‘That solicitor phoned: Roger is planning to call in the police on Monday. That’s my deadline,’ Crystal advanced in tremulous explanation, fastening frightened eyes to her daughter’s frowning face. ‘Oh, Tally, what am I going to do? Your father will never help me. He probably just invited you to lunch so that he can hear the dirty details and gloat.’
‘Let’s hope for the best,’ Tally responded, grimacing at the reality that her parents so thoroughly disliked each other. Though she’d had an affair while she was engaged to and pregnant by Anatole, Crystal had pursued Anatole through the courts to receive maintenance for their daughter. In any case, Tally had never known her father to act out of compassion. Anatole Karydas was first and foremost a businessman and he hadn’t made money out of being a soft touch. On the other hand, he was the only hope Crystal had, Tally reflected unhappily: she could scarcely approach Sander for financial help while she was pursuing a divorce he had said he didn’t want.
‘I’ve got a proposition to put to you,’ Anatole, a small portly man with iron-grey hair and shrewd dark eyes, informed his daughter within minutes of her joining him at his table at his favourite Italian restaurant. ‘I’ll give you the money for Crystal, no questions asked, but only if you agree to go back and live with your husband.’
Completely taken aback by that offer, which had come out of nowhere, Tally froze, her eyes very wide. ‘You’ve got to be joking!’
‘I don’t joke about serious matters. I valued having a connection to the Volakis tribe—they’re very important well-connected people in Athens—’
‘How can that influence you? Nobody there even knows that I’m your daughter.’
Anatole compressed his lips in disagreement. ‘A lot of my friends and business colleagues know about you now. Sander’s parents let the cat out of the bag, so you’re not a secret any more. And why should you be?’ he remarked in a sudden burst of irritation that took her aback. ‘I would be very happy to see you go back to live with your husband.’
‘That’s ridiculous—’
‘No, it’s not, it’s sensible and still the best option you have,’ he contradicted with conviction. ‘I don’t want you ending up like your mother, living off one man and then another, until you end up in the gutter and start stealing to get by. I want my daughter to enjoy a normal decent life, and Sander Volakis can give you that.’
Tally was shattered by that little speech because it had never once in all the years she had known her father occurred to her that he might cherish a genuine concern for her well-being. Certainly he had never revealed such an interest in her welfare before. Green eyes reflecting her surprise, she stared at the older man with a frown building between her brows.
‘I know I’ve not been a proper father to you, that I’ve made mistakes and let my dislike of your mother and my respect for my wife’s wishes come between us,’ Anatole admitted grittily, evading her startled scrutiny. ‘But I won’t stand by and watch you burn your boats with Sander Volakis if I can help it. So, if you want that money to save Crystal’s worthless skin, you can have it, but you have to give your marriage another chance for at least a year.’ He hesitated. ‘What happened with your child was tragic but, given time, you’ll get over it and start again.’
Shaken, Tally felt her eyes sting with hot tears at that blunt reference. ‘Sander’s parents didn’t seem to care …’
Her father touched her hand in a brief awkward gesture and then looked away, his discomfiture obvious in the humming silence. But it was clear to her that even though he did not have the words he had felt a good deal more than Sander’s parents when he’d learned of her stillborn son, who would have been his first grandchild. ‘Well, will you accept my offer?’
Wildly disconcerted by a choice she had never envisaged, Tally said thinly that she couldn’t make up her mind there and then. Ironically, although she was furious that Anatole was trying to manipulate her now as he had once manipulated Sander, she could not help feeling touched that her father was concerned in his own way about her future. And how could she stand back and allow her mother to be charged and possibly even imprisoned for fraud? The law came down hard on women who were dishonest with money, she acknowledged worriedly, particularly a spoiled woman like Crystal who had not held down a paying job in more years than her daughter cared to count. Tally also knew that her mother could not be allowed to go on running up debts that she couldn’t afford while struggling to maintain a lifestyle that she should have abandoned years earlier. She was painfully aware at that moment that she would have to instigate changes in Crystal’s life in return for advancing Anatole’s money. To ignore the roots of Crystal’s problem would be to invite the same situation to happen again.
‘Yes … I’ll accept,’ Tally finally conceded in a tense undertone. She refused to think in any depth about the marriage that she was agreeing to return to and simply accepted that she was putting her pride and independence on a funeral pyre.
She couldn’t face phoning Sander and hearing the triumph edge his slow dark drawl, so she texted him like a teenager determined to avoid confrontation.
Have changed my mind. Willing to try being married again.
Sander phoned her while she was waiting for her mother to return from a shopping trip. ‘I’ll pick you up for dinner—’
‘No … er … I’m busy tonight. Mum’s staying with me at present,’ she explained hurriedly. ‘I’ll pack and see you tomorrow at the apartment—’
‘I sold the apartment last year and bought a house.’ Sander reeled off the address, his Greek accent roughening every vowel sound. ‘Tally … you won’t regret this.’
Momentarily, Tally was discomfited. Sander had assumed that she was returning to him of her own free will. That was far from being the case but she saw no good reason to admit the ugly truth. What would it achieve? She was methodically packing her things when Crystal came home. Joining the older woman in the lounge, she was quick to share the news that her father was willing to settle Crystal’s debt to Roger.
Crystal was stunned. ‘I never thought Anatole would play the good Samaritan.’
‘There’s a price—for both of us. I had to agree to give my marriage another go,’ Tally volunteered. ‘And, before we go any further, you have to agree to get a job.’
‘A job?’ Crystal gasped in ringing disbelief. ‘What on earth would I do?’
‘You won’t find out until you try. Maybe you could work in the beauty or cosmetics fields … I don’t know exactly what you’d do but, whatever, you need to get a job and earn enough money to keep yourself.’
‘I couldn’t!’
‘Of course you can. You don’t need another man to keep you. You’ll have no credit card bills to worry about this time around. We’ll cut the cards up and you’ll do what other people do: live on a budget, not beyond your means.’
Crystal blinked. ‘You’re out of your mind.’
‘No, I’m telling you the only way that this will work for you. This—Anatole coming to the rescue—is a once-in-a-lifetime deal,’ Tally was careful to stress. ‘It’s going to be tough for you to make a fresh start and leave old habits behind, but you’re stronger than you think. Things have to change. You can’t go on spending money you don’t have.’
‘Well, I could, if my wealthy daughter chose to help me out,’ Crystal dared with more than a hint of her usual calculation.
‘No, I’m not going to ask Sander to foot all your bills. That wouldn’t be fair,’ Tally fielded unhappily. ‘Isn’t it enough that I’m being forced to return to a marriage I had already turned my back on?’
‘You can’t fool me,’ Crystal breathed witheringly. ‘I don’t believe you’ll ever turn your back willingly on Sander Volakis. He’s the love of your life!’
Crystal remained in an edgy, sharp-tongued mood as she fought the prospect of being self-supporting; but, by the end of the evening, Tally had secured her agreement to seek employment and felt satisfied with that climb-down as a first step in a
new lifestyle.
The next day, Robert was astonished when Tally brought him up to speed on events. ‘You’re going back to live with Sander Volakis? Since when?’
‘When we met at the house in France he asked me to give our marriage another chance,’ Tally admitted tautly. ‘I’ve thought about it and I’ve decided he’s right—’
‘But he’s wrong!’ Robert Miller protested in sudden anger. ‘You were unhappy with him.’
‘Things only went wrong between us after we lost our child.’