his lips curved into a pensive smile and he nodded. ‘Your intuition is right. My grandfather has cancer.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘He’s eighty-seven,’ he said philosophically, but his eyes had dimmed.
‘That doesn’t make it any easier.’ Jo had only known one of her grandparents: her paternal grandfather. She’d never seen much of him when she’d been growing up but she remembered how she’d always looked forward to his visits. When Granddad Bill came over her mother would bake even more cakes than usual and her father would drag himself out of the study where he spent his days drinking cheap whisky.
His death had saddened her but the distance between their lives had meant it had caused a dull ache rather than an acute pain.
It would be a thousand times harder for Theseus. The King was like a father to him.
He must be going through hell.
She remembered his despondency five years ago, when he’d learned his grandmother was dying. Whatever regrets Jo might have over that night, she would never regret being there for him.
Who amongst this palace of courtiers did he turn to for solace now? Who wrapped their arms around his neck and stroked his hair? Who tried to absorb his pain and give him comfort?
Because surely—surely—his pain that night had been real. Even if everything else had been a lie, that had been true.
Somewhere beneath the brooding façade Theseus was in agony. She would bet every penny she owned on it.
He tugged at his shirt collar as if it constricted him. ‘The hardest thing to understand is why he didn’t say anything sooner. He’s known for a number of years that something was wrong but didn’t say a word until the pain became intolerable. If he’d spoken sooner they might have been able to cure him, but...’ He shrugged and closed his eyes. ‘He left it too late. He’s riddled with it.’
‘Is he having any treatment?’
‘Against the doctor’s advice, yes.’
‘They don’t think it’s a good idea?’
‘His age and frailty are factors against it, but my grandfather is a stubborn old man who has never had to bow to the opinions of those he disagrees with—he is a king. He wants to live long enough to celebrate his jubilee and see Helios married. He has tasked the doctors with making that happen.’
Silence hung, forming a strangely intimate atmosphere that was broken by a knock on the door.
Theseus’s eyes held hers for a beat longer before he called out, ‘Come,’ and a courtier entered with news that the delegation he was expecting had arrived.
Excusing himself, he disappeared, leaving Jo with nothing but her own confused thoughts for company.
She doubled over and laid her cheek on the desk, gazing at the closed door with unfocused eyes, trying to control the savage beat of her heart.
The King—her son’s great-grandfather—was dying.
It brought it home as nothing else had that this family, however great and powerful they might be, were Toby’s kin.
She gripped her head, felt a cramping pain catching in her belly. Her emotions were riding an unpredictable roller coaster. She might as well be blindfolded for all she knew of what the immediate future would bring.
But her conscience spoke loud and clear. Toby would start school in five months and the innocence with which he looked at the world would change. He knew he had a daddy who lived in Greece, but so far that was the extent of his knowledge and his curiosity. Soon the notion of a father wouldn’t be some abstract thing but something concrete that all the other kids had and he would want too.
And didn’t Theseus deserve to know that he was a father and be given the choice to be in Toby’s life?
If only she had a crystal ball.
But no matter how much guilt she carried she could not forget that her overriding priority was her son. She would do anything to keep him safe, and if that meant keeping Theseus in the dark until she was certain his knowing could bring no harm to Toby, then that was what she must do.
* * *
Dictaphone and notepad in hand, Jo slipped through the archway into Theseus’s office. After almost two days of going through the research papers she was ready for him.
He was on the phone. His desk—which, like her own, curved to cover two walls but was twice the size—was heaped with neat piles of files and folders. His three desktop computers were all switched on.
He nodded briefly in acknowledgement and raised a hand to indicate that he wouldn’t be long.
While he continued his conversation she felt his eyes follow her as she stepped over to the window.
She loved gazing out over the palace grounds. No matter which window she looked out from the vista was always spectacular, with sprawling gardens that ran as far as the eye could see, lush with colourful spring flowers and verdant lawn, and the palace maze rising high in the distance.
When she looked back he was unabashedly studying her.
Prickles of self-consciousness swept through her. Flustered, she smoothed her sweater down over her stomach and forced her gaze back outside, scolding herself for reading anything into his contemplative study of her. Her thin cream sweater and faded blue jeans were hardly the height of fashion.
‘What can I help you with?’ he asked once he’d finished his call.
‘I’m ready with my questions for you.’
‘Ask away.’
‘It’ll probably take a couple of hours to go through them all,’ she warned him, conscious of how busy he must be.
‘My diary is clear. I’m at your disposal. Please, take a seat.’ He pointed to the armchair in the corner of his office and put his computers into sleep mode.
Sinking into the armchair’s cosy softness, she resisted the urge to tuck her feet under her bottom.
‘Before we discuss anything, I want to say how sorry I was to read about your parents’ accident.’
Their tragic car crash had changed the course of Agon’s history. It was something Jo knew would reverberate through the rest of her work, and as much as she would have liked to steer away from it, knowing that to talk about it would bring back painful memories for him, it wasn’t something she could avoid.
His gaze held hers before he brushed away a lock of hair that had fallen into his eyes.
‘See,’ he said quietly, emotion swirling in his brown eyes, ‘I didn’t lie to you about everything.’
She didn’t answer, keeping her gaze on his and then wrenching her eyes away to look at her notebook, trying to keep her thoughts coherent.
When they’d sat in his cabin on Illya he’d swigged at his bottle of gin and told her
