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Skye could only blink in stunned horror as he suddenly switched to a frighteningly near-accurate copy of her own words, her own voice, and to her shock and distress she caught the note of husky seduction mixed in with the pleading she had aimed for.
‘“I’m begging you, Theo…” Oh, yes—you were begging, all right!’
To her total astonishment he suddenly came forward and held out a hand, clearly intending to help her up. Stunned and bemused, Skye could only take the hand he offered, finding herself wrenched to her feet with a force that almost had her flying to the opposite side of the room.
But Theo caught her, whirled her round back to face him, yanked her close. For a long, long moment he simply stared into her face, but then he reached out his free hand, tracing the side of her face, the contours of her cheek, before he pushed his long, powerful fingers into the fall of her burnished red hair.
‘Oh, I know what you were begging for. What you wanted was this…’
The kiss he dragged her into was hard and rough, cruelly punishing, devastating. It was meant to tell her exactly what he thought of her and it did. It humiliated, angered, shattered her. And it left her shaking in her shoes at just the thought of what was in his mind.
But then just as suddenly that kiss stopped.
It stopped and Theo lifted his head for a moment, drew in a raw, ragged breath. Molten jet eyes blazed down into hers, searing right through to her soul.
‘Oh, yes, my sweet,’ he murmured, soft as a deadly snake. ‘That’s what you want. What you respond to. What you use to try to entice me into doing as you want.’
‘It wasn’t like that…’ Skye tried to whisper, but her tongue seemed to have frozen in her mouth, unable to speak a word, and he either didn’t hear her or ignored her attempt and pushed straight on.
‘And do you know what I hate—what I despise the most? It’s that even now, when I know that everything you are is a lie, that the woman I met, the woman I slept with, was as false as she could be, that she was promised to someone else—to my own father!—you still can’t stop! You still think that you can seduce me round to your way of thinking—to doing what you want me to do. That by offering me your body—’
‘No!’
‘Yes,’ Theo returned harshly. ‘Oh, yes. But it won’t work, agape mou. You don’t catch me that way again. I may have been duped at our first meeting—but I don’t put my head into the noose a second time. Not for anyone—and certainly not for a conniving, scheming little tramp like you’ve proved yourself to be.’
‘No…’ It was all she could manage; all she could think of to say.
But even as she spoke she knew that it was all pointless, that she might just as well have saved herself the effort. Theo wasn’t going to listen to her, and, even if he did, there was no way she could refute the appalling accusations he was throwing at her, not unless she offered him some alternative explanation.
And the only explanation she could offer was the truth. A truth that she was forbidden to tell anyone, that she had sworn to keep to herself. If she let it out, she would ruin so many other lives.
While keeping silent only ruined her own.
‘No?’ Theo scorned. ‘Well, I’m sorry, my angel, but I just don’t believe you.’
His hand came out, slowly, carefully, so that she didn’t have time to react or flinch away.
With the back of one long finger he traced the line of her face, from her temple, down her cheek, along the curve of her jaw. Just for a second, his touch lingered on her mouth, stroking softly, and even though she knew it was impossible, that she was just deceiving herself, in that second, despairingly, Skye would have sworn that the bleak black eyes had been touched with a tiny gleam of regret.
But she had to have been imagining things because the next moment he snatched his hand away, shaking it faintly as if to remove the contamination of her touch. Whatever had been in his eyes vanished completely as his face closed up, harsh and severe, in total rejection of her.
‘You have three days,’ he told her, each word cold and clear and totally obdurate. ‘Three days in which to tell my father the truth. And at the end of that time, if you still haven’t told him—then I promise you I will.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
THREE days.
It hadn’t sounded long when Theo had given Skye the ultimatum. In fact it hadn’t sounded like any time at all.
Three days—just seventy-two hours—in which to find the courage to face Cyril and admit to him what had happened. She didn’t know how she could do it. She only knew that somehow—God knew how—she had to.
But that had been the day before yesterday. Now more than forty-eight hours of the seventy-two had passed—gone. And she was no nearer to bringing herself to do as Theo had ordered.
If anything, she was further away from it than she had ever been.
For one thing, Cyril hadn’t even been in the house most of the time. He had spent a large amount of yesterday in the village and had returned in such a dreadful mood that Skye had hurriedly retired to her room and left him to himself. This morning he had ordered the helicopter to take him to Athens at what seemed like the crack of dawn and hadn’t been seen since.
Skye could only be thankful that Theo too had made himself scarce. The thought of facing him and the inevitable reaction when he discovered that she still hadn’t given in to his demands and told his father the truth made her shiver in genuine fear.
The future seemed dark and bleak, without a single glimmer of hope on the horizon, and she had no idea which way to turn.
If she didn’t tell Cyril, then Theo would. But how could she tell Cyril when doing so would inevitably mean that he would call off the whole engagement and the wedding that was supposed to follow it?
And without that wedding, then her father had no chance of avoiding arrest, because if thwarted then Cyril would surely press charges even more vehemently. And if he was arrested, then her mother…
‘Oh, heaven help me!’
Skye sank down onto the nearest chair and buried her face in her hands, giving in to despair.
She had never felt so lost and alone. So totally abandoned by everyone.
‘Is there a problem?’
She recognised the husky male voice immediately. It was the one that had haunted her dreams, sounded in her head all day long ever since she had heard it issuing the brutal ultimatum that threatened to shatter her life, and that of all the people she loved.
‘Oh, no, there’s no problem!’ she flung at him, her head coming up sharply, auburn hair tossed back over her shoulder, grey eyes blazing defiance. ‘No problem at all! Only the fact that my life finally seemed to be back on some sort of track—one that I could at least cope with. But then I had the misfortune to meet you and now everything’s blown up in my face!’
‘You haven’t told him.’ It was a statement, not a question, but Skye still felt he was waiting for a response to it.
‘No, I haven’t told him!’
If he’d been around in the house, he would have known that. But for his own private reasons Theo had made himself scarce for the past couple of days. Having delivered his ultimatum, he had backed off and left her alone with his father.
Of course, she knew why. He was expecting her to use the time to tell Cyril everything. She supposed that he thought he was being fair—even considerate—by giving her the space and the quiet in which to broach the subject.
Well, he might not have been actually putting pressure on her directly with his words and his presence, but the knowledge that he was there, waiting, watching, like some cruel hunter lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce if she didn’t do as he ordered, had kept her in a permanent state of shivering terror, never knowing when his dark patience would run out and he would move in for the kill.
‘For one thing, I haven’t had an opportunity, and for another—well, I just don’t know how he’s going to react.’
‘That’s something you should have considered before you leapt into bed with a complete stranger.’
The cynicism in Theo’s tone seemed all the worse when Skye admitted to herself just how wonderful he looked. With the afternoon sunlight shining on the glossy black hair, making the dark eyes gleam spectacularly between their frame of thick, lush lashes, he was a Greek god come to life in modern dress. The long, lean legs were clothed in jeans so tight they were positively indecent, and the power of his chest and shoulders was emphasised by the loving cling of the soft tee shirt to the muscled contours. The white material threw the colour of his bronzed skin into sharp relief, his tan already deepened by several days in the Greek sun, and the whole picture was one that made her mouth dry in purely sensual delight.
‘I had no idea that the complete stranger was going to turn out to be my fiancé’s son!’
‘No, I don’t suppose you did,’ Theo drawled, strolling into the room and dropping down into a chair opposite with indolent ease. ‘That was rather unfortunate for you.’
‘Unfortunate!’ Skye echoed sourly. ‘That has to be the understatement of the year!’
‘But would it have made things any more justifiable if I’d been a perfect stranger? You would still have been unfaithful to the man you were engaged to. Or are you one of those people who believe that the crime is not in the actual action, but in getting found out?’
‘Not at all!’ Skye denied his words furiously ‘I don’t expect you to believe me, but I don’t make a habit of indulging in one-night stands with complete strangers!’
‘You’d be wrong about that—I do believe you.’
‘And I wasn’t exactly engaged to your father at the time—’
The sudden realisation of the words he had inserted quietly into her tirade pulled her up sharp, her head spinning in shock.
She couldn’t be hearing properly. Had he said…?
‘What did you say?’ she demanded rawly.
‘That I believe you. That you’re not the type who makes a habit of indulging in one-night stands with complete strangers.’
‘You—you do?’
‘Absolutely.’
Stunned relief and delight flooded through her. Her heart leapt, her spirits lifted. A smile she couldn’t suppress spread wide across her face.
‘That’s wonderful! Fantastic! You can’t imagine the relief that makes me feel…’
But something was wrong.
Very wrong.
The smile slipped a bit, faded, as she realised that there was no answering lightening of Theo’s expression. Instead, his features remained set in the sombre, unyielding cast that they had displayed from the moment he had come into the room.
As sudden doubt crept into her mind and took an uncomfortable hold Skye felt her world tilt on its balance, swaying sickeningly.
‘You didn’t mean it?’ she questioned hesitantly.
‘Oh, yes, I meant it. I could hardly think otherwise—could I? After all, I am only too aware that there hadn’t been any man before me. You were a virgin that night.’
Another statement. A flat, blank-toned question that rocked her back in her seat, making her stare into his dark, shuttered face. Had she failed so completely in her attempt to look and act sophisticated and experienced?
‘I—what—you knew?’
The look Theo shot her was dark with cynical mockery. A black humour that wasn’t echoed in any lightening of his expression, not even the tiniest hint of a curve to his sensual mouth.
‘Oh, yes, I knew. Do you know what that did to me?’
‘You’re angry about that?’
She couldn’t understand his reaction, couldn’t understand what was going through his head at all, and the confusion and uncertainty made her too uncomfortable to sit still. Pushing herself to her feet, she prowled about the room, agonisingly conscious of those deep, dark eyes following her every move until she felt like some specimen under a microscope or a caged animal being closely observed by some coldly analytical scientist.
‘I don’t get it! I don’t understand at all! I—I thought it was a deep-seated male fantasy to be some woman’s first lover. To be the one who took her virginity…’
But she’d hit quite the wrong note there. In trying for a levity she was far from feeling, her words had had the effect of lighting the blue touch-paper and failing to stand well back while the whole multicoloured explosion roared into life right in her face.
Theo hurled himself to his feet in a movement that was so expressive of barely controlled violence that it had her stumbling back behind a chair for protection. His face was twisted into a savage scowl that added to her sense of fearful apprehension.
‘In a sordid one-night stand in a cheap hotel?’ he snarled viciously. ‘Oh, yeah—some fantasy! Your—a woman’s—first time should be something special—something to remember. Not just thrown away!’
He meant it! Skye could hardly believe what she was seeing. Theo truly meant this. It was in his eyes, in his voice.
‘Can’t you see?’ she pleaded with him. ‘That’s why I did it—why I was with you. I didn’t want your—my wedding night to be the first. That’s why I was there.’
She’d thought she could make things better by explaining, but to judge from the change of expression, the searing burn of those deep-set eyes, she’d only managed the exact opposite.
‘To throw it away on any man you met?’
He was taking it exactly the wrong way.
‘Not just any man…’
And it had been special, she told him in the privacy of her thoughts, not daring to let on just how special that night had been. It was bad enough knowing it herself, but if she admitted to even a tiny part of it then she knew that it would rip her to pieces inside.
‘Oh, don’t tell me that you met me and instantly knew I was the love of your life,’ Theo scorned.
‘No—I’m not saying that.’
‘I could have been just anyone.’
‘No!’ Never. ‘And the hotel wasn’t that cheap!’
Oh, why couldn’t she stop? It had been obvious from the start that her attempts to pretend that that night hadn’t mattered so much had failed painfully. Theo’s scowl, the way his black brows were drawn tightly together, the black eyes blazing beneath them were warning enough that she was blundering blindly into a dangerous minefield where at any moment things might blow up in her face. But still she couldn’t help herself. Couldn’t stop herself from blurting out totally inappropriate remarks that were only making matters worse.
‘It was to me!’
The savage declaration made her jump like a startled rabbit. In fact, that was exactly what she felt like as he came towards her—a small, frightened rabbit, transfixed in the beam of a car’s headlights, wishing desperately that she could move.
‘I did exactly what you wanted. Took you exactly where you asked. “A quiet, decent hotel”,’ Theo said, and Skye realised that he was quoting her exactly.
‘But, of course, I didn’t know who you were then. If I had, then I might have…’
Something about the icy glare he turned on her froze the words on her tongue, cutting them off completely. In dawning horror, she realised just what she was saying, the impression she was giving. A hot tide of red swept right across her face and her hands crept up to cover her mouth, trying to hold the dreadful words back.
But of course it was far too late.
‘If you’d known who I was then what, Skye?’ Theo pounced on the foolish sentence. ‘Would you have held out for more, is that it, hmm? Would you have insisted on a five-star place, or asked for more? Traded your virginity for a night in a penthouse suite, perhaps—or a little room service?’
‘I didn’t ask for anything from you!’
‘Only a night of meaningless sex with an anonymous man.’
‘Yes! Yes, that was exactly what I was looking for!’
