‘Hi, Willow. Congratulations on the award.’ A voice floated over the garden gate. Willow looked nervously over Theo’s shoulder, and then smiled at Tess’s husband cycling past on his way home.
‘Thanks, Bob.’ And she waved.
‘Damn it to hell!’ Theo suddenly exploded, and, grabbing her arm in an iron grip, he dragged her towards the open front door and shoved her into the hall, slamming the door behind him. ‘You can cut out the country-girl routine in front of me, Willow. You are the most devious bloody woman I have ever met,’ he snarled. ‘My God! Why didn’t you tell me I had a son?’
‘How did you find me?’ she shot back. She knew her publisher would never reveal her address. Willow realised that if Theo got the idea she was hiding something it would simply confirm his suspicions. Not waiting for an answer, she added, ‘And anyway, what makes you think my child has anything to do with you?’ she demanded in a cool, polite voice. Inside she was shaking like a leaf.
‘Don’t bother to deny it,’ he said harshly, his fingers tightening on her arm. ‘I saw the photograph in the newspaper. I had my people check the boy’s birth date at the register office, and, surprise, surprise, he was born at home, at this address. It was not terribly difficult to discover, Willow.’
‘No. Oh, no,’ she murmured. Her worst fear had been realised. Bowing her head to evade his searing gaze, she knew with a despairing sense of inevitability that her world would never be the same again.
‘You dare to deny it?’ he declared contemptuously, completely misreading her negative response. ‘Then I will see you in court, and show you up for the little liar you are. By the time my lawyers are finished with you, you will be begging me to see our son. Believe me, Willow, I can and I will do it.’ The cold menace in his voice sent shivers of fear down her spine. ‘You have deprived me of my child for eight years.’ Grasping her chin with his free hand, he tilted her face up to his.
‘Hanging your head in shame now? It is a bit late for that, Willow,’ he opined scathingly, forcing her to look at him. ‘Because it was not only me you deprived of the child.’ The hard bones of his jaw and chin tightened with suppressed emotion. ‘The one thing my father wanted before he died was to see me with a family of my own. He died three years ago, and went to his grave never knowing he had a grandson, all because of you.’ The bitterness in the black eyes that held hers chilled her to the bone. ‘No more lies, Willow. Where is my son? I want to see him now!’
‘He is at school until three-thirty.’ She told the truth; there was no point trying to deny it. ‘And I’m sorry about your…’ She was about to finish, but as she looked into his bitter, hate-filled eyes the words of conventional sympathy stuck in her throat. When Stephen was born, it had never entered her head that, by not informing the father, at the same time she might be depriving a decent old man of a much-longed-for grandson.
‘Oh, you are going to be sorry. I can promise you that.’ Theo tightened his grip and she winced.
‘You’re hurting me,’ she snapped, the physical pain cutting through her mental anguish and restoring some of her usual spirit. She refused to feel guilty about Theo’s father. If Theo himself had not been a two-timing swine of a man and already married when Stephen had been born things might have worked out differently. If anyone was to blame it was Theo, she thought scathingly, and his hedonistic lifestyle.
‘You don’t know what pain is… yet.’ He smiled a cold, humourless smile, but did release her and glanced around the small wood-panelled hall.
Theo had to look away from her because for the first time in his life he felt dangerously close to inflicting violence on a woman. He battled to contain his rage and noted a door on either side of the hall. Both doors were partially opened, one revealing the living room, and the other a dining-room-cum-study. A third door at the rear led to the kitchen, and a narrow steep staircase led to the upper floor. ‘I might have guessed,’ Theo drawled with a negative shake of his dark head. It was like stepping back in time, the perfect hideaway. Her friends had not been far wrong when they had nicknamed her The Mole.
Guessed what? Willow wondered, but said nothing. She continued to watch him with wary eyes, and began nervously rubbing her bare arm where his fingers had left their mark. Theo’s tall, broad figure seemed to fill the small hall, making her feel positively claustrophobic in her own home. She frantically racked her brain for some way to get rid of him.
His temper now back under control, Theo cast her a cynical glance. ‘I will wait in here, and, as you did not turn up for our breakfast together,’ he said with biting sarcasm, ‘you can make me lunch.’ With this, he strolled through the open living-room door.
Make him lunch! He was in her house for less than two minutes and already he was ordering her around. The cool cheek of the man. Willow silently fumed but followed behind him, knowing exactly what he was going to encounter next. She decided that she was not going to warn him… Let him knock himself out, the arrogant devil.
Low oak beams crossed the plastered ceiling. The room was furnished with all her grandmother’s old oak furniture, and knick-knacks and it hadn’t changed much since she was a child. She had modernised some rooms, but essentially the style was seventeenth century, in keeping with the house.
As she walked through the door she watched as Theo turned around in the middle of the room, and deftly dipped his head, narrowly missing one of the low beams. Trust him to duck in time, she thought bitterly, but then by all accounts he’d spent his whole life ducking and diving in the business world, which was why he was so filthy rich. She eyed him balefully. He had never looked more foreign, more Greek to her than he did right now, and she wondered how on earth she was going to come to some agreement with him over Stephen.
‘You certainly fit your nickname—The Mole.’ Theo raised one black sardonic eyebrow. ‘Buried away in an ancient dark-beamed house, overlooking the river in a tiny village that does not even appear on a map, blindly keeping yourself and my son hidden from sight.’
She allowed no one to attack her home, or her lifestyle, and certainly not a jet-setting, womanising multimillionaire with more money than sense. She had seen in magazines the huge villa Theo had built for his wife, Dianne, and hadn’t been impressed.
‘I like it,’ she snapped back, ‘and so does Stephen. It is our home, and we have lots of friends and are very happy here.’
But his sarcastic comment had hit a nerve; she had always been a secret, sensitive person, and very much a creature of habit. When she had lost both her grandmother and mother in a few short months, almost everyone in the village had rallied around the pregnant eighteen-year-old. This house, which she had known all her life, had become her sanctuary; she loved the place. Free of a mortgage and with her mother’s life insurance policy, and the income she received from her writing, she had been able to stay here with her son, safe and secure among friends.
She had given up any thought of going to university, not willing to move across the country and live among strangers. She also hated the idea of putting her baby into a crèche when she could stop where she was and look after him herself. But she also knew that she did tend to ignore anything that might upset her cosy lifestyle.
Realistically she had known for some time that Stephen wanted to meet his father. He had dropped plenty of hints, and she’d known she was going to have to do something about it. Maybe subconsciously she had allowed her editor to talk her into going to London and revealing her true identity as a first step towards facing up to her wider responsibility and seeking out Theo Kadros.
Even so, she sure as hell had not expected him to turn up on her doorstep today and start making derogatory comments about her house. She could feel her anger increasing by the minute.
‘You were not invited to my home, Theo, and I don’t do lunches. So please, feel free to leave.’ She stared defiantly up at him, the atmosphere between them crackling with tension.
‘No,