Thea shot a look over her shoulder. ‘That won’t be necessary.’
He shrugged and exchanged a concerned look with Anna, who’d rushed towards them. Sergei must have texted her.
‘I’m fine. Really,’ Thea said, as Anna opened her mouth to speak. ‘I just need a shower and coffee.’
‘I’ll bring breakfast. You haven’t been eating enough,’ Anna chided.
Thea smiled. It felt stiff, unfamiliar, but if she faked it for long enough her smile might become reality. One day.
‘In my room. Thank you.’
She went into her en suite bathroom. Discarded her sodden clothes and stood under the steaming shower as water pounded her skin, washing away the dark hand of fear threatening to strangle her.
She had to get help to Alexis. How dared her father accuse him of stealing the money she’d negotiated as part of her agreement to marry Christo?
But her father had lied and now her marriage was pointless.
Christo might help.
She silenced the inner voice. That would require trust she didn’t have for another man who was using her for his own ends.
Thea turned off the water. Dried her now wrinkled skin and wrapped a robe tight around her body.
The food Anna had left held as much temptation as cardboard. So she lay on her side in the huge bed. Stared out at the drizzly view of New York sprawling below her. The place her mother would never see.
And, as much as she’d tried to outrun the feelings, now she let them overwhelm her. For Alexis. For this marriage. For that awful afternoon when she’d waited in the kitchen, clutching only her favourite doll and wearing her St Christopher medal for a safe journey. Waited for her mother to come through the small wooden side door and steal her away. Waited as the day had darkened and daylight had faded.
But the person she’d loved most in the world had never come. And the waiting had ended when her father found her and delivered the words which had changed her life for ever. ‘Your mother’s dead...’
Thea curled tighter into a ball on her side, arms wrapped round her waist.
A shadowed reflection loomed in the window ahead of her. The prickle of awareness skittering along her spine announced that there was only one person it could be.
‘Sergei says you were ill on your run.’
The voice was tight with concern. But Christo didn’t care. He only wanted to ensure he inherited from his father. She was just a casualty along the way.
‘I overexerted myself.’
‘Sergei doesn’t believe that.’
‘I don’t care what anyone believes.’
The bed dipped as Christo sat on the edge of the mattress. She didn’t look at him. Only at the rain that beaded and slid down the window ahead of her.
‘So you’ve made clear before. Would you like me to call a doctor?’
Thea shook her head. ‘It’s nothing. You shouldn’t have interrupted your day.’
‘Sergei called. I came.’
A cool hand rested on her forehead. She closed her eyes.
‘No temperature...’
So few people cared about her. She could count them on one hand: Alexis, Elena. Anna and Sergei, perhaps, but they were paid to care, after all. Same as the servants at her father’s home, who’d looked after her when her mother had left. And still, like the little girl she’d once been, she craved the caring with a bone-numbing ache.
‘We have the dinner party tonight.’ Christo’s voice was gentle and soothing. ‘I’ll cancel it.’