Page 17 of Reclaimed By His Billion-Dollar Ring

He looked me in the face and told me it was just a summer romance. That that was the only reason he ended it.

But she knew better. Bitterly, bitterly so.

Again, the memory of her father’s words to her as she’d sobbed her youthful heartbreak sounded in her head, telling her just what the man who’d romanced her all summer had done...what kind of man it had proved him to be.

And he thinks I don’t know. It’s obvious he thinks that.

Well, she would not enlighten him. Let him trot out whatever he liked about ‘summer romance’!

Because I can’t bear to tell him that I know—I can’t bear to feel again, in front of him, the humiliation of it...

She screwed her eyes shut behind her dark glasses, grateful for them, schooling her emotions back under her control. She would not let them out again. Instead, she would deal with the situation as it presented itself. Behave as though he meant nothing to her. Because that would be the least painful to her, and protecting herself was her priority.

She took a silent breath, opened her eyes again, and watched him finish the unpacking, her expression impassive, making her features relax. She was safe from him—whatever he might so shamelessly, arrogantly think. That was what she had to hang on to.

He sat back, glancing up at her, and smiled. ‘OK, what do you want to start with? It all looks good! There’s seafood salad, chicken breast with some kind of dressing, Parma ham and smoked salmon—and any number of side salads!’

He indicated the spread with a sweep of his hand. His tone was genial, amicable, easy-going, his smile warm.

Out of nowhere, memory hit. She’d picnicked with Nik before, during their lunch breaks at the excavation, though nothing like this grand gourmet feast. They’d bought gyros at the harbour-side, clambered up the narrow goats’ path to look down over the azure sea, settling themselves down.

Nik had smiled at her... Just as he was smiling now.

The pain was visceral, like a blow to her lungs. She forced it away. Forced the memory away. Forced away all memories of Nik from that time so many years ago. She would not give them oxygen to flare and burn her. Instead she dragged her eyes down to the repast spread on the dry ground. Against her volition she suddenly felt hungry. Breakfast had been a long time ago. Would it really kill her to eat some of this picnic?

She reached for one of the plates, hovering her fork over several of the dishes, then taking a little of each. She was hungry—she would eat. And the fact that she was doing so in the presence of the man she had never wanted to see again in her life she would completely ignore, with strength of will and absolute self-control.

I won’t let him get to me. I can’t and I won’t.

Yet even as her eyes rested on him, still blessedly veiled by her dark glasses, and she sat back, making her position more comfortable and forking into the delicious food, she felt sensation sweep over her.

Nik at twenty-five had been a hunk of the first order—she hadn’t needed Georgia’s breathless admiration to tell her that. She’d had eyes in her head. Eyes that had wanted to do as she had done that first fateful night at the taverna: simply gaze and gaze and gaze...

As they still did.

She felt something squeeze inside her—something catch. Her gaze rested on him now as helplessly as it had eight long years ago.

He’s matured. That raw, rough toughness has matured into a lean strength. Smoothed itself. Honed itself. Then, he looked exactly what he was—a man in his mid-twenties, muscles pumped from hard physical labour, hair over-long, jawline roughened, hands callused. But now...

Now the years sat on him well, as did his wealth. He might be lounging back on the cliffs of Cape Sounion, but there was a sophistication to him now, a cosmopolitan air that went with the expensive casual clothes, the impeccably groomed hair, the pristine jawline.

She felt again that tightening, that catching of something inside her. Eight years had passed, but one truth still forced itself upon her—however unwilling she was to hear it, however much she might bitterly resist it and resent it.

In her head, his words echoed.

‘You were irresistible eight years ago, and you are even more so now.’

And, with a heaviness that seemed to crush her like a weight she could no longer bear, she knew that those words were true of her feelings too.

And the knowledge was unendurable.

Somehow she got through the rest of the picnic. For reasons she did not want to think about—because it was somehow easier on her not to do so...because letting Nikos know how hideously he’d hurt her was just too painful—she let Nikos behave as though this were just a normal occasion. As if he really was just a new business acquaintance of her father, inviting his daughter for this al fresco outing.

That, she knew, with a shiver of coldness, would, in fact, be what her father would assume.

That I’m going out on a date with a new man. A man who, so far, has passed my father’s eligibility test.

The cold pool in the pit of her stomach chilled even more. If her father only knew—

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