This was revenge. She didn’t know how Theo’s commissioning her to design a house for him could be a form of revenge but she knew it was.
She’d unwittingly humiliated him. She’d only learned after the fact that he’d stood at the cathedral’s altar for an hour before telling their guests the wedding was off. His colossal ego meant he hadn’t believed she no longer wanted to marry him until he could no longer deny it.
‘I’m not doing it.’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘No.’ She shook her head for emphasis. ‘I’m not. No amount of money is worth the grief working for you would give me.’
His hand went to his chest again and he blinked his eyes in puppy-dog fashion. ‘You keep wounding me, agapi mou. I am offering you the olive branch but you throw it back at me.’
She snorted. ‘Oh, please.’ She emphasised the P. ‘I never wanted an olive branch and even if I did, this isn’t one. This is some Machiavellian scheme you’ve dreamed up. I’m not stupid. You’ve gone to an awful lot of trouble...’
‘Remember those plans we made when we were on Sidiro? When I inherited the peninsula you would design the home for it, the home in which we would raise our children?’
Sidiro was the tiny Greek island she’d spent the most magical month of her life on. She’d spent three years trying to forget its existence. To remember always made her heart feel as if it were being shredded.
‘Well, my sweet temptress,’ he continued, ‘the peninsula is mine.’
There was a piercing in her heart at the realisation that this meant his grandmother had died. Another loss for a man who’d lost both his parents within three months of each other at the tender age of eighteen.
Helena pulled at her hair and tried desperately to get air into her lungs, trying even harder to stop the room spinning around her as another thought struck her.
If he planned to build a house on the peninsula then it must mean he planned to marry. The peninsula meant too much to him for it to be used for anything else.
So that was how he intended to get his revenge. By getting his ex-fiancée to design the home he would share with his future wife.
CHAPTER THREE
THEO’S ENGAGEMENT MUST have been a whirlwind romance the way theirs had been. Only a month ago Helena had seen a photo of him and his newest clothes horse attending one of those glamorous society parties he enjoyed so much, his famous luxury-underwear model lover not wearing much in the way of actual clothes, thus guaranteeing them front-page coverage on most of the tabloids.
She supposed it had been inevitable that he’d fall for one of the many, many women he’d cavorted with these past three years. She hoped the poor woman knew what she was letting herself in for.
As for Helena...
She knew exactly what she’d be letting herself in for if she took the commission.
‘I’m sorry about your grandmother,’ she said in as clear a voice as she could manage.
‘What are you sorry about?’
That stumped her. Theo must have read her mind, for his eyes gleamed. ‘Have no worries there, agapi mou. My grandmother is alive and kicking.’
‘Good.’ Her relief was instant. She’d only met Theo’s grandmother a couple of times but had liked her very much.
‘She’s gifted the peninsula to me.’
‘Good for you but I’m not taking the job.’
‘Do I have to remind you that it’s not just you who will benefit financially?’
Helena pressed her back against the front door, the change in his tone sending needles digging into her skin and making her limbs shaky.
‘Staffords,’ he added casually, referring to the company she worked for. ‘I have seen the accounts. Your company is struggling for commissions.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘It’s struggling for commissions worth anything. Your offices are expensive. There have been whispers about redundancies.’ He tilted his head. ‘I think your job will be safe for now. The other junior architect and the clerical staff though...’ He made a tutting sound. ‘They will be gone by the end of the summer. If things continue as they are, the company will fold by Christmas and you will be out of a job.’
Feeling faint, she pressed herself harder against the door. ‘How do you know all this?’
Every word he’d said was true. Staffords was in serious trouble. If they went under, she would go under too—Helena had debts up to her eyeballs and lived payday to payday.
He winked. ‘Details.’
‘If you wink at me again I’m going to slap you.’
His eyes gleamed. ‘Promises, promises. Take the commission and you can slap me whenever you want.’
‘Your face would be swollen by the end of the first day.’
‘Then it will match another part of my anatomy.’
How could he utter such innuendoes when he was going to marry someone else?
But then, Theo had always been a flirt, she remembered bitterly. It had driven her mad the way women threw themselves at him. He’d taken their attention as his due. She’d had no cause to think he’d cheated on her—in the three months they were together he’d never let her out of his sight—but deep down had lived the fear that if she let him out of her sight, he would happily avail himself of one of them. Her fears had played out when, mere weeks after she’d left him, he’d taken up with his first model. The first of many. All identikit. All tall, skinny as rakes, blonde, beautiful and accomplished in the art of draping themselves over him. The total opposite of her: short, buxom, dark haired, with average looks and averse to public displays of affection.
Oblivious to her dark thoughts and not giving her the chance to retort, he continued. ‘Take the commission, and both you and the company that supported you throughout your training will be richly rewarded. The prestige of designing a home for me—and let us be clear, this will be no ordinary home; I want something spectacular—will in itself lead to coverage that’s usually reserved for Pellegrinis.’
Pellegrinis was an international multi-award-winning architectural firm that scooped up commissions with an ease that left everyone else breathless.
The doorbell rang, making her virtually jump out of her skin.
‘That will be our food,’ Theo said cheerfully, striding towards the door. Striding towards her...
Helena only just managed to move from the door and squash herself against the wall before Theo reached it, but her hallway was so narrow that he still brushed against her.
A blast of cold air swept into the flat, but if Theo felt its embrace he didn’t show it. With his usual bonhomie, he took the large box from the young delivery driver and pressed a note into his hand with his thanks.
And then he closed the door and swept past her again, shouting over his shoulder as he opened the door to her living room, ‘If you get the plates and cutlery I’ll put this on the table.’
A strangled noise ripped from Helena’s throat, but before she could articulate anything Theo came straight back out of the living room and opened her bathroom door, then looked at her with his brow creased. ‘Where’s your dining room?’
‘I don’t have one.’
He looked at her as if she’d admitted to having a major drug problem. ‘Then where do you eat?’
‘Off a tray on my lap... Why are you even here still? I told you to go. Get out. I have no interest in eating with you.’
‘I remember you once had great interest in eating me, but I guess that’s a reminiscence for another time.’ And then he had the audacity to wink at her again. ‘Okay, then trays it shall be.’
‘I only have one...’ But then she realised what he’d just alluded to and her words died on her tongue as her cheeks flamed with humiliation. She would have been talking to thin air anyway, for Theo had bustled back into the kitchen. She heard the distinct sound of cupb
oards and drawers being flung open.
‘Do you want red or white wine?’ he called.
Gritting her teeth so tightly she was lucky her jaw didn’t shatter, Helena followed him into the cramped space.
‘Where are your wine glasses?’ he asked before she could get a word in, another perplexed expression on his face.
‘I’ve already told you I don’t have any wine, and even if I did, I wouldn’t share it with you. For the last time, get out of my flat or—’
‘You know what your problem is?’ he said, speaking over her as he pulled her half-sized dishwasher open and removed two dirty tall glasses. ‘You’re too uptight. We will spend much time together in the coming months. It will pass more smoothly if you can learn to loosen up a bit.’
‘Loosen up? Are you kidding me?’
Placing the glasses under the tap, he ran water into them. ‘Fear not, agapi mou, once we have eaten our dinner and made our plans, I will leave you in peace.’
‘You’re taking a lot for granted here. I haven’t agreed to anything.’
‘But you will.’ He raised a hefty shoulder. ‘Or you live with the consequences and hope a miracle occurs to save your firm from liquidation and save you from losing your home and independence.’
Helena, Theo had discovered, had accrued thousands of pounds of debt during her studies. Half her monthly salary went on rent for her miniscule flat. The rest went on debt repayment, other household bills, food and transport costs. She would be lucky to survive a month without a job before handing back the keys to the flat and having to go crawling to Mummy and Daddy. It didn’t surprise him that she hadn’t tapped them up for help with her debt—Helena’s middle name should be Independent—but the debt itself did surprise him. Her parents had always been generous with their only child. He guessed she’d severed her financial dependency on them as part of her great strides towards complete independence.
Glasses clean, Theo opened the box, first removing the two bottles of wine and then lifting out the foil cartons. ‘I ordered Thai.’
Thai food was Helena’s absolute favourite.
‘I’m not hungry.’
He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. Me, I’m starving.’
Another strangled sound came from her throat before she bit out, ‘Seeing as you’re as cloth-eared as you always were and not budging, I’m going to get changed.’
The glare emanating behind her spectacles from her sultry eyes suggested he would be pushing his luck if he suggested she change into something revealing.
‘Cloth-eared? Is that a compliment?’
‘No, thickhead, it was an insult. And so was that.’ And then she stalked out of the room before he could quip a retort.
A door slammed shut. The walls of the flat were so thin the tall glasses drying by the sink rattled from the force.
Alone, Theo opened the bottle of white and poured them both a glass. After taking a hefty slug of his, he rubbed the nape of his neck and closed his eyes.
Had she stripped that ugly robe thing off? Was she, at that very moment, naked?
He remembered every inch of Helena’s delicious body, from the small mole above her left breast to the scar on her right hip from a childhood accident involving a bicycle and barbed wire. There was nothing about Helena Armstrong he hadn’t committed to memory. He’d spent six months planning this day and had made contingency plans—in his favour, of course—for every eventuality.
Time had not dulled his memories of the woman he’d once worshipped. Goading her and teasing her, watching her cheeks flame with angry colour, heightened the charge racing gloriously through his veins, reminding him vividly of the way her cheeks had flamed with passion when he’d brought her to orgasm with his tongue or his hand.
He straightened his back and breathed deeply to quell the ache in his loins and rid himself of Helena’s heady, musky scent suddenly playing like an old forgotten ghost on his senses. He would have that taste again soon, but until such time he thought it best not to walk around her flat with obvious arousal. The mood she was in, she was likely to karate-chop it.
He took their glasses and the wine bottle into the living room, which consisted of a two-seater sofa and single armchair crammed around a low coffee table, then went back to the kitchen and served their food onto chipped plates, found the cutlery and carried it into the living room too. Making one last trip to the kitchen, he found her solitary tray rammed behind the microwave then returned to the living room and sat on the two-seater sofa. The sofa was so old that the springs had gone. No sooner had his backside landed inches from the floor than Helena appeared in the doorway. She’d changed from the ugly robe thing into an equally ugly red T-shirt and even uglier black and white checked workout leggings. He just knew she’d selected the vilest items of clothing she possessed especially for him. He doubted she realised that, as gross as the items were, they clung to her hourglass figure like a dream.
‘I see you’ve found your level,’ she said with an evil smile.
Theo responded with a suggestive smile of his own. ‘You know me, I like to go down low.’
She hit him with a thousand-yard stare but he was rewarded with a deep stain of colour across her beautiful cheeks.
Figuring the floor had to be more comfortable than this excuse for a sofa, Theo heaved himself up then shifted the coffee table until it was placed where he could unfold his legs beneath it.
When he was uncomfortably settled on the threadbare carpet he took his first mouthful of phat kaphrao, a street food he’d discovered during his backpacking days on his first visit to Bangkok and which he could eat until the sun came up. This particular phat kaphrao didn’t quite have the fresh chilli kick he so enjoyed but it was a decent effort.
Helena waited until Theo’s big mouth was full of food before saying primly, ‘Let us get one thing straight. If—and it’s a big if—I take the job, there will be no flirting. I know it’s second nature to you but it’s inappropriate.’
The sparkle in his eyes as he swallowed his food let her know she’d missed her mark even before he shook his head. ‘I wish very much I could make that assurance but my mother always told me never to make a promise I couldn’t keep.’
‘That’s my condition.’
‘It’s a condition I can’t meet. You should eat before your food gets cold.’
‘I’ve already told you, I’m not hungry.’ She wouldn’t even look at her plate. If she did, her empty belly might start rumbling.
Damn him, since the food delivery she’d had to block her nose off from breathing in his horrible cologne and the scent of her favourite food. She couldn’t believe he remembered she liked Thai. She thought, after all the women he’d had since she left, she’d have become nothing but a blur, a face amongst many. She was surprised he remembered her name.
Helena wished she’d been able to forget his face. She wished she’d been able to forget everything she’d felt for him.
She wouldn’t eat his food but she would drink his wine, she decided. Theo only bought the best, so she was certain the wine would be delicious. Leaning over, she took her glass from the table and brought it to her lips. Theo’s dancing ice-blue eyes watched her every move.
The wine slipped down her throat like nectar and she had to resist closing her eyes to savour it.
‘Back to my condition,’ she said briskly.
‘A condition I will not meet.’ Another huge forkful of chicken, chilli and basil disappeared into his mouth.
She narrowed her eyes, wishing she could fire lasers from them. ‘Flirting with an employee isn’t just inappropriate, it’s unprofessional and can be construed as sexual harassment.’
He washed his mouthful down with a large drink of wine and grinned. ‘You will be a contractor, not an employee.’
‘I don’t imagine your fiancée will care about the difference if she catches you flirti
ng with me.’
His eyebrows drew together. Heaping another pile of food onto his fork, he laughed, ‘What fiancée?’
‘The fiancée you’re building the house for.’
‘You must be mistaking me for someone else. I’m not getting married.’
Her heart jolted so hard at this she had to keep her bottom rooted to the armchair to stop herself springing out of it.
‘My apologies,’ she said stiffly. ‘When you said you were building on the peninsula I made an assumption.’
He shook his head in a chiding fashion. ‘First rule of business: never make assumptions. I have no intention of ever marrying, so rest easy, agapi mou, I can flirt with you all day every day.’
‘What about your girlfriend’s feelings?’
His laughter was even louder. ‘What girlfriend?’
Having far too much pride to admit to reading any article about him even inadvertently, she arranged her face into a mask of nonchalance. ‘Are you saying you don’t have one?’
The sparkle in his eyes deepened. ‘Would it bother you if I did?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she spluttered. ‘I just think it’s cruel to commit to one person and then flirt with another.’
‘I’ve only committed myself to one person before and she left me.’ Theo raised his glass and winked, enjoying the latest stain of colour on Helena’s face. ‘I never make the same mistake twice.’
She clamped her lips together.
‘But, seeing as my love-life is on your mind, I am of the same opinion as you.’ He smiled. ‘It is cruel to string lovers along. Honesty is always best, do you not agree?’
He watched her absorb the barbed sting he’d just launched, satisfaction filling him. If Helena had been honest with him from the beginning and not strung him along, he would never have been fool enough to propose, let alone go to all the trouble and expense of preparing an elaborate wedding. He would never have suffered the humiliation of standing at an altar waiting for a bride who would never turn up.
Theo swallowed his last mouthful of food, finished his wine and then hoisted himself to his feet. ‘I need to use the bathroom.’
His Greek Wedding Night Debt Page 3