my dear,’ he said. ‘It is, after all, a time for celebration.’
‘The return of the prodigal son,’ Theo supplied dryly.
Like his father, he got up from his seat as she came into the room and was holding out to her a delicate crystal flute filled with bubbling pale wine.
‘And of course to celebrate your own arrival into the family.’
He was so close to her that there was no way his father could have seen the cold black stare that accompanied the apparently welcoming words. But Skye saw it, and as a result her hand shook so violently as she took her drink that some of the champagne slopped over the edge and spilled onto the fine silk of her skirt.
‘Careful,’ Theo said. ‘You don’t want to spoil things.’
He smiled as he spoke, but the icy glitter of his eyes, and the soft but deadly menace of his tone, left Skye in no doubt at all that the warning was meant in a way that was very different from a concern about her dress.
As a result she had been desperately on edge all evening, waiting for the axe to fall, for Theo to speak out and reveal the dark secret that would ruin everything.
But for now he was clearly biding his time, and hiding his cruel intent behind a smiling mask.
‘So how did you two meet?’ he asked now, pushing aside his plate and leaning back in his chair, a glass of rich red wine in one hand.
It was an innocent enough question—on the surface at least. But underneath the lazily drawled words lurked so many dangerous rocks that could sink her totally if she wasn’t careful.
Instinctively Skye turned to Cyril, conceding to him automatically. When he had come up with his proposal, he had insisted on absolute secrecy. Their marriage was to look genuine, with no hint of the deal behind it, and of course both Skye and her father had been only too glad to agree.
‘Business,’ was what he said, helping himself to another portion of the rich baklava that had formed their dessert. ‘Skye’s father runs a couple of my hotels in England.’
‘In London?’ Both Theo’s tone and his eyes had sharpened and Skye shivered faintly, knowing where his thoughts were heading.
‘No—Suffolk. Country house hotels—part of the group but out of the capital.’
‘But Suffolk isn’t far from London, is it?’
Theo raised his glass to his lips, sipped slowly, black eyes moving to lock with grey over the top of it. His fierce, unwavering gaze held hers mesmerically.
‘Do you go into London very often, Kyria Marston?’
‘Skye, please.’
She forced it from between lips that felt as if they were carved from wood.
‘And, no—I don’t go into London.’
‘Not at all?’
Careful! Skye warned herself. One false step and he would swoop like that hunting eagle. But she didn’t want him to think he had her on the run. It might feel like that, of course—she was very definitely trapped with her back against a wall, but she was damned if she was going to run away in panic and leave the field to him. She might just as well surrender right here and now and tell Cyril the truth about their meeting herself.
She could at least give Theo Antonakos a run for his money.
Deliberately she picked up her own glass, swirled the wine around in the bottom of it, then looked him straight in the eye again.
‘Well, obviously, I do go to London every now and then—but not often. And to tell you the truth, I can’t remember the last time I was there.’
Her defiance caught his attention. One black brow lifted sharply in sardonic response and he inclined his dark head in a small acknowledgement of the way she had parried his attack.
Oh, but she was good, Theo admitted to himself. This Skye Marston was a superb actress—so good that, if he didn’t now know exactly what was going on, he would have been totally convinced by her performance.
He had met her precisely twice—for less than a day at a time—and on those occasions she had been perhaps half a dozen different women, changing her personality and her behaviour as quickly and easily as he changed his clothes.
Looking at her now, no one would ever guess that she had been that nervous, distressed creature in the London bar, let alone the wild, passionate woman who had been in his bed that night.
Now here she was the picture of cool elegance in that sleek turquoise silk dress, sleeveless and with a deep vee neckline. Silver glittered at her ears and around the long graceful neck, exposed by the way she had piled that glorious rich coloured hair up at the back of her neck, and she looked calm, relaxed and totally in control.
But she couldn’t really be in control, any more than he could. She had to know that their shared secret was there, between them, like a dark shadow.
He lifted his glass again to drink, then reconsidered and only pretended to sip from it. His head was clouded enough. His thoughts had been reeling since the instant in which his father’s announcement had hit him like a punch to his jaw, and he still hadn’t decided what to do about it.
‘You don’t want to go out—to clubs—or bars?’
He wasn’t quite sure who was watching whom—only that it seemed to him as if there were no one in the room but the two of them. His father might have disappeared completely, and the quiet, decorous presence of a couple of maids barely impinged on his consciousness.
‘Skye doesn’t frequent clubs and such.’
It was Cyril who answered, reminding Theo sharply of the fact that he was there, at the head of the table. That this was his house—his father’s home—and the woman opposite was his father’s future bride.
‘That’s one of the things that attracted me to her. Her innocence. She’s not like so many modern young women.’
This time Theo really did have to gulp down a large mouthful of his wine, if only to stop himself from laughing out loud, or making some cynical comment, revealing just precisely how he felt about that statement.
So she had his father totally conned. The old man had no idea at all what she was really like.
So why didn’t he just tell him? Why didn’t he just open his mouth and say the words?
Your fiancée is not at all the woman you think she is.
The words sounded so clearly inside his head that for one heart-stopping moment he almost thought he’d said them aloud and froze, waiting for the explosion that would follow.
But nothing happened. The declaration had just been in his imagination and the conversation continued just as be-fore—his father blithely ignorant of the emotional grenade that had almost exploded right in his face.
Because that was the effect it would have had. In one split second, Cyril Antonakos would have gone from being the proudly possessive fiancé of a beautiful, stylish, sexy…
Oh, Theos, so devastatingly sexy…
A gorgeous, glamorous, much younger woman.
One moment, Cyril would have been the envy of all men with such a woman on his arm—the next he would have known the sordid truth.
‘Her mother has been unwell. So Skye spends most of her time at home, caring for her.’
Except when she’s out trawling bars, picking up strange men…
Once more Theo had to bite down hard on his lower lip to stop the words from escaping.
Skye’s stunning eyes had dropped, staring down at her hands on the table, and it was all he could do not to laugh out loud in cynical admiration. As a pose of innocent modesty, it was damn