The Greek s Convenient Mistress Read online

  He wished he could read her expression. Not just the blaze of molten gold in her widening eyes. They held his for a heartbeat, for two, so long that he almost forgot about his mother, standing there beside him.

  ‘Hiding from the truth won’t make it go away.’

  He watched Sophie put the book down beside the bed, then turn to talk to Eleni.

  ‘Believe me. I’m not hiding from anything.’

  ‘Aren’t you? Yet you scowl whenever you look at Sophie. And you still freeze out any conversation about Fotini.’

  He swung round to stare at his mother. ‘This is neither the time nor the place.’

  ‘Then when is the time? You’ve avoided talking about Fotini ever since the accident.’

  ‘There’s nothing to discuss. But don’t worry, I’m aware of the differences between Sophie and her cousin.’ His body responded vigorously and constantly to those unique differences. ‘Sophie is no spoiled heiress and she wasn’t brought up to be shallow or selfish.’

  ‘Costa! That’s not what I meant. And it’s not like you to be so harsh. Not after the way you supported Fotini. You did everything a husband could to help her. More than many men would have done.’

  And what had that achieved? Despite his vigilance, his eternal patience, he hadn’t saved her from herself.

  Costas felt the familiar helpless anger in the hollow of his gut. Perhaps if he’d truly loved her—

  ‘She had severe post-natal depression,’ his mother said. He felt her hand on his sleeve and looked down at her neat fingers against the dark fabric. ‘It was no one’s fault that her condition escalated so uncontrollably.’

  ‘I disagree,’ he countered. ‘My wife chose to disregard her medical advice and shun her family. If she hadn’t tried to drink and party her way out of her illness she wouldn’t have lost control and smashed her car.’

  If only he’d been with her that night. He should have ignored Eleni’s slight fever and left her to her nanny’s care. He could have postponed the late teleconference to Singapore. He should have—

  ‘It was no one’s fault, son. You weren’t responsible.’ He heard the words as if from a distance.

  ‘And Eleni’s illness is no one’s fault either.’

  Yet he felt the flare of guilt deep inside. The fear that he’d failed his daughter.

  The silence was punctuated only by the harsh sound of his breathing as he fought a vice-like grip around his chest. It was as if iron bands constricted his lungs, cutting off his oxygen.

  ‘Don’t blame yourself, Costa. You need time to heal. To learn to trust again.’

  Sharply he lifted his head. So, they were back to Sophie.

  He wondered what his mother would say if she knew precisely how much his body wanted to trust Sophie Paterson. How completely she’d got under his skin, dominating even his troubled sleep. How impossibly strong was the connection he felt with her.

  But he’d learned his lesson well. Trust and partnership were illusions he could do without. He knew not to fall for their spurious promise.

  No matter how much he was tempted to believe.

  After his marriage the last thing he needed was a new relationship. Especially with another girl from the house of Liakos.

  His mother shook her head then turned away and began the ritual of hand-washing and donning mask and gown ready to visit Eleni.

  Costas stood rock-still, trying to salvage the tattered shreds of his control.

  His mother had dredged up memories he’d tried so hard to bury. And tenuous, seductive hopes that had no place in his life. He was off-balance, teetering on the brink of a black abyss of turbulent emotions.

  What was happening to him?

  He was always in control. That was how he operated. This sudden uncertainty—the wretched, unfamiliar feelings—he hated it.

  Almost as much as he hated this waiting game, waiting to see if Eleni would live or die.

  He shrugged back his shoulders and lifted his head, disgusted with himself. This was no time for weakness.

  He watched his mother enter the private room. He wouldn’t follow her just yet. Eleni might pick up on his tension. Instead he’d go and check if the doctor was in. So far the medical staff had been cautiously optimistic, but noncommittal about Eleni’s long-term recovery. It drove him crazy. He needed something more concrete.

  He was moving down the corridor when he heard the door open behind him. He heard a murmur of voices then footsteps. It was Sophie.

  He stopped, unable to help himself.

  Sophie avoided his intense stare as she removed her mask and gown. It only took a few seconds. She wished it took longer—anything to delay their inevitable conversation.

  She was a coward, she knew.

  Especially when Costas Palamidis stood there, as imposing and as unapproachable as a stone idol.

  She wondered what he was thinking. She hadn’t missed the speculation in his eyes when he’d found her sitting with Eleni.

  She should be furious with him for the way he’d treated her. She was furious.

  But that insidious longing was stronger than ever. Shamefully so.

  Even now, after so much time to pull herself together, to perfect a semblance of nonchalance when he was near, she felt the skitter of awareness, that thrill of self-destructive excitement under her skin.

  And it was far worse now. For this time they were alone. No Eleni, no medical staff, no hovering relatives to fill the room and break the tension between them.

  The tension was there all right. A taut awareness that vibrated like a wire humming between them. It made her movements choppy, uncoordinated. Her breath came in short, jagged gasps till she found the strength to regulate it.

  Now wasn’t the time to try to fathom Costas or the extraordinary hold he exerted over her. There’d never be a right time for that. She wasn’t a masochist.

  She needed to concentrate on something else. Like the duty she had to discharge. Just thinking about it made her nervous.

  ‘Hello, Sophie.’ His voice was as deep as ever, like the soft, low rumble of thunder in the distance.

  ‘Costas.’ She inclined her head, trying to seem unfazed by his liquid dark eyes and the way he loomed over her. ‘Eleni seems a little brighter this afternoon,’ she offered. ‘She was laughing and there’s colour in her cheeks.’

  He nodded but his brooding gaze didn’t leave her face.

  ‘I’m about to go and check whether the results of the latest tests are back,’ he said and she read fierce control in the grim lines bracketing his mouth.

  She wished she could offer to go with him. To support him when he got whatever news was awaiting him.

  How stupid was that? He didn’t want her help, her sympathy. He’d made it abundantly clear that he didn’t need anything from her except the use of her body for a night.

  And yet, idiotically, she couldn’t stop the surge of empathy for him as he stood alone, facing the dark, uncertain future.

  She’d lain awake night after night wondering if that was the real reason she’d stayed in Crete. Not just because of little Eleni. But because Costas Palamidis needed someone.

  Needed her.

  She shook her head. How mind-blowingly pathetic could she get? The man had turned independence into an art form. And as for truly needing anyone as ordinary as her…

  ‘Sophie? We need to talk. I—’

  ‘I was wondering if you’d help me,’ she burst out before he could continue. Anything to stop him. Whatever he was going to say, whatever trite apology or explanation he was going to make, she didn’t want to hear it.

  ‘I need to find another one of the private wards,’ she said quickly. ‘And I need to convince the nursing staff to let me in.’

  ‘Your grandfather.’ It wasn’t a question.

  ‘Yes.’

  Her grandfather. The man she’d vowed never to forgive.

  ‘You’ve decided to see him, then.’ Costas’ dark eyes bored into her, penetrating her defenc
es, her would-be careless posture.

  She shrugged. ‘It seemed appropriate.’

  The information Costas had given her about the old man and the discovery that he was here in this very hospital had irrevocably altered her daily visits. Knowing that she passed so close to the tyrant who’d shaped her mother’s life. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the guilt had come. It had been compounded by the vague feeling, after watching a valiant child struggle through each new day, that perhaps life was more important than old grudges.

  An uncomfortable suspicion had grown inside her. However right she was in her judgement of Petros Liakos, life was too precious for feuds. Was she was growing into someone just as stubbornly cruel as he’d been to her mum?

  She didn’t intend to forgive him for what he’d done. But she couldn’t be as pitiless as he’d been.

  Maybe he wouldn’t want a visit from her. That wouldn’t be a surprise. But if he did, then she’d swallow her resentment and see him.

  ‘Sophie?’

  She looked up, wondering if she’d missed something Costas had said.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he murmured. ‘I can show you the way, I’ve visited him myself.’

  Of course. She’d forgotten Petros Liakos had been his wife’s grandfather too. Costas would take such family obligations seriously, even after Fotini’s death.

  ‘Yes. Thanks.’ She wasn’t about to admit that she didn’t think she’d ever be ready to face old man Liakos. That the thought of meeting him made her want to turn tail and run. Instead she fell into step beside Costas.

  There was something strangely soothing about his easy, deliberate pace. His tall presence beside her generated a welcome heat that counteracted her sudden chill.

  She was glad of his company. After avoiding him for so long, trying not even to think about him, she felt better just having him beside her as she went to face the man she’d hated and resented most of her life.

  Surreptitiously she watched Costas. So aloof, so impenetrable. He stared ahead down the corridor and she saw strength etched in his profile, in the way he held himself.

  She knew without doubt that his was a different strength to her grandfather’s. He had no need to prove himself by manipulating people weaker than himself. By playing vicious games with their lives.

  Costas was a man who allowed himself to be tender with those he loved—his daughter and his mother. She’d seen it in his amazing gentleness when he was with them.

  For one soul-searing, painful moment she let herself wish he’d extend that loving protectiveness to encompass her.

  But that would never happen.

  She and Costas were doomed to rub each other up the wrong way—to strike sparks. From the first he’d awakened reactions so intense that she’d known at some primitive level he was dangerous. She’d been fighting him one way or another ever since.

  So how could she be drawing strength now from his presence?

  Sophie gave up trying to fathom that conundrum. Nothing about their relationship was logical or moderate. It was all high emotion and raw passion—running hot in her blood. It had nothing to do with her mind.

  Even now, as he led the way to another floor, passing ward staff and visitors, the two of them were essentially alone, cocooned in a private world where everything else faded into a background blur. He didn’t touch her. Yet she was aware with every alert nerve of his lithe form beside her, the swing of his arm so close to her own, the way he tempered his pace to match hers.

  They rounded a corner and stopped in front of a nursing station. Sophie clawed for mental control as she realised they were here, at Petros Liakos’ ward.

  She couldn’t face the old man with her mind fixed on Costas. She needed her wits about her, and every ounce of self-assurance she’d learned at her mother’s knee.

  Sophie straightened her shoulders, only half listening to the conversation between Costas and the nurse. She knew that facing this one, sick old man would test her resolve to the limits. But she owed it to her mother to be calm. To show him that her mother’s daughter was a woman to be reckoned with, not brushed aside as unworthy.

  She shouldn’t care what he thought, but deep down she knew she did.

  Her heart raced at a staccato beat. Dampness bloomed at her palms and she swiped them down the back of her jeans.

  ‘Sophie?’ Costas stared down at her. ‘It’s supposed to be one visitor at a time, but I’ll come in with you.’

  ‘No!’ She shook her head. ‘No, that’s OK. I’d rather see him alone.’

  She couldn’t even begin to imagine facing both Petros Liakos and Costas together. She’d be a nervous wreck! And more than that, this confrontation was far too private, too personal, to be shared.

  ‘It will be easier with me there,’ he persisted. ‘The stroke—it’s affected his speech.’

  She nodded. ‘You forget I’m a trained speech pathologist. I’m used to working with speech impediments. And,’ she hurried on before he could interrupt, ‘as long as he speaks slowly I’ll understand simple Greek.’

  ‘You won’t need to. Your grandfather speaks English.’

  Now, that surprised her. She’d imagined him such an old-fashioned patriarch that he wouldn’t concede the value of learning any language other than his own.

  ‘Kyrie Liakos will see you now,’ said the nurse, emerging from a room near by. Her eyes were fixed on Costas. She didn’t even glance in Sophie’s direction.

  ‘Thank you,’ Sophie said, walking towards the room.

  ‘Sophie—’ Costas sounded as if he’d like to say more.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ she said before he could continue and slipped into the private ward, letting the door close behind her.

  It felt different from Eleni’s bright hospital room.

  Immediately the familiar too-sweet scent of sick-room flowers filled her nostrils, making her stomach churn. The intense, distinctive quiet that accompanied the gravely ill enveloped her.

  For a long, awful interval the memories of her mother’s deathbed rose to swamp her. Bitter nausea made her reel, her hand outstretched to the door behind her for support. Her skin prickled hotly and she swallowed down bile.

  Then she blinked and the déjà vu eased. The resemblance between this suite and her mother’s spartan room were few. Every inch here attested to a luxury unlike anything the Paterson family had been able to command.

  But despite that it was a hospital room. The nearby oxygen tank, the drip, the panel of emergency buttons and dials beside the bed—they were all familiar.

  Despite Petros Liakos’ wealth, he was as powerless against illness as her mother had been.

  There was complete silence as she concentrated on getting her breathing under control.

  A curtain hid the head of the bed. Was he even awake? There was no movement, no rustle of sheets.

  But the nurse had said he’d see her. He must be lying there now, waiting for her. Perhaps guessing she was too nervous to face him.

  Sophie tilted up her chin and clenched her fists at her sides. If Petros Liakos could bear to look her in the eye, she wouldn’t deny him the opportunity.

  Slowly she paced towards the bed. Ridiculous to feel so nervous. She had nothing to be ashamed of!

  The bedcovers shaped feet, long legs, a thin body. A big, gnarled hand lay on the coverlet, curled into a claw.

  Tingling heat seared her skin as she paused, imagining how the owner of a hand like that, once strong and capable, could bear his body’s incapacity. It must be hell.

  She walked closer, to the end of the bed, and then she saw him. Petros Liakos, her mother’s father. Patriarch of the Liakos family.

  The man who’d disowned his flesh and blood because he’d refused to relinquish control over his daughter’s life.

  Glittering dark eyes met hers and she felt the force of his will-power, the surge of energy, even from where she stood. His heavy brows jutted low in a ferocious scowl. His nose was a prominent, commanding beak, just what you
’d expect of a power-hungry tyrant.

  Thank heaven she hadn’t inherited that nose, Sophie thought hysterically, her mind shutting down against the turmoil of desperate emotion deep within.

  Movement caught her eye. A clumsy, abrupt gesture from that useless fist on the bedclothes. She heard the hiss of his indrawn breath, recognised the savage sound of pure frustration. A man as proud as him would hate being seen like this.

  Sophie looked up to his face again. This time she saw the rest, not the power she’d looked for and found the first time, but the frailty. The old man’s cheeks were sunken, the skull too prominent beneath his skin. His mouth was distorted into a lopsided grimace.

  A twist of sympathy knotted her stomach.

  ‘Come to…gloat.’ His voice was laboured, barely intelligible with its slurred consonants. She had to lean forward to hear it.

  ‘No.’ She stared straight back into his eyes. They seemed the only thing about him still alive.

  He drew a deep, shuddering breath that racked his frail body and scoured her conscience. Maybe she should leave. He was in pain.

  ‘Come…for my…money,’ he mumbled.

  ‘No!’ She stood straighter, anger driving out unwilling sympathy.

  She glared at him, feeling the hurried beat of her pulse as long moments passed.

  ‘I was curious,’ she said at last when she could control her voice.

  Again that stifled gesture with his useless claw of a hand.

  ‘Closer,’ he whispered. ‘Come closer.’

  Sophie stepped up to the head of the bed, looking down at her grandfather propped against the mountain of pillows. This close his eyes looked febrile, glittering. It took her a moment to realise it was moisture that made his eyes so bright. Tears.

  She stared, dumbfounded at the thought of this man crying. He must have seen the shock on her face, for he blinked and turned his head away, towards the window.

  Sophie stared at his grizzled, still curly hair, and wondered if that had been genuine emotion she’d seen or simply the effect of his stroke.

  ‘Look like…her.’ He struggled to get the words out, as if the impediment of an almost useless tongue had got worse.