He bent his dark head slightly. ‘In fact I will let you into a secret; I have asked Helen to marry me and she has agreed.’
‘Oh, how romantic.’
‘I think so.’ Leon smiled again, ordered a meal, and left. Once in his room, he opened his laptop and began to check his messages, finding an e-mail from Louisa in Paris complaining about his long absence. Louisa was a problem he had to solve quickly, and surprisingly he realised he was rather relieved at the thought.
Helen had just seen Mick out, when the telephone rang. She listened in stunned silence as Tracy congratulated her on her forthcoming marriage. Aristides had wasted no time. She was so shocked that she agreed with everything Tracy suggested without anything really registering.
Helen went to bed with her mind in turmoil. She cried into her pillow as the full horror, the finality, of Delia’s sudden death finally sank in. Then she lay red-eyed and sleepless, her mind spinning at the thought of actually marrying Leon Aristides.
She must have been mad to agree; the shocking news must have momentarily short-circuited her brain, she decided as the first rays of dawn lighted the sky. However much she wanted it to be, Nicholas was not her child, and she couldn’t marry Aristides simply to keep the boy. By the time she finally fell asleep her mind was made up. She would tell Leon Aristides she had changed her mind. There had to be another way.
‘Come on, Nicholas, eat your yoghurt.’ He was being particularly difficult this morning. She had dressed and washed him, and settled him at the kitchen table with his breakfast, but she was still wearing a fluffy red towelling robe with eyes to match.
A pealing of the doorbell made her groan. Oh, God, what idiot called at eight in the morning? She opened the door with Nicholas at her side to see Leon standing there, looking wide awake and vibrant in the same dark suit but with a dark grey shirt and tie that made him look even more forbidding to her tired mind.
Nicholas looked warily up at the man. ‘I’m having my breakfast.’
The words were superfluous as his mouth was covered in strawberry yoghurt, and Helen, after the conventional greeting, added in an urgent aside to Leon, ‘I need to speak to you.’
One look was all it took for Leon Aristides to realise Helen had changed her mind. She was hovering in the hall wearing some shapeless red robe, with her hair falling in a tangled mass around her shoulders.
‘I will look after Nicholas.’ He kept his tone light. ‘You run along and get dressed and we will talk later.’ Then, dropping a brief kiss on the top of her head, he grinned down at the boy. ‘Back to the kitchen for you—I could do with something to eat.’
Fifteen minutes later, washed and dressed in jeans and a pink cashmere sweater, her hair loose, Helen entered the kitchen. But she was definitely superfluous to requirements, she realised resentfully some time later.
Leon, with a skill she would not have attributed to him, had patiently overcome Nicholas’ rather sombre mood. In a stroke of brilliance he had told him amusing stories of Delia as a child, making him laugh and quietening all his fears. Within an hour Nicholas had returned to his usual sunny disposition, and was chatting happily and confidently with his new uncle, totally captivated by the man. Talk about male bonding, Helen thought, watching the pair lay out a train set on the bedroom floor. How Leon Aristides had obtained one so quickly in the rural depths of the Cotswolds, she had no idea.
By the time she finally got Leon on his own for a moment while Nicholas visited the lavatory she discovered she was too late.
‘Mr Aristides,’ she began, glancing down at him balanced on his haunches fixing the damn train. ‘About yesterday—I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to relocate to Greece and I don’t want to marry you. We will have to come to some other arrangement,’ she finished in a rush.
Leon rested his eyes on her, his gaze running over her slim shapely body, and for a moment said nothing. He saw the determination in her expressive face and something more—the slight fear she could not hide.
‘Too late,’ he said softly. ‘I have already told Nicholas we are all going to Greece. If you want to tell him you have changed your mind, and you don’t want to go with him, fine. But if you do, you run the risk of upsetting him all over again, and maybe losing him altogether, so be warned.’
‘You had no right to do that,’ she gasped.
Leon rose to his feet, and grasped her arm. ‘I had every right; we had an agreement,’ he said coldly and saw her go pale. ‘I am a man of my word. You, on the other hand, like most females, don’t seem to grasp the concept. But we will marry.’
‘Are you fighting?’ a plaintive voice asked, and the two adults both turned to look at the small boy. Leon reacted first.
Dropping back down on his haunches, he held the boy by his shoulders. ‘No, we were discussing our future together. ‘
Helen could do nothing but watch and agree as Leon explained Helen was going to marry him, and they were going to be his new parents and all stay together in Greece.
By the time Leon had finished Nicholas was clearly a little boy whose every dream had just come true and was suffering from a severe case of hero-worship.
Not surprisingly Helen was suffering from a severe tension headache. The man had used emotional blackmail without a moment’s hesitation to secure her co-operation and, while she bitterly resented it, she was powerless to do anything about it. When Aristides, after insisting on arranging a meeting for her with Mr Smyth for the following week, finally left around noon, claiming pressure of business, she was relieved to see the back of him.
What had she done?
CHAPTER FIVE
HELEN LOOKED AT her reflection in the mirror, and almost groaned out loud. She looked like a child in fancy dress; why on earth had she given in to Nicholas? He was a little boy—what did he know about clothes?
The answer came to her as quick as a flash. She had given into him because she loved him and always would. He was the reason she was standing on her own in a huge bedroom suite in this nineteenth century mansion, set in elegant gardens overlooking a tree-lined square in Athens, about to be married to a man she didn’t love, and who certainly didn’t love her.
The past couple of weeks had been chaotic. Tracy and the friends Helen had made on the hotel staff had turned up at her door at the weekend and insisted on throwing a wedding shower for her. They had pooled their resources and given her a present of some skimpy lace briefs and the most revealing negligee she had ever seen, well aware of her penchant for delicate underwear. Not that Leon was likely to see her wearing them, but just the thought made her blush. If that was not bad enough Tracy had brought a bridal magazine and declared she must choose a glamorous wedding dress. When Helen had said no, it was to be a simple civil ceremony, Tracy had declared that as she was marrying a filthy rich man the least she could do was look the part, and had left the magazine behind when she’d left in case Helen changed her mind.
Which was why she now looked so juvenile. Nicholas had seen the pictures in the magazine and decided one model was wearing the exact same dress as the fairy on his bedroom wall. He could be as stubborn as a mule and she knew where he got that from, she thought dryly. He had gone on and on about wanting to see her wearing the fairy dress, until finally she had given in. On a visit to London to keep her appointment with Mr Smyth the lawyer, she had bought the gown.
Leon had telephoned frequently and visited them again earlier in the week. With ruthless efficiency he had made a deal with the hotel management to take care of her house and arranged for the transportation of all the items Helen had decided were essential for their relocation to Greece. Then he had spent most of the afternoon with Nicholas before leaving at six for a pressing engagement in Paris.
Helen had not seen him again until