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crossing her arms over her chest, faced him determinedly.

      ‘OK. Let’s skip the weather and the current cricket score and get right down to why you are here.’

      He held her defiant glare for another pulsing pause. ‘I thought it was time I paid the Mercer family a visit.’

      ‘I can’t imagine why. You’re not exactly on the Christmas card list any more.’

      His mouth thinned in what she recalled was his version of a smile. ‘No, I imagine not.’

      She forced her eyes away from the jagged edge of his scar, surprised at how it still affected her to see it after all this time.

      He looked fit and strong, as if he was no stranger to hard physical exercise, and his skin was tanned, but then, she reminded herself, his maternal Greek heritage had always given him somewhat of an advantage in the summer sun. Standing before him now, her creamy skin seemed so pale in spite of the intolerably hot weather they’d been having since Christmas four weeks ago.

      ‘How is your mother?’ she felt compelled to ask out of common politeness.

      ‘She’s dead.’

      Bryony blinked at his bluntness. ‘I…I’m sorry…I hadn’t heard…’

      His eyes glittered with hard cynicism. ‘No, I expect the passing of a long-term servant wouldn’t quite make it to the Mercer breakfast table, let alone as a topic for discussion over lunch or dinner.’

      The bitterness of his words stung her as he clearly intended it to. As much as she hated admitting it, he was very probably right. Her parents would never discuss servants as if they were real people. She’d grown up with their attitudes, had even demonstrated similar ones herself, but as she had grown older had shied away from maintaining such outdated snobbery.

      Not that she was going to let him know that.

      No, let him think her the spoilt brat heiress of the Mercer millions.

      She sent him an imperious look over one shoulder as she wandered back to her chair, taking her time to arrange her skirt over her knees.

      ‘So—’ she inspected her neatly French-manicured nails before lifting her blue gaze back to his ‘—what do you do these days, Kane? I don’t suppose you’ve followed in your mother’s footsteps and clean up other people’s messes for a living?’

      She knew she sounded exactly like the shallow socialite he’d always considered her to be; she could even see the slight curl of his damaged lip as if he was satisfied his opinion had been justified by her crass words.

      ‘You suppose right.’ He leant back against her father’s antique desk with the sort of indolence she’d come to always associate with him. ‘You could say I’m in shipping.’

      ‘How very Greek of you,’ she observed with undisguised sarcasm.

      His dark eyes challenged hers, a flicker of anger lighting them from behind. ‘I am just as much an Australian citizen as you are, Bryony. I’ve never even been to Greece, nor do I speak any more than a few words of the language.’

      ‘How can you be sure of your true heritage?’ she asked. ‘I thought you didn’t know who your father was?’

      It was a nasty taunt, and one she wasn’t proud of, but his manner had increasingly unnerved her to the point of reckless rudeness.

      She watched as he reined in his anger, the white edge of his scar standing out as his mouth tightened.

      ‘I can see you still like to play dirty,’ he said.

      She shifted her gaze back to the unfathomable depths of his. ‘When pressed to do so, yes.’

      ‘Let’s hope you can cope with the consequences if such a need arises in the very near future.’

      Bryony couldn’t hold back a small frown at his coolly delivered statement. There was something about his demeanour that alerted her to the strange undercurrents she’d felt swirling about her ever since she’d driven down from Sydney that morning.

      ‘Why are you here?’ she asked. ‘What possible reason could you have to be here?’

      ‘I have several reasons.’

      ‘Let’s start with number one.’ She set her chin at an imperious angle even though inside she was trembling with an unnamed fear.

      He crossed one ankle over the other, his action drawing her eyes to his long muscled thighs.

      She tore her gaze away and forced herself to hold his Sphinx-like stare.

      ‘Number one is—’ He paused for a mere fraction of a second, but it was long enough for another flutter of unease to feather along the lining of her stomach. ‘I now own Mercyfields.’

      Her eyes widened in alarm. ‘W-what did you say?’

      Kane ignored her question and continued with implacable calm, ‘Number two is I also own Mercer Freight Enterprises.’

      She swallowed her rising panic with difficulty. ‘I-I don’t believe you.’

      Again he ignored her strangled comment. ‘I also own the harbourside apartment and the yacht.’ He paused as he gave her an inscrutable look before adding, ‘However, I have decided to allow your father to keep his Mercedes and Jaguar; I have enough cars of my own.’

      ‘How very magnanimous of you,’ she managed to quip caustically. ‘Is there anything else in the Mercer household you think you now own?’

      He smiled a hateful smile that chilled her already tingling flesh.

      ‘I don’t just think I own the Mercer package, Bryony—I do own it.’

      He reached for a sheaf of papers that was lying on her father’s desk behind him and handed them to her. She took them with fingers that felt like wet cotton wool, her tortured gaze slipping to where her father’s signature should have been but very clearly wasn’t.

      Each document was the same.

      The new owner of everything to do with the Mercer millions was now Mr Kane Leonidas Kaproulias. The houses, the business, the investments, the yacht…

      She let the papers flutter to the floor as she stood up on watery legs. ‘I don’t understand…how did this happen? My father would never let things get to this state! He’d rather die than see you take everything.’

      The loathsome smile was back. ‘Actually, he was quite agreeable to it all in the end.’

      ‘I don’t believe you. You must be blackmailing him or something, for he would never allow you to—’ She stopped as she thought about her father’s recent behaviour. Always a stressed-out control freak, he’d definitely worsened of late. Christmas had been a tense affair, his constant harping on at her had seen her make up an excuse to leave a couple of days early, even though she’d felt guilty at leaving her mother.

      Had Kane set him up to destroy him?

      He certainly had all the motives one would need to implement such a plan, for even though her father had sponsored Kane’s private academy education as a goodwill gesture he’d still treated him appallingly during the time he’d lived on the estate, when his mother had been employed to do the cleaning.

      And not just her father. Her brother, Austin, had been relentless in his bullying at times, not to mention her own reprehensible behaviour, which still made her cringe with shame whenever she allowed herself to think about it…

      ‘I wouldn’t exactly describe it as blackmail.’ He cut across her thoughts. ‘Suffice it to say I persuaded him to consider his somewhat limited options. And, as I expected him to, he took the easy way out.’

      ‘The easy way?’ She gave him an incredulous look. ‘You call handing over several million dollars worth of assets the easy way out?’

      ‘It

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