‘Nice of you to join us, Despinis Green,’ he said. His tone was even, but his dark brown eyes resembled bullets waiting to be fired at her. ‘Take a seat.’
Utterly shaken to see him there, she blinked rapidly and forced herself to inhale. Helios was the palace museum’s director, but his involvement in the day-to-day running of it was minimal. In the four months she’d worked there, he hadn’t once attended the weekly Tuesday staff meeting.
She’d known when she’d stolen back into the palace late last night that she would have to face him soon, but she’d hoped for a few more days’ grace. Why did he have to appear today, of all days? The one time she’d overslept and looked awful.
Unfortunately the only chair available was directly opposite him. It made a particularly loud scraping sound over the wooden floor as she pulled it back and sat down, clasping her hands tightly on her lap so as not to betray their tremors. Greta, one of the other curators and Amy’s best friend on the island, had the seat next to her. She placed a comforting hand over hers and squeezed gently. Greta knew everything.
In the centre of the table was the tray of bougatsas Amy had hoped for. Three remained, but she found her appetite gone and her heart thundering so hard that the ripples spread to her belly and made her nauseous.
Greta poured her a cup of coffee. Amy clutched it gratefully.
‘We were discussing the artefacts we’re still waiting on for my grandfather’s exhibition,’ Helios said, looking directly at her.
The Agon Palace Museum was world-famous, and as such attracted curators from across the world, resulting in a medley of first languages amongst the staff. To simplify matters, English was the official language spoken when on duty.
Amy cleared her throat and searched her scrambled brain for coherence. ‘The marble statues are on their way from Italy as we speak and should arrive in port early tomorrow morning.’
‘Do we have staff ready to welcome them?’
‘Bruno will message me when they reach Agon waters,’ she said, referring to one of the Italian curators accompanying the statues back to their homeland. ‘As soon as I hear from him we’ll be ready to go. The drivers are on call. Everything is in hand.’
‘And what about the artefacts from the Greek museum?’
‘They will arrive here on Friday.’
Helios knew all this. The exhibition was his pet project and they’d worked closely together on it.
She’d first come to Agon in November, as part of a team from the British Museum delivering artefacts on loan to the Agon Palace Museum. During those few days on the island she’d struck up a friendship with Pedro, the Head of Museum. Unbeknownst to her at the time, he’d been impressed with her knowledge of Agon, and doubly impressed with her PhD thesis on Minoan Heritage and its Influences on Agon Culture. Pedro had been the one to suggest her for the role of curator for the Jubilee Exhibition.
The offer had been a dream come true, and a huge honour for someone with so little experience. Only twenty-seven, what Amy lacked in experience she made up for with enthusiasm.
Amy had learned at the age of ten that the happy, perfect family she’d taken for granted was not as she’d been led to believe. She wasn’t what she’d been led to believe. Her dad was indeed her biological father, but her brothers were only half-brothers. Her mum wasn’t her biological mother. The woman who’d actually given birth to her had been from the Mediterranean island of Agon.
Half of Amy’s DNA was Agonite.
Since that bombshell discovery, everything about Agon had fascinated her. She’d devoured books on its Minoan history and its evolution into democracy. She’d thrilled at stories of the wars, the passion and ferocity of its people. She’d studied maps and photographs, staring so intently at the island’s high green mountains, sandy beaches and clear blue seas that its geography had become as familiar as her own home town.
Agon had been an obsession.
Somewhere in its history was her history, and the key to understanding who she truly was. To have the opportunity to live there on a nine-month secondment had been beyond anything she could have hoped. It had been as if fate was giving her the push she needed to find her birth mother. Somewhere in this land of half a million people was the woman who had borne her.
For seventeen years Amy had thought about her, wondering what she looked like—did she look like her?—what her voice sounded like, what regrets she might have. Was she ashamed of what she’d done? Surely she was? How could anyone live through what Neysa Soukis had done and not feel shame?
She’d been easy to locate, but how to approach her...? That had always been the biggest question. Amy couldn’t just turn up at her door; it would likely be slammed in her face and then she would never have her answers. She’d considered writing a letter but had failed to think of what she could say other than: Hi, do you remember me? You carried me for nine months and then dumped me. Any chance you could tell me why?
Greek social media, which Greta had been helping her with, had proved fruitful. Neysa didn’t use it, but through it Amy had discovered a half-brother. Tentative communications had started between them. She had to hope he would act as a conduit between them.
‘Have you arranged transport for Friday?’ Helios asked, the dark eyes hard, the bowed, sensual mouth tight.
‘Yes. Everything is in hand,’ she said for a second time, as a sharp pang reached through her as she realised she would never feel those lips on hers again. ‘We’re ahead of schedule.’
‘You’re confident that come the Gala the exhibition will be ready?’
His voice was casual but there was a hardness there, a scepticism she’d never had directed at her before.
‘Yes,’ she answered, gritting her teeth to stop her hurt and anger leeching out.
He was punishing her. She should have answered one of his calls. She’d taken the coward’s way out and escaped from the palace in the hope that a few days away from him would give her the strength she needed to resist him. The best way—the only way—of beating her craving for him would be by going cold turkey.
Because resist him she must. She couldn’t be the other woman. She couldn’t.
But she hadn’t imagined that seeing him again would physically hurt.
It did. Dreadfully.
Before her job had been rubber-stamped, Helios had interviewed her himself. The Jubilee Exhibition was of enormous personal importance to him and he’d been determined that the curator with the strongest affinity to his island would get the job.
Luckily for her, he’d agreed with Pedro that she was the perfect candidate. He’d told her some months later, when they’d been lying replete in each other’s arms, that it had been her passion and enthusiasm that had convinced him. He’d known she would give the job the dedication it deserved.
Meeting Helios... He’d been nothing as she’d imagined: as far from the stuffy, pompous, ‘entitled’ Prince she’d expected him to be as was possible.
Her attraction to him had been immediate, a chemical reaction over which she’d had no control. It had taken her completely off guard. Yet she hadn’t thought anything of it. He was a prince, after all, both powerful and dangerously handsome. Never in her wildest dreams had she thought the attraction would be reciprocated. But it had been.
He’d been much more involved with the exhibition than she’d anticipated, and she’d often found herself working alone with him, her longing for him an ever-growing fire inside her that she didn’t have a clue how to handle.
Affairs in the workplace were a fact of life, even in the studious world of antiquities, but they were not something she’d ever been tempted by. She loved her work so much it took her entire focus. Her work gave her purpose. It grounded her. And working with the ancient objects of her own people, seeing first-hand how techniques and social mores had evolved over the years, was a form of proof that the past didn’t have to be the future. Her birth mother’s actions didn’t have to define her, even if she did feel the taint of her behaviour like an invisible stain.
Relationships of any real meaning had always been out of the question for her. How could she commit to someone if she didn’t know who she truly was? So to find herself feeling such an attraction, and to the man who was effectively her boss, who just happened to be a prince... It was no wonder her emotions had been all over the place.
Helios had had no such inhibitions.
Long before he’d laid so much as a finger on her he’d undressed her with his dark liquid eyes, time and again. Until one late afternoon, when she’d been talking to him in the smaller of the exhibition rooms, she on one side, he on the other, and he’d gone from complete stillness to fluid motion in the beat of a heart. He’d walked to her with long strides and pulled her into his arms.
And that had been it. She’d been his for the taking. And he’d been hers.
Their three months together had been a dream. Theirs had been a physically intense but surprisingly easy relationship. There had been no expectations. No inhibitions. Just passion.
Walking away should have been easy.
The eyes that had undressed her a thousand times now flickered to Pedro, giving silent permission for him to move the discussion on to general museum topics. There might be a special exhibition being organised, but the museum itself still needed to be run to its usual high standards.