Taking deep breaths, she waited for it to pass. The waves of pain always did, leaving nothing but a constant heavy ache that balled in her chest and pumped around her blood.
‘I thought I’d find you here.’
Sending lemonade flying everywhere, Jo spun around to find Theseus standing in the doorway.
She blinked. And blinked again. And again.
He was still there, dressed in a pair of familiar cargo pants and nothing else. His hair was tousled; dark stubble covered his jaw. Wry amusement played on his face, but his eyes...his brown eyes were full of apprehension.
She opened her mouth but nothing came out.
She blinked again, totally uncomprehending.
‘What are you doing here?’ she croaked eventually.
‘Waiting for you.’
‘But how...?’
He smiled ruefully. ‘You’re the mother of my child. You and Toby have had bodyguards watching you since you left Agon. As soon as they told me you’d booked a holiday to Korcula I knew you’d come here.’
He came over to stand beside her.
‘I put this up,’ he said, putting his finger on their picture and brushing it lightly, just as she’d done minutes before.
‘You did?’ Her words sounded distant to her ears.
Any second now and she would wake up and still be on the ferry from Korcula, the large Adriatic island an hour’s sail away, where she’d left Toby in a family hotel with her brother and sister-in-law.
‘I found it last week in a box in my dressing room. When I returned from Illya I put everything to do with my travels in boxes and tried to forget about them. In one of the boxes was my old phone. I got Stieg—do you remember him?—to take that picture of us.’ He finally looked at her, a crooked smile on his handsome face. ‘There were a lot of pictures of you on that phone. More pictures of you than anyone else. Let me show you.’
He reached into the back pocket of his cargo shorts and pulled out his old phone. He went to his photo gallery and offered it to her. ‘See?’
But her hands were shaking too much to take it.
With his warm body pressed against her, Theseus scrolled through the photos of his time on Illya—dozens and dozens and dozens of them. Most of them were of the surf on the north side of the island, or the mountains of the neighbouring islands. Only a few had people in them. Of those she was in over half. Only in two of them was she posing—in the rest he’d captured her unawares.
There was even a picture of her sitting alone on the beach in her swimsuit. She remembered that day. She’d been too embarrassed at the thought of what she’d look like in a wetsuit to surf with him and the others. She’d been scared someone would call her a hippo, and even more scared that Theo would laugh at it.
But now she knew differently. If anyone had insulted her he would have probably flushed their heads down a toilet.
How she wished she’d had the confidence to say to hell with them all and go surfing.
‘There’s more,’ he said quietly, opening his phone’s contacts box. ‘There. Do you see?’
She nodded. It was all she was capable of.
There was her name. Jo. And beneath it was her old mobile number.
‘Come,’ he said, tugging at her frozen hand. ‘Let’s go and sit on the beach together.’
In a daze, Jo let him guide her out into the sun.
They sat on the deserted beach and Theseus leaned back on his elbows. Jo sat forward, hugging her knees and watching the sailing boats in the distance.
Had she fallen into a dream?
‘Why do you think I remembered you had royal blood in your veins?’ he asked quietly.
‘Because you remember everything,’ she whispered.
From out of the corner of her eye she saw him shake his head.
‘I have a good memory, but when it comes to you I remember everything. I remember standing on the ferry and pressing “delete” on your number. But when I got the message asking if I wanted to carry on with the action I cancelled it. I couldn’t do it. When I got home...’
He sat up and grabbed her hand, pulling it to his mouth. It wasn’t a kiss. It was a brush of his lips and a warm breath of his air that sent tingles of sensation scurrying through her.
Dear God, he really was here. Theseus was here.
And just like that the stupor left her and her heart kick-started in thunderous jolts.
His eyes were dark and intense. ‘Helios has always known he will one day be king. His destiny is carved in stone. My own destiny was to be nothing more than his shadow—his spare—but I wanted something so much more. I craved freedom. I wanted to play with other children and run free.’ He pointed to the cobalt sky. ‘I wanted to be up there in the stars. But I was born to be a prince. After my parents died I kept thinking, Is this it?, and I struggled endlessly to reconcile myself with my destiny, never realising that to my family it was like I was spitting on the Kalliakis name.