A Passionate Night With The Greek
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‘And now?’
‘We have extended into the houses both sides, the entire row, and can take thirty-five women at any one time, depending, obviously, on the number of children. In the eighties the chapel across the road came up for sale and we bought it. Now it houses the nursery and crèche, which is available for women when they have moved out. It also contains a drop-in centre, which provides legal help and so forth. Dame Laura was personally involved, right up to her death.’
Had her own mother found Hinsdale, or a similar place, both their lives might have been very different.
Zach watched the wave of sadness flicker across her expressive face. Letting this interview play out a little longer might be on shaky ground morally, but practically it would provide a swifter insight into this woman whom he was meant to be babysitting.
‘And what is your role?’ Zach was experiencing a strange reluctance to abandon his mental image of a person so damaged they never looked at anything other than their own self-interest—a person, in short, much like himself.
The frown that came with the unbidden flicker of self-awareness faded as he watched her beautiful face light up with a glow of conviction and resolution as she leaned forward in her seat, losing the nervousness as she answered proudly.
‘I run the refuge, along with a great team, many of whom are volunteers, as was I initially. I began by volunteering at the crèche when I was at school, and after I left I was offered a salaried position. I like to think Dame Laura would have been proud of what we have achieved.’ Kat had met the redoubtable lady once; she had been frail but as sharp as a tack and totally inspirational. ‘Her legacy lives on.’ Embarrassed, Kat swallowed the emotional lump in her throat and reminded herself that there was a fine line between enthusiasm and looking a little unhinged. ‘We have a dedicated staff and, as I said, so many volunteers. We are part of the community and don’t turn anyone away.’
‘That must make forward planning difficult.’
‘We build in flexibility—’
He felt a twinge of admiration that, despite the starry-eyed enthusiasm, she was not so naive that she didn’t know how to sidestep a difficult answer.
‘Is that possible fiscally?’
‘Obviously in the present financial climate—’
‘How much do you need?’
The hard note of cold cynicism in his interruption made her blink, then rush to reassure. ‘Oh, please, don’t think for one moment we are expecting you to cover the total shortfall.’
‘As negotiating tactics go, that, Kat...’ the way he drawled her name made the fine hairs on the nape of her neck stand on end ‘...was not good—it was bad. It was abysmal.’
Her expression stiffened and grew defensive. ‘I came here under the impression that you wanted to contribute to the refuge.’ She struggled to contain the antagonism that sparkled in her eyes as she planted her hands on the table and leaned in. ‘Look, if this is about me... There are other people who could do my job. The important thing is the work.’
‘Do you think everything is about you?’
Kat felt her face flush. ‘Of course not, it just felt...feels as if you find me...’
‘So you are saying you’d sacrifice yourself to save this place?’
She swallowed, wondering if that was what it was going to take. Obviously it was a price she would be willing to pay, but only as a last resort. Crawl and grovel if that’s what he wants, Kat. She heaved a deep sigh and managed an almost smile.
‘You don’t like me, fine.’ Because I really don’t like you.
Zach watched the internal struggle reflected on her face. This was a woman who should never play poker. As a born risk-taker, he enjoyed that form of relaxation.
She left a space for him to deny the claim.
He didn’t.
‘But, please,’ she begged, ‘don’t allow that to influence your decision. I am one person easy to replace, but there is a dedicated staff who work incredibly hard.’ Breathing hard, she waited for a response, the slightest hint of softening, but there was none.
Her chin went up; she was in nothing-to-lose territory.
She flicked to the first page of the thin folder, except the first page was now somewhere in the middle so it took her a few moments to locate it. ‘I have the facts and figures; the average stay of a client is...’ With a sigh she turned the page of figures over. It wasn’t the right one. ‘The average doesn’t matter. Everyone who comes is different and we try to cater to their individual needs. The woman who is my deputy first arrived as a client. She was in an abusive relationship...’
A nerve along his jaw quivered. ‘Her partner hit her?’
The hairs on the nape of her neck lifted in response to the danger in his deceptively soft question. Underneath the beautiful tailoring she sensed something dangerous, almost feral, about this man. A shiver traced a sticky path up her spine as she struggled to break contact with his dark eyes.
‘No, he didn’t.’ He hadn’t needed to. He had isolated Sue from her family and friends and had controlled every aspect of her life before she’d finally left. Even her thoughts had not been her own. ‘It’s not always about violence. Sometimes the abuse is emotional,’ she said quietly. ‘But she now works for us full-time, is a fantastic mum and was voted onto the local council. The refuge has helped so many and it will again in future, the cash-flow situation is—’
Her own earnest flow was stemmed by his upheld hand. ‘I am sure your cause is very worthy, but that is not why you were invited here.’
‘I don’t understand...’
‘I had never heard of your refuge, or your Dame Laura.’
As his words sank in, the throb of anger in her head got louder; her voice became correspondingly softer. ‘Then why the hell am I here?’
It was an indulgence, but he took a moment to enjoy the flashing amber eyes that viewed him with utter contempt.
‘I am here to represent Alekis Azaria.’
The name seemed vaguely familiar to Kat but she had no idea why. She leaned forward, arching a questioning brow. ‘Greek...?’
He nodded. He had seen several reactions to Alekis’s name before, ranging from awe to fear, but hers was a first. She clearly didn’t have a clue who he was.
‘Like you.’
She frowned, then realised his mistake. ‘Oh, not really. The name, you mean? Oh, I suppose I must have some Greek blood, but I’ve never been there. Are you...?’ she asked, searching for some sort of explanation, some sort of connection to explain him and this interview.
‘I am Greek, like Alekis.’
‘So why did this man who I have never heard of invite me here?’ The entire thing made no sense to her. ‘Who is he?’
CHAPTER THREE
‘HE’S YOUR GRANDFATHER.’
He watched as the bemused confusion drawn on her face froze and congealed. As her wide eyes flickered wide in shock.
It took a conscious effort for Zach to hold on to his objectivity as she gasped like a drowning person searching for air. She sucked in a succession of deep breaths.
‘I have no family.’ Her voice was flat, her expression empty of the animation that had previously lit it. ‘I have no one, so I can’t have a grandfather.’
He pushed away an intrusive sliver of compassion and the squeeze of his heart and hardened his voice as he fell back on facts, always more reliable than sentiment.
‘We all have two grandfathers, even me.’
Another time she might have questioned the significance of the even me but Kat was in shock. The sheer unexpectedness of what he had said had felt like walking...no, running full pelt into a brick wall that had suddenly appeared in the middle of a flower-filled meadow.
‘I don’t even know who my father is, other than a name on a birth certificate.’ It had never crossed her mind to track down the man who had abandoned her pregnant mother. The decision to search for her mother had not been one she had taken lightly, though, as it turned out, she had already been five years too late. ‘Why should I want any contact with his family?’
Zach narrowed his eyes, recalling the one line in the file on the man Alekis’s daughter had married in defiance of her father’s wishes. ‘He might have a family, but I don’t have that information.’
‘I don’t understand...’
‘It is your mother’s family, or rather her father, that I am representing.’
She listened to his cold, dispassionate explanation before sitting there in silence for several moments, allowing her disjointed thoughts to coalesce.
‘She had a family...’ She faltered, remembering bedtime stories, the tall tales of a sun-drenched childhood. Was even a tiny part of that fantasy based on reality? The thought made her ache for her mother, far away from home and rejected.
‘Your grandfather is reaching out to you.’
Shaking her head, Kat rose to her feet, then subsided abruptly as her shaking legs felt too insubstantial to support her.
‘Reaching...’ She shook her head and the slither of silk down her back rippled, making Zach wonder what it would look like loose and spread against her pale gold skin. ‘I don’t want anyone reaching out to me.’ Her angry amber eyes came to rest accusingly on his handsome face. She knew there was a reason she had never trusted too-good-looking men besides prejudice and the fact the man who had spiked her drink all those years ago had been the one all the girls in the nightclub had been drooling over. ‘Is this some sort of joke?’
‘It is real.’ As real as the colour of those pain-filled, angry, magnificent eyes.
‘He’s rich?’
Her words did make it sound as though a yes would be a good thing. This was not avarice speaking, he realised, but anger. The former would have made his life a lot easier.
‘He is not poor.’
Her trembling lips clamped tight, the pressure blanching the colour from her skin as she fought visibly for composure.
‘My mum was... She was poor, you see...very poor.’ She eyed him with contempt, not even bothering to attempt to describe the abject hand-to-mouth existence that had driven her mother to drugs and the men who supplied them. A man who looked like him, dressed like him and oozed the confidence that came from success and affluence could not even begin to understand that life and the events that trapped people in the living hell of degradation.
‘Yes.’
One of the reasons she rarely mentioned her early years was the way people reacted. She mentally filed them into two camps: the ones that looked at her with pity and those that felt uneasy and embarrassed.
His monosyllabic response held none of the above, just a statement of fact. Ironic, really, that a response she would normally have welcomed only added another layer to the antagonism that swirled inside her head as she looked at him. By the second he was becoming the personification of everything she disliked most in a person. Someone born to privilege and power without any seeming moral compass.
Ignoring the voice in her head that told her she was guilty of making the exact sort of rush or, in this case, more a stampede to judgement that she’d be the first to condemn, she sucked in a deep sustaining breath through flared nostrils.
Despite her best efforts, her voice quivered with emotion that this man would definitely see as a weakness. ‘He didn’t reach out to her...’
‘No.’
Her even white teeth clenched. ‘Where was he when his daughter needed him? If he makes the same sort of grandfather as he made father, why would I want to know him?’
‘I don’t know...’ He arched a satiric brow and pretended to consider the answer. ‘He’s rich?’
Her chin lifted to the defiant angle he was getting very familiar with. It was a long time since Zach had been regarded with such open contempt.
Better than indifference!
The knee-jerk reaction of his inner voice brought a brief frown to his brow before he turned his critical attention to the play of expression across her flawless features. He had never encountered anyone who broadcast every thought in their heads quite so obviously before.
The concept of a professional guard would be alien to her. Though in her defence, this wasn’t professional to her—it was very personal. He was getting the idea that everything with this woman might be.
For someone who compartmentalised every aspect of his life, the emotional blurring was something that appalled him.
‘So you’re of the “everyone has a price” school of thought,’ she sneered.
‘They do.’
His man-of-few-words act was really starting to get under her skin.
‘I don’t. I’m not interested in money and...and...things!’
He arched a satiric brow. ‘That might be a more impressive statement if you hadn’t come here with a begging bowl.’
She fought off the angry flush she could feel rising up her neck. ‘That is not the same.’
He dragged his eyes up from the blue-veined pulse that was beating like a trapped wild bird at the base of her slender throat. This might be the moment he told himself to remember that the untouched, fragile look had never been a draw for him. He had no protective instincts to arouse.
‘If you say so.’
His sceptical drawl was an insult in itself.
‘I am not begging. This isn’t for me.’
He cut her off with a bored, ‘I know, it is for the greater good. So consider that for the moment—consider how much you could help the greater good if you had access to the sort of funds that your grandfather has.’
He allowed himself the indulgence of watching the expressions flicker across her face for several seconds before speaking.
‘You see, everyone does have a price—even you.’
‘There is no even me. And I’m not suggesting I’m a better person than anyone else!’ she fired back.
Zach watched her bite her lip before lifting her chin and found himself regretting his taunt. As exasperating as her attitude was, she had just received news that was the verbal equivalent of a gut punch.
And she had come out fighting.
‘If you say so.’
She blinked hard, not prepared to let it go. ‘I do say so, and,’ she choked out, ‘I really don’t want to know the sort of person who would abandon his daughter.’
‘Maybe she abandoned him?’
The suggestion drew a ferocious glare. On one level he registered how magnificent she looked furious, on another he realised that he was now in uncharted territory—he was playing it by ear. Zach trusted his instincts; his confidence was justified but, in this instance, it had turned out to be massively misplaced.
The unorthodox role assigned to him had been unwelcome, but he had approached it as he would anything. He’d thought that he had factored in all the possibilities...had considered every reaction and how to counter them to bring about the desired outcome with the least effort on his part.
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