Over three years later and she’d had the exact same reaction to seeing him again.
Over three years later and Helena was still paying the price for that impulsive visit to the palace.
She’d reached her station. Hooking her bag over her shoulder, she trudged off the Tube and up the steep escalators. The sun had been setting when she’d begun her commute home but when she left the long, wide tunnel that brought her back out into the world, rain lashed the night sky. So much for the light cloud the forecasters had promised. Naturally, the first thing she did was step into a puddle that immediately soaked through the flat canvas shoe she’d changed into after the disastrous pitch.
Marvellous. All she needed was to be hit by a bus and her day would be complete.
By the time she reached her basement flat, the rest of her body was as soaked to the bone as her left foot.
Her flat was freezing and, shivering, she chided herself for believing that early May would bring glorious sunshine.
She’d turned the heating on, stripped off her soaking clothes and put on a thick towelling robe, and was running herself a hot bath when her doorbell rang.
Helena sighed, removed her glasses and covered her face with her hands. All the energy had been sapped out of her.
When the bell rang again, she turned the taps off and shoved her glasses back on. In the three years she’d rented her little breadcrumb of London she’d had one unannounced visitor: a delivery man hoping she’d take in a parcel for the couple in the flat upstairs.
She padded to the front door and, out of precautionary habit, put her eye to the spy hole...and immediately reared back in fright.
How the hell had he found her?
The bell rang again.
Heart thumping, she backed away. Unless Theo had developed X-ray vision, he couldn’t know she was in. She would slip back to the bathroom...
The bell that rang out this time was continuous, as if a Greek man famed for his impatience had decided to keep his finger on it until he’d annoyed every resident who lived in the building.
The infuriating, egotistical, sneaky little... She couldn’t think of a name to call him that wouldn’t earn her a slap from her grandmother.
The shock that had cloaked her since she’d come face to face with him in the boardroom lifted and a spike of furious energy shot through her veins, making her legs stride to the front door and her hands remove the three chains, deadlock and ordinary lock to fling the door open.
And there he stood, in a black shirt and black trousers, rain lashing down on him, black overcoat billowing in the growing wind, the widest grin on his face that could have been mistaken for rapture had she not seen the danger sparking from his ice-blue eyes.
Raising his hands and spreading them palm up, Theo tilted his head. ‘Surprise!’
CHAPTER TWO
THEO ALLOWED HIMSELF a moment to savour the angry shock on Helena’s face before brushing past her and into the pleasant warmth of her home. That this should never have been her home was something he would not allow himself to dwell on.
He wiped the rain off his face with his hands while wiping his feet on the doormat.
‘Nice place you have here,’ he commented as he stepped over a threadbare rug covering hardwood flooring. An estate agent would call her flat cosy. A lay person would describe it as fit for dormice.
Helena closed the door and stood with her back against it. ‘What are you doing here?’
He faced her and placed a hand to his chest in a wounded fashion. ‘You don’t seem happy to see me, agapi mou.’
‘Dysentery would be a more welcome visitor. For cripes’ sake, Theo, it’s been three years. You turn up at my place of work all cloak and dagger and then you turn up at my home? What’s going on?’
‘I thought you would like to know in person that you won.’
Her forehead creased. ‘Won what?’
‘The job.’ He flashed the widest smile he could spread his mouth into. Theos, he was enjoying this. ‘Congratulations. You are the architect of choice for my new home.’
But her beautiful face only became blanker.
‘Why don’t you open a bottle of wine for us while we talk details?’ He peered round the nearest door and found a kitchen of a size a toddler would struggle to party in.
‘What are you talking about?’
He spun back round to face her and clicked his finger and thumb together. ‘Details. They are important, do you not agree?’
‘Well...yes...’
‘And alcohol always makes tedious detail go down easier.’ He strode to the fridge and opened it. He tutted and sighed theatrically at the sparsity of its contents. ‘No white wine. Where do you keep the red?’
‘I haven’t got any.’
‘None? Anything alcoholic at all?’
‘No...’
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and winked as he pressed his thumbprint to it. ‘Easily rectified.’
‘Hold on.’ Suspicion suddenly replaced the disbelieving gormless look.
‘Nai, agapi mou?’
‘You’re telling me I’ve won the pitch?’
‘Nai. You have won. Congratulations.’ He raised a hand palm up and waggled his fingers jazz-hands-style.
Her brows drew together in increased suspicion.
‘You’re allowed to smile, you know.’ Goading her was something to relish in itself.
She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, eyes not leaving his face. ‘I’ll smile when you tell me why you’ve come to my home to deliver the news instead of using the proper channels, and, now I’m thinking about it, who gave you my address? And will you stop going through my cupboards and drawers?’
‘The contents of a kitchen are a good indication of a person’s character,’ he chided playfully, opening another drawer that contained precisely a roll of cooking foil, a roll of Clingfilm and two tea towels.
‘And the
