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

Caring for a child, he told himself, was hardly difficult. He’d hire a nanny, enlist the best help. It might mean travelling a bit less to be more available to her as a father. That thought, that word, shook him more than he cared to admit.

Still, he would do what needed to be done to provide for the child and, more importantly, to keep the Petrakides name free from scandal or shame. He would do his duty.

‘What girl?’ he asked now, forcing his mind back to the present, to the frowning countenance of his father.

‘That English girl. She has no place in our lives, Lukas.’

Lukas’s palm curled into a fist on the smooth, mahogany-topped desk. Slowly, deliberately, he flattened it out again. ‘She’s Welsh, and her name is Rhiannon. She does have a place in our lives, Papa—she’s Annabel’s guardian.’

Theo’s eyebrows rose at hearing the casual, almost intimate way Lukas referred to both Rhiannon and Annabel.

Lukas realised he’d spoken about Rhiannon as if he knew her, liked her. He shrugged. What he said was still true.

‘For now,’ the older man agreed flatly. ‘But when Christos—damn him!—is shown to be the father, she will have no place at all. You told me she’s not related, just a friend of the mother. We are blood relations, and we will do our duty—even for Christos’s English bastard.’

‘Is that what you plan on telling the child, when she is old enough to hear?’

‘I won’t be around then,’ Theo replied with brutal frankness, ‘so you can do the honours. She can hardly complain if she has been well provided for. No one can accuse us of being ungenerous.’

‘No, indeed,’ Lukas agreed dryly, and Theo frowned.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve a fondness for that English piece?’

‘She’s Welsh, and, no, I have not. But I prefer to speak about any woman with respect.’

‘She will only complicate matters,’ Theo continued, ignoring his son. He strode to the window, watched the waves crash onto the rocky shore. ‘If she isn’t already attached to the child, she will become so, and we cannot have the bad press of a messy custody case. The tabloids would make a meal of this, Lukas. You’ve already seen what they’ve done with these rumours of your mistress and your love-child.’

‘I have,’ he replied tightly. ‘But I believe Rhiannon is willing to be reasonable if we approach her with sensitivity. I don’t want to take her from the child now. Annabel has had a great deal of upheaval in her life, and it would do none of us any favours to send Rhiannon away before she is settled.’

Theo glanced shrewdly at his son. ‘None of us?’ he repeated, and gave a dry chuckle. ‘Oh, very well. If you must have her, have her. You’ve been without a woman too long, haven’t you? You never learned how to be discreet in such matters.’

‘I prefer to be restrained.’ Lukas’s head was throbbing with fury. He knew he should be used to his father’s frank, crass ways—and he knew his father believed duty was a public matter, rather than a private one. As long as people saw what you did was right, it hardly mattered what you thought.

He felt differently.

‘This would be solved,’ Theo continued in a harder voice, ‘if you did your duty to provide me with an heir and marry.’

‘You know I never plan to marry.’

‘Your duty—’

‘I refuse to marry a woman I love,’ Lukas intervened flatly, ‘and I refuse to marry without love. It would not be fair to the woman.’

‘There are plenty of women who would marry without love,’ Theo scoffed.

Lukas suppressed a sigh. They’d had this conversation many times.

‘Scheming gold-diggers or materialistic snobs,’ he dismissed. ‘Hardly suitable material.’ The thought of not providing an heir for the Petrakides empire was an uncomfortable one, but he knew his limits. Marriage was outside of them. As was love.

‘Fine,’ Theo said, willing to let go of this thorny subject for a moment. ‘Still, the English bit goes.’ He stared his son down. ‘And soon.’

Lukas gazed at his father. ‘There is no question that she will leave when the child’s paternity is determined,’ he agreed coolly. ‘There can be no place for her in our lives. But until then it would benefit us all to keep her sweet.’ He busied himself with some papers on his desk. ‘Now, I have work to do, Papa. I will see you at dinner.’

Theo glanced sharply at his son, but with a jerky nod he left the room.

Lukas swivelled to stare out of the window. The aquamarine sea stretched flatly to an endless horizon—yet he knew that only a few miles out there would be boats. Boats disguised as fishing vessels, but filled with photographers and journalists clamouring for an exclusive shot of Lukas with his illicit family. Photographs which would then be sold to tabloids around the world, to make the Petrakides name raked through the mud and the dirt once again.

He sighed, thrusting a hand through his hair. He understood the need to avoid bad press—God knew, the Petrakides family had had enough of it.

He also understood that Rhiannon Davies would have to go. As his father had said, her presence could only complicate matters, and he didn’t want a Petrakides child—any child—attached to a woman whose motives in staying were at best uncertain, at worst suspect.

What did she want? he wondered, not for the first time. She didn’t want to leave the child; she didn’t want to stay. Lukas still wasn’t sure if she was playing a high-stakes game, or if she simply didn’t know what she wanted.

Hardly a woman to trust with a child, he thought in derisive dismissal. With a child’s love.

Still, he had use of her, as did the child. He wasn’t ready to release her just yet.

That night for dinner Rhiannon dressed in the outfit she’d worn yesterday to the reception—now slightly crumpled, but still clean at least.

She’d fed Annabel in the kitchen, under the eye of Adeia, the kindly housekeeper and cook. After giving the baby a bath in the huge tub in her adjoining bathroom, she’d put Annabel to sleep in the middle of the wide bed in her room. There were no travel cots, but Lukas had assured her one would be found by the next day.

Dinner, she’d been informed, was in the villa’s dining room, and she was expected there at half past seven.

Rhiannon drew in a shaky breath and examined her reflection.

Her hair had turned wild and curly due to the moisture in the sea air, and no amount of brushing or spray would tame it. She’d abandoned any pretence at styling it, and settled for a slick of lipstick, a dab of perfume, and her old outfit.

It wasn’t as if she were trying to impress either Theo or Lukas. Though she dreaded seeing the older man again. His words rang in her ears.

Bastard.

That was all he saw Annabel as. What would he think, she wondered with wry bitterness, if he knew she was illegitimate too?

What would Lukas think? Would he judge her an unfit mother? Damn her for the circumstances of her birth, as Theo seemed willing to do?

Rhiannon threw back her shoulders, her mouth hardening into a grim line. That wasn’t going to happen. Because she was going to stick around. No matter what they said. No matter what they did.

After checking that Annabel was deeply asleep—exhausted, no doubt, by the upheavals of the day—Rhiannon headed downstairs. The wide, sweeping staircase led to a tiled foyer flanked with mahogany double doors that led to the villa’s reception rooms.

Lukas came into the foyer from one of the rooms at the sound of her heels clicking on the tiles. He wore a light grey button-down shirt, expensive and well made, and charcoal trousers cinched with a leather belt. He looked comfortable, walking with the innate arrogant grace of someone who was used to being watched, admired, obeyed.

He swept her with a cool gaze that made Rhiannon uncomfortably aware of her unruly hair, her crumpled outfit. Her position weak, helpless.

Hopeless.

Who was she kidding? She might put on a face of bravado, but that was all it was. False courage. If Lukas didn’t want her here, there was nothing she could do to convince him to let her stay.

She swallowed, realising afresh how out of her depth she truly was.