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www.millsandboon.co.uk
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
VICKY could hear her heels clacking on the marble floor of the vast atrium as she headed towards the reception desk, which was an island in the middle of an ocean of gleaming white and metallic grey. The whole interior screamed modernity—ironic, really, Vicky found herself thinking, as the man who ran this whole mega-corporate shebang was as antediluvian as a dinosaur. A big, vicious dinosaur that ripped your throat out with its talons, tore you limb from limb, and then went on its way, searching for other prey to dismember.
Walking into this dinosaur’s cavern now made it all come rushing back. In her head she could again hear that deep, dangerously accented voice, carving into her with a cold, vicious fury that had stripped the flesh from her bones with savage economy. She could hear the words, too, ugly and foul, not caring how they slayed her, his fathomless eyes pools of loathing and—worse than loathing—contempt. Then, having verbally dismembered her, he had simply walked out of her life
She had not seen him since. And yet today, this morning, right now, she was going to walk up to that reception desk she could see coming closer and closer, walk up to that svelte, immaculate female sitting there watching her approach, and ask to see him.
She felt her throat spasm.
I can’t do this! I can’t.
Protest sliced in her head. But her nervous feet kept on walking, ringing on the marble. She had to do it. She’d tried everything else, and this was the only avenue left. Letters had been returned, all phone calls blocked, all e-mails deleted unread.
Theo Theakis had absolutely no intention of letting her get close enough to ask him for what she wanted.
Even as she replayed the thought in her mind, she felt a spurt of anger.
I shouldn’t damn well have to go and ask him! It’s not his to hand out or withhold. It’s mine. Mine.
To her grim chagrin, however, the law did not see it that way. What she wanted was not, as her lawyer had sympathetically but regretfully informed her, hers to have, let alone dispose of.
‘It requires Mr Theakis’s consent,’ her lawyer had repeated.
Her face darkened now as she closed in on the reception desk.
He’s going to give me his damn consent, or I’m going to—
‘May I help you?’
The receptionist’s voice was light and impersonal. But her eyes had flicked over Vicky’s outfit, and Vicky got the instant feeling that she had been classified precisely according to the cost of it. Well, her clothes at least should pass muster in these palatial corporate surroundings. Her suit might be well over a year out of date fashion-wise, but its designer label status was obvious to anyone with an eye for couture. Not that she herself had such an eye, but the world she’d once moved in—albeit so briefly—had been ruthlessly observant in that respect. And now this rare remnant of that vast wardrobe she had once had at her indifferent disposal was finally coming in useful. It was getting her the attentive focus of someone who was standing in the way of what she wanted.
‘Thank you.’ She smiled, striving to keep her voice just as light and impersonal. It was hard, though, given the mixture of apprehension and anger that was biting away inside her. But, whatever the strength of her feelings about her situation, there wasn’t the slightest point showing them now.
So she simply stood there, as poised as she could, knowing that the pale ice-blue dress and jacket she was wearing was perfectly cut, and that the thin silver necklace went with it flawlessly, as did her high-heeled shoes and handbag, which were both colour co-ordinated. Her hair, newly washed and styled—albeit by herself, not a top hairdresser—flicked neatly out at the ends, and was drawn off her forehead by a hairband the exact colour as the rest of her outfit. Her make-up was minimal and restrained, and the scent she was wearing was a classic fragrance she’d got as a free sample in a department store a while ago.
She looked, she knew, expensive, classic, English and—oh, dear God, please—sufficiently appropriate to get past this hurdle.
Right, time to do it—now.
In a deliberately poised voice, she spoke.
‘I’d like to see Mr Theakis,’ she said. She made her tones slightly more cultured than she usually bothered to do. But this was England, and these things counted. She gave the name as though it were something she did every day, as a matter of course. As if, equally as a matter of course, her giving it were not in the slightest exceptional and would always meet with compliance.
Was it going to happen now? She must not let any uncertainty show in her face.
‘Whom shall I say?’ the receptionist enquired. Vicky could tell that she was staying neutral at this point, but that she had conceded that it was indeed possible that this designer-dressed female might actually be someone allowed that level of access. Might even, unlikely though it was, given the restraint of her appearance, be a female granted the privilege of personal intimacy with Theo Theakis. But Vicky also knew, feeling another bite of her tightly leashed anger at having to be here at all, that she did not look nearly voluptuously delectable enough to be one of his legion of mistresses.
Vicky gave a small, poised smile.
‘Mrs Theakis,’ she said.
Theo Theakis sat back in his leather executive chair and felt his blood pressure spike. The phone he’d just picked up and discarded lay on the vast expanse of mahogany desk in front of him, as if it were contaminated.
And so it was.
She was here, downstairs, in this very building. His building. His London HQ. She had walked into his company, his territory, daring to do so! His eyes narrowed. Was she mad? Daring to come near him again after he’d thrown her from him like a diseased rag? She must be mad to be so stupid as to come within a hundred miles of him!
Or just shameless?
His face darkened. Shame was not a word she knew. Nor disgrace. Nor guilt.
No, she neither knew or felt any of those things. She’d done what she had done and had flaunted it, even thrown it in his face, and had felt nothing—nothing at all about it. No hesitation, no compunction, no remorse.
And now she had the effrontery to turn up and ask to see him. As though she had any right to do so. That woman had no rights to anything—let alone what he knew she was here for.
And certainly no right—his eyes flashed with a dangerous, dark anger that went deep to the heart of him—no right at all, to call herself what she still did…
His wife.
Vicky sat on one of the dark grey leather sofas that were arranged neatly around a smoked glass table. In front of her, laid out with pristine precision, were the day’s leading newspapers in half a dozen languages. Including Greek. With a fragment of her brain that was still functioning normally she started to read the headline that was visible. Her Greek was rusty—she’d deliberately not used any of the language she’d acquired—and now her brain balked at forming sounds out of the alien writing. But at least it gave her mind something to do—something other than just going round and round in an ever-tightening loop.
I ought to just stand up and walk out. Not care that he’s refused to see me. Not sit here like a lemon with some insane idea of door-stepping him when he leaves! Because he might not leave—he’s got a flat here, somewhere up above his damn executive suite. And anyway the lift probably goes down to an underground car park, where he’s either got one of his flash cars or a chauffeured limo waiting. There’s no reason he should walk past me…
So she should go, she knew. It was pointless just continuing to sit here, with her stomach tying itself in knots and her feet slowly starting to ache in their unaccustomed high-heeled shoes.
But I want what I came for. I won’t go back empty-handed until I’ve done everything I can to get it!
Determination gave strength to her expression. What she wanted was rightfully hers—and she’d been cheated of it. Cheated of what she had been promised—what she needed. Needed now, two years later, with imperative urgency. She could afford to wait no longer. She needed that money!
And it was that thought only that was keeping her glued to the grey leather as the slow minutes passed. Pointless, she half accepted, and yet the deep, deep sense of outrage she felt still kept her there.
She had sat for almost two hours before she finally accepted that she would have to throw in the towel this time around. Sinkingly resigned, Vicky knew that, stupid as she would look, she would just have to get to her feet and leave. People had been coming and going intermittently all the time, and she knew she’d been on the receiving end of some half-puzzled, half-assessing looks—not least by the receptionist. With a sense of bitter resignation she folded up the last of the newspapers and replaced it on the table. Useless—quite useless! She would just have to think of some other way of achieving her end. Quite what, though, she had no idea. She’d already done everything she could think of, including looking at the possibility of taking legal action, which had been promptly shot down by her lawyer. A face-to-face confrontation with her husband had been her last resort. Her eyes flashed darkly. Not surprisingly, considering that Theo Theakis was the last person on earth she ever wanted to see again!
Which was why, as she picked up her handbag from the floor and prepared to stand, bitter with defeat, her stomach suddenly plummeted right down to her heels. Right there in front of her appeared a bevy of suited figures, gracefully exiting one of the lifts and sweeping forwards across the marble floor to the revolving doors of the Theakis Corp’s London HQ.
It was him.
She could see him. Her eyes went to him immediately, drawn by that malign awareness that had been like doom over her ever since that first fateful encounter. Half a head taller than the other suits around him, he strode forward, his pace faster than theirs, more impatient, as they hurried to keep up. One of the group was talking to him, his expression concentrated, and Theo had his face half turned towards the man.
Vicky felt herself go cold.
Oh, God, don’t do this to me! Don’t, please!
Because she could feel it again—feel that tremor in her veins that Theo Theakis could always set running in her whenever she looked at him. It was as if she was mesmerised, like a rabbit seeing a fast car approaching and not being able to move, not being able to drag her eyes away.
She’d forgotten his impact, his raw physical force. It was not just his height, or the breadth of his shoulders and the leanness of his hips. It was not the fact that he looked like a billion dollars in a charcoal handmade suit that must have cost thousands of pounds, with his dark, sable hair immaculately styled, or that his face seemed as if it was planed from a fine-grained stone that revealed every perfect honed contour. It was more than that—it was his eyes, his dark, fathomless eyes, that could look at her with such coldness, with such savage fury, and with another expression that she would not, would not, let herself remember. Even now, when he wasn’t even looking at her, when he was half focussed, clearly impatient, on what was being said to him. She saw him give a brief assenting nod, and look ahead again.
And that was when he saw her.
She could see it happening. See the precise moment when he registered her presence. See the initial flash of disbelief—followed by blinding fury.
And then it was gone. Just—gone. As she was gone from his vision. Gone from the slightest claim on the smallest portion of his attention. He had simply blanked her out as if she did not exist. As if she had not been sitting there for nearly two whole hours, waiting. Waiting for him to descend to ground level, where the mortals dwelt in their lowly places, far, far from the exclusively rich, powerful people that made up his world.
He was walking past her, still surrounded by his entourage. Any moment now he would be past the sofas and out of the sheer glass door, which one of the group was already hurrying to hold steady for his august passage. Very soon he would be out of the building he owned, the company he owned, and away from the people he owned.
She surged to her feet towards him.
She saw his head turn, just by a fraction. But not towards her. He gave one of the suits flanking the outer edge of his entourage an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Vicky saw the man peel off from the group, cross behind it with a swiftness that was as soft-footed as it was unanticipated by her, and intercept and block her path exactly where she would have been level with her target.
‘Get out of my way!’ It was a hiss of fury from her. It was like a spot of rain on a rock. The man didn’t move.
‘I’m sorry, miss,’ he said. His eyes didn’t meet hers, his body didn’t touch hers—he just stood there, blocking her way. Letting Theo Theakis get away from her and stride off with total and complete unconcern for the fact that he had taken something from her that was not his to take and had kept it.
Her self-control was at breaking point. She could feel it snapping like a dry twig beneath her high heels. She felt her hand arch up, gripping the soft leather clutch bag she was holding like some kind of slingshot, and with every ounce of muscle in her arm she hurled it towards the man who was walking past her, walking out on her. Totally stonewalling her.
‘Speak to me, you bastard! Damn well speak to me!’
The handbag bounced off one of the suits’ shoulders, falling to the ground. The bodyguard in front of her caught her arm, too late to stop her impetuous action, but in time to force it down, not roughly, but with the strength his profession required of him.
‘None of that, please,’ he said, and there was a slight grimness to his mouth—presumably because, she thought, with a glance of vicious satisfaction, he hadn’t expected a ‘nice young Englishwoman’to behave in such an outrageous fashion.
Not that it had done her the slightest good at all. The entourage just kept going—hastened, even. Though the man at the centre did not change his pace by a centimetre. He simply walked out of the building and disappeared into the sleek black limo that was waiting at the kerb. The car moved off. He had gone.
You swine, thought Vicky, trembling all over. You absolute, total swine.
She had never, ever hated him so much as at that moment.
Theo let his gaze rest silently, impassively, on the newspaper clipping that had been placed in front of him. He was at breakfast in his London apartment, and on the other side of the table his private secretary stood, uneasily waiting for his employer’s reaction. It would not be good, Demetrious knew. Theo Theakis hated anything about his private life getting into the press—which was ironic, really, since the life he led made the press very interested in him indeed, even though they could never get much information on him at all.
Theo Theakis managed his privacy ruthlessly. Even when the press could smell a really juicy story bubbling beneath the expensive surface of his tycoon’s existence, Theo would remain calm. Eighteen months ago, when rumours had started to circulate like buzzing wasps about just why his apparently unexceptional marriage had proved so exceptionally brief, the press had been hot on his tail. But, as usual, they’d got absolutely nothing beyond the bland statement issued at Theo Theakis’s curt instruction. Which was exactly why, Demetrious knew with a sinking heart, the tabloid from which the cutting had been taken had snapped up this latest little morsel.
He stood now, watching and waiting for his employer’s reaction. He wouldn’t show much, Demetrious knew, but he was aware that the mask of impassivity would be just that—a mask. Demetrious was grateful for it. Without the mask he would probably have been blasted to stone already by now.
For a few seconds there was silence. At least, thought Demetrious gratefully, there was no picture to go with the newspaper article. What had happened yesterday in Theakis HQ would have made a photo opportunity for any paparazzi to die for. As it was, it was nothing more than a coyly worded few paragraphs, laced with speculation, about just what had caused the former Mrs Theo Theakis to hurl her handbag at him and call him an unbecoming name. The journalist in question had teamed the article with an old photograph from the press archives of Theo Theakis, looking svelte in a tux, walking into some top hotel in Athens with a blonde, English, couture-dressed woman on his arm. Her expression was as impassive as his employer’s was now.
But she certainly hadn’t been impassive yesterday. And nothing could hide the glee with which the brief, gossipy article had been written up.
Theo Theakis’s eyes snapped up.
‘Find out who talked to these parasites and then sack them,’ he said.
Then he went on with his breakfast.
Demetrious stood back. The man was ruthless, all right. There were times, definitely, when he felt sorry for anyone who ever got on the wrong side of Theo Theakis. Like his ex-wife. Demetrious wondered why she’d done what she had. Surely by now she must know it was just a waste of her time? She’d been plaguing his boss for weeks now, and he’d not given an inch. He wasn’t going to, either. Demetrious could tell. Whatever it was she so badly wanted, she could forget it! As far as Theo Theakis was concerned she clearly no longer existed.
Demetrious turned to go. He’d been dismissed, he knew, and sent on an errand he would not enjoy, but which had to be done all the same.
‘One more thing—’
The deep voice halted him. Demetrious paused expectantly. Dark eyes looked at him with the same chilling impassivity.
‘Instruct Mrs Theakis to be here tonight at eight-thirty,’ said his employer.
CHAPTER TWO
VICKY was ploughing through paperwork. There was a never-ending stream of it: forms in triplicate, and worse, letters of application, case notes, invoices, accounts and any number of records, listings and statistical analyses. But it all had to be done, however frustrating. It was the only way, Vicky knew, to achieve what this small voluntary group, Freshstart, was dedicated to achieving—making some attempt to catch those children who were slipping through the education net and who needed the kind of dedicated, intensive, out-of-school catch-up tutoring that the organisation sought to provide them with.
Money was, of course, their perpetual challenge. For every pound the group had, it could easily have spent five times that amount, and the number of children who needed its services was not diminishing.
She gave a sharp sigh of frustration, which intensified as she picked up the next folder—the batch of quotes from West Country building firms for doing up Jem’s house. Jem had deliberately kept the work to the barest minimum—a new roof, new electrics, new flooring—to secure the property and make it comply with Health and Safety regulations. Everything else they would have to do themselves—painting, decorating, furnishing—even if they had to beg, borrow or steal. But the main structural and safety work just had to be done professionally—and it was going to cost a fortune.
Yet the house, Pycott Grange, was a godsend. Jem had inherited it the previous year from his childless maternal great-uncle, and now that probate had been granted he could take occupation. Although it was very run down, after years of neglect, it had two outstanding advantages: it was large, standing in its own generous grounds, and it was close to the Devonshire seaside. Both those conditions made it ideal for what everyone hoped would be Freshstart’s latest venture. So many of the children it helped came from backgrounds that were grim in the extreme—deprived, dysfunctional families, trapped in dreary inner-city environments that simply reinforced all their educational problems. But if some of those children could just get a break, right away from their normal bleak lives, it might provide the catalyst they needed to see school as a vital ladder they could climb to get out of the conditions they’d been born into rather than the enemy. Two weeks at the Grange, with a mix of intensive tuition and space to play sport and surf, might just succeed in turning their heads around, giving them something to aim for in life other than the deadbeat fate that inevitably awaited them.
But the Grange was going to cost a lot of money to be made suitable for housing staff and pupils, and a lot more to run, as well, before Jem’s dream finally came true. Disappointment bit into Vicky again. If the building work could start, without more delay, then there was a really good prospect that the Grange could open its doors in time for the long school summer holidays coming up in a few months. Already Freshstart had a list as long as your arm of children they would like to recommend for the experience. But without cash the Grange would continue to crumble away, unused and unusable.
If we just had the money, she thought. Right now. And they should have the money. That was the most galling part of it. They should—it was there, sitting uselessly in a bank account, ready to be used. Except that—
I want what’s mine!
Anger injected itself into the frustration. It’s mine—I was promised it. It was part of that damned devil’s agreement I made—the one I knew I shouldn’t have made, but I did, all the same. Because I felt…
She paused mentally, then finished the sentence. Felt obligated.
Wretchedness twisted inside her as painful memories came flooding back.
Vicky could hardly remember her father. She had always known that he had been born to riches, but to Andreas Fournatos his money was no more than a tool. At an early age he had taken his share of his patrimony and gone to work for an international aid agency, where he had met her mother and married her—only to die tragically when Vicky was not yet five. It had been his money, inherited by his widow, which had set up Freshstart, and Vicky’s mother had run the organisation until Vicky had taken over her role.
She had had very little contact with her father’s side of the family—except for her one uncle. Despite hardly knowing her, Aristides Fournatos had been so good to her, so incredibly kind and welcoming. She had always understood why her mother had withdrawn from her late husband’s family all those years ago—because it had simply hurt too much to be reminded of the man she had married and lost so early. So, although there had been Christmas cards and birthday presents arriving regularly for Vicky throughout her childhood from her Greek uncle, her mother had never wanted to return to Greece, and had never wanted Vicky to accept her uncle’s invitations.
Aristides had respected her mother’s wishes, knowing how much it pained his sister-in-law to remember her first husband after his premature death. And when Vicky’s mother had remarried, Aristides had been the first to congratulate her, accepting that she wanted to put all her emotional focus on her second husband—a divorced teacher with a son the same age as Vicky—and raise Vicky to be English, with Geoff as the only father she could remember. They had been a happy, close-knit family, living an ordinary, middle class life.