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She closed her eyes tightly; it should not be like this, her mind cried. Shaken as she was by the destructive power of his passion she was still capable of realising that he was using his superior sexual expertise as a weapon to deliberately humiliate her. But with the ever-softening sensuality of Theo’s lips and tongue and his hand moving up her body to her breast, the fine cotton of her dress no barrier as deftly the first few buttons flew open, Willow knew she was in imminent danger of falling under his spell all over again.
She wasn’t wearing a bra and his hand cupped her naked breast, his thumb sliding over the tender peak, and she was helpless to prevent her body responding. She groaned a low, soft sound of both desire and despair intermingled, and involuntarily her slender arms linked around his neck. She then surrendered to the heat, the hunger and the fierce wave of passion suddenly sweeping through her body.
Theo slowly raised his dark head. ‘That’s better, Willow,’ he said roughly. His long fingers were still covering her breasts, deliberately moving from one to the other, playing with the aching, rigid peaks. She opened her eyes, and gazed up into his darkly attractive face, hot and breathless with sensual excitement.
He was staring down at her, unable to hide the desire in his eyes, his breathing as erratic as hers, a muscle beating in his jaw. But his voice was remarkably steady as he added, ‘Now I know coming to an arrangement will not be a problem.’ She caught the gleam of cynical triumph in his smouldering eyes and it was like a douche of cold water.
What on earth was she doing? She must be mad. This man wanted her son, and for the second time in less than twenty-four hours she was lying in his arms, her dress half off, gazing at him like a besotted fool. Terrified by her own emotional frailty, she wrenched herself from his arms and darted out of the room. She ran into the kitchen, fumbling with the buttons of her dress, her legs trembling and almost collapsing with shame and embarrassment.
Leaning over the sink, she turned on the cold-water tap and splashed her face with water in a desperate attempt to cool her overheated flesh. Straightening, she picked up the hand towel from the rail and dried her face. Coffee, thick and black, that was what she needed. She realised it had been a long night and an even more harrowing morning and she needed to start thinking sensibly and quickly. She filled the kettle and reached for the jar of coffee in the cupboard with a hand that shook.
‘Ah, there you are.’ Spinning around, she almost dropped the coffee jar as Theo, her nemesis, walked in.
Willow glared at him. He’d removed his tie, and the open-necked shirt only served to draw her attention to his strong, tanned throat. She gulped and felt hot colour return to her cheeks as she recalled how only minutes ago her arms had been wrapped intimately around that throat. It was so unfair—he looked even more incredibly attractive than ever, and he was in total control, she thought bitterly.
‘Coffee. Good, I could do with a cup, and I hope your hasty exit means you are going to make me lunch. I am starving,’ Theo drawled smoothly, and, as cool as a cucumber, pulled out one of the four pine chairs that surrounded the square breakfast table and sat down. ‘We can talk just as easily in here.’
She didn’t trust herself to speak, and simply stared at him as his dark, curious gaze swept around the room, lingering on the window that opened out onto the back garden and the fields beyond.
‘One thing I will say for this little house, it does have rather good views.’ Theo turned his dark head towards her, his eyes taking in her beautiful face still tinged scarlet with embarrassment. His gaze flickered over her slender figure before lingering on the bodice of her dress, where in her haste she had fastened the buttons in the wrong buttonholes, and the curve of one breast was exposed to reveal the dark aureole surrounding a small, tight nipple. ‘Both outside and in,’ he added.
As a gentleman he should tell her, but after what she had done to him he had no inclination to act the gentleman. Let her find out for herself, and in the meantime he could sit back and enjoy the view. He glanced up into her wary eyes, a broad smile slashing across his handsome face, his dark eyes lit with amusement.
His grin was so open that for a moment Willow was tempted to respond, but, tearing her gaze away, she muttered, ‘Flattery will get you nowhere,’ and she turned back to the bench. Reaching up for two cups, she plonked them down on the worktop. ‘But I will make you a coffee.’ At least that way she could keep her back to him for a while. ‘There is a good pub and restaurant a few miles back the way you came that serves a very nice lunch, if you are really hungry.’ With a bit of luck he would take himself off to the pub and, with a bit of breathing space, she might just possibly get her chaotic thoughts into some kind of order before she had to pick up Stephen.
‘You don’t really imagine for a minute that I am going to leave you alone,’ he prompted, moving across the room to lean casually against the bench beside her. ‘And surely you cannot be so cruel as to refuse to feed a starving man? Because of you, Willow, I ate very little breakfast.’
She ignored his barbed reminder and cast him a sidelong glance. ‘You don’t look like any starving man I have ever seen. But, if you insist, I think I have some eggs and homemade bread rolls.’ Slowly it was beginning to dawn on Willow that there was no point in fighting Theo. She needed to keep her temper, and her arguments, for the big issue: Stephen.
Ten minutes later she placed a plate containing a cheese omelette and salad on the table in front of Theo, accompanied by the butter dish and a basket of crusty bread rolls.
Willow did not want to eat, in fact she felt sick, but Theo had insisted she join him. His earlier anger appeared to have vanished and she agreed, hoping to keep him sweet. As she watched Theo wolf down his food with apparent enjoyment she pushed hers around the plate, pretending to eat, her stomach curled in knots of nervous tension.
‘That was excellent, Willow. I must say you surprised me. The omelette was perfect and the bread rolls were a work of art; you are a wonderful cook.’ Theo grinned, leaning back in his chair. ‘I don’t think I have ever had a girlfriend who made her own bread,’ he offered, amusement in his tone.
Rising to her feet, she collected the plates and glanced down at him. ‘You still haven’t,’ she responded bluntly. ‘Your type of girlfriends are well-documented fashion plates who probably don’t have the time between visiting the beautician’s and the hairdresser, and of course pandering to your every whim, to do anything else,’ she ended dryly. Turning, she crossed to the dishwasher and loaded the plates, and then plugged in the kettle. ‘More coffee?’ she asked without looking around. Theo disturbed her on so many levels she was having trouble concentrating.
‘Yes.’ She nearly jumped out of her skin as the affirmative was murmured very close to her ear. She had not heard his silent approach, and he was now standing right behind her. ‘But I think you are going to need the coffee more before this day is out, because you are quite wrong, Willow.’
No humour now. Willow heard the threat in his voice, and she straightened up, her shoulders tense, but she was incapable of turning around as his warm breath brushed against her cheek.
‘True, you are no longer my girlfriend—that was a short-lived but very productive episode, as I have just discovered. But, make no mistake, I am no longer the poor fool who was put off by your lie about the morning-after pill,’ he drawled silkily. ‘This time I don’t just want you as a girlfriend. This time I’ll marry you if I have to, but I do want my son.’
‘What?’ She spun around. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses? I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth!’ she exclaimed, horrified at his suggestion.
Theo stared down at her for a long moment, taking in the stunned expression in her dazzling blue eyes. He then gave a slight shrug of his broad shoulders. ‘Tough.’ He paused, one dark brow arching sardonically, ‘But it is not your choice, Willow. It is mine.’
‘You can’t say that,’ she cried, agitation making her voice rise. ‘It’s ridiculous. Marriage is a diabolical suggestion.’
He gave a scornful laugh. ‘Nowhere near as diabolical as you depriving me of my son for eight years. I had to learn of his existence, even his name, from a cheap tabloid. Well, you are not getting the chance to humiliate me, or lie to me, again. If we marry our son will have both parents. It is the simplest solution and the only thing we need to discuss is what you have told Stephen about his absent father.’ He stared down at her, ferocious tension written into every hard line of his strong face as he added in a voice devoid of all emotion, ‘And if you made the mistake of telling him I was dead, I might very well kill you myself.’
The threat was there in his eyes and in the powerful body towering over her. Suddenly something seemed to snap in Willow’s brain, and without thinking she lashed out at him, her hand connecting hard on his lean cheek. ‘Don’t you dare threaten me, you no-good womanising bastard. No one ever deprived you of anything in your life, and you have the nerve to threaten me and my son.’
Theo stared down at her, his eyes cold as ice. ‘That was a very stupid thing to do, Willow. I want my son, but I don’t have to take you. My offer of marriage was one of kindness, but a court order will do just as well,’ he drawled cynically.
‘As if I care about your kindness. You deserved it,’ she snapped, almost choking with anger. ‘No court in the land would give you custody, you arrogant devil, not when I tell them the truth.’
‘And the truth, as we both know,’ he sneered, grasping her by the shoulders, ‘is that you were a precocious young girl who wanted nothing more than to get rid of her virginity. So desperate, in fact, that you slept with some unsuspecting male. Then you quite deliberately denied that you could possibly be pregnant, and quite deliberately deprived the father of his son.’
‘My God, that is rich coming from you,’ she cried. ‘You took one look at me and seduced me into your bed, in your own house, where your sister and her friends were supposed to be looking after me, conveniently forgetting you were engaged to be married at the time!’ She tried to twist free from his hold but he slammed her back against the bench.
‘Don’t try to lie your way out of it, Willow. I was not engaged to anyone.’
‘Oh, please, save me!’ Willow mocked. ‘I answered the telephone call from your fiancée myself, Theo. She wasn’t surprised you were still asleep, because she had apparently kept you up in her bed all night the previous evening.’
Theo’s hands slackened on her shoulders, and he stared down into her wild blue eyes. She obviously believed what she was saying. Then he remembered the conversation he had had with Anna that fateful morning, nine years ago. Willow had taken the first of many calls from Dianne. He had to admit Willow was right, he had been up all night, but as for the rest… His dark brows drew together in a deep, puzzled frown.
But Willow was past noticing, she was on a roll. All the pain and hurt she had buried deep for nine years came bursting out. ‘The woman you married six months later, Theo, before Stephen was even born. You do remember her, don’t you? You rotten, two-timing, lousy bastard. And yet you have the colossal nerve to stand there and try to blame me.’ She shook her head, her long hair flying wildly around her shoulders. Lifting her hands, she pushed him in the chest. ‘Get out of my house; you make me sick.’
‘No.’ Theo clasped both her hands in one of his and raised his other to brush his fingers through her curling black hair, tucking it behind her ear. ‘Are you trying to tell me you ran out on me nine years ago because you thought I was engaged?’
‘Not thought, Theo. Knew,’ she said vehemently.
Ignoring her comment, Theo said, almost to himself, ‘You lied at the airport about the pill because you assumed I was engaged, and you were jealous.’
‘Jealous? Of you? Never! And I never lied,’ Willow snapped, trying desperately to hang onto her anger. But the low, husky note in his voice was making it very difficult, and his strong hand keeping her wrists pressed against his hard chest wasn’t helping. ‘I merely said I had heard of the morning-after pill. How you chose to interpret it was up to you.’
She gave a short, ironic laugh. ‘Dear God! I was naive. I would never have mentioned it, except I was absolutely sure I could not possibly be pregnant because you had used protection.’ She lifted her eyes to his. ‘A sensible precaution with your womanising lifestyle and especially as you were engaged to someone else at the time.’ She tried desperately to rekindle her anger by reminding herself that Theo was a devious, cold-hearted love rat, with absolutely no morals.
For a moment Theo had almost felt sympathy for her. She had been very young, and he knew Dianne had always been fond of stretching the truth. But her sneering dig at his supposed lecherous lifestyle banished any of his finer feelings. She was still the woman who had cold-heartedly deprived him of his son. That was all he needed to know.
‘Yesterday you said to me, “ I try never to dwell on the past but prefer to look to the future.” Do you remember that?’ he prompted hardly, and for a long moment he studied her upturned face. Her smouldering anger mingled with a sensuality she could not disguise and was visible in the depths of her sapphire eyes.
Helpless to tear her gaze from his, Willow could feel the steady pounding of his heart through her palms. She had the wild urge to spread her fingers and trace the perfect musculature of his hard chest; to reach around his strong neck and drag his mouth back to hers again. Shocked by the intensity of her own longing, she swallowed hard. What was it about this man that he could render her speechless and a quivering mass of raw feeling without even trying?
‘It is time to take your own advice, Willow, but know this…’ Theo continued. ‘Your future, and that of our son, is with me.’ His hard, sensual mouth set in a tough line. Willow could yell at him, deny it as much as she liked, but he could feel the involuntary flexing of her fingers on his chest, could see the pulse beating in her neck, and he knew he only had to bend his head and her mouth was his for the taking.
She oozed sex appeal; she could not help herself. Theo remembered all too well that sex with her had been out of this world. He wondered, with bitter humour, how many more men had possessed her exquisite body since him. She had said only one last night. But he was no fool; in all his thirty-seven years he had rarely met a woman who admitted to having had more than one lover. Experience had taught him that one was the standard response.
But it didn’t matter any more; as she was the mother of his son, her love life stopped now. He was not having his son exposed to a parade of uncles as some unfortunate children did in today’s world. If she needed sex then he was perfectly willing to accommodate her, married or not, and he deliberately lowered his head.
She knew he was going to kiss her and to her shame her slender body tensed with anticipation. She waited, unable to take the step back her common sense was urging her to do.
CHAPTER SIX
‘COOEEE, WILLOW,’ a high-pitched voice sounded from the back garden.
‘That will be Tess,’ Willow murmured and Theo’s dark head lifted. In a couple of strides he was leaning casually against the pine dresser at the end of the kitchen just as the back door opened.
‘Hi, love, so you are up, then?’ Tess put her head around the door. ‘I thought I better check on you as it is almost time to collect Stephen. You looked shattered earlier.’
‘Yes, thanks, Tess.’ Willow smiled shakily at her friend, glad of the interruption—a momentary release of the tension that was binding her to Theo—but a second later she wasn’t feeling as sure as Tess walked into the room.
‘I was just in the back garden clearing out the shed, and I came across this cool-box,’ she said, waving the bright red and white box in her hand. ‘I thought it would come in useful for you and Stephen when you go on holiday tomorrow.’
‘I’m sure it will,’ Willow managed to say before another voice cut in.
‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, Willow, darling?’ a deep, dark voice drawled.
Tess dropped the cool box in surprise. She hadn’t noticed the man standing at the end of the kitchen until Theo strolled forward and slid a possessive arm around Willow’s waist.
For a second Willow was too astonished and angry to speak. Theo’s mockingly voiced ‘darling’ sickening her, she tried to shake off his controlling arm. But Tess appeared to notice nothing amiss as she looked up at the tall dark stranger before her, her green eyes sparkling with curiosity and pure female appreciation.
‘Well, Willow has kept you quiet,’ Tess exclaimed as Theo gave her a brilliant smile. ‘I’m Tess, her neighbour.’ She held out her hand and Theo took it. But instead of shaking it, he raised it elegantly to his lips before gently releasing it.
‘It is a real pleasure to meet you, Tess. I am Theo Kadros, a very old friend of Willow’s.’ He cast a glittering sidelong glance at Willow’s flushed and furious face. ‘Isn’t that right, darling?’ His fingers digging into her waist dictated her reply.
‘Yes,’ Willow grated between clenched teeth, knowing that if he said ‘darling’ once more she would thump him. She didn’t know what Theo was up to, but he was up to something and she knew she would not like it. He was quite deliberately giving Tess the impression that they were already intimate friends.
As for Tess. Willow wondered what on earth was the matter with her? As a happily married woman she should have more sense than to be taken in by Theo’s brand of sophisticated charm. Instead she was flirting with him, quite outrageously.
‘Now I know why she wanted to get back to bed so eagerly this morning,’ Tess said. ‘You were waiting for her.’ She laughed up into his smiling eyes, and, finally looking at Willow, adding, ‘You dark horse. I asked you about Mr Carlavitch but you never mentioned you already had a man in tow who was even more handsome, or that you had brought him home with you,’ she teased.
‘I did—’ was as far as she got in denying Tess’s assumption, before Theo cut in.
‘I am the man she and Stephen are going on holiday with. Hopefully that will be tonight rather than tomorrow. That is if we can impose on you again, Tess, to look after the cottage while we are away?’
‘Oh, I will be delighted.’ Tess’s attention immediately diverted from Willow back to Theo. ‘I am always telling Willow that she doesn’t get out enough or go anywhere, like other girls of her age. Stephen is a lovely boy, and she is a great mum, but she tries to be a dad to him as well. What Willow is badly in need of is a few more adult pursuits.’
Willow’s mouth fell open in shock at her friend’s treachery. Her lips moved but no words came out.
‘I agree and fully intend to change all that,’ Theo said smoothly. ‘For a highly intelligent and successful woman, I am always saying that Willow spends far too much time locked away with her books.’
‘Exactly what I have told her.’ Tess beamed, and Willow exploded.
‘Now just a minute.’ They were talking about her as if she didn’t exist. She expected this kind of behaviour from Theo, but not from Tess. ‘I am not going anywhere with Theo, and, Tess, you have got it all wrong.’
‘As wrong as the buttons on your dress, I suppose.’ Tess grinned. ‘I don’t think so.’ And she burst out laughing.
Willow glanced down at herself, and her face turned a fiery red with embarrassment. ‘Oh, my God!’ she exclaimed. The top two buttonholes of her dress were empty, and the first button was slipped into the third hole, revealing much more of one breast than was ever intended. ‘You could have told me,’ she yelled at a grinning Theo, and she wanted to reach out and slap the smile off his face. Instead she began hastily refastening the front of her dress correctly. ‘I made lunch and everything,’ she groaned with embarrassment.
‘Oh, will you just look at the time? It’s twenty past three already,’ Tess cried. ‘Got to go, love, and you will have to go and collect Stephen soon. Drop the cottage keys in later when you leave and have a great holiday.’ She shot out of the back door before Willow could stop her. It was the last straw for Willow.
Elbowing Theo hard in the ribs, she spun out of his hold. ‘What the hell do you think you are playing at?’ she demanded, glaring up at his strong, autocratic face. ‘How dare you come into my house and lie and embarrass me in front of my friend? Who the hell do you think you are?’ She screamed at him, her eyes flashing fire. ‘I am going absolutely nowhere with you.’
‘There isn’t time for a temper tantrum,’ Theo said, coolly glancing down at the slim platinum watch on his wrist, and then back to her flushed, furious face. ‘Unless you intend to leave our son standing alone at the school gates,’ he drawled sardonically. ‘But then again that would give my lawyers more ammunition if it came to a custody case.’
‘You, you…’ she spluttered. She realised that he might be right, damn him. She stared back at him, her brilliant blue eyes glittering with fury and frustration. Her fingers curled into fists at her sides to prevent them developing a will of their own and slugging the damn man. That would go down well in a court of law—a mother given to fits of violence. Unable to hold Theo’s steel-hard gaze, Willow looked down at the floor, teeth catching at her lower lip. She could not afford to give this man any more ammunition to beat her with.
‘I’ll go and collect Stephen, and you can wait here,’ she said with what composure she could muster, and, turning, walked out of the kitchen and headed down the hall.
A large hand closed around her elbow. ‘No. I will come with you, and you can fill me in on what exactly you have told Stephen about me before I meet him.’
With a defeated shrug of her slender shoulders, Willow sighed, and, pushing open the front door, walked outside. She glanced up the road past the ominous black car parked outside her house. Stephen would be out of school in minutes and she had run out of time.
Theo stopped and turned her towards him, his night-black eyes zeroing in on her. ‘I’m waiting, Willow, and I want the truth.’
‘I told Stephen the truth,’ she said bluntly. ‘I met his father when I was very young, and we became close. I left to go and stay with my mother in India, and when I discovered I was pregnant and returned to London the man had vanished.’ She shot him a vitriolic look. ‘I went to your house but something called British Land Ltd was converting it. As for the rest of the story, I told Stephen you had married someone else before he was born. Again the truth because I saw the pictures of your wedding in a flashy magazine. End of story.’ Her own expression steely, she looked straight into his black eyes, daring him to deny it.
Theo felt as if he had been hit by a ten-ton truck. ‘You came looking for me?’
‘Only because my mum said it was the right thing to do. I already knew I was wasting my time,’ she drawled derisively, and set off once more along the lane to the school.
His strong face grim with the gravity of thoughts that he could no longer deny, Theo followed along behind her. Willow was telling the truth, she had looked for him, or how else could she have known the name ‘British Land Ltd’, which was a subsidiary of one of his own companies. And he remembered all too well his wedding to Dianne in New York six months later, and the extravagant magazine spread of the event that Dianne had insisted on.
He looked at Willow marching along in front of him now, and he was reminded of the very first time he’d seen her. Her marvellous black hair falling in silken waves down her back. She had been quite scantily clad then, and he had been recklessly determined to have her. No thought had been in his head other than a casual affair. He had only just escaped the tightening clutches of a very determined Dianne. So he had taken Willow to his bed, and then been furiously angry when he’d discovered the following morning that she had left him. He had been almost apoplectic when he had caught her later at the airport.
He squared his broad shoulders. Maybe some of the fault was his, he recognised, and he meant to tell her so. He increased his stride to move alongside her, and then he saw his son.
‘Hey, Mum,’ a boyish voice cried and Theo was struck dumb as Willow dashed forward.
‘Stephen, you know you are not supposed to leave the school yard alone,’ she remonstrated, a smile twitching the corners of her lush lips as she looked down at him.
‘Ah, Mum, I could see you coming so Miss Lamb said it was okay.’
‘Okay then this time. But just remember next term, when you go to the middle school in town, you must wait for me.’
‘Yes, I know.’ His young face creased in a frown. ‘But why is that man following you, Mum?’ he demanded, scowling warily up at Theo, who had stopped at her side.
Having completely forgotten Theo for the moment, Willow was suddenly brought back to reality with a vengeance. She glanced fearfully up at him, terrified at what he might say. But his entire concentration was focussed on the small boy staring warily up at him. She could see that his shock over the discovery that he was a father had been replaced by a burning desire to know his child, the emotion in his dark, intense eyes unmistakable.
She saw his hands clench at his sides, as if it would stop him reaching out for the boy, and she sensed his bitter frustration. It was there in the taut lines of his powerful body, the proud tilt of his dark head. For the first time since meeting Theo again, her heart went out to him, and she actually felt compassion for him. She had always had Stephen, and his unconditional love in her life. But Theo…
‘Who are you?’ Stephen demanded bravely, and his hand reached out to seek hers. Looking back down at her son, Willow felt her heart flood with pride and love. At only eight he was already her protector.
‘Why are you following my mum?’
‘It’s all right, Stephen.’ Willow looked from one to the other, and Theo caught her upward gaze, his eyes blazing for a second with killing enmity into hers. He was never going to forgive her for denying him the boy, and any compassion she had for him quickly vanished.
‘What your mother is trying to say,’ Theo stated dropping to his haunches so his face was near Stephen’s level, ‘is that I am Theo Kadros, a very old friend of hers. I met your mother yesterday in London, and we had a drink together. Then I saw a photograph of you and your mother in the newspaper this morning and I thought it would be nice to visit you both. Your name is Stephen, isn’t it? I may call you Stephen?’ he queried with a tentative smile. ‘And you can call me Theo.’ Extending a strong hand, he added, ‘Shake on it.’
With all the fickleness of youth, Stephen smiled back, his eyes, so like his father’s, dancing with excitement as he took the hand offered. ‘Sure, Theo, but did you really see my photo in the newspaper?’
‘Yes, of course, and it was excellent.’
‘Great.’ Stephen spun back towards Willow. ‘See, Mum, I told you the reporter said I would be in the paper.’ Smiling back at Theo, he asked, ‘Have you still got the paper? Can I see it?’
‘Please,’ Willow prompted, falling back on her good manners, when all else failed, as usual. She supposed she should be relieved that at least Theo had not said you could call me Dad. But her relief was short-lived…
