Anyone who might find her beauty appealing...beguiling... Tempting...
Thoughts were circling now, coming closer like birds of prey—thoughts he must not have, must not allow. To do so would be madness—what else could it be? For six long years he’d blanked Eliana’s existence, refused to think about her, relieved that she was away up in Thessaloniki so he wouldn’t run into her. Wouldn’t see her with the man she had preferred to himself.
But that man was gone now.
So she’s available again—and missing her luxury lifestyle...
The birds of prey that were those thoughts he must not have circled closer, talons outstretched, taking hold of him...
His eyes went to her photo on the screen. He was unable to tear his fixed gaze away.
And everything that he had blanked for six long years came rushing back like a tidal wave. Drowning his sanity.
He felt his fingers move again on the keyboard, calling up another tab. Slowly, deliberately, he clicked through the screens, reaching the one he wanted.
Booking his flight to Thessaloniki.
Eliana had just got off shift and was dog-tired. She’d worked a twelve-hour day—seven in the morning till seven at night—not even stopping for lunch. She gave a sigh as she let herself in to her shabby, depressing studio apartment. Was this really going to be her life from now on? This miserable hand-to-mouth existence?
But what could she do to improve it? She had no marketable skills other than basic ones. She’d skipped on higher education in order to be with her father, and then, for those few, blissful months now lost for ever, tainted by the memory of how they’d ended, she’d thought that her future would be the everlasting bliss of being married to Leandros, making a family with him.
After that she’d been an ornamental, dressed-up doll of a wife for Damien, shown off to his father, to his father’s friends and business associates, dressed up to the nines, bejewelled, smiling, making polite small talk as Jonas Makris’s docile daughter-in-law. A daughter-in-law who had become an increasing disappointment to him in her failure to present him with the grandson and heir he demanded.
As for Damian...
Her mind slid sideways. Back into the grief she still felt at his death, at the waste of it all. The sheer sadness.
He’d left such a mess behind...
And she was caught up in it.
She gave a tired sigh. Her life now was what it was, and nothing would change it. Nothing could change it.
She went into the cramped kitchenette, with its cheap fittings and broken cupboard, stained sink and chipped tiling. She needed coffee—only instant, which was all she could afford these days. She’d brought back a sandwich from the supermarket, marked down at the end of the day, and that would have to do for supper with a tin of soup. Meagre fare, but cheap—and that was all that mattered.
She had just taken a first sip of her weak coffee when something unusual happened. Her doorbell rang. She replaced her mug on the worn laminate work surface, frowning. The rent wasn’t due, and no one else ever called except the landlord’s agent. The bell rang again—not at the door itself, but at the front door to the apartment block. Still frowning, she crossed to the door to press the buzzer to let it open.
She knew she ought to check who it was first, but the intercom had never worked, and she lacked the energy to trudge down to the main door. It was probably for a different apartment anyway.
She took another mouthful of coffee and then, moments later, there was a knock on her own door. The safety catch was on so, setting down her coffee again, she opened it cautiously—and froze in total shock.
CHAPTER THREE
LEANDROS WAS STILL in shock himself. Eliana lived here? In this run-down apartment block in the back end of the city? Had she really been reduced to this?
Disbelief had hit him when the airport taxi had dropped him off in this street, and he’d stared around, questioning whether he had possibly got the wrong address. But no, he had not. And that was definitely Eliana standing there, her face ashen, in the narrow gap of the safety chained doorway.
He watched her fumble with the safety chain, as though her hands wouldn’t work properly, and as the door opened more widely he stepped forward. She stepped away, as if automatically, and then he was inside, casting a still half-disbelieving look around him at the tiny studio, with its shabby furniture, worn floor, cramped kitchenette and totally depressing air of chronic poverty.
Eliana had not just gone down in the world—she had reached the bottom.
Her face was still ashen, her eyes distended.
‘What—? What—? I don’t understand... Why—?’
The disconnected words fell from her lips, uncomprehending, as filled with shock as her expression. Leandros’s gaze snapped back from surveying her unlovely living quarters to her face. Not just ashen, but with lines of tiredness etched into it. She did not look good...
But that was to his advantage. Just as seeing the daughter of Aristides Georgiades, whose forebears had hobnobbed with the long-gone kings of Greece, now the widow of the son of one of Greece’s richest men, reduced to living in a dump like this was to his advantage.