Chapter 6
Ignoring the question, Tiffany glanced his way. ‘Tell me, Theo, are all Greek men this whimsical?’
Just as she hadn’t answered his question, he didn’t answer hers. He just grinned and rolled onto his back and stared at the sky again. So she changed the subject.
‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘What did you want to be when you grew up?’
His mouth broke into a grin, which ruffled like the breeze through the muscle fibres low and deep in Tiffany’s belly. ‘Would it surprise you to know exactly what I’m doing?’
‘Cruising the Greek islands in a giant phallic symbol of a boat?’
He laughed out loud and it was just what was needed to burst the strange sense of intimacy that had sprung between them as they’d shared stories from their childhood.
‘You are hard on a man’s ego, you know that, right?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Just as well you have the ego of ten men.’
He laughed again before he continued. ‘Not the cruising, no. Well, actually, yes, that too.’ His hand moved to splay against his abdomen, which was exceptionally distracting. ‘But I meant running the company.’
‘Oh, come on.’ It was Tiffany’s turn to laugh. ‘Surely little four-year-old Theodorus didn’t want to run a multi-conglomerate.’
‘Four-year-old Theo wanted to be whatever his beloved pappou was. I am the first grandson and he doted on me. Still does.’ He broke into an unabashed grin.
‘He says he doesn’t have any favourites among his many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but that he did love me first. I was his shadow, his… how did you say it? Little buckaroo?’
Tiffany nodded, smiling a little at the very Australian word given a romantic twist in the hands of his slight accent.
On paper, she and Theo could not be more different.
Greek versus Australian. Billionaire versus working class.
Owner of a mega-international company versus owner of things that could fit in two suitcases.
Loving – from what she could gather – family versus complicated family.
Yet they’d both had similar experiences in their childhoods, which somehow bridged those divides.
‘He took me into work often, into the office and down to the port, introduced me to everyone and never considered me too young to learn anything. And when my father stood down due to ill health when I was twenty-three, I was ready.’ He shrugged. ‘I never thought about being anything else.’
As a child, Tiffany had thought she’d stay on Balmain Downs forever. She’d been born there and she’d figured she’d die there, too. Luckily, life on the land teaches a person to be adaptable. ‘What would you do if you weren’t CEO? If you didn’t have ōceanós. If you weren’t a Callisthenes?’
Pursing his lips, he thought about it for long moments. Possibly for the first time in his life if what he’d said about his CEO aspirations was true. ‘I’d be a fisherman.’
Tiffany frowned. She’d been expecting a much grander answer. ‘Do you mean own fishing trawlers instead of cruise ships?’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I mean just me, a small boat and the sea. Sitting with the old men in the evenings smack-talking about the tourists ruining the ambience and the football scores and the weather. A simple life.’
Okay, she definitely hadn’t been expecting that.
Or the image currently in her head of him similarly dressed to the way he was now – no shirt, no shoes – standing in the well of a bobbing boat, his hair blowing in the wind, his skin burnished to an even deeper shade of bronze from days in the sun, every muscle in his body rippling as he threw out a net.
Yeah, she could see it for sure. But… it was hard to believe.
‘I don’t think many of them are rich?’
‘You think I can’t not be rich?’
He sounded amused more than affronted as Tiffany made a show of looking around his superyacht.
Nothing like the simple tin boats powered by outboard motors she’d seen puttering out to sea from the multitude of Mediterranean harbours she’d visited over the past seven years.
‘I think you might find it a difficult adjustment.’
Theo wasn’t like his grandfather. He’d been born into money.
‘Maybe,’ he laughingly conceded. ‘But I think I could be happy. Sun on my face, fish in my belly. Walking to work, the sea surrounding me? There are worse things.’
‘True.’
There were. And it sounded idyllic. She could certainly picture herself sitting with her back to the harbour wall, laptop balancing on her knees, sun sparkling on a crystal blue ocean, as she weaved her mermaid stories and waited for her fisherman to bring home his catch.
Which was why she definitely had to leave. Now!
Lurching forward, she grabbed her laptop and stood. ‘I’m going to turn in.’
‘I’m sorry, I interrupted your writing.’
‘It’s fine,’ Tiffany assured, not quite meeting his eye as she busied herself, shoving the computer under her arm, grabbing the stained towel with one hand and the empty wine glass with the other. ‘I’m just in the planning stages. It’s all good.’
She threw the towel over her shoulder to quell the sudden urge to tug the perfectly decent hemline of her oversized T-shirt lower. ‘Well…’ Clearing her throat, she tipped her chin in the direction of the stairs. ‘Goodnight.’
Theo’s softly spoken ‘ Kalinyhta , Tiffany’ followed her all the way to her cabin.
* * *
‘Theodorus, you good-looking bastard.’
Theo laughed as the first of his London friends stepped on board from the tender. ‘Jealousy is a curse, Rufus,’ he said as they embraced.
Hugo, Ben, Fabian and Irving all followed to much backslapping and smack talk. ‘Aha,’ Rufus said, his gaze falling on Kelly, who was also there to greet their guests with a tray of beers. ‘This is Kelly,’ Theo introduced.
‘And what a treat you are, too,’ Rufus said, in full flirt mode.
For a guy who looked like he’d fallen from the ugly tree and smashed into every branch on the way down, Rufus always scored well with women. That could of course be because he had a lot of money, oodles of charm and one of those evenly modulated British accents that women apparently went gaga for.
The castle in Yorkshire didn’t hurt.
No one ever took a picture through his French doors though because the difference was, Rufus had made his fortune behind the scenes and was able to remain anonymous.
Rufus and Fabian were the only two unattached members of the party. Ben was married to Patrice. Hugo was married to David. And Irving had been with an American girl called Neve since last Christmas.
‘Dial it back, man,’ Theo chided good-naturedly. ‘Unless you want her giant Scottish husband who is up top readying the boat for departure to make your ball sack into a sporran.’
Rufus winced slightly and the other guys laughed as they each took a beer. ‘Could I take him?’ he asked Kelly conspiratorially.
She laughed. ‘Depends how fond you are of your ball sack, I guess.’
More male laughter as they all moved up to the main deck where Maria had laid out a fresh batch of baclava. ‘Tuck in,’ Kelly said. ‘Tiff will be here soon to give you the tour.’
The guys needed no further instruction, wolfing it down in five minutes flat as Simon bought up their bags from the tender.
But just the mention of her name pulled Theo’s stomach muscles taut AF.
Their paths hadn’t crossed since last night given the staff were now in guest mode, which meant they’d eaten breakfast in the crew mess and they’d been busy making last-minute preparations while he’d been plotting a rough course for island-hopping all the way to Santorini on the nav system.
But that didn’t mean he hadn’t been thinking about her non-fucking-stop since their tête-à-tête on deck last night.
Theo had never been particularly interested in the backstories of the women he’d taken to bed.
He took great pains to keep everything superficial, and yes, he knew that made him a kavliaris , but it wasn’t like he’d ever pretended otherwise.
Or that said women gave a crap about his backstory either.
When he was between the sheets, his sole focus was on sending his one-and-done away with a smile on her face.
And the same had been true for Tiffany. But then he’d woken to an empty bed, a head full of sexy memories and her scent all over his body, and he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her.
Had her Cinderella act been a challenge to his masculinity?
Maybe. Was he butthurt that she was the first woman ever who had done the walking?
Possibly. But then she’d turned up on the Nerida and he’d known the issue was much more complex.
Which had only been hammered home on the deck last night. Because not only had he wanted to know everything about her, but he’d wanted her to know everything about him.
And that was a first.
Not to mention how he’d jerked off to visions of her as a cowgirl complete with hat and fringed vest swirling a lasso around her head.
Was he proud of that? Not particularly. But this last twenty-four hours, this fucked-up, no-sex dare had felt like an especially heavy yoke around his neck.
Which, surprisingly, it hadn’t been. Out here on his boat, he actually hadn’t missed the merry-go-round of women or the constant paparazzi attention.
And then Tiffany had stepped on board and he was suddenly aware of every celibate hour of the last two months.
As if he’d conjured her from the febrile roil of his thoughts, Tiffany appeared just as the last dregs of the first beers had been chugged down, and Theo could suddenly feel the dull thud of his pulse everywhere.