his retreating back, it took Jo a few beats before she pulled herself together and scrambled after them.
Dull thuds pounded in her brain, bruising it, as the magnitude of her situation hit her.
For all these years she’d sworn to herself that she would find Toby’s father and tell Theo about their son. She’d had no expectations of what would happen afterwards, but had known that at the very least she owed it to Toby to find him. She’d also thought she owed it to Theo to tell him he had a child.
But Theo didn’t exist.
Whoever this man was, he was not the Theo Patakis she had once fallen in love with.
Theseus wasn’t the father of her son; he was a stranger dressed in his skin.
‘VISITORS TO THE palace often get lost, so I’ve arranged for a map to be left in your apartment,’ Theseus said as they climbed a narrow set of stairs.
‘A map? Seriously?’ She would remain civil if it killed her. Which it probably would.
So many emotions were running through her she didn’t know where one began and another ended.
He nodded, still steaming ahead. Her legs were working at a quick march to keep up with him as he turned into a dark corridor lit by tiny round ceiling lights.
‘The palace has five hundred and seventy-three rooms.’
‘Then I guess a map could come in handy,’ she conceded, for want of anything else to say.
‘There will not be time for you to explore the palace as you might like,’ he said. ‘However, we will do everything in our power to make your stay here as comfortable as it can be.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said, trying not to choke on her words.
‘Are you up to speed with the project?’
‘I read a good chunk of it on the plane,’ she confirmed tightly.
As the deadline for the biography’s completion was so tight, Fiona had been emailing each chapter as she’d finished it so they could be immediately edited. The editor working on it had spent the past six weeks or so with a distinctly frazzled look about her.
‘Fiona has completed the bulk of the biography, but there is still another twenty-five years of my grandfather’s life to be written about. I appreciate this must sound daunting, but you will find when you read through the research papers that there is much less complexity there than in his early years. Are you confident you can do this within the time constraints?’
‘I wouldn’t have accepted the job if I wasn’t.’ Fiona’s editor, who Jo was now working with, had assured her that the last three decades of King Astraeus’s life had been comparatively quiet after his early years.
But Jo had accepted the job before discovering who she would be working for and exactly who he was.
As she clung to the gold banister that lined the wall above a wide, cantilevered staircase that plunged them into another warren of passageways and corridors Jo remembered a trip to Buckingham Palace a few years back, and recalled how bright and airy it had seemed. The Agon Royal Palace matched Buckingham Palace for size, but it had a much darker, far greater gothic quality to it. It was a palace of secrets and intrigue.
Or was that just her rioting emotions making her read more into things? Her body had never felt so tight with nerves, while her brain had become a fog of hurt, anger, bewilderment and confusion.
‘I don’t remember you speaking Greek when we were on Illya,’ he said, casting her a curious, almost suspicious glance that made her heart shudder.
‘Everyone spoke English there,’ she replied in faultless Greek, staring pointedly ahead and praying the dim light bouncing off the dark hardwood flooring would hide the burn suddenly ravaging her skin.
‘That is true.’ He came to a halt by a door at the beginning of another wide corridor. He turned the handle and pushed it open. ‘This is your apartment for the duration of your stay. I’m going to visit my grandfather while you settle in—a maid will be with you shortly to unpack. Dimitris will come for you in an hour, and then we can sit down and discuss the project properly.’
And just like that he walked back down the corridor, leaving Jo staring at his retreating figure with a mixture of fury and incredibly lancing pain raging through her.
Was that it?
Was that all she was worth?
A woman he’s once been intimate with suddenly reappears in his life and he doesn’t even ask how she’s been? Not the slightest hint of curiosity?
The only real reference to their past had been a comment about her speaking his language.
He’d sought her out back then. It had been her comfort he’d needed that night. And now she wasn’t worth even a simple, How are you? or How have you been?
But then, she thought bitterly, it had all been a lie.
This man wasn’t Theo.
A soft cough behind her reminded her that Dimitris was still there. He handed her a set of keys, wished her a pleasant stay and left her alone to explore her apartment.
* * *
Theseus blew air out of his mouth, nodding an automatic greeting to a passing servant.
Joanne Brookes.
Or, as he’d known her five years ago, Jo.
Now, this was a complication he hadn’t anticipated. A most unwelcome complication.
Hers was a face from his past he’d never expected to see again, and certainly not in the palace, where a twist of fate had decreed she would spend ten days working closely with him.
She’d been there for him during the second worst night of his life, when he’d been forced to wait until the morning before he could leave the island of Illya and be taken to his seriously ill grandmother.
Jo had taken care of him. In more ways than one.
He remembered his surprise when he’d learned her age—twenty-one and fresh out of university. She’d looked much younger. She’d seemed younger than her years too.
He supposed that would now make her twenty-six. Strangely, she now seemed older than her years—not in her appearance, but in the way she held herself.
He experienced an awful sinking feeling as he remembered taking her number and making promises to call.
That sinking feeling deepened as he recalled his certainty after they’d had sex that she’d been a virgin.
She couldn’t have been. She would have told you. Who would give her virginity to a man who was effectively a stranger?
Irrelevant, he told himself sharply.
