She didn’t fight the images that immediately popped to the forefront of her mind. They were images to savour as much as the exhilaration was.
Her body became suffused with heat as she remembered all the ways they’d made love throughout the night.
She pressed her thighs together in a futile effort to counter the thickening and pulsing ache between her legs.
They’d had breakfast on his private balcony. After devouring his food, he’d devoured her.
She should be exhausted but that feeling of being alive still buzzed on her skin. There was a zesty energy in her veins. Her throat kept wanting to expel bursts of laughter.
And beside her sat the man who’d brought all these feelings out of her as effortlessly as he controlled the powerful car.
‘I love this song!’ Theo suddenly said, pressing the controls on the steering wheel to turn the volume up. It was a jaunty summer tune Helena had never heard before but she soon found her foot tapping along to the beat while Theo massacred the lyrics by tunelessly but enthusiastically singing along.
She’d forgotten singing was the one thing he was useless at, but nothing could stop Theo doing something he enjoyed.
Music, like everything else Theo had introduced her to, had been forgotten when she’d returned to her life in London. The only music system she had was an old radio she’d been given by her grandmother on her fifteenth birthday.
The studio, when they reached it, was a huge white building neatly hidden away on a large plot of land. A diminutive man of around fifty, dressed in ragged jeans and T-shirt nominally protected by a black apron, hurried out of the wide-open doors to meet them.
‘Theodoros, it’s good to see you again,’ he said, speaking so quickly Helena struggled to keep up.
Theo shook his hand and then introduced him to Helena. ‘Do you have time to give her a tour of your studio before we get down to business?’
‘It would be my pleasure.’
Walking past Titanic-sized slabs of marble, they entered the vast space. The temperature dropped and the noise level increased the moment they stepped over the threshold.
Helena found her eyes struggling not to pop out of her head. The interior more closely resembled a warehouse than anything, an interior filled with a dozen people all turning different-sized slabs of marble into works of art. One wall was lined with shelves containing foot-high marble statuettes of religious themes, while dozens and dozens of marble slabs at least ten feet high were raised on boards and in varying stages of finish. Whatever stage any of the works were at, the one common denominator was that they were exquisite. These were works Donatello would have been proud to create.
Takis, the sculptor whose name they all worked under, introduced her to his newest apprentice, a young Englishwoman covered in white dust who happily showed her the bust she was working on. Her talent took Helena’s breath away. The face appearing in the marble already appeared to pulse with life.
‘Don’t you get scared?’ Helena asked her.
‘Of what?’
‘Making a wrong mark.’ Architecture was as precise as sculpting must be, but creating plans was an evolving process. She didn’t draw the first line of a building knowing that if she got it wrong she would not be able to correct it. If the wrong mark was made on marble, it couldn’t be deleted or the marble scrunched up like a piece of paper and another magically produced to start again. She had a luxury this woman didn’t have and yet she envied her the nerve she must have to make that first mark. Do or die.
If Helena were the sculptor, she would probably spend a year plucking up the courage. Theo, on the other hand, wouldn’t think twice. He’d make the mark in a heartbeat.
The woman smiled, her eyes shining. ‘It’s terrifying!’
Soon, Helena and Theo were led to Takis’s office at the far end of the warehouse. Judging by the mess, it was a room rarely cleaned, but Takis was not in the least embarrassed by the state of it. He rummaged through a drawer and eventually pulled out a thick sheaf of A4 paper and handed it to Theo.
Theo looked through the sheets one by one, automatically passing each one to Helena once he’d finished perusing. They were Takis’s designs for all the statues and ornate benches that would eventually adorn Theo’s garden.
Each and every design was stunning. She had no doubt that, once completed, any piece could sit proudly in the Vatican or in the Uffizi Gallery.
‘What did you think of Takis?’ Theo asked her once they were driving back to the villa.
‘A true artist,’ she replied, shaking her head reverently. ‘Your garden is going to be a work of art.’
‘That’s the idea.’ He cast a quick glance at her before turning his attention back to the open road before them.
Theo had loved watching her reaction to the studio. In many ways, she was an artist like Takis, her imagination creating something out of nothing. The sketches she made freehand, he’d always believed, were works of art in themselves and he felt a sudden twinge of guilt to remember the fate of that first sketch in the palace grounds.
Flushed with happiness at his compliments of her work, she’d given the sketch to him and refused to accept anything in return, which he’d immediately pounced on by insisting he buy her dinner as a thank-you. He’d bought her dinner every night for three months thereafter and he’d treasured the sketch, had it professionally framed and hung on his bedroom wall.
He’d smashed the frame’s glass and burned the sketch a fortnight after she jilted him.
His jaw clenched. It didn’t relax until they were back
