Page 63 of Reclaimed By His Billion-Dollar Ring

He broke off. Then he made himself say what he must.

‘Before, it was you who loved me and I who turned my back on you. Now, all these years later, it is you who has turned your back on me.’

He paused, frowning. Looking away from her. Not able to bear to look at her.

‘I thought,’ he said, and he heard a bleakness in his own voice that tore him in pieces, ‘that in marrying you I was getting everything I wanted. But...’ his voice was ragged now ‘...in fact I was losing it all.’

He made himself look at her, meet her stricken eyes with his.

‘Losing you, Calanthe, the woman that this time I knew with all my heart I had come to love.’

He heard a cry break from her. Break from her heart broken so long ago as his was newly broken. Tears were pouring down her face. Tears he could not bear to see. Tears he must wipe away. Kiss away.

She came into his arms. Clinging to him with broken sobs. His hands framed her face, his fingers clutching at her, and he was bending to kiss her eyes urgently, desperately.

‘Do you mean it, Nikos?’ Her voice was a whisper...a plea.

‘With all my being,’ he told her, and his voice was rich with emotion. ‘At first I thought that all I felt was desire,’ he said, and his voice was different now, stronger and full of wonder. ‘A desire I could now fulfil, for I belonged to your world...had earned my place in it. But then...’ He took a breath, ragged and raw. ‘It took your denunciation of me on our wedding night, your rejection of me, to show me the truth of what I felt for you! Desire, yes—oh, yes, always and for ever! But also—oh, my most adored Calanthe—so, so much more.’

His name broke from her and he swept her to him. Emotion was rising in him like a tsunami, and he held her tightly, fiercely, against him.

She was gazing up at him, and what he saw in her eyes made him reel.

‘I never stopped loving you,’ she said. ‘I tried... I tried and failed. Whatever my father told me...whatever I told myself. Even though I knew and believed that what you had done was torture to me—still I went on loving you. Though I buried it as deep as it was possible to do. Until—’

She broke off. Spoke again.

‘When you came back into my life—oh, dear God—I felt it all start again. Hating you and loving you. And I could not bear it! But now...’

There was something new in her voice, like a bird breaking free of a cage after beating its wings in vain.

‘Oh, Nik, my dearest, darling one, now I need only love you.’

The joy in her voice turned his heart over. He kissed her slowly, gently, his senses still reeling, and she kissed him back. Softly, lovingly...

‘What happens now, Nikos?’ she asked, her voice low, as she drew back from him a little.

‘Will you stay with me?’ he asked, his voice just as low. ‘Will you stay with me, my bride, my wife...my love?’

She gazed up at him, her eyes shining like stars. ‘Oh, yes,’ she breathed. ‘Oh, yes.’

It was the answer he craved. The only answer he could bear to hear. Now and for ever. It took him to heaven on wings of gold. And he was flying there with her.

‘This,’ Calanthe declared, ‘is the best pizza ever—it’s official!’

‘It’s the same one you ordered last night,’ Nikos pointed out, lifting a slice of his own—also exactly the same as he’d ordered the night before.

‘It’s completely different!’ she riposted. ‘Because...’ she reached a hand across the wooden table at the poolside bistro, her other hand precariously holding a slice of fully loaded pizza al funghi, threads of melted mozzarella trailing ‘...I am completely different!’

She shut her eyes. Could happiness such as this truly be real? It radiated from her like sunshine, brighter than anything she had ever known. Filled her from within. Every cell in her body...every fibre of her being.

She gazed across the table at him as he took a mouthful of his own pizza, cocking a quizzical eyebrow at her as he did so. He was smiling, his eyes alight with a warmth that took her breath away. Not letting her gaze drop for even a second, an instant, she bit into her own pizza slice.

At the table next to theirs was seated the same family as last night, the two children filling in their colouring sheets, their parents smiling at each other with fondness, secure in their love for each other.

Calanthe felt her heart squeeze.

Last night she had thought such happiness could never be hers—and now it was. Hers for ever.

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