Moving the plate to his desk and out of her eyeline, he settled back in his chair, cradling his coffee cup in his hands.
He didn’t miss the quick smile of gratitude she threw his way. It was a smile that made his stomach pull and a wave of something he couldn’t distinguish race through him.
‘We were discussing my grandfather’s plans for abdication,’ he prompted her, keen to steer them back to their conversation and focus his mind on the job at hand rather than on her.
She threw him another grateful smile and leaned forward to press ‘record’ on her Dictaphone again. The movement pulled her sweater down enough to give him the tiniest glimpse of her milky cleavage.
A stab of lust pierced him. Thoughts he’d done his damnedest to keep at bay pushed through.
She had skin like satin. Breasts that...
With resolve like steel he pushed the unbidden memory away.
He was not that man who put his own pleasure above everything else any more.
Holding on to his steely resolve and keeping his head together, he answered her many questions, one leading directly to another, all the while stopping his thoughts from straying any further into forbidden territory.
It was a hard thing to do when the mouth posing the questions was so sinfully kissable.
* * *
By the time she’d asked her last question Jo’s lower back ached from sitting in the same position for so long—three hours, according to her watch. She got up to stretch her legs and went to stand at the window.
Discussing his grandfather’s life had felt strangely intimate and she was relieved that it was over. The way Theseus had stared at her throughout...
His dark eyes had never left her face. And she hadn’t been able to wrench her gaze from his.
‘There’s a load of schoolchildren in your garden,’ she said, saying the first thing that popped into her mind as she tried desperately to break through the weird atmosphere that had shrunk the spacious office into a tight, claustrophobic room.
‘They’ll be here for the tour,’ he murmured, coming to stand by her side. ‘The palace museum and grounds only open at weekends in the off season, but we arrange private midweek tours for schools and other groups. From the first of May until the first of September the grounds, museum and some parts of the palace are open every day. You can’t walk anywhere without tripping over a tourist.’
‘Is it hard, opening your home to strangers?’
He gave a tight smile. ‘This is a palace—not a home.’
‘It’s your home.’
‘Our private quarters are off-limits to visitors, but look around you. Where can I go if I want to enjoy the sun in privacy? As soon as I step out of my apartment there are courtiers by my side—’ He broke off and muttered what sounded like an oath.
Jo would have pressed him further, but her throat had closed up. Theseus’s nearness, his heat and the warm, oaky scent she remembered so well were all there, igniting her senses... She clenched her fists, fighting her body and its yearning to press closer, to actually touch him.
A heavily fortified black four-by-four pulled to a stop below them.
A tall man, very similar in looks to Theseus, stepped out of the back, followed by a rake-thin woman with raven-black hair and enormous sunglasses.
‘Is that Helios?’ she asked, grabbing at the distraction.
‘Yes. And that’s Princess Catalina from the principality of Monte Cleure.’ Theseus placed his enormous hands on the windowsill. ‘Between you and me, he’ll be announcing their engagement at the Gala.’
‘That’s quick. Didn’t they only meet at the ball last Saturday?’
‘Our families have been friends for decades. Catalina’s brother went to boarding school with us.’
‘They don’t look like a couple in love.’
Jo wasn’t an expert in body language, but the way they walked together—past the schoolchildren who had all stopped what they were doing to gape at them—reminded her of her parents, who walked as if even brushing against each other might give them a disease.
And as she thought this, Theseus’s arm brushed lightly against hers.
Her lungs tightened.
She could feel him.
‘Heirs to the Agon throne marry for duty, not love,’ he said, his voice unusually hard.
She looked at him. He was gazing intently out of the window, his jaw set.
‘It’s the twenty-first century.’
‘And protocol has been adapted. Helios is the first Agon heir free to choose his own bride.’
‘Can he choose anyone?’
‘Anyone of royal blood.’
‘Freedom with caveats? How sad.’
‘It is the way things work here. Change takes time.’
‘I hope they at least like and respect each other.’
She wondered if her parents’ marriage would have been different if her mother had ever respected her father. Would her father have resorted to the demon drink if her mother hadn’t been so disparaging towards him?
‘My brother would never have married someone he didn’t respect.’ A marriage without respect had to be just as bad as a marriage without love, if not worse.
‘When will they marry?’
‘As soon as it can be arranged. Hopefully before...’
He didn’t need to finish his sentence. Jo knew what he meant.
Before his grandfather died.
The mood shifted, the atmosphere becoming even heavier.
‘It will be a full state wedding,’ he explained curtly. ‘That usually takes a good six months to organise. Helios wants this one to be arranged in a maximum of two months.’
‘That’s asking a lot.’
He shrugged. ‘Our staff are the best. It will be done.’
‘Are you expected to marry too?’
‘The spare to the heir must produce more spares,’ he said scathingly. ‘Once Helios is married I will have to find a suitable royal bride of my own.’
‘And what do you consider “suitable”?’ she asked.
Of course it was only the fact that Theseus marrying meant Toby would have a stepmother, and eventually half-siblings to contend with, that made it feel as if a knife had been plunged into her heart.
Theseus was a prince. Princes needed their princesses.
‘Someone who understands that it will be a union within which to make children.’
She strove to keep her voice casual. ‘Don’t you want love?’
The look he cast her could have curdled milk. ‘Absolutely not. Only fools marry for love.’
‘That’s very cynical.’
‘You think? Well, my mother loved my father, and all she got for her trouble was endless infidelity. My grandparents loved each other, but when my grandmother died my grandfather aged a decade overnight. It’s not the cancer that’s killing him; it’s his broken heart. Love causes misery and I want no part of it. I want a bride who understands what palace life entails and who I can respect. Nothing more.’
Jo swallowed the bile rising in her throat.
Her memories of this man were filled with such warmth that this coldness chilled her.
Where had that man gone?
She wanted to argue with him, to tell him that surely the sweetness of love overrode anything else, but what would she know about it? The only person who’d ever truly loved her was her son, and in all honesty he had no choice in the matter, just as she had no choice but to love her own cold mother. In Jo’s experience filial love was as automatic as breathing. Parental love was not.
What if Theseus’s disdain for love extended to his children? There was a cynicism to him that scared her.
She couldn’t bring herself to ask. Instead she took a quick breath and said, ‘Will Heli
os’s children be sent to boarding school, like you and your brothers were?’
This was a question that had played on her mind since she’d realised all the Princes had been packed off to boarding school. If she told Theseus about Toby, and if he recognised him as his son, would he expect him to be sent away too?
That was if he recognised him as his son.
What if he demanded a DNA test? The thought made her shudder.
So many ‘what ifs’.
If only she could see what the future held.
‘Of course. It is the Kalliakis tradition.’
‘Is it traditional to be sent away at eight?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s such a young age.’ She thought again of Toby, who still struggled to put his own socks on. To imagine being separated from him for months on end... No, she couldn’t do it. Being apart from him while she was here on Agon was hard enough.
‘I agree. Too young.’
She swallowed back her relief. ‘Did you find it hard, leaving your home and family?’
‘You have no idea,’ he said, his tone harsher than she’d ever heard it.
‘Was it easier for you, having Helios there already when you went?’
He looked at her and paused for a moment. ‘Harder. I was always being compared to him. I wanted to be judged in my own right.’
‘So were you always rivals?’
‘What makes you ask that?’ The intensity of his stare grew.
She pulled a rueful face, knowing she was reaching dangerous territory. ‘I’ve been putting two and two together again. I saw a press cutting about your grandparents’ wedding anniversary party, where you punched him in the face.’
To her amazement he shook his head and burst into laughter.
The transformation took her breath away.
It was the first time she’d heard him laugh since she’d arrived at the palace, and the sound dived straight through her skin.
Almost lazily he reached out and pressed a finger to her lips. ‘You are a very astute woman.’
It was the lightest of touches, but enough for all the breath in her lungs to rush out in a whoosh and for her heart, which was already hammering, to accelerate.
‘Yes, we were rivals,’ he murmured. ‘Helios was always destined to be King. My destiny was to be the perfect Prince, tucked in his shadow. It was a destiny I fought against. I didn’t want to be in his shadow. I wanted to be in the sun.’
His finger drifted away from her mouth and slid across her cheek, leaving flickers of heat following his trail. If he moved any closer he’d be able to feel the thundering of her heart...
He stepped closer. ‘My childhood was a battle for attention and freedom.’
He was going to kiss her.
Her senses were filled with him; his scent, his heat, the masculine essence he carried so effortlessly and that every part of her sang to.
She mustn’t give in to it. She mustn’t.
She cleared her throat. ‘Is that why you’re the perfect Prince now? Are you making up for your behaviour then?’ Judging by the press cuttings, his behaviour over these past few years had been exemplary.
He stiffened. The hazy mist that had appeared in his eyes cleared. He pulled his hand away from her face and stepped back, his regal skin slipping into place effortlessly.
Breathing heavily, Jo tried to collect her scattered thoughts, tried dispelling the tingles racing through her.
He’d been about to kiss her.
And she’d been about to kiss him right back.
She still wanted to. Her mouth ached to feel his warm, firm lips upon hers again.
She could feel the invisible mark his finger had left on her lips, had to clench her hands into fists to stop them tracing it.
‘Yes, you are an astute woman.’ Theseus had regained his composure. ‘Now, unless you have further questions about my grandfather, I have work to do.’
‘I’m done,’ she said quietly, edging away from him, sidestepping into her own office, glad of the dismissal.
Only when she was completely alone did she place her fingers to her lips and trace the mark he’d made on her mouth.
* * *
Theseus stood in the adjoining archway and looked into Joanne’s office, as he’d done numerous times since she’d arrived on his island.
There she sat, hunched over her computer, earphones in, seemingly oblivious to his pursuing eyes.
Any doubts he’d had about Hamlin & Associates sending a relative novice to take Fiona’s place had gone. Unashamed of asking for help with translation when needed, Jo had finished four chapters in three days, passing them to him for approval before sending them to the Oxford office for editing. At the rate she was going she would beat the Wednesday deadline by a comfortable margin.
It wasn’t only her speed and work ethic that impressed him, but also the quality of the chapters she’d produced. He was certain the reader wouldn’t be able to spot the transition between the two biographers.
His grandfather was coming to life on the page in a way he’d never anticipated. He’d enjoyed Fiona’s chapters, and had read them almost like a history lesson. But Jo had taken up the story from Theseus’s own childhood. Reading her chapters was like seeing his own life through his grandfather’s eyes, with events he’d lived through taking on greater significance.
His grandparents’ fortieth wedding anniversary celebrations were vivid on the page. He could taste the food that had been served, hear the music of the Agon orchestra, see the dancing couples on the ballroom floor... And, although she’d wisely left it unwritten, he could see his fourteen-year-old self launching at fifteen-year-old Helios in full view of all the distinguished guests, breaking his nose.
He could see his brother’s blood soaking into the royal purple sash, see his grandmother’s horror and his grandfather’s fury. He could still taste his own blood as Helios—never one to shy away from a fight like any good Agonite—had launched himself right back at him.
What he couldn’t remember was why he’d done it.
He remembered hating the stupid penguin suits he and his brothers had been forced to wear, hating the forced small talk with boring old people, hating it that a president’s daughter he’d taken a liking to had made a beeline for his older brother.
Everyone had made a beeline for Helios.
Helios lived under even greater restrictions than he did, but his brother had always taken it in his stride, acting as if going on a date with three burly men with guns accompanying him was natural and not something to resent.
Their rivalry had been immense.
He smiled as he recalled their younger brother, Talos, then only twelve, pulling them apart.
Theseus had been in disgrace for months and confined to the five-hundred-and-seventy-three-roomed palace over the long hot summer.
And then his smile dropped.
He’d ruined his grandparents’ special day. He’d shamed them.
He had shamed them many times with his selfish behaviour. Royal military parades, state banquets—all the events the three young Princes had attended Theseus had treated with an indifference bordering on disdain. He’d wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else, and he hadn’t cared who’d known it.
Reading about these events in the book, even with his churlish behaviour omitted, had brought it all back to him—everything he was fighting to atone for. It was the humanity Jo brought to both his grandparents on the page that made it all seem so vivid again.
Yes. His doubts about her ability had truly been expelled. He enjoyed working with her, their back and forth conversations, the flashes of shared humour. He especially liked the way she blushed when she caught him looking at her. She made his veins bubble and his skin tingle, long-dead sensations blazing b
ack to life.
He found it fascinating to watch her work; her face scrunched with intensity, her fingers flying over the keys of her computer, completely in the zone. Sometimes she sensed his presence and would turn her head, colour creeping over her cheeks when she saw him...
She drove him crazy. It had become a constant battle to keep his hands to himself. He’d been so close to kissing her. So close. He’d breathed in her scent and every part of him had reacted.
And that was dangerous.
He was about to turn away and return to the safety of his own desk when her phone vibrated loudly next to her.
With her earphones still in, she grabbed it with her right hand and swiped the screen in an absent manner. Whoever had messaged her must have been deemed worthy, for she straightened, brought the phone close to her face and pressed the screen.
She gazed at whatever she’d received, brushing her fingers gently over it, before lifting the phone to her mouth and kissing it gently.
His stomach roiled.
He’d assumed she didn’t have a lover. It was easy to tell if a woman was in love—there was a certain glow she carried. Jo didn’t have that glow. But the way she’d pressed her lips to that phone...as if she’d been trying to breathe in the essence of whoever had sent that message to her...
It was a gesture that made his skin feel as if needles were being pricked into it.
He remembered the way those lips had once felt under his own mouth, the clumsy eagerness he’d found there. The innocence.
‘Who was that?’ he asked loudly, stepping into the room, his curiosity burning.
But of course she didn’t hear him. By the time he’d tapped on her shoulder, making her almost jump out of her seat, the screen on her phone had gone black.
‘Who was that?’ he repeated, when she’d tugged the earphones out with trembling hands.
Dark colour stained her cheeks, her teeth bit into her full lips and her eyes were wide...fearful?
What on earth did she have to be frightened of?
Her throat moved before she answered. ‘It’s private.’
‘Private?’
‘Private,’ she repeated more decisively. ‘Did you want me for anything?’
Theseus Discovers His Heir Page 5