Page 1 of Reclaimed By His Billion-Dollar Ring

PROLOGUE

CALANTHE STOOD BESIDE her father, greeting their guests for the evening as they arrived in the banqueting suite of this top Athens hotel. All of Athens high society was here, and she was glad of it. Her father’s sixtieth birthday was something to celebrate after all.

Her glance went sideways to him, a small frown forming. For all his bonhomie there was a look of strain about him, and his shoulders sagged as if he were making a visible effort. He did not look well.

Anxiety plucked at her. Her father had always been an ebullient character, strong-minded and forceful—characteristics that had made him a very wealthy man, whose property empire was worth a fortune. Though her own specialism was classical art, and she split her time between museums in London and Athens, Calanthe knew that as her father’s only child she would one day inherit all his wealth. But she did not want that day to come too soon. She wanted her father to live longer than her mother had.

Grief shadowed her face... It was barely two years since her English mother had succumbed to the cancer she had fought so valiantly.

She shook the sadness from her. She was here as her father’s hostess and she wanted to do him proud. She had already received approving smiles, and his praise of her had been heartfelt.

‘My darling child, how beautiful you look!’

If she did, it was for him, she knew. For her position as the daughter of Georgios Petranakos.

She was gowned in a couture number, its pale blue silk a match for the grey-blue eyes inherited from her mother. Her dark hair and Mediterranean complexion came from her Greek genes. The artful bias cut of the gown showed her slender figure to perfection. With her perfect oval face, delicate nose and tender mouth, her hair in an elegant upswept style and her father’s gift of a simple yet extremely expensive diamond necklace around her swan-like neck, Calanthe knew that her beauty was assured.

It drew eyes and attention—and always had. But her smile was never more than gracious, her air always a little elusive. It exasperated her father, she knew. He wanted her to marry—and soon. But to marry required falling in love—and she had done that once before, when she had been young and naïve and trusting.

And she had her heart not just broken, but smashed to pieces—her illusions shattered in the cruellest way.

More guests were arriving, and she made herself pay attention to them, exchanging social chit-chat, being her father’s gracious daughter as always. Soon they were moving away, and her eyes moved once more to the entrance to the banqueting suite, where new arrivals were being ushered in by the hotel staff.

One of the waiters glided up, proffering fresh glasses of champagne, and absently, with a smile of thanks, she took one, handing one to her father as well, while he conversed affably with yet another guest. Calanthe’s gaze flicked back to the entrance. Surely everyone who had been invited was here by now? Dinner—a lavish buffet in the adjoining room—would soon be served.

She was just about to take a sip of her champagne when another guest made an appearance. Tall, wearing a tuxedo like all the other male guests, his face was averted from her as he spoke to a member of staff on the door. But there was something about him...

Suddenly, out of nowhere, every muscle in Calanthe’s body tensed. Her breath froze in her throat, fingers convulsing on the stem of the champagne flute.

The new guest turned...looked into the crowded room.

Faintness drummed through Calanthe and she felt the blood drain from her face, a deathly coldness seize her.

CHAPTER ONE

Eight years earlier

GINGERLY, CALANTHE EASED up the ceramic shard embedded in the hard, dry earth, delicately teasing it free with the tip of her trowel, calling across to Georgia, working beside her, to take a look with a more expert eye than her own.

It was Georgia who was studying archaeology, and was therefore well experienced on digs, whereas Calanthe was reading History of Art, which was a lot less hands-on with its subject matter. But she’d happily volunteered to join the student team which Georgia’s professor had pulled together on a very tight timescale, to excavate a site newly revealed by the construction of a holiday resort on one of the myriad islands in the Aegean.

The students were a cheerful crowd, glad of a free, albeit working holiday in Greece—a sunny change from their alma mater, a rainy north country university in England.

Calanthe was pitching in willingly. She might have a wealthy Greek father, whom she’d visited twice yearly all her childhood, enjoying staying with him at his luxurious mansion on the outskirts of Athens, but she’d been raised in a quite ordinary way by her mother. Few knew she had a Greek surname as well as the English surname of her mother, which she was known by, and not even her close friends knew just how rich her father was.

‘What do you think?’ she asked Georgia now, holding the curved terracotta shard in the palm of her hand.

Georgia peered at it. ‘Possibly Corinth ware? Let’s see if there’s more before we tell Prof,’ she said enthusiastically, and set to with her trowel and brush.

A shadow fell over their kneeling forms.

‘Find any gold or jewellery yet, ladies?’ a deep voice enquired laconically in accented English.

Startled, Calanthe and Georgia lifted their bowed heads. Simultaneously, Calanthe was dimly aware, both their jaws dropped. The stranger looking down at them in their shallow trench was totally worth the reaction. Calanthe felt her breath catch. He stood there, towering over them—and not just because they were kneeling in a trench—booted feet apart, long legs encased in multi-pocketed khaki work trousers, heavily belted. He was narrow-hipped and broad-shouldered, his obviously muscled chest moulded by a dusty khaki tee, and he sported dark glasses that only emphasised the strong line of his jaw, already starting to darken this late in the afternoon, the sculpted mouth and the blade of a nose, and the dark, slightly over-long hair that feathered over his brow and at the nape of his strong neck.

The whole package was rough, tough and totally devastating...

Calanthe heard Georgia gulp and knew why.

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