He would greet Miss Brookes, then spend some time with his grandfather while she settled in. His grandfather’s nurse had messaged him to say the King was having a good spell and Theseus was loath to miss spending private time with him when he was lucid.
Nikos, his right-hand man, had laid out a freshly pressed suit for him. Theseus had heard tales of royalty from other nations actually being dressed by their personal staff, something that had always struck him as slightly ludicrous. He was a man. He dressed himself. His lips curved in amusement as he imagined Nikos’s reaction should he request that the man do his shirt buttons up for him. All Nikos’s respect would be gone in an instant. He would think Theseus had lost his testosterone.
Once dressed, he rubbed a little wax between his hands and worked it quickly into his hair, then added a splash of cologne. He was done.
Exiting his apartment, he headed down a flight of stairs and walked briskly along a long, narrow corridor lit up by tiny ceiling lights. After walking through three more corridors he cut through the palace kitchens, then through four more corridors, until he arrived at the stateroom where he would meet Fiona Samaras’s replacement.
Murmured voices sounded from behind the open door. The replacement had clearly arrived—something that relieved him greatly.
His grandfather’s illness had forced the brothers to bring the Jubilee Gala forward by three months. That had meant that the deadline for completing a biography of his grandfather—which Theseus had tasked himself with producing—had been brought forward too.
His relationship with his grandfather had never been easy. Theseus freely admitted he’d been a nightmare to raise. He’d thoroughly enjoyed the outdoor pursuits which had come with being a young Agon prince, but had openly despised the rest of it—the boundaries, the stuffy protocol and all the other constraints that came with his title.
His demand for a sabbatical and the consequences of his absence had caused a further rift between him and his grandfather that had never fully healed. He hoped the biography would go some way to mending that rift before his grandfather’s frail body succumbed to the cancer eating at it.
Five years of exemplary behaviour did not make up for almost three decades of errant behaviour. This was his last chance to prove to his grandfather that the Kalliakis name did mean something to him.
But first the damn thing needed to be completed. The deadline was tight enough without Fiona’s appendicitis derailing the project further.
Her replacement had better be up for the task. Giles had sworn she was perfect for it... Theseus had no choice but to trust his judgement.
Dimitris stood with his back to the door, talking to the woman Theseus assumed to be Despinis Brookes.
‘You got back from the airport quickly,’ he said as he stepped into the stateroom.
Dimitris turned around and straightened. ‘Traffic was light, Your Highness.’
The woman behind him stepped forward. He moved towards her, his hand outstretched. ‘It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Brookes,’ he said in English. ‘Thank you for coming at such short notice.’
He would keep his doubts to himself. She would be under enough pressure to deliver without him adding to it. His job, from this point onwards, was as support vehicle. He would treat her as if she were one of the young men and women whose start-up businesses he and his brothers invested in.
His role in their company was officially finance director. Unofficially he saw himself as chief cheerleader—good cop to his younger brother Talos’s bad cop—there to give encouragement and help those people realise their dreams in a way he could never realise his own. But woe betide them if they should lie to him or cheat him. The few who’d been foolish enough to do that had been taught a lesson they would never forget.
He wasn’t a Kalliakis for nothing.
He waited for Miss Brookes to take his hand. Possibly she would curtsey. Many non-islanders did, although protocol did not insist on it unless it was an official function.
She didn’t take his offered hand. Just stared at him with an expression he didn’t quite understand but which made the hairs on his nape shoot up.
‘Despinis?’
Possibly she was overwhelmed at meeting a prince? It happened...
In the hanging silence he looked at her properly, seeing things that he’d failed to notice in his hurry to be introduced and get down to business. The colour of her hair was familiar, a deep russet-red, like the colour of the autumn leaves he’d used to crunch through when he’d been at boarding school in England. It fell like an undulating wave over her shoulders and down her back, framing a pretty face with an English rose complexion, high cheekbones and generous bee-stung lips. Blue-grey eyes pierced him with a look of intense concentration...
He knew those eyes. He knew that hair. It wasn’t a common colour, more like something from the artistic imagination of the old masters of the Renaissance than anything real. But it was those eyes that really cut him short. They too were an unusual shade—impossible to define, but evocative of early-morning skies before the sun had fully risen.
And as all these thoughts rushed through his mind she finally advanced her hand into his and spoke two words. The final two little syllables were delivered with a compacted tightness that sliced through him upon impact.
‘Hello, Theo.’
* * *
He didn’t recognise her.
Jo didn’t know what she’d expected. A hundred scenarios had played out in her mind over the past twenty hours. Not one of those scenarios had involved him not remembering her.
It was like rubbing salt in an open, festering wound.
Something flickered in his dark eyes, and then she caught the flare of recognition.
‘Jo?’
As he spoke her name, the question strongly inflected in a rich, accented voice that sounded just as she imagined a creamy chocolate mousse would sound if it could talk, his long fingers wrapped around hers.
She nodded and bit into her bottom lip, which had gone decidedly wobbly. Her whole body suddenly felt very wobbly, as if her bones had turned into overcooked noodles.
His hand felt so warm.
It shouldn’t feel warm. It should feel as cold as his lying heart.
And she shouldn’t feel an overwhelming urge to burst into tears.
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
Straightening her spine, Jo tugged her hand out of his warm hold and resisted the impulse to wipe it on her skirt, to rid herself of a touch she had once yearned for.
‘It’s been a long time,’ she said, deliberately keeping her tone cool, trying to turn her lips upwards into the semblance of a smile.
But how could you smile when your one and only lover, the man you’d spent five years searching for, the father of your child, didn’t remember your face?
How could you force a smile when you’d spent five years searching for a lie?
Dimitris, the man who’d collected her from the airport and introduced himself as His Highness’s private secretary, was watching their interaction with interest.
‘Do you two know each other?’
‘Despinis Brookes is an old acquaintance of mine,’ said Theo—or Theseus—or whatever his name was. ‘We met when I was on my sabbatical.’
Oh, was that what he’d been doing on Illya? He’d been on a sabbatical?
And she was an acquaintance?
She supposed it was better than being