The Greek Tycoon's Achilles Heel by Lucy Gordon Read Free Book Online Page B

up as the one with common sense?’
    ‘Well, one of us had to have some,’ she chuckled.
    ‘How did you manage with all those stepfathers?’
    ‘They were OK. Mostly they were lovelorn and a bit dopey, so I had a hard job keeping a straight face.’
    ‘What about the one in Las Vegas?’
    ‘Let’s see, he was the—no, that was the other one—or was he? Oh, never mind. They’re all the same, anyway. I think he was an aspiring actor who thought Estelle could help his ambitions. When she finally saw through him she tossed him out. She was in love with someone else by then.’
    ‘You’re very cool about it all. Doesn’t all this “eternal love” affect you?’
    ‘Eternal love?’ She seemed to consider this. ‘Would that be eternal love as in he tried to take every penny she had, or as in he haunted the set, throwing a fit whenever she had a love scene, or as in—?’
    ‘All right, I get the picture. Evidently the male sex doesn’t impress you.’
    ‘However did you guess?’
    ‘But what about your own experience? There must have been one or two brave enough to defy the rockets you fire at them?’
    Her lips twitched. ‘Of course. I don’t look at them unless they’re brave enough to do that.’
    ‘That’s the first of your requirements, is it? Courage?’
    ‘Among other things. But even that’s overrated. The man I married was a professional sportsman, a skier who could do the most death-defying stuff. The trouble was, it was all he could do, so in the end he was boring too.’
    ‘You’re married?’ he asked slowly.
    ‘Not any more,’ she said in a tone of such devout thankfulness that he was forced to smile.
    ‘What happened? Was it very soon after our meeting?’
    ‘No, I went to college and studied hard. It was the same college where my grandfather had been a professor, and it was wonderful because people couldn’t care less that I was a film star’s daughter, but they were impressed that I was his granddaughter. I had to do him credit. I studied to improve my knowledge of the Greek language, learned the history, passed exams. We were going to come here and explore together, but then he and my grandmother both died. It’s not the same without him. I so much wanted to make him proud of me.’
    She hesitated, while a shadow crossed her face, making him lean forward.
    ‘What is it?’ he asked gently.
    ‘Oh—nothing.’
    ‘Tell me,’ he persisted, still gentle.
    ‘I was just remembering how much I loved them and they loved me. They needed me, because I was all that was left to them after their son died. They liked Estelle, but she wasn’t part of them as I was.’
    ‘Wasn’t your mother jealous of your closeness to them?’
    Petra shook her head. ‘She’s a loving mother, in her way, but I’ve never been vital to her as I was to them.’
    ‘How sad,’ he said slowly.
    ‘Not really. As long as you have someone who needs you, you can cope with the others who don’t.’
    At that moment all the others who hadn’t needed her seemed to be there in the shadows, starting with Estelle, always surrounded by people whose job it was to minister to her—hairdressers, make-up artists, lawyers, psychologists, professional comfort-givers, lovers, husbands. Whatever she wanted, there was always someone paid to provide it.
    She was sweet-tempered and had showered her daughter with a genuine, if slightly theatrical affection, but when a heavy cold had forced Petra to miss one of her weddings— Fourth? Fifth?—she’d shrugged, said, “Never mind” and merely saved her an extra large piece of cake.
    Petra had soon understood. She was loved, but she wasn’t essential. She’d tried to take it lightly, saying that it didn’t matter, because she’d found that this was one way to cope. Eventually it had become the way she coped with the whole of life.
    But it had mattered. There, always at the back of her mind, had been the little sadness, part of her on the lookout for someone to whom she