‘You can trust me,’ Anton insisted. ‘We are not going to Theo! On my honour, Zoe, the promise of a sanctuary in my home was the truth.’
And pigs might fly, thought Zoe scornfully. She was forced to let go of Toby’s seat with one hand so she could feel behind in search of the door catch so that she could escape. ‘I should have known your nice behaviour was fishy,’ she said shakily. ‘You are his loyal representative, after all. No wonder my father steered well clear of you lot, people like you would have eaten a gentle man like him for breakfast and thrown away the bits.’
‘This isn’t about Leander.’
‘Don’t you dare call him that!’ She flared up with spectacular force. ‘He is Mr Ellis to you. Ellis, because he couldn’t stand to use the Kanellis name and now I know why—he knew what you were like!’
‘I am not a Kanellis, Zoe,’ Anton said heavily. ‘And this is not what you think. I accept I did not tell you the full truth about where we are going but—’
He ripped out a curse as she began to shiver, all of her shaking like a slender volcano about to erupt, and she’d gone as white as the proverbial sheet.
‘Zoe, listen to me— Damn,’ he muttered when her door flew open and she began scrambling out of the car.
Anton threw open his door, strode around to her side of the car at speed and reached her side as she turned to bend and collect her brother. Teeth seared together behind his tight lips, he looped an arm around her and hauled her backwards before she could get a firm grip on the baby seat. She wriggled and kicked out at him, he dumped her on the tarmac then spun her around to face him.
‘Just listen,’ he insisted, half-angry, half-pleading. ‘I am sorry I’ve upset you this badly.’
Upset me? Zoe threw her head back and looked at him. He actually blanched when he saw the electric-blue pools of her eyes spinning his wretched betrayal into the hard angles of his face.
‘I hate you,’ she choked. ‘You duped me all the way! We were safe in our little house. You made it impossible for us to stay there. You, and my grandfather playing your power games. And if you don’t let go of me right now, I’m going to start screaming my head off!’
Pulling in a deep breath, she opened her mouth to carry out the threat. Anton’s mouth landed on hers with enough power to plug the threatened scream back down her throat. Even he was shocked that he’d used such a method to stop her. Yet once it was done the idea of drawing back again did not enter his head. Her lips were already parted and trembling with tears; he felt their tongues touch and heat explode between them like some unknown, powerful force. She was still sobbing but she kissed him back with hungry urgency. Where it had all come from, he didn’t think even she understood.
Across the airfield by the closed gates a line of telescopic cameras lifted in unison to record the kiss. His team of people all stood watching their controlled, sophisticated employer ravish Theo Kanellis’s granddaughter, when every one of them knew they’d been embroiled in one hell of a row inside the car only seconds before. And still the passion pulsed between them like a wild, living thing. He held her pressed up against him and the hardening of his body made her choke out a groan in dismay.
Wrenching her lips free from his, she gasped out in quivering rejection, ‘That was just gross!’
Anton felt two strikes of heat score across his high cheeks. ‘But you still joined in,’ he grated back unsteadily—unsteadily because his breathing had gone haywire. He didn’t know himself like this.
‘You—you—’ Zoe ran out of words on a thickened stammer. Her lips felt swollen and hot. Things, senses, were crawling around inside her, aiming stinging strikes at certain intimate parts of her body, from the tightened tips of her crushed breasts to her achingly heavy pelvis where he still held her pressed against the hard evidence of his own response. Even her hair roots were tingling, the long loose strands lying like a splash of gold across one of his shoulders because of the way he had tilted her head.
And the way he was looking down at her, as if he was contemplating kissing her again, shot fear and excitement through Zoe in equal amounts.
‘Let go of me,’ she breathed into the burning passion stamped onto his handsome face.
No chance, thought Anton. As though he was being driven by some unknown influence, he bent and scooped her into his arms then started walking towards the plane. He felt taut, energised and downright macho. Theo’s granddaughter had fast turned into a passionate obsession for him—indefensibly so, he admitted, when those amazing, fascinating eyes flooded with fresh tears again.
‘Why are you doing this to me?’ Zoe sobbed up at him in wretched confusion and pained disbelief.
Then a sound reached her—only the briefest tiniest hint of a squeak—but it was enough to fling Zoe over the edge.
‘Toby,’ she whispered, and had to strain to look around Anton’s broad shoulder. She saw to her horror that the car with its doors still hanging open was already several yards away. ‘Anton … Toby. He’s still in the— Oh my God, what’s that man doing with my baby brother?’
A fresh wave of panic erupted in a swirling spin of dizzying terror. She stared up at the hard cast of his grimly determined face. ‘Please,’ she begged achingly. ‘Don’t take my brother away from me!’
Lips clipped tight now, Anton said something to her, but Zoe couldn’t hear him over the roaring rush of fear going on in her head. They’d already entered the plane and he was carrying her down the cabin. She knew that she was fighting him, wriggling and hitting out with her clenched fists. ‘Toby …’ She sobbed out her brother’s name over and over, heard it throbbing inside her head.
Lowering her into a seat, Anton came to squat down in front of her. ‘Listen to me, Zoe,’ he insisted—harshly, because it was only just occurring to him what was actually happening to her. Her eyes had turned black and tears were streaming down her cheeks. Her kiss-crushed lips kept mouthing her brother’s name and she was trembling like a leaf.
The muscles in his face clenched tightly and he fixed his attention on fastening her in to her seat. ‘Get this plane in the air,’ he growled at someone; he didn’t give a damn who it was as long as they did what he said.
As if his words had filtered into her head, Zoe’s fingers closed around the lapels of his jacket, making him look up, making him feel like the worst person alive when she pleaded, ‘Toby, Anton. Please, I need my brother. Please, Anton, please …’
It was the agonised cry of a wounded creature. No one was immune to it. Everyone in the cabin froze in dismay, including Anton who had never felt so angry with himself—or so ashamed.
Kostas looked at him as he approached; he was ashamed of him too. ‘Your brother is right here, Miss Kanellis.’ The deep slightly thickened voice of Kostas Demitris made Zoe jerk in response. She stopped weeping, blinked her wretched eyes and looked at the seat still holding her baby brother all snug and safe.
‘Toby,’ she breathed in trembling relief.
‘I must secure him in a safety harness while the plane takes off,’ continued Kostas in the gentlest voice Anton had ever heard him use, and he’d known the other man for most of his life. ‘We will be just up here a couple of seats away. He is safe with me, thespinis, I promise you.’
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, then turned to look at Anton. ‘I thought you—’
‘I know what you thought,’ he cut in grimly. ‘For all my faults, Zoe, I promise you I will never hand your brother over to anyone other than to yourself, OK?’
OK? Zoe nodded even though she was asking herself why she was allowing herself to believe a single word that he said. Yet she did.
‘He’s