But between the legal stuff, it was great that the kids were happy, she thought. She had visions of her son and Christa at Annia’s kitchen table, where she’d spent the happiest part of her childhood. They were safe. And Nikos was right here, reading through the contracts with her, trying to make it less boring.
Her family was where it ought to be. She could cope with a boring day or two. And after she signed…Annia had offered to keep the children until dinner time. That meant Athena had a whole evening with Nikos, and no kids.
She was already thinking of the little cove under the castle. She’d have a secluded beach with only herself and Nikos.
She glanced up from the document she was signing and saw Nikos watching her-and she blushed.
He grinned.
She blushed some more.
She was signing the last contract. The lawyers were starting to pack up documents, beaming, congratulating.
And then Nikos’s phone rang.
He listened and his face lost colour. She was at his side in an instant. ‘What…what…’
‘Mama’s just rung,’ he said. ‘The kids…Demos has the kids.’
He had her hand. He was running, tugging her behind him, down the castle steps to the limousine parked in front. The lawyers were abandoned, shocked to silence.
She drove while Nikos barked orders into his phone. Then he told her what had happened.
‘Mama used the time while she had the kids to cook dinner for a neighbour who’s ill. The kids were playing-they were happy and she thought it’d only take five minutes to pop the food next door, the children were in the garden and Joe was in the house. He’d taken his eyes off the children only for a moment. The first he knew of trouble was a scream from the cove below the house. By the time he got down there they were gone.’
Gone…
‘Is he sure it’s Demos?’ Athena asked in a voice she scarcely recognised as hers.
‘He saw him,’ he said, his voice catching. ‘He had both the children in the boat-the same boat that tried to hit you. I’ve just rung Alexandros on Sappheiros. He has a helicopter. I thought this was safe. I never dreamed…’ His voice broke.
She wanted to hold him. She had to keep driving, but it took every ounce of self-restraint not to pull over, take him in her arms and comfort him.
He was her man. She knew it. Whatever had happened in the past, Nikos was her man and she’d fight for him. As she’d fight for her child. Her children, she corrected herself. Her family.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ANNIA was standing in her kitchen, white-faced and tearful. They walked in, she stepped straight into Nikos’s arms and sobbed out her horror on his chest.
Then she tugged back from Nikos and hugged Athena. And then Joe came lumbering in, looking like a dog who’d been kicked. Before Thena knew it, Joe was a part of the hug.
Family.
Despite her terror, here was a glimmer of comfort. She let herself be hugged, she let herself be wept on and if she wept too, it didn’t matter.
The hugs were fast; there were too many imperatives to indulge in emotion, but it steadied her. For this moment she’d take comfort where she could find it.
There were more men entering the kitchen now, summoned by Joe-big men, determined, grave-faced. Not knowing what to do.
She held Nikos and Nikos held her. Who was holding who up? It didn’t matter. They were facing this as one.
But there was nothing to do. The consensus was that all their hope had to be in Alexandros and his helicopter. It was the only thing fast enough to locate a boat so powerful.
She was trying so hard to think. How to think when you were enmeshed in panic? She must.
‘What…what would Demos do with them?’ she managed, speaking to the room in general, and the unsayable had been said.
Annia gave one heartrending sob and ended up held again by Nikos.
But Athena wasn’t thinking like that. She met Nikos’s gaze over his mother’s head. She saw his terror, and inexplicably it steadied her.
She knew her cousin. He was a weak-willed man, greedy for riches. Desperate even. But he wasn’t completely stupid.
‘He wouldn’t hurt them,’ she said, and the words themselves steadied her, for she knew they were the truth. ‘Not deliberately. Yes, he tried to kill Nicky and me, but that was aimed at the two of us, staged to be an accident. Think of all he’d lose by hurting them now. He’s been seen. He knows that. If he’s known to have hurt them, he could never claim this Crown. Plus, this world doesn’t hold a hiding place deep and dark enough if he touches my Nicky.’ She shook her head, still puzzled. ‘And I don’t understand how he got them both onto his boat. Was there only him?’
‘Yes,’ Joe said. ‘He had them in the boat by the time I saw them.’
‘If he’d grabbed Christa, Nicky might have decided to stay with her,’ Nikos said doubtfully, following her train of thought. ‘Was it Nicky who screamed?’
‘It surely was,’ Joe said. ‘I heard him screaming from here, and by the time I reached the beach I could still hear him.’
‘If Demos came up here and grabbed them…why didn’t he scream here? You’d surely have heard if he had.’
Joe had no answers.
It made less and less sense. She knew her Nicky. ‘For Demos to creep in here and grab them without alerting you…And to get him into the boat…Was he holding him? Why didn’t he jump out?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe Demos tied him up. I couldn’t see.’
‘He’ll be trying to blackmail you into giving up the throne,’ Nikos said.
‘He must be.’ But she’d steadied. She’d heard enough now to be less panicked. ‘And if he is then he’ll contact us.’ She forced herself to say what they all knew they had to do. ‘We have to wait.’
But Nikos’s face was still strained to breaking.
‘Christa has a heart condition,’ he said numbly to the room in general, and she felt his wash of absolute fear. Her normally daredevil lover was jelly in the face of a threat to his daughter. ‘She’s on medication. She has to have it. If we don’t find her…’
‘He can’t have her,’ Annia said fiercely. ‘He’d never love her. Oh…’
‘It’s okay, Mama,’ Nikos said, hauling himself together again in the face of his mother’s terror. ‘Demos doesn’t want her and, like Thena said, he can’t afford to hurt them. We’ll find her.’
Oscar was at Thena’s feet. She knelt and hugged him while Nikos held his mother. ‘Why didn’t you bite him, Oscar?’ she whispered.
There was no answer.
Her terror had faded a little. This had to be an attempt at blackmail, she thought. But…in her confused mind she found room for more questions. What had Annia said?
Why would Demos want Christa? There were undercurrents here she didn’t understand.
She straightened and Nikos’s arm came round her waist and held. He was more afraid than she was, she thought.
How serious was Christa’s heart condition?
Now wasn’t the time to ask. Now it seemed all they could do was wait, and to wait seemed the hardest thing in the world.
