'You're hurting me,' she snapped, the physical pain cutting through her mental anguish and restoring some of her usual spirit. She refused to feel guilty about Theo's father. If Theo himself had not been a two-timing swine of a man and already married when Stephen had been born things might have worked out differently. If anyone was to blame it was Theo, she thought scathingly, and his hedonistic lifestyle.
'You don't know what pain is. . .yet.' He smiled a cold, humourless smile, but did release her and glanced around the small wood-panelled hall.
Theo had to look away from her because for the first time in his life he felt dangerously close to inflicting violence on a woman. He battled to contain his rage and noted a door on either side of the hall. Both doors were partially opened, one revealing the living room, and the other a dining-room-cum-study. A third door at the rear led to the kitchen, and a narrow steep staircase led to the upper floor. 'I might have guessed,' Theo drawled with a negative shake of his dark head. It was like stepping back in time, the perfect hideaway. Her friends had not been far wrong when they had nicknamed her The Mole.
Guessed what? Willow wondered, but said nothing. She continued to watch him with wary eyes, and began nervously rubbing her bare arm where his fingers had left their mark. Theo's tall, broad figure seemed to fill the small hall, making her feel positively claustrophobic in her own home. She frantically racked her brain for some way to get rid of him.
His temper now back under control, Theo cast her a cynical glance. 'I will wait in here, and, as you did not turn up for our breakfast together,' he said with biting sarcasm, 'you can make me lunch.' With this, he strolled through the open living-room door.
Make him lunch! He was in her house for less than two minutes and already he was ordering her around. The cool cheek of the man. Willow silently fumed but followed behind him, knowing exactly what he was going to encounter next. She decided that she was not going to warn him. . . Let him knock himself out, the arrogant devil.
Low oak beams crossed the plastered ceiling. The room was furnished with all her grandmother's old oak furniture, and knick-knacks and it hadn't changed much since she was a child. She had modernised some rooms, but essentially the style was seventeenth century, in keeping with the house.
As she walked through the door she watched as Theo turned around in the middle of the room, and deftly dipped his head, narrowly missing one of the low beams. Trust him to duck in time, she thought bitterly, but then by all accounts he'd spent his whole life ducking and diving in the business world, which was why he was so filthy rich. She eyed him balefully. He had never looked more foreign, more Greek to her than he did right now, and she wondered how on earth she was going to come to some agreement with him over Stephen.
'You certainly fit your nickname—The Mole.' Theo raised one black sardonic eyebrow. 'Buried away in an ancient dark-beamed house, overlooking the river in a tiny village that does not even appear on a map, blindly keeping yourself and my son hidden from sight.'
She allowed no one to attack her home, or her lifestyle, and certainly not a jet-setting, womanising multimillionaire with more money than sense. She had seen in magazines the huge villa Theo had built for his wife, Dianne, and hadn't been impressed.
'I like it,' she snapped back, 'and so does Stephen. It is our home, and we have lots of friends and are very happy here.'
But his sarcastic comment had hit a nerve; she had always been a secret, sensitive person, and very much a creature of habit. When she had lost both her grandmother and mother in a few short months, almost everyone in the village had rallied around the pregnant eighteen-year-old. This house, which she had known all her life, had become her sanctuary; she loved the place. Free of a mortgage and with her mother's life insurance policy, and the income she received from her writing, she had been able to stay here with her son, safe and secure among friends.
She had given up any thought of going to university, not willing to move across the country and live among strangers. She also hated the idea of putting her baby into a crèche when she could stop where she was and look after him herself. But she also knew that she did tend to ignore anything that might upset her cosy lifestyle.
Realistically she had known for some time that Stephen wanted to meet his father. He had dropped plenty of hints, and she'd known she was going to have to do something about it. Maybe subconsciously she had allowed her editor to talk her into going to London and revealing her true identity as a first step towards facing up to her wider responsibility and seeking out Theo Kadros.
Even so, she sure as hell had not expected him to turn up on her doorstep today and start making derogatory comments about her house. She could feel her anger increasing by the minute.
'You were not invited to my home, Theo, and I don't do lunches. So please, feel free to leave.' She stared defiantly up at him, the atmosphere between them crackling with tension.
'No, you are not getting rid of me so easily this time, Willow,' Theo responded, casually lowering his long length down onto the leather sofa. He glanced up into her furious blue eyes, his own a bland, unemotional black. 'I am staying here until I get my son.'
Not until he saw his son, she noted, but until he got his son, a statement of fact issued with all the cool assurance of a man who always got what he wanted. She doubted if the person was born who could get one over the mighty Theo Kadros. The fact that she had managed to do so for eight years was a miracle in itself. But in the face of his calm assumption that he would get his son her fears for the future were increased a thousandfold.
'He is not your son,' she began, her blue eyes flashing defiance. 'He—'
'You little bitch,' he cut in, leaping to his feet, and in one swift movement he grasped a clump of her hair and twisted the thick silken strands around his wrist and tugged her head back. His other arm latched around her waist and hauled her hard against him.
'You still dare to deny it. You dare to play games with me even now,' he grated, his self-control completely de
serting him. She saw the glitter of violent fury in his black eyes, and for a moment her heart quaked with fear.
But she refused to be intimidated. Stephen was her son; and she was prepared to fight for him. She knew instinctively that she could not afford to appear weak in front of Theo Kadros.
'Get your hands off me, you b—' she gasped, but was prevented from saying any more by a second cruel tug on her hair.
'I'd like to strangle you,' he snarled, 'but you aren't worth swinging for.' And his mouth crashed down on hers with a cruel force that drove the breath from her body.
She was crushed against him so closely she was aware of every bone in his huge body. She only had a brief fleeting glimpse of the merciless intent in his dark eyes before his mouth hardened and he forced her lips apart and began a ruthless exploration of the moist interior of her mouth. It was a savage and hungry passion that had nothing to do with love and everything to do with a primitive male desire to punish and dominate.
She tried to resist but his hand curved around the back of her head, and held her immobile while he continued to plunder her mouth. He eased the pressure a little to allow her to breathe and a slight moan escaped her. Then the hand at her waist was holding her crushed against his lower body, slid over the curve of her buttocks and made her instantly aware of his fiercely aroused state. At the same time the punishing pressure of his mouth subtly altered, and, to her horror, a treacherous heat ignited deep down inside her.
She closed her eyes tightly; it should not be like this, her mind cried. Shaken as she was by the destructive power of his passion she was still capable of realising that he was using his superior sexual expertise as a weapon to deliberately humiliate her. But with the ever-softening sensuality of Theo's lips and tongue and his hand moving up her body to her breast, the fine cotton of her dress no barrier as deftly the first few buttons flew open, Willow knew she was in imminent danger of falling under his spell all over again.
She wasn't wearing a bra and his hand cupped her naked breast, his thumb sliding over the tender peak, and she was helpless to prevent her body responding. She groaned a low, soft sound of both desire and despair intermingled, and involuntarily her slender arms linked around his neck.
She then surrendered to the heat, the hunger and the fierce wave of passion suddenly sweeping through her body.