The thing that struck her most starkly was how clean everything was, from the well-maintained roads to the buildings and homes they drove past. When they went past a harbour she craned her neck to look more closely at the rows of white yachts stationed there—some of them as large as cruise liners.
Soon they were away from the town and winding higher into the hills and mountains. Her mouth dropped open when she caught her first glimpse of the palace, standing proudly on a hill much in the same way as the ancient Greeks had built their most sacred monuments. Enormous and sprawling, it had a Middle Eastern flavour to it, as if it had been built for a great sultan centuries ago.
But it wasn’t to the palace that she was headed. No sooner had it left her sight than the chauffeur slowed down, pausing while a wrought-iron gate inched open, then drove up to a villa so large it could have been a hotel. Up the drive he took them, and then round to the back of the villa’s grounds, travelling for another mile until he came to a much smaller dwelling at the edge of the extensive villa’s garden—a generously sized white stone cottage.
An elderly man, with a shock of white hair flapping in the breeze above a large bald spot, came out of the front door to greet them.
‘Good evening, despinis,’ he said warmly. ‘I am Kostas.’
Explaining that he ran the main villa for His Highness Prince Talos, he showed her around the cottage that would be her home for the month. The small kitchen was well stocked and a daily delivery of fresh fruit, breads and dairy products would be brought to her. If she wished to eat her meals in the main villa she only had to pick up the phone and let them know; likewise if she wished to have meals delivered to the cottage.
‘The villa has a gym, a swimming pool, and spa facilities you are welcome to use whenever you wish,’ he said before he left. ‘There are also a number of cars you can use if you wish to travel anywhere, or we can arrange for a driver to take you.’
So Talos didn’t intend to keep her prisoner in the cottage? That was handy to know.
She’d envisaged him collecting her from the airport, locking her in a cold dungeon and refusing to let her out until she was note-perfect with his grandmother’s composition and all her demons had been banished.
Thinking about it sent a tremor racing up her spine.
She wondered what great psychiatrist Talos would employ to ‘fix’ her. She would laugh if the whole thing didn’t terrify her so much. Whoever he employed had better get a move on. She had exactly four weeks and two days until she had to stand on the stage for the King of Agon’s Jubilee Gala. In those thirty days she had to learn an entirely new composition, her orchestra had to learn the accompanying score, and she had to overcome the nerves that had paralysed her for over half her lifetime.
THE MORNING CAME, crisp and blue. After a quick shower Amalie donned her favourite black jeans and a plum shirt, then made herself a simple breakfast, which she took out to eat on her private veranda. As she ate yogurt and honey, and sipped at strong coffee—she’d been delighted to find a brand-new state-of-the-art coffee machine, with enough pods to last her a year—she relaxed into a wicker chair and let the cool breeze brush over her. After all the bustle of Paris it felt wonderful to simply be.
If she closed off her mind she could forget why she was there...pretend she was on some kind of holiday.
Her tranquillity didn’t last long.
After going back inside to try another of the coffee-machine pods—this time opting for the mocha—she came back onto the veranda to find Talos sitting on her vacated chair, helping himself to the cubes of melon she’d cut up.
‘Good morning, little songbird,’ he said with a flash of straight white teeth.
Today he was dressed casually, in baggy khaki canvas trousers, black boots and a long-sleeved V-necked grey top. He was unshaven and his hair looked as if it had been tamed with little more than the palm of a hand. As she leaned over the table to place her mug down she caught his freshly showered scent.
‘Is that for me?’ he asked, nodding at the mug in her shaking hand.
She shrugged, affecting nonchalance at his unexpected appearance. ‘If you don’t mind sharing my germs.’
‘I’m sure a beautiful woman like you doesn’t have anything so nasty as germs.’
She raised a suspicious eyebrow, shivering as his deep bass voice reverberated through her skin, before turning back into the cottage, glad of an excuse to escape for a moment and gather herself. Placing a new pod in the machine, she willed her racing heart to still.
He’d startled her with his presence, that was all. She’d received an email from his private secretary the evening before, while eating the light evening meal she’d prepared for herself, stating that the score would be brought to her at the cottage mid-morning. There had been nothing mentioned about the Prince himself bothering to join her. Indeed, once she’d realised she wasn’t staying in the palace she’d hoped not to see him again.
When she went back outside he was cradling the mug, an expression of distaste wrinkling his face. ‘What is this?’
‘Mocha.’
‘It is disgusting.’
‘Don’t drink it, then.’
‘I won’t.’ He placed it on the table and gave it a shove with his fingers to move it away from him. He nodded at her fresh cup. ‘What’s that one?’
‘Mocha—to replace the one you kidnapped. If you want something different, the coffee machine’s in the kitchen.’ The contract she’d signed had said nothing about making coffee for him.
That evil contract...
She dragged her thoughts away before her brain could rage anew. If she allowed herself to fume over the unfairness, her wits would be dulled, and she already knew to her bitter cost that she needed her wits about her when dealing with this man.
As she sat herself in the vacant chair, unsubtly moving it away from his side, Talos reached for an apple from the plate of fruit she’d brought out with her. Removing a stumpy metal object from his trouser pocket, he pressed a button on the side and a blade at least five inches long unfolded. The snap it made jolted her.
Talos noticed her flinch. ‘Does my knife bother you?’
‘Not at all. Did you get that little thing when you were a Boy Scout?’
Her dismissive tone grated on him more than it should have. She grated on him more than she should.
‘This little thing?’ He swivelled the chair, narrowed his eyes and flicked his wrist. The knife sliced through the air, landing point-first in the cherry tree standing a good ten feet from them, embedding itself in the trunk.
He didn’t bother hiding his satisfaction. ‘That little thing was a present from my grandfather when I graduated from Sandhurst.’
‘I’m impressed,’ she said flatly. ‘I always thought Sandhurst was for gentlemen.’
Was
