Michelle Smart - Theseus Discovers His Heir

Joanne Brookes.

Or, as he’d known her five years ago, Jo.

Now, this was a complication he hadn’t anticipated. A most unwelcome complication.

Hers was a face from his past he’d never expected to see again, and certainly not in the palace, where a twist of fate had decreed she would spend ten days working closely with him.

She’d been there for him during the second worst night of his life, when he’d been forced to wait until the morning before he could leave the island of Illya and be taken to his seriously ill grandmother.

Jo had taken care of him. In more ways than one.

He remembered his surprise when he’d learned her age—twenty-one and fresh out of university. She’d looked much younger. She’d seemed younger than her years too.

He supposed that would now make her twenty-six. Strangely, she now seemed older than her years—not in her appearance, but in the way she held herself.

He experienced an awful sinking feeling as he remembered taking her number and making promises to call.

That sinking feeling deepened as he recalled his certainty after they’d had sex that she’d been a virgin.

She couldn’t have been. She would have told you. Who would give her virginity to a man who was effectively a stranger?

Irrelevant, he told himself sharply.

Illya and his entire sabbatical had been a different life, and it was one he could never return to.

He was Prince Theseus Kalliakis, second in line to the Agon throne. This was his life. The fact that the new biographer was a face from the best time of his life meant nothing.

Theo Patakis was dead and all his memories had gone with him.

* * *

‘This is where I’ll be working?’ Jo asked, hoping against hope that she was wrong.

She’d spent the past hour giving herself a good talking-to, reminding herself that anger didn’t achieve anything. Whatever the next ten days had in store, holding on to her fury would do nothing but give her an ulcer. But then Dimitris had collected her from the small but well-appointed apartment she’d been given and taken her to Theseus’s private offices, just across the corridor, and the fury had surged anew.

Her office was inside his private apartment and connected to his own office without so much as a doorway to separate them.

‘This is the office Fiona used.’ Theseus waved a hand at the sprawling fitted desks set against two walls to make an L shape. ‘Nobody has touched it since she was admitted into hospital.’

‘There’s a spare room in my apartment that will make a perfectly functional office.’

‘Fiona used that room when she first came here, but it proved problematic. The research papers I collated and my own notes only give the facts about my grandfather’s life. I want this biography to show the man behind the throne. As I know you’re aware, this project is going to be a surprise for my grandfather so any questions need to be directed to me. With the time constraints we’re working under it is better for me to be on hand for whatever you need.’

‘Whatever you feel is for the best.’

A black eyebrow rose at her tone but he nodded. ‘Are you happy with your apartment?’

‘It’s perfectly adequate.’

Apart from being in the same wing as his.

How was she going to be able to concentrate on anything whilst being in such close proximity to him? Her stomach was a tangle of knots, her heart was all twisted and aching...and her head burned as her son’s gorgeous little face swam before her eyes.

Toby deserved better than to have been conceived from a lie.

She knew nothing of this man other than the fact that he was a prince in a nation that revered its monarchy.

He was descended from warriors. He and his brothers had forged a reputation for being savvy businessmen. They’d also forged a reputation as ruthless. It didn’t pay to cross any of them.

Theseus was powerful.

Until she got to know this man she couldn’t even consider telling him about Toby. Not until she knew in her heart that he posed no threat to either of them.

‘Only “adequate”?’ he asked. ‘If there is anything you feel is lacking, or anything you want, you need only say. I want your head free of trivia so you can concentrate on getting the biography completed on time.’

‘I’ll be sure to remember that.’

‘Make sure you do. I have lived and breathed this project for many months. I will not have it derailed at the last hurdle.’

The threat in his voice was implicit.

Now she believed what Giles had told her when he’d begged her to take the job—if she failed Hamlin & Associates would lose their best client and likely their reputation in the process.

‘I have ten days to complete it,’ she replied tightly. ‘I will make the deadline.’

‘So long as we have an understanding, I suggest we don’t waste another minute.’

Where was the charmer she remembered from Illya? The man who had made every woman’s IQ plummet by just being in his presence?

She’d spent five years thinking about this man, four years living with a miniature version of him, and his presence in her life had been so great she’d been incapable of meeting anyone else. Once Toby had been born the secret dream she’d held of Theo—Theseus—calling her out of the blue with apologies that he’d lost his phone had died. As had the fantasy that she would tell him of their son and he would want to be involved in their lives.

Motherhood had brought out a pragmatism she hadn’t known existed inside her. Until precisely one day ago she hadn’t given up on her dream of finding him, but that wish had been purely for Toby’s sake. All she’d wanted for herself was to find the courage to move on. She’d accepted she’d been nothing but a one-night stand for him and had found peace with that idea. Or so she’d thought.

Because somehow that was the worst part of it. Her body still reacted to him in exactly the way it had on Illya, with a sick, almost helpless longing. If he looked closely enough he’d be able to see her heart beating beneath the smart black top she wore.

His indifference towards her cut like a scalpel slicing through flesh.

He couldn’t give a damn about her.

A swell of nausea rose in her and she knew she had to say something.

She couldn’t spend the next ten days with such an enormous elephant in the room, even if she was the only one who could see it.

Heart hammering, she plunged in. ‘Before I start work there’s something we need to talk about.’

He contemplated her with narrowed eyes that showed nothing but indifference.

‘I’m sorry,’ she continued, swallowing back the fear, ‘but if you want me focused I need to know why you let me and everyone else on Illya believe you were an engineer from Athens, travelling the world on the fruits of an inheritance, when you were really a prince from Agon.’

‘It hardly matters—it was five years ago,’ he said sardonically.

‘You lied to me and every person you met on Illya.’

You lied to him too, her conscience reminded her, and she felt her cheeks flame as she recalled how her one lie had been the most grievous of all, a remembrance that knocked back a little of her fury and allowed her to gain a touch of perspective.

Her lie had been the catalyst for everything.

He contemplated her a little longer before leaning back against the wall and folding his arms across his chest.

‘Let me tell you about life here on Agon,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Outsiders struggle to understand but Agonites revere my family and have done so for over eight hundred years, ever since my ancestor Ares Patakis led a successful rebellion against the Venetian invaders.’

‘Patakis?’ she repeated. ‘Is that where you got your assumed surname from?’