Page 49 of Reclaimed By His Billion-Dollar Ring

It was all he deserved.

His thoughts were bitter, like acid in his throat.

I never wanted her to know. Never wanted her to know what I had done.

But she had known all along. Known even in that moment he’d set eyes on her again, walking up to her at her father’s birthday party.

Every time she looked at me she knew.

He stared blindly out over the dark waters of the lake. No wonder she had left him that morning, after their night together in the beach house...the night he had believed had brought them back together again. When all along...

He wrenched his hands from the wooden balustrade, turned sharply away, strode back indoors. He needed a drink. Any drink. Anything at all that might dull the rawness inside him, which felt as if the skin had been torn from his flesh.

He yanked open his cocktail cabinet, splashed out a slug of malt whisky, knocked it back as if it were water. It burned as it went down his throat and he poured another.

But he did not drink it. He put the glass down roughly instead. Felt his jaw set like steel as a thought came to him.

He had one chance—one only.

One hope—one only.

And everything...everything...depended on it.

Calanthe was in Berlin, attending a conference on Late Antiquity which her former boss at the London museum had agreed she could still go to if she reported back on it. She’d gone straight from London, and it would mop up a few days.

She’d emailed her father when she’d arrived in London, saying she had some loose ends to tie up in clearing her desk, sorting out her flat and bringing over what she would need for a permanent stay in Athens.

As for Nikos, she’d simply tersely texted him to say she was in London. He would know why, and that it had nothing to do with what she’d told her father.

It was simply to avoid him.

He would be busy, anyway, she knew. He had a lot to take over at her father’s company, and he had his own to run as well. He was in Zurich right now, and she was glad of it. It would give her some time in Athens without him.

But she could not avoid him for ever. She knew that. She had meant what she’d said when she’d told him that she would appear as his wife in public, for the sake of her father. Yet she dreaded it with all her being.

To stand beside him...to be Kyria Kavadis, accepting congratulations, having her girlfriends eager to know all about how she’d finally succumbed to love and marriage...

She felt her throat close, painful and tight. How could she have come to do what she had done? Let herself fall in love with him again? When this time around she knew what kind of man he was! How could she have let her stupid, stupid heart betray her as it had?

And yet it had.

And it was agony to know it.

Nikos stood in Arrivals at Eleftheriou, tension in every muscle of his body. Calanthe’s flight from Berlin had landed. She would be deplaning now. He knew she was returning to Athens because her father’s housekeeper had mentioned it when he’d put in his daily call to Georgios, reporting back on his company’s affairs.

Calanthe herself had not informed him. She had kept ruthlessly silent since leaving for London.

Her absence had given him the essential time he’d needed...

His muscles tensed again. So much depended on this.

Everything—my whole life...

But he would not—must not—let that show. He must stay...detached.

He craned his neck as another bevy of arriving passengers issued through from Customs. And there she was—walking swiftly forward, wearing a smart business suit in dark blue, low-heeled shoes, pulling a wheeled carry-on suitcase.

He stepped forward and he saw her face whiten with shock. He took her arm with one hand, relieved her of her carry-on with the other. She had stiffened at his touch, but he ignored it.

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