She took the mug from him and raised it to her lips and swallowed down a mouthful of the hot liquid. She grimaced as the spirit caught her throat, but the warmth seemed to spread through her veins inducing a kind of calm. Slowly she sipped the refreshing brew until she had drained the cup and put it on the coffee table in front of her.
Finally she glanced across at Leon reclining on the sofa opposite. He had finished his coffee and he was watching her from beneath heavy-lidded eyes, a brooding expression on his rugged face, and she wondered what he was thinking. A moment later she found out.
‘Did you mean what you told Nicholas about never leaving him?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she asserted. ‘I know it will be difficult, and obviously I don’t expect to be physically with him all the time,’ she said gathering her thoughts into some kind of order. ‘I understand you will want to spend some time with him. You could take him for the holidays, as I know it is a custom in your family, plus apparently you have already told him.’ She couldn’t resist the dig. ‘Given the circumstances it is inevitable Nicholas and I will be apart for some periods, but I will still keep in touch with him by telephone on a daily basis so he will never feel I have left him,’ Helen offered and thought she was being reasonable.
‘I hear what you are saying, but I don’t agree. I can see Nicholas is happy with you and you don’t want to part with him. But as his uncle, his only blood relative, I think we should share his upbringing. Nicholas can live with me for six months of the year and you for the other.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Helen exclaimed, her eyes widening in astonished disbelief on his darkly attractive face. ‘That would be absurd. Nicholas switching home every six months, switching schools, doctors everything—only a man could come up with such an idiotic suggestion,’ she declared, for once feeling superior to the arrogant devil.
His mouth hardened. ‘Exactly.’
‘Then why suggest it?’ she queried warily, no longer feeling superior as she realised he had set her up for something, but what?
‘Don’t get me wrong. I think you have done a wonderful job with Nicholas, with little help from my sister, though his knowledge of the Greek language is quite good, so she did do something right. But I have noted he calls you my Helen. But he rarely adds the prefix Mum to Delia’s name unless you prompt him. He is upset at the news of her death, but, though it pains me to say it, nowhere near as upset as he would be if he lost you. To all intents and purposes you are his mother, and I think it would be in his best interest if he stays with you.’
‘You mean you agree he can stay with me? ‘Helen asked, hardly daring to believe Aristides could be so reasonable.
‘No, I mean the boy has had a confusing start in life with you as the only constant adult and he deserves more. He deserves two parents and a stable home and I can provide that.’
For a moment she was confused, then the full import of his words hit her and her heart sank. Obviously he had a new wife.
‘So you married again; I didn’t know,’ she murmured. Why hadn’t she thought of that? A wealthy, virile man like Leon Aristides who could take his pick of women, of course he had a wife. Suddenly the possibility of losing Nicholas completely became very real. How could she possibly deny the young boy two parents?
‘No, I am not married yet.’
‘You have a fiancée. You mean to marry and make a home for Nicholas?’ she found the courage to ask. While her heart was breaking at the thought of losing him, her own innate honesty told her she could not deny Nicholas the chance of being part of a normal family.
Leon did not answer immediately. He placed his glass on the table between them and lounged back on the sofa, his dark eyes, piercing in their intensity, focusing on her ashen face. ‘No, I do not have a fiancée. But with one condition you can marry me, and we can share Nicholas’ upbringing at my home in Greece.’
Helen stared at him in stunned disbelief. ‘Marry you! Are you mad?’ He had to be joking. She didn’t like the man. But something in the ruthless curl of his mouth, in the black unfathomable eyes that held hers, sent a prickling sensation down her spine. Her heart beat like a sledgehammer in her chest. She felt again the fear she had known as a teenager the first time they had met, and she knew he was not joking.
His mouth twisted sardonically. ‘I have been accused of many things, but mad was never one of them. However, you and my sister obviously were, to have hatched such a ridiculous plot and denying a child his right to grow up in the bosom of his family. I was informed when she died that Delia had taken drugs, which might account for her perverse behaviour. So do you have the same problem? I need to know before I marry you,’ he demanded arrogantly.
‘I certainly do not,’ she exclaimed furiously. ‘And I don’t believe for one minute Delia did either, she was perfectly fit and healthy the last time I saw her.’
‘Then you are even more naive than you look.’ His night-black eyes mocked her. ‘I have the doctor’s report to prove it.’
Helen was stunned into silence, her mind at first rejecting the truth, and then it slowly dawned on her she had not seen Delia since last summer. Maybe the pressures of returning to live in Greece and her engagement might have led Delia into doing something so stupid. It certainly explained her erratic behaviour over the last few months. The cancelled visits and dwindling telephone calls, suddenly it all made a horrible kind of sense. Why had she not noticed something was wrong? She had failed her friend when she had needed her. ‘I never knew; I never guessed,’ she murmured.
‘I am inclined to believe you. Preliminary investigations seem to suggest Delia only got involved in recreational drugs last year when she returned to Athens and began to socialise in the party crowd—tragically for her.’
‘Surely her fiancé could have stopped her,’ Helen exclaimed.
‘Her fiancé was blissfully unaware of what she got up to when he wasn’t around, and when he found out after her death he was horrified. His father sent him to Japan to work and get over his loss, and I would guess by now his main feeling is that he had a lucky escape,’ Leon drawled. ‘Delia was more devious than any of us imagined. But as she is no longer here, you now have to pay the price for your foolishness. Unless you want to traumatise Nicholas by leaving him, you will have to marry me.’
Put like that, Helen had no defence. She had failed to recognise Delia had needed help. Helen could not, would not, compound her fault by failing Nicholas as well. But marriage to Leon Aristides…
Searching for the words, she began hesitantly. ‘Surely there must be some other way that would fulfil all Nicholas’ needs that does not involve marriage?’ she appealed to him, Leon Aristides saw the flicker of helplessness in her violet eyes, the slight perceptible slump of her slender shoulders, and he knew he had won. ‘Nicholas has just lost his birth mother—not a very good one, I will grant you,’ he said dryly. ‘He sees you as his mother and he needs the reassurance of your constant presence more than ever now. You have known my nephew from birth. I have not had that privilege. I am not a brute, but there is no way I will allow you to have sole custody. Marriage between us is the only answer.’ And, rising to his feet, he crossed to sit down beside her on the sofa.
‘Believe me, Helen, if there was any other way I would take it.’ And he reached for her hand, clasping it against his thigh. ‘I have married before and I have no real desire to do so again.’ He let his thumb idly caress her palm. ‘But for Nicholas’ sake I will.’
He felt her tremble and saw the flash in quick succession of two different emotions in her huge violet eyes. The first was fear, but the second was one a man of his experience could not fail to recognise, and he felt a surge of triumph go through him. She had tried to hide her awareness of him all afternoon, but he had seen it in her hastily lowered lashes, her pink cheeks. He could feel it in the rapidly beating pulse in her slender wrist. It would be no