was it about?’
‘Do you really want to know?’ Theo demanded sharply. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, I do.’ Skye tried to sound much more certain than she actually felt. ‘It might make me understand things more.’
Something in Theo’s expression warned her that that was a vain hope. But she had taken this path now. She was determined to see it through.
‘Tell me,’ she said unevenly.
Theo pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans and strolled away towards the open patio doors where he stood, staring out at the clear blue water of the pool glinting in the sun.
‘My father disowned me because I wouldn’t marry the bride of his choice.’
‘What?’ Skye was stunned. ‘You’re kidding!’
Theo swung round to face her again and the deadly serious cast of his stunning features made the half-laughing protest and disbelief fade rapidly from her face.
‘Do I look as if I am joking?’ he demanded haughtily, his accent sounding very pronounced on the question. ‘Believe me, it is not a topic I would be flippant about.’
‘But—he—I mean—why?’
Theo’s mouth curved into a grim travesty of a smile that had no trace of humour at all in it.
‘My father has always tried to run my life,’ he said at last. ‘When I was small he took control completely—I could barely breathe without his permission. My mother died when I was five—two years later I was sent to board-ing-school in England.’
‘At seven?’
She looked truly shocked, Theo reflected. Shocked, and something else he couldn’t quite interpret. If he’d been caught in a weak moment he might have called it sympathetic, but he would probably be fooling himself to even consider it.
‘I wasn’t the only one,’ he returned dryly. ‘I was in a class of boys that age. My father was determined that I should get the best education possible—for him that meant an English public school, then an English university. Then, of course, working with him in the Antonakos Corporation.’
‘He had your life all mapped out for you.’
Theo’s mouth twisted cynically.
‘Right down to the woman I should marry.’
Skye perched on the arm of one of the big chairs. Her eyes still had that strange shadowed look in them. Concentrate on that, he told himself fiercely. At least if he kept his gaze—and his attention—focused on her eyes, then he would stop himself from thinking too much about the rest of her.
About the slide of her hair over the bare, lightly tanned shoulder exposed by the slender straps of her lilac-coloured dress. About the way that sitting on the edge of the chair had pulled the already short skirt up even higher on the slim, elegant legs. About the sway of soft breasts clearly not confined in some restricting contraption of satin and Lycra, but moving with each slight gesture she made.
When she lifted a hand to push through her hair his blood pressure mounted to an alarming degree. And the memory of those legs wrapped around his waist like hot silk as she writhed underneath him threatened his ability to think so badly that he barely heard her next comment and had to force his attention back to the present before he lost track of things completely.
‘You didn’t like her?’
‘You really don’t know my father too well, do you? I never saw her—and neither, I believe, did he.’
There was no mistaking the emotion that widened her eyes now. It was total consternation—mixed with a touch of disbelief.
‘You’d never even met her?’
Theo shook his head firmly. ‘It was to be an arranged marriage. A cold-blooded financial arrangement between my father and hers.’
‘And you had no say in the matter?’
‘My father certainly didn’t intend that I should. I was twenty-seven—more than old enough to start providing him with grandchildren. He had surveyed all the families with daughters of marriageable age, and Agna’s father owned land he wanted. That, together with the fact that she was just nineteen, a virgin, and the family fortune, though no match for the Antonakos wealth, was far from inadequate, made her the perfect choice as far as he was concerned.’
‘So this Agna didn’t get a choice either?’
‘Why should she? She was only a daughter, and as far as two greedy old men were concerned she had one real purpose to serve—to marry well, improve the family fortunes, and bear an heir to the combined estate.’
‘Oh, don’t! You make her sound like a brood mare!’
Skye’s voice broke uncontrollably on the words as a result of the bleak thoughts that flooded her mind. At first she been feeling so uptight that she had almost let his explanation of the rift with his father slip by in a haze of shocked disbelief, without registering the impact it had on her personally. All she had thought of was the way Theo had been treated, when she should have looked at what it meant for her.
And what it meant for her was an added brutal twist to the knife in her heart, an added sense of being used.
She was only a daughter, and as far as two greedy old men were concerned she had one purpose to serve—to marry well, improve the family fortunes, and bear an heir to the combined estate.
The words seemed to gather an added sense of bitterness with each repetition inside her head. Theo’s father had not managed to get his way, by marrying his son off, so he had done the next best thing by taking a young wife who, in her own words, would have to act as ‘a brood mare’.
‘Not me, sweetheart,’ Theo returned harshly. ‘I was the one who turned her down, remember. I had no wish to get married. And I lost my own inheritance as a result.’
‘He really disinherited you? Cut you out of his will without a penny?’
‘That is what the term usually means. Though that “without a penny” isn’t strictly accurate. I’d already formed my own company—one with an income my father couldn’t touch. No, the part of my inheritance I really lost was this island.’
‘Helikos?’
The grim set to Theo’s mouth as he nodded twisted her nerves into even more painful knots.
‘It was my mother’s and it should have come to me. But anything else—forget it! In the five years since I rebelled against the idea of becoming a married man, I’ve more than doubled my profits. I expect my personal fortune will match my father’s now. So you needn’t worry that I lost out on the deal.’
‘I never…’ Skye began, but she was interrupted by the sound of the telephone shrilling through the room. She glanced in the direction of the sound, but it was more important that Theo should know she hadn’t been shocked at his father’s treatment of him because of the money he had lost.
‘That
