ramshackle farmhouse repossessed and losing the foster children currently in their care, she had disregarded her long-dead father’s warning and had approached her wealthy grandfather with a begging letter.
Stam Fotakis had cut off their late father, Cy, without a penny when he was barely more than a teenager. Cy had demonstrated his disdain for the family name by legally changing it to his grandmother’s maiden name of Mardas, which, of course, had meant that their grandfather had had no way of tracing either his son or the family he had eventually had.
At twenty-six, Winnie was old enough to remember their parents, who had died in a car crash when she was eight, but Vivi had only the barest recollection of them, and Zoe, a mere toddler at the time, had none at all.
But all three young women were very much aware that the Brooke family had saved them when they’d needed saving, giving them the care and support they had long lacked to rise above the tragic loss of their mum and dad and the disturbing consequences that had followed because they had all had bad experiences in state care. Winnie, extracted from a physically abusive foster home, had arrived with them first, and John and Liz’s caring enquiries and persistence had eventually led to the sisters being reunited within their home.
From that point on all their lives had improved beyond all recognition and gradually a happy, secure normality had enveloped the traumatised siblings. You couldn’t put a price on what John and Liz had done for them, Winnie conceded ruefully, because you couldn’t put a price on love. Without adopting them, John and Liz had become the girls’ forever family, treating them like daughters and encouraging and supporting them every step of the way into adulthood.
‘That’s true.’ Vivi spoke up again with a grimace at the reminder that they had failed to get a loan. ‘And we can only get that money if we agree to marry men hand-picked by our crazy grandad. Obviously getting his granddaughters married off to suitable men is hugely important to him.’
‘He did say they didn’t have to be real marriages...in-name-only stuff is rather different,’ Winnie muttered the reminder ruefully, because in truth she didn’t want to get married either, even if it did only mean a piece of legal paper and a ring on her finger.
When she had first contacted her grandfather, she had had to provide documents to prove her identity but, barely a week later, she and her sisters and her little boy had been flown out on a private jet to Greece for several days. They had been stunned by their grandfather’s wealth and his very big and opulent home and had been well on the road to liking him until he had mentioned his terms for giving them the money to save the roof over John’s and Liz’s heads.
Of the three of them, Winnie had been most shocked by those terms, particularly when it should’ve been obvious to a man who had bitterly lamented their unhappy childhood in foster care that he too owed John and Liz Brooke a moral debt for the care they had taken of his grandchildren. But evidently the concept of giving something for nothing was not one Stam Fotakis was willing to embrace. Yes, he had acknowledged he was delighted to learn of their existence and very grateful that John and Liz had given them such wonderful care...but still he had had to mention terms...
Winnie had immediately scolded herself for her sentimental expectations and unrealistic hopes of her grandfather. He was the same man who had thrown his younger son out of his home for refusing to study business at university and he had never looked back from that hard decision. Not necessarily a kind man, not even necessarily a nice man. He wanted them all married off to what he had referred to as ‘men of substance’ and restored to the society position he saw as their Fotakis birthright. Winnie, however, did suspect that she knew why Stam Fotakis had decided not to simply invite his grandchildren into his home to gift them that birthright as members of his household.
Stam Fotakis was ashamed of his granddaughters’ current status. He had adored her son, Teddy, on sight but had been appalled that Winnie was unmarried. He had been equally shocked by the dreadful scandal in which Vivi had become innocently embroiled. In fact, Stam Fotakis didn’t have a modern laid-back bone in his entire body. He believed women should be safely, decently married before they had children and that their names should only ever appear in a downmarket tabloid newspaper because they were beautifully dressed VIPs.
Winnie grimaced. She had always believed that she too would be married before she had a child but a crueller fate had tripped her up and she was a little wiser now. Falling in love with the wrong man could be a disaster and that was the crux of what had happened to Winnie and her once-fine ideals. Her only consolation was that she had not once suspected that Eros was a married man, and he had most definitely concealed that reality from her. Her wake-up call had come in the shape of a visit from Eros’s wife, Tasha, and she still broke out in a cold sweat just remembering that awful day. It had forced her to grow up fast though, she told herself bracingly, and she had needed that ‘short sharp shock’ treatment to get the strength to walk away from the man she loved.
‘I have to get ready for work.’ Winnie sighed, rising from her seat.
Zoe stood up, as well. ‘Give me Teddy,’ she urged. ‘I’ll put him down for a nap while I make dinner and that’ll allow you to slip out without him noticing.’
Zoe was tiny like Winnie but her hair was golden blonde as their father’s had been. Her grandfather had told Winnie that she bore a close resemblance to her grandmother who had apparently been an Arabian princess. Winnie shook her head over that startling recollection because nothing could have more surely pointed out that her grandfather came from a very different world. Her father, Cy, had never once mentioned his mother’s exalted birth, but he had talked very lovingly about her.
Smiling at her youngest sibling, Winnie recognised how very lucky she was to have sisters who loved and cared for her son as much as she did. She could never have managed without them although the fact that, as a junior chef, she invariably worked evenings and weekends helped in the childcare department. They had also been living in a dump of a flat before they met their grandfather and Winnie had only accepted the older man’s generous offer of new accommodation for her son’s sake. In the space of two weeks, however, that new comfortable terraced home with its four generous bedrooms and extra space, not to mention its smart location, had changed their lives very much for the better. They weren’t paying rent any more either, which meant that surviving on their low salaries was no longer a struggle.
Even so, it didn’t feel safe to be depending even temporarily on the generosity of a grandfather who was very much a mixed bag of traits and tricks. Winnie was painfully aware that Stam Fotakis could decide to turn his back on them as quickly as he had laid down a welcome mat for them. Rich people, she had learned from her experience with Eros Nevrakis, could be unreliable and volatile. It didn’t do to trust them or to expect them to stay the same like more ordinary folk, she recalled sickly.
‘I’m sorry, I’m not in the mood tonight.’ She recalled Eros murmuring in apology, as if it were perfectly normal to push her away when he was usually keen to encourage her affection. That rejection had hurt, it had hurt so much, acting on her like the very first frightening wake-up call to reality.
Her eyes stinging, Winnie compressed her lips and shut down the memory fast. Remembering Eros was a two-edged sword that both wounded and infuriated her. She had been so stupidly naive and trusting, refusing to see or suspect what her grandfather had picked up instantly...that she had not been engaged in a passionate love affair but had instead become a married man’s mistress. And there was nothing remotely romantic or loving or caring about that role, she concluded as she stepped onto the Tube to travel to the restaurant that currently employed her as a pastry chef. She would’ve been rather higher up the career ladder had she not dropped out of her apprenticeship to become Eros Nevrakis’s personal chef, she reflected resentfully. On the other hand, she would never have had Teddy without him and, no matter what her grandfather thought of unmarried mothers, Teddy could never ever be a source of regret.
* * *
Midevening, Vivi was just tucking the little boy into his jammies when a loud knock sounded on the front door. The knocker sounded again before she even reached the hall with Teddy clutched precariously below one