The Kanellis Scandal

Lounging comfortably in his own seat, Anton raised his attention from the laptop he had open on his lap and reviewed this unilateral demonstration of respect from his staff for their passenger. He compared it ruefully to the deep freeze they had been treating him to in silent objection to his driving a grieving young woman to the place into which Zoe had tumbled due to his ruthless method for getting her onto this flight.

Even Kostas wasn’t speaking to him. His head of security did not spare him a glance as he passed by his seat on his way to greet Zoe. Returning his gaze to the computer screen, Anton sat in his splendid isolation and listened to Kostas enquiring of Zoe if she had enjoyed a comfortable rest. Polite to an inch, his tough, bulky security chief then offered to settle the boy in the installed flight-bassinette, while the rest of his staff returned to their seats.

He had glimpsed a new side to Kostas Demitris today, Anton mused ruefully, one which had wobbled years of total loyalty to him. Kostas had cornered him the moment he’d stepped out of the bedroom cabin after leaving Zoe to sleep, and he’d told him to his face that he should feel shame for the way he had behaved.

That he did feel shame was something he chose not the share with Kostas. Nor was he going to share the other forces that had been driving him at the time: sex … desire … a dangerous attraction, unwillingly felt but felt all the same. Theo’s slender young granddaughter with the vivid eyes, flowing golden hair and pale, pinched vulnerability, stoked up his senses in ways which shocked even him.

That she was prepared to take him on in a fight as if she was his equal only fired him up even more. She had Theo’s spunk, though she would be insulted if he told her so. A courageous creature with her life ripped apart, yet valiantly determined to cope. He admired her and lusted after her in equal measures. He’d felt so in tune with her from the moment he’d stepped into her tiny house that he’d failed to question if she would see what he had planned for her and her brother in the same sensible light.

He’d been a man on a mission, focused, driven by the tactical cut and thrust, and so had failed to recognise that she was so fragile the slightest knock to her defences was bound to shatter them. Now he knew he was going to live for a long time with the crucifying sounds of her grief as it poured from her.

His punishment; he deserved it. He even deserved the ‘gold-digger’ tag, when he still had not bothered to offer up a better side of himself.

Her perfume arrived first, that distinct scent of apple shampoo assailing his nostrils, and he looked up. She had changed her clothes, he noticed, the creased grey dress and black jacket had been replaced by a black tunic that made her skin look startling white and her hair, which she’d brushed away from her face then caught loosely back at her nape, was finer than silk.

‘I need to talk to you,’ Zoe said, still warily on the defensive but anxious at the same time.

‘Of course.’ He set the computer aside on the table in front of him. ‘Please,’ he invited. ‘Take a seat.’

He’d removed his jacket again, Zoe noticed, it lay folded on the seat opposite. As he indicated with one of those long brown hands to the chair beside him she bit down into the soft flesh inside her lower lip for a few seconds, not really wanting to sit down so close to him, but too aware of all the other people seemingly dedicated to observing her every move. In the end she sat down on the edge of the chair, so tense her back was ramrod straight.

‘You’ve forgotten something important,’ she told him.

‘I have?’ He frowned as he cast his mind over his meticulous planning.

‘Passports.’ She nodded. ‘Mine is in the box I gave to Kostas to look after, but Toby doesn’t have one. You’re going to have to turn this plane around because he can’t enter Greece without a passport, and I won’t have him taken away from me and stuck in some detention centre while I sort out the problem, so—’

‘All sorted,’ he cut in, feeling curiously pleased with himself that in this one area of concern he had everything covered.

Leaning down to pick something up from the side of his seat, he lifted it onto the table.

Zoe watched in frank bewilderment as he produced a fine leather document-case, set it down then fed back the zip. Sliding out the contents, he sifted through pieces of paper until he came across one bearing the official stamp of a UK government department which he passed across the table to her. Her eyelashes flickered as she looked down at it.

‘Your brother is travelling on an emergency visa,’ he explained. ‘I applied for it on the grounds of your grandfather’s ill health.’

While Zoe sat trying to absorb this information, two more pieces of paper arrived beside the first one.

‘This one is a letter from your general practitioner saying that Toby is fit to travel, and this one is from Social Services giving you permission to take your brother out of the UK. We—’

‘You—you arranged all of this without any of these people applying to me to check if I was OK with it?’ Zoe interrupted.

He nodded. ‘Mainly as a precaution because of the complications due to probate and your pending legal rights over Toby,’ he enlightened her. ‘A full passport for Toby will be couriered to you from the British Embassy in Athens in the next few days.’

Zoe was still staring at the accumulation of formal letters lined up in front of her. ‘You need a photograph for a passport,’ she murmured.

‘I took one on my phone and texted it over to the appropriate government body.’

‘When did you do that?’ she demanded, beginning to simmer inside.

‘While you were upstairs packing your things,’ was the beautifully modulated response she received. ‘With all the press you have been receiving, it needed little explanation for everyone to sympathise with your plight and be eager to fast-track the process. And I know a few useful people.’

He knew a few useful people, Zoe echoed, feeling a nice fresh wave of anger flush up from her chest until it mottled her cheeks. ‘Wealth and power have their uses, then.’

He must have heard something in her voice because he turned his dark head. There was a moment of stillness in which he tapped the tips of his fingers against the table and Zoe glared at them as the pressure inside her built and built.

‘I’m in trouble again,’ he sighed out.

‘Where is my input?’ she responded tautly.