Aristides' Convenient Wife
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Jacqueline Baird
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CHAPTER ONE
ENGLAND IN FEBRUARY was not a place he would have chosen to be, Leon Aristides thought angrily as the freezing rain continued to lash down almost obscuring his view of the road. But the letter he had received at his office in Athens yesterday morning from a Mr Smyth, a partner in a firm of London solicitors, and the information enclosed within had totally stunned him.
Apparently the man had read an article in the Financial Times, mentioning the dip in the price of Aristides International shares, where Leonidas Aristides had explained it was an understandable market reaction to the tragic accident that had claimed the lives of his sister and his father, the chairman of the company, but the price would quickly recover. The said Mr Smyth had informed him Delia Aristides was a client of his and he wanted confirmation of her death as his firm held a will made by the lady and he was the executor.
Leon’s first thought was that it must be a hoax resulting from the mention of his name in the paper, an unusual enough circumstance in itself. The Aristides name occasionally appeared in financial journals, but rarely if ever in the popular press. A banking family, they belonged to the type of wealthy élite that did not court publicity or fame but concentrated on the fortune. Their privacy was so closely guarded that the general public barely knew they existed. But after a telephone call to Mr Smyth, Leon had quickly realised the man was serious and if he didn’t act fast that anonymity might disappear all too soon. He had arranged to call him back later. Then he had finally taken the time to go through his sister’s safety deposit box, something he should have done weeks ago, but which the constant pressures of business had prevented.
There were the jewels their mother had left her, as he had expected. But there was also a copy of a will drawn up two years ago by the same Mr Smyth of London and officially signed and witnessed. A will moreover that took precedence over the will held by the family lawyer in Athens that Delia had made at the age of eighteen at their father’s instigation.
The information the new will contained so outraged Leon his initial reaction had been to tear the document into a million pieces. But only for an instant before his iron-cool control had reasserted itself and he had called one of his lawyers. The resultant conversation had made him think long and hard.
A return call to Mr Smyth and he’d had an early appointment with the man for the following day. At the crack of dawn this morning he had boarded his private jet heading for London. A sombre interview with the lawyer had confirmed the shocking news.
Apparently on Leon’s verbal confirmation of Delia’s death he had immediately drafted a letter to one Miss Heywood as instructed, informing her that Delia had died and she was a beneficiary of her will. Leon could do nothing about it now, but he had obtained the man’s promise of absolute discretion in the matter and they had parted with a handshake. Mr Smyth was an honest man but no fool, a banking company like Aristides International was not one to upset unnecessarily.
Leon manoeuvred the rental car into the short drive. In the ordinary course of events he usually travelled by a chauffeured limousine, but in this case absolute secrecy was required until he had assessed the situation. He stopped the car and glanced up at the house. Nestling in the Cotswold hills, it was a double fronted detached stone built house, surprisingly set in the corner of the walled grounds of a luxury hotel.
Which was why he had driven past the entrance drive to the Fox Tower Hotel and around the whole damn estate three times without connecting the entrance to the hotel with the home of Miss Heywood: The Farrow House, Foxcovet Lane. So much for satellite navigation systems. Finally, in frustration he had entered the hotel and booked a room for the night; it looked as if he was going to need one if he did not find the elusive Miss Heywood soon. Then with a few casual questions he had discovered where the house was and why it had taken him so damn long to find it.
A light shone from a downstairs window, hardly surprising given the gloominess of the day, and hopefully an indication Helen Heywood was at home. He had considered ringing her, but he did not want to warn her. The element of surprise was the best weapon in any battle, and this was a conflict he was determined to win.
A predatory gleam lightened his dark eyes as he opened the car door and stepped out onto the gravelled drive slamming the door behind him. Unless she had already received the letter from Mr Smyth, which was highly unlikely if the British postal service was anything like the Greek, the lady was in for one hell of a shock. Squaring his broad shoulders, he approached the front door with decisive steps and rang the bell.
No signal again. Helen slowly replaced the telephone on the hall table, a frown pleating her smooth brow. Her best friend Delia Aristides led a hectic lifestyle but she usually called every week and visited at least once a month. Admittedly since Delia had returned to Greece last July she had occasionally missed a week or two, but now it was over six weeks without a call. What made it worse was Delia had promised her son, Nicholas, she would definitely visit in the New Year after cancelling her last three visits, but once again she had cancelled at the last minute. Helen had heard nothing since.
She chewed worriedly on her bottom lip. It wasn’t fair to Nicholas, or to her for that matter. Nicholas had been at nursery school all morning and, after she had collected him and made his lunch, he was now taking his afternoon nap. She knew he would be awake in an hour, if not sooner, and she wanted to get in touch with Delia before that. But she only had Delia’s cell phone number. Helen knew the address of the Aristides island home but not the telephone number, she had tried to get the number from enquiries but of course it had turned out to be ex-directory. She was at a loss as to what to do next.
Helen grimaced and picked up the post she had not yet had time to look at from the hall table. Maybe Delia had written, but it was a forlorn hope. Her friend had never written a letter in all the time she had known her, the nearest she got was a card at Christmas and birthdays. Telephone or e-mail were her preferred forms of communication.
The doorbell rang, and she dropped the post and, heaving a sigh, wondered who could be calling in the middle of the afternoon.
‘All right, all right I’m coming,’ she muttered as the bell pealed out again and continued to ring. Whoever it was they obviously were not big in the patience department, she thought as she walked down the hall to open the door.
Leon Aristides. Helen stiffened, her hand tightening on the door handle, unable to believe her eyes. For a fleeting moment she wondered if she had forgotten to wear her contact lenses and he was a figment of her imagination, but only for a moment.
‘Hello, Helen,’ a deep-throated voice drawled, and although she was slightly myopic there was nothing wrong with her hearing. Oh, my God, Delia’s brother! Here, at her door.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Aristides.’ She automatically made the polite response, her shocked gaze flicking up over him. Six feet plus and immaculately clad in a dark business suit, white shirt and silk tie, he hadn’t changed much in the years since she had last met him. He was just as big, and dark, and forbidding as she remembered.
With heavy-lidded dark eyes and angular cheekbones, a large straight nose and a wide mouth, he looked hard rather than handsome. But he was physically attractive in a raw, masculine way. Unfortunately for Helen, he still had the same disturbing effect on her as he had the first time they had met, bringing a sudden fluttering in her stomach that she determinedly put down to nerves. She couldn’t possibly still be afraid of the man. She was twenty-six, not seventeen any more.
‘This is a surprise. What are you doing here?’ she finally asked, eyeing him warily.
She had met him nine years ago, the one time she had gone on vacation with Delia to her family holiday home in Greece, and she had been left with a lasting impression of cynical arrogance and powerful masculinity.
She had been walking along the beach when a deep voice had called out demanding to know who she was. She had understood that much Greek. Glancing towards the sea, she had seen a man standing on the shoreline. She had known it was a private beach, but as Delia’s guest she had had every right to be there, and in her innocence she had called out a response and walked towards him, concentrating on trying to bring him into focus. As her vision had improved she had offered her name with a smile, and held out her hand, then stopped and stared, her hand suspended in mid-air.
He had been tall and broad with a white towel draped around his lean hips, and the musculature of his magnificent bronzed body had been so clearly defined Michelangelo himself could not have sculpted better.
His gaze had captured hers, and the breath had stopped in her throat. There had been something dark and dangerous swirling in the black depths of his eyes that had made her heart beat faster. Every primitive sense she had possessed had told her to run but she had been paralysed by the physical presence of the man. Then he had finally spoken, and his sarcastic comment rang in her head to this day.
‘Flattered though I am, and available as you so obviously are, I am a married man. You should try asking before ogling.’ And he had walked away. She had never been so embarrassed before, or since.
‘I would have thought that was self-evident.’ The sound of his voice jerked her back to the present. ‘I am here to see you. We need to talk.’ He smiled but she noticed the smile didn’t touch his eyes.
Helen didn’t want to talk to him. She shuddered at the thought.
After their first meeting, for the rest of her stay in Greece she had tried to avoid him. It had not been too hard. With the constant flow of sophisticated friends and family to the Aristides home, it had been quite easy for two young girls to go unnoticed. On the rare occasion when Helen had had no option but to be in his company she had addressed him with cool politeness. When his beautiful wife Tina had arrived near the end of Helen’s stay, she had only been able to wonder what the happy-go-lucky American woman saw in such an aloof, cynical man.
For Helen his scornful and deeply embarrassing comment to her, coupled with the senior Mr Aristides’ distant politeness to both her and his daughter, simply confirmed what Delia had told her when they had first become friends at school.
According to Delia the reason she was at boarding-school in England rather than at home in Greece was because her father and her brother had agreed she needed to improve her English, but the reality was they had both decided she needed the discipline of a girls-only boarding-school. Apparently she had been caught smoking and flirting with a fisherman’s son. No big deal according to Delia, who had personally thought it had more to do with the fact that her mother had committed suicide when she was twenty months old, from depression after her birth. Her father had blamed her for the death of his wife, and preferred her out of his sight.
To quote Delia, her father and brother were both stiff-necked chauvinist pigs. Ultra-conservative wealthy bankers totally devoted to the family business of making money, the females in their lives chosen simply as assets to enhance the business.
Delia had had no intention of being married for the benefit of the family company, as her mother and sister-in-law had been. She had been determined to stay single until she was at least twenty-five and then her father could not prevent her from inheriting the banking shares her mother had left in trust for her. Helen over the years had helped her to do just that.
Recalling Delia’s low opinion of her brother, Helen stared at the tall, wide-shouldered man in front of her. His black hair was plastered to his head by the driving rain, but he still exuded the same shattering aura of aggressive male power that had so frightened her the first time they had met.
‘Are you going to ask me in?’ His dark eyes narrowed on her face. ‘Or is it your habit to keep visitors wet and freezing on the doorstep?’ he mocked.
‘Sorry, no, y-yes…’ she stammered. ‘Come in.’ She stepped back as he brushed past her into the hall. She closed the door and turned to face him, and it took all her self-control to say coolly, ‘Though I can’t imagine what you and I have to talk about, Mr Aristides.’
Why was Aristides here? Had Delia finally told her family the truth? But if so why hadn’t she called and told Helen? Suddenly not having heard from Delia for so long took on a frightening aspect. She had been worried for young Nicholas, but now she was more worried for her friend.
‘Nicholas.’
‘You know!’ Helen exclaimed and lifted shocked violet eyes to his. ‘So Delia finally told you,’ she prompted with a sinking heart.
She had always known that when the time came Delia would reveal to her family that Nicholas was her son and take over the full-time care of the boy, but she hadn’t expected it for at least another three months. Nor had she fully expected the extent of the pain in her heart at the prospect of becoming an honoured aunt, a visitor in Nicholas’s life rather than virtually his sole carer.
‘No, not Delia,’ he said curtly. ‘A lawyer.’
‘A lawyer…’ Helen was hopelessly confused and the mention of the legal profession filled her with foreboding. To give herself time to gather her scattered thoughts she crossed the hall and opened the door to the large cosy sitting room. ‘You will be more comfortable in here.’ She indicated one of the two sofas that flanked the fireplace, where a fire burned brightly in the grate.
‘Please take a seat,’ she said politely, nervously clasping her hands together in front of her. ‘I’ll get you a coffee, you must be cold. It is a foul day.’ She noted a droplet of water fall from his thick black hair to linger on the slant of his cheekbone. ‘And you need a towel.’ She was rambling, she knew, and quickly she turned and scurried back out of the room, her legs shaking and her mind racing. She grabbed her bag off the hall table and dived into the kitchen.
Leon Aristides noted her nervousness, in fact he had noticed every single detail from the moment she had opened the door, from the hip-hugging blue jeans to the tight blue sweater that outlined her firm breasts. Her hair was much longer now, otherwise she looked no older than the first time they had met. Then she had been lovely and ripe for the plucking and he damn near had.
He had arrived at the family’s island home late in the night and early the next morning had been swimming naked in the sea. Emerging out of the water he had seen her walking towards him. Her fair curly hair had framed a face that was pale with huge eyes, a small straight nose, a full lipped mouth and had been gentle in its natural beauty. She had been wearing a long-sleeved ankle-length white dress in some fine material that should have been demure but instead with the sun behind her had been virtually transparent. Beneath the dress she had been wearing tiny white briefs.
Leon shifted uncomfortably in the seat, as he again saw in his mind’s eye the high, round breasts, the tiny waist, the feminine flare of her hips and shapely legs as she had moved towards him, her gaze fixed intently upon him. He had demanded who she was and what she was doing there.
Showing no embarrassment at his nudity, she had called out that she liked the early morning before the sun got too hot. But he had got hot simply looking at her, and whipped a towel around his hips as she had continued to approach him. ‘I am Helen, Delia’s friend from school.’ And she had held out her hand and stopped not a yard away.
The thickly lashed eyes she had lifted to his had been a smoky violet, and full of hidden promise. He had been surprised and tempted to take what she had been so blatantly offering, until it had registered with him that she could only be fifteen, the same age as his sister. He had dismissed her with a few crude mocking words, disgusted with his own reaction more than with her.
When she had answered the door earlier, and looked up at him with those huge violet eyes, he had had the same urge all over again. Remarkable, because she wasn’t his usual type at all; he preferred tall, slender brunettes, an image of his current lover, Louisa, a sophisticated French lady, forming in his mind. He had not seen her for two months, which probably accounted for his unexpected sexual reaction to Helen Heywood. She was the direct opposite of Louisa, a pale-skinned ash-blonde who couldn’t be much more than five feet tall. Added to which the innocent-looking Miss Heywood had to be the most devious, money-hungry woman he had ever encountered, and he had encountered quite a few.
Still he had her in his sights now and she was no match for him, he concluded arrogantly and briefly closed his eyes. Theos, he was tired, and for a man who lived to work that was some admission, but the last few weeks had been hell.
It had started when he had taken a phone call in his office at Aristides International Bank in Athens a month ago. His father and sister had been in an accident and he could remember the day in every minute detail.
He had paced the length of the hospital corridor outside the operating theatre, with a face like thunder. None of the hospital staff who had passed him had dared to speak, but they had all known he was Leonidas Aristides the international banker, with offices in Athens, New York, Sydney and Paris, as rich as Croesus, and about to be more so after the tragic events of the day.
He had stopped outside the double doors and wondered how long it had been. He had glanced at the functional watch on his wrist, and stifled a groan—a meagre forty minutes.
Not even an hour since they had wheeled the broken body of his sister Delia through the metal doors of the operating theatre. Only three hours since the telephone call he had taken at the bank informing him of the car crash that had killed his father instantly and badly injured his sister. Even as he had been informed Delia had been transferred by air ambulance from their island home to the best hospital in Athens.
He had trouble believing what had happened. They had all spent Christmas and New Year’s Eve together on the island but he had left early the next afternoon to spend a couple of weeks in New York. He had flown into Athens early that morning assuming his father and Delia had returned to their house in the city a couple of days ago and expecting to meet his father at the bank. Only to be told his father was still at their holiday home.
How the hell had it happened? he had asked himself for the thousandth time, having already demanded the same from the hospital staff and the police right up to the minister. All he had known was Delia had been driving to the harbour with their father when apparently she had lost control of the car and ended up in a ravine. As for the top team of surgeons he had demanded and got, they had been reluctant to give an opinion on Delia’s chances other than to say she was critical but they would do all they could.
He had crossed to slump down in a seat facing the theatre doors, and had laid his head back against the wall and closed his eyes in an attempt to block out the reality of the situation.
His father was dead and he had known he would mourn his passing, but his sister had been fighting for her life behind those closed doors, and he had never felt so helpless in his life.
A sense of déjà vu had enveloped him. A different couple, a different time, and, he had prayed, a different outcome. Four years ago in June he had sat in a private hospital very like this in New York, waiting while they operated on his wife Tina after another car crash. The passenger then had been his wife’s fitness instructor who had died instantly.
A bitter, cynical smile curved his hard mouth. Later the surgeon had told him sadly his wife had died on the operating table, but they had delivered the child she was carrying, a boy. For a moment he had felt a surge of hope until the doctor, who had carefully avoided eye contact with him, had added, ‘Although the child was full term he was badly injured and his chances of survival are slight.’ A few hours later the child had also died.
‘Mr Aristides.’ Leon opened his eyes and, silently praying this accident would have a happier outcome, he rose to his feet as the surgeon approached him. ‘The operation was a success and your sister is now in Intensive Care.’ He heaved a mighty sigh of relief, but it was short-lived as the surgeon continued, ‘But there are severe complications, she has lost a lot of blood and her kidneys are failing. Unfortunately the traces of recreational drugs in her system are not helping. But we are doing all we can. You can slip in and see her for a few moments, the nurse will show you the way.’
He was still reeling from the knowledge his sister took drugs when she died two hours later.
Opening his eyes, Leon looked around the very English-looking cosy sitting room. If he had thought the fact that his sister took drugs was the worst thing she could have done in her young life he had been proved wrong yesterday.
The intelligent, educated young lady he had imagined Delia had grown up to be had been leading a double life for years with the help of Helen Heywood. A woman he distinctly remembered his sister telling him she had virtually lost touch with when she had gone to university in London.
Even for a man as cynical as him, particularly where the supposedly fair sex was concerned, the lies and the acting ability Delia had displayed over the last few years boggled the mind. He had loved his sister though he might not have shown it as he should, and her deceit hurt. For a man who never indulged in emotion and actively disdained anyone who did, it was a galling admission and he knew exactly who to blame. His sister was gone, but Miss Heywood had a hell of a lot to answer for, and he was just the man to make sure she did.
