Page 12 of Reclaimed By His Billion-Dollar Ring

She is dominating my thoughts....my desires...

The frown cleared from his face. That was hardly a problem—only a challenge.

A challenge he would meet gladly.

Determinedly.

Oh, she could freeze him out all she liked, but he knew better than to think he could not unfreeze her. Reclaim the ardent, eager lover he had known, who had given herself so rapturously to him and would once more.

He was certain of it.

He settled back more comfortably into the deep leather car seat.

The only question was how and when to make his next move.

Calanthe set her coffee cup back on the tray, nestling back against her pillows. She was indulging in breakfast in bed, having been out late the night before. And the night before that. She was keeping busy—very busy—socialising to the hilt. Far more than she usually did when she was in Athens with her father.

Last night she’d been out to dinner with Yannis, one of her regular ‘swains’, as she wryly called the well-heeled young men who moved in her father’s elite circles and would happily be a lot more to her than a mere dinner date if she ever showed the slightest inclination.

Her father, as she knew all too well, kept on hoping that one day she would choose one of them to marry. He made no secret of it. And as time had gone by she had come to accept that one day, eventually—though not yet!—she probably would accept a proposal from Yannis, or someone like him. Someone who was easy-going, pleasant company...who would make a loyal husband and an affectionate father to whatever children they might have.

Such a marriage—a marriage in which burning passion and heady desire played no role—was what she had come to reconcile herself to. It had come to seem...acceptable.

Except—

She pulled her thoughts away as emotion filled her—emotion that she did not want, that she deplored, rejected. No, she must not go down that dangerous path. Only one man had ever set her passion on fire... Made her ache with desire for him...

A man she must guard herself against with all her strength.

And he had walked back into her life again.

Bleakly, she stared unseeingly into her bedroom, feeling a restlessness seize her that had no right to be there.

For her father’s sake she was stuck here in Athens, not wanting to abandon him while she still had cause to worry over his ill health, deny it as he insisted on doing. And Nikos was here too. She knew that because her father kept her informed of it. She’d dreaded this last week, lest her father take it into his head to matchmake again and invite Nikos for dinner. But she’d been blessedly spared that ordeal. Even more blessedly, Nikos had not attempted to get in touch with her.

Maybe I have nothing to fear after all! Maybe he really is only interested in a business acquaintance with my father! It would be useful enough to him, after all.

Her mouth twisted. Yes, her father’s use to Nikos was attested...

Again, she pulled her thoughts away. She would not think of Nikos Kavadis—would not pay attention to the restlessness inside her. She would think, instead, of what she would do today.

She might head into central Athens...put in some time at the museum where she did some exchange work for her London museum during her long stays in Greece visiting her father.

Or perhaps one of her friends might suggest lunch somewhere—maybe down on the Athenian Riviera at Glyfada...or they could take a boat from Piraeus out to one of the offshore islands and make a day of it.

Even as she mulled over these possibilities the house phone on her bedside table rang. She picked it up, expecting it to be one of her friends—or Yannis, perhaps, thanking her for the evening before and suggesting another outing today.

But it was none of them. It was Nikos.

He had caught her off guard. He knew it the moment he spoke, by the sudden intake of breath at the other end of the line. Well, he wanted her off-guard—that was why he’d left it nearly a week before making contact with her.

OK, so he’d been full-on anyway, immersed in initial meetings with government officials as well as a whole slew of business meetings on his own account—including with Georgios Petranakos—which he was using his time in Athens to make the most of. But now he’d cleared his desk and another priority had taken over. The one he was focussing on today.

‘Come to lunch,’ he said, making no bones about it.

‘I’m otherwise engaged,’ came the immediate stiff reply.

‘Your housekeeper says not,’ Nikos riposted. ‘I was thinking,’ he went on, ‘of a leisurely jaunt out of the city. How about we go to Sounion? Take a picnic?’ He paused deliberately. ‘Your father thinks you’ve been burning the candle at both ends. He’s suggested you need to slow the pace. With me.’

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