Greek Escape

‘What the heck does having or not having a partner have to do with it?’ Tabby demanded defensively. ‘This past year I’ve been far too busy to waste time looking for a man.’

‘And with your approach it might have proved a considerable challenge,’ Acheron interposed without hesitation.

Tabby opened and closed her lush mouth in angry disconcertion and took a seething step closer to the Greek billionaire. ‘You accused me of having no manners? What about your own?’ she snapped in outrage.

Studying the two adults before him squabbling and insulting each other much as his own teenaged children did, Stevos averted his attention from them both. ‘Miss Glover? If you had had a partner it would certainly have made a big difference to your application. Raising a child today is a challenge and it is widely believed that two parents generally make that easier.’

‘Well, unfortunately for me a partner isn’t something I can dig up overnight!’ Tabby exclaimed, wishing the wretched man would think of something other than picking holes in her suitability to adopt Amber. Didn’t she have enough to worry about?

A germ of a wild idea leapt into Stevos’s brain, and he skimmed his insightful gaze to Acheron and addressed him in Greek. ‘You know, you could both help each other...’

Ash frowned. ‘In what possible way?’

‘She needs a stable home and partner to support her adoption application—you need a wife. With a little compromise on both sides and some serious legal negotiation, you could both achieve what you want and nobody would ever need to know the truth.’

Acheron was always quick on the uptake but for a split second he literally could not believe that Stevos had made that speech, could even have dared to suggest such an insane idea. He shot a disdainful glance at Tabby Glover and all her many obvious deficiencies and his black brows went skyward. ‘You have to be out of your mind,’ he told his lawyer with incredulity. ‘She’s a foul-mouthed girl from the back streets!’

‘You’ve got the money to clean her up enough to pass in public,’ the older man replied drily. ‘I’m talking about a wife you pay to be your wife, not a normal wife. If you get married, all your problems with regard to ownership of the company go away—’

In brooding silence, Acheron focused on the one massive problem that would not go away in that scenario—Tabby Glover. Not wife material screeched every one of his sophisticated expectations, but he was also thinking about what he had learned about Troy Valtinos and his late mother, Olympia, and his conscience was bothering him on that score. ‘I couldn’t marry her. I don’t like her—’

‘Do you need to like her?’ Stevos enquired quietly. ‘I shouldn’t have thought that was a basic requirement to meet the terms of a legal stipulation to protect your company. You own many properties. I’m sure you could put her in one of them and barely notice she was there.’

‘Right at this moment the first thing on my agenda has to be the child,’ Acheron startled his lawyer by asserting. ‘I want to check up on her. I have been remiss in my responsibilities and too quick to dismiss them.’

‘Look...’ While Stevos was engaged in giving Ash an alarmed look at that sudden uncharacteristic swerve of his into child-welfare territory, Tabby had folded her arms in frustration and she was glowering at the two men. ‘If you two are going to keep on chatting in a foreign language and acting like I’m not here—’

‘If only you were not,’ Ash murmured silkily.

Tabby’s hands balled into fists. ‘I bet quite a few women have thumped you in your time!’

Shimmering eyes dark as sloes challenged her, his lean strong face slashing into a sudden smile of raw amusement. ‘Not a one...’

Amber, Tabby reminded herself with painful impact, her heart clenching at the thought of the child she adored. She was here to ask for his help for Amber’s sake, and Amber’s needs were the most important consideration, not how objectionable she found the despicable man. His charismatic smile struck her like a deluge of icy water. He was incredibly, really quite breathtakingly, handsome and the fact that he found her amusing hurt. Of course, Tabby had never cherished many illusions about her desirability factor as a woman. Although she had always had a lot of male friends, she’d had very few boyfriends, and Sonia had once tactfully tried to hint that Tabby could be too sharp-tongued, too independent and too critical to appeal to the average male. Unfortunately, nobody had ever explained to Tabby how she could possibly have survived her challenging life without acquiring those seemingly unfeminine attributes.

‘You want to meet the child?’ Stevos stepped in quickly before war broke out again between his companions and wasted more time.

A sudden smile broke across Tabby’s face like sunshine, and Acheron studied her intently, scanning her delicate features, realising that there could be an attractive female beneath the facade of bolshie belligerence. He liked women feminine, really, really feminine. She was crude and unkempt and the guardian of Olympia’s granddaughter, he reminded himself doggedly, striving to concentrate on the most important element of the equation. And that was the child, Amber. He cursed the fact that he had not known of the connection sooner, cursed his own innate aversion to being tied down by anything other than business. He had no relatives, no loving relationships, no responsibility outside his company and that was how he liked his life. But not at the expense of basic decency. And his recollection of Olympia, who had frequently been kind and friendly to a boy everyone else had viewed as pure trouble, remained one of the few good memories Ash had of his childhood.

‘Yes. I want to see the child as soon as possible,’ Acheron confirmed.

Tabby tilted her head to one side, taken aback by his change of heart. ‘What changed your mind?’

‘I should have personally checked into her circumstances when I was informed of the guardianship,’ Acheron breathed grimly, angry with himself for once at the elaborate and very protective support system around him that ensured that he was never troubled by too much detail about anything that might take his mind off business. ‘But I will take care of that oversight now and be warned, Miss Glover, I will not support your application to adopt the little girl unless I reach the conclusion that you are a suitable carer. Thank you for your help, Stevos, but not for that last suggestion you made...’ Sardonic dark eyes met the lawyer’s frowning gaze. ‘I’m afraid that idea belongs in fantasy land.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘I COULD’VE DONE with some advance warning before you came to visit,’ Tabby remarked thinly, after giving the uniformed chauffeur the address of the basement flat where she was currently staying, courtesy of her friend, Jack.

Jack, Sonia and Tabby had become fast friends and pseudo-siblings after passing their teenaged years in the same foster home.

Tabby eased slowly into the leather upholstered back seat of Acheron’s unspeakably fancy limousine and studiously avoided staring starstruck at her surroundings but, dear heaven, it was a challenge not to stare at the built-in bar and entertainment centre. She had, however, enjoyed a mean moment of glorious one-upmanship when she sailed out of the front doors of the DT building with the doors held open by the same security guards who had, the hour before, manhandled her on the top floor.

‘Obviously a warning would’ve been unwise. I need to see how you live without you putting on a special show for my benefit,’ Acheron responded smoothly, flipping out a laptop onto the small table that emerged at the stab of a button from the division between front and back seats.

Tabby gritted her teeth at that frank admission. Any kind of fake special show was not an option open to her in the tiny bedsit that she was currently sharing with Amber. It was purely thanks to Jack, who was a small-time builder and property developer, that she still had Amber with her and had not already been forced to move into a hostel for the homeless and give up Sonia’s daughter. It hurt that her long-term friendship with Sonia counted for nothing next to the remote blood tie Acheron Dimitrakos had shared with Troy. What had they been? Troy’s gran had been a cousin of Acheron’s mother, so Acheron was what...a third cousin or something in relation to Amber? Yet Tabby had known and loved Sonia since she was ten years old. They had met in the children’s institution where they were both terrorised by the older kids. Tabby, having grown up in a violent home, had been much more used to defending herself than the younger girl. Sonia, after all, had once been a loved child in a decent family and tragically orphaned by the accident in which her parents died. In comparison, Tabby had been forcibly removed by the authorities from an abusive home and no longer knew whether her parents were alive or dead. There had been a few supervised visits with them after she was first taken away, many attempts to rehabilitate her mother and father and cobble the family back together, but in reality her parents proved to be more attached to their irresponsible lifestyle than they had ever been to their child.

Acheron Dimitrakos worked steadily at his laptop, making no effort to start up a conversation. Tabby compressed her generous mouth and studied him. She knew he had already decided that she was a rubbish person from the very bottom of the social pile. She knew he had taken one look and made judgements based on her appearance...and, doubtless, her use of bad language, she conceded with a sneaking feeling of shame.

But then she doubted he knew what it felt like to be almost at the end of your tether. He was so...self-possessed, she decided resentfully, her violet gaze wandering over his bold bronzed profile, noting the slight curl in his thick black hair where it rested behind his ear and the extraordinary length of his dense inky-black eyelashes as he scrutinised the screen in front of him. Imagine a boyfriend with more impressive lashes than you have yourself, she ruminated, unimpressed, her soft mouth curling with disdain.

It annoyed her that he looked even more gorgeous in the flesh than he had in the magazine photographs. She had believed the photos must’ve been airbrushed to enhance his dark good looks but the evidence to the contrary was right before her. He had high aristocratic cheekbones, a perfectly straight nose and the wide, sensual mouth of a classic Greek statue. He was also extremely tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped and long-legged—in fact, he was graced with every attractive male attribute possible.

Not a nice, caring person though, she reasoned staunchly, determined to concentrate on his flaws. Indeed, thinking of how he had outright refused to take any interest in Troy and Sonia’s daughter, it was a challenge to understand why he should be suddenly bothering to come and see Amber now. She decided that she had made him feel guilty and that, after all, he had to have a conscience. Did that mean that he would support her application to adopt Amber? And even more importantly, would his opinion carry any weight with Social Services?

* * *

Acheron could not concentrate, which annoyed the hell out of him. Tabby Glover never sat still, and the constant movements of her slight small body on the seat beside him were an irritating distraction. He was too observant, he thought impatiently as he noted the bitten nails on her small hands, the shabbiness of her training shoes, the worn denim of jeans stretched taut over slender thighs, and he suppressed a sigh. He was out of his depth and although he had told Stevos to return to his office he was not enjoying the course he had set himself on. After all, what did he know about a young child’s needs? Why did he feel guilty that he had already made up his mind to the hard fact that this young woman was not a fit sole guardian for a baby girl?

When the car came to a halt, Tabby slid out of the limo and bounced down the steps to stick her key in the front door of the basement flat. Here goes, she conceded nervously as she spread wide the door.

Ash froze one step inside, aghast at the indoor building site that comprised her accommodation. There was scaffolding, buckets and tools lying around, wires dangling everywhere, plasterboard walls. Tabby thrust open the first door to the left of the entrance.

Acheron followed her into a small room, packed with furniture and a table bearing a kettle and mini-oven and scattered with crumbs. Baby equipment littered almost every other surface. A teenage girl was seated on the bed with work files spread around her and when she saw Tabby she gathered up her files with a smile and stood up to leave. ‘Amber’s been great. She had a snack, enjoyed her bottle and she’s been changed.’

‘Thanks, Heather,’ Tabby said quietly to the girl who lived in the apartment above. ‘I appreciate your help.’

The child was sitting up in the cot wedged between the bed and the wall on one side. Acheron surveyed the child from a safe distance, noting the mop of black curls, the big brown eyes and the instant dazzling smile that rewarded Tabby’s appearance.

‘How’s my darling girl?’ Tabby asked, leaning over the cot to scoop up the little girl and hug her tight. Chubby arms wrapped round her throat while curious brown eyes inspected Acheron over Tabby’s shoulder.

‘What age is she?’ Ash enquired.

‘You should know,’ Tabby said drily. ‘She’s over six months old.’

‘Do the authorities know you’re keeping her here?’

A flush of uneasy colour warmed Tabby’s cheeks as she sat down on the bed because Amber was getting heavier by the day. ‘No. I gave them Jack’s address. He’s a friend and he bought this apartment to renovate and sell on. He’s allowing us to stay here out of the goodness of his heart. He hasn’t the space for us at his own place.’

‘How can you live in such a squalid dwelling with a young child and believe that you’re doing the best you can for her?’ Acheron condemned.

‘Well, for a start, it’s not squalid!’ Tabby flared defensively and hurriedly rose to set Amber back into her cot. ‘It’s clean. We have heating and light and there’s a fully functional bathroom through that door.’ She pointed a hand to the opposite wall, and the gesture fell down in effectiveness because her arm shook and she hurriedly lowered it again. Tears were suddenly stinging the back of her eyes, and her head was starting to thump with the onset of a stress headache. ‘For the moment I’m just doing the best I can but we’re managing.’

‘But you’re not managing well enough,’ Ash stated curtly. ‘You shouldn’t be keeping a young child in accommodation like this.’

Her brow pulsing with the band of tension tightening round it, Tabby lifted her hands to release the weight of her hair from the ponytail. Acheron watched a torrent of long blonde hair fall down to her waist and finally saw something he liked about her appearance: blonde hair that was natural unless he was very much mistaken, for that pale mass had no dark roots or streaky highlights.

‘I’m doing the very best I can,’ Tabby countered firmly, wondering why he was staring at her, her self-conscious streak on override, her pride still hurting from the ‘squalid’ comment.

‘And how are you supporting yourself?’ Acheron asked with a curled lip.

‘I’m still cleaning. I didn’t lose all my clients when I had to close my business down, and those I kept I’m still working for. I take Amber with me to the jobs. Most of my clients are out at work anyway so her coming with me doesn’t bother them,’ she admitted grudgingly. ‘Take a look at her. She’s clean and well fed and happy. We’re rarely apart.’

Ash assimilated the information with a grim twist of his expressive mouth. ‘I’m sorry, but your best isn’t good enough. Nothing I’ve seen here will convince me otherwise. You don’t have a proper home for the child. You’re clearly living on the poverty line—’

‘Money isn’t everything!’ Tabby protested. ‘I love her and she loves me.’

Ash watched the slender blonde lean over the cot rail to gently stroke the little girl’s head and saw the answering sunny smile that the gesture evoked. No such love or tenderness had featured in his childhood experience, and he fully recognised the fact, but he was also bone-deep practical and not given to changing his mind mid-course. ‘Love isn’t enough on its own. If you had a supportive family to back you and a proper home to raise her in I might feel differently, but you on your own with her in this dismal room and dragging her out with you to cleaning jobs is wrong,’ he pronounced with strong conviction. ‘She could do better than this, she should have better than this and it is her needs and not your own that you should be weighing in the balance.’

‘Are you saying that I’m selfish?’ Tabby prompted in disbelief, because she had given up so much that was important to her to take care first of Sonia, after she had suffered her first stroke, and ultimately her baby daughter.

Beneath the shocked onslaught of eyes the colour of rain-washed amethysts, Acheron’s stubborn jaw line clenched hard and his mouth compressed. ‘Yes. You have obviously done the best you can and given her continuity of care since her mother’s death but now it’s time for you to step back and put her best interests ahead of your own personal feelings.’

The tears glistening in Tabby’s eyes overflowed, marking silvery trails on her cheeks, and for the first time in years Acheron felt like a real bastard and yet he had only told the truth as he saw it. I love her and she loves me. Yes, he could see the strength of the bond before him but it couldn’t cover up the cracks in the long-term struggle for survival he saw for them both. Olympia’s grandchild deserved more. Yet how did he put a price on the love and then dismiss it as if it were worthless?

‘What age are you?’ he pressed.

‘Twenty-five.’

‘I should’ve dealt with this situation when it first came up,’ Acheron acknowledged grimly, thinking that she was surely far too young and immature to take on such a burden and that he should have taken immediate action to resolve the situation the instant the guardianship issue arose. It was his fault that Tabby Glover had been left to struggle on with the child while becoming more and more dangerously attached to her charge.

‘Not if it meant parting Amber and me sooner,’ Tabby argued. ‘Can’t you understand how much I care about her? Her mother and I became best friends when we were kids, and I’ll be able to share my memories of her parents with her when she’s old enough to want that information. Surely there’s something you could do to help?’

But on a personal level, Acheron didn’t want to be involved. He always avoided emotional situations and responsibilities that fell outside company business, and it had been that very detachment that had first roused his late father’s concern that his only son should have set himself on such a solitary path.

Tabby searched Acheron’s handsome features, marvelling at his masculine perfection even as she appraised the glitter of his dark-as-jet eyes and the hard tension round his wide, sensual mouth. ‘I’ll do anything it takes to keep her...’

Acheron frowned, his brow furrowing. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘What do you think? I’m desperate to keep Amber. If you have any suggestions on how I can be a better parent to her, I’m willing to listen and take advice,’ Tabby extended with the new-found humility of fear.

‘I thought you were offering me sex,’ Acheron confided bluntly.

‘Seriously?’ Tabby gasped in shock at that misconception. ‘Does that happen to you a lot? I mean...women... just offering?’

Acheron nodded cool confirmation.

Her violet eyes widened in astonishment and she lifted her head, pale blonde hair cascading in a silken tangle round her shoulders with the movement. In the space of a split second she travelled from possibly pretty to decidedly beautiful in Acheron’s estimation, and desire kindled; a desire he neither wanted nor intended to act on. His body was stubborn, though, and the pulse of heaviness at his groin was utterly disobedient to his brain, throwing up outrageous images of her lying on his bed, that lovely swathe of hair spread over his chest, that lush mouth gainfully employed in pleasuring him. He gritted his perfect white teeth, suppressing the outrageous fantasy, furiously conscious of the child’s innocent presence and his unprecedented loss of self-discipline.

‘Women just offer themselves? No wonder you’re so full of yourself,’ Tabby remarked helplessly, aware of the tension in the atmosphere, but unsure of its source as she stared back at him. She liked looking at him, didn’t know why or exactly what it was about those lean sculpted features that fascinated her so much. But as she collided with his stunning dark-as-midnight gaze, liquid warmth surged between her legs and her nipples tightened, a message even she couldn’t ignore or deny. He attracted her. The filthy rich Greek with his dazzling good looks and hard-as-granite heart attracted her. How foolish and deceptive physical chemistry could be, she reflected ruefully, embarrassment colouring her pale cheeks.

I’ll do anything it takes to keep her... And suddenly Acheron, rigid with the force of his self-control, was reasoning with a new and unfamiliar sense of freedom to think outside the box and he was thinking, Why not? Why the hell not? Possibly Stevos’s bright idea had not been as off the wall as it had first seemed. He and this strange girl both wanted something from each other, and he could certainly ensure that Amber benefitted from the deal in every way, thereby satisfying his uneasy conscience where the child was concerned.

‘There is a way you could keep Amber with you.’ Ash dangled the bait straight away, as always impatient to plunge to the heart of the matter.

Tabby leant forward where she sat, wide violet eyes intent on him. ‘How?’

‘We could apply as a couple to adopt her—’

Thoroughly disconcerted by that unexpected suggestion, Tabby blinked. ‘As a couple?’

‘With my backing it could be achieved but we would need to be married first,’ Ash delivered smoothly, deciding there and then that he would not admit the truth that he would have a great deal riding on the arrangement as well. That acknowledgement would tip the power balance between them and he refused to take that unnecessary risk and find himself being blackmailed. The less she knew, the less power she would have.

Astonishment was stamped on her small oval face. ‘Married?’

‘For the sake of the adoption application. I should think that the most traditional approach would have the likeliest and quickest chance of success.’

‘Let me get this straight...you’re saying you would be willing to marry me to help me get permission to adopt Amber?’ Tabby breathed in frank disbelief.

Acheron dealt her a sardonic look. ‘Naturally I’m not suggesting a proper marriage. I’m suggesting the legal ceremony and a joint application to adopt her. We would then only have to give the appearance that we are living below the same roof for as long as it takes to complete the proceedings.’

So, not a real marriage, a fake one, she mused, but even so she was still transfixed by the concept and the idea that he might be willing to go to such lengths to help her. ‘But why would you do that for us? A couple of months ago, you simply dismissed the idea that you could have any obligation towards Amber.’

‘I wasn’t aware then that she was Olympia Carolis’s grandchild—’

‘Olympia...who?’ Tabby queried blankly.

‘Troy’s mother. I only knew her by the name she had before she married. I knew her when I was a child because she worked for my mother and lived with us,’ Acheron volunteered with pronounced reluctance. ‘I lost all contact with that side of the family after my mother died. But I liked Olympia. She was a good woman.’

‘Yet you don’t have the slightest true interest in Amber,’ Tabby commented with a frown of incomprehension. ‘You haven’t even tried to hold her.’

‘I’m not accustomed to babies and I don’t want to frighten her,’ Acheron excused himself glibly and watched her process his polite lie. ‘I should’ve taken a greater interest in the child when I was first informed that I was one of her guardians. Your situation would not have reached crisis point had I accepted that commitment and taken my share of the responsibility.’