Greek Affairs: Tempted by the Tycoons: The Greek Tycoon's Convenient Bride / The Greek Tycoon's Unexpected Wife / The Greek Tycoon's Secret Heir

‘Before I’m booted out?’ Rhiannon interjected. ‘Sorry, I don’t feel like complying.’

Lukas shrugged, ran a hand through his hair. Rhiannon watched as it flopped boyishly across his forehead; she resisted the urge to brush it back with itching fingers.

‘Suit yourself,’ he said. ‘I only thought you might want to be comfortable.’

‘I don’t want to be comfortable,’ she snapped, even though she knew she was being childish.

Lukas’s eyes flashed. ‘You should—at least for Annabel’s sake. Surely it is in her best interests for both of you to be relaxed and comfortable during your stay here? It is, in fact, your responsibility,’ he continued in a harder voice, ‘to be so.’

Rhiannon’s mouth pursed in annoyance. ‘It’s all about responsibility, isn’t it?’

For a half-second Lukas looked nonplussed. ‘Of course it is.’

‘Not love.’

His eyebrows rose. ‘Who am I supposed to love?’

‘Annabel!’ Rhiannon cried, too angry and despairing to be embarrassed that he might have actually thought she meant herself. ‘I came here so she could find her father … a father who would love her!’

‘But I am not her father,’ he reminded her. ‘And I cannot love a child I’ve never even seen before. Not right away.’

‘Especially one that is not yours, I suppose?’ Rhiannon finished, and he shook his head, dismissing her jibe.

‘If Annabel is Christos’s child—which I believe she is—then I will make sure she is cared for. Absolutely.’

Rhiannon’s mouth dried. Absolutely. It was a word that didn’t allow for difficulties, differences. Flexibility. It was a cold, hard, unyielding word, and she didn’t like it. ‘I didn’t want it to be like this,’ she finally said after a moment, her eyes averted.

‘I understand. But this is now how it is. How it will be remains for me to decide.’

‘You,’ Rhiannon said, ‘and not me, I suppose?’

Lukas shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you want from me. If you came to the Petra resort to find Annabel’s father, you succeeded. You did your duty. Now you will leave the rest to us.’

‘I’m not going to leave it up to you,’ Rhiannon protested. ‘Annabel is my ward, not yours. Any decisions that are made will involve me.’ Her voice came out more strident than she intended, and Annabel looked up anxiously. Rhiannon bent down, soothed her with a few hushing motions.

‘The only decision that has been made so far,’ Lukas said, with a deliberate patience that warned Rhiannon he was close to losing his temper, ‘is for you to remain here until the question of paternity is resolved. All I’m asking now is that you stay here, in comfort, not snapping and biting like a fish on a line, and enjoy a few days in what most people consider to be paradise.’

Rhiannon watched Annabel bang two shells together, her eyes wide and round. Lukas’s analogy was dead on, she realised grimly. She did feel like a fish on a line, dangling desperately—and, worse yet, she’d willingly put the hook in her own mouth.

‘A few days—and then what?’

‘That remains to be seen.’ His mouth was a thin line, his eyes dangerously blank, and Rhiannon knew better than to press him now. She wasn’t going to ask questions she didn’t want answers to.

‘Fine,’ she said heavily. ‘Have you spoken to Christos?’

‘No. He is on a friend’s yacht at the moment. I’ve left a message on his mobile, but he probably won’t answer it until he is on shore.’ His mouth twisted, tightened in derision. ‘He doesn’t like his holidays disturbed.’

‘And this is the man you want for Annabel’s father?’ Rhiannon said with a shake of her head.

‘No, this is the man who is Annabel’s father. We cannot change that … if it is proved.’

He glanced down at the baby, frowning as he saw her suck the edge of a shell. ‘Do you think this is an appropriate toy for the child?’ he asked, taking the offending item from a reluctant Annabel, who immediately howled in outrage.

Rhiannon scooped her up, pressed the baby to her body in a defensive gesture. ‘It’s the best I could do. Leanne had few toys for Annabel, and there hasn’t been time …’

‘I will make sure that you are both adequately supplied while you’re here,’ Lukas said, although there was still a frowning furrow on his forehead.

‘We don’t need anything from you,’ Rhiannon protested, as Annabel began to tug rather painfully on her earring.

The look Lukas gave her was swift, searching. Knowing. ‘On the contrary,’ he corrected quietly, ‘there are many things you need from me. That is why you came, is it not?’

Before she could answer, he sketched a brief bow of farewell and left her alone.

‘Ouch!’ Rhiannon disengaged Annabel’s chubby fingers from her earring. ‘Not so hard, sweetheart.’ She set the baby back on the floor, prowled the room once more.

Her heart was racing in time with her thoughts, whirling helplessly, out of reach, out of answers.

After a moment she flung open the doors to the balcony, went outside and breathed in the clean sea air. She needed it to steady her, for her senses were still reeling from Lukas’s presence, his power.

He seemed determined to take responsibility for Annabel. To care for her.

This was what she had wanted—yet not like this. Never like this. With Annabel as discarded goods, unwanted, thrust on someone who believed he needed to do his duty.

Her life would be loveless; she would grow up with the cold knowledge that she’d only been taken in because there had been no other place for her, because no one had wanted her.

As Rhiannon had grown up.

I want her. The words burned in her brain and lit her soul. I want her. She would not give Annabel up so easily. When she’d envisaged giving her up, it had been to a loving home, to a father who wanted her. Who loved her.

A fantasy, she acknowledged now, and perhaps she realised that from the moment she’d spoken to Lukas Petrakides. A fantasy based on what she’d always wanted—always dreamed of—for herself.

But this was not about her, or her lost dreams. It was about Annabel. And she would not condemn the infant to a childhood like she’d had. She’d come to France, to Lukas, to keep that from happening. Now that things had changed she would do what was necessary to keep Annabel from being the burden she herself had been.

She’d thought that meant walking away. Now it meant staying.

‘The girl must go.’

Lukas jerked his contemplative gaze away from the study window and turned to see his father standing still and erect in the doorway. Though his hair was snow white, his face lined, Theo Petrakides was still a handsome and imposing man.

He was also dying.

The doctors had told Lukas that Theo had a few good months left in him—but it would go downhill from there. Theo knew; he accepted it with the grim stoicism with which he’d accepted all the tragedies in his life.

‘I’ll die well,’ he’d said with cold detachment. ‘I’ll do my duty.’

Yes, Lukas knew Theo would do his duty in death—as he had in life.

Just as he would do his. His promise to care for Annabel had not been rash. As soon as the possibility had arisen that Christos might be the father Lukas had known what it would mean. The sacrifice he would have to make.