell, he knew what was coming.

‘Kalispera, Theo,’ he greeted smoothly.

‘I want the boy, Anton.’ Theo Kanellis’s famously hard and irascible voice sounded in his ear. ‘Get me my grandson!’

‘I didn’t know you were a Kanellis,’ Susie said, eyeing with an expression of awe the famous business logo belonging to Kanellis Intracom which headed the letter Zoe had just discarded on the kitchen table with a contemptuous flick of her hand.

‘Dad dropped the “Kan” when he came to England to live.’ Because he was scared of being hunted down and dragged back to Greece by his bully of a father and forced into doing his duty, she tagged on bitterly, though she gave a different reason to Susie. ‘He thought Ellis was an easier name to use here in the UK.’

Susie’s eyes were still round as saucers. ‘But you’ve always known you are a Kanellis?’

Zoe nodded. ‘It’s on my birth certificate.’

And now it was on Toby’s birth certificate, she added silently, her eyes glossing over when she recalled where else she had been forced to use the Kanellis name recently.

‘I hate it,’ she choked, fighting back the ever-threatening burn of tears when she saw an image of herself sitting there looking at that name on two death certificates the same day that Toby’s birth had been registered.

‘Never mind about the name.’ Reaching across the table, Susie squeezed one of her hands. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’

Why not? It was currently splashed all over every type of media there was out there, because some junior reporter for the local rag had happened to notice the Kanellis name while he’d been writing up the story about her parents’ accident. He had been curious enough to follow it up with a clever bit of sleuthing. Zoe wondered if the same reporter would soon be working for one of the major tabloids; he certainly deserved the promotion for uncovering such a huge scoop.

‘It feels weird,’ Susie said, sitting back in her chair to look around the homely kitchen which doubled as a sitting-room cum everything-room.

‘What feels weird?’ asked Zoe, blinking tears from her eyes.

‘That you are the granddaughter of a genuine, filthy-rich, Greek tycoon, yet you live right next door to me in an ordinary little house smack-bang in the middle of Islington.’

‘Well, don’t start imagining this is a real-life fairy tale.’ Getting up from the table, Zoe carried their coffee mugs to the sink. ‘Cinderella I’m not, and I don’t want to be. Theo Kanellis—’ she refused to refer to him or even think of him as ‘Grandfather—is nobody to me.’

‘That’s not what this letter says, Zoe,’ Susie pointed out. ‘It says that Theo Kanellis wants to get to know you.’

‘Not me—Toby.’

Turning around, she folded her arms across the ache constantly in control of her body, unaware that she was highlighting just how much weight she had lost over the last few, awful weeks. Her hair, usually a bright and shining golden colour, hung dull and heavy from a scraped-back pony tail which emphasised the strain in charge of her face. Dark shadows circled her blue eyes and her once naturally-smiling mouth had developed a permanent down turn that only lifted when she held her brother Toby.

‘The horrible man disowned his own son! He never once attempted to acknowledge my mother while she was alive—or me, for that matter. And the only reason he’s showing some interest in us now is because he’s been shamed into it by all the negative press coverage he’s getting. And because he probably fancies moulding Toby into a better clone of himself than he made of my father.’ She sucked in a deep breath that turned out to be a suppressed sob. ‘He’s a cold and heartless, miserable old despot and he is not getting his hands on Toby!’

‘Wow.’ Susie breathed after a second of stunned silence. ‘That’s one heavy chip you carry on your shoulders there.’

You bet that it’s heavy, Zoe thought bitterly. With a bit of loving support from his thankless father, her father might not have spent the last twenty-three years tinkering with, coaxing and lovingly polishing the ancient sports-car he’d brought with him to England when he’d run away from a marriage made with the devil. It was only now, when she woke up sobbing in the night visualising the whole horrid accident, that it occurred to her that her father had needed to hang onto the stupid old car because it was his only link to home. With a more caring father of his own maybe—just maybe—her father would have been driving her mother to the hospital in something newer and more substantial. Then maybe—just maybe—the car would have protected them from the full force of the impact that had killed them both.

And she would still be in Manchester right now, studying for her post-grad and Toby, sleeping upstairs in the little room his parents had so excitedly prepared for him, would not have been robbed of the most loving parents a little boy could have.

Wow, she thought, echoing Susie as she drew the burning flood to a stop.

‘It says here that you’re to expect a visit from his representative this morning at eleven-thirty.’ Susie had returned to the letter again.

Theo Kanellis was sending a representative to deal with her because he couldn’t be bothered to come and do the job for himself.

‘That means he should be here any minute.’

Just another person in the long line of people Zoe had had walking in and out of her life over the last three horrible weeks: doctors, midwives, care workers, a hundred different departments from social services wanting to check if she was a fit carer for her baby brother, or if she qualified for any handouts. Each one of them had arrived sporting tediously long tick-box questionnaires that had intruded on her privacy but which she’d had to answer if she wanted to hang on to Toby. Yes, she had left her university studies to look after her brother. Yes, of course she was prepared to take employment if child-care facilities came with the job. No, she did not have a boyfriend she might be thinking of moving in with her. No, she was not promiscuous or irresponsible. Of course she wouldn’t leave Toby alone in the house while she went off to enjoy a girly night out. The inquisitions had gone on and on, each one of them filled with such horribly intrusive questions her skin still prickled with pique.

And then there had been the funeral people, she remembered, quiet, calm and very professional as they had walked her gently through the decisions regarding the worst arrangements a grieving daughter could ever have to make. Those arrangements had taken place three days ago and her grandfather had sent no representative to watch his only son and daughter-in-law being lowered into the ground. Had that absence been due to an awareness of the media hype, or due to sheer indifference?

Zoe didn’t know and right at this precise moment she did not care. He had not turned up. He’d stayed hidden away in his ivory tower while the press had crawled all over the funeral like feeding locusts.

Which brought her nicely to the final list of people she’d been forced to deal with these last three awful weeks—the cockroaches out there who’d crawled out of the woodwork the same day the sensational story had broken. The ones that had come banging on her door to offer her big money for exclusive rights to her story, and the ones that still camped outside her home just waiting for her to step out of the door so they could pounce. Were they out there because they cared about her and Toby’s tragic loss? No. They were there because Theo Kanellis was a recluse who hid himself away on his private island somewhere in the middle of the Aegean, and protected his privacy so well that this story was like a juicy, ripe peach they couldn’t resist gobbling up—even if the juice was messy and the centre held a nasty, crawling worm.

Even the worm had a juicy name: Anton Pallis. The tall, dark and gorgeous global sex-icon and seriously clever CEO of the heavyweight Pallis Group. Pallis wasn’t so picky about getting his name in the papers, business or pleasure. She’d often seen him making a name for himself. What she hadn’t known until this story had broken, was that he was the man who had reaped the rewards of her father’s exile.

A buzz of anger fizzed inside her like a tightly wound ball of living energy, generated almost exclusively by that name—Anton Pallis. Every so often, especially when she let herself dwell on the name, that ball of energy broke free from its restraints and totally overwhelmed her need to remain sunk inside her desperate grief. Was this the Greek side of her she had never previously known she had coming to the surface—this burning desire to feed an unforgiving hate?

The front doorbell gave a sharp double ring suddenly. The two women tensed then looked at each other.

Susie got to her feet. ‘Could just be one of the press trying their luck again,’ she suggested.

But somehow Zoe just knew it was Theo Kanellis’s representative. The letter had stated he would be calling on her at eleven-thirty and it was exactly eleven thirty as far as she could tell from the old clock hanging on the wall opposite. Wealthy men with loads of power expected their instructions to be carried out to the second, she thought grimly as she straightened up to her full five feet six inches, pushed back her narrow shoulders and pulled in a breath.

So this was it, the moment she found out what Theo Kanellis really wanted. She didn’t doubt for a second that he was about to place an utterly obscene price on Toby’s vulnerable little head.

‘Do you want me to stay?’

Heavily pregnant with her second baby, Susie sounded genuine in her offer, but Zoe could read the uncertainty in her face. For all she’d been a wonderful neighbour and friend over the last devastating weeks—sneaking in the back way so no one could catch her, refusing to speak to the press each time she left her own house to do ordinary things like shopping or collecting her little girl from her playgroup up the street—Zoe knew Susie would prefer to back out of this particular scene.

‘It’s almost time for you to go and collect Lucy,’ she reminded Susie, knowing that this was something she needed to face all by herself.

‘If you’re sure? I’ll just slip out the back way, then.’

The doorbell rang again, jerking both women into movement. Susie made for the back door as Zoe went in the other direction. She heard the back door closing behind Susie as she came to stop at the solid wood door at the front of the house. Her throat felt dry suddenly and she swallowed. Her heart had acquired a couple of extra beats. Rubbing her palms nervously down the sides of her jeans, she took a minute to school her expression into something cold and unforthcoming then finally reached out to unlock the door.

In her mind she was expecting some short and stocky middle-aged Greek, with ‘tough lawyer’ stamped all over him. So when she drew open the door and saw exactly who it was standing there, surprise rendered her frozen by shock.

Tall, dark, immaculately presented, he looked like an exotic, dark prince clothed in an Italian suit. Handsome didn’t even begin to describe his smooth, gold, angular features, or the pair of deep-set eyes the colour of midnight which held her own blue eyes trapped like powerful magnets. She had never looked into eyes like them. They made her feel slightly queasy because it felt as if they were trying to draw her in. When the noise suddenly started up as the media frenzy erupted, she still couldn’t break free of them. He was so tall, he almost blocked out everything that was happening behind him—reporters shouting questions at them, TV camera-men and photographers locked in scuffles as they vied for position in their efforts to get the best shot.

He just continued to stand there as if it wasn’t happening, protected by a semi-circle of space created by three big-set men wearing immaculate black suits who stood with their backs to him forming a tough-guy ring of protection around his personal space.

Finally managing to drag her gaze downwards a little, Zoe found herself staring at the uncompromisingly sensual shape to his unsmiling mouth. Inside she was a mixed-up mess of stirring emotions she couldn’t even recognise. She was even mesmerised by his whole dynamic breath-stopping stance—the never-a-hair-out-of—place demeanour he was displaying, the relaxed set of his wide shoulders inside the dark jacket which didn’t quite obscure the long lean rock-solid contours of his body beneath a crisp white shirt and sober dark tie. The sheer elegant quality of his whole manner screamed indomitable self-confidence at Zoe and drove the power of his personality home, a million stinging pinpricks attacking her unsuspecting flesh.

For the first time in three weeks, she became acutely aware of her own shabby appearance—the old pair of jeans she had dragged on this morning that had seen better days and the itchy knowledge that her hair was in need of a good wash. One of her hands clutched the edges of an old red cardigan together across the pounding pump going on behind her ribs. The cardigan was her mother’s and she’d been wearing it all week, a big, fluffy, unsightly thing she hugged to her for comfort and because it kept giving her wafts of her mother’s delicate scent.

He parted those beautifully moulded pair of lips and spoke to her. ‘Good morning, Miss Kanellis,’ he greeted in the most quietly modulated and beautiful voice. ‘I believe you are expecting me.’

He sent Zoe’s head reeling for a completely different reason: for the smooth, deep cultured tones of his Greek accent sounded so like her father’s voice to her that it actually physically hurt.

Anton watched as Zoe closed her eyes and swayed in front of him. She looked as if she was going to faint. If he’d thought she’d looked stricken when she’d stood on the steps of the hospital in the photograph three weeks ago, it was nothing to how she looked right now—brittle. She looked painfully brittle, white-faced, pinched and frail enough for a puff of wind to blow her off her feet.

Biting back a soft curse, he acted on instinct and stretched out a hand with the intention of catching hold of her but she opened her eyes again, saw his hand coming towards her and shrank away from it as if it was an attacking snake.

Shock stunned him into stillness for a second. Something close to affront clawed down his front; it took grim grit and determination to stop his feelings from showing on his face. Aware of the media circus going on behind him, he tried to think fast. She did not need all of these witnesses watching her every move and expression. He did not want them to read her expression. What he needed was to get the two of them inside the house with the door shut before she stopped staring at him like that and started spitting insults at him—or, worse, slammed the door in his face.

‘Shall we …?’ he murmured very smoothly and took a step forward into the house.

As he was about to take the door from her grasp so he could close it, Zoe snatched her hand away from the risk of his touch. A fresh flare of affront struck at his pride but he kept on going, swinging the door shut behind him without allowing his expression to reveal anything—he hoped.

Silence clattered around them the moment the door closed. She was several feet away from him by now, hovering like a trapped bird, with her face still frighteningly pale and her eyes still fixed on his face.

She had the most startling pair of electric-blue eyes, he noticed, and a trembling crushed-strawberry mouth. Something kicked into life low down in his gut but he ignored the sensation, annoyed with himself for feeling such a fierce sexual tug at a time like this.

‘My apologies,’ he said gravely, ‘For entering your home without your invitation to do so. I thought it best that we conduct our business without all the witnesses looking on.’

She didn’t speak. She just blinked at him, long—indecently long—golden-brown eyelashes moving in a slow movement; he had the weirdest feeling that she wasn’t even seeing him. And she was clutching the most peculiar red garment across her breasts as if it was the only thing holding her upright.

‘Let me try again,’ he persisted, vaguely aware that they were standing in a hellishly narrow hallway with a set of steep stairs shooting up on his left. ‘My name is—’

‘I know who you are,’ Zoe breathed out in a trembling whisper.

He was the man whose name had been bandied about in the media as much as her own name had been. He was the man Theo Kanellis had put in her father’s place. ‘You’re Anton Pallis.’ Theo Kanellis’s adopted son and heir.