Page 6 of Reclaimed By His Billion-Dollar Ring

But as his gaze rested on her now he knew, with a surge of his blood, that one thing had not changed. A kick went through him, visceral and compelling. As visceral and as compelling as it had been the very first time he’d ever set eyes on her. Though here, in her couture gown, with her immaculate upswept hair, her perfectly made-up face, diamonds glinting at her throat, she could not have looked more different from the way he remembered her.

And yet...

Her beauty is the same—as perfect now as it was then...

He felt emotions well up in him—and memories... oh, definitely memories. Sensual, evocative and, sweeping over him in a way that was so very, very pleasurable...

For a moment he indulged them, gave them space to possess him. But then other memories came too. Memories less pleasurable. Unwelcome and jarring.

Georgios Petranakos’s fixers...making me that offer...spelling it out to me.

Again, he pulled his thoughts away. His host was speaking, and Nikos gave his attention back to him, glad to pull away from thoughts he did not want to have...unpalatable memories.

‘My daughter Calanthe,’ Georgios Petranakos announced.

Had her father heard his murmured greeting a moment ago? Nikos gambled that he had not. Gambled, too, that Calanthe would make no reference to their prior acquaintance.

Acquaintance? The word mocked him silently inside his head. What he had had with Calanthe that summer long ago had been so much more than an ‘acquaintance’...

‘Kyrios Kavadis.’ Her voice was cool, her expression cooler.

Yet she wasn’t cool at all.

Nikos knew it. Could see it in the stiffness of her slender body, the way she held her head so high, the blankness in her face, her eyes. He felt again the emotions—untidy, irrelevant, unwelcome—that had made their presence felt as he’d walked towards her. As he’d registered her presence here, and that their paths were crossing like this after so long.

His gaze washed over her, expertly assessing. Eight years ago, not even out of her teens, she had had the natural loveliness of youth, but now...

Now she has come into her full beauty.

Exquisite—that was the only word for her now. The word echoed in his head. She was as exquisite in her beauty as her couture gown was exquisite, as the delicate diamonds at her throat and earlobes were exquisite, the diamond clip in her upswept hair. Chic and soignée, poised and elegant.

Memory thrust into his vision. Her coltish body in shorts, exposing her long, tanned legs, and a clinging tee shirt that moulded her breasts. Her hair in a plait hanging down her back, ready for a day working on the dig.

Then later, heading off to the taverna in a colourful, calf-length gathered cotton skirt and embroidered blouson, showing off her sun-kissed shoulders, her hair loosened into a tumbling cloud.

And later still, when he had taken her back to his room in the cheap pensione. Her lovely face lifted to his, her mouth tender as a newly ripened peach, her naked body arched and ardent beneath his, long limbs twining intimately with his, her hands winding around his bare back as he moved to take sweet possession of her...

Memory quickened in him.

And more than memory.

Desire.

It rose within him like a rich, potent liqueur, bringing the past into the present, fusing it, melding it, dispelling any doubts that had pulled at him moments ago as to whether it was wise to see her again like this. See her again after so many years. Here in her own refined, bejewelled milieu, a million miles from how she’d been when he’d first known her.

Yet again emotion plucked at him, unwelcome and jarring, but yet again he set it aside, dismissing what he did not wish to feel. Right now all he wanted was to let his gaze feast on her as she stood there, the poised and perfect daughter of one of Greece’s richest men, taking in her exquisite beauty, savouring it, melding it with his memories.

But his host was addressing him once more. Requiring his attention.

‘So what brings you to Athens? You are headquartered, I believe, in Switzerland?’

‘Yes,’ Nikos acknowledged, wresting his gaze and his mental focus away from where it wanted to be. ‘Zurich. But I am here in Greece at the government’s invitation, to consult on the current parliamentary enquiry—which of course you will know about—into reducing the cost of affordable housing whilst ensuring it is both environmentally low-impact in its construction and maintenance as well as earthquake-proof. It’s based on work my company has undertaken recently in the Middle East, where similar constraints operate.’

He saw Georgios Petranakos nod knowledgably. ‘Ah, yes, of course. I, myself, am likely to be involved marginally—though my remit is commercial rather than environmental.’ He nodded. ‘Perhaps we may find some discussion useful to us both while you are here?’

Nikos smiled politely with satisfaction. ‘I would be more than happy to do so. When might suit you?’

‘Come for lunch,’ his host said expansively. He turned his head towards his daughter, who was standing rigidly, holding her glass of champagne. ‘Calanthe, my darling one, you know my social diary better than my PA! Can we fit young Kavadis in for lunch this week? I was thinking, perhaps, of the day after tomorrow?’

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