For a second there was silence. Absolute silence between them. Then into the silence came a high, solitary wail.
With a cry of consternation Lyn wheeled about. Oh, no—now she had gone and woken Georgy! With all this awful arguing about what was never going to happen—because she was never giving Georgy up! Never!
The wail came again. She rounded on Anatole. ‘Please go!’ she said. ‘Please—just go!’
She rushed from the room into the bedroom, where Georgy was wide awake, his little face screwed up. She scooped him up with a hushing noise, soothing and rocking him in her arms until he had quietened.
The feel of his strong, solid little body, so familiar, so precious, calmed her too. She took long slow breaths, hugging him tightly, and felt his warmth and weight in her arms like a blessing, a benediction.
How could anyone think to ask her to give him up? She loved this little child more than anyone in the whole world! He was everything to her—and she was everything to him.
Love flowed from her, enveloping and protective, as she cradled him against her, her eyes smarting, her throat tight. Slowly the heaving emotions in her breast, her heart, eased. Georgy was safe. He was in her arms. He was with her. She would never let him go, never abandon him. Her hectic pulse slowed. Cradling him, her hand curved protectively around his back, she crooned soothingly at him, wordless sounds murmuring, familiar and comforting. The rest of the world seemed very far away...
‘May I see him?’
The voice behind her made her spin round. Anatole was standing in the doorway of the bedroom.
But there was something different about him. Something quite different. She’d seen him only as dark and tall and formidable—telling her things she did not want to hear, his very presence a terrifying threat to everything that she held most dear.
Now, as she gazed at him, her expression stricken, across the dimly lit curtained room, he did not seem formidable at all. Or threatening. He seemed merely—tense. As if every muscle in his body were pulled taut. In the dim light the bone structure of his face was stark.
She felt Georgy lift his head from her shoulder, twist his neck so that he could see where the voice had come from. He gazed at the figure in the doorway with eyes just as dark as those which were fixed on him.
For a moment the tableau held all of them immobile. Then, with a gurgling sound, Georgy lurched on her shoulder, his little arms reaching forward towards the man standing in the doorway. The man with eyes like his own.
The man who was kin to the father he had never known. Never would know now....
As if in slow motion, Anatole found his hand reaching inside his jacket pocket, drawing out something he had brought with him from Greece. It was a silver photo frame from his grandfather’s opulent drawing room, displaying one individual alone. Slowly he shifted his gaze down to the photo he held in his hand, then back to the baby cradled so closely in his young aunt’s arms.
‘He is Marcos’s son.’ Anatole’s voice was flat. But there was emotion in it. Powerful emotion. His gaze cut suddenly to Lyn. ‘Look,’ he instructed, holding up the photo.
It was an old one, pre-digital, an informal shot and unposed, but the likeness to the baby in it was unmistakable. The same wide brown-eyed gaze. The same-shaped mouth and head. The same expression.
How was it, Anatole found himself thinking, emotion rising in his chest, that the genes Marcos had carried could be so clearly visible even at this tender age? What was it about the human face that revealed its origins, its kinship? Yet so it was—this scrap of humanity, less than a year old, stared back at him in the baby he himself could just dimly remember from his own boyhood.
‘I couldn’t be sure,’ he heard himself saying. ‘Knew that I must get DNA testing. Knew there would be doubts that necessitated such measures.’ He paused. ‘But I have no doubts—not now.’ His voice changed, and so did his expression. ‘This is my cousin’s son—his only son! The only trace left of him in this life! He must be part of his father’s family.’ He held up a hand as if to pre-empt what he knew would be her response to that unarguable statement. ‘But we must find a way...there must be one—’ He broke off, taking a sharp breath, his focus now on Lyn.
‘I am sorry—sorry that I said what I did just now. It was offensive, and you have every right to be angry.’ He paused. ‘Will you accept my apology?’
His eyes met hers, seeking a way past the stormy expression in them. Slowly, painfully, Lyn swallowed. There was a large stone in her throat, but it was not only from her anger at his vile offer. It was because of the way he’d stared at Georgy...the emotion in his eyes...his voice.
He was seeing his dead cousin in the baby she was holding in her arms...
Just as I see Lindy in him.
She felt her throat close—felt something change, somehow, deep within her. Slowly she nodded, taking a ragged breath.
‘Thank you,’ he said in a low voice.
His eyes went from her face back to Georgy. That expression returned to them, making her breath catch as the same emotion was aroused in herself.
Warily Lyn made her way past him into the living room, heading for the sofa onto which she sank down on shaky legs, her heart rate still ragged. But something had changed. She could feel it—sense it as clearly as if the wind had changed its quarter, as if the tide had turned in the depths of the sea. It was in his voice, his stance, his face, as he sat down at the far end of the sofa.
And it was in her, too, that change. Was it because she was finally accepting that Georgy was more than her dead sister’s son? That he had a family on his father’s side too, to whom he was precious—as precious as he was to her?
She did not want to accept that truth—had tried to fight it—but she had to. Must.
For a moment—just a moment—as Anatole Telonidis lowered his tall frame on to the sofa, he seemed far too physically close to her. She wanted to leap to her feet—away from the intensely physical presence of the man. But even as she fought the impulse she could feel Georgy using his not inconsiderable strength to lean forward, towards this interesting addition to his world. And as he did so, he gave another crowing gurgle, his little arms stretching forward towards his father’s cousin.
And then Lyn saw something quite extraordinary happen.
Before her eyes she saw this tall, dark, forbidding man who had walked uninvited into her world, catalysing her deepest fears with his demands, his assumptions, all the power of his wealth and family, transform. Greek words sounded from his mouth and then slowly, as if he were moving through thick, murky water, she watched him reach a hand out towards the infant. Immediately a little starfish fist closed around the long, tanned finger and tugged it hopefully, if ineffectually, in the direction of his mouth.
‘Hello, Georgy,’ said Anatole. His voice sounded strained, as if his throat weren’t working properly. ‘Hello, little fellow.’
There was, Lyn could see as plain as day, extraordinary though it was, a look of stunned wonder on his dark, formidable face.
She felt emotion stab at her but did not know what it was. Only that it was powerful. Very powerful...
Her eyes could not leave his face, could not stop staring at the transformation in the man. But Anatole had no eyes for her stunned scrutiny of him. He had eyes only for one thing—the baby in her arms who had brought him here. His dead cousin’s child.
Lyn heard him murmur something in Greek. Something that sounded soft and caressing. Something that felt like a warm touch on her skin even though it was not directed at her. It drew a response from her, all the same, and she felt a strange, potent flickering of her senses.
Then Georgy was wriggling