The sun had appeared in the form of the sexiest man she had ever set eyes on.
It was only on a whim that she’d gone to the palace that day. Needing a break after the first year of slogging for her master’s degree, she’d decided to visit her mother’s family in Agon. The sun always shone in Agon and life always felt freer. Simpler. Even her father relaxed enough to stop fault-finding every five minutes when he was there.
On her third morning, she’d woken early and decided to visit the palace she’d loved as a child.
Armed with nothing but her sketchbook, drawing pencils, a bottle of water and a picnic lunch, she’d parked her bottom on a bench and drawn her favourite building in the world.
After five hours of stillness cocooned in her own head, tuning out the hordes of tourists drifting around her, she’d suddenly become aware of being watched. She’d looked up at the same moment a voice had spoken behind her ear. ‘That is some talent you have there, lady. Name your price.’
She’d turned her head sharply and found herself face to face with a man who’d immediately made her heart swell. Tall—he had to be at least a foot taller than her own five-foot-one frame—and muscular, he’d had messy, short brown hair, the tips highlighted by the sun, and a deep tan that suggested a life spent enjoying the great outdoors. When she’d met the ice-blue eyes surrounded by laughter lines, her swelling heart had set off at a canter.
Over three years later and she’d had the exact same reaction to seeing him again.
Over three years later and Helena was still paying the price for that impulsive visit to the palace.
She’d reached her station. Hooking her bag over her shoulder, she trudged off the Tube and up the steep escalators. The sun had been setting when she’d begun her commute home but when she left the long, wide tunnel that brought her back out into the world, rain lashed the night sky. So much for the light cloud the forecasters had promised. Naturally, the first thing she did was step into a puddle that immediately soaked through the flat canvas shoe she’d changed into after the disastrous pitch.
Marvellous. All she needed was to be hit by a bus and her day would be complete.
By the time she reached her basement flat, the rest of her body was as soaked to the bone as her left foot.
Her flat was freezing and, shivering, she chided herself for believing that early May would bring glorious sunshine.
She’d turned the heating on, stripped off her soaking clothes and put on a thick towelling robe, and was running herself a hot bath when her doorbell rang.
Helena sighed, removed her glasses and covered her face with her hands. All the energy had been sapped out of her.
When the bell rang again, she turned the taps off and shoved her glasses back on. In the three years she’d rented her little breadcrumb of London she’d had one unannounced visitor: a delivery man hoping she’d take in a parcel for the couple in the flat upstairs.
She padded to the front door and, out of precautionary habit, put her eye to the spy hole...and immediately reared back in fright.
How the hell had he found her?
The bell rang again.
Heart thumping, she backed away. Unless Theo had developed X-ray vision, he couldn’t know she was in. She would slip back to the bathroom...
The bell that rang out this time was continuous, as if a Greek man famed for his impatience had decided to keep his finger on it until he’d annoyed every resident who lived in the building.
The infuriating, egotistical, sneaky little... She couldn’t think of a name to call him that wouldn’t earn her a slap from her grandmother.
The shock that had cloaked her since she’d come face to face with him in the boardroom lifted and a spike of furious energy shot through her veins, making her legs stride to the front door and her hands remove the three chains, deadlock and ordinary lock to fling the door open.
And there he stood, in a black shirt and black trousers, rain lashing down on him, black overcoat billowing in the growing wind, the widest grin on his face that could have been mistaken for rapture had she not seen the danger sparking from his ice-blue eyes.
Raising his hands and spreading them palm up, Theo tilted his head. ‘Surprise!’
CHAPTER TWO
THEO ALLOWED HIMSELF a moment to savour the angry shock on Helena’s face before brushing past her and into the pleasant warmth of her home. That this should never have been her home was something he would not allow himself to dwell on.
He wiped the rain off his face with his hands while wiping his feet on the doormat.
‘Nice place you have here,’ he commented as he stepped over a threadbare rug covering hardwood flooring. An estate agent would call her flat cosy. A lay person would describe it as fit for dormice.
Helena closed the door and stood with her back against it. ‘What are you doing here?’
He faced her and placed a hand to his chest in a wounded fashion. ‘You don’t seem happy to see me, agapi mou.’
‘Dysentery would be a more welcome visitor. For cripes’ sake, Theo, it’s been three years. You turn up at my place of work all cloak and dagger and then you turn up at my home? What’s going on?’
‘I thought you would like to know in person that you won.’
Her forehead creased. ‘Won what?’
‘The job.’ He flashed the widest smile he could spread his mouth into. Theos, he was enjoying this. ‘Congratulations. You are the architect of choice for my new home.’
But her beautiful face only became blanker.
‘Why don’t you open a bottle of wine for us while we talk details?’ He peered round the nearest door and found a kitchen of a size a toddler would struggle to party in.
‘What are you talking about?’
He spun back round to face her and clicked his finger and thumb together. ‘Details. They are important, do you not agree?’
‘Well...yes...’
‘And alcohol always makes tedious detail go down easier.’ He strode to the fridge and opened it. He tutted and sighed theatrically at the sparsity of its contents. ‘No white wine. Where do you keep the red?’
‘I haven’t got any.’
‘None? Anything alcoholic at all?’
‘No...’
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and winked as he pressed his thumbprint to it. ‘Easily rectified.’
‘Hold on.’ Suspicion suddenly replaced the disbelieving gormless look.
‘Nai, agapi mou?’
‘You’re telling me I’ve won the pitch?’
‘Nai. You have won. Congratulations.’ He raised a hand palm up and waggled his fingers jazz-hands-style.
Her brows drew together in increased suspicion.
‘You’re allowed to smile, you know.’ Goading her was something to relish in itself.
She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, eyes not leaving his face. ‘I’ll smile when you tell me why you’ve come to my home to deliver the news instead of using the proper channels, and, now I’m thinking about it, who gave you my address? And will you stop going through my cupboards and drawers?’
‘The contents of a kitchen are a good indication of a person’s character,’ he chided playfully, opening another drawer that contained precisely a roll of cooking foil, a roll of Clingfilm and two tea towels.
‘And the failure to stop rifling through said kitchen when the owner has requested it is an equally good indicator.’
With another theatrical sigh, he closed the drawer. Judging by the contents of what he’d seen so far, Helena was as averse to cooking now as she’d been three years ago.
‘Have you eaten?’ he asked.
‘N... Yes.’
Laughing at her blatant lie, he pulled his phone back out. ‘What would you like?’
‘For you to stop mucking about like a hyperactive child, get
to the ruddy point and get the hell out of my flat.’
Now Theo’s forehead creased and he waggled a finger at her before tapping the screen of his phone. ‘Is that any way to speak to the man who is going to make you rich?’
‘If I cared anything for riches I would have married you.’
He put his hand to his chest again and pretended to double over. ‘Ouch. I see you have been sharpening your tongue in recent years.’
‘And you’ve been dulling your hearing. For the last time, answer my question.’
‘Which one? There have been so many.’
A growl escaped her slender throat. Theo laughed to finally get a proper reaction out of her. Her shock had been transparent in their earlier meeting but she had recovered beautifully, making her pitch with controlled precision. A stranger meeting her for the first time could be forgiven for thinking her controlled persona defined her, but the stranger would be wrong. Helena kept her passion, be it anger or desire, tightly hidden beneath prim clothing, but when it was unleashed...whoa! She scorched. He could hardly wait to feel her burn.
‘You can start with how you got my address,’ she bit out with barely concealed exasperation.
‘Your mother gave it to me.’ A photograph on the kitchen wall by the door caught his attention. It was a picture of Helena cuddling a cute toddler. He touched the glass frame beside the child’s face. ‘Who is that?’
She ignored his question. ‘You’ve seen my mother?’
‘I wanted to find you, agapi mou. Who better to help than your mother?’
He felt her dumbfounded stare on his skin but deliberately kept his gaze from hers.
This was a scene Theo had played out in his mind many times since formulating his plan. So far only two things had marred his picture-perfect fantasy: arriving at Helena’s home soaked from the three-metre walk from his car to her front door, and Helena wearing a grey towelling bathrobe. If she’d been psychically attuned to his picture-perfect fantasies, she would have worn a silk kimono that caressed her wonderful curves, not the shapeless thing that covered her from neck to ankle. Sexiness must have been the last thing on her mind when she’d bought it. It didn’t stop him from wanting to pull the ugly robe apart—she could have worn a sackcloth and he’d still have wanted her—but he still vowed to burn the ugly thing at the first opportunity.
‘When did you see her?’ she asked tightly.
‘Three months ago. Who is the child?’
‘Stop changing the subject.’ Her teeth were well and truly gritted. She hadn’t moved from the threshold of the kitchen door but the room was so small that if she entered it, she would have to touch him. He knew perfectly well that at that moment, Helena would rather stroke a tarantula than touch him. ‘My mother never said anything about seeing you.’
Theo grinned. He was enjoying this. The entire day had been one of unremitting joy. ‘I asked her not to.’
The pretty face shaped like a diamond, and which glowed like a diamond under the sun, tightened. ‘Why?’
‘I will tell you that when you tell me who the child in the photo is.’ It couldn’t be hers. Firstly, her mother would have mentioned it. Secondly, this apartment wasn’t big enough for Helena, let alone Helena, a child and, presumably, the child’s father...who would be Helena’s lover.
He didn’t care what lovers she’d had. Okay, he did care. A little. But only in the kicking-himself-for-not-having-her-himself sense. Helena had wanted them to make love. She’d tried every trick in the book to weaken his resolve. It had been torturous. Thoughts of making love to her had fuelled his every waking moment but he’d been determined to do things properly. He’d believed himself in love with her. He’d believed they would be together for ever. He’d loved her and he would show that love by respecting her virginity and waiting until they were husband and wife before making love to her. After all, he’d reasoned, they had their whole lives to spend making love. So they had stuck to doing ‘everything but’ and then she’d jilted him at the last moment, leaving his ego battered and his desire unfulfilled. Was it any wonder he’d been unable to rise to the occasion since?
Just being here and sharing the same air as her proved his plan was going to be a winner. Energy flowed through his veins, his skin tingled and arousal...for once he was having to squash it rather than futilely coax it.
Helena scowled at Theo’s profile while he was still studiously examining the photos she’d hung on the wall. ‘She’s my boss’s granddaughter. Now stop looking at my photos and tell me why you’ve been bothering my mother.’ Her poor mother, trained to obey the word of a man, would have told Theo anything he wanted to know and made any promise he asked of her.
No wonder she’d been jumpier than normal during their recent secret get-togethers. She would have wanted to warn Helena that Theo was back on the scene but been unable to say a word. Her mother knew too well the consequences of going against a man who held power.
‘I already told you.’ He winked again. ‘I wanted to find you.’
‘You better not have upset her.’
‘Why would I have done that?’ he asked mildly. ‘I like your mother.’
‘What about my father? Was he there? Is he in on it too?’ She thought it unlikely—if her father thought there was any way Helena and Theo could get back together he was quite likely to kidnap and hand-deliver her to him—but she needed to be sure.
He shrugged. ‘He wasn’t there when I visited. I don’t know if your mother told him.’
Her tight lungs loosened a fraction. ‘Well, you’ve succeeded in your quest to find me. Congratulations. Now you can go.’
He bestowed her with a look that made her feel as though the blood could burst from her veins and she wished she could say it would be entirely due to anger. Theo had always been his own life-force, a man who thrummed with infectious energy. Although far from traditionally handsome, he had a magnetism that ensured every eye in the vicinity was drawn to him, and an affable charm and wit that could make a complete stranger feel they’d just met their new best friend.
For three incredible months Helena had been at the centre of his life-force. He’d treated her like a princess. There was nothing he wouldn’t have done for her. If she’d asked for the moon he would have got a lasso and pulled it down to her. If she’d married him she would have wanted for nothing...apart from her own autonomy. Because the flip side of Theo’s magnetic energy was a spoilt, entitled, controlling, easily bored ego who thought the world revolved around him. And in Theo’s world, everything did revolve around him.
The secret fears that had built up in her as their wedding approached had crystallised during the fateful lunch with her parents the day before they’d been due to exchange their vows. Her future had flashed before her, a future that would see her become a clone of her mother, a once vivacious woman turned into a timid mouse under the weight of her husband’s misogyny; browbeaten into giving up her dreams and becoming as dependent as a child.
Yanking herself out of Theo’s world and far from his orbit had been the hardest thing Helena had ever done but she’d never regretted it. If her heart fisted into a knot whenever she saw a picture of him with yet another walking clothes horse on his arm it was only the residue of her old love making a dying flicker.
To find herself standing only feet away from him, the laser stare penetrating her from the ice-blue eyes that should have made her feel cold but warmed her far more effectively than the bath she’d run for herself... Cells in her body that had been dormant all these years were flickering back to life and, with a burst of fearful clarity, she realised these flickers needed extinguishing immediately.
Turning on her heel, Helena stormed to the front door and yanked it open. ‘Get out.’
This was her home. Her sanctuary. Her flat, tiny but usually plentiful enough for her, now, with Theo’s hulking body sucking out all its oxygen, felt as if its pr
oportions had shrunk to the size of a playpen. She wanted him gone right now, before she gave in to the urge to punch the arrogance right off his smug face, or, worse, burst into tears or, even worse than that, flung her arms around him.
He moved out of the kitchen but no further than its door, shaking his head sadly. ‘But we have not yet discussed the details of the project or answered the other questions we have of each other.’
That blasted voice. She hated it. All gravelly and throaty and capable of penetrating her skin and seeping into her bloodstream.
‘I don’t care,’ she snapped. ‘I told you three years ago that I never wanted to see you again. If I’d known you were our mystery client I would never have pitched for the job.’
‘I know.’ Another wink. ‘That’s why I kept my identity hidden and asked your mother to keep her mouth shut.’
She didn’t know if it was the gust of wind that blew over her through the open front door or Theo’s words that made her skin chill. ‘You...you hid your identity on purpose?’
He winked again and clicked his finger and thumb together. ‘Details, agapi mou. One must always take care of the details. I needed to get to this position, to where we are right at this precise moment. All the details came from that end game.’
She closed the door slowly as the penny dropped with equal slowness. ‘This was a set-up?’
He looked at her pityingly. Or with something that resembled pity mixed with a dollop of glee. If he’d winked again she might just have slapped him. ‘The pitch was created for you.’
‘No.’ She shook her head to clear the ringing in her ears. ‘It couldn’t have been. I wasn’t asked to pitch personally...’
‘Details,’ he reminded her with another wink. ‘I needed you to bite without raising your suspicions.’
‘I was always going to win?’
He pulled a musing face. ‘Unless your pitch was terrible, in which case I’d have given the job to a Greek firm, but I knew it wouldn’t be. I knew it would be fantastic. I knew you were the right woman for the job.’
His Greek Wedding Night Debt (Mills & Boon Modern) Page 2
