the fool sitting opposite her.
It had been entirely predictable. Right from the start Athan had feared that Ian Randall was weak, self-indulgent, and born to be a philanderer.
Just like his father.
Martin Randall had been notorious—notorious for womanising, notorious for succumbing to every tempting female who passed in front of him. He had indulged his incontinent desire for her until the next one floated by. Then he’d dropped the present incumbent and gone after a new one.
Time and time again.
Disgust and contempt twisted Athan’s mouth. If that was what Martin’s son was going to be like, then—
Then I damn well should have stopped Eva marrying him! Whatever it took, I should have stopped it!
But he hadn’t—he had given the son the benefit of the doubt, even though it had gone against all his instincts to do so. His mouth set. And now he’d been proved right all along. Ian was no better than his father.
Philanderer. Womaniser. Libertine.
Adulterer.
With an angry impulse Athan got to his feet, picking up the innocuous-looking buff folder that contained enough dynamite to blow apart Ian’s marriage. Could it yet be saved?
Athan speculated. How far had his adultery progressed? Certainly his inamorata had been installed in a fancy apartment by Ian, and judging by her designer outfit and freshly styled hair—not to mention the diamond necklace she’d been presented with—she was clearly benefiting from his largesse already. His mouth thinned. But had she paid the bill for that largesse yet?
The expression on Ian’s face caught by the camera phone was—no other word for it—besotted. It wasn’t the expression of a lascivious lecher—it was the expression of a man caught in the toils of a woman he could not bring himself to resist. A woman he was showering his wealth upon. But not, as yet, very much of his time. That was the one cause for optimism Athan could see in this whole sordid business.
The surveillance reports had found no evidence that Ian Randall visited the girl in her fancy apartment—not yet, at any rate—and nor did he take her to hotels. So far the only time he spent with her was in restaurants, clearly chosen for their out-of-the-way locations, and his only visible adultery was his besotted expression.
Can I stop this in its tracks? Can I stop it in time?
That was the question in the forefront of Athan’s brain. Ian Randall was, it seemed, playing it pretty cautiously—in that, at least, he was unlike his father, who had been totally blatant about his affairs. But if that look of slavish devotion on his face was anything to go by he would soon throw caution to the winds and make the girl his mistress in fact as well as intention.
It was inevitable.
He set the folder back on the desk with a sense of angry frustration.
What the hell am I going to do about this?
The question hung in his head like a dead weight. He had to do something—that was inescapable. He had a responsibility to do so. If he had done from the outset what he’d wanted to do—put his foot down and objected to Eva’s marriage to Ian Randall—then he wouldn’t be facing this infernal situation now. He should have gone with his instincts, stopped the marriage. Whatever it had taken to do so. Oh, Eva would have been heartbroken, he knew, but what was she going to be once she found out what Ian had done?
Athan’s expression shadowed. He knew exactly what she was going to be—going to become—if her husband followed the same damnable path his father had so heedlessly and selfishly taken. She would end up just like Ian’s unhappy, tormented mother.
Athan had grown up knowing all about just how unhappy Sheila Randall was in her marriage to Martin Randall, Ian’s father. Sheila had been his mother’s best friend since finishing school in Switzerland, and once Sheila’s eyes had been painfully opened to her husband’s ways she had poured out her unhappiness into his mother’s ears.
‘Poor Sheila’ had become a permanent fixture in their lives during his youth, as his mother did her best to comfort and console her friend—whether by phone or on mutually exchanged visits between London and Athens. Athan’s mother had spent, so it seemed to him, an interminable amount of time trying to mop up Sheila Randall’s tears, but despite his own sense that the best course of action would have been to divorce Martin Randall and be done with him, Sheila, it seemed, was of a romantic disposition.
Despite all the evidence she’d gone on hoping that her husband would one day realise that his wife was the only woman who truly loved him and his adulterous lifestyle would be finally abandoned. In this unlikely hope she had been supported by Athan’s mother, who had been equally romantically disposed—a disposition also shared by her daughter, Eva.
This was the crux of his concern for his sister. His expression darkened. His mother had discovered the full depths of Martin Randall’s irredeemability in a manner that had very nearly proved disastrous to her own marriage—and to her friendship with Sheila. For Martin Randall had been unable to resist the temptation of stooping so low as to target the best friend of his wife with his pernicious attentions. His attempt at seduction during one of her visits to his wife had, Athan remembered, caused an unholy row in both families. His mother had had to do everything in her power to convince her husband that Martin Randall’s assiduously insistent advances were neither invited nor welcome, and it had taken almost as much persuasion to convince Sheila Randall as well.
A hard, brooding emotion filled him. Men like Martin Randall caused misery and torment and trouble all round. He had very nearly succeeded in breaking up his parents’ marriage. If his son were anything like him he would wreak the same kind of devastation all around him.
But there was no way—no way—he was going to let Ian do that kind of damage. No way Ian was going to repeat his father’s misdeeds. Athan would stop him in his tracks.
Whatever it took.
An angry rasp escaped him. If only Eva weren’t married to Martin Randall’s son! If only she could see through him the way he could himself. But Ian Randall’s dangerously easy charm had fooled Eva just as it had fooled his own mother—Sheila.
Ian Randall had grown up the apple of his mother’s eye, indulged and petted—especially after his father’s early death. And with his good looks and his supreme confidence in his own ability to attract females he’d cut a swathe through the population as a teenager and a young man.
Yet again Athan’s expression darkened. Had he had the slightest idea of just how dangerously indulged and doted upon Ian Randall was by his mother, he would never have let Eva get anywhere near him. But when his mother had so tragically died, when his sister was only just eighteen, Sheila Randall’s heartfelt invitation for Eva to go and live with her in London had seemed a godsend.
Having already lost her father to a heart attack only two years earlier, this second blow had been grievous indeed to Eva. Athan, who had had to take up the full running of his late father’s business enterprise, had been worked off his feet, and his bachelor apartment in Athens was scarcely suitable for a teenage girl to make a home in. Nor could Eva be left alone in the family mansion, with none but the household staff to live with.
Moving to London, living with her beloved mother’s best friend and changing her college to one of the London universities instead, had been a far, far better choice for Eva. In Sheila Eva had gained a surrogate mother who’d taken her under her wing, and in Eva, the now-widowed Sheila had gained a surrogate daughter to lavish her attention upon.
She had also, so it had proved, gained a daughter-in-law.
Eva had fallen head over heels in love with Sheila Randall’s handsome, indulged son, and had set her sights on him.
Just why Ian Randall, with his predilection for playing the field, had responded to Eva’s open ardour with a proposal of marriage Athan didn’t