at the way Rhys kept shutting her out of his life. ‘And with my own villa I won’t be crowding you, so you can’t be too angry. In fact, I’ve probably planned to be quite independent with Clara once I’ve made my point.’
Pleased with her own inventiveness, Thea sat back in her chair. ‘What do you think?’
Rhys was looking at her with open admiration. ‘I think it would convince Kate, and if it would convince her it would convince anybody!’
They both laughed, releasing the tension that had underlain the game, until Thea realised that Rhys had stopped laughing and was looking thoughtful instead, and the chuckle dried in her throat.
‘You’re not serious?’
CHAPTER THREE
RHYS looked at her for a long moment, and then seemed to shake himself back to reality.
‘No, of course not,’ he said heartily. ‘I couldn’t possibly ask you to do something like that.’ He leant forward and picked up the jug to refill their glasses. ‘Have some more retsina.’
She had probably had enough, thought Thea, watching the golden liquid pouring into her glass. The retsina was probably the reason why she had been sitting there joking about anything quite so silly.
Because it was silly, and they hadn’t been serious, and she ought to be running a mile from a strange man who would even suggest such a thing. She didn’t know anything about Rhys Kingsford, other than what he had chosen to tell her this morning.
But it didn’t feel that way. It felt as if she had known him for a very long time. It felt almost as if he had always been part of her life.
They sipped their retsina in silence for a while, both thinking about what a ridiculous idea it was to go to such lengths just to avoid being patronised by a woman who meant nothing to either of them.
But still thinking about it, anyway.
‘It would be very embarrassing if Kate and Nick found out that we were pretending, wouldn’t it?’ said Thea eventually as if carrying on the unspoken conversation between them.
‘Probably,’ Rhys agreed. ‘On the other hand, would it be as bad as spending the next two weeks finding excuses not to go over to dinner?’
‘Or explaining why I’m a sad person without a boyfriend,’ said Thea.
There was another silence.
It was Thea who broke it again. ‘Do you really think we could convince them?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ he said, considering the matter all over again.
‘We’d have to pretend that we were in love,’ she said, as if the idea had only just occurred to her.
‘Yes,’ he agreed.
They glanced at each other and then away.
‘But that shouldn’t really be a problem, should it?’ she reassured herself. ‘I mean, they won’t expect us to be all over each other, will they? Even if we were a real couple, we wouldn’t be sticking our tongues down each other’s throats in company.’
‘Quite,’ said Rhys in a dry voice. He hesitated. ‘I might have to put an arm round you occasionally or something, though. Would you mind that?’
Thea managed a careless shrug. ‘I ought to be able to manage that,’ she said as lightly as she could, but it wasn’t easy when his lean, solid body tugged at the corner of her eye and the mere thought of being held against it was enough to give her a severe attack of the flutters.
The truth was, she wouldn’t mind at all.
‘So what are we saying?’ said Rhys at last.
Thea took a deep breath. ‘I will if you will,’ she said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Why not?’ She sat up straighter. ‘It’s just a bit of fun. It’s not as if you really do have a girlfriend who would be hurt if she found out…Is it?’ she added, hoping that she didn’t sound too anxious to have this little point confirmed.
‘No,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘I’m keeping all my attention for Sophie at the moment. What about you? No boyfriend likely to turn up and start acting jealously?’
‘No.’ Thea shook her head a little sadly. She would have loved to have been able to imagine Harry turning up out of the blue and glowering jealously at Rhys, but jealousy had never been Harry’s thing, at least as far as she had been concerned. ‘I don’t think he’ll be doing that.’
Rhys hesitated. ‘But there is a boyfriend?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘You don’t know?’ he asked in surprise.
‘No. I suspect not, but…no, I’m just not sure.’ Thea ran a finger around the rim of her glass, her face sad as she remembered.
‘I met Harry a year ago, and fell for him like a ton of bricks. He was a dream come true—incredibly attractive, charming, glamorous…and honest. He told me all about his split with his ex-girlfriend and how close he still felt to her. Isabelle is the complete opposite of me.’
‘You met her?’
She shook her head. ‘No, but Harry spent most of his time talking about her. She’s very pretty and petite, apparently, and she works in the City like him. She’s got some high-powered job that means she’s constantly under pressure and it doesn’t help that she’s completely neurotic anyway. That’s not what Harry says, of course,’ Thea added with a twisted smile. ‘He says she’s “highly strung.”’
‘I can see that you might be a relief after someone like that,’ said Rhys carefully.
‘That’s what Harry used to say, but I always felt he secretly thought I was a bit dull after Isabelle’s histrionics. According to Harry, it was an amicable split, and they both agreed that they would be free to see other people, but as far as Isabelle was concerned she still had first call on his time. At the first hint of a crisis she’d ring him up and he would drop everything to rush round and sort it out for her.’
Rhys’s eyes rested on her averted face. ‘That must have been difficult for you.’
‘It wasn’t easy.’ Thea managed a shrug. ‘Nell—Clara’s mother—thinks Harry is weak and selfish, but I told her she didn’t understand. Harry’s a kind person. He feels that Isabelle needs him and that he wants to be a good friend to her.’
‘What about being a good friend to you?’
She glanced at him. ‘Funny, that’s what Nell used to say, too!’ Heaving her shoulders, she let them slump back. ‘Oh, I don’t know…I suppose I was prepared to put up with anything as long as Harry came back to me. And he did. He’d tell me that Isabelle was just needy, and that I was the one he loved and, of course, I let myself believe it.’
‘So how come you’re here now, not sure whether you’ve got a boyfriend or not?’ asked Rhys after a moment.
‘We’d booked a holiday together.’ It still hurt Thea to think about how much she’d looked forward to that holiday. ‘I’d found a perfect little cottage in Provence and it was going to be just the two of us, away from Isabelle, but about a month before we were due to go Harry started to backpedal, saying he wasn’t sure it was good timing and maybe we should think about postponing it.
‘It turned out that Isabelle had to have some operation on her foot. It wasn’t anything major, and she was just an outpatient at the hospital, but she decided that she needed Harry to feed her cat, water her plants, make her little cups of herbal tea, and generally dance attendance on her.’
Thea blew out her cheeks and pushed the hair away from her face. ‘Sorry, that sounds bitchy.