Page 19 of Reclaimed By His Billion-Dollar Ring

‘Earth-shaker.’ Nikos stood contemplating the ruins of the ancient temple to the powerful sea god Poseidon, brother of Zeus, patron of all seafarers.

Calanthe spoke at his side. ‘Enosichthon—that’s what Homer calls him. Though there are variants on that.’

She was speaking civilly to him—that was something at least, Nikos allowed, bringing his gaze back to her. He was taking it carefully. She’d had her showdown with him—the one he’d braced himself for, knowing he needed to get it out of the way. Defuse the past so he could move on to the future.

His eyes rested on her. Every glance at her only confirmed what he wanted. No matter how they’d parted eight years ago—or why they’d parted—right now he wanted only the immediate future with her.

He heard his own words to her echo in his head.

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

Nothing had ever been truer. She had swept him away—then and now.

He realised she was speaking again, and made himself pay attention to what she was saying.

‘It’s strange,’ she mused, ‘that a sea god should also be a god of earthquakes.’

‘Well, we think of earthquakes as being of the land, but they’re caused by the movement of the crust’s tectonic plates, and many tectonic fault lines lie underwater or along coastlines,’ Nikos explained. ‘Greece is very vulnerable, sitting in the midst of some very complex plate boundaries. The whole area is moving and jolting as the plates grind together—hence the frequent earthquakes, some minor and some devastating, like the one that caught my parents—’ He stopped.

Calanthe looked at him. He looked away. He should not have mentioned his parents, but it was too late now.

‘They were killed in an earthquake when I was five,’ he said.

He heard the intake of her breath.

‘Nik... I didn’t know. You never... You never mentioned that when we first—’

She broke off.

He looked at her, his expression veiled.

‘There was quite a lot that didn’t get mentioned,’ he replied.

He shifted restlessly. There were things that perhaps they should have known about each other then. And things that should never be known...even now.

Especially now...

He walked a little way away, feeling the afternoon heat beating down. The blue of the sea was azure, brilliant in the sun, and the ceaseless chorus of cicadas was all around. He had touched on a dangerous subject and wanted to move away from it.

‘They put the temple here because it was the first glimpse of Attica for ships sailing home, didn’t they?’ he heard himself say, gazing around, wanting something totally neutral to say. ‘Presumably by the time they could see the temple they were all but home and dry.’

‘Seafaring was a dangerous business in those days,’ she answered.

‘Yet it was undertaken so much, all the same. All that trade constantly going on...taking goods back and forth across the Aegean and further. I remember from the dig that—’

He stopped again.

There was a pause. But then Calanthe picked up the thread, her tone of voice unexceptional.

‘Yes, that was what pleased Prof so much—that the pots we dug up proved that trade with Corinth, even in that difficult era, had not disappeared.’

‘What happened to all the finds?’

Nikos made sure his voice was simply civilly enquiring, glad that he could do so and that she could reply in kind. He wanted to be able to have a simple, normal conversation with her, not something charged with stressful emotions.

Like fault lines between us, creating tension I do not want.

She was answering his question, her voice as civil as his.

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