Page 13 of Reclaimed By His Billion-Dollar Ring

He could hear only silence on the line. He didn’t let it last more than a microsecond, before speaking again.

‘Good, that’s settled. I’ll pick you up at half-twelve.’

Then he rang off, a smile of satisfaction playing about his lips.

She could have kept to her room. Cited a headache—a hangover, even! Could have phoned her father at his office and rung a peal over his head for setting her up, as he so obviously had! Could have ripped into Elena the housekeeper for blabbing.

There were half a dozen things Calanthe knew she could have done—but she hadn’t.

And she knew perfectly well why.

There were things that needed to be made clear.

Crystal-clear.

She emerged at the time Nikos had said to find him waiting in a low-slung, silver-grey, open-topped car sporting an Italian crest on its long bonnet. His own, or hired? She didn’t know, and didn’t care.

He leant across to open the passenger door for her, nodding a greeting as he did so, which she did not return. She had nothing civil to say to him. She slipped into the passenger seat, smoothing her pale green palazzo pants which she wore with their matching top. Like her, Nikos was wearing sunglasses, and she was glad of it. Perhaps they need never actually look at each other for the duration.

She sat back, pulling the seat belt across herself, burningly conscious of his presence beside her. Though she did not look at him she’d taken in that he was casually dressed in an open-necked shirt, cuffs turned back, his dark hair—so much shorter now than it had been that long-ago summer—slightly ruffled by the breeze. She felt her stomach clench as she caught the faint scent of aftershave.

Doggedly, she stared ahead, not letting herself look at him as he drove the car down the drive and turned out onto the highway, keeping deliberately silent. This was not a social outing—she did not even owe him courtesy.

Her face was set, more stony than ever.

He didn’t speak either—only took the direction to Cape Sounion on the south-east of the Attica Peninsula, guiding the powerful car through the busy traffic until he could open the throttle clear of the city.

She was glad they were going to Sounion. It would be sufficiently out of the way for what she intended. Deliberately, she breathed slowly and evenly, refusing to let her tension show.

But she was as taut as a high-tension cable and she knew it. Did Nikos know it as well? If he did, he’d know why.

And I want him to know—I damn well want him to know!

Emotion rose in her. Emotion that had been suppressed for so long now that she might have thought it extinct. But it was no more extinct than the volcano on Thera had been extinct. It seethed like boiling magma, just below the rigidly composed air with which she sat so motionless beside Nikos.

He was so close...

Ripples like earth tremors vibrated within her. All she had to do was lift her hand to touch him...

Instead, she sat quite still, hands folded in her lap, gazing out through the windscreen, her expression impassive. Saying nothing. But feeling so much...

‘What about here? It catches the breeze and the view is spectacular!’

Nikos’s tone was inviting—deliberately so. He’d studiously ignored Calanthe’s silence on the way here. It was, after all, to be expected. And he knew why.

She’s spoiling for a fight.

That, he knew, was why she’d accepted his invitation. Why she was having anything to do with him. Why, indeed, he’d suggested driving out to Cape Sounion—way out of the city—taking with them the lavish picnic his hotel’s kitchens had supplied him with, and which he now proceeded to unload from the small boot of the car.

It was a hire car, but he’d chosen and driven it with pleasure—even though the presence of Calanthe at his side, stony-faced and silent, had been a distraction from putting the car through its paces.

Closing the boot with a snap, he led the way to a picnic spot with panoramic views over the Cape and the Aegean Sea beyond. He spread out the blanket then hunkered down to open up the cool box, extracting a chilled bottle of white wine and one of sparkling water.

‘Wine, water, or a spritzer?’ he enquired genially.

‘Water,’ came the terse reply from Calanthe.

She was sitting herself down, carefully angling her legs away from him and keeping a good metre distant, towards the edge of the blanket. She did not remove her dark glasses, and neither did he take off his own. After all, the sun sparkling over the blue water beyond the cliff-edge was very bright. That was excuse enough.

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