would have died a thousand times over tonight, Skye thought miserably as she tried once more to make a pretence of eating the meal that had been put in front of her. The cold blaze of fury in the black eyes of the man sitting opposite felt as if it had the power to shrivel her into nothing where she sat, reducing her to just a small bundle of ashes on her chair.
She wished that the earth would just open and swallow her up, anything so that she didn’t have to be here. She would much rather have escaped to her room and stayed hidden there all night.
But there was no escape. Cyril Antonakos liked a formal dinner in the evenings and he expected his family and guests to dress up for it. So she had been forced to put on the elegant peacock-blue silk dress he had told her to wear, pin her hair up into an elegant roll at the back of her head and sit down at the big wooden table to endure the worst sort of torture by food.
She had no idea at all what she was supposed to be eating, only that it had as much taste and texture as stewed sawdust and that it was impossible to swallow anything because her throat seemed to have closed up completely.
And the all the time Theo Antonakos was watching her like a hawk eyeing its prey, watching, waiting, judging the best time to swoop down and pounce. And just like some tiny, shivering dormouse cowering on the ground and watching the shadow of the predator’s wings circling overhead, she had no doubt that when he did decide to act, then the attack would be swift, merciless—and totally lethal.
She was just surprised that he hadn’t denounced her to his father from the first moment he had realised who she was. She had fully expected the condemnation to come as soon as the introduction had been made and her heart had stopped beating, her breath catching in her throat as she’d waited for the words that would ruin her and her family and bring the whole delicate structure of Cyril’s unexpected offer to rescue them tumbling down around her.
But to her astonishment it hadn’t happened. Somehow Theo had controlled the burn of fury deep inside him, though, seeing the anger that had blazed in his eyes, Skye had recognised that it was there and only the most savage and ruthless control was what held it back, kept it from showing in his voice when he had replied to his father’s introduction.
‘Ms Marston and I had just made ourselves known to each other,’ he said smoothly. So smoothly that Skye actually blinked hard in shock at the skilful way he managed to fake an easy calm that he was clearly so very far from feeling. ‘You’re a lucky man, Father, to have such a beautiful fiancée.’
And then, when she was least expecting it, and when she certainly wasn’t at all emotionally prepared, he shocked her rigid by holding out his hand to her in a pretence of a formal greeting.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms Marston.’
That ‘pleasure’ was laced with a darkly sardonic intonation that turned it into a mockery of the true meaning of the word.
And it made Skye recall, so unwillingly, the way that earlier he had taunted her, ‘Do we shake hands formally and really do everything totally back to front?’
The memory almost made her snatch her hand away, jumping back from the burn of his skin against hers, the pressure of palm on palm. But to do that was to risk alerting his father to the fact that something was wrong. At the moment, Cyril Antonakos was beaming with proud satisfaction as he watched what he believed was the first meeting between his fiancée and the estranged son who had newly returned home. How quickly that smile would fade, his mood changing rapidly if he was even to suspect that they had met before—never mind realising in what circumstances that meeting had taken place.
Just thinking of it made Skye’s hand shudder still within Theo’s grasp, and feeling it he tightened his grip on her cruelly. Looking into the black depths of his eyes, she saw the danger that smouldered there, searing over her face in a look of pure contempt. It was as if he was sending her a wordless message through the merciless pressure on her fingers.
‘I can break you as quickly and easily as I can crush your hand,’ he seemed to be saying. ‘And I will—as and when I want to.’
She had been waiting for him to act ever since. All through the painfully awkward moments after Cyril’s arrival, and Theo’s realisation of just what her position in his family was. Then she had had to go to her room to shower and change, and get ready for the evening. She had had to leave father and son alone then, unable to find any excuse to stay with them, but she had rushed through her preparations, terrified by the thought that when she returned to the main living room Theo might have decided to tell his father the truth, and all hell would have broken loose.
She had nerved herself to see a dark scowl on the older man’s face. A smug, cruel satisfaction lighting his son’s black eyes. Struggling with the fear that gripped her at the thought that she might be told to pack her bags and go home—and that her father, her family, could rot in hell—she had found that her legs were trembling so hard they would barely support her as she’d made her way from her bedroom on the lower floor and into the airy white-painted living room.
But Theo had said nothing, it seemed. If he had then Cyril would not have come forward with a smile to give her his usual peck on the cheek, and offer her a drink.
‘We’re having champagne tonight, my dear,’ he said. ‘It is, after all, a time for celebration.’
‘The return of the prodigal son,’ Theo supplied dryly.
Like his father, he got up from his seat as she came into the room and was holding out to her a delicate crystal flute filled with bubbling pale wine.
‘And of course to celebrate your own arrival into the family.’
He was so close to her that there was no way his father could have seen the cold black stare that accompanied the apparently welcoming words. But Skye saw it, and as a result her hand shook so violently as she took her drink that some of the champagne slopped over the edge and spilled onto the fine silk of her skirt.
‘Careful,’ Theo said. ‘You don’t want to spoil things.’
He smiled as he spoke, but the icy glitter of his eyes, and the soft but deadly menace of his tone, left Skye in no doubt at all that the warning was meant in a way that was very different from a concern about her dress.
As a result she had been desperately on edge all evening, waiting for the axe to fall, for Theo to speak out and reveal the dark secret that would ruin everything.
But for now he was clearly biding his time, and hiding his cruel intent behind a smiling mask.
‘So how did you two meet?’ he asked now, pushing aside his plate and leaning back in his chair, a glass of rich red wine in one hand.
It was an innocent enough question—on the surface at least. But underneath the lazily drawled words lurked so many dangerous rocks that could sink her totally if she wasn’t careful.
Instinctively Skye turned to Cyril, conceding to him automatically. When he had come up with his proposal, he had insisted on absolute secrecy. Their marriage was to look genuine, with no hint of the deal behind it, and of course both Skye and her father had been only too glad to agree.
‘Business,’ was what he said, helping himself to another portion of the rich baklava that had formed their dessert. ‘Skye’s father runs a couple of my hotels in England.’
‘In London?’ Both Theo’s tone and his eyes had sharpened and Skye shivered faintly, knowing where his thoughts were
