The Secret Kept From The Greek

A pawnbroker had given Lizzie her first break, taking what few scraps had remained of her mother’s jewellery in exchange for enough money to pay her first week’s rent. She remembered begging him not to sell her mother’s wedding ring. ‘There’s nothing exceptional about it,’ she’d protested when he’d informed her that he wasn’t a charitable institution. ‘You must have dozens like it—’

‘Not with three seed pearls set in the centre of the band,’ he’d said as he’d studied the ring with his eyeglass.

‘I’ll clean your shop for nothing,’ she’d offered in desperation. ‘I’ll pay you back with interest, I promise...’

But life had caught up with her, making the necessity of keeping a roof over her head more important than her mother’s wedding ring, so it would have to wait. Maybe one day...

‘Something wrong?’ Damon asked as she bit her lip and grimaced.

‘Nothing. Why?’ she gazed up at him evenly.

‘You made a sound like an angry kitten.’

She made no comment. Being compared to a kitten would not have been her choice. She felt as if the past few years had required her to be a tigress.

‘Enough?’ he said, when she shivered.

‘I’d better get back,’ she agreed.

The Bentley sat waiting for them, gleaming black and opulent. It was attracting admiring glances from passers-by, and now they were attracting interest too, as they approached it. The elegant vehicle was a fabulous representation of privilege, and Lizzie thought it the most visible proof of the yawning gulf between them. She couldn’t imagine what people must be thinking about the suave billionaire and the shabby kitchen worker getting into a car like that.

Did there ever come a point when a cork stopped bobbing to the surface? she wondered as Damon opened the passenger door and saw her safely settled in?

No. She hadn’t come this far to give up now.

‘Home?’ he asked.

So he could see where she lived?

‘Back to the restaurant, please.’ She tried not to look at him. ‘There are things I need to pick up.’

She didn’t want him visiting her home. She couldn’t risk it. This had been pleasant, but there was more to life than Damon’s riches and his personal success. What Lizzie was protecting was infinitely more precious, and she had no intention of risking everything she cared about by acting carelessly now.

Damon had the power to steal everything away from her.

She wouldn’t let him. It was as simple as that. Whatever it took, that wasn’t going to happen.

He started the engine and the Bentley purred obediently.

‘Your mother was Greek, wasn’t she?’ he asked conversationally as he pulled onto the road.

‘Yes, she was.’

‘I suppose that accounts for your unusual colouring. I never thought about it before, but with your Celtic red hair and those chocolate-brown eyes and long black lashes your colouring is quite unusual...’

‘I suppose it is,’ Lizzie agreed, realising that she had never thought about it either, beyond the fact that when things had been at their bleakest she had sought refuge in the warm, home-loving Greek community in London, where there was always someone who knew someone, she reflected wryly. But wasn’t life like that? Paths crossed, then separated, and then crossed again.

‘I think we should see each other again.’

She stared at Damon in amazement, feeling a little defensive. ‘Should we? Why?’ Her heart thundered as she waited for his reply.

He shrugged. ‘I promised you a proper meal?’

‘I won’t hold you to that.’ But they would have to see each other again, she accepted. That was inevitable now.

‘We’ll make a date before I leave tonight,’ he said, glancing across at her.

Would they? Could she risk spending an entire evening with Damon? Could she risk becoming relaxed with him and yet not telling him about anything of significance that had happened in her life over the past eleven years? Could she risk her feelings for him only to lose him again—and for good this time?

She had never shrunk from a challenge yet, Lizzie concluded as Damon slowed the Bentley outside the restaurant, whether that challenge had been battling the demand for clean plates when Stavros’s industrial-sized dishwashers decided to pack up in the middle of service—or having a second meeting with the man who didn’t know he was the father of her ten-year-old child.

CHAPTER TWO (#u10a103ea-f9ef-5b61-8ae5-b4ced8b09bdb)

NO ONE—NOT even the tall, imposing figure towering over her as he opened the car door and stood back—would ever come between Lizzie and her daughter.

Thea had never asked about her father. In fact Thea had shrugged off all mention of a father, which Lizzie had come to think was for the best when it had proved impossible to get in touch with Damon.

Lizzie’s experience with her own father was hardly encouraging. She had never got past the fact that he’d rejected her. Lizzie’s mother had been an heiress, and had had an obvious use, but once her mother was dead and the money was spent Lizzie’s father had lost interest in her.

Lizzie had been too young to understand at the time, but she still remembered her wonderful mother being sad and wanting Lizzie to have a better and more exciting life. Maybe that had fuelled Lizzie’s night of rebellion with Damon. It was very easy to mistake lust for love at eighteen—as it was to take a late, loving parent’s suggestion and bend it to suit her own, hormonal eighteen-year-old’s will.

‘Goodnight, Damon, and thank you—’

‘Not so fast,’ he said, catching hold of her arm. ‘We haven’t made that date yet.’

‘Do you really want to?’

‘Do you need to consult your diary?’ he countered.

‘I do have other things to do,’ she pointed out.

‘But nothing important, I’m sure...?’

Damon’s black stare bored into her. She had to think of something fast—and that something didn’t include blurting out that they had a child together, here on a busy London street.

‘Why don’t you come back to the restaurant some time?’ And give me time to think and plan how best to tell Thea about this. ‘I’m usually there each night, and we can fix something up.’

‘No kidding?’ he murmured.

Letting her go, he pulled back.

She watched Damon drive away in his Bentley until the limousine had turned the corner and was out of sight. The logic she’d used at eighteen for keeping her pregnancy to herself felt more like a selfish cop-out now. Yes, she’d been facing huge upheaval in her life—and, yes, it had been a fight to survive, with her character largely unformed and her reaction to crises untested—but maybe she could have done something differently, or better.

But when Thea had been born Lizzie had wanted to protect her from the hurt Lizzie had felt when her father had rejected her. She didn’t know that it wouldn’t happen to Thea. Why would Damon want a child?

As the years had passed and her conscience had pricked she’d tried to get in touch with him, but his people had kept her away. And then, in another unexpected turn, Thea had proved to be musically gifted—a talent Lizzie believed Thea had inherited from her mother. Lizzie’s mother had used to say she had music flowing through her veins instead of blood. And once Thea’s musical life had taken off, Lizzie had been completely wrapped up in that. Thea had recently won a music scholarship to a prestigious school in London, where she was a boarder.

Didn’t Damon deserve to know all this?