‘It would require better acting skills than I possess,’ Ava muttered.
‘On the contrary, I thought you were very convincing when you kissed me outside the hotel.’
She made a choked sound as if she had swallowed a wasp. ‘I was in a state of shock after hearing you tell the photographers that I was your fiancée.’ After a tense pause, she said, ‘What will happen if Stefanos sells his company to you and then we end our fake engagement and you go back to your bachelor lifestyle that he disapproves of? Won’t he be angry when he realises he was duped?’
Giannis shrugged. ‘There will be nothing he can do once the sale is finalised.’
‘Isn’t that rather unfair?’
‘Life is not always fair.’ Irritation made his voice curt. He really did not need a lecture on morals from Ava. ‘It was not fair that your brother wrecked my boat, but I am offering you a way to help Sam stay out of prison. Face it, angel-face, we both need each other.’
‘I suppose so,’ she muttered. ‘But I can’t give up a month of my life. What am I supposed to do about my job, for instance?’
‘You told me you are between jobs since you moved from Scotland to London. What do you do, anyway? I noticed you avoided talking about your career.’
She grimaced. ‘I am a victim care officer, and I try to help people who have been the victims of crime. I worked for a victim support charity in Glasgow and I have been offered a similar role with an organisation in London.’
‘When will you start the new job?’
Ava seemed reluctant to answer him. ‘The post starts in November.’
‘So there is nothing to stop you posing as my fiancée now.’
‘You are so arrogant. Do you always expect people to jump at your command? How do you know that I don’t have a boyfriend?’
‘If you do, I suggest you dump him because he clearly doesn’t satisfy you in bed.’ Giannis’s lips twitched when Ava muttered something uncomplimentary. She was prickly and defensive and he had no idea why she fascinated him. Well, he had some idea, he acknowledged derisively as he pictured her sprawled on black silk sheets wearing only a pair of sheer stockings. He glanced at her and she quickly turned her head away, but not before he’d seen a flash of awareness in her eyes.
Last night they had been dynamite in bed and sex with her had been the best he’d had in a long, long time. Was that why he had come up with the fake engagement plan? Giannis dismissed the idea. He’d been forced to take drastic action when the paparazzi had snapped him and Ava leaving the hotel, having clearly spent the night together. He could not risk that his playboy reputation might lose him the deal with Stefanos Markou.
His inconvenient desire for Ava would no doubt fade once he had secured Markou’s fleet of ships. The only thing he cared about was fulfilling the promise he had made over his father’s coffin, to provide for his mother and sister. Money and the trappings of wealth were all that he could give them to try to make up for what he had stolen from them. Yet sometimes his single-minded pursuit of success felt soulless, and sometimes he wondered what would happen if he ever opened the Pandora’s Box of his emotions. It was safer to keep the lid closed.
‘Did you choose to work with crime victims because your brother got into trouble with the police?’ Giannis succumbed to his curiosity about Ava. She had made an unusual career choice for someone who had learned etiquette and social graces at a Swiss finishing school. At dinner last night he had noted how comfortable she was with the other wealthy guests, and he was confident she would act the role of his fiancée with grace and charm that would delight Stefanos Markou.
She shook her head. ‘Sam was still in primary school when I went to university to study criminology.’
‘Why criminology?’
For some reason she stiffened, but her voice was non-committal. ‘I found it an interesting subject. But moving away to study and work in Scotland meant I wasn’t around to spot the signs that Sam was having problems, or that my mother didn’t know how to cope with him when he fell in with a rough crowd.’ She sighed. ‘I blame myself.’
‘Why do you blame yourself for your brother’s behaviour? Each of us has to take responsibility for our actions.’
Every day of the past fifteen years, Giannis had regretted that he’d drunk a glass of wine when he and his father had dined together at a taverna. Later, on the journey back to the family home, he had driven too fast along the coastal road from Athens and misjudged a sharp bend. Nothing could excuse his fatal error of judgement. If there was any justice in the world then he would have died that night instead of his father.
Ava insisted that her brother regretted taking a gang of thugs aboard Nerissa and damaging the boat. She clearly loved her brother, and Giannis felt a begrudging admiration for her determination to help Sam. He remembered how scared he had felt at nineteen when he had stood in a courtroom and heard the judge sentence him to a year in prison.
He had deserved his punishment and prison had been nothing compared to the lifetime of self-recrimination and contempt he had sentenced himself to. The car accident had been a terrible mistake, yet not one of his relatives had supported him. His sister had been too young to understand, but his mother would never stop blaming him, Giannis thought heavily.
He looked at Ava and she blushed and quickly turned her head to the front as if she was embarrassed that he had caught her staring at him.
‘What about your father?’ he asked her as he slipped the car into gear and pulled away from the traffic lights. At least the traffic was flowing better as they headed towards Camden. ‘Did he try to give guidance to your brother?’
‘Dad...left when Sam was eight years old.’
‘Did you and your brother have any contact with him after that?’
‘No.’
‘It is my belief that children, especially boys, benefit from having a good relationship with their father. Although I realise my views might be regarded as old-fashioned by feminists,’ Giannis said drily.
* * *
‘I suppose it would depend on how good the father was,’ Ava muttered.
She glanced at Giannis’s hard profile and wondered what he would say if she told him that it had been difficult for her and Sam to have a relationship with their father after he had been sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Her mother had refused to allow Sam to visit Terry McKay at the maximum-security jail which housed some of the UK’s most dangerous criminals. Ava had visited her father once, but she had found the experience traumatic. It had been bad enough having to suffer the indignity of being searched by a warden to make sure she was not smuggling drugs or weapons into the jail.
Seeing her father in prison had been like looking at a stranger. She had found it impossible to accept that the man she had trusted and adored had, unbeknown to his family, been a violent criminal and ruthless gangland boss. The name Terry McKay was still feared by some people in the East End of London. Perhaps if Sam had seen the grim reality of life behind bars he might not hero-worship his father as a modern-day Robin Hood character, Ava thought heavily. She was prepared to do everything in her power to prevent her brother from turning to a life of crime, and keeping him out of a young offender institution was vital. Giannis had offered her a way to give Sam another chance, but could she really be his fake fiancée?
She had assumed after they had spent the night together that she would never see him again. Memories of her wildly passionate response to his lovemaking made her want to squirm with embarrassment, but she remembered too how he had groaned when he had climaxed inside her. Did he intend that they would be lovers for the duration of their fake engagement? The little shiver of anticipation that ran through her made her despair of herself. If she had an ounce of common sense she would refuse