‘We have received a contact address,’ came the reply.
‘Finally!’ breathed Xandros, relief flooding through him.
Five minutes later he’d booked a flight to London—into whose anonymous millions Rosalie had simply...disappeared.
Despite his urgent efforts there had been no trace of her. Not at the dive she’d used to live in, nor at the cleaning agency she’d worked for. She’d just...vanished.
But now—at last—she’d shown up!
He punched in the number for Ariadne and she answered immediately, anxious to hear from him.
‘She’s got in touch! Told the lawyer how to reach her,’ he announced. ‘So I’m flying straight off to London now.’
But his buoyant relief did not last beyond his hot-footed arrival at the hotel she’d given as her contact address. Where she awaited the paperwork that she expected him to send her so as to expedite the divorce she was initiating.
He stared disbelievingly at the reception desk clerk.
‘But she must be staying here—she’s given this hotel as her address!’
It wasn’t the same hotel he’d taken her to that first night he’d found her, because he’d already checked there. And now she didn’t seem to be at this one either.
Frustration knifed in him—and anxiety, too. The credit card he’d given her when they’d married hadn’t been used—so how was she paying for whatever accommodation she was in? The last thing he wanted was her resorting to her own meagre finances... Especially after what she’d told his lawyer—
He snapped his mind away—back to what the hotel clerk was repeating to him.
‘I am so sorry, Mr Lakaris, but there is absolutely no record of Mrs Lakaris as a current or recent guest.’
Nor had she booked in under her maiden name—or the Coustakis name.
Grim-faced, he checked into the hotel himself, going up to his room with a heavy frown. He shrugged off his jacket, threw himself down on the bed.
Where is she?
The question burned in him, finding no answer.
Where to look next?
She could be anywhere! Anywhere at all!
A discreet knock sounded on the door. Irritated at the disturbance, he got up, strode to the door and yanked it open. It was Housekeeping. The turn-down service.
Except the chambermaid who stood there gasped in shocked dismay.
It was Rosalie.
The blood was draining from Rosalie’s face, and faintness drummed in her ears.
She could not move...was frozen to the spot with shock.
With dismay.
With something that was the very opposite of dismay...
And then Xandros was seizing her, dragging her into the room, holding her by her shoulders.
‘Rosalie? What the hell?’
She heard words breaking from him.
‘So that’s why there’s no trace of you here as a guest!’ He was staring at her, shock in his face. ‘How can you possibly be working here?’ he demanded.
‘They...they provide accommodation for housekeeping staff,’ she said falteringly. ‘I gave up my old bedsit when—’
He cut across her, an expletive breaking from him and then a volley of vehement Greek.
‘We have to talk,’ he said grimly.
He propelled her to the room’s armchair, pressing her down into it. Her legs were like jelly and she sank down heavily. It was as if a storm was breaking out in her head.
Xandros towered over her.
‘Why the hell did you leave Athens like that? Without talking to me first?’ he demanded.
His eyes were like black pits, his face stark.
‘To say what, Xandros?’ she cried in reply.
Her heart was hammering, each beat a blow hard enough to crush her to the ground.
It was unbearable to see him.
I thought I would never set eyes on him again.
Pain clutched at her at the thought—and at the reality of seeing him. Because there was no reason for him to have sought her! No point—no purpose.
No purpose in anything now except what she had to do now—what she was telling him, the words tearing from her.
‘It was obvious what I had to do. I had to set you free!’ She swallowed, and there was a razor blade in her throat, drawing blood. ‘Free to marry Ariadne.’ Her voice changed. ‘As you always wanted to.’
He was staring at her, his brows snapping together in an uncomprehending black frown. He lowered himself to the bed, leaning forward. In the low light his features seemed gaunt and strained, and tension racked his jacketless shoulders.
Helplessly, she let her eyes rest on the way his powerful chest moulded the fine material of his shirt... Then she dragged her pointless gaze away. He was gone from her—as distant as the stars in the sky. All she had to do now was tell him that she knew that, accepted it...
‘Your mother told me, Xandros!’ she said, her voice twisting painfully. ‘Told me what I had absolutely no idea of! That you and Ariadne were once engaged!’
‘My mother—’ His voice was bitter.
‘Xandros! Don’t blame her! I’m grateful to her—incredibly grateful! She was as kind as she could possibly have been about it! She was upset—I could see she was. Upset for me as well as upset because obviously the whole situation is a mess! An unholy, hideous mess!’ A cry broke from her. ‘If only you hadn’t given up on Ariadne! She’d have come back to you—as she has now—and then...then everything would have been all right.’
She took a gulping breath, leaning forward, willing him to hear her out. To know she was doing all she could to clear up that unholy, hideous mess. The mess that had Xandros married to one woman while another carried his child. The woman he had wanted to marry all along...
‘But it still will be all right,’ she said urgently now. ‘I’ll do everything I can to get our divorce through as fast as it can be done, I promise! And as for the pre-nup—of course I won’t be taking a penny from you!’ She swallowed. ‘Not now you don’t need me to get your merger with my father.’
Her face worked. She knew she had to say this, too. That it would make it easier for him in the long run.
‘There’s something I haven’t told you. I was... I was going to steel myself to do it, but I didn’t want to spoil that last weekend on Kallistris. My father cornered me in a café the day before and he told me...’ Her voice faltered, but she forced herself on. ‘He told me that he would not progress the merger until—’ Her voice cracked with the pain of it all and the bitter, bitter irony. ‘Until he knew that I was pregnant.’