He rubbed his hair. ‘Why does she stay with him?’
‘She seems to think that because he’s not physically abusive she has nothing to complain about. I think—and this is just an educated guess—that she’s scared. She’s been with him since she was nineteen. She has no money of her own and doesn’t believe she has the tools to support herself.’ She sighed. ‘I just wish she’d stand up to him. Find some courage. She could live with me. We’d cope. But every time I suggest it she refuses and tells me I’m making too much of it. She made her vows.’
She could see how disturbed Theo was at her description of her parents’ marriage. He couldn’t know that she’d only realised how wrong and abusive it was when she’d been on the verge of marrying him, and the fear that she could end up like her mother had almost paralysed her.
She’d been as guilty as her mother at burying her head in the sand. Until she’d spent those blissful three months with Theo, the longest she’d been away from home had been a week. Until she’d spent those blissful three months with Theo, she’d continued to obey her father. At the age of twenty-three she’d still asked to be excused from the dinner table. She’d still lived under a curfew.
With a sharp pang, Helena realised that had she not met him she would never have had the courage to face her father down at his fury over her failed nuptials. That was one good thing Theo had done for her. He’d made her brave.
She’d been so frightened of becoming like her mother that she hadn’t appreciated all the good ways his influence had rubbed off on her.
Theo had freed her in more ways than he could know.
As all these thoughts rushed through her head, Theo’s throat moved and his chest rose sharply before he broke the charged air between them to look at his watch. ‘We need to go soon.’
Checking her own watch, she was amazed to see they’d been in the café for over an hour. ‘I thought we were having a lazy day?’ And it was a lazy day she didn’t want to end...
The familiar knowing twinkle returned to his eyes. ‘I never said we were having a lazy evening.’
Her heart skipped but she feigned nonchalance. ‘Oh?’
He folded his arms across his chest and tilted his head. ‘We are going out tonight.’
Folding her own arms in mimicry and leaning forward, closer to him, thrills of excitement zinging through her body, she raised a brow. ‘Are we?’
A smile tugged at his lips. ‘We are.’
‘Where?’
‘That, agapi mou, is a surprise.’
CHAPTER NINE
HELENA DID A full slow-motion pirouette, wonder filling her heart. Theo had given her a room a princess would be thrilled to call her own. She could hardly take it all in: the raised four-poster bed with the muslin curtains, the crystal chandelier that hung from the frescoed ceiling, the thick carpet her toes sank into...
‘You like?’ The velvet undertone of Theo’s deep, gravelly voice coiled into her overloaded senses. She closed her eyes and let it fill her.
‘I get why you moved.’ Not only was her bedroom fit for a princess but it also had the most wonderful view of the sea.
‘Do you?’
‘You need the elements.’
His brow creased.
Tucking hair behind her ear, she tried to explain what she meant, but it was hard speaking coherently. There had been a palpable charge between them on the drive back to his villa. For once, conversation had been stilted, not just from her but from Theo too. Every second of every mile had been spent with awareness thrumming through her skin. ‘You’re a free spirit, Theo. Living in a city is too restrictive for you. You need to be able to throw yourself into the sea or climb a mountain when the urge takes you. Here, and on Sidiro too, you can do that.’
Theo’s heart caught in his throat at this unexpected observation. And at the softness of her tone.
Sometimes he forgot that Helena had once known him as well as he’d known her. He’d opened himself to her as he’d never opened himself to anyone. And then she’d left him.
Had she really left because she’d feared a marriage like her parents’? It had sounded ludicrous when she’d shouted it at him three years ago, and he’d told her so. He hadn’t believed she was serious. And now he had to contend with the knowledge that she thought him the same as a man who was, by any sane person’s definition, an emotional abuser.
He’d known Helena’s childhood had been different from his, but in the euphoria of falling in love he’d never appreciated just how different it had been. He’d been lucky with his parents. His childhood had been idyllic. He’d been given the best of everything, indulged in every way, and smothered with so much love that he’d assumed all the wonderful things in life were his due.
The death of his mother and father, especially coming so closely together, had taught him pain. Helena leaving him had taught him that non-parental love could be broken as quickly as it had formed. Both had served to strengthen him and harden him.
He didn’t want to feel himself softening towards her.
He’d bought this villa when he could no longer bear to walk the rooms and hallways of the townhouse Helena had once walked and where he could still hear the echo of her laughter. That laughter had echoed louder than the childhood memories stored in its walls.
When she left this home, her ghost would not haunt it. He would have exorcised it.
The time for exorcism was getting closer and closer. He could feel it. He could taste it. Anticipation laced the air and it tasted sweeter than the purest honey.
She tucked her hair behind her ear and cleared her throat. ‘So...where are we going tonight?’
‘To the palace for
