He was silent for so long that she thought he was not going to answer. ‘I did,’ he said at last in a curt voice. ‘My father is dead.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Evidently she had touched a raw nerve, and his forbidding expression warned her to back off. She sighed. ‘This isn’t going to work. We are two strangers who know nothing about each other. We’ll never convince anyone that we are madly in love and planning to get married.’
To her surprise, Giannis nodded. ‘We will have to spend some time getting to know each other. I can’t afford any slip-ups when we meet Stefanos. Let’s start with some basics. Why do you and your brother have different surnames? Have you ever been married?’
‘No.’ Her voice was sharper than she had intended, and she flushed when he threw her a speculative look before he turned his eyes back to the road. For some reason she found herself explaining. ‘There was someone who I was sure...’ She bit her lip. ‘But I was wrong. He didn’t love me the way I’d hoped.’
‘Did you love him?’
‘I thought I did.’ She did not want to talk about Craig. ‘After my parents divorced I took my mother’s maiden name.’
Ava breathed a sigh of relief when he did not pursue the subject of her brother’s surname. Giannis was Greek and it was possible that he did not associate the name McKay with an East End gangster. If he knew of the crimes her father had committed she was sure he wouldn’t want her to pose as his fake fiancée and he was likely to refuse to drop the charges against Sam.
Giannis slowed the car to allow a bus to pull out. ‘Where did you learn Greek? I did not think the language is routinely taught in English schools.’
‘My family lived in Cyprus when I was a child, although I went to boarding school in France and then spent ten months at a finishing school in Switzerland.’
‘Why did your parents choose not to live in England?’
‘Um...my mother hated the English weather.’ It was partly the truth, but years later Ava had learned that the real reason her father had taken his family to live abroad had been the lack of an extradition agreement between the UK and Cyprus, which had meant that Terry could not be arrested and sent back to England.
Her thoughts were distracted when a cyclist suddenly swerved in front of the car. Only Giannis’s lightning reaction as he slammed on the brakes saved the cyclist from being knocked off his bike.
‘That was a close call.’ She looked over at Giannis and was shocked to see that he was grey beneath his tan. His skin was drawn so tight across his face that his sharp cheekbones were prominent. Beads of sweat glistened on his brow and she noticed that his hand shook when he raked his fingers through his hair.
Ahead there was an empty space by the side of the road and Ava waited until he had parked the car and switched off the engine before she murmured, ‘You didn’t hit the cyclist. He was riding like an idiot and it was fortunate for him that you are a good driver.’
Giannis gave an odd laugh that almost sounded as though he was in pain. ‘You don’t know anything about me, angel-face.’
‘That’s the point I’ve been making,’ she said quietly. ‘We are not going to be able to carry off a fake engagement.’
‘For your brother’s sake you had better hope that we do.’ The stark warning in Giannis’s voice increased Ava’s tension, and when he got out of the car and walked round to open her door she froze when she recognised an area of London that was painfully familiar to her.
‘Why have we come here? I thought you were taking me home.’ It occurred to her that he had not asked where she lived, and she had been so stunned after he’d told the photographers she was his fiancée that she had let him drive her away from the hotel without asking where they were going.
‘Hatton Garden is the best place to buy jewellery.’
‘That doesn’t explain why you have brought me here.’ She was aware that Hatton Garden was known worldwide as London’s jewellery quarter and the centre of the UK’s diamond trade. It was also the place where her father had masterminded and carried out his most audacious robbery.
Ava remembered when she was a little girl, before the family had moved to Cyprus, her father had often taken her for walks to Covent Garden and St Paul’s Cathedral. They had always ended up in Hatton Garden and strolled past the many jewellery shops with their windows full of sparkling precious gems. She had loved those trips with her father, unware that Terry McKay had been assessing which shops would be the easiest to break into.
‘For our engagement to be believable you will need to wear an engagement ring. Preferably a diamond the size of a rock that you can flash in front of the photographers,’ Giannis drawled. He glanced at his watch. ‘Try not to take too long choosing one.’ He took his phone out of his jacket pocket. ‘I need to tell my pilot to have the jet ready for us to leave earlier than I’d originally planned.’
Ava stared at him. ‘You own a jet?’
‘It’s the quickest way to get around. We should be in Paris by lunchtime. I’m going to be busy this afternoon but I’ll arrange for a personal shopper to help you choose some suitable clothes. This evening we will be attending a high-profile function at the Louvre that is bound to attract a lot of media interest. By tomorrow morning half the world will believe that we are in love.’
‘Wait...’ She stiffened when he slid his hand beneath her elbow and tried to lead her towards a jewellery store. Her heart plummeted when she saw the name above the shop front.
Ten years ago her father had carried out an armed robbery at the prestigious Engerfield’s jewellers and stolen jewellery with a value of several million pounds. But Terry McKay’s luck had finally run out and he had been caught trying to flee back to Cyprus on his boat. In court, CCTV footage had shown him threatening a young female shop assistant with a shotgun.
Ava had been devastated to discover that her father was a ruthless gangster. Even worse, several national newspapers had published a photo of her and her mother with the suggestion that they must have been aware of Terry’s criminal activities. If Julie McKay had harboured suspicions about her husband, she had not told her daughter. But Ava knew that her mother had worshipped Terry and been blind to his faults.
She stared at the jewellery shop. ‘I can’t go in there.’
Giannis frowned. ‘Why not? Engerfield’s is arguably the best jewellers in London.’
‘What I mean is that I can’t wear an engagement ring or go to Paris with you until I’ve seen my brother and explained that our relationship is fake.’
‘You cannot tell anyone the truth in case someone leaks information to the press. I mean it,’ Giannis said harshly as Ava opened her mouth to argue. ‘No one must have any idea that our engagement is not real.’
‘But what am I going to say to Sam?’
He shrugged. ‘You’ll have to invent a story that we met a few weeks ago, and after a whirlwind romance I asked you to marry me. That will explain why I dropped the charges against Sam because I did not want to prosecute my future brother-in-law.’
‘I don’t want to lie to my brother,’ she choked. ‘I hate deception.’
‘Do you really want to have to admit to him that you slept with me the night we met? That is the truth, Ava, and I will have no qualms about telling Sam how we got into this situation.’
‘You told the paparazzi that I am your fiancée. The situation is all your fault.’ She winced when Giannis tightened his grip on her arm and escorted her through the door of the jewellers.
‘Smile,’ he instructed her in a low tone when