‘What a winner Apollo picked to father my only grandchild with! He had the pick of the world’s heiresses. He could have brought a royal princess home as his bride,’ Theo Demakis growled in disgust. ‘Even then I was rich as Midas and money is the equal of any fancy pedigree. But my son wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, was he? He picked a woman who was a lush, a spendthrift and a whore-’

Her face flaming, Prudence surged upright. ‘I won’t sit here listening to you talking about my mother like that!’

The older man surveyed her with ironic amusement. ‘What choice do you have? You need my money to dig her out of trouble.’

At that blunt declaration, Prudence lost colour. She lowered her head and swallowed hard on her angry pain. Slowly, heavily, she sank back down in her seat again. As she had learned at an early age, penury and dignity rarely went hand in hand. In any case, Theo Demakis was right and the truth was not very pleasant: she did need his money. Her mother was deeply in debt, drinking heavily and currently facing court action over unpaid bills. But Prudence was convinced that if the stress of the older woman’s financial problems was removed, Trixie could be persuaded to enter a clinic and go through rehab again. Painful as it was to accept, Prudence reflected with a sinking sensation in her tummy, Demakis money could well make the difference between her mother living or dying. Years of alcohol abuse had dangerously weakened Trixie’s health.

The older man dealt his silent granddaughter a harsh look of impatience. ‘I brought you to Greece only because I believe you can be of use to me. It’ll be interesting to see if you have the brains to recognise a lucky break when it’s on the table in front of you. ‘