RHIANNA was stepping out on to the zebra crossing. It was
pouring with rain, the wind battering the rain hood on
Nicky's buggy. She'd checked both ways before starting to
cross, but as she pushed forward, eyes stinging with rain,
her head bowed into the wind, weak and exhausted but with
desperate urgency, it came again, the way it always did.
A screech of tyres, an engine roaring, and then a blow
so violent it lifted her up and threw her sideways as the
black and white painted tarmac slammed up to meet her. And
then the sickening thud of her body impacting — and then
the darkness. Total darkness.
She jerked as her brain relived, yet again, the moment
when the speeding car had run her down on a pedestrian
crossing. The jerking caused pain, shooting through her,
but following the pain came worse — much worse.
A voice screaming — screaming inside her head. Distraught.
Demented.
Nicky! Nicky! Nicky!
Over and over again. Drowning her with terror and fear and
horror. Over and over again —
A hand was on her shoulder. Her eyes flew open. One of the
nurses was speaking.
"Your little boy is safe — I've told you that. He's safe.
He wasn't injured."
Rhianna stared up into the face looking down at her, her
eyes pools of anguish. "Nicky," she whispered again, her
voice husky, fearful. "Nicky — where are you? Where are
you?"
The nurse spoke again, her voice calm and
reassuring. "He's being looked after until you get better.
Now, you just relax and get some sleep. That's what you
need now. Would you like something to help you sleep?"
Rhianna pressed her lips together and tried to shake her
head. But any movement when she was awake was agony. Even
breathing was an agony, her infected lungs raw and painful.
"I can't sleep — I mustn't! I've got to find
Nicky...they've got him. They won't give him back. I know
they won't — I know it, I know it!"
Her voice was rising again, fear gulping in her throat,
and she could hardly get the air out of her.
"Of course you'll get him back," the nurse said
bracingly. "He's only been taken into care while you're
here. As soon as you come out they'll hand him over —"
But terror flared in Rhianna's eyes. "No — she's taken
him. That social worker. She said I couldn't look after
him, that he'd be better off in care." Her hand clawed at
the nurse's fingers, eyes distending. "I've got to get him
back. He's my son!"
"I'll get you a sedative," the nurse said, and went off.
Dread and anguish filled Rhianna. Nicky was gone. Taken
into care. Just like the social worker had said he would
be.
"You clearly can't cope with looking after a child."
Rhianna heard the condemning tone ringing in her
memory. "Your son is at risk."
Oh, God — why? Why? thought Rhianna. Why had the woman had
to turn up just then? She'd felt so ill, and it had only
been a few days after her father's funeral. She'd taken a
double dose of flu powder and it had knocked her out, so
that when the social worker had arrived it had been Nicky —
still in his pyjamas, patiently watching toddler TV in
the living room, with a bowl of spilt cereal on the floor —
who'd opened the door to the woman while his mother lay
collapsed in bed, breathing sterterously and all but
unconscious...
The woman had taken against her, Rhianna knew, the first
time she'd ever come to the rundown council flat to assess
whether Rhianna's plea for home help for her father was
valid or not. The woman had told Rhianna bluntly that her
father needed hospitalisation until the end came, that a
dying man should not be anywhere near a small child, and
that if Rhianna insisted on refusing to name her child's
father she had no business expecting the state to pay for
his upbringing instead of his father. Nicky should be in
nursery and she should go back to work, because that was
government policy.
At the end of her tether, Rhianna had lost her temper and
yelled at the woman, not registering that she was still
holding the vegetable knife she'd been chopping carrots
with in the kitchen before the social worker had come in
to harangue her. Seeing the knife blade, the woman's eyes
had flared, and she told told Rhianna she was dangerously
violent and brandishing a weapon threateningly.
After that everything had gone increasingly downhill. Her
father's life had drawn to its tormented close, and she'd
eventually had to call an ambulance to take him to
hospital, where a final stroke had brought the end at
last. Her exhaustion, her illness, her desperate need to
shelter Nicky from what was happening all around him, had
laid her lower than she had ever been in the five bleak
years since her world had collapsed around her.
And when the social worker had arrived that fateful
morning, to find Nicky unsupervised and Rhianna passed
out, it had been the final straw.
"I'm having a Care Order issued," the woman had told her
grimly. "Before any harm comes to him either from your
violent tendencies or your complete lack of
responsibility." She'd dipped her finger in the trace of
flu powder on the bedside table and sniffed it
suspiciously, glaring down at the barely conscious
Rhianna. "I'll take this for analysis, so don't even
bother to try and hide whatever other drugs you've been
using."
She'd left the room, and Rhianna had somehow found the
strength to get out of bed and stagger after her — only to
crash into the doorframe as if she were, indeed, under the
influence of drugs instead of being so ill with a chest
infection she could hardly breathe.
When the woman had gone, informing her she would be
returning shortly with the necessary documentation to
remove Nicky, Rhianna, out of her mind with terror, had
dragged clothes on and set off for the doctor's surgery,
desperate to get some antibiotics as well as her doctor's
avowal that she was not a drug user and was not violent —
anything she could use to fight off the Care Order. But
before she'd been able to get to the surgery she'd been
knocked down by a speeding car on a pedestrian crossing.
When she'd surfaced back to consciousness it had been to
find herself in a hospital ward, her body in agony, her
limbs and torso strapped up, a drip in her arm and her
lungs on fire.
And Nicky gone.
Nicky — her only reason for living, the only light in the
black pall that crushed her, the only joy in her life.
Nicky — she had to get him back! She would die without
him. And he — oh, God — she could not bear to think of his
distress, his confusion. Taken into care with no familiar
face around him, no mother to keep him safe the way she
had kept him safe all his little life. Despite all the
strain and pressure, the hardship and the relentless,
punishing difficul-ties of nursing her difficult,
cantankerous father, despite coping with no money, coping
with her father's depression and his slow decline into
both physical and mental incapacity, with no one to help,
no one to turn to, and only the bare subsistence of the
state to keep them going.
Nicky! The silent, anguished cry came again and again as
she drifted in an out of consciousness, reliving over and
over the moment when the car had crashed into her and
she'd thought it was Nicky who'd been killed...
But he wasn't dead! Dear God she'd been spared that. He
was alive, but gone, and she was terrified that she would
never get him back. Never. He'd be put up for adoption,
spirited away, locked away...taken from her...
The nurses had tried to help. "Is there no one who could
look after him for you? Friends, neighbours, relatives?"
Rhianna's hands had clawed on the bedclothes. "No one."
She had no relatives — not since burying her father. No
friends left. All gone. And neighbours — she'd never
befriended anyone in the council flats, too caught up in
her own overwhelming problems to have time, or any spare
energy, to notice anyone else — too horrified, if she
faced up to it, that her life had sunk to these sorry
straits.
One of the nurses had spoken again. Very carefully. "What
about your little boy's father?" Rhianna's eyes had
hardened automatically, irrevocably. "He has no father."
Tactfully, the nurse had said nothing more, but as she'd
bustled off Rhianna's own words seared in her mind.
He has no father....
An image leapt in her mind like a burning brand. Burning
through her skin, her flesh. Her memory...
RHIANNA had been desperate. Filled with a sick, agitated
desperation that had made her do what she had done.
But she had had no choice.
Now, somewhere close to the hospital, she could hear the
chilling wail of an ambulance siren. It echoed in her
memory — the wailing siren of the ambulance, five long
years ago, carrying her stricken father to hospital. A
heart attack, and it had been her fault — her fault for
telling him what she had just heard from Maunder Marine
Limited. That they had themselves been acquired, and so
their own corporate investment programme would have to go
on hold until their new owners, Petrakis International,
had given it their approval. That could take months, she'd
been warned.
Months during which Davies Yacht Design would have no idea
whether or not the life-saving takeover by MML would ever
go ahead.
And without that assurance her father's company would go
under — succumb to its debts as its creditors foreclosed.
It would be the end of the company — and the end for her
father. He lived for his company — lived for designing
yachts. A vocation. An obsession. Taking over his whole
life, giving it the only meaning it had.
And she, his daughter, would be no comfort to him. Unless
she could save his company. She had left the intensive
care ward, left her father wired up to monitors, the
nursing staff looking grave, and gone back to her father's
office.
And picked up the phone.
There had to be a way to get the go-ahead for the takeover
by MML. She had been the one to approach them in the first
place, convincing the larger company that Davies Yacht
Design was a profitable acquisition prospect. Forward
order books were full, and the company's technical
reputation was outstanding, but the chronic under-
capitalisation and growing debt-interest burden, combined
with a major client cancelling his already completed order
and another one changing his mind halfway through, had
pushed Davies Yacht Design to the brink. Her father's
complete lack of interest in the mundane details of
keeping a company financially healthy had meant the banks
had lost confidence in him and they wanted an exit. If it
wasn't going to come from a white knight like MML, then
they would foreclose.
She had to get MML to go through with the acquisition! But
it had looked as if it was not on their say-so any more.
It was Petrakis International who would have to agree to
it.
And there was no reason why they should not, Rhianna had
thought desperately. Investing in Davies Yacht Design
would pay off handsomely — if she could just convince them
as she had convinced MML.
But she'd hit a stone wall. It was standard corporate
policy, Petrakis International had informed her, to stall
all its acquired companies' major investments until they'd
been checked out. She'd gone as high up the company as she
could reach, and the answer had always been the same.
So she'd aimed for the top, as a last desperate throw.
Alexis Petrakis — head of Petrakis International. Fifteen
minutes. That would be all she'd need. Fifteen minutes to
run through the figures, to show what a shrewd investment
it would be for MML to buy Davies Yacht Design.
But his PA had shot down her hopes. Yes, Mr Petrakis was
currently in London, but his diary was full, including the
evenings, and he was flying back to Greece in three days'
time. Perhaps next month...
But next month would be too late.
There had been only one thin sliver of hope left to
Rhianna. The PA had mentioned that on his last evening in
the UK Alexis Petrakis would be attending a business
dinner at one of the top West End hotels.
It had been her last, last chance...
She closed her eyes, lying in her hospital bed, feeling
memory pour over her like a sheet of acid, burning into
her skin. Feeling again the claws, like pincers in her
stomach, as they had that fateful evening as she'd sat
worried sick, at the table in the thronged banqueting hall.
Because it had seemed Alexis Petrakis wasn't going to
show! It had all been in vain. She'd come up to London,
forked out a fortune for a ticket to the dinner, splashed
out on a new dress and a session at the hairdresser and
beauty parlour — all money she could ill afford, given the
parlous state of the finances at Davies Yacht Design — all
for nothing. She'd even altered the seating plan posted in
the cocktail reception area for the dinner, so that she
would be sitting next to Alexis Petrakis. But though she'd
managed to take her seat without anyone else challenging
her — the seat next to her, with Alexis Petrakis's
nameplate — remained empty.
Her heart had sunk, heavy as lead.
If Alexis Petrakis were not there she might as well give
up and take the next train home, to return to the hospital
waiting room and wait for any sign that they would move
her father out of intensive care.
Worry had closed over her.
A waiter had approached their table, deftly placing a
starter course in front of each guest. As she'd murmured
her desultory thanks another, taller figure, in a black
jacket, not white, had suddenly also been standing there
momentarily. Then he'd been taking his seat — right beside
her.
"Do please excuse me — I've been delayed," he apologised
briefly to the table, his English fluent but accented. He
nodded at several of the guests, acknowledging them by
name, and then turned to his right.
"Alexis Petrakis," he said, holding out his hand. But
Rhianna wasn't capable of responding. She was simply
staring.
This couldn't be Alexis Petrakis. Alexis Petrakis —
chairman of an international company — should be middle-
aged and corpulent, like three-quarters of the male guests
here tonight.
But the man who'd just joined the table was...devastating.
The word thudded in her b