Page 16 of Reclaimed By His Billion-Dollar Ring

He levered himself forward, looked directly at her. Said now what he wanted to say. What he wanted her to hear. What he had brought her here to say.

‘But now I’m back.’

CHAPTER FOUR

CALANTHE STARED AT HIM.

‘But now I’m back.’

His words, so coolly uttered, stung like wasp stings on her bare arms. She felt emotion rise in her like boiling magma. But somehow she kept a lid on it. She was no longer that nineteen-year-old in the throes of agonising first love. She was a mature woman. Calm, composed, under control.

My own control.

‘Back for what, Nik?’ she asked.

Her voice was dry. As dry as sand.

She was aware far too late that she’d called him by the name she’d used eight years ago.

He smiled. It was a smile that reached back through the years. A smile she had not seen directed at her for those eight long years that divided them. A smile that divided her stupid, foolish ingenue self from the mature, capable, self-controlled woman she was now.

‘For you, of course, Calanthe,’ he said.

For a second—an endless, motionless second—the words hung in the air between them. Both of them looked at each other, their gazes veiled from the other.

Then he broke the moment. Set down his spritzer and leaned forward to examine the rest of the contents of the picnic box.

‘I’m hungry,’ he announced. ‘Let’s eat.’

She watched him busy himself extracting carefully wrapped parcels from the box, setting them out on the blanket, before peeling off the wrappings. Her mind was in turmoil. She wanted to yell at him, shout at him, throw everything she had buried so deep within her those long eight years ago when he had walked out on her...everything that had festered and burned and hurt so much...

And more than hurt.

Worse than hurt.

Once again, as she had the night after her father’s birthday party, when she had lain sleepless in her bed, with Nik having just walked into her life again as he had, she felt the hot, humid drenching of humiliation rise up in her unbearably. She forced it from her. Refusing to give it entry.

Her expression hardened as she went on watching him unpack the picnic. Her mouth twisted. So Nik—rich and successful now—thought he could just move in on her again! Thought he could stroll into her life, driving his fancy car, staying in Athens’ best hotel, flashing his cash around as casually as if it were candy. Thought he could just stroll right up to her and take up with her again!

He really thought that?

After what he’d done to her?

Well, he can think again! Because it will never, never happen.

She was safe from him. Had made herself so—painstakingly, painfully, assiduously and determinedly—with every year that separated her from that long-ago summer when she had been so vulnerable to him, so trusting...

He can’t get to me again. Not now.

Because now, as the bitter taste in her mouth accentuated, she knew what kind of man he was. What he was prepared to stoop to...

A ‘summer romance’. That was what he was calling what they’d had. Even though, for her, it had been so much more than that.

She felt her heart clench.

I really thought myself in love—I truly, truly did...

The pain inside her twisted, wrenching at her emotions.

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