on her tongue that she couldn’t have managed if she’d planned it. ‘Who in their right mind would want to turn down this?’ She waved a hand in an all-encompassing gesture that took in the whole room, the patio out beyond the doors, and the blue water of the swimming pool beyond that. ‘I certainly wasn’t going to.’
It was only when his face changed, his expression hardening, eyes turning to black flint, that she realised how a moment before he had had an entirely different look. She had been near to some sympathy, some understanding from him, and now he had backed away again. Physically as well as mentally.
He had moved back from her; his grip on her jaw loosening. The barriers were up between them once more and it hurt so badly that she had to blink back tears.
But it was better this way.
Safer.
The implications of that word, ‘safer’, were ones she flinched away from admitting to herself. They gave her an idea, though. If she tried to defend herself from Theo’s questions, then she very rapidly found herself with her back against the wall. It was time to stand up for herself—go on the attack instead.
Wrenching her chin free from his loosened grasp, she tried to push Theo aside, get to her feet. But the barrier of his big body offered far more resistance than she had ever imagined. Her push had no effect whatsoever on him, but it made her fingers curl in shock at the sensations that fizzed up her nerves as they encountered the heat and hardness of his powerful chest.
Giving up the attempt to make him move, she scrambled inelegantly off the chair over its arm, turning hastily to confront him while she had the advantage of height because he still knelt on the floor.
‘Why does it matter so much to you what happens between me and your father? I understood that you and he weren’t exactly close.’
She’d got under his guard with that one. She saw it register in the depths of his eyes and knew a shiver of apprehension as his jaw tightened and a muscle in his cheek tugged sharply.
‘Who told you that?’
‘Your father, of course.’
Her throat dried as Theo uncoiled his long body and slowly stood up. Perhaps it was the fact that she had no shoes on and in bare feet was inches smaller, but Skye felt that never before had he seemed so tall, so imposing, so big as when he towered over her now. Her toes curled on the polished wooden floor as she fought against the craven impulse to turn and run.
‘And what did he tell you about it?’
‘That—that you had a disagreement.’
‘Which is something of an understatement.’
The bitter irony of Theo’s response made it plain that it had been anything but a ‘disagreement’.
‘What was it about?’
‘Do you really want to know?’ Theo demanded sharply. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, I do.’ Skye tried to sound much more certain than she actually felt. ‘It might make me understand things more.’
Something in Theo’s expression warned her that that was a vain hope. But she had taken this path now. She was determined to see it through.
‘Tell me,’ she said unevenly.
Theo pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans and strolled away towards the open patio doors where he stood, staring out at the clear blue water of the pool glinting in the sun.
‘My father disowned me because I wouldn’t marry the bride of his choice.’
‘What?’ Skye was stunned. ‘You’re kidding!’
Theo swung round to face her again and the deadly serious cast of his stunning features made the half-laughing protest and disbelief fade rapidly from her face.
‘Do I look as if I am joking?’ he demanded haughtily, his accent sounding very pronounced on the question. ‘Believe me, it is not a topic I would be flippant about.’
‘But—he—I mean—why?’
Theo’s mouth curved into a grim travesty of a smile that had no trace of humour at all in it.
‘My father has always tried to run my life,’ he said at last. ‘When I was small he took control completely—I could barely breathe without his permission. My mother died when I was five—two years later I was sent to board-ing-school in England.’
‘At seven?’
She looked truly shocked, Theo reflected. Shocked, and something else he couldn’t quite interpret. If he’d been caught in a weak moment he might have called it sympathetic, but he would probably be fooling himself to even consider it.
‘I wasn’t the only one,’ he returned dryly. ‘I was in a class of boys that age. My father was determined that I should get the best education possible—for him that meant an English public school, then an English university. Then, of course, working with him in the Antonakos Corporation.’
‘He had your life all mapped out for you.’
Theo’s mouth twisted cynically.
‘Right down to the woman I should marry.’
Skye perched on the arm of one of the big chairs. Her eyes still had that strange shadowed look in them. Concentrate on that, he told himself fiercely. At least if he kept his gaze—and his attention—focused on her eyes, then he would stop himself from thinking too much about the rest of her.
About the slide of her hair over the bare, lightly tanned shoulder exposed by the slender straps of her lilac-coloured dress. About the way that sitting on the edge of the chair had pulled the already short skirt up even higher on the slim, elegant legs. About the sway of soft breasts clearly not confined in some restricting contraption of satin and Lycra, but moving with each slight gesture she made.
When she lifted a hand to push through her hair his blood pressure mounted to an alarming degree. And the memory of those legs wrapped around his waist like hot silk as she writhed underneath him threatened his ability to think so badly that he barely heard her next comment and had to force his attention back to the present before he lost track of things completely.
‘You didn’t like her?’
‘You really don’t know my father too well, do you? I never saw her—and neither, I believe, did he.’
There was no mistaking the emotion that widened her eyes now. It was total consternation—mixed with a touch of disbelief.
‘You’d never even met her?’
Theo shook his head firmly. ‘It was to be an arranged marriage. A cold-blooded financial arrangement between my father and hers.’
‘And you had no say in the matter?’
‘My father certainly didn’t intend that I should. I was twenty-seven—more than old enough to start providing him with grandchildren. He had surveyed all the families with daughters of marriageable age, and Agna’s father owned land he wanted. That, together with the fact that she was just nineteen, a virgin, and the family fortune, though no match for the Antonakos wealth, was far from inadequate, made her the perfect choice as far as he was concerned.’
‘So this Agna didn’t get a choice either?’
‘Why should she? She was only a daughter, and as far as two greedy old men were concerned she had one real purpose to serve—to marry well, improve the family fortunes, and bear an heir to the combined estate.’
‘Oh, don’t! You make her sound like a brood mare!’
Skye’s voice broke uncontrollably on the words as a result of the bleak thoughts that flooded her mind. At first she been feeling so uptight that she had almost let his explanation of the rift with his father slip by in a haze of shocked disbelief, without registering the impact it had on her personally. All