The Kanellis Scandal

‘But—but that’s a plane!’

Taking a look out of the car window at the sleek lines of the Pallis private jet, Anton drawled, ‘So it is.’

CHAPTER FOUR

CONFUSED and trying not to let the tiny nub of alarm she could feel inside her start to balloon, Zoe murmured, ‘You said a helicopter.’

‘A slight change of plan,’ Anton countered with the smoothness of balm.

‘So we are flying in—that—to your house?’

He watched as his chauffeur climbed out of the car. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed.

His eyes wore a polished jet look to them that Zoe couldn’t read. Having to moisten her lips, she found that they were trembling. ‘And wh-where is this house?’

Perhaps she should have asked that question a long time ago. In fact she was angry with herself that she hadn’t, because there was something about Anton Pallis now that put her senses on stinging alert. He was still reclining in the corner of the car but she was picking up danger signals that made her reach out with a hand and close it around the handle on Toby’s seat.

And he had not answered her question. A new kind of tension sizzled in the air. The chauffeur appeared outside Anton’s door and went to open it for him, but with a tap from the back of his fingers on the glass he waved him away without removing his attention from her.

‘We are going to Greece, Zoe,’ he told her.

‘Greece?’ She said it as if she had never heard of the place. ‘But—but I don’t want to go to Greece. And—and you said …’

‘I never actually said that my house was here in England,’ he pointed out as if she was supposed say, Oh, that’s all right, then. My mistake!

But Zoe wasn’t going to say that. Zoe wasn’t going to Greece. ‘Not me, Mr Pallis, and not my brother,’ she told him on a sudden spurt of movement, and started releasing Toby’s seat from its safety restraints.

‘So where are you intending to go?’ he questioned curiously.

‘Back home, where I belong.’

‘And how are you going to get there?’

‘I will walk if I have to! All the way down that road we’ve just driven along and straight to the police still hanging around the gate. Or the press,’ she added, tight lipped and shaking in her determination to get out of this car as fast as she could. ‘Why

the heck should I not go to the papers and let them decide if this makes you a lying, cheating, kidnapping rat?’

At last he showed some emotion with an impatient hiss from between his even white teeth. ‘I may have lied by omission but I am not a cheat and I am not kidnapping you.’

She fumbled in her efforts to release the car seat. ‘What do you call this then—a holiday?’

‘Yes!’ he snapped, sitting up out of his corner.

‘And who is waiting at the other end of this plane journey, Mr Pallis. Theo Kanellis, by any chance?’

The way she scythed out both names as if they poisoned her to say them set Anton’s teeth on edge. ‘No,’ he denied, then sighed and reached over to clamp a hand on the side of Toby’s seat when she tried to pick it up. ‘Will you just stop doing that and listen to me?’

‘Listen to more of your lies? Do you think I’m an idiot?’ She closed both hands over the baby-seat handle. ‘You told me to trust you and I did!’ she acknowledged bitterly. ‘Now look where it’s got me!’

‘You can trust me,’ Anton insisted. ‘We are not going to Theo! On my honour, Zoe, the promise of a sanctuary in my home was the truth.’

And pigs might fly, thought Zoe scornfully. She was forced to let go of Toby’s seat with one hand so she could feel behind in search of the door catch so that she could escape. ‘I should have known your nice behaviour was fishy,’ she said shakily. ‘You are his loyal representative, after all. No wonder my father steered well clear of you lot, people like you would have eaten a gentle man like him for breakfast and thrown away the bits.’

‘This isn’t about Leander.’

‘Don’t you dare call him that!’ She flared up with spectacular force. ‘He is Mr Ellis to you. Ellis, because he couldn’t stand to use the Kanellis name and now I know why—he knew what you were like!’

‘I am not a Kanellis, Zoe,’ Anton said heavily. ‘And this is not what you think. I accept I did not tell you the full truth about where we are going but—’