Page 48 of Reclaimed By His Billion-Dollar Ring

‘No, it’s not something you’d want known about yourself! Just what you stooped to!’ she shot at him. ‘Well, my father told me,’ she said flatly. ‘He said...he said I needed to know.’ There was a stone in her lungs, so that she couldn’t breathe. ‘That I needed to know I would always be a target for unscrupulous men who would romance me, seduce me, tell me anything I wanted to hear—but whatever they did, whatever they said, all they would want would be his money.’

Her voice was as hollow as his now, her eyes dead. She shifted restlessly, as if moving might untwist the torsion in her guts, but it only tightened it, making it agonising to endure.

‘And now his money is what you have again, Nik,’ she said, unconsciously using the name she’d called him by all those years ago, when the world had been a wonderful place and Nik the most wonderful man in that wonderful world. ‘And much, much more of it this time! By bringing you in to run his company he’s made you richer than even you’ve made yourself. Oh, you’ll work for it, I’m sure—hard and well—and you’ll earn your share of the profits that will accrue now.’

She forced a ragged, razored breath into her stone-filled lungs, forced herself to look at him. He was standing there, so close—and yet so infinitely far away—with shock still immobilising him. Because what else could he feel but shock at what she’d thrown at him, that she’d known about him all along, shock that was making his face grey like ash?

‘You’ve told me twice now, Nik, that I am “important” to you—and I know I am. I always was, from the minute you knew I was my father’s daughter.’

He started forward. ‘Calanthe—that’s not why! You’re important to me because—’

Her hand slashed upwards, silencing him. ‘Don’t try and make it right, Nik! It cannot be made right! Because nothing can justify what you did! Oh, you might well have left me anyway—I know that. That’s the line you’ve trotted out to me—that it was a summer romance, that I was so young, that you had your way to make in the world. But you found a good way to make it easier for yourself, didn’t you? Didn’t you? With my father’s money. The pay-off you took to walk out on me.’

Bitterness and pain and burning humiliation consumed her.

‘You wanted my father’s money. Not me.’ She took another razored breath. ‘Well, that’s what you’ve got now, too.’

She made herself look at him again. He hadn’t moved—not a muscle. Somehow she made herself walk past him, head to the front door of the apartment. There she paused and turned back to him.

‘I won’t be living with you here, Nikos. I’ve rented the apartment next door. So far as my father is concerned I’m with you. And the world can think that too. I’ll socialise with you, keep up appearances—for my father’s sake, you understand. I’ll stick this out until he’s well enough to hear that we’ve split up, that I married in haste and repented all too quickly.’ Her voice twisted. ‘He knows, you see, that I make mistakes when it comes to falling for men. As for his company—well, as I say, I’m sure you’ll run it well, and make money both for him and yourself, and everyone will be happy because of it.’

She frowned.

‘Not much has changed, has it, Nik? Eight years ago my father paid you to leave me. Now, because he wants you to run his company and be the son-in-law he’s been waiting years for, he’s paying you to stay with me. He bought you off—now he’s buying you in.’

She took a breath...it was a like a razor in her throat.

‘Well, enjoy it, Nik—enjoy all the Petranakos money coming your way now. This time around it’s all you’ll get.’

She pulled open the door, stepped through...

And was gone.

Calanthe watched the lights around Gatwick get closer as the plane descended. She had been desperate to get away, right out of Greece, so she’d walked out of the apartment block and headed for Eleftheriou Airport, taken the first flight to London. She’d land after midnight but she didn’t care. She’d head for her flat and take refuge there.

Like a wounded animal...

She closed her eyes, saw that monstrous scene in Nik’s apartment playing and replaying in her head. Saw herself throwing at him the accusation that had burned within her for so long, shameful and shaming. The thing that she had never wanted to admit to. The ultimate humiliation.

She had turned it into anger—anger that was utterly justified—and condemned him for what he’d done. But it had taken all her strength to face the man who had taken money to leave her, to look him in the eyes and tell him she knew she had been nothing to him...

She gave a sob of misery.

I loved him! I loved him with all my stupid, stupid heart!

Her hands twisted in her lap, nails digging into her palms. And now she was facing the worst pain of all. The pain she could not bear to face. But she had to.

If she had never set eyes on Nikos again she might have survived his betrayal eight years ago. But he had walked back into her life with devastating consequences—that night in the beach house, in his arms, finding again the bliss she had once known with him when she had first loved him.

And she knew, with another anguished sob, that she loved him again...

Nikos stood on the balcony of his apartment in Zurich, overlooking the lake. The air off the mountains was cool. Autumn would fall sooner here than in Greece, and then the winter’s snows would come. But he already dwelled in the land of winter...the land of perpetual ice and snow. It was a land he had not expected ever to be exiled to. And he might never escape. Not even if—

He cut off his thoughts.

Too dangerous. Far, far too dangerous.

Better to accept the perpetual ice and snow.

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