At The Greek Tycoon's Pleasure

Sophie looked at him warily, then she smiled. So he did have chinks in that armour! Even though he came across as the sort of man who could climb Mount Everest during his lunch break!

That genuine hesitant smile was disconcerting enough to make Theo frown, and Sophie, seeing the frown, misinterpreted it as embarrassment at being caught out unable to succeed at doing something.

‘I know,’ she said with pseudo-concern, ‘it’s terrible for a man having to admit that he actually can’t do something, isn’t it?’ She thought back to the many DIY jobs her father had attempted doing, only to end up calling in the experts. He had been clever at science and enthralled at what mankind was capable of inventing, but show him a flat pack and he had inevitably been stuck. ‘Still, you’re a writer so I suppose you have an excuse.’

‘And why is that?’

‘Because writers aren’t really supposed to know how to do practical stuff, like working out the heating or fixing a washer or…replacing a light bulb.’

Theo was outraged at her generalised assumption that he was a woolly-headed idiot but condemned to accept it with grudging good humour. He wondered why he had conjured up such a ridiculous story. Frankly, he wondered why he had bothered. People had already called to find out whether he needed company, including one acquaintance, Yvonne, who had mistakenly translated his previously polite responses as active encouragement. So why the hell was he seeking out the company of a woman who, aside from everything else, did not have a respectful bone in her body?

‘Is that right?’ he drawled, sitting back and sipping some of the tea and watching as she tucked into the obligatory scone with jam and cream.

‘Yes. Although maybe you’re different as you don’t write fiction.’

Theo watched her lick a drop of cream from her finger. His so-called profession was something he certainly did not wish to linger upon.

‘Okay, I’ll pop in after work and have a look. There shouldn’t be a problem, really. One thing we’ve always made sure to look after has been the heating system in the house. It gets too cold here to take any chances.’

‘You being…you and your father…’

Sophie stilled. She wiped her fingers on the napkin and looked across to the waitress for the bill.

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘So, if anything, the timer switch needs adjusting. I should have thought that you would want the heating on more than normal because you’re probably indoors all day working.’ The bill came and she protested vigorously when Theo insisted on paying.

‘How did he die?’

He wasn’t overstepping the mark—Sophie knew that. He was being polite, maybe even sympathetic, but she still resented the question. It was none of his business. Asking her personal questions was out of line. He was a tenant, not a friend, and not even a particularly nice tenant.

‘I assume it’s not a secret,’ Theo said dryly, ‘but if you’d rather change the subject, then that’s fine.’

‘He had a heart attack. It was quite sudden. He wasn’t old and he was very fit and healthy.’

The memory of Elena’s death came back to him with such ferocity that he drew in his breath. A different start to her day, a different road travelled, maybe not stopping to take his call, and her life would not have shattered into a thousand pieces.

‘So you have been left to sort out his affairs,’ he said abruptly and Sophie, relieved to escape the sadness of the topic, grasped the diversion gratefully and nodded.

‘It’s a bit of a mess, to be honest. I guess I’ll have to get some financial person in at some point to help, but right now I’m doing the best I can.’ She looked at her watch and stood up. ‘Will you be staying on here for another pot of tea?’ she asked politely. ‘Because I’ve got to go now. It’s a bit cold and breezy, but the shops will be open for another hour or so and you could explore.’

‘I might,’ Theo said dismissively, having no intention of doing any such thing. ‘And I’ll see you…at what time…?’

‘Oh, about six, once I’ve locked up.’

It was a Friday night. She was a young girl. Yes, the area might not be hopping with wild night excitement, but had she nowhere to go?

Curiosity, like some alien virus, entered his bloodstream and he stood up, waiting for her to leave before heading back to the cottage. Where he cleverly adjusted a couple of switches so that his ridiculous story could be corroborated.

For once, the panacea of work took a back seat. Gloria phoned, updating him on various deals he had on the go, filling him in on the snippets of gossip, in which he was not the slightest interested. As she spoke, Theo thought about Sophie, then slammed shut the door on the thoughts the second he became aware of them.

At six he heard the buzz of the doorbell and there she was when he pulled open the door. No longer in her jeans and rugby shirt, but combat trousers and a cream sweater over which she wore a longish olive-green jacket that engulfed her. The rumpled hair was now brushed and tied back into two little plaits that made her look about fifteen.

‘On time,’ he said, stepping aside and watching as she walked into the hall and deposited her coat on the banister with the familiarity of someone who had probably spent a lifetime doing it.

‘I live just above the office. It takes me all of ten minutes to get here.’ Sophie looked around, expecting and finding the house in impeccable condition. Annie and Catherine would have told her if he had been a slob. He might be arrogant, obnoxious and full of himself but at least he was relatively tidy. No sign of anything, not even the reams of paper she would have expected to be piling up somewhere. He probably just wrote directly on to his computer—no need to print anything.

Reluctantly she allowed her eyes to finally rest on him and again that little frisson of something. What was it about him that did that to her? Was it because there was a watchful stillness about him that made her painfully self-conscious? When he began walking towards her, her pulses leapt and she had to make an effort not to take a couple of steps backwards. Even with that slight limp, he moved with the grace of an athlete, every muscle in his body honed to fine perfection.

She felt her breasts ache in a sudden unwelcome response to his overpowering masculinity.

Dislikeable he might be, but he was, she conceded, drop dead gorgeous. The black hair swept away from his face threw into relentless emphasis the drama of his face. It would be enough to send any woman into a dither, she concluded uneasily, even one who disliked him and could smell him for the heartbreaker he probably was from a mile away.

‘I’ll have a look at that heating and then I’ll be off.’ She turned on her unsteady heel and headed for the boiler room where, for a few minutes and some elementary twiddling, she got the system going. When she turned round it was to find him right behind her, leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded.

‘You were right. Pretty easy.’

‘Very. Now, if you don’t mind…?’

‘Why don’t you stay for a drink?’

‘I can’t.’ At least she could breathe when he wasn’t looming over her like that.

He had followed her back out into the hall, where she was pulling on her jacket and seemed in a desperate rush to leave.

Theo was not accustomed to any woman being in a desperate rush to avoid his company. In fact, he had become adept at avoiding theirs. Before Elena, with variety spread before him like a moveable feast, he had sampled the wares and moved on. The physical pull towards a beautiful woman had always had temporary, limited appeal. It was the way he had liked it. Since Elena, the moveable feast had become a rude invasion of his privacy, but he had still been accustomed to having it there, to dealing with the necessity of avoiding it.

Something elemental kicked in now, in the face of a woman who was already making for the door as though he was a seriously infectious disease.

‘Where are you going tonight?’ he asked politely. The jacket was sizes too big for her and he wondered if it had belonged to her father. Or the blond man at the office with the over-developed protective streak.

‘Oh.’ Caught on the hop, Sophie looked at him for a few silent seconds, her face going redder by the minute as she tried to think of something fun she might be doing.

‘Exciting nightclub somewhere?’ Theo prompted silkily. He walked through to the kitchen and helped himself to a glass of wine. ‘Cinema? Theatre, if there’s one around here within striking distance? Maybe a restaurant?’ He paused and sipped some of the wine. ‘Or, of course, there’s always the pub. Although you were quick to dispel the myth that all the locals do is frequent a pub and down pints of ale.’

‘I suppose you think you’re so clever,’ Sophie told him in a shaking voice, to which he shrugged and walked towards the sitting room, leaving her with the option of either storming out in mid-tirade and looking like a coward, or else following him.

She followed to find him lounging on her sofa, thoroughly and infuriatingly calm.

‘You might be some kind of writer. Who knows? Maybe you’re even famous in that little circle you mix in, but that doesn’t cut it with me!’

‘What little circle?’ Theo asked, curious to discover what image she had of his mysterious and fictional life.

‘Oh, you know what I mean!’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘That little circle of academics! Everyone sitting around, drinking wine and congratulating themselves on being so much smarter than the rest of the human race!’

There was a lot of insight in what she had just said, Theo thought, and it applied to his own circle of financiers and businessmen, the richest of the rich who could afford to relax on the Olympian summits of their own self-worth.

He watched her fume over the rim of his glass and nodded thoughtfully. ‘You’re right.’

‘But don’t think that you can swan in here and throw your weight around!’ His words registered belatedly and she lapsed into silence. ‘What did you just say?’

‘I said you’re right. There’s a lot of self-righteous preening that takes place when wealthy, important people get together. It’s fairly nauseating.’

‘So you agree with me.’

‘I agree with the concept, but not,’ he said lazily, ‘in so far as it applies to me.’

‘Because…?’ Sophie felt giddy. She took a couple of tentative steps into the sitting room and swore that she would be out of the cottage just as soon as he backed up his statement. She couldn’t very well initiate this and then flounce off, could she? Not, she reminded herself piously, when he was her tenant, a small fact which, once again, she appeared to have forgotten.

‘Because I happen to be a very modest man.’ Quite a few, he admitted to himself, might disagree.

Something didn’t sit right with that statement, but she had to admit that he had not been stingy in conceding her point. When he reiterated his offer of a glass of wine, she found herself accepting. She justified that easily on the grounds that it was just so nice being back in this sitting room, even if she had to share the space with a man like Theo Andreou. And, besides, her bank manager would appreciate her good manners.

He had drawn the curtains and the room was just how she loved it, bathed in the mellow glow of the standing lamp, with lots of shadows in the corners and the wind rattling against the window panes. Her father’s books were ranged along one wall, housed in a bookcase that looked as old as the overhead beams.

‘You hate this, don’t you?’

Snapped back to the present, Sophie looked at him and frowned uncomfortably. ‘Hate what?’

‘Renting out this cottage to an arrogant bastard like me.’

Sophie dodged the description. ‘It’s been hard renting it out to you or to anyone.’

‘But you had to because you needed the money.’

‘Is this what you writers do?’ she asked edgily. ‘Cross-examine people and then use their reactions as fodder for books?’

‘And is this what you do?’ Theo asked coolly.

‘What?’

‘Categorise people?’

‘I do not categorise people,’ Sophie said. ‘Well, not usually,’ honesty compelled her to admit. ‘Look, yes, you’re right. I’m renting the cottage because I need the money and, no, I don’t like doing it, as I said, because it’s full of memories for me.’

‘And what do you intend to do with it once your father’s affairs have been sorted out? Was his expenditure as extravagant as you think?’

Sophie opened her mouth to tell him that her financial situation was none of his concern, and shut it again. She hadn’t actually spoken to anyone about the mess that was her financial situation. Her bank manager knew and Robert, who had worked alongside her father off and on, a labour of love, as he told her, surely suspected the worst, but the other members of staff, Moira and Claire, wouldn’t have a clue and it wouldn’t have been fair to tell them. They were both in their fifties and had only ever worked on an occasional basis for her father, sometimes writing up complicated reports which would have meant nothing to them, or else generally tidying up in the wake of his discarded petri dishes and test tubes. They had indulged him and looked after him in the way an owner might look after a playful but lovable puppy, making sure that he ate, carting him off to their bridge groups and socials whenever they could.

He would never have let them in on the chaos of his accounts. He hadn’t even let her, his own daughter, in on it! She had lived in blissful ignorance, doing her gap year in the neighbouring town, then on to university in Southampton, from which she had travelled home to see her father every fortnight. Only his death, interrupting the final leg of her teacher training, had woken her from her peaceful slumber and catapulted her into a confrontation with debt and money borrowed and money owing, all poured into her father’s obsession with discovering things.

He had lived for the hope of discovery. Of what exactly he could only ever offer mysterious promises and the general assumption that in a world so full of complex life forms and even more complex diseases there was always something waiting to be discovered.

Over the years, Sophie had fondly considered his passion for tinkering around as a harmless hobby. He had been extremely bright and, having retired from his full-time job, it had kept him out of mischief.

Theo was looking at her with a shuttered expression. She knew that she would be safe from any saccharine-sweet expressions of sympathy from him. He would be blunt and he would probably reduce her to grinding her teeth in anger, but he wouldn’t cluck his tongue and offer her a cup of tea. And he wouldn’t insult her father’s memory by asking how he could have been so irresponsible as to leave his only child to cope with his debts.

‘Worse than that,’ Sophie confessed.

Theo didn’t say anything. He stood up and silently fetched the bottle of wine so that he could refill her glass.

Did he need any of this? Some stranger bawling out her troubles on his shoulder? Because he could smell a financial mess a mile off and he had smelled it big time in that office. It wasn’t his problem and he didn’t have to listen to anybody’s tale of woe.

But a night spent reading through reports, updating files on his computer, downloading information on three companies he had his eye on, didn’t hold much appeal on a rainy, cold October night behind God’s back.

Theo looked at the downbent head consideringly before he handed her the glass of wine, topped up to confessional level.

He knew that the slightest hint of reluctance on his part to listen and she would be off. And she would make sure not to repeat the mistake. And, indeed, take away the fact that it was dark, rainy, cold and she had probably discovered yet one more IOU to add to the stockpile, and he knew that she would never have succumbed to any need to confide. She wasn’t a confiding kind of girl.

What harm in indulging her need to talk? A village in the middle of nowhereland was not the place where confidantes could be easily located, not unless you wanted every member of the village to know your private business. Or at least so Theo assumed.

‘Care to explain?’ he asked, retreating to his chair and feeling suitably pleased with himself for actually bothering to listen to someone else’s problems. Obeying doctor’s orders, in fact! Doing this small good deed filled him with a bracing sense of virtue. ‘You will find that I am very good at listening.’

CHAPTER THREE

SOPHIE looked at Theo’s dark shuttered face and wondered where this strange urge to spill all her worries was coming from.

The man did not exude natural sympathy. In fact, she had to remind herself that he was a writer because he didn’t embody any of the characteristics she associated with being in a creative profession.

But, right now, the world seemed to be on top of her shoulders. There seemed to be no end to the invoices and bills she was discovering by the minute and her father’s cavalier approach to filing meant that there was the looming spectre of yet more debts waiting in the wings. She couldn’t bring herself to discuss the situation with anyone she knew. Her friends from college would sympathise but really their heads would be somewhere else and, anyway, she hadn’t seen them for ages.

And confiding in anyone in the village, even some of the people she had grown up with, would have been a huge mistake. She was determined to protect her father’s reputation and not reveal the extent of his financial troubles.

Of course there was Robert. Sophie frowned at the thought of him. Theoretically he presented the perfect shoulder on which to cry, but for some reason she fought shy of confiding in him. To his credit, he didn’t try and force her and a couple of times had even made it clear that he would be there for her, that however great the financial mess, he had savings and would bail her out.

It almost felt treacherous to be staring into Theo’s enigmatic green eyes now, insanely tempted to pour her heart out. Robert would feel utterly betrayed.

But then Robert was too much of a fixture in her life. The advantage with Theo was that he would be gone in a matter of weeks and with him anything she said. There wouldn’t even be a temptation to keep in touch with him because she didn’t particularly care for him. In a sense, that, too, made it easier.

‘You’ve listened to a lot of other people’s problems, have you?’ Sophie asked with a wry smile.

‘It’s not usually something I encourage.’

‘I thought you said that you were a good listener.’

‘I am. Which isn’t to say that I encourage people to pour out their problems to me.’

‘Thank you for telling me that. It’s just the right thing to make me feel at ease.’ Extraordinarily, she did feel stupidly relaxed. ‘Why don’t you like people pouring out their problems to you?’

‘Because most people like advice, they like solutions. They want to be told what their next difficult step might be and no one can advise anyone else on what they should do to sort themselves out. So, to avoid being called upon to do that, I prefer to refrain from putting myself in the firing line, so to speak.’

‘Sometimes it just helps to talk,’ Sophie said slowly.

‘And, as I said, I’m willing to listen.’ He had never talked about Elena. At her funeral, he had been surrounded by sympathetic well-wishers. He had been positively drowning under the torrent of well-meaning compassion. But at no point had he felt inclined to talk to anyone about what he was going through. Not even his mother could penetrate the defence system he’d erected like a steel cordon around his emotions.

His emotions, like everything else in his life, he could take care of by himself.

‘Didn’t you know that your father was in debt? Is that the problem?’

‘Part of it,’ Sophie admitted. ‘Do you mind if I help myself to another glass of wine? I’m not accustomed to discussing my private life with other people.’

Theo felt a strange sense of satisfaction that he had got it right about this aspect of her personality. It seemed to him an almost masculine trait because, in his experience, there wasn’t a woman alive who didn’t enjoy discussing every small facet of whatever happened to be flitting through her mind.

It was reassuring to think of his landlady in those terms. Masculine, brusque, quick to bristle, never mind the stubby girlish plaits or the soft pink of her cheeks as she glanced away from him.

‘There’s nothing less private than a financial mess,’ Theo said dryly.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because it always needs cleaning up and it’s almost impossible to hide the cleaning up tools once you set to work.’

‘Don’t say that!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t want my father’s reputation to be ruined. I don’t want him to be remembered as the man who left a mess for his daughter to sort out. I don’t want to be an object of pity.’

‘No.’ Theo could certainly understand that one. ‘So how big is the mess?’

‘I honestly don’t know where to begin. Dad was the most disorganised person in the world. He has notes scribbled on pieces of paper in places no one would think of looking. Just yesterday I found a file stuffed at the back of the sofa in the sitting room above the office.’

‘Which your father used…?’

‘Oh, when he was very busy into the night reviewing something or other. Which is another problem. I don’t actually understand a lot of what’s in his files so I don’t know whether to bin them or not. Robert’s been good helping me go through them, but there are just so many!’

‘Tell me about Robert.’

‘Why?’

‘How does he fit into the dynamics?’

‘He worked with my father, off and on, so to speak. He’s a trained pharmacist as well. I think he saw my dad as something of a mentor and, in the absence of a son to carry on the profession, Dad was pleased to have Robert tagging along over the past few years, especially as I’ve been away a lot of the time, going to university and doing my teacher training.’

‘So the two of you go back a long way?’

‘I guess so,’ Sophie said in a guarded voice.

Theo’s curiosity cranked into gear and, with it, his age-old talent for reading members of the opposite sex. He had always been able to sense what the slight change in body posture meant, the barely noticeable shift in tone, the quick glance. It was a talent that had spent the past eighteen months getting rusty.

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