She might not have much pride left after spending the last four years as a single mother, but she still had enough to be wounded and not to want to show it, especially as they had an audience. One thing motherhood had taught her was resilience. In fact it had taught her a lot of things, all of which had made her infinitely stronger than she’d been before.
Theseus appraised her openly, his dark brown eyes sweeping over her body. ‘You look different to how I remember you.’
She knew she was physically memorable—it had been the bane of her childhood. Red hair and a weight problem had made her an easy target for bullies. Having Toby had been the kick she’d needed to shift the weight and keep it off. She would never be a stick-thin model but she’d grown to accept her curves.
She might be a few stone lighter, and her hair a few inches longer, but there was nothing else different about her.
‘Your hair’s shorter than I remember,’ she said in return.
Five years ago Theseus’s hair—so dark it appeared black—had been long, skimming his shoulders. Now it was short at the back, with the front sweeping across his forehead. On Illya she’d only ever seen him in shorts and the occasional T-shirt. Half the time he hadn’t bothered with footwear. Now he wore a blue suit that looked as if it had cost more than her annual food bill, and shoes that shone so brightly he could probably see his reflection in them.
‘You’re looking good, though,’ she added, nodding her head to add extra sincerity to her words.
What a shame that it was the truth.
Theo—or Theseus—or His Highness—wasn’t the most handsome man she’d ever met, but there was something about him that captured the eye and kept you looking. A magnetism. He had a nose too bumpy to be considered ideal, deep-set dark brown eyes, a wide mouth that smiled easily and a strong jawline. This combined with his olive colouring, his height—which had to be a good foot over her own five foot four inches—and the wiry athleticism of his physique, gave the immediate impression of an unreconstructed ‘man’s man’.
Her awareness of him had been instant, from the second he’d stepped into Marin’s Bar on Illya with a crowd of Scandinavian travellers hanging onto his every word. She’d taken one look at him and her heart had flipped over.
It had been a mad infatuation. Totally crazy. Irrational. All the things she’d reached the age of twenty-one without having once experienced had hit her with the force of a tsunami.
But now she was five years older, five years wiser, and she had a child to protect. Any infatuation had long gone.
Or so she’d thought.
But when he’d strode through the door of the stateroom the effect had been the same; as if the past five years had been erased.
‘Different to all those years ago,’ Theseus agreed, looking at his watch. ‘I appreciate you’ve had a long day, but time is against us to get the biography complete. Let’s take a walk to your apartment so you can freshen up and settle in. We can talk en route.’
He set off with Dimitris at his side.
Staring at his retreating back, it took Jo a few beats before she pulled herself together and scrambled after them.
Dull thuds pounded in her brain, bruising it, as the magnitude of her situation hit her.
For all these years she’d sworn to herself that she would find Toby’s father and tell Theo about their son. She’d had no expectations of what would happen afterwards, but had known that at the very least she owed it to Toby to find him. She’d also thought she owed it to Theo to tell him he had a child.
But Theo didn’t exist.
Whoever this man was, he was not the Theo Patakis she had once fallen in love with.
Theseus wasn’t the father of her son; he was a stranger dressed in his skin.
‘VISITORS TO THE palace often get lost, so I’ve arranged for a map to be left in your apartment,’ Theseus said as they climbed a narrow set of stairs.
‘A map? Seriously?’ She would remain civil if it killed her. Which it probably would.
So many emotions were running through her she didn’t know where one began and another ended.
He nodded, still steaming ahead. Her legs were working at a quick march to keep up with him as he turned into a dark corridor lit by tiny round ceiling lights.
‘The palace has five hundred and seventy-three rooms.’
‘Then I guess a map could come in handy,’ she conceded, for want of anything else to say.
‘There will not be time for you to explore the palace as you might like,’ he said. ‘However, we will do everything in our power to make your stay here as comfortable as it can be.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said, trying not to choke on her words.
‘Are you up to speed with the project?’
‘I read a good chunk of it on the plane,’ she confirmed tightly.
As the deadline for the biography’s completion was so tight, Fiona had been emailing each chapter as she’d finished it so they could be immediately edited. The editor working on it had spent the past six weeks or so with a distinctly frazzled look about her.
‘Fiona has completed the bulk of the biography, but there is still another twenty-five years of my grandfather’s life to be written about. I appreciate this must sound daunting, but you will find when you read through the research papers that there is much less complexity there than in his early years. Are you confident you can do this within the time constraints?’
‘I wouldn’t have accepted the job if I wasn’t.’ Fiona’s editor, who Jo was now working with, had assured her that the last three decades of King Astraeus’s life had been comparatively quiet after his early years.
But Jo had accepted the job before discovering who she would be working for and exactly who he was.
As she clung to the gold banister that lined the wall above a wide, cantilevered staircase that plunged them into another warren of passageways and corridors Jo remembered a trip to Buckingham Palace a few years back, and recalled how bright and airy it had seemed. The Agon Royal Palace matched Buckingham Palace for size, but it had a much darker, far greater gothic quality to it. It was a palace of secrets and intrigue.
Or was that just her rioting emotions making her read more into things? Her body had never felt so tight with nerves, while her brain had become a fog of hurt, anger, bewilderment and confusion.
‘I don’t remember you speaking Greek when we were on Illya,’ he said, casting her a curious, almost suspicious glance that made her heart shudder.
‘Everyone spoke English there,’ she replied in faultless Greek, staring pointedly ahead and praying the dim light bouncing off the dark hardwood flooring would hide the burn suddenly ravaging her skin.
‘That is true.’ He came to a halt by a door at the beginning of another wide corridor. He turned the handle and pushed it open. ‘This is your apartment for the duration of your stay. I’m going to visit my grandfather while you settle in—a maid will be with you shortly to unpack. Dimitris will come for you in an hour, and then we can sit down and discuss the project properly.’
And just like that he walked back down the corridor, leaving Jo staring at his retreating figure with a mixture of fury and incredibly lancing pain raging through her.
Was