just a boy, and had returned home from the long weeks away at the exclusive English boarding-school he had detested but which his father had been determined would turn him into a gentleman, he had recognised every tiny landmark on the flight from Athens airport. He had almost hung out of the helicopter cockpit to spot each change in the scene beneath them, the dozens of other, tiny, uninhabited islands that marked the familiar route to his beloved family home.
And when Helikos had finally come into view, at first as just a small dot on the horizon, he had always let out a great cheer to celebrate that, at last, for him, the holidays had begun.
But this time there was no excited thudding of his heart, no resounding cheer on his lips. Instead he viewed the approaching coastline with a dour, cynical expression, watching it come nearer with a complicated mix of emotions in his soul. He was heading back to Helikos after an absence of five long years, but the island was no longer truly home to him. The split with his father had seen to that. And now there was the new wife to consider, too. Theo scowled as the sound of the engine changed subtly, indicating that the pilot was beginning their descent. Another complication he could well do without. Though, from the little information he had had about her, this marriage was clearly not a love match. More like a business deal.
‘I don’t think you’ll find the island much changed.’
It was the pilot again, interrupting his thoughts as his voice came through the earphones both men wore.
‘I doubt if it’s changed in the least.’
Theo kept his eyes on the dark mass of land set in the brilliant sea. He was not in the mood for conversation; in fact he was not in the mood to be here at all. He most definitely was not in the mood for meeting his father’s latest floozy and trying to be polite to her. Cyril Antonakos was not known for choosing the most intelligent of female companions, and unless his father had changed dramatically in the past five years, then tonight’s dinner when he was to meet the brand-new Antonakos bride-to-be was going to be a long endurance test.
All the more so because his mind would be anywhere but here on Helikos.
From the moment that he had woken to find the space in the bed beside him cold, the room empty, he hadn’t been able to get the mysterious Skye out of his thoughts. He had spent the last week hunting for traces of the woman who had shared that one amazing night with him, but, with so little to go on, he had had a frustrating lack of success. He would do better, he knew, to forget the whole thing and put her out of his mind.
But in one brief night she had got completely under his skin and he couldn’t forget about her. Even when he slept, his dreams were filled with hot, erotic images of the night they had spent together. He would dream that he held her close, her slender, smooth-skinned limbs entangled with his, her Titian hair spread across the pillows, over his face, her perfume driving him wild.
And then he’d wake with his heart racing, his breath coming in raw, uneven gasps, his body slicked with sweat as if he had actually been making love to her in reality and not just in his mind. But of course none of it was real—none of it except the burning ache in his groin, the throb of unappeased hunger through every nerve.
If he could, he would have made some excuse and not come here. But the division between him and his father had gone on quite long enough. If Cyril was prepared to offer an olive branch, however half-hearted, then he, Theo, would meet him more than part way.
The house was just as he remembered it. High on a cliff above the sea, the huge white building sprawled over a large plot of land on two levels, each with its own vast veranda giving an amazing view of the ocean. A wide arched gateway to one side led to a stone-flagged patio, the oval swimming pool, and a small pool house that doubled as a guest house.
As Theo approached the door was pulled open and a small, plump, dark-haired figure hurried towards him.
‘Master Theo! Welcome! It’s wonderful to have you back!’
‘Amalthea…’
Theo submitted to the exuberant embrace of the tiny woman who had been his nurse as he grew up, and, because his mother had died when he was small, the closest person to a mother he had ever known.
‘Where am I staying? Have you put me in my old room?’
Amalthea’s dark eyes clouded as she shook her greying head.
‘Your father told me to put you in the pool house.’
So the olive branch was not quite as definite as he had thought, Theo told himself with a twist of sardonic resignation. His father was a hard man to like—a difficult man to love. He took offence easily and held onto grudges for a long, long time. It seemed that being invited here for the old man’s wedding was only the start of things. There wasn’t any sign of the fatted calf being prepared for the return of the prodigal son.
‘Who’s in my room?’
Surely the guests hadn’t started to arrive just yet? The wedding wasn’t taking place until the end of the month.
‘The new Kyria Antonakos.’
‘My father’s fiancée?’
So his father and the bride-to-be didn’t share a room already. That was a surprise.
‘What’s she like?’
Amalthea rolled her eyes in an expression of disapproval that she could only get away with in front of Theo.
‘Not at all his usual sort. But she is very beautiful.’
‘They’re always beautiful,’ Theo commented cynically. ‘That’s why he chooses them. Is my father at home now?’
‘He had to go to the village,’ Amalthea told him. ‘But he’ll be back this evening in time for dinner. His fiancée is at home. Would you want to—’
‘Oh, no,’ Theo put in swiftly, before she could even form the suggestion. ‘Dinner time will be soon enough.’
That way he could get both awkward encounters over and done with in the same time. Perhaps making polite small talk with The Fiancée would be easier than trying to carry on any sort of a conversation with his parent.
‘My bags will have been taken to the pool house. I’ll unpack and settle in—maybe have a swim.’
He stretched slowly, easing muscles cramped tight after the journey from London.
‘It’s good to be home.’
So this was to be home.
Skye turned away from the window with its panoramic view of the sea and sank back down onto the bed with a sigh, digging her teeth into her lower lip in an attempt to force back the tears that were threatening.
She was always on the edge of tears these days. Always only just managing to subdue the panic that gripped her when she contemplated what lay ahead of her. She still couldn’t quite take it all in. Still couldn’t believe that this was to be her future.
But sitting here brooding wasn’t going to change that. She really ought to come out of the bedroom at some point soon, and get to know the rest of the house better. She was going to live here, after all.
That thought only added to her sense of desolate unreality. This house, beautiful as it was, just didn’t seem anything like the home she had left in the damp and green countryside of Suffolk, the small village where she had grown up.
She supposed she would get used to it in time. She had to get used to it; she had no choice.
Skye rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes, brushing away the tears. When she’d phoned home earlier, her father had told her that her mother had been taken into hospital again. Claire Marston needed yet another operation, and soon. And her doctors had said that it was vital she was kept quiet. Any stress at all could be fatal.
It was a terrible, bitter irony, one that brought a taste like the burn of acid into her mouth, to think that she had always dreamed of visiting Greece, of seeing the