‘What about some wine?’
‘I think I could do wine. I had a glass yesterday, and the rest is in the fridge.’
She began walking towards the kitchen, leaving Theo to wonder who she had been sharing the wine with. Heather was not the sort of woman who enjoyed drinking by herself. Which meant that she would have been drinking with someone, and the only person who sprang to his suspicious mind was the opportunist date of a few evenings before. He felt his mouth tighten in an instant, glowering hostility, but soothed his distaste by quickly reminding himself of his generous mission tonight.
‘Have you eaten?’ Heather asked, stretching up to fetch down a couple of wine glasses and looking at him over her shoulder.
‘There’s no need to put yourself out on my behalf,’ Theo said, ‘but, no, I haven’t. In fact, I’ve come straight from work.’
‘I haven’t eaten either.’ She smiled, guiltily aware that she shouldn’t really be enjoying his company, having him in her flat. Beth would have a thousand fits if she knew. ‘Actually, I’ve spent the day getting my portfolio together in preparation for my new job. They had a look at the interview but I’m going to take it in anyway when I start—just so that my immediate boss knows what I’m capable of. Beth said that’s the only thing to do—make them know from the start that I have the potential to get into the area I want. People don’t know what you’re capable of unless you blow your own trumpet.’ She handed him a glass of wine, noticing how he seemed to dwarf the small kitchen even though he had sat down and pushed the chair back as far as he could, so that he could stretch out his long legs.
This gave Theo the leeway he needed to get across his point, but ramming it home wasn’t going to do. Heather was obviously very excited about her brand-new life, and slamming into her about its pitfalls would simply get her back up. He decided to let the evening unwind and drop sufficient casual hints that would build up into an insurmountable wall of unavoidable fact. He sipped the wine, watching her as she smiled at him, cheeks attractively pink.
‘This Beth character has too much influence over you,’ he contented himself by pointing out. ‘If you are going to be cooking something for yourself, then I might share it with you. I’m in no rush this evening.’
Heather was dying to ask what had happened to Michelle. Surely if they were an item she would be around on any evening Theo had free?
‘Just some pasta actually.’
‘Tell me about this job.’
‘Do you want some pasta?’ It was on the tip of her tongue to offer to cook him something else instead, but good sense held her back from saying it. Yes, he had come to see her, and she was quietly stunned and overjoyed, but it wasn’t quite enough to make her forget what a push-over she had been in the past, putting herself out to do whatever he wanted, even if it was a meal at some ungodly hour of the evening after he had worked his usual mammoth hours and still had more to do.
‘Why not?’
‘Don’t let me push you into having it,’ Heather said, with an uncustomary surge of rebellion. ‘The sauce is just from a tin, and I know you don’t like anything from tins.’
Theo frowned. ‘Simply because home cooking is a damn sight healthier, not to mention tastier, than anything you can get from a can. Canned foods are loaded with preservatives.’
‘And, of course, you’ve always had the luxury of never having to take the quick and easy way out…’ Before she had come along Theo had had the chef from his favourite restaurant prepare food for him which he could freeze and pull out for instant healthy home-cooked food whenever it happened to suit him.
‘I didn’t come here to have a pointless argument with you over the advantages and disadvantages of processed food,’ Theo grated. ‘You were going to tell me about your job…?’ He stood up to fetch himself another glass of wine and brushed past her, sending little electric currents whizzing through her body.
Distracted by that fleeting physical contact, Heather forgot the question that had risen to her lips—which had concerned his reasons for coming to see her, now that he mentioned it—and found herself chatting to him about the whole nerve-racking interview through to its happy conclusion.
As she chatted she chopped tomatoes, making a small concession to his distaste of anything pre-prepared, which she added to the concoction from the tin. She also shredded and tossed in a few basil leaves from the little plant she had growing on the counter, and crushed some fresh garlic to give it a bit of extra bite.
The end result looked mouthwateringly home-made, and she ladled good amounts for both of them onto some steaming tagliatelle.
‘Very healthy,’ Theo announced, eyeing her appraisingly. ‘Is this a new diet to go with your new life? You’ve lost weight.’
Heather was proud of the achievement. There was no way she was going to let on that sheer unhappiness had curbed her healthy appetite, and that in the process something weird but wonderful had happened. She had lost some of her cravings for sweet things. Instead, she nodded, and looked at him over the rim of her glass as she swallowed a mouthful of wine.
‘I didn’t think you’d noticed,’ she said, pleased that he had. In those few glorious, heady weeks when they had been together as a couple he had commented often on how much he adored her body, its fullness. ‘But I’ll never be a stick insect,’ she continued. ‘I mean, aside from my waist and stomach, everything’s pretty much the same as it was before.’
‘I’d noticed that as well. Your breasts are still as luscious as ever.’
Heather blushed and told herself not to get her hopes up, not to imagine that the passing compliment was an indication of things to come. But hope sprang inside her like an unchecked river breaking its banks, and it was all she could do not to tremble.
‘You don’t have to pay me compliments because I’ve cooked you a meal, Theo. Anyway, you have a girlfriend, and I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be overjoyed to know that you’re sitting in my kitchen making flattering noises about my figure.’
‘I wouldn’t call Michelle a girlfriend. She’s a woman I took out on a couple of dates and is no more, as a matter of fact.’
‘Oh, dear. Did she get a little too possessive for her own good?’
‘At the moment I have just a little too much work to devote time and attention to courting a woman,’ Theo said smoothly. Dwelling on his love life wasn’t part of his agenda, and particularly not when it came close to discussing their relationship or the demise of it. Post-mortems had never been his thing.
Heather shook her head in admonishment. Actually, she found that hard to believe. From what she had seen of Theo over time, pressure of work played almost no part in his ability to wine, dine and bed the fairer sex. It seemed that oodles of charm, looks and money went a long way to success, with or without the availability of free time.
‘All work and no play…’
Theo felt his hackles rise, and with his usual rapid leap of logic worked out why. In all the time she had been living with him, dutifully listening and obeying, she had never questioned him in that tone of voice. He was fast realising that she had broken out of the cocoon to which he had become lazily accustomed and was expressing opinions which went way beyond the point of acceptability.
He ignored the flagrant breach of his boundaries and gave her a slow, curious smile.
‘More advice from the house of Beth?’ he asked mildly, and, as he’d predicted, she went bright red. The cynical words might be there, but the lack of accompanying polish told their own story. He had never met her friend, although he had heard her mentioned frequently in the past—usually in connection with some ridiculous piece of rampant feminism. Now he could clearly see what was happening. Heather was being swept along on a tide of Girl Power that was essentially not her at all.
But swept along she was. Which just proved how gullible she was. It only stiffened his resolve to steer her away from all possible dangers lurking in her path. Who else was going to do it for her? Certainly not her free-thinkin
g friend, who was quite possibly a man-hater.
‘She has a lot of experience,’ Heather said defensively. ‘She comes into contact with all manner of people in the courts of law, and she’s naturally developed a hard shell. Basically, she doesn’t get taken for a ride.’
‘Which is what happened to you?’ His annoyance with this absent but influential friend was increasing at a rate of knots.
Heather maintained a stubborn but pointed silence and his face hardened into implacable lines.
‘I don’t believe anyone held a gun to your head, forcing you to work for me,’ he pointed out. ‘In fact, I don’t believe there was any necessity for me to offer you that job in the first place. And, having been offered the job—which, incidentally, was quite a generous package…free accommodation in fairly luxurious surroundings…a good pay cheque at the end of the month…a light enough workload to enable you to carry on with your course, unhampered by concerns over time or money—having been offered all that, you always had the right to turn it down.’
If there was one thing Theo knew how to do, it was to win an argument. Before she could defend herself Heather could see the pitfalls of any point of view she might come up with—because the conciseness and clarity of what he was saying was inescapable. She had taken up his offer, and chosen to feed her infatuation with him at her own peril.
Just in case she failed to get the message, and infuriated that she might be trying to pin him down as the big, bad wolf in her head—especially when he had come to see for her own good—Theo decided to drive home his point.
‘When my mother paid us that unexpected visit and jumped to all the wrong conclusions about our perfectly platonic relationship, yes, I admit I asked you to do me the favour of going along with the pretence for the sake of her health. But I didn’t force you to climb into bed with me. I never used you, and you were never taken for a ride. We enjoyed what we had and you always knew that I was not the kind of man who wanted to settle down.’
His words drove into her fragile hopes like a hammer obliterating a cardboard box.
‘Look, I didn’t come here to argue with you.’
Heather stood up abruptly and began clearing the table, waving down his perfunctory offer to help. In a minute she would be able to speak, but right now her mouth felt as though it was stuffed with cotton wool, and there was the sharp, painful pricking of tears behind her eyelids.
She could feel his eyes narrowed on her as she bustled about, with barely enough room to move. Eventually she turned around, propping herself against the sink, and folded her arms.
‘No, of course not. And I don’t want to argue with you either. It seems a waste of time when we’ve known each other…well…for a while…’ Civilised and mature was how she sounded, which was the only thing Theo could deal with. He certainly wouldn’t want her to freak out because she had expected more from this visit than was being extended. Yet again she had misread the circumstances. When was she ever going to learn? Were there courses for people like her? People who allowed their hearts to be eaten up and then dumped all the good advice their friends and their heads gave them so that they could walk right back into the same trap and end up being eaten up all over again?
He still hadn’t told her why he had come, but she was beginning to think that it was to do with something horribly simple. Like a request for her to come and collect some piece of nonsense she had forgotten at his apartment in her rush to leave.
‘Would you like some coffee? I’m afraid I’m going to have to rush you away pretty soon. I’m exhausted.’
‘Painting the town red?’
Heather could detect some amusement in his voice, and she pinned a bright smile on.
‘Amongst other things,’ she said vaguely, stretching the truth like a piece of elastic. ‘Now that I’ve got my own place, I don’t see the point of sitting around.’
‘More advice from your wise friend?’
‘It’s very unkind of you to pick holes in Beth when you’ve never even met her,’ Heather felt constrained to point out. She glanced at her watch, then at him.
‘Forgot. Exhaustion’s kicking in.’ He stood up and flexed his muscles. ‘Okay. A cup of coffee. I still need to talk to you, and somehow we haven’t managed to get around to it.’
‘If you want to go and sit down I’ll bring you the coffee.’ Knowing that he was in the kitchen, watching her, put her on edge, and right this minute she needed to get her bearings. She needed him out.
She made sure not to make herself any coffee—another hint for him to leave. An image of Beth kept popping into her head, telling her what a good idea it had been to take charge of her life and move out.
She found him sitting on the sofa, leafing through one of her art books, which he proceeded to dump the minute she walked in.
‘If you had something to tell me, you could have phoned.’ Heather handed him his coffee and retreated to the chair facing him.
She tried to think of him as just an ordinary chap she was no longer involved with. She tried not to absorb the slashing cheekbones, the piercing eyes, the extravagantly handsome features.
‘The number here is ex-directory.’
‘Oh. Yes.’
‘And I couldn’t get through on your mobile phone.’
‘It broke. I’ve been meaning to get another one, but I haven’t got around to it.’
Theo clicked his tongue in irritation. In this day and age of fast technology Heather was the only person he knew who could blissfully live life without a mobile phone. When she had had one, it had generally been left in the house when she was out, or switched off when it was in her bag because she was convinced that it was permanently on the verge of running out of charge. Arguments about the need to have it fully charged and on her person at all times fell on deaf ears, because she was of the opinion that if the world had survived for centuries without its invention, then why should it suddenly be a necessity?
‘Please don’t lecture me on why I need to go out and buy one tomorrow. I’m quite happy not to have one.’
‘What if someone needs to get in touch with you?’
Heather shrugged. ‘So why have you come?’
Theo recognised a no-win situation when he heard one, and promptly dropped the contentious matter of the non-existent mobile phone.
‘I’ve come—and I’m not sure how to phrase this—because seeing you in that nightclub with that Sam character…’
‘Scott.’
He ignored the interruption. Actually, blessed with almost perfect recall, Theo was well aware of the man’s name, but no way was he going to be accurate on the subject and give her any notion that he had been thinking about her and the man in anything more than vague paternalistic terms.
‘…made me realise how incurably green around the ears you are.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Bewildered, Heather ran her pink tongue over her lips, and Theo’s eyes narrowed broodingly.
That, he thought, was a perfect example of what he was talking about. Most women with any nous would know that to be a gesture of pure provocation—but did Heather? Absolutely not. His eyes, which he had obediently kept plastered to her face, now drifted to her breasts, and to the cleavage he couldn’t fail to see as she leant forward, all ears.
He felt himself turn on, and lowered his eyes with considerable will-power.
‘Look at the way you’re sitting.’
More bemused by the second, Heather frowned. It occurred to her to ask whether he had been drinking before he came to visit her, because he wasn’t making any sense. Then again, she thought, bringing herself up short, she could hardly trust her own keen sense of deduction, could she?
‘How am I sitting? What are you talking about? You haven’t come here to talk to me about my posture, have you?’ Theo rarely uttered anything that wasn’t relevant to what he wanted to say, but she was at a complete loss as to where he was heading with this line of conversation. ‘I know I slump,’ she said nervously, ‘and I’m
going to correct that just as soon as I buy my mobile phone.’
He failed to see the limp stab at humour. ‘When you lean forward like that, pretty much everything is on display.’
Slow colour mounted in Heather’s cheeks, and she pushed herself back and fiddled with the neckline of her top. Changing her drab wardrobe in favour of clothes that were younger and fresher had not taken much encouragement on Beth’s part. Pleased with her new figure, which for her was probably the slimmest she had been in a very long time, she had enthusiastically taken to the shops and bought herself a range of things that showed off her assets, as one of the sales assistants had confidently assured her.
Guilt and a lifetime of circumspection washed over her in a burning tide of embarrassment.
‘You don’t have to look,’ Heather countered belatedly.
‘It would be impossible not to.’ Theo sat back and linked his fingers on his lap. ‘Either you really and truly are not aware of the signals you give off by something as simple as that, or else you are showing me what’s on offer deliberately…’
Heather reeled from the humiliating assumption. Theo’s ego was big, but she had never known just how big until now. Did he really think that she was trying to turn him on? That she was desperate enough to do anything to win him back, even after he had reiterated his views to her only minutes earlier?
Of course he did, she thought in frank, shameful honesty. She had opened that door to him willing to forgive every cutting remark on the simple thread of hope that he had come back with reconciliation in mind. How pathetic was that? Even if he couldn’t read her mind, he was astute enough to sense her need, and naturally he would assume, with that splendid arrogance of his, that she would do anything to tempt him back. Including revealing her body.
For a few taut seconds she couldn’t think of anything to say, and then she felt a slow rush of anger to her head.
‘You really think that I’m sitting here trying to get a response out of you?’ she asked, her voice shaking. ‘That is the most arrogant…conceited…ridiculous assumption you could ever make…’
At the Greek Tycoon's Bidding Page 13