‘It wasn’t important.’
‘I disagree. If I’d known you were a virgin I would have taken more care. I could have hurt you.’
‘But you didn’t.’ He would never hurt her.
His huge shoulders rose in a shrug. He looked away from her, out into the distance. ‘You really did go back into your shell, didn’t you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You left me because you wanted to be free.’ He looked sharply back at her with a distinct flash of anger in his eyes. ‘What the hell have you been doing? I never expected you to turn into a wild party animal, but this...?’
He shook his head and made a grunt-like laugh. ‘I have believed these past years that you were living a boring life with a boring accountant or a boring teacher, having boring sex, everything boring but for you perfect.’
‘Are you saying I’m boring?’ she said, trying to turn it into a joke but shrivelling inside at the acuteness of Theo’s observation. She had tried dating when she’d completed her masters. She’d had dinner with two accountants and one maths teacher. On paper they’d each been perfect for her. None of them would have controlled her or interfered with her career. She’d had a strong suspicion the maths teacher would have been delighted to become a house husband and raise any children, should the opportunity arise.
The opportunity had not arisen, not least because each date ended the same way, with Helena paying her share of the bill, politely thanking them for a lovely evening and then getting the nearest public transport home, never to see them again.
It shamed her that, as lovely and as perfect as these men were, they’d bored her rigid. They were so earnest, so right-on...
She should have snapped one of them up. They might be boring but wasn’t that what she wanted? None of them would have steamrollered her into anything by dint of their personality. Mainly because none of them had had a personality.
In short, none of them had been Theo...
He laughed. ‘You are the least boring person I know but you’re like a frightened bird, terrified to leave the nest and embrace life. You’ve had all the opportunity in the world to explore the different sides that make you Helena and explore them on your terms away from your father’s control and influence, and you’ve squandered them. You haven’t even tried.’
‘That’s not fair,’ she said, stung. She had tried! Those three disastrous dates proved that.
He grimaced before placing his glass on a curved bench close to them, then stood before her and gently cupped her face.
He gazed into her eyes for the longest time. Under the moonlight, his eyes had a silver hue and they danced with the energy that was always in them whatever colour shone out.
He pressed his lips to hers for a moment and breathed her in. ‘You, agapi mou, are beautiful. There is not a heterosexual man alive who wouldn’t want you. You also have a deeply...’ he brushed his lips from her mouth to her ear, sending tiny shivers of delight pirouetting over her skin ‘...sensual side. I have seen it. I have tasted it. The wildness that lives in you...you have locked it back in its box when it needs its freedom. You hide yourself away...’
She forced her mind out of the stupor into which the velvet of his low voice was pulling her. Why had she gone on those disastrous dates? Because the week she’d started her final year of training, she’d gone into a newsagent’s and seen Theo’s broad face smiling at her from the magazine rack. The shock at seeing him had landed like a punch in her throat just as it had every time before. But that time had been different and she’d known she had to do something to help her speed up the healing process.
The dates hadn’t worked.
In the three years since she’d left Theo she hadn’t met a single man who made her feel anything. She couldn’t even imagine kissing another man without shuddering.
She mustn’t let Theo suspect the truth. She couldn’t bear for him to think she had spent the intervening years pining for him.
‘We don’t all have the time or money to go out partying with a new supermodel every weekend like you.’ She put her hands to his chest and pushed. ‘You have the cheek to ask me what I’ve been doing since we parted? I could ask the same of you—in fact, I will. Where do you get off making judgements about my sex life when you can’t stay with one woman for more than five minutes before your eyes stray to her replacement?’
Under the moonlight, she saw a tick pulse on his jaw. But then he smiled and reclaimed the space between them. He traced a finger across her cheek. ‘How do you know so much about my sex life, agapi mou?’
Fear and pride had her retort come without hesitation. ‘It’s hard to miss when it’s always splattered over the news.’
Reading about him had become an addiction. It was almost as if he’d taunted her from the pages of the glossy magazines, as if he knew she would seek news of him and chose the greatest weapon at his disposal to get back at her: her jealousy.
Theo watched all the emotions blazing over Helena’s face and tilted his head, waiting for the burst of satisfaction to know she had followed his life, just as he’d followed hers.
The Helena he’d known had not been interested in current affairs, be it gossip or serious news articles.
She would never know those women had been mere window dressing, a panacea to show the world—and Helena—that his humiliation at being jilted had been a mere flesh wound.
She would never know that the desire burning in him only burned for her. By the time he was finished with her, all the desire would be sated and he would be able to move on.
He traced his fingers lightly to her
