MAX VASILIKOS LOWERED his tall frame into the leather chair by the desk and relaxed back into it, his long legs stretching out in front of him.
‘OK, what have you got for me?’
His UK agent handed him a set of glossy brochures. ‘I think there are some good contenders here, Mr Vasilikos,’ he said hopefully to this most demanding of clients.
Max’s dark eyes glanced briefly, and then he found his gaze lingering on only one of the properties.
An English country house, in warm honey-coloured stone, with wisteria tumbling over the porch, surrounded by verdant gardens and sheltering woodland, with a glimpse of a lake beyond the lawn. Bathed in sunshine, the whole place had an appeal that held his gaze, making him want to see the real thing.
He picked up the brochure and shifted his gaze to his agent.
‘This one,’ he said decisively.
* * *
Ellen paused in the hallway. She could hear her stepmother’s sharp voice coming from the drawing room.
‘This is exactly what I’ve been hoping for! And I will not have that wretched girl trying to spoil it—again!’
‘We’ve just got to hurry up and sell this place!’
The second voice came from Ellen’s stepsister, Chloe, petulant and displeased.
Ellen’s mouth tightened. She was all too aware of the source of their displeasure. When Pauline had married Ellen’s widowed father she and her daughter, Chloe, had had only one aim—to spend his money on the luxury lifestyle they craved for themselves. Now all that was left, after years of their lavish spending, was the house they had jointly inherited with Ellen after her father’s sudden death last year from a heart attack—and they couldn’t wait to sell it. That it was Ellen’s home, and had been in her family for generations, bothered them not in the slightest.
Their hostility towards her was nothing new. From the moment they’d invaded her life Pauline and her daughter had treated Ellen with complete contempt. How could Ellen—tall and ungainly, clumping around ‘like an elephant’, as they always described her—possibly compare with slender, petite and oh-so-pretty Chloe?
She clumped down the rest of the stairs deliberately now, to drown out their voices. It sounded, she thought grimly, as if her stepmother had hopes of a potential purchaser for Haughton. Despite knowing she would need to resort to legal action against her stepdaughter in order to force a sale through, Pauline obdurately kept the house on the market, and relentlessly went on at Ellen to try to wear down her resistance and force her to agree to sell up.
But Ellen’s heart had steeled in that first winter without her father, when her stepmother and Chloe had been disporting themselves expensively in the Caribbean. She would make it as difficult as she could for Pauline to sell her beloved home—the home Ellen had been happy in until the terrible day her mother had been killed in a car crash, sending her father spiralling into a grieving tailspin of loneliness that had made him so dangerously vulnerable to entrapment by Pauline’s avaricious ambitions.
As Ellen walked into the drawing room two pairs of ice-blue eyes went to her, their joint expressions openly hostile.
‘What kept you?’ Pauline demanded immediately. ‘Chloe texted you an hour ago saying that we needed to talk to you.’
‘I was taking lacrosse practice,’ Ellen returned, keeping her tone even. She sat down heavily on an armchair.
‘You’ve got mud on your face,’ Chloe informed her sneeringly.
Her gaze was not just hostile, but contemptuous. Ellen could see why. Her stepsister was wearing one of her countless designer outfits—a pair of immaculately cut trousers with a cashmere knit top—her nails were newly manicured and varnished, her freshly cut and styled ash-blonde hair and make-up perfect.
A familiar silent sigh went through Ellen. Chloe was everything she was not! Petite, with a heart-shaped face, and so, so slim! The contrast with her own appearance—she was still wearing the coaching tracksuit from the nearby private girls’ school where she taught Games and Geography, with her thick, unmanageable hair gripped back in a bushy ponytail and her face devoid of any make-up except the streak of mud on her cheek that Chloe had so kindly pointed out!—was total.
‘The estate agents phoned this afternoon,’ Pauline opened, her gimlet eyes on Ellen. ‘There’s been another expression of interest—’
‘And we don’t want you ruining things!’ broke in Chloe waspishly, throwing a dagger look at her stepsister. ‘Especially with this guy,’ she continued.
There was a note in her voice that caught Ellen’s attention. So, too, did the discernibly smug expression in Pauline’s eyes.
‘Max Vasilikos is looking for a new addition to his portfolio—he thinks Haughton might be it.’ Pauline elucidated.
Ellen looked blank, and Chloe made a derisive noise. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t expect her to know who Max Vasilikos is,’ she said. ‘Max Vasilikos,’ she spelt out to Ellen, ‘is a stinking rich property tycoon. He’s also just had an affair with Tyla Brentley—you must have heard of her, at least?’
Ellen had, as a matter of fact. She was an English actress who’d found fame in Hollywood in a hugely successful romantic blockbuster, and the pupils at her school were full of her. But as for this Max Vasilikos... Apart from surmising that with a name like that he must be of Greek origin—well, ‘stinking rich’ property tycoons were nothing to do with her.
And they would be nothing to do with Haughton either, please God! A cold shiver went down her spine. Someone like this Max Vasilikos would sell it on for a huge profit to a Russian oligarch or a Middle Eastern sheikh who would spend a week or two in it, at best, every year or so. And it would languish, unloved and unlived-in...
Pauline was speaking again. ‘Max Vasilikos is sufficiently interested to come and view the property himself. As a courtesy I have invited him to lunch with us.’
That smug expression was in her eyes again. Ellen just looked at her. ‘Does he understand the ownership structure of Haughton and that I am unwilling to sell my share?’ she asked bluntly.
Pauline waved a hand to brush aside this unpalatable detail. ‘What I understand, Ellen,’ she said bitingly, ‘is that if—if—he expresses an interest, we will be very, very fortunate. I do not,’ she emphasised, ‘want you rocking the boat. Moreover—’ she glared at her stepdaughter ‘—if nothing I can say will make you see sense about selling up, perhaps Max Vasilikos can.’
There was an explosive, choking half-laugh from Chloe. ‘Oh, Mummy, don’t,’ she jeered. ‘You simply can’t inflict her on him!’
Ellen felt the jibe, flinching inwardly and yet knowing it for nothing but the truth. No man—let alone one who dated film stars—could look at her with anything but complete indifference to her appearance. She had nothing to attract a man in her looks. Knew it...accepted it. At least, though, she wasn’t cruel like her stepsister.
Pauline had turned to Chloe. ‘Nevertheless, that’s just what we are going to have to do,’ she continued. ‘Ellen has to be there.’ Her gaze went back to her stepdaughter. ‘We’ll present a united front.’
Ellen stared. United? A more fractured family was hard to imagine. But, although it would be gruelling to endure, it would at least, she realised grimly, give her the opportunity to make it clear to this Max Vasilikos just how unwilling she was to sell her share of her home.
With reluctant acquiescence she got to her feet. She needed a shower, and she was hungry, too. She headed for the kitchen. It was the part of the house she liked best now—the former servants’ quarters, and the perfect place for keeping out of Pauline and Chloe’s way. Cooking was not a priority for either woman.
She’d moved her bedroom to one of the back rooms as well, overlooking the courtyard