He shrugged. ‘He wasn’t there when I visited. I don’t know if your mother told him.’
Her tight lungs loosened a fraction. ‘Well, you’ve succeeded in your quest to find me. Congratulations. Now you can go.’
He bestowed her with a look that made her feel as though the blood could burst from her veins and she wished she could say it would be entirely due to anger. Theo had always been his own life-force, a man who thrummed with infectious energy. Although far from traditionally handsome, he had a magnetism that ensured every eye in the vicinity was drawn to him, and an affable charm and wit that could make a complete stranger feel they’d just met their new best friend.
For three incredible months Helena had been at the centre of his life-force. He’d treated her like a princess. There was nothing he wouldn’t have done for her. If she’d asked for the moon he would have got a lasso and pulled it down to her. If she’d married him she would have wanted for nothing...apart from her own autonomy. Because the flip side of Theo’s magnetic energy was a spoilt, entitled, controlling, easily bored ego who thought the world revolved around him. And in Theo’s world, everything did revolve around him.
The secret fears that had built up in her as their wedding approached had crystallised during the fateful lunch with her parents the day before they’d been due to exchange their vows. Her future had flashed before her, a future that would see her become a clone of her mother, a once vivacious woman turned into a timid mouse under the weight of her husband’s misogyny; browbeaten into giving up her dreams and becoming as dependent as a child.
Yanking herself out of Theo’s world and far from his orbit had been the hardest thing Helena had ever done but she’d never regretted it. If her heart fisted into a knot whenever she saw a picture of him with yet another walking clothes horse on his arm it was only the residue of her old love making a dying flicker.
To find herself standing only feet away from him, the laser stare penetrating her from the ice-blue eyes that should have made her feel cold but warmed her far more effectively than the bath she’d run for herself... Cells in her body that had been dormant all these years were flickering back to life and, with a burst of fearful clarity, she realised these flickers needed extinguishing immediately.
Turning on her heel, Helena stormed to the front door and yanked it open. ‘Get out.’
This was her home. Her sanctuary. Her flat, tiny but usually plentiful enough for her, now, with Theo’s hulking body sucking out all its oxygen, felt as if its proportions had shrunk to the size of a playpen. She wanted him gone right now, before she gave in to the urge to punch the arrogance right off his smug face, or, worse, burst into tears or, even worse than that, flung her arms around him.
He moved out of the kitchen but no further than its door, shaking his head sadly. ‘But we have not yet discussed the details of the project or answered the other questions we have of each other.’
That blasted voice. She hated it. All gravelly and throaty and capable of penetrating her skin and seeping into her bloodstream.
‘I don’t care,’ she snapped. ‘I told you three years ago that I never wanted to see you again. If I’d known you were our mystery client I would never have pitched for the job.’
‘I know.’ Another wink. ‘That’s why I kept my identity hidden and asked your mother to keep her mouth shut.’
She didn’t know if it was the gust of wind that blew over her through the open front door or Theo’s words that made her skin chill. ‘You...you hid your identity on purpose?’
He winked again and clicked his finger and thumb together. ‘Details, agapi mou. One must always take care of the details. I needed to get to this position, to where we are right at this precise moment. All the details came from that end game.’
She closed the door slowly as the penny dropped with equal slowness. ‘This was a set-up?’
He looked at her pityingly. Or with something that resembled pity mixed with a dollop of glee. If he’d winked again she might just have slapped him. ‘The pitch was created for you.’
‘No.’ She shook her head to clear the ringing in her ears. ‘It couldn’t have been. I wasn’t asked to pitch personally...’
‘Details,’ he reminded her with another wink. ‘I needed you to bite without raising your suspicions.’
‘I was always going to win?’
He pulled a musing face. ‘Unless your pitch was terrible, in which case I’d have given the job to a Greek firm, but I knew it wouldn’t be. I knew it would be fantastic. I knew you were the right woman for the job.’
‘So all those other architects who wasted their time...?’
‘The only other firms invited to pitch do not have Greek speakers on their books. If they were stupid enough to draw up plans when the stipulation of having a Greek speaker had been made clear then the wasted time is their own doing.’ He raised his shoulders in a fashion that reminded her strongly of the stance the naughty boys in her primary school had given when trying to convince the teacher that the culprit wasn’t them even with the evidence right at their feet. ‘This is a plan I set in motion a long time ago.’
It took a few beats for Helena’s brain to compute.
This was revenge. She didn’t know how Theo’s commissioning her to design a house for him could be a form of revenge but she knew it was.
She’d unwittingly humiliated him. She’d only learned after the fact that he’d stood at the cathedral’s altar for an hour before telling their guests the wedding was off. His colossal ego meant he hadn’t
