It all made perfect sense to her in the forty-five minutes she spent in the kitchen, waiting for Theo to emerge and wondering whether it was appropriate for her to wait at all.
When he eventually did come out, she knew from his expression that the news wasn’t going to be good.
‘I need something stronger than coffee,’ was the first thing he said as he sat at the kitchen table and wearily pressed his thumbs on his eyes. ‘And I suggest,’ he added, ‘that you have something as well.’
Occasionally Heather had wine with Theo when she happened to have cooked for him, but actually she was on an alcohol-free diet, guaranteed to shed several pounds in combination with rigorous exercise—which she planned on getting down to very soon. The look on his face put paid to that. She poured them both a glass and sat down facing him.
‘She did not want to worry me,’ Theo said at last. ‘The chest pains began a while ago, but she put it down to old age, wear and tear. Eventually, she made an appointment with her doctor, who referred her to his colleague in London, a specialist in heart surgery.’
Heather gasped. ‘And you had no idea…?’
‘If I had, do you think that I would have allowed her to carry that burden on her own?’ Theo snapped irritably. She had tapped into his own dark guilt—guilt that he had been so wrapped up in his own fast-moving life that he barely surfaced to see what was going on around him. ‘She took the private jet over to London, visited with the doctor, who did a few tests, and she was then told that flying back to Greece was not a realistic option. Which was when she decided to come here, to my flat. Which was when she met you…’
CHAPTER FOUR
HEATHER waited for an improvement on this flatly spoken statement, which had carried just a hint of accusation with it. None was forthcoming.
‘Look,’ she said, drawing in a deep breath, ‘I’ve been thinking…and…’ The prospect of saying goodbye loomed ahead of her like a yawning Black Hole, but she ducked down and ploughed on. ‘And now your mother’s here…and, well…especially as she seemed to get the wrong impression of me…it wouldn’t be appropriate…for me to stay on here…’ She could feel her cheeks reddening under his silent watchful gaze, and the wrenching in her gut as she absorbed the enormity of what she was doing. Not that it wasn’t the right thing to do—because it absolutely was!
‘I’ve finished my course now, and it’s time I moved on…with a proper job. Not that it hasn’t been great being here…Well, Beth has a flat in mind for me, actually…it’s in the same block as hers. Just small, of course, because I won’t be able to afford that much to start with…’ As usual she could hear herself turning one small statement of fact into several bewildering thousands, and she forced herself to shut up and smile.
Theo shrugged. ‘It is naturally up to you if you feel inclined to move out…’
Heather fought the undermining temptation to retract her rash statement and buy herself just a little more time, just a few more months. ‘I think it’s for the best,’ she mumbled.
‘So might it be. Just not yet.’
For a few wild seconds her heart leapt as she translated those three words into what she wanted to hear. Need, love, want! Then reality sank its teeth into her and she looked at him, bemused.
‘Permit me to clarify,’ he said, finishing his wine and helping himself to another glass. ‘As I said, my mother has a heart problem. She’s explained it to me as best as she can and it would appear that it is not life threatening. Of course I will talk to her consultant in depth about that.’ He frowned, and Heather could read his thoughts as if they were written on his forehead in large neon lettering. She felt sorry for the consultant. ‘But, at any rate, it is imperative that she is spared any stress.’
‘Naturally,’ Heather nodded, relieved. Things might have been a lot worse.
‘Which brings me to you,’ Theo said smoothly. He sat back and tapped the table with one thoughtful forefinger. ‘My mother, as you pointed out, is under the illusion that we are involved with one another, that I have finally found the woman I want to settle down with. In her head, you are living in my apartment, and therefore we are conducting a serious relationship…’
‘You mean you haven’t told her the truth?’
‘It was impossible,’ Theo informed her flatly, and Heather gaped at him in consternation. ‘She’s in a very fragile state of health at the moment. If I tell her the truth, then there is no telling how it might affect her current situation.’
‘But you have to!’ Heather cried.
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Not necessarily? I plan on moving out, Theo! Don’t you think she might suspect that something’s not quite right when your so-called serious relationship rents a flat on the other side of town? Anyway,’ she continued, ‘it wouldn’t be right to deceive an old woman…’
‘It wouldn’t be right to burden her with stress she cannot handle…’
‘How can you assume that your mother wouldn’t be able to handle the truth, Theo?’ She leaned forward, so that her hands were lying flat on the table between them. ‘You’re not thinking straight.’
‘I know I’m not,’ Theo said simply. ‘But I’m afraid to take the chance.’
As easily as that he managed to slice through all her protests and appeal to her on the most basic of levels, and although there was absolute sincerity in his eyes, she wouldn’t have been surprised if he had deliberately used the ploy because he knew her well enough to realise that her emotions were her downfall. This was a girl who sobbed during the sad bits in films, who would give her last coins to a busker on the underground and who continued to have faith in a sister who had taken her money and headed for the hills.
Theo watched the sudden indecision in her eyes and breathed an inward sigh of relief.
‘It won’t be for long,’ he promised. ‘A couple of weeks—no more. Just until she’s strong enough to travel back to Greece…’
‘And you’ll break it to her then…?’
‘I’ll break to her gently, over time. Put it this way, your role will soon be over. After that you can get your proper job and find your proper flat and start your proper life.’ He didn’t know why the thought of that made him ever so slightly angry, but it did. Since he didn’t care to analyse the emotion, he let it go. There were far more pressing things to think about.
How easy it was for him to say that, Heather thought sadly. She could easily be replaced. There weren’t many who would bite a hand willing to part with generous sums of money for very easy work.
She thought of the times when she had foolishly bought presents for his girlfriends, while the pain of being the helpful employee in the background had twisted inside her like a knife. Well, if she had thought that fate hadn’t quite finished with her, how right she had been!
‘I think I’ll go to my room now,’ Heather said, standing up. ‘I’ll come out a bit later, if your mother wakes up, but I’m not very hungry.’
‘Another one of your crazy diets?’ Theo asked, and she replied with a smile that was neither friendly nor hostile. She felt as though the stuffing had been knocked out of her. But before she could leave the room he was talking again, telling her as if it was the most normal thing in the world that his mother expected them to be sharing a bedroom.
Heather spun round and looked at him, aghast. ‘Share a room?’ she squeaked, walking towards him. ‘With you?’
‘It’s a very big bedroom,’ Theo said placatingly. ‘With a sofa.’
‘Out of the question!’
‘Why?’ He raised his eyebrows in what was the first indication of amusement since he had walked into the flat a couple of hours previously. ‘What do you think I’m going to do?’
‘I don’t think anything!’
‘Then why the sudden outburst?’ he asked curiously. ‘Unless you think I might be tempted to touch…?’ A sudden image of her flashed through his head, a picture of her lying on the sofa many months ago, after he had delivered her back to t
he house she had been sharing at the time…lying with her hand flung back and her breasts, full and heavy, gently rising and falling as she breathed.
‘It just doesn’t seem right,’ Heather muttered, blushing furiously. She could tell that he was laughing at her and was bitterly hurt and angry.
Theo’s voice was more brusque than he intended. ‘I know it’s not ideal, but it won’t be for long. Now, you’ll have to clear your belongings into my bedroom—or at least some of them. Enough to…’
‘Perpetuate the charade?’ Heather heard herself say tightly. She couldn’t remember ever speaking to him like that, with real anger in her voice, not even when she had been feeling angry inside. It was as though she was looking at herself for the first time and watching someone else—someone who had been prepared to do as he asked, like a puppy following its master, because the pure pleasure of being around him now and again had outweighed everything else. Every last ounce of common sense.
Now fate had played one last trick on her, and she was being punished in the most cruel way possible.
‘Why can’t you get Venetia to come and stay with you?’ Heather asked in a more normal voice. ‘That way, at least you won’t be lying.’ And that, more than anything else, would force her to make a decision and move out, because knowing that he was in his room with his current girlfriend would have taken the knife-twisting a step too far.
Theo had never brought a woman back to his apartment to sleep. Heather had correctly read this as his way of ensuring that no woman got her foot through the door and started nurturing impossible ideas of permanence. He didn’t mind her living under the same roof because as far as he was concerned Heather wasn’t a threat to his precious independence. She wondered what he would have done had he ever suspected that she was addicted to him. Thrown her out without a backward glance, she imagined.
‘Venetia isn’t the sort of woman my mother would approve of,’ Theo was telling her now, eyebrows raised in amusement at the very thought of it. ‘And besides…’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘I wouldn’t like Venetia to think that a brief spell of moving in might lead to something more concrete. With you it would be completely different. You would know the boundaries and wouldn’t be stupid enough to think that they could be overstepped. Anyway—’ he shrugged ‘—my mother’s taken to you. She thinks you’re very sweet and jolly.’
Heather couldn’t think of two adjectives she would have found more insulting, even though she knew that insulting her was the last thing on Theo’s mind. He was simply stating a fact.
‘Of course I’ll compensate you financially for doing this, Heather. Even I realise that it’s a favour way beyond the normal call of duty.’
An hour later and Heather was still in a daze at the progression of events. She had moved a select amount of her belongings into his room, choosing to stuff as much as she could into the drawers of the room she currently occupied.
Just standing there, looking around her, made her feel slightly sick. She had always found his bedroom enormous, way too big for one person, with its own small sitting area and a bathroom that could have accommodated a small family. However, with the prospect of sharing it in mind, it suddenly seemed painfully small. Was it her imagination or had the proportions shrunk to the size of a doll’s house?
She wouldn’t dwell on it, she decided. In a funny way his unconscious insults, the offer of payment, the assumption that she would know her place because she was, after all, no more than a valued housekeeper who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, would strengthen her. He had effectively managed to put her in her place, and as soon as his mother left she would finally have the backbone to walk away.
Having always been a firm believer in the truism that every cloud had a silver lining, Heather now clung to this salutary theory with the tenacity of a drowning man clinging to a lifebelt.
It didn’t help that his mother was such a nice person. Over a light supper, she briefly explained to them both what her doctor in Greece had advised, but it was clear that she was much more interested in learning about the new addition to her son’s life.
‘I have worried about him,’ she told Heather in a conspiratorial whisper that was meant to be overheard. ‘Too much success with the girls from an early age is not always a good thing for a young boy! It can turn him into a playboy, if that is the correct word!’
Faced with the glorious opportunity to somehow get back at him, Heather smiled and glanced at Theo. He looked uncomfortable and hunted.
‘Theo? Oh, no, Theo would never see women as playthings—would you?’
The look he shot her from under his lashes was worth every second of the dig, accompanied as it was by a wide-eyed stare of complete innocence. With an inarticulate grunt, he began clearing away the dishes.
‘It is very important for a man to settle down,’ Litsa was saying, watching approvingly as her son gave off the totally inaccurate impression of someone who habitually helped around the kitchen. ‘A good wife is necessary to train a man into being civilised!’ She laughed and gave him an affectionate look, while Heather chewed over the ridiculous notion of any woman being able to train Theo Miquel.
‘You seem to be flagging, Mama,’ he said, shooting Heather a warning glance which she ignored. ‘Perhaps it is time for you to retire now. Big day tomorrow. I shall come with you to see the consultant, so you needn’t worry yourself unnecessarily.’
He had successfully managed to divert the conversation, but his respite was transitory. Litsa Miquel spent the next forty-five minutes in pleasurable contemplation of her son’s settled love life, obviously relieved that she could now share her past concerns about him with someone who understood, and Heather picked up the reins of the conversation with gusto.
It was a unique experience for him to be on the receiving end of female banter that made him squirm, and squirm he did, as childhood escapades were dredged up, until eventually he vaulted to his feet and insisted that he take his mother to her room.
As they disappeared in the direction of the bedroom Heather could feel her ebullient mood evaporating under the weight of reality. Reality was his dismissal of her, made all the more cruel because he wasn’t aware of it. It was the bitter emptiness of realising just how far she had sunk in her own estimation—sunk to the level of someone who had been prepared to scramble for the crumbs he had carelessly tossed at her. Reality was the bedroom waiting for her. That thought galvanised her into immediate action. She didn’t know how long it would take him to settle his mother, but it wouldn’t give her much time to get into her pyjamas and fling herself under the covers, lights off.
For someone who had never seen the allure of strenuous exercise, Heather now discovered that she could move at the speed of light.
She let herself into his bedroom with wings on the soles of her feet and completed her ablutions in five seconds flat. Then, with the door of the bathroom firmly locked, she speedily changed into her pyjamas, which consisted of a pair of small shorts and a vest top. Since she had not heard the sound of a door opening and closing, she assumed he was still with his mother, leaving the coast clear for her to sprint to the bed, leap in, and then switch off the light by the bed.
She dearly wished that she had had the foresight to stack some spare linen on the sofa, but there was no way she was going to risk a trip to the laundry cupboard—and anyway he could get it himself. He did precious little around the house as it was, never mind his persuasive acting earlier on when he had strode around the kitchen, tidying up, teacloth draped over one shoulder, for all the world as though he did it on a regular basis.
After one hour of coiled tension, body on red-hot alert for the sound of the door opening, sleep began to take its toll, and by the time Theo did enter the bedroom Heather was sound asleep.
He had been working. His conversation with his mother had been to his mind over-long, despite his fruitless attempts to convince her that she was exhausted and needed to get to sleep immediately. He had never reali
sed just how much she worried about him—about the pressure he was under from work, about his single state. With a fictitious relationship now on the scene, a dam of maternal concerns had been unleashed, and he had left the bedroom feeling slightly battered.
Then had come an awkward conversation with Venetia, as he cancelled plans.
After that, work had seemed to be the only thing, and so he had remained in his office for well over an hour, replying to e-mails that could have easily waited until a more civilised hour.
The sight of Heather in his bed rendered him momentarily disconcerted. She was lying just as she had been months ago, on that sofa, with one arm flung wide. He very much doubted that she had originally lain down in that position of utter abandonment.
Making as little noise as possible, Theo advanced into the bedroom, his eyes getting accustomed to the darkness as he walked tentatively towards the bed, unbuttoning his shirt en route before stripping it off and discarding it.
When he had mentioned the sofa, his implication had been that she would sleep on it. A faint smile curved the corners of his mouth as he stood over her, watching her as she slept. Fair’s fair, he thought wryly. He had twisted her arm to help him out. As far as she was concerned he could take the sofa—or, judging from her deep reluctance to participate in his plan, the floor, and never mind any bedlinen.
He showered quickly, finding himself preoccupied more with the woman lying on his bed and what he would do about her than anything else.
She stirred as he walked back into the room, stark naked. Now he could see the shapely bend of her leg, protruding from under the quilt, and, from the looks of it, whatever she was wearing there wasn’t a great deal of it. Was she one of those women who covered themselves up like a nun during the day but then wore sexy little bits of nothing at night? The thought kick-started something in him, some reaction that felt as though it had been waiting there all along for the right time to leap out. He sucked in his breath sharply and turned away, aware of his body’s reaction proclaiming a sexual response that was as powerful as it was unexpected.
At the Greek Tycoon's Bidding Page 6