LITMIR.BIZ

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else I could ask or trust. Do I approach my son—her uncle—or one of her untrustworthy cousins to take care of this for me?’

      ‘No, that would not be fair. They would view another family member coming out of the woodwork as competition.’

      ‘Exactly.’ Socrates looked relieved by the younger man’s quick understanding. ‘I will be deeply in your debt if you take care of this matter for me. If Rose’s namesake turns out to be greedy or dishonest you need never tell me the unsavoury details. I only need to know if she’s a worthwhile risk.’

      ‘I’ll consider it,’ Alexius pronounced grudgingly.

      ‘Don’t take too long—I’m not getting any younger,’ Socrates warned him.

      ‘Is there something I should know about?’ Alexius prompted tautly, worried that Socrates had health concerns that he was keeping secret. Alexius was touched by the faith the older man had in his judgement but he still didn’t want the job, which sixth sense warned him would be a solid gold poisoned chalice. ‘You have other friends—’

      ‘None as shrewd or experienced as you are with women,’ Socrates countered gravely. ‘You will know her for what she is. I’m convinced she won’t succeed in pulling the wool over your eyes.’

      Alexius finally lifted his drink and sighed, ‘I’ll think this over. Are you well?’

      The old man gave him a stubborn appraisal. ‘There is nothing that you need worry about.’

      Nonetheless, Alexius was filled with concern, but the closed look of obstinacy on Socrates’s face kept him from demanding answers to that laden assurance. He was already disconcerted by Socrates’s abnormally frank speech. His godfather had buried his pride and virtually bared his soul when he openly admitted for the first time what a disappointment his three adult children had proved to be. Alexius perfectly understood that the old man did not want to add another idle freeloader to his family circle, but he could not approve of his devious approach to the problem.

      ‘Suppose this girl is the good granddaughter that you want?’ Alexius prompted uneasily. ‘How will she feel when she finds out about your relationship and realises that I’m your godson? She’ll know then that she was set up—’

      ‘And she’ll understand why if she ever meets the rest of my family,’ Socrates fielded without anxiety. ‘It’s not a perfect plan, Alexius, but it’s the only way I can face the possibility of letting her into my life.’

      Having dined with his godfather, Alexius flew straight back to London in an unusually troubled state of mind. He lived for the challenge of business, the action of staying one step ahead of his closest competitors and the thrill of ensuring that his enemies fell by the wayside. What the hell did he know about working out whether or not his godfather’s long-lost granddaughter was a fit person to become the old man’s heir? It was a huge responsibility and an unwelcome challenge when Alexius did not consider himself to be ‘a people person’.

      Indeed, his own private life was as regimented as his public life. He didn’t like ties and he gave his trust to very few. He had no family of his own to consider and believed that lack had simply made him tougher. His relationships were never complicated and, with women, were generally so basic that sometimes they filled even him with distaste. He had always avoided the ones who wanted commitment, and the other ones, the habitually shallow beauties who shared his bed, often put a price on their bodies that would have shamed a hooker. But he was a not a hypocrite even if he was aware that on one level he did pay for their services with the heady allure of the publicity being seen in his company offered and with the designer clothes, diamonds and the luxurious lifestyle he supplied. All such women had a natural talent for feathering their own nests and their greed was no worse, to his own mind, than his body’s natural need for sexual release.

      ‘So what’s so special about this job?’ Zoe demanded impatiently. ‘Why do we have to move here?’

      Rosie suppressed a sigh as the two young women wheeled the cleaning trolley through the almost silent foyer into the lift, having shown their identification to the security staff on the doors. ‘STA Industries is part of a much bigger concern and this may only be a small contract but this is their headquarters. Vanessa is convinced that if we provide an efficient service here it could lead to more work and she chose us because she says we’re her best workers.’

      The attractive brunette by Rosie’s side grimaced, unimpressed by the compliment. ‘We may be her best workers but she doesn’t pay us on that basis and it’ll cost me more to travel here.’

      Rosie was no more enamoured of the change in her routine, but in the current economic climate she was relieved to still have regular employment, not to mention the invaluable accommodation that went with the job. After all, only a week ago Rosie had found herself unexpectedly and scarily homeless and only Vanessa’s offer of a room had saved Rosie and her pet dog, Baskerville, from ending up on the street with their possessions. It would be quite some time before she stopped being grateful for her reasonably priced bedsit in a building rented by her employer and shared with other staff.

      Vanessa Jansen’s office-cleaning business was small and she only got contracts by severely undercutting her competitors, which meant that the profits were minimal and the contents of Rosie’s pay packet never seemed to increase. Times were tight in the business world, with non-essential services being cut, and Vanessa had recently lost a couple of regular clients.

      ‘You never call in sick and you’re never late. I always know that I can rely on you and that’s rare,’ her boss had told her warmly. ‘If we can get more work out of this contract I’ll up your pay … I promise.’

      Although Rosie was used to such promises being broken by Vanessa, she had smiled appreciatively out of politeness. She was a cleaner because the hours suited and allowed her to study during the day, not because she enjoyed it. She also could have told Vanessa some very practical ways in which she could improve her business prospects. Well aware, though, that the advice would be resented, she said nothing when she saw lazy co-workers being retained and slapdash work done through lack of adequate supervision. Vanessa was great at juggling figures and seeking out new clients, but she was a poor manager, who rarely emerged from behind her desk. That was the real reason why her business was struggling to survive.

      But then, Rosie had long since learned that you couldn’t change people. After all, she had tried for a long time to change her mother, had encouraged, supported, advised, even pleaded, and in the end it had all come to nothing because, regardless of what Rosie did, her mother had had no desire to change the person she was. You had to accept people as they were, not as you would like them to be, Rosie reflected with a pained sense of regret as she recalled that hard lesson. She remembered countless supervised sessions with her mother during which she had tried to shine bright enough to interest her parent in being a parent and in wanting to raise her own daughter. And now she winced, looking back at all that wasted energy and angst, for Jenny Gray had been infinitely fonder of booze, bad boys and a lively social life than she had ever been of the daughter she had purposely conceived.

      ‘I thought your father would marry me—I thought I’d be set up for life,’ her mother had once confided on the subject of Rosie’s conception. ‘He came from a rich family but he was a waste of space.’

      As she was nothing like the ambitious fantasist her late mother had been, Rosie privately thought that a lot of men were a waste of space and that women were better company. The men she had dated had been boringly obsessed with sex, sport and beer. As she had no interest in any of that and better things to do with her few hours of free time, it had been many months since she had even had a date. Not that she was ever likely to be bowled over by a rush of male interest in her essentially unexciting self, Rosie conceded ruefully. Rosie was barely five feet tall and flat as a board back and front, embarrassingly bereft of the womanly curves that attracted the opposite sex. For years she had hoped that she was simply a ‘late developer’ and that if she waited long enough the required badges of womanhood would magically arrive and transform her body and her prospects, but here she was, twenty-three years old

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