The Enigmatic Greek by Catherine George Read Free Book Online Page B

would console Ross McLean for her failure to get an interview with Alexei Drakos. And pigs might fly! Eleanor shrugged philosophically and settled down to write the article that would round off her series.
    Due to his mother’s inevitable refusal to make the journey in his helicopter, Alexei had been obliged to take the ferry to Crete to see her onto the plane, and spent most of the trip promising her he would take more time in future to relax and enjoy life. It was a wrench, as always, to part with her; and on the way back he occupied himself with calls to Athens and London. For the remainder of the trip he leaned against the rail, calling himself all kinds of fool for letting his mother cajole him into returning to Kyrkiros to babysit a journalist. And, not only a journalist, but one he had fleetingly suspected of involvement in his mother’s kidnap. And because Talia rarely asked anything of him—not even more of his company, which he well knew she wanted most of all—he would do as she wanted. It would do him good, he was assured, to get away from it all for a while, in the company of an intelligent, attractive woman who, she pointedly reminded him, he was indebted to for his mother’s safety. All Eleanor wanted by way of appreciation was an in-depth interview, Talia had informed him, which had to be a refreshing change from the usual women in his life, who probably demanded very different rewards for their company at his dinner table and or bed …
    Alex frowned, wondering exactly what Ms Markham meant by ‘in-depth’ for the interview. If she imagined he would lay his soul bare, she was mistaken. Only a fool would do that with anyone, least of all a journalist—even one as appealing as Eleanor. He might be many things, and not all of them admirable, but a fool wasn’t one of them. Christina Mavros’ malicious spin on their brief affair had been merely a fleeting embarrassment. His hostility towards reporters had begun long before then. From the day he’d found the online accounts of his parents’ divorce, the press had been irrevocably linked in his mind with the shattering discovery that his father, his hero, had hurt his mother badly enough to make her divorce him. The hero had crashed from his pedestal and from that day on Milo Drakos’ efforts to maintain a normal relationship with his son had met with little success.
    When Alex had questioned his mother about the reasons for the divorce, he was told it was something private between her and his father. Talia had refused to say another word, but his grandfather, Cyrus Kazan, had been more forthcoming. If Alex was old enough to ask the question, he was old enough to cope with the answer, had been his grandfather’s justification for telling the boy that Milo, though madly in love with his wife, was so insanely jealous he had refused to believe that the child was actually his.
    ‘The problem,’ Talia had explained years later when Alex demanded the truth, ‘Was the inconvenient fact that I grew large very early on in the pregnancy, which aroused Milo’s suspicions. When you were born exactly ten months from our wedding day, Milo was desperately repentant and begged my forgiveness. I’ll spare you the details, but it was a long, difficult labour and, because I was exhausted and at the mercy of my hormones, and so furious and heartbroken at his lack of trust, I refused to listen to him. My father,of course, had been ready to kill Milo, but my mother persuaded him to calm down. She pointed out that the best revenge would be to collect Milo’s wife and son from the hospital to drive them to the Kazan family home, which would then be barred against him.’
    Alex’s face was grim as he watched the water streaming past. In the clash between his father and mother it had been a classic case of Greek meeting Greek, which probably explained Talia’s vengeance. But, although she was a fiercely protective mother, she was also a practical one determined for the