Stepping back inside, she found he was still standing where she had left him, in the process of sliding a mobile phone into his pocket. He dwarfed the room with the sheer power of his personality. Everything about him was larger than life and so expensively honed and neat. His charcoal suit draped his powerful figure with creaseless silkiness; his facial features were so perfectly balanced even his high-bridged nose didn’t look out of place. Nor did the thick and glossy satin-black hair so perfectly cut to flatter the shape of his head nor the sheen to his closely shaven chiselled chin.
He glanced up and caught her staring at him, and Zoe felt those pin pricks attack her flesh again.
‘I have arranged for you to have some security to keep the media away.’
‘Oh good,’ she said, looking away from him and tipping her armload of washing onto the table. ‘Now Toby and I can go out surrounded by heavy bruisers instead of reporters. What a treat.’
Sensing a sharpening in his mood at her ungrateful tone, she began folding baby clothes.
‘Would you like me to do more?’ he enquired.
It was a serious question, Zoe recognised, cushioned with genuine concern. ‘I don’t recall asking you to do anything,’ she responded. ‘But then, hey—’ she shrugged ‘—I did not ask for any of this. Would you like a coffee or something before you begin your pitch?’
Anton narrowed his eyes. What he had seen in her as brittle and frail had been a dangerous miscalculation, he realised. For whatever the physical ravages grief had wrought on Zoe Kanellis, she was sharp-tongued and tough. In one way he supposed he should have been ready for it—she was Theo’s granddaughter, after all.
And she hated him; he’d seen that already. She probably hated Theo too. If she was as intelligent as her CV said she was, then she had also worked out exactly why he was here and was more than ready to take on the fight.
‘Your grandfather—’
‘Stop.’ Dropping the pale-blue body suit she had been folding, Zoe spun on her heels to send him a cold look. ‘Let’s get one thing clear before we start this, Mr Pallis—the person you refer to as my grandfather is nobody to me. So you will please use his proper name—or, even better, don’t mention him at all.’
‘Well, that cuts the need for conversation between us down to nil before it even gets started,’ he mocked.
Another shrug and she returned to folding the washing. Anton studied her while he contemplated the different ways he could tackle this. He had not come here expecting it to be easy, but nor had he come here expecting to find Zoe Kanellis so ravaged by grief or filled with so much bitterness for a man she had never been given the chance to meet.
‘I expected him to send a lawyer.’
‘I am a lawyer,’ Anton told her, surprised that she’d given him something with which to set the ball rolling. ‘I trained as one at least, though I rarely have the opportunity to use the skill these days.’
‘Too busy being the hot-shot tycoon?’
Relaxing slightly, he smiled. ‘Life in the fast lane,’ he conceded, ‘I am rarely in one place long enough to utilise the concentration required by the law. I believe your thing is astrophysics—much more impressive.’
‘Was,’ she replied. ‘And before you start explaining to me how easy you can make it for me to go back to my studies, I am not willing to hand over my brother to anyone, even for a pot of gold,’ she added flatly.
‘I don’t believe I was intending to offer a pot of gold,’ Anton countered. ‘Or to explain to you what you clearly already know.’
‘Which is what?’
‘That you can probably get a government grant to help you with child care while you continue your studies.’
Picking up the stack of folding washing, she moved across the kitchen to put the things down on top of another pile of washing. ‘You’ve been doing your homework.’
‘It’s the lawyer in me,’ he answered. ‘I also know that you cannot remain living here to bring up your brother and continue your studies, because the mortgage on this house was not protected by life insurance so it still must be paid.’
Zoe turned to look at him again. It amazed her how he could dare to stand there looking so relaxed while discussing her life as if it was his business!
‘Did your boss tell you to mention that?’
‘My boss?’ he arched a sleek black eyebrow.
‘Theo Kanellis. The guy who gave you your great start in life, then turned you into his messenger boy.’
At last she had the satisfaction of seeing a stab of anger flare his nostrils. ‘Your grandfather is old and sick and unable to travel far.’
He’d used the ‘grandfather’ label deliberately, Zoe noted. ‘Though not too old and sick to throw his weight around,’ she countered.
‘You are not very sympathetic to his age and his health, are you?’ he drawled in return.
‘No, not at all,’ she confirmed. ‘In fact you can take it as a given that I couldn’t care less if he sent you here to tell me had was about to drop dead.’
She turned away to click the switch on the kettle, so she missed the way Anton used the moment to narrow his eyes in grim contemplation of his foe.
‘However, in any other circumstance he wasn’t likely to bother with any message for me, was he?’ she went on as she turned back again in time to watch him lower glossy black eyelashes over his eyes. ‘It’s only that he wants Toby so he can groom him into a chip off the old block more worthy of the Kanellis name than my father was that he’s bothered to send you here at all.’
As he parted his lips to respond to all of that, Zoe watched him change his mind and clip those beautiful lips together again in a way that held her ever so slightly transfixed. How old was he? she wondered. Late twenties, early thirties? Not much more than that.
‘You are very bitter,’ he observed quietly.
‘Look around you,’ Zoe invited. ‘Does this look like the home of a Greek billionaire’s family?’
He did it. He actually dared to stand there in her cluttered kitchen and look around at the pine cupboards, cheap lino and the two mugs sitting on the draining board waiting to be washed. The pure silk of his suit slithered expensively against his long body as he moved.
Then she caught the brief twist his horribly sensual mouth gave and her offended dignity suddenly caught light. ‘If I wipe down a chair would you like to sit down?’
He swung back on her so sharply Zoe almost jumped, then wished she could take the snipe back again when she saw the sudden, hard glint in his eyes. ‘Now, that was uncalled for,’ he rebuked.
‘Well, don’t make remarks about my feelings for a man I have never met or even heard a peep out of in my twenty-two years,’ she threw back. ‘And don’t,’ she added warningly, ‘Even attempt to defend him by telling tales about how badly my father let him down or I will be showing you the door, Mr Pallis—or killing the messenger.’
She couldn’t stop the last bit—it just came out. A tight silence dropped between them. Zoe could not take her eyes off the sudden stillness in control of his face. Her heart had picked up extra beats again and those prickles were making themselves felt as she waited for him to retaliate. When he took a step towards her, she raised her chin up in defiance even as her eyes revealed that she knew that this time she had gone too far with her snipes.
‘Don’t touch me,’ she jerked out as he raised a hand then made her stiffen and drag in a breath as he closed his fingers around her wrist. It was only when he brought up his other hand to carefully prise the knife she hadn’t been aware that she was holding from her fingers that she realised