She nodded and swiped the tears away, only to find them replaced with more.
He rubbed a hand through his hair and shook his head in disbelief. ‘I had no idea. You have a child...? How old is he?’
She wrapped her arms around herself and whispered, ‘Four.’
His hand froze on his head. Slowly his gaze drifted to fix on her, then stilled, his expression like those on the statues of the fierce Minoan gods that lined the palace corridors.
Her stomach churned as she watched him make the connection.
An age passed before he showed any sign of movement other than the narrowing of his unblinking eyes. Slowly he brought his hand down from his head to grip his glass, which still had a little red wine in it. Without taking his eyes from her face he knocked it back, emptied the remnants of the bottle into the glass and knocked that back too.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and got to his feet.
When he spoke, his words were laced with a snarl. ‘Get up. We leave now.’
* * *
He was a father.
Those four words were all Theseus could focus on.
He’d known there was something in her life that was putting her on edge, but the truth was nothing like he’d imagined.
Jo had a child.
And he was the father.
He’d been on the brink of tossing away his vow of celibacy for a lying, deceptive...
Theos. He had a four-year-old boy out there—a child of his blood.
He hadn’t needed to do more than rudimentary maths to know the child was his. One look at Jo’s terrified, tearful face had confirmed the truth.
She’d denied him their son’s existence.
She was sitting in the back of the stretch Mercedes alone while he rode in front with Nikos, who wisely hadn’t uttered a word since they’d come out of Club Giroud. The partition was up. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her.
His control hung by the tiniest of threads. There were so many emotions playing through him it was as if a tsunami had been set loose in his chest.
When they arrived back at the palace he got straight out of the car and yanked open the back door. ‘Get out.’
Not looking at her, or waiting to see if she obeyed, Theseus unlocked the door to his private apartment and held it open for her.
As she walked past him he caught a whiff of that feminine scent that had been driving him crazy all week and his loathing ratcheted up another notch.
When they were alone in his apartment he slammed the door shut behind him and faced her.
‘I was going to tell you,’ she said, jumping in before he could say anything. She stood in the middle of the living area, her arms folded across her chest, her face as white as a freshly laundered sheet. ‘I swear.’
‘I’m sure you were,’ he said with deliberate silkiness. ‘Tell me, when were you planning on telling me? When my son was ten? When I was on my deathbed?’
‘When the biography was finished.’
‘You should have told me the minute you landed on Agon.’ He gritted his teeth. ‘You’ve had a whole week to tell me the truth. A whole week during which you have lied to me—so many lies. You sicken me.’
She blanched under the assault of his words, but straightened and kept her composure. ‘I didn’t know who you were until a week ago. I spent five years searching for an engineer called Theo, not a prince called Theseus. I thought Theo was Toby’s father. When I realised, I had to do what was right for Toby. I had to protect him.’
He stopped his voice turning into a roar by the skin of his teeth. ‘Protect him from me? His own father?’
‘Yes! Look at you! You’re a prince from a hugely powerful family with a reputation for ferocity. I didn’t know you—I still don’t. When I arrived here you were a stranger in Theo’s skin. I had to be sure you posed no risk. To be honest, I’m still not sure. But I knew today that I had to tell you.’
‘You would say that,’ he said, fighting to hold on to his temper before it exploded out of him.
‘It’s the truth!’ she cried. ‘I know how much the biography means to you and I knew that to tell you before we’d finished it would derail you. I swear I was going to tell you as soon as it was done. I swear.’
‘Stop with the swearing. Right now I don’t know if I even care to believe your lies.’ Something else occurred to him—something so profound he couldn’t believe it had taken him so long to consider it. ‘You said you were on the pill.’
She winced and gazed down at the floor. ‘I lied,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so very sorry.’