Sitting on the bath’s edge, Theo covered his face and took the ten breaths he needed to regain his equilibrium. It was a trick his mother had taught him in childhood when she’d determined his temper would get him into trouble if he didn’t learn to curb it, and he credited it with helping him through the worst of the nightmare days after his parents’ death. It was a trick he’d employed again when Helena had left him.
By the time he’d reached number ten, the angst knotting in his stomach had eased and he could examine her poky bathroom without wanting to sweep all her stuff onto the floor and crush it under his feet.
But there wasn’t much to sweep and crush even if he wanted to. The small wall cabinet contained a handful of cosmetics, make-up remover, day cream, night cream and a spare tube of toothpaste.
There was no discernible reason why the sparsity of her possessions should make him feel so cramped inside.
There was no discernible reason why Helena’s tiny flat as a whole should make him feel so disquieted. How she chose to live was none of his business. That she’d suffered financially these last few years was none of his business either.
Leaving the bathroom, he went back to the living room.
Helena was still curled up on the armchair, hugging a cushion. She didn’t look at him.
‘I’m leaving,’ he informed her.
That made her look. There was a vulnerability to her stare that threatened to constrict his throat but he fought through it successfully before it could take root.
He picked up his coat from the back of the sofa and shrugged his arms into it. ‘My PA will be in touch tomorrow about the contract and to make the arrangements.’
She pushed her glasses up her nose with a trembling hand and turned her face away. ‘’Bye, then.’
‘Kalinikta, agapi mou.’
Theo walked the narrow hallway, doing up the buttons of his overcoat as he went. When he reached the front door, soft footsteps followed in his wake.
Helena stood behind him. ‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked.
He closed the gap between them and stared at the upturned face. The beautiful face he’d fallen in love with all those years ago... Incredibly, time had only made it more exquisite. He stroked a finger along a high cheekbone, relishing the tiny quiver she wasn’t quick enough to disguise. ‘You promised to design me a house for my peninsula,’ he murmured. And then he leaned down to whisper into her ear. ‘And you still owe me a wedding night.’
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN THE JET touched down on the Agon runway, Helena squeezed her eyes shut. If she didn’t look out of the window she could pretend she was still in London and that the nightmare she’d just flown into wasn’t real.
The last leg of her journey to the island went as smoothly as the first leg had. She was escorted off Theo’s private plane and whisked into an ultra-sleek, ultra-expensive car, which in turn whisked her to the harbour, where she was escorted onto an ultra-sleek and ultra-expensive yacht. Before she even had time to blink, the yacht was slicing through the Mediterranean.
An hour after they set sail, land appeared on the horizon.
Sidiro. The most magical island in the world.
Heart thumping and memories assailing her, Helena sucked in a large breath and was glad of her phone vibrating, distracting her. She had two messages. The first was from her mother, wishing her luck. They’d managed only a short get-together at a coffee shop since Theo had waltzed into Helena’s flat. She’d confided everything to her, reassuring her mother that she had nothing to be sorry about—if she hadn’t given him Helena’s address he would have got it another way. Privately, Helena had come to the conclusion that getting her address from her mother had been a fishing expedition for Theo. Her mother, her eyes sad, had made her promise to be careful. In return, Helena had made her promise to think, again, about leaving her father. She didn’t hold out much hope but she had to try. She’d given her mother a key to her flat the day she moved in, hoping that one day she would use it. Her hopes had so far been forlorn.
The other message was from Stanley, asking how the journey had gone. His kindness squeezed her heart, as it always did. How different would her life be—would she be—if she’d grown up with a man like Stanley as a father? To have a father whose only objective in parenting was his child’s well-being and happiness rather than someone whose only objective was to mould his child as he’d moulded his wife into his version of perfection?
But it was as pointless wishing for a different father as it was wishing to erase other aspects of her past.
Three weeks of maniacal planning for this had allowed her to shove from her mind exactly where she was going. Whenever a snapshot of her time on Sidiro had flitted into her mind she’d simply taken a deep breath to counteract the lance of pain and blinked the memory away.
An isolated, horseshoe-shaped, hilly island that would be fortunate to be named in the top one hundred Greek islands by the general public and even then only for its cheese, Sidiro was a tiny dot on the map with a population barely touching two thousand. The majority of said population were involved in the business of tending goats and making and exporting cheese.
However, Sidiro had a secret. Its isolation, along with its pristine white sandy beaches, iron-filled rocks that glowed orange under the sun and from which the island got its name, turquoise waters and spectacular sunsets, had seen it become a mecca for wealthy but discerning party-lovers who found the raucous nightlife of Europe’s more notorious nightspots unsavoury. For two months each summer, rich, young, beautiful people sailed across the globe to party in their own secret paradise. One of those
