Chapter Eight
‘WE’RE LEAVING FOR Athens in an hour,’ he said, later that morning, interrupting a long stretch of silence that had been seriously grating on Annie’s last nerve. Yet she hadn’t dared be the first one to break it. Not after the beach.
Sex with Theo had been paradigm shifting.
Wonderful, physically. Fulfilling and perfect and achingly good.
But it had also been complicated and awful, because of how it had been afterwards.
The accusation in his voice, the anger. She’d felt like a total inconvenience, and it was all she could do to remember the moment he’d pulled out of her, clearly without experiencing his own climax, and started tearing strips off her.
Except, he hadn’t been mad, he’d been confused and judgemental, and she’d felt like a child who’d been caught doing the wrong thing.
‘Annie, did you hear me?’
She glanced up at him slowly, then nodded.
‘The silent treatment?’ he said, the same scathing tone in his voice that made her feel like a misbehaving teenager.
‘Fine.’ She pasted a saccharine smile on her face. ‘Thank you for consulting me, by the way.’
He stared at her, obviously pissed. ‘Well, Annie, would you like to stay on this island another night, after what just happened?’
‘What just happened?’ He dragged a hand through his hair. ‘We had sex—isn’t that what you wanted?’
‘It’s what we both wanted.’
‘I’m not saying otherwise. But what about my virginity changes the fact we both knew what we were doing?’
‘I didn’t. You took away my ability to know and act accordingly.’
‘It’s just sex,’ she spat out.
‘Your first time is different.’
‘I never had you pegged for such a romantic.’
‘It’s not romance, it’s—’ But he faltered, and she knew she’d caught him out. ‘Just how it is.’
‘Oh, really? Was your first time some big, special, candlelit affair?’
He made a noise of dark amusement. ‘Hardly.’
‘So, what’s the problem? Why the double standards?’
‘Because you deserved better,’ he shouted, silencing her, so she blinked up at him, and he frowned, shaking his head, like he wanted to take the words back.
And was it little wonder? He was still so angry with her, angry enough to blackmail her into this marriage, and yet there he stood, admitting that she deserved better?
‘That’s why I didn’t sleep with you back then, Annie.
I wanted your first time to be special. I wanted you to understand that you were special.
I wanted you to know that I saw it, and would wait for you, that nothing mattered more to me than taking care of you.
And even though that was many years ago, and I feel very, very differently now, apparently, there is still a part of me that cares.
That wants to know you have what I believed you deserved in life, even when I have no interest in being the one to provide it. ’
The words took her breath away. They sucked the life from her. The very oxygen she needed to exist seemed to evaporate like dew on a leaf.
‘It was special,’ she whispered, because it had been.
Somehow, making love to Theo in the elemental, passionate ocean, the ancient, time-worn water washing over them, was like a baptism of sorts.
A cleaning of the slate—a new start. She stood up, a little uncertain, but also, driven by his honesty to be honest with him.
‘I cared about you, too, Theo. I know you don’t believe that, because of how—and why—everything with us ended. You asked why I’m a virgin?’
His jaw shifted as though he were grinding his teeth, but he nodded.
‘It’s because of you,’ she said, pressing a hand to his chest. ‘When I was eleven and you came to live next door, I thought you were the most beautiful person I’d ever seen.
When I was thirteen, I thought I was in love with you.
I have a whole notebook somewhere in my room with Annie Leonidas scrawled all over it.
’ Her smile was rueful, but Theo stood still, completely frozen to the spot.
‘When I was sixteen, I couldn’t get you out of my mind.
By the time I turned eighteen, I was yours for a song.
Do you know how long it took me to work up the courage to ask you to kiss me? ’
‘You were drunk.’
‘Yes. I thought it would give me courage, and it did.’
He stared down at her.
‘After that, I dated other guys. My parents set me up with the sons of some of their friends,’ she said, aware of the way his body tightened.
‘Suitable men,’ he said grimly.
She nodded, because that was exactly how they’d described the men to her.
Men who came from families like theirs. Old families, aristocratic and wealthy, with proud names and coats of arms. Annie had known for as long as she’d been alive that the expectation was to marry just such a man.
‘But I couldn’t get you out of my head. So, by twenty-one, you were the sum total of fantasies and crushes, the only man I’d ever wanted. And when you kissed me, I just knew.’
‘What did you know?’ His voice had a hard quality to it, despite the way she was opening her heart to him.
‘That I wanted you to be my first.’
‘You aren’t saying you’ve been waiting for me.’
‘No.’ Her lips twisted in a grimace. ‘After things with us ended, and…everything with my mum… I just wasn’t interested in dating. I’ve become quite reclusive,’ she admitted.
‘You should have told me.’
She bit into her lip. ‘I didn’t know how.’
He nodded, slowly, but when he reached out and pressed a finger to her chin, his touch was so gentle that his words, when he spoke, seemed totally jarring.
‘It doesn’t change anything, Annie. Sex is just sex to me, and you will always be who you became the morning you left.
I can’t forgive it. I don’t want to.’ He padded his thumb over her lower lip, evidently with no idea how hard she was finding it to breathe, much less remain upright.
‘You know why I left,’ she said, unevenly.
He dropped his hand away. ‘Yes.’ The word was laced with anger. ‘I understand your reasoning.’
‘You’re still so angry.’
A muscle jerked in his jaw. ‘I’m angry at myself, not you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I should have known better than to let it go so far. I have always been able to walk away—from anyone and anything. And then you…’
‘What?’ she asked, quickly.
‘You made me forget, for a while, that’s all.’
She wished she understood, but he’d always been so reluctant to speak freely, so cryptic in his answers. ‘Don’t you think we should talk about this?’ she asked.
His eyes ran over her face, and for a second she thought he might relent, but then, he shook his head, just once, but it was a death knell to any hopes she might have had of his opening up to her in a meaningful way.
‘There is no time. The plane will be here soon, and I have things to take care of before we leave. Pack your bag, Annie. Real life is calling.’
He was silent as the plane took off, and it did nothing to ease the stretching of her nerves. Annie felt like she was at sixes and sevens, with no idea which way was up. She knew only that she hadn’t wanted to leave the island.
She had a feeling she couldn’t shake that Theo was running away.
But why?
If it really was a case of ‘sex being just sex’, as he’d claimed, why should it be such a big deal?
Did he realise the contradictions in what he said?
One minute it was an easy, physical thing, the next, she deserved her first time to be ‘special’.
And what did that even mean? Did he think that having careful, slow sex in a bed with some other man would have been more special than what they’d done?
Irritation built inside of her, stretching like a rubber band, and yet she’d presumed it would stretch and then snap, eventually. She’d presumed that at some point, he’d look at her and say something, or reach for her, or they’d share a moment and things would return to a more normal footing.
But the flight was almost completely silent, as was the drive to his mansion, on the other side of town.
At some point during their honeymoon, all of Annie’s belongings had been relocated from her father’s to Theo’s, and she tried not to think about how that must have pained her dad.
And how Theo had probably enjoyed that knowledge.
Had probably organised it for that reason.
His hatred of her father—and late mother—was like a constant niggle in the back of her mind; so too her betrayal for being able to ignore it, and fall into the way of craving him, despite that.
When they’d made love, she’d thought the ocean was like a wiping clean of their past, a rebirth of sorts, but she’d been wrong. There was far too much water under the bridge for that.
He said she’d made him what he was. That her rejection was the reason he was so cold now, so famously ruthless. And for Annie? Theo had hurt her, too. Why hadn’t he understood that she’d had no choice? Why hadn’t he seen that her parents were acting out of love?
His resentment had scored marks deep in her heart.
Maybe it just wasn’t possible for either of them to move past that.
Maybe she was stupid to even hope.
But why would she hope? This was a temporary arrangement, the purpose of which was to rebuild her family’s company. Why did she need to heal their past? Was it just a case of wanting to know that Theo was alive, and no longer angry with her? Or was there something more at the heart of it?