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All the more so because his mind would be anywhere but here on Helikos.
From the moment that he had woken to find the space in the bed beside him cold, the room empty, he hadn’t been able to get the mysterious Skye out of his thoughts. He had spent the last week hunting for traces of the woman who had shared that one amazing night with him, but, with so little to go on, he had had a frustrating lack of success. He would do better, he knew, to forget the whole thing and put her out of his mind.
But in one brief night she had got completely under his skin and he couldn’t forget about her. Even when he slept, his dreams were filled with hot, erotic images of the night they had spent together. He would dream that he held her close, her slender, smooth-skinned limbs entangled with his, her Titian hair spread across the pillows, over his face, her perfume driving him wild.
And then he’d wake with his heart racing, his breath coming in raw, uneven gasps, his body slicked with sweat as if he had actually been making love to her in reality and not just in his mind. But of course none of it was real—none of it except the burning ache in his groin, the throb of unappeased hunger through every nerve.
If he could, he would have made some excuse and not come here. But the division between him and his father had gone on quite long enough. If Cyril was prepared to offer an olive branch, however half-hearted, then he, Theo, would meet him more than part way.
The house was just as he remembered it. High on a cliff above the sea, the huge white building sprawled over a large plot of land on two levels, each with its own vast veranda giving an amazing view of the ocean. A wide arched gateway to one side led to a stone-flagged patio, the oval swimming pool, and a small pool house that doubled as a guest house.
As Theo approached the door was pulled open and a small, plump, dark-haired figure hurried towards him.
‘Master Theo! Welcome! It’s wonderful to have you back!’
‘Amalthea…’
Theo submitted to the exuberant embrace of the tiny woman who had been his nurse as he grew up, and, because his mother had died when he was small, the closest person to a mother he had ever known.
‘Where am I staying? Have you put me in my old room?’
Amalthea’s dark eyes clouded as she shook her greying head.
‘Your father told me to put you in the pool house.’
So the olive branch was not quite as definite as he had thought, Theo told himself with a twist of sardonic resignation. His father was a hard man to like—a difficult man to love. He took offence easily and held onto grudges for a long, long time. It seemed that being invited here for the old man’s wedding was only the start of things. There wasn’t any sign of the fatted calf being prepared for the return of the prodigal son.
‘Who’s in my room?’
Surely the guests hadn’t started to arrive just yet? The wedding wasn’t taking place until the end of the month.
‘The new Kyria Antonakos.’
‘My father’s fiancée?’
So his father and the bride-to-be didn’t share a room already. That was a surprise.
‘What’s she like?’
Amalthea rolled her eyes in an expression of disapproval that she could only get away with in front of Theo.
‘Not at all his usual sort. But she is very beautiful.’
‘They’re always beautiful,’ Theo commented cynically. ‘That’s why he chooses them. Is my father at home now?’
‘He had to go to the village,’ Amalthea told him. ‘But he’ll be back this evening in time for dinner. His fiancée is at home. Would you want to—’
‘Oh, no,’ Theo put in swiftly, before she could even form the suggestion. ‘Dinner time will be soon enough.’
That way he could get both awkward encounters over and done with in the same time. Perhaps making polite small talk with The Fiancée would be easier than trying to carry on any sort of a conversation with his parent.
‘My bags will have been taken to the pool house. I’ll unpack and settle in—maybe have a swim.’
He stretched slowly, easing muscles cramped tight after the journey from London.
‘It’s good to be home.’
So this was to be home.
Skye turned away from the window with its panoramic view of the sea and sank back down onto the bed with a sigh, digging her teeth into her lower lip in an attempt to force back the tears that were threatening.
She was always on the edge of tears these days. Always only just managing to subdue the panic that gripped her when she contemplated what lay ahead of her. She still couldn’t quite take it all in. Still couldn’t believe that this was to be her future.
But sitting here brooding wasn’t going to change that. She really ought to come out of the bedroom at some point soon, and get to know the rest of the house better. She was going to live here, after all.
That thought only added to her sense of desolate unreality. This house, beautiful as it was, just didn’t seem anything like the home she had left in the damp and green countryside of Suffolk, the small village where she had grown up.
She supposed she would get used to it in time. She had to get used to it; she had no choice.
Skye rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes, brushing away the tears. When she’d phoned home earlier, her father had told her that her mother had been taken into hospital again. Claire Marston needed yet another operation, and soon. And her doctors had said that it was vital she was kept quiet. Any stress at all could be fatal.
It was a terrible, bitter irony, one that brought a taste like the burn of acid into her mouth, to think that she had always dreamed of visiting Greece, of seeing the cluster of the Sporades Islands, perhaps holidaying there. She had dreamed of the sunshine, the sea, the white houses she had seen in photographs. And now she had achieved her dream, but it had turned into a terrible nightmare; one from which even waking wouldn’t mean that she could escape.
Now she had the sun. It had been shining all day. And, there, beyond her window, was the sea, an almost unbelievable bright and sparkling turquoise in colour. She lived in one of the white houses—a huge white house. And she hated it.
She was lonely and lost and terrified of the future.
And she had no way out.
‘Oh, Dad! Why did you have to be so stupid? How could you have made such a mess of things?’
If only…
But no! Skye caught herself up sharply, giving herself a brusque, reproving shake.
She couldn’t let herself dwell on if only. Couldn’t even let herself dream of if only.
But, oh, if only she had never made that mad, foolish mistake last week. If only she hadn’t given into the crazy, wild impulse to have one last night of freedom while she could.
And if only she had never met the most devastating man called Anton. A man who had taken her to bed for the most amazing, most stunning, most memorable night of passion. The only night of such passion she was ever likely to know. A night of passion she would never forget.
And she could never, ever forget the man who had shared it with her.
But because she would never forget, then the situation in which she now found herself became so very much worse. Appallingly so. Perhaps before last week she might have been able to bear the prospect of the future with some degree of equanimity. Now she had been shown, oh, so briefly, the image of another, very different future, only to have it snatched away from her for ever, and she had no idea at all how she was ever going to cope.
But she had to. Even though she felt that her heart would break just with trying.
‘Come on, Marston!’ she told herself fiercely. ‘Pull yourself together. You’re going to have to make the best of this!’
She could at least keep herself busy. Keep her mind occupied and not let herself brood.
What was it Cyril had said before he left—to go into the village on business?
‘Make yourself at home. The house is yours—anything you want, just ask for it. Use the cinema, or the pool.’
The pool! There was her answer. Some exercise would distract her; it would fill the long, empty afternoon that stretched ahead. And if she was lucky, it would tire her out so that she would finally manage to sleep tonight.
And she needed to sleep, she told herself as she pulled open a drawer, hunting through it for the sleek white costume that Cyril had insisted on buying for her when he had realised that she didn’t have anything to wear to swim in, apart from the regulation navy blue one piece that had seen her through school and was now definitely on its last legs.
She would exercise until she was exhausted and then tonight she might crash out, almost unconscious. With luck she would not have to lie there, in the strange bed, staring at the white-painted ceiling, remembering…
Or would falling asleep be worse? Every night she had slept so badly, locked in feverish dreams of a night in a hotel, a long, sleekly muscled body next to hers, powerful arms holding her, jet-black eyes looking down at her. And every morning she had woken with the bedclothes in a twisted tangle, knotted around her body, evidence of the disturbed night she had passed.
She was shivering with reaction to her memories as she pulled on the white swimsuit, grabbed a towel, and headed for the pool.
Theo’s unpacking only took a very short time. There was little enough to put away in the cupboards of the pool house where his father had left instructions he was to stay, his old room apparently being occupied by The Fiancée, and now he was at a loss. The afternoon was warm and the thought of the cool, clear water of the pool was appealing. It was the work of seconds to change into black swimming shorts and head outside, padding silently in bare feet over the white-tiled surround.
What he didn’t expect was to see someone already in the water. Shock brought him to a halt, eyes narrowing against the glint of the sun on the water as he studied the scene before him.
A sleek form sped through the water, powering from one end of the pool to another. A sleek female form in a clinging white costume. The Fiancée, if he wasn’t very much mistaken. He couldn’t see much of her from here, she was swimming away from him and the water hid most of her body. He had a brief, blurred impression of dark hair, long, slender arms slicing through the water, slim, toned legs kicking out behind the shapely body, high, tight buttocks…
What the hell was he doing? He couldn’t have thoughts like that about his father’s fiancée—the woman who was going to be his stepmother by the end of the month.
Or was this in fact the brand-new fiancée? Because she was much younger than he had ever anticipated…
Perhaps The Fiancée had been married before and this girl was a daughter? Whoever she was, she made him think disturbingly of the mysterious Skye.
He’d better make himself known to her. He didn’t want to give the impression of behaving like a peeping Tom, standing here staring at her.
‘Kalimera.’
She hadn’t heard him—the water must still be in her ears. Or perhaps she didn’t even understand Greek. A cynical smile twisted his mouth. It was an indication of just how bad things had become between him and his father that he had no idea whether the new woman in Cyril’s life was Greek or some other nationality entirely. The last time he had known anything about any of Cyril’s mistresses, his father had been deeply involved with a woman from the village.
‘Good afternoon.’ He spoke again, more firmly and clearly this time, just as she reached the far end of the pool and held onto the side, wiping the water from her face. ‘I think I ought to introduce myself to you, Stepmama.’
It was her stillness that told him something was wrong. The sudden total freezing into immobility that caught on a raw edge in his mind and made him frown, studying her more closely.
Just what had he said that had startled her so much?
Even from this distance he could see the way that she clutched at the side of the pool, the pressure that turned the knuckles white on each delicate hand.
That hand…
Suddenly, shockingly, it was as if he had been kicked in the stomach hard.
A cold, damp night in London. A smoky bar. The laughter of two men.
A hand held prisoner on the table top.
‘Theos, no!’
He had to be imagining things. Fooling himself.
But in the warmth of the Greek sun the hair that tumbled down her back—the hair that he had thought was dark, but now he could see was only soaked with water from the pool—was already starting to dry. And as it dried its colour changed, lightening…revealing a red-gold tint.
‘Ochi…’
Feeling as if he had been slapped on the side of the head, Theo reverted to his native Greek, shaking his head in denial of what he was seeing, what he suspected.
‘No!’
It couldn’t be true.
But if it wasn’t, then why was she still standing as if frozen, with her head turned away from him—that long, straight back held tight with tension, the delicate hands clenched over the edge of the pool?
Why didn’t she turn and face him—revealing the features of a total stranger, shattering the foolish, damn stupid, appalling delusion that had taken a grip on his mind and wouldn’t let go?
She wasn’t…she couldn’t be…
‘Skye?’
From the moment that she had first heard that voice, Skye had been fixed to the spot, unable to move, unable to think, unable to breathe.
‘Good afternoon,’ he had said, and it was as if a cruel hand had reached out through time and yanked her backwards, dragging her away from the present, and back into the past, into a whirlwind of memories that paralysed her mind, slashed at her soul.
‘Good afternoon.’
Those were the words she had heard in the clear light of today. But in her mind what she had heard was: Oh, but he does.
The first words that Anton had spoken on the night in London. The night that ever since had simply become that night in her thoughts, with no further title needed.
That night.
That was when she had first heard that rich, slightly husky voice with the touch of the beautiful accent that made her toes curl in response.
But how could she have heard it here and now?
She had to be imagining things! She couldn’t have heard it. He couldn’t be here. Fate couldn’t be so cruel.
But then he had said, ‘I think I ought to introduce myself to you,’ and the world had tilted violently, swinging right off balance, making her head spin crazily.
Her vision had blurred, her stomach had clenched tight in panic. She couldn’t see, couldn’t think. She had to know—and yet she didn’t dare to look round, terrified in case she was right. In case it was him.
And then the worst horror of all.
‘Skye?’
He used her name. In the voice that she had heard him use dozens of times—a hundred times—on that night. She had heard it said calmly, heard it said softly, heard it said huskily, seductively, passionately, demandingly. And finally, she had heard her own name used as a cry of fulfilment, as he had lost himself in her. But always, always, in that voice.
