‘THEN KATALEVENO.’ I don’t understand. Amelie paused and tried again, working to keep her teeth from chattering as the temperature dropped another degree or six. ‘Kyrios Evangelos, parakalo.’ Mr Evangelos, please.

The intercom squawked into a burst of machine-gun-fast Greek. Amelie hadn’t a hope of understanding. She’d already used up her handful of phrases.

Clearly the woman inside the house had no patience for foreigners. Or language skills other than Greek. Amelie had already tried French, English, German and finally even Spanish and Russian.

But why should the housekeeper, if that was who she was, speak anything other than Greek? This estate was high in the mountain spine of northern Greece. Tourists headed for the beaches of the Aegean Sea or the ancient ruins. Amelie guessed only the most adventurous foreigners headed to this isolated, beautiful region.

Adventurous or desperate.

Amelie had never had a chance to be adventurous. But a twist of fate had turned her staid, predictable world on its head. Desperate was too mild a description for her situation.

‘Please. Parakalo,’ she began, hunching her shoulders against the icy wind, but the line went dead.

Amelie stared, disbelieving, into the security camera perched above the gates. The woman had hung up! She must have seen Amelie shivering in the unseasonable icy blast.

Amelie blinked, torn between indignation and curiosity. This was a first. Never before had she been ignored—no, not ignored...rejected.

Yet even as she thought it, she knew that was wrong.

She’d been rejected by the very man she’d come here to see. Once, when it had been just her happiness in question, she’d taken his rebuff with all the grace she’d spent a lifetime learning. This time, when it was Seb’s happiness, his future in question, Amelie refused to accept ‘no’.

Her mouth settled in a way her father had called obstinate. But her father had never been pleased, no matter how she tried, or how many of the family burdens she shouldered. Besides, he was dead and gone. Like Michel, her brother, and his wife, Irini.

A giant hand gripped her insides and twisted them till they burned. The ache welled high, clogging her chest, her throat, her whole being.

But Amelie wouldn’t let it conquer her. She blinked, refusing to let tears come. There’d been no time for tears since the accident for, of course, everyone relied on her to be strong. The burden might have broken her if she hadn’t spent years as the anchor for her family and everyone else. For as if grief wasn’t enough, the repercussions from Michel’s death were...complicated.

Amelie breathed deep, determined to focus on the positive. She still had Seb.

Her glance strayed to the nondescript hire car pulled over in front of the massive gates. There was no movement inside. Seb must still be asleep. Their journey from St Galla had exhausted him.

It had exhausted her. Amelie almost lifted a hand to her aching head—too much stress and too little sleep—but she was conscious of the security camera. She was watched from inside the house she couldn’t even see down its long drive.

A lifetime’s training in never revealing weakness kept her arm by her side and her chin up. If Lambis Evangelos and his lackeys thought she’d meekly run away...

Her lips turned up in a mirthless smile. They had no idea what despair could do. What she could do.

Slowly, shoulders back and hands swinging at her sides, she strolled to the car. She didn’t even flinch when the first snowflakes spattered her face.

It needed only that to put the seal on this horrible journey. The secretive trip to Athens on a friend’s boat in order to avoid the paparazzi. The press had mobbed her in St Galla and they’d been forced to slip out in the dead of night. The long journey, the crowds and bustle of Athens, then the stonewalling when she’d arrived at the Evangelos Enterprises office. Then the long, exhausting drive north.

She’d come this far. She refused to return home, defeated. There was too much at stake.

Opening the back door of the car, she slid in beside Seb. Sure enough, he was sleeping, a lock of blond hair flopping over his too-pale face. He looked vulnerable, curled up with his teddy under his chin.

Amelie’s heart turned over and love, fierce and fortifying, slammed into her. She shrugged out of her long coat and scooted over against him, draping it over the pair of them. He shifted, frowning in his sleep, opening his mouth as if to protest, but then subsided without so much as a whimper. Under the cashmere, Amelie wrapped her arm around him and hugged him close.

They’d hit a dead end and she was out of alternatives. She’d have to come up with another plan, but for now, she’d allow herself a tiny respite. Ten minutes’ rest

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