Page 51 of Reclaimed By His Billion-Dollar Ring

He paused. Looked at her. His gaze was veiled. ‘Don’t you recognise it?’

She looked at him blankly and shook her head.

‘Ah, well,’ he said, ‘no reason you should. The last time you saw it, it was a building site.’

For a moment what he’d said made no sense. Then realisation flooded in. She gave a gasp. Of what, she wasn’t quite sure.

He gave another nod as it dawned on her. ‘Yes,’ he said dryly, ‘one and the same.’ He glanced around him. ‘Strange to think some of this is here due to my efforts. The foundations, mostly, and maybe part of the first storey.’

She was feeling faint. Faint with shock. It was washing over her in great waves.

What was she doing here? Why had she just numbly let Nik bring her here? And why did he want to be here?

Cold iced through her.

Please, please don’t let him think he can recreate our time here eight years ago—pretend that what he did to me never happened...

He was speaking again, still in that same everyday tone of voice, as if her presence here was completely normal.

‘I’ll check us in. I’ve reserved a villa near the pool. Two bedrooms.’

She felt a fraction of the cold that had iced through her dissipate.

She glanced out of the tinted plate glass windows that looked out over gardens in which was set a massive pool—thronged, she could see, with children. On the far side, to the right, beyond more gardens, she could see tennis courts. She knew that underneath was the excavated archaeological site.

Time telescoped...past and present. She could almost see them all...students in two long rows, hunched over on their kneelers, flat pointed trowels teasing away the dry earth and stones, carefully, assiduously, patiently trying to reveal the past of three thousand years ago...

Eight years was nothing in that timeframe. The blink of an eyelid. But so, so long ago to her...

‘Calanthe?’

Nikos’s voice brought her back to the present. The present she did not want and could not avoid. Could not escape. He had a folder with their keys in it and was holding open the wide doors leading out to the gardens and the pool area. She walked forward, feeling the heat slam into her as they lost the air-con of the atrium.

She followed Nikos along a wide paved path, lined with bougainvillea, hibiscus and oleander, all attractively planted, with stone benches and ironwork chairs and tables set along it, and parasols against the sun. They skirted the pool widely, heading, she realised, for a semicircle of little stone villas curving away from the pool area, overlooking the sea.

Each semi-detached villa was attractively built, with a balcony fronting the upper storey and a private terrace created in front at ground level, and hedging between the villas for privacy. As they passed one she heard gleeful laughter coming out, and children’s cries in English.

‘Come on, Dad! Let’s get to the pool! I can’t wait!’

She smiled in spite of herself. Children on holiday, families on holiday...far from soggy England which was having a wet summer.

‘This is ours,’ Nikos said, as they approached the end villa.

He set their baggage down at the wooden front door, painted Greek blue, just like the shutters and window frames, and opened the door, hefting up the luggage again.

There was something in the way his body moved that lanced memory through her. How easily, eight years ago, his muscled body had tackled all that heavy lifting at the building site, as if what he was carrying was papier-mâché. She shook the thought from her...told herself instead that it was a wonder that a man as rich as Nikos was should lower himself to carry his own luggage.

He gestured for her to go in and she did so. Immediately cool air enveloped her, and she was glad. They were in a sitting/dining room that occupied the whole ground floor, with an open-plan kitchenette at the rear and a staircase against the left-hand wall. It was attractively furnished in blue and white—but, again, it was just an ordinary family resort.

It was homely. Comfortable. Appealing.

Against her volition she liked it.

‘Do you want to choose your bedroom?’ Nikos said, poised at the foot of the wooden staircase.

She nodded briefly, following him upstairs. The room at the front was larger—a double with a balcony—but she chose the smaller one at the back, a twin. Nik was welcome to the double bed. Welcome to its solitary vastness.

She relieved him of her suitcase, closed the door on him. Went and sat down on one of the beds.

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