For all his fury towards her, not once had he questioned Toby’s paternity. He hadn’t even asked to see a photograph as evidence. But then, he’d been too busy laying down the law over his rights as a father to bother with anything so trivial as what his son actually looked like.
Stop it, she chided herself. You can’t judge him for his reaction. You don’t walk in his shoes. You knew it wouldn’t be easy.
Whatever Theseus might think of her—and she knew it would be a long time before he forgave her—it seemed not to have crossed his mind that someone else might be the father, and from that she took comfort.
It was the only comfort she could take.
She had no idea what the future held, and that terrified her.
How could she keep her heart away from him when they would be sharing a bed and a life together? Making love...
His words of warning against loving him had come at the right time. She’d loved him once. Desperately. She couldn’t take that pain again. Especially not now, when he’d categorically told her he would never love her.
She would build on the strength she had gathered over these past few years and make her heart as impenetrable to love as his.
Even if it did mean saying goodbye to all her dreams.
Most little girls dreamed of being princesses, but for her it had never been about that. All she’d wanted was someone to love her for who she was.
Had that really been such a big thing to want?
Shaking off the melancholy, she opened her laptop and turned it on. She took a seat and adjusted the screen.
‘Do you know what you’re going to say?’ he asked, standing behind her, close enough for her to smell his freshly showered scent and that gorgeous cologne she could never get enough of.
She jerked her head in a nod and did a test run of the camera. ‘You need to stand to my left a bit more to keep out of shot.’
His heart thumping erratically, the palms of his hands damp, Theseus watched as the call rang out from the computer.
It connected almost immediately. The screen went blue, and then suddenly a little face appeared.
‘I’m eating my breakfast!’ the face said, in a high, chirpy voice.
‘Good morning to you too!’ Jo laughed.
The face grinned and laughed as a pudgy hand pushed away a lock of black hair that had fallen over his eyes.
Theseus couldn’t move. His body was frozen as he gazed at the happy little boy dressed in cartoon pyjamas.
Jo had been right.
No one looking at this child could ever doubt he was a Kalliakis. It was like looking at a living version of his own childhood photographs.
CHAPTER NINE
‘I’VE DRAWN YOU another picture,’ the boy—Toby—his son—was saying. ‘I’ll go and get it.’
The screen emptied, then seconds later he reappeared, waving a piece of paper.
‘Keep still so I can see it,’ Jo chided lightly.
Toby pressed the paper right to the screen.
‘Wow, that’s an amazing dinosaur,’ she said.
The picture was dropped and Toby was back. ‘Silly Mummy—is not a ’saur,’ he said crossly. ‘Is a plane.’
Theseus covered his mouth to stop the sudden burst of laughter that wanted to escape.
‘It’s good that you’ve drawn an aeroplane,’ Jo said, clearly holding back her own amusement, ‘because guess what?’
‘What?’
‘You’re going on an aeroplane.’
‘Wow! Am I? When?’
‘Today! Two nice men are coming to collect you and you’re going to get on an aeroplane with them and come and see Mummy on Agon.’
‘What—now? Right now?’
‘Lunchtime.’
Toby’s eyebrows drew in. Theseus almost laughed again. It was the same face Talos pulled when he was unamused about something.
‘Aunty Cathy is making meatballs for lunch,’ he said, as if missing that would be the biggest disappointment of his short life.
‘I’m sure they’ll let you eat the meatballs before you leave.’
That cheered him up. ‘Can I bring my cars?’
‘Of course you can.’
‘And can I meet the King?’
Finally her voice faltered. ‘Let’s get you here first, and then we can see about meeting the King.’
‘Can I meet your Prince?’
The knuckles of her fists whitened. ‘Yes, sweet pea, you can definitely meet the Prince.’