It was the first time in three years he’d stayed in when he could have gone out.
He doubted he would have enjoyed the party without her by his side.
Their time together was ticking onwards, days turning into weeks as if life had been set to fast-forward. Helena shared his bed every night. They made love constantly. How either of them got any work done he didn’t know. Their passion for each other remained undiminished and he was no closer to exorcising her from his blood.
He no longer wanted vengeance. He no longer believed he’d ever wanted it, not the way he’d told himself he did.
He couldn’t allow what they’d shared this time around to be turned into something ugly for the sake of petty revenge. It was a realisation that had come to him as if he were a man waking from a long dream. Helena didn’t deserve it. She’d never set out to hurt or embarrass him. His humiliation at the cathedral was all on him. He hadn’t listened. She’d been a frightened child and he, although older than her, had been an immature fool.
She’d been right about one thing though. When it came to her, he had been a control freak. Not in the way her father was, God forbid, but in a possessive, all-consuming way. He’d needed to know where she was every minute of the day for his own peace of mind, to know she was safe. He’d wanted her by his side so he could feed his addiction to her, to always be able to touch her, to look at her, to just be with her. His love for her had been obsessive and greedy, and he could sense the old feelings building back up in him. He needed to rein them in before he opened himself up to having the great wound in his heart ripped open again.
Helena looked out of her office window and let Theo concentrate on the first complete set of draft plans in peace. In the distance, across the water separating the peninsula from Sidiro itself, were clifftop homes nestled together. Anyone visiting Sidiro for the first time would be forgiven for thinking these pretty, simple dwellings served only one function. They couldn’t know—indeed, only a few did know—that when the sun went down in the months of July and August, the owners of these dwellings threw their doors open, their homes becoming nightclubs, bars, restaurants, cafes and shops. When the sun came up, the partygoers would drift back to their rustic lodgings, the owners would close their doors and the island would doze lazily until the sun went down again. Rinse and repeat.
Today, on this beautiful Friday morning, she watched a large yacht with a batch of revellers sail past the peninsula towards Sidiro’s small harbour. The past week had seen more yachts sail to and from the island than usually visited throughout the rest of year. She wondered if tonight the wind would carry the music beating from it in their direction.
To which dwelling had Theo taken her dancing that time she’d drunk too many Greek Doctor cocktails? She hadn’t realised the strength of them until she’d been rocking like a madwoman on the makeshift dancefloor. Her top had ridden up her belly, she remembered. Theo, who’d been chatting to a group of other people, had noticed. He’d grinned, danced his way to her and discreetly pulled her top back down.
With a stab of emotion, she remembered how, even through the fog of her own inebriation, she’d known he’d pulled her top down out of pure caring. Theo had known how shy she was about her body—by that stage, she’d lost all shyness with him but in public it was a completely different matter—and he’d known she would be mortified to be flashing her belly like that.
It was a memory Helena hadn’t thought about since it had happened. She’d forgotten how many hang-ups she’d had. She’d forgotten how Theo had simply sliced through them. He was doing the same now.
As she was about to turn away from the window, her attention was caught by two figures walking hand in hand down the hillside. Elli and Natassa.
What a blind idiot she’d been not to realise they were a couple. Or, if she was being honest with herself, what a jealous idiot she’d been. As she’d learned in the weeks since she and Theo had become lovers, the two women had been together since art school. Elli was an old family friend of the Nikolaidises. Theo had got talking to them at a party and learned Natassa had lost her job teaching art and that they were struggling to pay the rent on their tiny apartment. When he’d offered them the shared job of his housekeeper and the promise of their own art studio when the house was built, they’d practically bitten his hand off to accept.
Another yacht sailed by. If she squinted she could see the partygoers sunbathing on it.
Those partygoers had once been her and Theo.
As she looked back at him, her heart hurt to see the exhaustion lining his face. The new legislation had given him nothing but headaches.
To think she had accused him of being spoilt and lazy. Spoilt still held—how could he be anything else considering the life he’d lived—but lazy? No. That had been an unfair accusation. She’d never appreciated that he’d taken three months off from his business to be with her. Every time she’d questioned him about it back then, he’d kissed the tip of her nose and said he wanted to enjoy their time together before real life had to intrude. She should have had faith that he was telling the truth.
While she’d worked diligently on the plans, Theo had quietly got on with running his business empire from the office next door, jetting off occasionally to meetings around Europe. Only twice had
