‘No!’ Her hands clenched beside her breasts and she inhaled deeply before muttering, ‘You’re impossible.’
‘Another compliment,’ he said with a wink, knowing perfectly well she meant it as nothing of the sort.
‘Is there a pharmacist on the island?’
‘Of course.’ The randomness of the question bemused him.
‘Good.’
‘What do you need?’
‘Some painkillers. You’re giving me a headache.’
Throwing his head back, Theo roared with laughter. Since his parents’ death, Helena was the one person other than his grandparents who had never taken his crap. Her insouciance had delighted him. It still delighted him.
He noted her lips twitching and when he caught her eye he saw the sparkle in it before she turned her face away. His mirth grew. Helena was trying to conceal her own amusement, the minx.
‘I will leave you to settle in. You should have everything you need but if there’s anything missing, let Natassa or Elli know and they will sort it out for you.’
Helena tightened her towel around her chest and, for the third time, rifled through her huge walk-in wardrobe hoping that something different would have magically appeared. Eventually she settled on a dark green skirt and a cream top, the least businesslike of her clothing. Unfortunately she, in her stubborn wisdom, had packed only business clothes and a few items to wear for lounging around in the evenings. She’d selected her clothes blissfully unaware she would be sharing a roof with Mr Ego for the duration. Blissfully unaware because he’d designed it that way. The fiend. Her intention to work seven days a week to get the plans drawn up only strengthened.
She could kill Theo. Happily kill him. The vast majority of the three hours Helena had been hiding out in her room had been spent imagining the variety of ways in which she could bump him off. She would write a list, she decided, and let him choose for himself.
Thoughts of murder had to wait while she got ready. Natassa had checked in on her to ask for her approval over dinner, which would be served shortly.
It was only when Helena was checking her make-up for smudges that she realised she’d even applied it. She hurriedly wiped it all off. Theo and his humungous ego would think she’d dolled herself up for him, which was absolutely not the case. Not in the slightest. To make that point even clearer, she tipped her head upside down and shook her hair until it resembled a messy beehive.
Et voila!
One last look in the mirror assured her she looked dreadful.
If this didn’t repel him and make clear that she’d rather get intimate with a corpse than him, nothing would.
Natassa greeted her in the kitchen with a wide smile. ‘Good timing. Your starter is ready. We have set the table for you on the terrace—is that okay, or would you prefer to eat inside?’
‘Outside would be great, thanks...assuming Theo’s okay with that?’ There was no reason on earth that Helena uttering his name should make her heart skip a beat.
The slightest crease marred Natassa’s beautiful brow. ‘Why would he not be okay with that?’
‘Because he might prefer to eat indoors.’
‘He isn’t here. He took the yacht back to Agon.’ The crease in her brow deepened. ‘I think he’s gone to a party. Wherever he is, he will be back tomorrow. Lunchtime. I think.’
‘You think?’
A shrug. ‘He was vague about timings. I am not paid to question him.’
Helena wasn’t being paid to question him either, or care that he’d left her on her first night so he could go out and party, something she kept reminding herself as she ate her meal on the terrace with only the crickets for company.
Helena didn’t care about eating alone. She was used to eating alone. A solo three-course meal that would be worthy of a Michelin-starred restaurant was nothing to complain about. She’d left her flat that morning expecting to eat every meal alone for the foreseeable future. The food and accommodation were a hundred times better than expected, but in the being-left-alone stakes she’d been right.
Theo must have been winding her up about his staying at the lodge with her. Playing another of his little mind-games.
Let him play. She didn’t care.
She didn’t care at all. She especially didn’t care that he was, at that moment, partying hard, no doubt with some clothes horse draped all over him and that he most definitely would not be alone when he awoke.
When she released her clenched fists, she resolutely ignored the indentations left by her fingernails in her palms.
‘Triple-aspect windows for the master suite?’ Helena clarified. To her great relief, she was able to utter the words ‘master suite’ without her voice catching.
This first on-site discussion about Theo’s requirements and wishes for his new home had been much harder than she’d envisaged. Three years ago, before the top of the hill they were standing on had been flattened in preparation for the monolith that would be built on it, the dream had been for this to be their home.
Heads pressed together, they had whispered in the dark for hours, night after night, about the home they’d build. They’d planned the layout, teasing each other about who should have the biggest office and the biggest dressing room. Theo had teased her over the extent of her leisure-use wishes, Helena wanting only a steam room, while he wanted a full-blown gym, two swimming pools, a tennis court, a cinema room and a sprawling games room with its own bar.
Were her memories playing her false or was everything Theo was describing in that expansive way of his exactly as they had whispered during those late-night plotting sessions?
The master suite, with his-and-hers bathrooms and his-and-hers dressing rooms and triple-aspect windows giving an unblemished view of the Mediterranean, had been exactly as they had dreamed up together.
‘Nai, floor-to-ceiling windows and doors that open up to my private balcony.’ He turned his head to face her, amusement dancing on his mesmerising features. ‘I will make sure to check for
