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Draining the glass, he strolled over to the telephone and gave the night-duty receptionist his instructions. He wanted a wake-up call at six-thirty. But more importantly if Miss Blain tried to book out, he was to be informed immediately. His mind was made up; Willow would not escape him so easily this time.
At eight the next morning a snarling Theo spun the hotel register around and read the entry. ‘Willow Blain. Care of Henkon Publishing’ and the address.
‘What time did she leave?’ he demanded icily of the cowering manager.
‘According to the night porter, about three in the morning. A car was waiting for her, apparently.’
Famed for his business acumen and his quick, incisive mind, Theo was in danger of losing it completely and sacking everyone on the spot. Until it struck him there was something very odd about Willow’s behaviour. He wasn’t a fool. He knew women, and he knew the sexual tension, the chemistry between them was electric. He could, with very little persuasion, have had Willow in his bed last night.
Willow might not want to renew their relationship, but all she had to do was say, ‘No’. So why did she feel the need to escape in the middle of the night? That was the real question. He had to give Willow credit—she was crafty. A wry smile twisted his firm mouth. The woman wrote detective novels; he should have expected as much. But the lovely Willow obviously had something to hide, and Theo was not going to rest until he found out.
It was eight in the morning when the cab pulled up outside Willow’s thatched cottage overlooking the river. Willow paid the driver and, with a sigh of relief, let herself into her home. Stephen was staying with Tess and her husband at their home a hundred yards further up the road, and they were not expecting her back until this afternoon.
She glanced around the familiar hall and smiled. She had probably overreacted, leaving London in the middle of the night, but she didn’t care. She was home, and it felt great. Running upstairs to her bedroom, she placed her weekend case on the bed and swiftly unpacked. She took a quick shower and washed her hair. Standing in front of the mirror, she set about drying her hair. As she glanced at the naked reflection of herself a vivid mental image of Theo’s dark head lowered over her breasts, his sensuous mouth suckling the rose-tipped peaks, suddenly flashed in her mind. A shaft of heat lanced through her slender body and she almost groaned. No! her mind cried. Sex and all that was behind her, had been for nine years, and that was the way it was going to stay. She continued drying her hair with more force than was necessary.
Returning to the bedroom, she looked out of the window at the view of the river sparkling in the bright early morning sunshine and smiled again. This was her life now and it was a good one. So what if she didn’t have a man in her life? She didn’t need one. Stephen was more than enough for her.
She quickly put on clean briefs and a multi-coloured Indian cotton summer dress with short sleeves, the skirt swinging around her calves. She slipped her feet into flat sandals, and with a flick of her long hair she went back downstairs.
She’d have a quick breakfast and then call at Tess’s and surprise Stephen. Then she would walk him to school as she usually did. Everything back to normal and no more city jaunts for her, she vowed. It was the first time since Stephen was born that she had spent a night away from him, and she had no intention of repeating the exercise.
Ten minutes later as she opened the gate to Tess’s cottage the front door opened, and her heart expanded in her breast at the sight of the dark-haired dynamo of a boy that shot out.
‘Mum… Mum, you’re back. I have had a really great time, you wouldn’t believe,’ Stephen called out as he ran full tilt down the garden path followed by a beaming Tess. ‘The reporter from the local paper called and interviewed me, and he took a photograph of me. He said my picture might be in the paper, and that you were going to make tons of money.’
Shock held her rigid for an instant. ‘That’s great,’ she finally managed to say, and swept the firm young body of her son up in her arms, and hugged him so tightly he yelped.
‘Hey, Mum, put me down. I’m eight, not a baby.’ Reluctantly she let him go.
‘I didn’t think you would mind,’ her friend Tess said, grinning. ‘You winning the award is the most excitement this village has ever seen.’
‘Thanks,’ Willow said, trying to smile. Inside she was horrified at the thought of Stephen’s photo appearing in a newspaper. But Tess did not seem to notice anything was amiss and continued speaking.
‘How did you get back so quick?’
‘Well…’
‘No, it doesn’t matter. I guess you want to walk Stephen to school. Call in on your way back. I will have the coffee ready and I want to hear every little detail.’
Stephen continued chattering nineteen to the dozen as they headed for the primary school two hundred yards away and for the first time in his young life Willow was barely listening to what he was saying, feelings of fright and panic already consuming her. She tried to tell herself it was a local paper, very few people read it, and she was worrying for nothing, but mixed in with her fear was guilt.
She glanced down at her son’s beaming, excited face and wondered if she had made the right decision all those years ago. Stephen had not looked particularly like Theo when he was born. His eyes had been a deep blue, but within months they had turned dark brown. Most of the people in the village, because of his black curly hair, had automatically said he looked like Willow. But as he had grown older the baby curls had some how straightened out, and his skin tone had become much darker than hers. More and more Willow could see his father in his features.
‘Anyway,’ Stephen said, ‘when the man asked who my father was, Tess told him to stop, and then he left.’
‘What?’ Willow exclaimed, the mention of father registering like a bullet to the brain. ‘Well, that was very wise of Tess.’ She smiled down into his suddenly serious face, and felt even worse.
‘Mum, you know you said my father married someone else and then vanished to the other side of the world but you didn’t know where? Well, now you are going to make a lot of money, do you think we could look for him? Today is the last day at school, and next week is half-term holiday, so we could start looking from tomorrow.’ He looked at her with such innocent, trusting eyes her heart turned over in her breast.
‘Well, I don’t see why not,’ she conceded, and then felt terrible for lying to him. But was it a lie? She had always known deep in her heart that at some point Stephen would want to meet his dad, and the event of the last twenty-four hours had simply reinforced her belief.
Smiling down at Stephen, she added, ‘In any case, a holiday will do us both good.’ The idea of taking Stephen away somewhere for a week suddenly seemed a brilliant idea. By the time they returned the press would have hopefully forgotten all about them. Part of her problem solved for the moment, she was relieved to see Stephen’s friend Tommy run towards him as they approached the schoolyard, Stephen’s thoughts of his father evaporating as he eagerly joined in his friend and vanished into the school building, without a backward glance.
‘Well,’ Tess exclaimed, ‘tell all! Is the gorgeous Mr Carlavitch as handsome and sexy in the flesh? And is he going to make you rich? And, most important, did you fancy him?’
Sitting at Tess’s kitchen table nursing a cup of coffee, Willow laughed. It was either that or cry. ‘I don’t know,’ she responded honestly. ‘He was quite attractive I suppose.’ She had had another man entirely on her mind during that time, and still had.
‘Are you all right?’ Tess frowned. ‘I thought you would be ecstatic winning the award and everything, yet you look a bit done in.’
‘Yes, I am a bit,’ Willow said, getting to her feet, grateful for the excuse to get away and be alone with her turbulent thoughts. ‘I did travel half the night in a car, you know. Thanks a million for looking after Stephen, I really appreciate it. I think I will just nip into the village for some milk, and then go home to rest for a while.’
‘Of course. I don’t know what I was thinking of. I’ll catch you later.’
‘I’ll pop back in after I collect Stephen from school this afternoon. Actually, I am thinking of taking him away tomorrow for the half-term holiday, down to Falmouth like we did last year, and a trip to France for a day or so. He likes the boat trip and he deserves a treat; he has been so good.’
‘Good idea. But in that case you will need all the sleep you can get.’ Tess chuckled.
But when Willow returned to her cottage thirty minutes later sleep was the last thing on her mind. After she’d accepted the congratulations of what appeared to be half the village, clustered around the post office, someone had complimented Willow on the picture in one of the national tab-loids. In horror she had scanned the photo. It was her, all right, standing in the foyer of the hotel the day before. But alongside the picture of her was another one of Stephen, obviously thanks to the miracle of a computer and modern technology. When she read the article she felt sick.
Willow moved around her much-loved home, scrubbing and cleaning in a frenzy of activity, anything to take her mind off her troubles. She paused for a long moment in Stephen’s bedroom, a sad smile curving her lush mouth. The Thomas the Tank Engine wallpaper he had loved when a toddler had been replaced by cool blue paper, posters of his favourite cars adorned the walls, and a computer stood on his desk. At eight he was clearly growing up, and she had buried her head in the sand for far too long. His demand today that they go and look for his dad had proved that.
Fearful for the future and what it held, she gave up any idea of lying down to rest, and walked back downstairs. She had a horrible premonition that Stephen might get his wish a lot sooner than he expected. She knew Theo Kadros was still in London. She tried to tell herself she had nothing to worry about—a man like Theo only read the financial papers. But she could not shrug off the fear that somehow he was going to discover her secret.
A stony-faced Theo glanced through the Financial Times waiting for the car that was to take him to his meeting, but his mind was not on business. He had called Henkon Publishing and asked for Willow’s address and been turned down flat.
‘Sir.’
‘Yes,’ he snapped at the hotel manager.
‘I know this is not the kind of newspaper you usually read, but I thought you might be interested.’ He wasn’t the manager of a top-class hotel without having a good brain and good insight where people were concerned. He had a shrewd idea that Mr Kadros might be very interested and hopefully very appreciative of his suggestion. ‘It is a very good picture. Don’t you think?’ He handed the paper to his boss folded at the correct page.
Theo glanced at the picture, and then at the smaller one next to it, and looked again. His dark eyes widened incredulously, and then blazed black with fury. His lips tightened into a hard, bitter line creating a ring of white around his mouth as he read the accompanying article.
Who would have guessed that the winner of this year’s Crime Writers’ Prize, J. W. Paxton, for his novel A Class Act Murder, would turn out to be not a man but a woman? The stunningly attractive Willow Blain, and yes, folks, that is her real name.
The film rights were sold only hours after the award ceremony to Mr Carlavitch, the famous American film producer.
Willow is also a single mother, but without a marriage behind her, living in Devon with an eight-year-old son she has brought up entirely on her own.
Theo took out his mobile phone, barked out a few instructions, then dialled again and cancelled his arrangements for the day.
CHAPTER FIVE
WITH a hotel booked in Falmouth for tomorrow night, and their suitcases packed, Willow was ready to leave first thing in the morning. A week away together would do them both good, she told herself. As for looking for Stephen’s father… She couldn’t lie to her son, but at least the break would give her time to come to terms with the fact that Stephen had a right to know who his father was and maybe some time in the future meet him. But not yet…
Meeting Theo for a drink last night had been a huge mistake and had seriously dented her pride and her confidence. Convinced she could handle the situation with mature sophistication, she had been terribly shocked to realise that, in the sexual stakes, she was no further forward where Theo was concerned than when she was an eighteen-year-old virgin. She hadn’t been able to resist him then, and it had been humiliating to realise that nothing much had changed.
True she had said, ‘No,’ and escaped, but not before she’d been forced to face the shattering realisation that for some bizarre reason her body seemed to be programmed to respond instantly and helplessly to one particular man: Theo Kadros. It was only lust. An unfortunate chemical reaction, nothing more. She knew this, but even so she needed time to build up her defences before even contemplating telling him he had a son.
Still too ill at ease to rest in the now spotless house, she walked out into the garden. Perhaps a stroll along the riverbank would ease the emotional turmoil the events of the past twenty-four hours had created in her mind. Spying a thistle among the profusion of flowers that lined the path, she stooped and tugged viciously at the offending weed. The spikes pierced the palm of her hand, and she cursed long and bitterly under her breath. The brief physical pain was nothing compared to how foolish she felt. She had allowed her editor, Louise, to persuade her into entering her book for the award, and to attend the ceremony in London.
She had succumbed to flattery and paid the price for it. Hadn’t her grandmother always said, ‘Get too big for you boots, and the chances are you will end up without any’? If she had thought the thing through logically she would never have taken the risk of exposing herself to the press, and especially not Stephen…
Willow straightened up as she heard the sound of a car approaching. A big black Mercedes almost filled the narrow road. Surprised, she watched as the car drew level with her garden. A car door slammed and the figure of a tall dark man appeared. He stared at her across the roof of the car, and the blood froze in her veins. He must have seen the newspaper, and put two and two together.
Theo’s hard black eyes swept over Willow from head to toe. He noticed her exquisite face framed by the silken mass of black hair tumbling over her shoulders; the long cotton dress skimming her slender figure, baring her arms, and just the merest hint of firm white breasts, and, lower, a glimpse of leg and ankles. He wanted to kill her.
Once he had taken her innocence and felt thoroughly ashamed of himself when he had discovered how young she was. Anger, regret and guilt had plagued him, and almost unmanned him. In consequence he had resumed a sexual relationship with Dianne, and had hastily leapt into a marriage that had never been going to last. The reason being the image of Willow’s exquisite body, wildly responsive in his arms, was etched into his brain for all time.
For years he had still ached to possess this one woman again; hers was the face that haunted his waking and sleeping dreams.
Only yesterday he had thought the gods were smiling on him and had given him a second chance. A harsh, cynical smile twisted his wide, sensual mouth. Not any more… She was no innocent deserving sympathy, never had been… She was a secretive, conniving bitch, and she had committed the most heinous crime against him and his family it was possible to envisage, and he had every intention of making her pay.
‘The original earth mother—how charming,’ he mockingly opined, strolling around the bonnet of the car.
Standing frozen to the spot, Willow couldn’t believe her eyes. It was Theo Kadros, but it was impossible. It was a five-hour drive from London. That was in the middle of the night with no traffic on the roads. There was no way he could have made the journey this morning. His tall, broad-shouldered frame was immaculately clad in a dark blue pinstriped business suit. A pale blue silk shirt emphasised his bronzed features and was complemented by a finely striped tie.
‘What, nothing to say, Willow?’ She simply stared at him, her heart pounding in her chest as he opened the garden gate and in a few lithe strides stopped inches from her.
‘Cat got your tongue, Willow?’ His black eyes, as cold as ice, stared down into hers.
‘Hello, Theo, nice to see you again.’ She made a polite response, too shocked to do anything else, and looked be-musedly past him to the car. ‘How did you get here?’
‘Let’s be civil, by all means,’ Theo drawled scathingly. ‘My private jet was waiting at London City airport. I was supposed to attend a meeting this morning and then fly out to Greece this evening; instead I had my pilot fly me to Exeter airport, and arranged for a car to be waiting. It is barely an hour’s drive to here.’
‘Oh, I see.’ And in that moment she saw a lot more than she wanted too. Theo, his great body taut, was watching her with a hard, challenging gleam in his dark eyes, and her heart sank like a stone. Did she really have the strength to protect her son from this man, to fight him? A man of his wealth and power. A man who could hop in his jet and appear on her doorstep at the drop of a hat. But, more, did she have the right? She was no longer sure.
‘Hi, Willow. Congratulations on the award.’ A voice floated over the garden gate. Willow looked nervously over Theo’s shoulder, and then smiled at Tess’s husband cycling past on his way home.
‘Thanks, Bob.’ And she waved.
‘Damn it to hell!’ Theo suddenly exploded, and, grabbing her arm in an iron grip, he dragged her towards the open front door and shoved her into the hall, slamming the door behind him. ‘You can cut out the country-girl routine in front of me, Willow. You are the most devious bloody woman I have ever met,’ he snarled. ‘My God! Why didn’t you tell me I had a son?’
‘How did you find me?’ she shot back. She knew her publisher would never reveal her address. Willow realised that if Theo got the idea she was hiding something it would simply confirm his suspicions. Not waiting for an answer, she added, ‘And anyway, what makes you think my child has anything to do with you?’ she demanded in a cool, polite voice. Inside she was shaking like a leaf.
‘Don’t bother to deny it,’ he said harshly, his fingers tightening on her arm. ‘I saw the photograph in the newspaper. I had my people check the boy’s birth date at the register office, and, surprise, surprise, he was born at home, at this address. It was not terribly difficult to discover, Willow.’
‘No. Oh, no,’ she murmured. Her worst fear had been realised. Bowing her head to evade his searing gaze, she knew with a despairing sense of inevitability that her world would never be the same again.
‘You dare to deny it?’ he declared contemptuously, completely misreading her negative response. ‘Then I will see you in court, and show you up for the little liar you are. By the time my lawyers are finished with you, you will be begging me to see our son. Believe me, Willow, I can and I will do it.’ The cold menace in his voice sent shivers of fear down her spine. ‘You have deprived me of my child for eight years.’ Grasping her chin with his free hand, he tilted her face up to his.
‘Hanging your head in shame now? It is a bit late for that, Willow,’ he opined scathingly, forcing her to look at him. ‘Because it was not only me you deprived of the child.’ The hard bones of his jaw and chin tightened with suppressed emotion. ‘The one thing my father wanted before he died was to see me with a family of my own. He died three years ago, and went to his grave never knowing he had a grandson, all because of you.’ The bitterness in the black eyes that held hers chilled her to the bone. ‘No more lies, Willow. Where is my son? I want to see him now!’
‘He is at school until three-thirty.’ She told the truth; there was no point trying to deny it. ‘And I’m sorry about your…’ She was about to finish, but as she looked into his bitter, hate-filled eyes the words of conventional sympathy stuck in her throat. When Stephen was born, it had never entered her head that, by not informing the father, at the same time she might be depriving a decent old man of a much-longed-for grandson.
‘Oh, you are going to be sorry. I can promise you that.’ Theo tightened his grip and she winced.
‘You’re hurting me,’ she snapped, the physical pain cutting through her mental anguish and restoring some of her usual spirit. She refused to feel guilty about Theo’s father. If Theo himself had not been a two-timing swine of a man and already married when Stephen had been born things might have worked out differently. If anyone was to blame it was Theo, she thought scathingly, and his hedonistic lifestyle.
‘You don’t know what pain is… yet.’ He smiled a cold, humourless smile, but did release her and glanced around the small wood-panelled hall.
Theo had to look away from her because for the first time in his life he felt dangerously close to inflicting violence on a woman. He battled to contain his rage and noted a door on either side of the hall. Both doors were partially opened, one revealing the living room, and the other a dining-room-cum-study. A third door at the rear led to the kitchen, and a narrow steep staircase led to the upper floor. ‘I might have guessed,’ Theo drawled with a negative shake of his dark head. It was like stepping back in time, the perfect hideaway. Her friends had not been far wrong when they had nicknamed her The Mole.
Guessed what? Willow wondered, but said nothing. She continued to watch him with wary eyes, and began nervously rubbing her bare arm where his fingers had left their mark. Theo’s tall, broad figure seemed to fill the small hall, making her feel positively claustrophobic in her own home. She frantically racked her brain for some way to get rid of him.
His temper now back under control, Theo cast her a cynical glance. ‘I will wait in here, and, as you did not turn up for our breakfast together,’ he said with biting sarcasm, ‘you can make me lunch.’ With this, he strolled through the open living-room door.
Make him lunch! He was in her house for less than two minutes and already he was ordering her around. The cool cheek of the man. Willow silently fumed but followed behind him, knowing exactly what he was going to encounter next. She decided that she was not going to warn him… Let him knock himself out, the arrogant devil.
Low oak beams crossed the plastered ceiling. The room was furnished with all her grandmother’s old oak furniture, and knick-knacks and it hadn’t changed much since she was a child. She had modernised some rooms, but essentially the style was seventeenth century, in keeping with the house.
As she walked through the door she watched as Theo turned around in the middle of the room, and deftly dipped his head, narrowly missing one of the low beams. Trust him to duck in time, she thought bitterly, but then by all accounts he’d spent his whole life ducking and diving in the business world, which was why he was so filthy rich. She eyed him balefully. He had never looked more foreign, more Greek to her than he did right now, and she wondered how on earth she was going to come to some agreement with him over Stephen.
‘You certainly fit your nickname—The Mole.’ Theo raised one black sardonic eyebrow. ‘Buried away in an ancient dark-beamed house, overlooking the river in a tiny village that does not even appear on a map, blindly keeping yourself and my son hidden from sight.’
She allowed no one to attack her home, or her lifestyle, and certainly not a jet-setting, womanising multimillionaire with more money than sense. She had seen in magazines the huge villa Theo had built for his wife, Dianne, and hadn’t been impressed.
‘I like it,’ she snapped back, ‘and so does Stephen. It is our home, and we have lots of friends and are very happy here.’
But his sarcastic comment had hit a nerve; she had always been a secret, sensitive person, and very much a creature of habit. When she had lost both her grandmother and mother in a few short months, almost everyone in the village had rallied around the pregnant eighteen-year-old. This house, which she had known all her life, had become her sanctuary; she loved the place. Free of a mortgage and with her mother’s life insurance policy, and the income she received from her writing, she had been able to stay here with her son, safe and secure among friends.
She had given up any thought of going to university, not willing to move across the country and live among strangers. She also hated the idea of putting her baby into a crèche when she could stop where she was and look after him herself. But she also knew that she did tend to ignore anything that might upset her cosy lifestyle.
Realistically she had known for some time that Stephen wanted to meet his father. He had dropped plenty of hints, and she’d known she was going to have to do something about it. Maybe subconsciously she had allowed her editor to talk her into going to London and revealing her true identity as a first step towards facing up to her wider responsibility and seeking out Theo Kadros.
Even so, she sure as hell had not expected him to turn up on her doorstep today and start making derogatory comments about her house. She could feel her anger increasing by the minute.
‘You were not invited to my home, Theo, and I don’t do lunches. So please, feel free to leave.’ She stared defiantly up at him, the atmosphere between them crackling with tension.
‘No, you are not getting rid of me so easily this time, Willow,’ Theo responded, casually lowering his long length down onto the leather sofa. He glanced up into her furious blue eyes, his own a bland, unemotional black. ‘I am staying here until I get my son.’
Not until he saw his son, she noted, but until he got his son, a statement of fact issued with all the cool assurance of a man who always got what he wanted. She doubted if the person was born who could get one over the mighty Theo Kadros. The fact that she had managed to do so for eight years was a miracle in itself. But in the face of his calm assumption that he would get his son her fears for the future were increased a thousandfold.
‘He is not your son,’ she began, her blue eyes flashing defiance. ‘He—’
‘You little bitch,’ he cut in, leaping to his feet, and in one swift movement he grasped a clump of her hair and twisted the thick silken strands around his wrist and tugged her head back. His other arm latched around her waist and hauled her hard against him.
‘You still dare to deny it. You dare to play games with me even now,’ he grated, his self-control completely deserting him. She saw the glitter of violent fury in his black eyes, and for a moment her heart quaked with fear.
But she refused to be intimidated. Stephen was her son; and she was prepared to fight for him. She knew instinctively that she could not afford to appear weak in front of Theo Kadros.
‘Get your hands off me, you b—’ she gasped, but was prevented from saying any more by a second cruel tug on her hair.
‘I’d like to strangle you,’ he snarled, ‘but you aren’t worth swinging for.’ And his mouth crashed down on hers with a cruel force that drove the breath from her body.
She was crushed against him so closely she was aware of every bone in his huge body. She only had a brief fleeting glimpse of the merciless intent in his dark eyes before his mouth hardened and he forced her lips apart and began a ruthless exploration of the moist interior of her mouth. It was a savage and hungry passion that had nothing to do with love and everything to do with a primitive male desire to punish and dominate.
She tried to resist but his hand curved around the back of her head, and held her immobile while he continued to plunder her mouth. He eased the pressure a little to allow her to breathe and a slight moan escaped her. Then the hand at her waist was holding her crushed against his lower body, slid over the curve of her buttocks and made her instantly aware of his fiercely aroused state. At the same time the punishing pressure of his mouth subtly altered, and, to her horror, a treacherous heat ignited deep down inside her.
