little gold-digger who had caught his father’s attention. This year’s wife who, if she followed the example of every other Kyria Antonakos, would be here and gone again in the space of a couple of years.
‘That is unusual,’ he managed, knowing from the tiny flicker of a glance in his direction that Skye was unable to control that the acid tone of the words hadn’t been lost on her. ‘I have to admit that in anyone else I might find it hard to accept about any modern young woman. But, having met your lovely fiancée, I can believe anything of her. Why, when I first encountered her this afternoon, she was embarrassed at being caught in just her swimming costume—in spite of the fact that it was a far more modest design than so many I have seen.’
She was listening hard again. All her attention was focused on his face, and the way those slender, elegant hands were nervously folding her napkin over and over on itself betrayed the inner tension that she had managed to smooth from her expression. She was not at all sure just in what direction he was going to take this and that thought gave him an intense, dark satisfaction.
He waited a nicely calculated moment before continuing with deliberate casualness.
‘In fact, there was one woman I met last weekend…She was exactly Skye’s age—and build—but the skirt she wore was barely there. She was probably showing far more flesh than you were this afternoon, Stepmama.’
Oh, she didn’t like that! She had definitely winced at that ‘Stepmama’, flinching back in her chair at his tone.
‘So it was hardly surprising that she got herself into trouble with some roughs in a bar—’
But Skye had clearly had enough. Dropping the napkin down on the table, she suddenly met his mocking gaze head on, a new flame of bravado in her soft grey eyes.
‘That’s precisely why I never go into bars or clubs if I can help it!’ she declared defiantly. ‘You can never tell what sort of thug you might meet there.’
Thug! It was meant to sting and it did.
Whatever else he had been that night, thug didn’t describe it. He had treated her as well as she had any right to expect, when she had come on to him as she had. But of course she would want to make out that she had been the innocent in all this, to win the sympathy vote, just in case Cyril ever found out the truth.
A black tide of rage swamped his mind, drowning all rational thought, and his hand clenched so tightly on the stem of the wineglass that he was within an inch of snapping it sharply in two.
He couldn’t stand to be in the room with the lying, conniving little bitch any longer. He had to get out of here or explode. And if he did lose his temper, then he would take Skye Marston and her calculated play-acting with him. He would tell the truth about their meeting—give his father every single gory detail, and then walk out while the shock waves were reverberating round the house.
But those shock waves would damage his world too. They would take the fragile peace he had made with his father and shatter it irrevocably into tiny, irreparable pieces. If he took Skye Marston down, then she would take his last chance of inheriting Helikos with her. And he wasn’t prepared to let that go.
Not for a cheap little tramp who was clearly well practised in lying through her teeth.
‘Well, you don’t need to worry about getting rid of me,’ he said, tossing down his own napkin and getting to his feet. He directed what he hoped was obviously a fake smile of understanding, his gaze going to where his father’s hand still rested on her arm.
‘I can see that you two would obviously like to be alone—and I’d hate to intrude. Besides, I’m expecting a call from a young lady.’
It was only his secretary with news of a contract he was working on, but hell would freeze over before he would admit to that.
‘So I’ll say goodnight, Father—Stepmama. And I’ll see you in the morning.’
He was proud of the way that he managed to stroll from the room. Pleased with the fact that he didn’t pause or look back, or even show that he gave a damn about what he was leaving behind him. He knew he appeared relaxed, casual and totally at ease.
The truth couldn’t be more different.
Because, no matter how much he might tell himself that he had kept quiet only because of Helikos, he knew that the real truth was much more complicated than that. Ever since that night they had spent together in London he hadn’t been able to get the searingly erotic images of Skye Marston out of his thoughts—and he still couldn’t. Just sitting opposite her had set off a string of heated images that circled over and over in his thoughts until he felt he would go mad.
He didn’t want to think of them—didn’t want to think of her.
But the truth was that he could think of nothing else.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HE MIGHT as well face facts; he was never going to sleep.
Theo finally admitted to himself that he had no chance at all of drifting into the welcome unconsciousness of slumber, no matter how hard he tried.
He had been tossing and turning in his bed for an hour or more now, and even working on the intensely boring business documents he had tried to use to numb his mind into sleeping had not had the desired effect. He was as wide awake as he had been when he’d left the dining table—wider, in fact, as his struggle not to think of Skye Marston had left him feeling more and more restless with each second that passed.
Eventually he gave up completely, tossed the file down onto the floor, flung himself out of bed and dragged on the pair of swimming shorts that he had discarded earlier.
He had wanted to swim earlier and had been frustrated. Finding Skye in the pool had driven every other thought from his head.
But now he felt so restless and edgy, with a tension building up inside him like the growing oppression before a storm. He had to act or explode. He had to do something! And exercise was the sanest, the safest thing he could think of.
Swimming in the still of the night, with only the moon for light, was a calming, relaxing experience. There was no one around, only the sound of an owl hooting once or twice to disturb the silence. Theo swam the length of the pool over and over and over again, backwards and forwards. Long, powerful strokes swept through the water, his muscular legs kicked again and again, until at last he felt a degree of peace descend on him.
Slowly, he began to tire, but still he pushed himself harder and further until his muscles ached and his breathing had a raw edge to it.
‘Enough,’ he muttered at one last turn. ‘Enough.’
Now, at last, he felt he might sleep.
If he could just keep Skye Marston from his mind then he might actually get some rest. It was after one in the morning, time to go to bed.
The single-storeyed pool house was in darkness. Only a small lamp by the door glowed to break up the pitch-black that came from being so far out in the country without a single street lamp for miles. But Theo knew his way around from growing up here as a boy. Shaking the water drops from his soaked hair, he padded into the hall, confident and sure on bare feet. Pausing only to snatch up a towel from a hook in the shower room, he made his
