at him, but she didn’t move. He was right, she knew. He was involved now, and that was her fault. She owed him a few more minutes of her time at least.
‘Why do you think your friend lied?’ he asked abruptly.
Rhiannon shrugged. ‘I don’t know. That’s why I didn’t think she had lied—she’d no reason. She was dying. I thought she’d want me to know Annabel’s father, even if she never intended for me to get in touch with him.’
‘She told you not to?’
‘No, she didn’t say anything about that. She just…’ She swallowed, forced herself to continue. ‘She just asked me to care for her. Love her.’ Her throat ached and she looked down.
‘A mother’s dying request?’
Rhiannon couldn’t tell if he was being snide or not. She gulped. ‘Yes.’ She looked up at him. ‘She had nothing to gain by lying. I honestly think she believed she was with Lukas Petrakides…with you.’
Lukas stiffened, his expression becoming like that of a predator that had scented danger. There was no fear, only awareness.
‘But we both know it wasn’t me.’ His mouth twisted wryly, but there was a hard edge of bitter realisation in his eyes. ‘So it had to have been someone else…someone who told her my name.’
Rhiannon shook her head in confusion. ‘Who would do that?’
Lukas muttered an expletive in Greek under his breath. ‘I should have considered it,’ he said, his face hardening into resolve. ‘He’s done it before.’
Rhiannon felt as if she were teetering on the edge of a dangerous precipice. She didn’t want to look down, didn’t want to cross over. She just wanted to tiptoe quietly away.
‘Who are you talking about?’ she asked faintly, and when Lukas met her gaze his face was full of grim realisation.
‘My nephew.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOUR nephew?’ Rhiannon stared at him in blank incredulity. He looked angry, determined. Hard. ‘But how…? I mean why…?’
She’d come here with the assumption—the belief—that Lukas Petrakides was Annabel’s father. A man of integrity, honour, responsibility. A man who would love her.
She wasn’t prepared for alternatives.
She didn’t want them.
‘Why would your nephew use your name?’ she finally asked as Lukas continued to stare, arms folded, his expression implacable. ‘Who is he, anyway?’
‘My nephew, Christos Stefanos, has used my name before.’ Lukas stared out at the shifting colours of the sea—blue, green, scarlet and orange in the setting sun. ‘I think he might have used it again with your friend. He’s twenty-two, wild, irresponsible, unscrupulous,’ he continued in a flat tone. ‘He often travels to London—his mother, my sister Antonia, lives there. He could very well have met your Leanne in some club there, flown her to Naxos on a whim, and discarded her after a weekend. It is,’ he finished with scathing emphasis, ‘entirely within his character to do so.’
Rhiannon’s thoughts were flying, whirling round and round in frightened, desperate circles. Lukas Petrakides as Annabel’s father was one thing. He was known to be steady, responsible. A good father figure. That was why she had come.
This Christos was something else entirely.
‘But why?’ she asked again, clutching at one seemingly improbable thread.
‘To impress your friend?’ Lukas shrugged. ‘Or more likely to annoy me. He likes to give me bad press, although the tabloid journalists are wise to him by now. They usually ignore his little peccadilloes.’
‘But surely people—the press—would know he wasn’t you?’
Lukas’s mouth twisted in harsh acknowledgement. ‘I keep a low profile. There are few photographs of me, and Christos has a family resemblance. He only does it outside of Greece—he knows he can’t get away with it there.’ He sighed, raking a hand through his hair. ‘It has been an annoyance in the past, but now it poses…’
‘A major inconvenience?’ Rhiannon finished, and he gave her a cool look.
‘A challenge, certainly.’
Rhiannon was silent for a moment. Her thoughts chased themselves down dark tunnels that led to implications her heart shied away from. There was too much new information. Too much to think about…to wonder about. To be frightened about.
‘From the sound of him, I don’t think he would make a good father,’ she finally said. ‘Would he?’
Lukas was ominously silent. ‘I cannot say he is particularly suited for the role.’
‘Or interested in it?’ Rhiannon surmised, feeling sick. She’d come to France to find Annabel’s father…but not this. Not some young, rakish sot who couldn’t care less. Not someone who would openly reject her.
‘No, probably not,’ Lukas agreed after a tense moment.
‘He won’t want Annabel,’ she said in a hollow voice. ‘Will he?’
Lukas’s expression was like steel. Flint. ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘He won’t.’
Rhiannon shook her head. This was so far from what she’d hoped. Dreamed. She realised now that the happily-ever-after she’d been planning in her head was a fantasy, pathetic and unreal. Could she leave Annabel with a man who didn’t want her?
Could she take her home?
Nothing made sense. Nothing felt right.
‘What are you going to do?’ Rhiannon asked. She didn’t like giving control to Lukas, no matter how used to it he was. She just didn’t know what to do next.
Lukas was studying her in an odd way, his mouth twisting in a grimace of acknowledgement. ‘You really don’t want her,’ he stated flatly. ‘That’s why you came, isn’t it? To give her up…to anyone willing to take her.’
‘If that were true,’ Rhiannon snapped, ‘I would have left her with Social Services. Don’t mistake me, Mr Petrakides. I have Annabel’s best interests at heart.’
‘Undoubtedly.’ It came out as a sneer.
Rhiannon shook her head. If Lukas wanted to judge her for giving up a child she couldn’t truly call her own—if he thought her attempt to find Annabel’s father was suspect—then fine. She refused to exonerate herself. She didn’t need to.
‘If Annabel is indeed Christos’s child,’ Lukas stated with flat finality, ‘then she is my great-niece. My relative.’ In case she didn’t yet get it, he added with steely determination, ‘My responsibility.’
‘I see.’ Rhiannon thought of every article she’d read, every glowing word about Lukas Petrakides being a man of honour, of integrity.
Of responsibility.
When she’d made her decision to find him, those descriptions had seemed like promises.
Now they were threats.
She didn’t want Annabel to be someone’s loveless responsibility. A burden. Yet now she realised she didn’t have much choice.
She’d given her choices away when she’d embarked on this reckless mission.
‘You will stay here until the issue of Annabel’s paternity is resolved,’ Lukas continued in implacable tones.
She’d expected as much, but his autocratic dictate still rankled. How about saying please? ‘What about my responsibilities back home?’ she demanded. ‘My job, my life?’
‘You can’t spare a few days?’ He raised