When she walked through the boardroom door, she was fortified to meet Stanley’s eye and be on the receiving end of an encouraging wink. She wanted desperately to make the architect who’d taken her under his wing five years ago proud. She’d worked under him for a year when she’d first graduated and he’d then made himself available whenever she needed him during her masters and ensured there was a place within his firm for her last year of work experience before she took her final exam. Stanley had been the one to create a permanent role for her when, after seven years of toil, she became a bona fide architect in her own right.
Along with Stanley were the two other senior partners, a PA and the mystery client, whose back was to the door and who made no effort to turn and greet her.
Her first thought was that the mystery client was a man.
Her second thought was that the staff backing the mystery client’s being a celebrity were on the money because, even with his back turned, recognition flashed through her.
Helena hurried to her designated seat opposite him, a warm, welcoming smile on her lips, and finally saw his face.
And that was the moment all her thoughts turned to dust as her brain froze.
The man sitting opposite her in the mystery client’s chair was Theo Nikolaidis. The same Theo Nikolaidis she’d jilted three years ago, twenty-four hours before they’d been due to marry.
Theo didn’t bother hiding the wide grin that formed on his lips.
This moment, when he wiped the smile off Helena Armstrong’s face, was a moment to savour, a moment deserving of a glass of fine wine and, if he were a man for exquisite canapés, a plateful of them. As it was, Theo was a man who preferred hearty food but a huge bowl of his grandmother’s kokkinisto didn’t quite fit this picture-perfect moment.
He rose to his feet and stretched out a hand, tilting his head expectantly. ‘Good morning, Helena,’ he said with an even wider smile and was rewarded by Helena’s beautiful face turning the colour of a sun-ripened tomato. ‘It is a pleasure to see you again.’
He was quite sure he heard a collective intake of breath from the others in the room.
If he had it in him to feel sympathy for the woman who’d made him a laughing stock, he was sure he could conjure some, but her panicking eyes darting from his gaze to his outstretched hand was another wonderful response to relish.
After a pause that would be deemed impolite by anyone’s standards, a small, milky-white hand with short but shapely nails extended towards him. Her fingers wrapped around his for approximately a tenth of a second before she snatched them away. ‘Mr Nikolaidis,’ she murmured, taking her seat and putting her bag on the floor and the long tube on the table without looking at him.
‘You two know each other?’ The question came from one of the partners, a man who had to be old enough to be Helena’s father but who was looking at her with a stare that made Theo want to cause him bodily harm.
Instead of allowing his hands to do the talking—Theo had learned to control that side of himself before he’d reached double digits—he smiled again and was rewarded by the older man paling. ‘Helena and I are old friends. Aren’t we, agapi mou?’
That made her look at him. Her naturally plump lips were drawn into a tight line, her dark brown eyes sparking with fury.
She thought she was angry now? This was only the beginning.
Jerking her head into the semblance of a nod, she unscrewed the end of the tube and said, ‘Shall we get on with this?’
Theo spread his hands. ‘Yes. Show me your designs. Let me see if you are as talented as I have been led to believe.’
Her eyes narrowed before she finally plastered a wide, fake smile to her face. ‘You will have to be your own judge of that.’
‘Believe me, agapi mou, I learned the hard way that reputations are as deceptive as appearances.’ Helena was the root of that hardness. Easily the most beautiful woman he’d ever set eyes on, he’d met her on his home island of Agon. At an unexpected loose end for a few hours, he’d decided to pay a visit to his good friend Theseus Kalliakis, an Agon prince who, at the time, had lived in the palace. As it had been a beautiful day and Theo was a man who enjoyed the feel of the sun on his face, he’d decided to walk through the palace gardens to reach Theseus’s private residence. In the garden he’d spotted a young woman sitting on a bench beside a statue of the goddess Artemis with an open book on her lap and a pencil in hand. Crouched forward as she’d been, her dark chestnut hair had fallen like a sheet over her face and slender shoulders. She’d absentmindedly swiped it away and tucked it behind her ear, revealing a face that, even behind the largest pair of spectacles he’d ever seen, could in itself have been worshipped as a goddess.
He’d sucked in the longest breath of his life and stared. And stared some more.
Curiosity piqued as to what she was doing, he’d sneaked up behind her to peer over her shoulder. On an A4 sheet of paper was an intricately drawn study of the palace. It was beautiful. Using nothing but a set of graphite pencils, she’d brought the palace to life. She’d even managed to convey light bouncing off some of the windows!
No wonder he’d been so smitten. A woman with beauty, talent and brains? He’d put her straight onto a pedestal and worshipped her as his countrymen had worshipped Artemis all those millennia ago.
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