Pellegrinis was an international multi-award-winning architectural firm that scooped up commissions with an ease that left everyone else breathless.
The doorbell rang, making her virtually jump out of her skin.
‘That will be our food,’ Theo said cheerfully, striding towards the door. Striding towards her...
Helena only just managed to move from the door and squash herself against the wall before Theo reached it, but her hallway was so narrow that he still brushed against her.
A blast of cold air swept into the flat, but if Theo felt its embrace he didn’t show it. With his usual bonhomie, he took the large box from the young delivery driver and pressed a note into his hand with his thanks.
And then he closed the door and swept past her again, shouting over his shoulder as he opened the door to her living room, ‘If you get the plates and cutlery I’ll put this on the table.’
A strangled noise ripped from Helena’s throat, but before she could articulate anything Theo came straight back out of the living room and opened her bathroom door, then looked at her with his brow creased. ‘Where’s your dining room?’
‘I don’t have one.’
He looked at her as if she’d admitted to having a major drug problem. ‘Then where do you eat?’
‘Off a tray on my lap... Why are you even here still? I told you to go. Get out. I have no interest in eating with you.’
‘I remember you once had great interest in eating me, but I guess that’s a reminiscence for another time.’ And then he had the audacity to wink at her again. ‘Okay, then trays it shall be.’
‘I only have one...’ But then she realised what he’d just alluded to and her words died on her tongue as her cheeks flamed with humiliation. She would have been talking to thin air anyway, for Theo had bustled back into the kitchen. She heard the distinct sound of cupboards and drawers being flung open.
‘Do you want red or white wine?’ he called.
Gritting her teeth so tightly she was lucky her jaw didn’t shatter, Helena followed him into the cramped space.
‘Where are your wine glasses?’ he asked before she could get a word in, another perplexed expression on his face.
‘I’ve already told you I don’t have any wine, and even if I did, I wouldn’t share it with you. For the last time, get out of my flat or—’
‘You know what your problem is?’ he said, speaking over her as he pulled her half-sized dishwasher open and removed two dirty tall glasses. ‘You’re too uptight. We will spend much time together in the coming months. It will pass more smoothly if you can learn to loosen up a bit.’
‘Loosen up? Are you kidding me?’
Placing the glasses under the tap, he ran water into them. ‘Fear not, agapi mou, once we have eaten our dinner and made our plans, I will leave you in peace.’
‘You’re taking a lot for granted here. I haven’t agreed to anything.’
‘But you will.’ He raised a hefty shoulder. ‘Or you live with the consequences and hope a miracle occurs to save your firm from liquidation and save you from losing your home and independence.’
Helena, Theo had discovered, had accrued thousands of pounds of debt during her studies. Half her monthly salary went on rent for her miniscule flat. The rest went on debt repayment, other household bills, food and transport costs. She would be lucky to survive a month without a job before handing back the keys to the flat and having to go crawling to Mummy and Daddy. It didn’t surprise him that she hadn’t tapped them up for help with her debt—Helena’s middle name should be Independent—but the debt itself did surprise him. Her parents had always been generous with their only child. He guessed she’d severed her financial dependency on them as part of her great strides towards complete independence.
Glasses clean, Theo opened the box, first removing the two bottles of wine and then lifting out the foil cartons. ‘I ordered Thai.’
Thai food was Helena’s absolute favourite.
‘I’m not hungry.’
He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. Me, I’m starving.’
Another strangled sound came from her throat before she bit out, ‘Seeing as you’re as cloth-eared as you always were and not budging, I’m going to get changed.’
The glare emanating behind her spectacles from her sultry eyes suggested he would be pushing his luck if he suggested she change into something revealing.
‘Cloth-eared? Is that a compliment?’
‘No, thickhead, it was an insult. And so was that.’ And then she stalked out of the room before he could quip a retort.
A door slammed shut. The walls of the flat were so thin the tall glasses drying by the sink rattled from the force.
Alone, Theo opened the bottle of white and poured them both a glass. After taking a hefty slug of his, he rubbed the nape of his neck and closed his eyes.
Had she stripped that ugly robe thing off? Was she, at that very moment, naked?
He remembered every inch of Helena’s delicious body, from the small mole above her left breast to the scar on her right hip from a childhood accident involving a bicycle and barbed wire. There was nothing about Helena Armstrong he hadn’t committed to memory. He’d spent six months planning this day and had made contingency plans—in his favour, of course—for every eventuality.
Time had not dulled his memories of the woman he’d once worshipped. Goading her and teasing her, watching her cheeks flame with angry colour, heightened the charge racing gloriously through his veins, reminding him vividly of the way her cheeks had flamed with passion when he’d brought her to orgasm with his tongue or his hand.
He straightened his back and breathed deeply to quell the ache in his loins and rid himself of Helena’s heady, musky scent suddenly playing like an old forgotten ghost on his senses. He would have that taste again soon, but until such time he thought
