Page 34 of Reclaimed By His Billion-Dollar Ring

She would give instructions that no call from him should be put through, and she would bury herself at the museum till Friday and stay totally out of circulation.

Above all, she must not think about the insanity she’d committed. Must not feel...must not remember. Because what else was it except insanity?

It could be nothing else. A moment of self-indulgence...succumbing to the soft music and the velvet night, to the bliss of feeling his arms around her once more after so long, to his lips on hers... To the fire he set running in her veins, to all that she had once had and had never thought could be hers again.

It had been a final chance to take and taste and claim all that she had once thought might be hers for ever.

From a man who had never been the man she’d thought he was.

That was all she had to remember. Not that night of madness in his arms that she should never, never have allowed...

Nikos glanced up at the imposing building that housed the headquarters of Georgios Petranakos’ property empire, in the business suburb of Marousi, close to Kifissia.

He’d been summoned there to a meeting.

OK, ‘summoned’ had not been the word used by Georgios’s efficient-sounding PA. ‘Graciously invited’ fitted the bill better. But it was a summons for all that.

And Nikos was very, very interested in knowing why.

There could, he well knew, be any number of reasons. But there was only one he wanted it to be.

He felt his solar plexus clench as he swung through the glass revolving doors into the air-conditioned lobby, giving his name at the reception desk.

He could see the receptionist glance at him appreciatively from under her eyelashes. Normally he would have bestowed a winning smile upon her—after all, why not? But today he refrained for two reasons. One because of the tension building up inside him as to why Georgios had asked him to come and see him, and another reason far more compelling.

Because the very attractive receptionist could, for all he noticed, be as boot-faced as a harpy.

Women no longer existed for him.

Apart from one.

Emotion roiled in him like bilgewater in the hull of a boat, weighing him down. Destabilising him. Words stabbed at him. Cutting into his flesh. Drawing blood.

She walked out on me.

Stark, brutal words. Stabbing again.

She’d walked out after everything that night at the beach house had brought—after the passion and desire, after he’d won her to him, after her body had yielded to his more than ever he remembered, after the sensual bliss that had possessed them both, after he had folded her trembling body against his, his heart hammering, holding her close, so close...

To wake in a cold, empty bed.

The pre-dawn beach house had been chill. Deserted. Silent. At first, with a grabbing of hope, he’d thought she might be in the attached shower room, but that had been deserted too. So had the pebbled beach when he’d yanked open the door.

Then, staring back inside the bleak and silent beach house, he’d realised, with a blow to his guts, that her gown was no longer carelessly thrown over a chair...was no longer visible at all. Only his own crumpled and tossed aside evening clothes cascaded on to the floor, his dress shoes kicked off at the foot of the bed.

She’d gone.

Now only one question burned in his head. Consuming him like a fire within, giving him no peace, no rest.

How do I get her back?

Because getting her back was vital. That night with her—that unforgettable night when he’d rediscovered everything he had ever wanted and so much more—had focussed his entire world on a single name.

Calanthe.

I want her. I want her back. I want her again. I want her in every way. I want her in my life. For my life.

It should have come as a shock for him to realise that, yet it did not. Because it seemed, quite simply, like the truth. Simple, straightforward, obvious. That unforgettable night with her had made that truth undeniable.

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