‘Isn’t that the best plan in the circumstances?’ Ash’s lawyer, Stevos Vannou, interposed in a very reasonable voice as though it was an expected thing that she should be willing to surrender the child she loved. ‘I seem to remember that you are single and living on benefits and that a child would be a considerable burden for you—’
Acheron had frozen the instant the phrase ‘foster care’ came his way but neither of his companions had noticed. It was a closely guarded secret that Ash, in spite of the fact his mother had been one of the richest Greek heiresses ever born, had once spent years of his life in foster care, shifted from home to home, family to family, enduring everything from genuine care to indifference to outright cruelty and abuse. And he had never, ever forgotten the experience.
‘I haven’t lived on benefits since Amber’s mother, Sonia, passed away. I looked after Sonia until she died and that was why I couldn’t work,’ Tabby protested, and shot a glance brimming with offended pride at Acheron’s still figure. ‘Look, I’m not just some freeloader. A year ago Sonia and I owned our own business and it was thriving until Troy died and she fell ill. In the fallout, I lost everything as well. Amber is the most important thing in my world but, in spite of me being chosen as one of her guardians, there’s no blood tie between Amber and me and that gives me very little real claim to her in law.’
‘Why have you come to me?’ Ash enquired drily.
Tabby rolled her eyes, helplessly inflamed by his attitude. ‘Troy thought you were such a great guy—’
Ash tensed, telling himself that none of what she had told him was any of his business, yet the thought of an innocent baby going into foster care roused a riot of reactions inside him drawn from his own memories. ‘But I never met Troy.’
‘He did try to meet you because he said his mother, Olympia, used to work for your mother,’ Tabby recounted.
Acheron suddenly frowned, straight black brows pleating as old memories stirred. Olympia Carolis, he recalled very well as having been one of his mother’s carers. He had not appreciated when the guardianship issue had arisen that Troy was Olympia’s son because he had only known her by her name before marriage, although if he stretched his memory to the limit he could vaguely recall that she had been expecting a child when she left his mother’s employ. That child could only have been Troy.
‘Troy was frantic to find a job here in London and you were his business idol,’ Tabby told him curtly.
‘His...what?’ Ash repeated with derision.
‘False flattery won’t advance your cause,’ Stevos Vannou declared, much more at home in the current meeting than he had been in the last, for the matter of the will would require considerable research of case law to handle.
‘It wasn’t false or flattery,’ Tabby contradicted sharply, angry with the solicitor for taking that attitude and switching her attention back to Ash. ‘It was the truth. Troy admired your business achievements very much. He even took the same business degree you did. That and the fact he saw you as head of his family explains why he put you down as a guardian in his will.’
‘And there was I, innocent that I am, thinking it was only because I was rich,’ Acheron breathed with sardonic bite, his dark deep drawl vibrating down her spine.
‘You really are a hateful, unfeeling creep!’ Tabby slammed back at him tempestuously, fiery emotion ablaze in her violet eyes. ‘Troy was a lovely man. Do you honestly think he realised that he was going to die at the age of twenty-four in a car accident? Or that his wife would suffer a stroke within hours of giving birth? Troy would never have taken a penny from anyone that he hadn’t earned first.’
‘Yet this lovely man left both his widow and child destitute,’ Ash reminded her censoriously.
‘He didn’t have a job, and Sonia was earning enough money at the time through the business we owned. Neither of them could possibly have foreseen that both of them would be dead within a year of having that will drawn up.’
‘But it was scarcely fair to name me as a guardian without prior discussion of the idea,’ Acheron pointed out drily. ‘The normal thing to do would have been to ask my permission first.’