The Greek's Convenient Cinderella - Lynne Graham Page 0,3

the landing. ‘I’ll be down as soon as I’ve got Posy settled,’ she called back.

Posy tried to roll away while her big sister was slotting her into a fresh onesie, but Tansy was practised at dealing with her playfulness. In spite of her difficult start in life, at ten months old and blessed with a mop of blond curls and big blue eyes, Posy was a very pretty baby with a happy disposition. Sadly, Tansy and Posy’s mother had died within minutes of bringing her second daughter into the world. At the hospital, reeling in shock from that tragedy, Tansy had taken one look into her sister’s eyes and had realised that, although she didn’t like her stepfather very much, she would never be able to walk away from her newborn sibling.

And yet her life, she conceded ruefully, would have been so much easier if she had had the strength to walk away.

Her aunt, Violet, had given her some surprisingly hard-hearted advice after her mother’s funeral. ‘Leave now and go back to that university course that your mother made you abandon. That baby is your sister, not your daughter. By all means, stay in touch with her and your stepfather, but let them get on with their lives while you return to yours. You don’t owe them or your mother’s memory anything more than that.’

But, unfortunately, nothing was that simple or straightforward, particularly when feelings got involved, Tansy conceded ruefully. Posy might not be Tansy’s daughter, but Tansy had become as deeply attached to her baby sister as any new mother. Calvin had asked Tansy to stay on to look after Posy and enable him to return to work and she had agreed to that, but she had soon begun to feel taken for granted as an unpaid childminder, and then her stepfather had begun dating again. While acknowledging that Calvin was only in his early thirties, having been considerably younger than her mother, Tansy had still thought his interest in other women had returned tastelessly soon, but she had minded her own business when Calvin’s lady friends had begun to stay over for the night. Only when Calvin had begun to pressure his regular girlfriend, Susie, into taking over Posy’s care and replacing Tansy had Tansy interfered, because it had quickly become painfully obvious that Susie was too irresponsible to take charge of a baby.

One afternoon Susie had actually gone out and left Tansy’s little sister alone and unattended in the house when something more entertaining than childcare had been offered to her. There had been other incidents as well, incidents that bordered on child neglect, which had stoked Tansy’s growing concern for her sister’s welfare.

It was not as though she could trust Posy’s father to look out for his child’s welfare. In fact, Calvin Hetherington hadn’t the smallest interest in being a father to his motherless daughter, nor did he seem to have developed any natural affection for his child. He had married Tansy’s mother, Rosie, a successful businesswoman in her mid-forties, and the last thing he had expected out of that union was to become a parent. Rosie might have been overjoyed by her unforeseen pregnancy, but Calvin had been aghast and his wife’s death had not made him any keener to take on a paternal role. He might live in the same household but he behaved as though his daughter did not exist. That was why Tansy had stayed on to look after her sister even though her stepfather had recently made it rather obvious that he thought it was time she moved out.

In her will, her mother had left both her home and her beauty salon to her second husband. Had it not been for her infant sibling and her impoverished state Tansy would immediately have moved out because she felt very much surplus to requirements in Calvin’s home life now that he was entertaining other women.

‘Is the kid in bed?’ Calvin checked as Tansy walked into the spacious lounge. ‘Look, sit down. We have to talk.’

‘What about?’ Tansy enquired defensively, standing straight and stiff, instinctively distrustful of the vain, shallow and selfish man her mother had chosen to marry. She had to force herself to sit down and act relaxed and pleasant, which she had learned to do around her stepfather.

‘I’m going to be totally honest with you. I’m facing bankruptcy proceedings in the near future,’ the slim blond man informed her as he stood at the window.

Tansy froze and paled. ‘That’s not possible.