For this, Helios was grateful. He was determined that whoever he selected would have no illusions that their marriage would be anything but one of duty.
‘You think...?’ he asked idly, while his skin crawled at the thought of dancing another waltz with any more of the ladies in attendance, no matter how beautiful they were. Beautiful women were freely available wherever he went. Women of substance less so.
He glanced at his watch. Another couple of hours and this would be over. He would call Amy and she would come to him.
Now, she was a woman of substance.
A frisson of tension raced through him as he recalled their earlier exchange. He’d never seen her angry before. There’d been a possessiveness to that anger too. She’d been jealous.
Usually when a lover showed the first sign of possessiveness it meant it was time for him to move on. In Amy’s case he’d found it highly alluring. Her jealousy had strangely delighted him.
Helios had long suspected that she kept parts of herself hidden from him. She gave her body to him willingly, and revelled in their lovemaking as much as he did, but the inner workings of her clever mind remained a mystery.
She’d been different from his usual lovers from the very start. Beautiful and fiercely intelligent, she held his attention in a way no other woman ever had. Her earlier anger hadn’t repelled him, as it would have done coming from anyone else; it had intrigued him, peeling away another layer of the brilliant, passionate woman he couldn’t get enough of. When he was with her he could forget everything and live for the moment, for their hunger.
The seriousness of his grandfather’s illness clung to him like a barnacle, but when he was with Amy it became tamed, was less of a thudding beat of pain and doom. When he was with her he could cast aside the great responsibilities being heir to the throne brought and simply be a man. A lover. Her lover. She was a constant thrum in his blood. He had no intention of giving her up—marriage or no marriage.
‘Has anyone else caught your attention?’ Theseus asked him.
‘No.’
Helios had always known he would have to marry. There had never been any question about it. He had no personal feelings about it one way or another. Marriage was an institution within which to produce the next set of Kalliakis heirs, and he was fortunate to be in a position where he could choose his own bride, albeit within certain constraints. His parents hadn’t been so lucky. Their marriage had been arranged before his mother had been out of nappies. It had been a disaster. His only real hope for his own marriage was that it be nothing like theirs.
Princess Catalina, currently dancing with a British prince, caught his eye. She really was incredibly beautiful. Refined. Her breeding and lineage shone through. Her brother was an old school friend of his, and their meals together in Denmark had shown her to be a woman of great intelligence as well as beauty, if a little serious for his taste.
She had none of Amy’s irreverence.
Still, Catalina would make an excellent queen and he’d wasted enough time as it was. He should have selected a wife months ago, when the gravity of his grandfather’s condition had been spelt out to him and his brothers.
Catalina had been raised in a world of protocol, just as he had. She had no illusions or expectations of love. If he chose her he knew theirs would be a marriage of duty. Nothing more, nothing less. No emotional entanglements. Exactly as he wanted.
Making a family with her would be no hardship either. He was certain that with some will on both their parts a bond would form. Chemistry should ensue too. Not the same kind of chemistry he shared with Amy, of course. That would be impossible to replicate.
A memory of Amy heading barefoot down the dimly lit passageway, her clothes and towel huddled to her, her dark blonde hair damp and swinging across her golden back, her bare bottom swaying, flashed into his mind. She’d been as haughty as any princess in that moment, and he couldn’t wait to punish her for her insolence. He would bring her to the brink of orgasm so many times she would be begging him for release.
But this was neither the time nor the place to imagine Amy’s slender form naked in his arms.
With titanium will, he dampened down the fire spreading through his loins and fixed his attention on the women before him. For the next few hours Amy had to be locked away in his mind to free up his concentration for the job in hand.
Before he could bring himself to dance again he beckoned a footman closer, so he could take another glass of champagne and drink a large swallow.
Theseus eyed him shrewdly. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You have the face of a man at a wine-tasting event discovering all the bottles are corked.’
Helios fixed a smile on his face. ‘Better?’
‘Now you look like a mass murderer.’
‘Your support is, as always, invaluable.’ Draining his glass, he got to his feet. ‘Considering the fact I’m not the only Prince expected to marry and produce heirs, I suggest you get off your backside and mingle with the beautiful ladies in attendance too.’
He smirked at Theseus’s grimace. While Helios accepted his fate with the steely backbone his upbringing and English boarding school education had instilled in him, he knew his rebellious brother looked forward to matrimony with all the enthusiasm of a zebra entering a lion enclosure.
Later, as he danced with Princess Catalina, holding her at a respectable distance so their bodies didn’t touch—and having no compulsion to bridge the gap—his thoughts turned to his grandfather.
The King was not in attendance tonight, as he was saving his limited energy for the Jubilee Gala itself. It was for that great man, who had raised Helios and his brothers since Helios was ten, that he was prepared to take the final leap and settle down.
For his grandfather he would do anything.
Soon the crown would pass to him—sooner than he had wanted or expected—and he needed a queen by his side. He wanted his grandfather to move on to the next life at peace, in the knowledge that the succession of the Kalliakis line was secure. If time was kind to them his grandfather might just live long enough to see Helios take his vows.
CHAPTER TWO
WHERE THE HELL was she?
Helios had been back in his apartment for fifteen minutes and Amy wasn’t answering his calls. According to the head of security, she had left the palace. Her individual passcode showed that she’d left at seven forty-five; around the time he and his brothers had been welcoming their guests.
Trying her phone one more time, he strolled through to his bar and poured himself a large gin. The call went straight to voicemail. He tipped the neat liquid down his throat and, on a whim, carried the bottle through to his study.
Security monitors there showed pictures from the cameras that ran along the connecting passageways. Only Helios himself had access to the cameras’ feeds.
He peered closely at the screen for camera three, which faced the reinforced connecting door. There was something on the floor he couldn’t make out clearly...
Striding to it and unbolting the door, he stared down at a box. Crammed inside were bottles of perfume, jewellery, books and mementos. All the gifts he had given Amy during their time together as lovers. Crammed, unwanted, into a box and left on his doorstep.
A burst of fury tore through him, so sudden and so powerful it consumed him in one.
Before he had time to think what he was doing he raised his foot and brought it slamming down onto the box. Glass shattered and crunched beneath him, the sound echoing in the silence.
For an age he did nothing else but inhale deeply, trembling with fury, fighting the urge to smash what was left of the box’s contents into smithereens. Violence had been his father’s solution to life’s problems. It was something Helios had always known resided inside him too but, unlike in his father’s case, it was an aspect of himself he controlled.
The sudden fury that had just overtaken him was incomprehensible.
* * *
Acutely aware of how late she was, Amy slammed her apartment door shut and hurried down the stairs that led to the palace museum. Punching in her passcode, she waited for the green light to come on, shoved the door open and stepped into the private quarters of the museum, an area out of bounds to visitors.
Gazing longingly at the small staff kitchen as she passed it, she crossed her fingers in the hope that the daily pastries hadn’t already been eaten and the coffee already drunk. The bougatsas, freshly made by the palace chefs and brought to them every morning, had become her favourite food in the whole world.
Her mouth filled with moisture as she imagined the delicate yet satisfying filo-based pastries. She hoped there were still some custard-filled ones left. She’d hardly eaten a thing in the past couple of days, and now, after finally managing to get a decent night’s sleep, she’d woken up ravenous. She’d also slept right through her alarm clock, and the thought made her legs work even quicker as she climbed another set of stairs that led up to the boardroom.
‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ she said, rushing through the door, a hand flat on her breathless chest. ‘I over...’ Her words tailed off as she saw Helios, sitting at the head of the large round table.
His elbows rested on the table, the tips of his fingers rubbing together. He was freshly shaven and, even casually dressed as he was, in a dark green long-sleeved crew-neck top, he exuded an undeniable power. And all the force of that power was at that very moment aimed at her.