Chapter Four
WILLA WAS RUSHING AGAIN. Or trying to. But Heathrow was the busiest airport in Europe. Apparently, it averaged around a quarter of a million passengers a day. And right now, it felt as if most of them were trying to get to her boarding gate.
It was the second time in a little over a week that she had found herself at the beck and call of Ares Konstantinou. Although, to be fair, it was Larry who had summoned her the first time.
But Ares was still the reason she’d had to hail a taxi and hotfoot it across London that day, she thought irritably.
Hot was apt. She felt her cheeks tingle, remembering her flushed face and general air of coming apart at the seams as she’d walked into the meeting room and seen Ares. But he seemed to have that effect on her.
She replayed the moment when she’d agreed to stay on as his lawyer.
At the time she had told herself that the taut, quivering thing inside her was fury.
It was her fury with him, and with herself for giving someone power over her that was making it hard to breathe, making her skin prickle.
And by power, she meant the power to hurt her.
It was one of the reasons she’d found it so hard to date.
That need to keep a part of herself separate, hidden.
But Ares had broken through her firewalls.
His touch had ignited a spark, and suddenly she was a forest fire burning out of control.
It was like trying to hold back a tsunami with her hands.
She hadn’t known it was possible to feel how Ares made her feel.
But perhaps her overuse of natural-disaster metaphors hinted at what was to come, she thought sourly, because afterwards he’d got up and left while she slept. As if none of what happened had mattered. As if she didn’t matter.
Which was pretty humbling. Or at least humbling enough to immunise her against the pull of his dark eyes.
Except for that moment when she felt as if it was going to start up again and she’d been so terrified that he might see her body’s response.
That it was as visible from space as the bright lights of Las Vegas.
She shivered. And now she was going to be stuck in Athens with him.
But twenty minutes later, the memory of that prickly, air-choked meeting at Milner’s was long forgotten as she tried to wedge her bag into an overhead locker.
It was the first week of the school holidays, and the flight to Athens was rammed with parents and children.
In fact, she might be the only single passenger on the flight.
Then again, all the working people would be in business class.
Where she would have been too if Ares had not flexed those metaphorical muscles of his.
As if to demonstrate that he was indeed calling the shots, he had changed the time of their meeting twice, and the second time the only available flight out of London to Athens had one seat available.
Which was why she was flying economy rather than stretching out in business class. She had hoped to work on the prenup, but it would take more than noise-cancelling headphones to block out the excited first-day-of-vacation hum, and instead she had decided to try and read her book.
And yet despite the noise, and the crying that was no doubt the result of too little sleep and too much sugar, she couldn’t help envying her fellow passengers.
They were going on holiday. To have fun in the sun. Whereas she would be spending two days in the company of a man who had only hired her out of some deranged sense of revenge.
The one positive was that Larry was delighted. ‘This is a great opportunity for you to be seen in the right circles. The Konstantinou name will open doors for you.’
Which was undoubtedly true, but frankly she would rather be slamming the door in Ares’s beautiful, arrogant face.
‘In you go. Go on. Mummy’s coming.’
Willa glanced up and smiled mechanically at a tired-looking woman holding a baby in a sling and the hand of a sticky toddler who was staring at her curiously.
It was around the twenty-minute mark into the flight when the little boy, who was called James, dropped his car off the side of the drop-down tray for the twentieth time since take-off.
‘Here, let me.’ Leaning forward, she picked up the car and held it out to him. His mother, who had the baby sitting on her lap, had picked it up the previous nineteen times, and Willa had wanted to help but was worried it would look a little pointed.
The woman smiled. ‘Thank you. Say thank you, James.’
The little boy mumbled something, then hid his face. His mother screwed up her face apologetically
‘I’m sorry. You were probably hoping to sit back and relax with your book.’
‘It’s fine.’ Willa smiled reassuringly. ‘It was an impulse buy, and it’s not very gripping.’
‘I booked this holiday on impulse. At half past three in the morning when this one had me up in the night.’ The woman grimaced as the baby tugged at her hair. ‘Sleep deprivation makes you do crazy things.’
Willa laughed. ‘You’re making memories. That’s not crazy. And going on holiday on your own with a toddler and a baby is impressive.’
The woman laughed. ‘Oh, I’m not on my own. My husband’s just over there’—she nodded across the aisle—‘with this one’s twin sister.’ She pressed a kiss on top of the baby’s downy head.
‘You have twins.’ Willa glanced back to where a man who was the spitting image of James was clutching an identical blond baby. ‘My younger sisters are triplets.’
‘Wow! Triplets.’ The woman’s eyes widened comically. She looked both admiring and appalled. ‘Your mum must be a legend.’
Willa felt her body tense. But obviously this stranger didn’t know her back story. Didn’t know that Meg Hamilton’s tragic, early death had turned her into a local legend back home.
But like all legends, the facts had been made to fit the fiction.
Her mother was a composite of other people’s memories and observations, the majority of which were based on lies they had been told and unwittingly believed.
Her father, Robert, was the only person who knew Meg, the real Meg, and she couldn’t bear to ask him, to hear more about the woman who had deceived him and left him with the ultimate rock-and-a-hard-place choice: to tell the truth about his wife and be revealed as a cuckold, or keep her secret and be forced to raise another man’s child as his own.
He had picked the latter because he was a good man. But that wasn’t to say he had no regrets, and she couldn’t bear to watch them play out on his face or hear them in his voice. It was why she had left home and not gone back.
As for Amber, she had inherited Willa when she was ten years old. She wasn’t a wicked stepmother, but the triplets were her focus, and ironically, she was worried that Willa had a special place in Robert’s heart because of Meg dying.
Willa gave a small gasp of surprise as the baby launched herself into her lap. She clutched at Willa’s shoulder as her mother tried to lift her off.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ the mother said. ‘I can’t believe she did that. She can be tricky with people she doesn’t know, but you’re obviously a natural.’
Ignoring the sting of pain that sentence produced, Willa smiled. ‘I’m glad I can help. And on a selfish note, it’s good for me too. Babies are the best distraction.’
The woman frowned. ‘Are you scared of flying?’
She wasn’t someone who chatted to perfect strangers about her private life, but suddenly Willa felt the oddest desire to share why she needed to be distracted.
To explain that her anxiety had nothing to do with flying and everything to do with what was waiting for her in some glittering, high-rise office in Athens.
Or rather who.
Because that was why her stomach was performing somersaults. It was the thought of having to spend time with Ares.
She wasn’t afraid of him. She’d worked with other men who had made her feel uncomfortable.
Seen for the wrong reasons. Those men with their inappropriate and overstepping attention were the reason she’d started wearing her mother’s ring on her hand instead of around her neck.
But with Ares, it was less about his behaviour than hers.
She didn’t like how being in his orbit made her feel so out of control.
So pagan.
The remaining two hours of the flight passed with surprising speed, and Willa was shocked to feel the wheels hitting the runway at Athens airport, but not as shocked as when she stepped through the open door.
After the air-conditioned chill of the plane, the heat was almost solid to the touch and the dazzlingly bright sunlight had her reaching into her bag to find her sunglasses.
She nipped to the restroom so that she could apply some sunscreen to her face and tidy her hair, but everything else could wait until she arrived at the hotel.
By the time she emerged, the queue for passport control had shrunk to a handful of people and she felt a sudden frisson of excitement when she stepped out of the terminal back into the sunlight.
Could she smell the sea? Almost certainly not, but the air smelled different to the London air. Or maybe her senses were on high alert.
Now all she had to do was find a taxi.
‘Ms Hamilton?’
She turned, frowning to find a tall, grey-haired man with wire-rimmed glasses standing behind her. Next to him were two other thick-set men with identical dark suits and blank expressions.
‘My name is Demetrios Kyriakos. I work for Mr Konstantinou. Welcome to Athens. If you would follow me, we have a car waiting.’ Sensing her confusion, he frowned. ‘I spoke to your PA, Maggie. She said she would let you know.’
At that moment, Willa felt her phone buzz repeatedly as her wireless provider changed networks and message after message tumbled into her inbox. Including one from Maggie.
Konstantinou car to collect you at the airport. ?