‘The child—you’ll recall your late cousin’s guardianship request, which you turned down a couple of months ago?’ Stevos Vannou hurtled forward to remind Acheron Dimitrakos in a quiet, respectful undertone.
An inconsequential memory pinged in the back of Ash’s shrewd brain and drew his straight black brows together into a frown. ‘What of it?’
‘You selfish bastard!’ Tabby raked at him, outraged by his lack of reaction and the consequences that his indifference to Amber’s fate were about to visit on the child. ‘I’ll go to the press with this...you don’t deserve anything better. All that wretched money and you can’t do anything good with it!’
‘Siopi! Keep quiet,’ Acheron told her sternly in Greek and then English.
‘And you and whose army is going to make me?’ Tabby snapped back, unimpressed, the fighting spirit that had carried her through many years of loss and disappointment rising to the fore again to strengthen her backbone.
‘What does she want?’ Acheron asked his lawyer in English as if she weren’t there.
‘I suggest we take this back into your office,’ Stevos remarked on a loaded hint.
Savage impatience gripped Ash. Only three days earlier he had returned from his father’s funeral and, without even allowing for his grief at the older man’s sudden death from a heart attack, it had turned into a very frustrating week. The very last thing he was in the mood for was a drama about some child he had never met and couldn’t have cared less about. Troy Valtinos, oh, yes, he could remember now, a third cousin he had also never met, who had unexpectedly died and, in doing so, had attempted to commit his infant daughter to Ash’s care. An act of sheer inexplicable insanity, Acheron reflected in exasperation, thinking back incredulously to that brief discussion with Stevos some months earlier. He was a childless single male without family back-up and he travelled constantly. What on earth could anyone have supposed he would do with an orphaned baby girl?
‘I’m sorry I swore at you,’ Tabby lied valiantly in an effort to build a bridge and win a hearing. ‘I shouldn’t have done that—’
‘Your mouth belongs in the gutter,’ Acheron breathed icily and he addressed the security guards, ‘Free her. You can take her out when I’m done with her.’
Tabby gritted her teeth together, straightened her jacket and ran uncertain hands down over her slender denim-clad thighs. Ash briefly studied her oval face, his attention lingering on her full pink mouth as a rare flight of sexual fantasy took him to the brink of picturing where else that mouth might be best employed other than in the gutter. The stirring at his groin put him in an even worse mood, reminding him of how long it had been since he had indulged his healthy libido. He knew he had to be in a very bad way if he could react to such an ignorant female.
‘I’ll give you five minutes of my valuable time,’ Acheron breathed with chilling reluctance.
‘Five minutes when a child’s life and happiness hang in the balance? How very generous of you,’ Tabby replied sarcastically.
Roaring rancour assailed Acheron because he wasn’t accustomed to such rudeness, particularly not from women. ‘You’re insolent as well as vulgar.’
‘It got me in the door, didn’t it? Politeness got me nowhere,’ Tabby traded, thinking of the many phone calls she had made in vain requests for an appointment. As for being called cheeky and vulgar, did she really care what some jumped-up, spoilt snob with loads of money thought about her? Yet her brain was already scolding her for her aggressive approach, telling her it was unwise. If she could get around the freeze front Acheron Dimitrakos wore to the world, he was in a position to help Amber while she was not. As far as Social Services were concerned, she could not be considered a suitable guardian for Amber because she was single, had no decent home and was virtually penniless.
‘Start talking,’ Ash urged, thrusting the door of his office shut.
‘I need your help to keep Amber in my custody. I’m the only mother she’s ever known and she’s very attached to me. Social Services are planning to take her off me on Friday and place her in foster care with a view to having her adopted.’