He parked the car outside the villa but sat still, staring through the windscreen, lost in his drive down nightmare lane. ‘Dimitri was so angry with her. I overheard him telling her he’d have insisted on a DNA test to prove she hadn’t trapped my father with another man’s bastard, if it weren’t for the fact that I was the spitting image of him. I couldn’t stand to hear him talk to her like that when I knew what my father had really been like...’
He’d been torn between defending his mother while burying all the details she’d shared with him. The affairs, the misery and heartache and the rage she’d felt towards his father. Her attempts to make him jealous. All Theo had wanted to do was make her feel better. But he’d failed in that.
‘And then, after the funeral, it was time to go home. But my mother said she didn’t want me. That she’d never wanted me and that it was best for me to stay with Dimitri.’
‘She left you in Greece and returned home to the States?’
He’d begged her to take him with her. Instead she’d signed over all parental rights to Dimitri. A man he’d barely known at the time.
‘You must have been heartbroken. You were a child.’
He’d been terrified.
‘You’d just lost your father, and then your mother too?’
He didn’t want her sympathy. He didn’t know why he’d told her any of this but now he’d started he couldn’t seem to stop. ‘The one time I fought Dimitri was when he said something back about her to me. I lost it so badly I thought he was going to...’ He breathed in. ‘But he didn’t. He just never mentioned her name again. I didn’t either. We never talk about her or my father. We discuss the business, politics...anything that isn’t personal. And it’s good. It works.’
That had only changed slightly since Dimitri had got sick and he’d started in on Theo finding a wife.
‘Where’s your mother now? Are you in contact with her at all?’
He already felt as if he’d been carved open and this memory was like pouring scalding acid on the bleeding wounds, but he couldn’t stop the pain—the truth—flowing out. ‘A few years ago... I wanted to know where she was, if she was okay...’ He’d been a fool to think that, just because he’d made a success of himself, anything would have changed. That she’d want to know him. ‘She didn’t welcome my visit, didn’t want to know. She didn’t even want any of my money. She just wanted me to leave her alone. She said her life was better without me. And mine was better without her.’
‘Theo—’
‘It is better.’ He didn’t want to hear any different—how could he?
‘Is it?’
‘Why would I want to revisit it, Leah? My mother was humiliated and hurt and she lashed out. She drowned her sorrows so much that she couldn’t stop. My father was beyond miserable too. I can’t let anyone else feel that—not Dimitri, not you. I can’t let it happen again.’
‘Dimitri said he was too hard on you,’ she said.
‘He told you that?’ Shocked, he finally looked at her. ‘He’s never told me that.’
She looked so serious and concerned. ‘Maybe you should talk to him.’ She leaned forward to get nearer. ‘You should talk to him about what really happened between your parents. Dimitri told me you’re different from your father. Maybe he already knows some of it, Theo. You know he’s a smart man.’
A smart businessman, but a blind old fool when it came to his son. Why would Theo ruin that memory for him?
‘I wouldn’t ever do that.’ He rejected the idea immediately, pushing back into his seat. ‘He was so hurt by Dad’s death. I watched him struggle with grief for so long. Isn’t it kinder to leave him believing the good in his son?’
Theo had never wanted to let Dimitri down either. He’d never wanted to do anything that might hurt him—that might make Dimitri push him away.
‘He gave me everything I needed—a home, an education, structure and discipline... I owe him, Leah. I can’t hurt him.’
‘But holding all that in hurts you.’
Now he was looking at her he couldn’t seem to look away and that was bad because everything was rising now—all those feelings he’d blocked for years.
‘You must have been so lonely.’
And she was right there, looking at him with those compassionate, velvety eyes as everything just slipped from him—the things he’d never said aloud to anyone—and his heart was racing so fast he felt dizzy. ‘After a month or so, we went on a boat to Dimitri’s holiday home for a weekend. It wasn’t like any place I’d ever been to before—I don’t mean beautiful buildings, but a place that was a total escape. I was free to roam and swim. It was vast and private and the sea so blue, so warm.’ He shook his head as he confessed his last little secret. ‘You might have thought it sounded like a prison, but it’s always been paradise to me.’
‘Oh, Theo—’
At the catch in her whisper he blinked and forced himself to break the connection. He unfastened his belt and got out of the car.
‘I should get some food,’ he said briskly. ‘You must be hungry.’ He headed straight into the kitchen.
Anything to change the topic and keep him busy so he wouldn’t have to look at her, so he wouldn’t give way to that yearning inside compelling him to seek solace in her hold. He couldn’t stand to see the empathy in her eyes, or bear the ache it caused.
‘You can cook too?’ Her laugh sounded strained. ‘I don’t know why I’m surprised.’
‘Actually...’ he breathed out, seemingly unable to stop being honest now ‘...I only have a couple of dishes in my repertoire and they’re not great. I just didn’t want us to be disturbed.’
He didn’t want to have to pretend in front of people.
Maybe that had been a mistake. Maybe having staff around right now might help him reclaim his distance. And perspective. Because the one person he couldn’t seem to pretend anything in front of was Leah.
He wasn’t even hungry. He didn’t know why he was even in the damn kitchen. But she’d opened the fridge and was absently staring at the contents as if she hoped a three-course meal would magically appear if she looked for long enough.
‘Don’t,’ he muttered. He didn’t want her waiting on him, helping him, being that kind person who did things for other people all the time. He didn’t want her to care for him in the same way she cared for her oldies or in doing nice things for her friends. That wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t want anything from her, right? ‘You don’t have to—’
‘Maybe we could just make do,’ she interrupted him. ‘Pull together a few things picnic style?’
He nodded, unable to argue any more. They briefly worked in silence, but their bodies brushed too close despite the spaciousness of the kitchen. The air almost hummed as his tension built. He sensed hers rising too and that only escalated his. Confusion swirled, twisting into a tornado that he didn’t know how to safely release. The silence thickened to the point where he couldn’t stand it any more. He stopped what he was doing and stared at her.
She’d stopped too, the moment he had. Her eyes reflected everything—the turmoil, the vulnerable hunger that couldn’t be hidden. He couldn’t seem to hold anything back from her any more. ‘Leah...’
He felt her shudder as he pulled her into his arms. His heart slammed against the palm she placed on his chest and his brain was fried by the look in her eyes as she rose on tiptoe to bring herself closer.
‘Maybe we just make do with what we have?’ he muttered.
What they had was this. With one kiss they ignited. Desperate to assuage the aching energy that had coiled so unbearably in the course of that conversation, they were wordless now. Swiftly pushing clothes aside, seeking skin, seeking complete contact. He lifted her back onto the big table and with almost no preamble pushed close and hard and deep and it still wasn’t enough. She instantly tightened her legs around his waist
in response, forming the hottest, tightest vice, and it was as if she were never going to release him. He ground harder, faster, pushing as powerfully as he could, but he still couldn’t get close enough. The shocking thing was this didn’t feel enough any more. That aching hole in his chest hurt—that place where other people had a heart. He growled in agony, in absolute frustration.
But she grabbed his burning face in her hands and kissed him. The passion in her deep caress destroyed that ache in an arc of pure lightning. It wasn’t just pleasure branding through his skin and flesh and blood to bone. It was peace and tumultuous contentment and it was perfect. Now it was fiercer than ever. Better than ever.
But now he needed it more than ever.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE FULL MOON bathed the room with pale light even at three in the morning. Still wide awake, Theo tried not to fidget and disturb Leah’s sleep but he couldn’t rest. He felt flayed, old wounds oozed. That physical bliss had ebbed and allowed cool, biting air—and anxiety—in.
Beside him Leah shifted position, then shifted again. A moment later she left their bed and went into the bathroom.
Theo waited, but the longer she was gone, the more his concern grew. He followed her to knock on the door. ‘Leah? You okay?’
She opened the door. She held one hand pressed below her belly button. His senses hit full alert. ‘What’s wrong?’
She shook her head and rubbed her stomach slightly. ‘Nothing.’