Chapter 10
Tiffany spent the next fortnight on the boat trying to have as little contact with Theo as possible. She’d gone to bed that night, her legs so wobbly it was a wonder she hadn’t broken her goddamn ankle in those stilettos, and even now two weeks later, she couldn’t believe her audacity.
Her bravado.
Considering he’d already confessed what he’d wanted to do to her in her uniform, she’d been playing with fire.
But when he’d walked in with that tux fitting him like the gods on Mount Olympus had tailored it especially for him, looking as sexy as he had that night he had blown her brain at Ari and Kelsey’s wedding, it had put her straight back in his bed.
Or the hotel bed, anyway.
Which had only stoked the slow burn of having his eyes on her all week – on her mouth, on her bowtie, on the way her breasts were framed by the vest. Then he’d shrugged out of his jacket and her body had lit up, and he’d known it, which had made her cranky and irritable, but that hadn’t stopped him from his little strip tease. If anything, it had encouraged him.
Cocky Greek bastard.
And she’d been powerless to resist the show as he’d pulled on his bowtie and slowly rolled up the snowy cotton cuffs of his sleeves like he’d invented forearm porn.
Thank God for that smug, triumphant expression he’d been wearing all over his face at the conclusion or she might really have done something stupid.
Like challenge him to a game of strip poker until they were both naked and he did fuck her over the blackjack table despite all the reasons they shouldn’t.
Not least because he was her boss.
Yeah, that look had drilled into her brain and hit a major nerve, her knee-jerk reaction not exactly well thought out, but the point had been made. Sure, she was hot for him, but he wasn’t exactly immune to her either and she could bring him to his knees with relative ease.
Something they both seemed to silently acknowledge these past two weeks as they went about their business, interacting when required but keeping it to the barest of minimums. Which, logistically, hadn’t been that difficult.
They’d been docked at Flisvos Marina on the Athens waterfront since they’d dropped off five very happy Englishmen and Theo had spent a lot of his days attending to business.
A lot of meetings and appointments saw him coming and going, sometimes even spending the night in his downtown apartment rather than returning to the boat.
Tiffany tried not to think about if or who he might be entertaining in his apartment because it was none of her business.
But the thoughts sometimes crept in anyway, sitting very uncomfortably in the pit of her stomach.
Sure, Theo had seemed determined to stick to the celibacy route, but there was a helluva lot of fooling around that could be done, which would technically not see him in breach of the dare he’d made to Ari.
Like, if she had blown him in the saloon, strictly speaking, there would have been zero sex involved, right?
And if he’d stuck to the dare for the last two months, then he was probably more than ready to succumb to temptation. Especially after the rather prolonged tease of the week his guests were on the Nerida .
But as tempted as she was to see if Theo had been papped somewhere in Athens, she did not google his name.
She had to remember at the end of the day he was Theo Callisthenes, Greek tycoon/playboy who owned a superyacht and had made sleeping around an art form.
And she was second stew on said yacht who, yes, had slept with him one amazing night, but who now slept below deck, in a single bunk.
And if that didn’t bring it right back to basics, she didn’t know what did.
Yes, it had been fun – incredible, actually – but they were done.
Even if their chemistry still zipped and sparkled and she truly believed he felt it too, she had no desire to be a rich man’s plaything.
Available at Theo’s whim like his bloody superyacht.
Taking it out at his convenience then leaving it in the dock when he preferred more land-based pursuits.
Tiffany wasn’t dumb enough to set her heart on a guy who’d never been in a romantic relationship. Ever. Or who clearly had a wandering eye. She was not her mother.
So she’d kept her head down and attended to what little chores there were on the stationary boat.
Occasionally she went into Athens, sometimes by herself to explore, sometimes with the others, usually for lunch somewhere.
Once, she’d even met Kelsey, who was in the city overnight before she and her mother flew to London to see an eye specialist.
Her bestie had pumped her for all the juicy details about life on board the Nerida with Theo, but Tiffany had been unusually reticent about spilling any info.
Largely because she didn’t want to encourage Kelsey’s fever dream about besties getting all wifed up with brothers.
But also because talking about it made it a thing. And it was not a thing.
No matter how much Kelsey was rooting for it.
Mostly though, there was an enormous amount of free time. Tiffany didn’t understand why Theo didn’t just lock up the boat and call the staff back if and when he needed them, but she supposed when you had more money than God you could do that kind of thing.
She suspected it also said a lot about his life preferences.
It had been evident when they’d talked about his childhood growing up around islands and fishing boats that his love for the sea was ingrained, and although she’d never seen him anywhere other than a wedding and on the Nerida , she wondered if, deep down, it was a boat rather than a boardroom where he was most at home.
Not that she or anyone else was complaining. They were being paid well to keep a moored boat – that was used more by them than the owner – shipshape, so if Theo didn’t care, why should she? Especially when it gave her oodles of opportunity to work on her book.
She used the days to plot and plan and the nights to write, taking her laptop up to the sky deck in the evenings once the sun had sunk beneath the hills of Athens, taking some of the heat with it.
At that time of day, the sky was lit with tangerine and pink and streaked with clouds gilded in rose-gold and, with the Nerida moored in such a way that the stern was facing the open sea, she had a front row seat to the glory.
The rest of the crew tended to go indoors after dinner, retiring to the media room to watch a movie on the big-screen television, so she usually had the deck to herself, which she loved.
Up here she could sit cross-legged on a sun lounger and let the musings of the day percolate from her brain and out through her fingertips as the sky changed from dusk to twilight to night.
The recent island-hopping with Theo’s British friends had given her endless descriptive fodder for scenery, and her mind swirled with the vivid colours of her book as she rushed to get it all down.
Breathing life into the watery world of Astraon – where the stars shone from the ocean floor and mermaids, not moons, controlled the tides – was exciting and exhausting in equal measure, but weaving this tale that had been living in her head since she’d been a girl also felt necessary.
And Tiffany was pleased with her progress, time flying every night as her fingers tippy-tapped over the keyboard, until the pressure of words eased and she was spent.
Only then did she look up to find a hush had fallen over the marina and it was just her and the stars, although with all the light pollution from Athens, she could see precious few of them.
It was usually about now, as she was finishing up for the night, she heard Theo come on board – if he was spending the night on the yacht.
He never made much noise, but it was so quiet this late she could often hear the plaintive meow of the marina cat as it prowled around.
Her whole body would tense as she strained to hear his footfalls, wondering if he’d seek her out.
Wondering if he even knew she was up here.
He never had – phew! – and, as far as she knew, he went straight to his suite, but just knowing he was on the Nerida caused a frisson of awareness that followed her all the way to her bunk and into her dreams.
Sighing, she closed her laptop lid and reclined on the lounge a little, adjusting the messy topknot she’d shoved her hair in earlier a little higher.
She inhaled the still warm air. It smelled of salt and sea and the faintest whiff of the damp seaweed that gathered around the waterline of the harbour wall, and she felt at peace and so grateful and lucky to be able to call somewhere this beautiful home.
For now, anyway.
It was so far removed from where she came from, she had to pinch herself sometimes even if she did miss Balmain Downs where the aromas were very different.
Dust and cattle. Hay and leather. Eucalyptus and petrichor.
And the night skies were next level. No light pollution out there where stars hung in the outback sky like crystal diamantes dripping from chandeliers and the cloudy shimmer of the Milky Way shone vibrantly luminescent, like thousands of glow worms in the night.
But she hadn’t missed seeing her father every day.
Or the tension between the two of them, never far from the surface.
Or the resentment from her brothers, who she loved but who didn’t understand why she couldn’t just get over it .
Get over her father making her complicit in his infidelity and forever poisoning Tiffany’s relationship with her mother.
Get over letting Mikey leave without any support or safety net because he wanted to make art and love men, not wrangle cattle and eat dust all his life.