Page 39 of Reclaimed By His Billion-Dollar Ring

Her knife and fork clattered to the tablecloth. Her head shot back. ‘That night should never have happened. Never!’

He held her gaze without concession. There had been something more in it than repudiation—something revealing.

She cannot deny what our night together brought her! What it meant for her...for both of us...

He had to make her see it and accept it. Accept everything that went with it. Everything he had brought her here to accept.

‘But it did, Calanthe—it did happen. And it proved just how good we are together—deny it all you will! I told you there, on the beach, how important you were becoming to me, and now—’

A choke broke from her.

He did not let it stop him.

‘Now I have the chance to tell you again...to tell you how...how special you have become to me. Eight years ago you were too young, and I had my way to make in the world. The time was not right for us. But now, Calanthe, now the time is right. So very right.’

His voice was a caress again. He wanted, needed her to accept what he was telling her.

‘Had your father not collapsed as he did, I would have taken the time to woo you properly...win you over to me. But your father needs the reassurance we can give him now. Would you begrudge him that?’

She stared across at him, her face still closed. ‘It’s not him I begrudge,’ she said. Her voice was tight, her mouth pinched.

He reached his hand across the table. Touched her fingers with his. Leant towards her. Her face was still leaden, and he didn’t want it that way. He didn’t want words like bullets, the freezing off and the rejection. He didn’t want that at all.

He wanted the woman he’d led down that scented pathway to the private darkness of the beach house...the woman he’d taken into his arms, her body aflame for him, trembling with a desire that answered his own, surging in his body, urging his possession of her.

He felt desire quicken in him again now, as his hand closed over hers, felt hers beneath it.

His voice was low once more when he spoke again. ‘What is between us—what has always been between us—cannot be denied! Be honest with yourself. Be honest with me as I am honest with you.’

Something came into her eyes. A flash. Dark like black lightning. Had he really seen it? Or had it been a trick of the light?

He felt her hand drawing back from his, withdrew his own.

Frustration filled him and made him speak more bluntly than he wanted. ‘Calanthe, this would protect your father! He just isn’t well enough to go back into harness. His heart is weakened—you cannot want to risk another attack! Not when it is so easy for you to remove that risk.’

He saw his warning hit home...pressed further.

‘When he outlined his hopes to me he told me about your mother, Calanthe. That she had died far too young. Deprived of old age. Don’t let that happen to your father too. Not when it would be so easy to prevent it.’

For one long last moment he let his gaze rest on her, met her veiled, oblique regard of him. Then she spoke, with no expression in her voice.

‘I’d like to go home now, Nikos,’ she said. ‘No, don’t get up. I’ll get a taxi. Finish your dinner. I’m sorry I only picked at mine.’

She got to her feet, walked stiffly away, as though tension racked her body. He watched her leave the restaurant, then sat back, unconsciously reaching for his wine glass. He caught the lingering fragrance of her perfume. All that was left of her presence there.

What will she decide?

He did not know.

Knew only that there was only one answer he could bear to hear from her.

‘Your father is asking for you,’ the housekeeper informed Calanthe as she stepped through the doorway.

Calanthe bit her lip. The last thing she could face right now was seeing her father. Her brain was in meltdown, churning with thoughts, emotions and feelings that she could not process, that had turned her upside down and inside out.

I didn’t see it coming.

But it had—like a bomb exploding inside her.

---