Chapter Six
IT WAS A summer trip to the beach, a rare escape from their landlocked village for Theo’s hard-working family.
The sun shone in a sky of endless blue, the golden sand warm beneath their feet.
Together the family built a sandcastle, decorating the walls with shells and digging a moat around it, along with a canal to let in the incoming waves.
Theo’s younger sister gave squeals of delight as every wave after wave flowed in, filling the moat surrounding their sandcastle, before draining back into the sea.
And when that novelty wore off, Theo and his sister played in the shallows, following schools of tiny fish while their parents took a break under a tent set up on the shore.
It was a perfect summer day.
The change came almost imperceptibly at first. A subtle shift in the weather, the breeze changing direction and turning gusty, stirring gentle waves into whitecaps. Laughter from swimmers turned to whoops, some of delight, some of shock as the waves built.
Theo’s father was the first in their family to react. ‘Theo, Helena,’ he called, rising from his chair, ‘it’s time to come out.’
Theo agreed. They were still only in the shallows, but a sudden undertow was sucking at his legs. He turned to relay the message to his sister in case she hadn’t heard, when he saw a wave break behind her, knocking her off her feet and tumbling her into the wash.
‘Helena!’ he screamed, bracing himself against the crashing wave before surging through the water to reach his sister.
Until just a moment before Helena had been a scant few feet away.
But a few feet might well have been light years away.
The sea was now a mess of white froth and tumbled sand, his sister nowhere to be seen.
The next wave caught him unawares, sending him sprawling.
He felt something brush past his arm—Helena!—and he made a desperate lunge for her, but she slipped away, sucked in the backwash. He emerged, gasping from the water, catching a glimpse of his sister being dragged out.
He struck out in his novice freestyle, battling to keep his head above water, struggling to keep her in his sights, desperate to reach her. Frantic.
‘Helena!’ he cried.
But despite his calls and his efforts, he couldn’t reach her. He couldn’t find her.
He couldn’t save her…
‘Shh, it’s okay.’
He was suddenly aware of the warm press of hands at his shoulders.
He was aware of the soothing voice through the pain of his loss.
A calming voice that made no sense. It was at odds with his memory—of his father pulling him half-drowned from the sea, laying him on the sand where Theo had retched his stomach out, as much from the seawater he’d swallowed as the knowledge that he’d failed his sister.
‘It’s okay.’ The words permeated the thickness in his mind, yet in an accent that didn’t sound like anyone he knew. Not his father who’d plucked him from the sea. A woman, yet not his mother.
Sophia, he thought. It made no sense but it had to be Sophia.
Who else could it be but his wife saying soothing words, blotting out memories of the beach tragedy as she had always done?
And the nightmare receded, his jagged breathing eased, as he let himself drift at the comforting stroke of her hands on his arms, at her calming perfume coiling into his senses.
Until something snagged with the sensuality of his dream. A hairline crack in the perfection that jarred.
Because Sophia’s perfume had been heady and sensual, rich with the spices of the silk route.
Whereas this scent—this scent was citrus and fresh.
And Sophia?
Sophia was gone.
And what started as a hairline crack grew into a fracture, shattering his dreamlike state and jolting him into wakefulness.
His eyes snapped open. It was dark but he was fully awake. He saw her face—Isabella’s face—close to his, as she murmured soothing words and heaven turned into hell.
He roared into the darkened room, rearing upright in the bed, pulling the sheet over his body with one hand, seizing one of her wrists with the other.
He snapped on the bedside light. She whimpered as she scuttled from the bed as far as she could, as far as she could go with one wrist ensnared. ‘You frightened me.’
The colour in her cheeks was high, her hair was mussed from sleep, and had her lips always been that plump and inviting?
Her candy-striped pyjama shorts showed off her smooth-skinned legs.
Her tiny lace camisole revealed too much the fullness of her breasts, not to mention the pointed peaks of her nipples.
He tore his eyes away, half wishing he’d left the light off so he couldn’t notice.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘You scared me.’
‘Tell me what you were playing at?’
‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’
‘Answer the question!’
‘You were having a nightmare. You were calling out. I was worried about you.’ She looked down at her wrist, still encircled by his long-fingered hand. ‘Are you going to let me go or are you going to hold onto me all night.’
He was in two minds, his thoughts in turmoil.
All he knew was that his dream had turned into a living nightmare, and he couldn’t get out of bed.
He was naked beneath the sheet, memories of Sophia turning him hard.
Finding a woman in his bed wearing scant clothing when he was in such a state was next-level hell.
She licked her lips, as if his hesitation was in her favour, her eyes traversing his naked chest as if she was sizing him up. ‘Because if you want me to stay…?’
He flung her hand away.
‘Don’t you realise how dangerous that was coming into my bedroom—where it could have ended up? What it might have cost you?’
‘I was worried about you,’ she said, a challenge clear in her voice. ‘You were calling out.’
He glared at her, hating her for reminding him of the loss of his younger sister.
Hating himself more for letting her witness his weakness.
And then there was his mad decision to sleep commando.
He’d expected the Princess to try to escape—he’d improvised alarms on the doors and windows in case she tried to make a run for it.
The last thing he’d expected was for her to ambush him in his own bedroom. He growled at his lack of foresight.
‘You acted foolishly, Princess.’
‘What else was I supposed to do—leave you to shout the house down?’
‘And if I had been less ethical and found you in my bed and taken advantage of you, how would you be feeling now?’
She blinked, her lips curling into a wicked smile. ‘Satisfied, I hope.’
‘Vlammeni!’ he said, hitting the heel of one hand against his brow.
If the dossier he’d been provided was accurate, the Princess had fled the castle an innocent.
He didn’t need to know why or how—he didn’t much care—all he cared about was bringing her home in the same state.
‘You know nothing about what happens between a man and a woman. Your actions were reckless. I expected more of you, Princess.’
She flung back her head, setting the ends of her hair in motion.
Platinum-blonde hair now that she’d washed the colour from it.
For once it wasn’t tied back in a ponytail, allowing the waves to dance around her face, the curled tendrils, still damp, brushing over her chest, over the full breasts that swelled and swayed under her camisole.
He swallowed. He really hadn’t needed to notice that. He averted his eyes.
‘Oh, I know more than you think I do.’
‘The hell you do!’ He was angry with her. But he was angrier with himself for noticing her hair. Her breasts. And he was angry that she no longer looked like a recalcitrant teenager now that she’d washed the veritable rainbow from her hair, because now she looked like a woman.
All woman.
‘What do you think I’ve been doing these last few weeks?
There have been plenty of men willing to educate me.
There was this cool surfer guy called Luke from Bondi, who had sun-bleached hair and big blue eyes, and his abs—OMG his abs!
You should have seen them. And then there was the Spanish barista, Mateo, from the coffee bar around the corner from Erin’s apartment. He was seriously hot. Oh, but then—’
He held out one hand to stop her. So much for getting her home unharmed and unscathed. But if the Princess had made the most of her freedom and was no longer the innocent she’d been painted, he didn’t need to know. He didn’t want to know. ‘But then nothing! I don’t want to hear this.’
‘I’m just saying I know more—’
It was his turn to cut her off. ‘And I said I don’t want to hear it. Save it for your girlfriends back home.’
Her chin jutted up and out. ‘And just when am I going to have a chance to talk to these so-called friends of mine? Rafael will lock me up like a prisoner the moment you deliver me back into his clutches. Right up until the time he trusses me up like a turkey and sends me off to marry his crony.’
‘You’re being melodramatic again, Princess.’
‘I’m being honest! This will happen! Do you know how hard it was for me to escape the palace? I might as well have been under house arrest. It was a miracle I managed to get away.’
‘How did you get away?’
She shrugged. ‘I pretended to be one of the cleaners, heading home to the village at the end of the day. All the women were wearing shawls. Nobody at the gate bothers to look at ID on the way out.’
Theo nodded. So security at the palace had been lax. So different from the story that he’d been told of her being spirited out the palace by a gang of enablers. He imagined that someone would have paid for that lapse and that things would be very different now.
‘He’ll make it impossible for me to so much as breathe once you take me home.
Is that what you want for me? To be made a prisoner in my own country before he marries me off to his creepy friend.
At least here, I’m free to make my own choices and my own friends.
’ She shrugged. ‘And at least I had the chance to meet a few decent men while I was in Australia.’
He shook his head. He’d heard enough. He had a job to do, and he intended to do it. ‘Get back to your room. Get some sleep.’ One of them might as well sleep tonight, and he knew damned well it wasn’t going to be him.
She tilted her head to one side, her expression turning coquettish as she ran her teeth over her bottom lip. Her full, pink, bottom lip. ‘Are you really sure you want me to go?’
‘Get out!’
She straightened her shoulders and flicked back her hair and damn if the action didn’t make her breasts sway again. ‘Then I’ll go. But I’ll keep an ear out in case you need me again.’
He growled. ‘Go!’ Wishing she would.
He watched her leave. God, he could have had her and ruined his business in the process.
But still he was unable to tear his eyes from the low-slung shorty pyjamas swaying with her hips.
She was trying to be provocative; he knew that.
She was trying to get under his skin. He pulled on a pair of boxer shorts—he wasn’t getting surprised again—lay down and punched his pillow.
The trouble was, she was succeeding.
But tomorrow.
Tomorrow he would be done with her and tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.
So that had been a revelation. Izzy padded slowly up the stairs to her room, her senses still buzzing at what had transpired.
She’d been lying in bed for what seemed like hours, trying to build up the courage to sneak down into Theo’s room and see if he might welcome her company.
But what had seemed a good plan in theory, was proving harder to carry out in real life.
She’d been kidding herself dreaming up her crazy plan. What did she really know about seducing men?
The first time she’d heard Theo cry out, she’d thought she’d imagined it and it must be just another sound generated by the winds, but then it came again, and again.
Sounds of distress and panic and insufferable pain, and it had been compassion that had led her feet down the stairs.
She’d stood at his open door a few moments to see if he’d calm naturally, but he twisted in his sheets, producing sounds like a wounded animal.
She knew better than to wake someone having a nightmare, but she could soothe him.
She drew closer, sitting on the side of the bed, murmuring words of comfort, stroking his fevered skin.
Firm skin over corded muscles. Her fingers drank him in, even as she continued to whisper soft words.
A sliver of light through the blinds silhouetted his body, highlighting his strong chest and flat belly leading to the tangled sheet below.
And she’d wondered—what if she had found the courage to descend the stairs? Could her plan have worked?
Theo was calming, his movements less frantic, his breathing steadier. ‘It’s okay,’ she’d whispered one more time close to his ear, and suddenly all hell had broken loose.
He’d been angry. He hadn’t welcomed her with open arms. But he hadn’t been unaffected by her either.
And that was encouraging.
Izzy wasn’t about to give up her plans to get Theo onside just yet.