Page 16 of The Billionaire's Demand

Leandros picked up a flute and held the other one out to Eliana. Passively, she took it, trying to calm her jangled nerves. Trying not to be so burningly aware of sitting there beside him in the capacious first-class seat. But he was dominating her senses—as he always had.

He always did—always! From the first moment I saw him there was never another man for me. Never...

Not Damian—poor, hapless Damian. Trying to please his overbearing father with a bride Jonas Makris considered suitable for his son—irrespective of what his son might want...

Poor Damian—and yet we both got what each of us wanted from our marriage.

A marriage that had ended with his car smashed to pieces on that treacherous road a year and a half ago, leaving the consequences that it had...

‘To Paris—and to our time together there.’

Leandros’s low voice interrupted thoughts she didn’t want to have...memories she wanted even less. He clinked his glass against hers, a smile pulling at his sculpted mouth. Yet it was a smile that was disquieting. Like the silky note in his voice.

‘To our days,’ he said. ‘And to our nights...’

For a moment his eyes held hers, and then she broke contact, knowing colour had stained across her cheekbones. Knowing why. Because when he looked at her like that...

More memories she must not have came to her. Of how he had once looked at her like that all the time, making no secret of his desire for her—a desire that she, in those heady, intoxicating days of her love for him, had made no secret of returning.

She took a hasty sip of her champagne, letting the soft mousse fill her mouth, divert her senses from the burning consciousness of Leandros so close beside her.

His power over her senses was as undeniable as ever—and yet now, in the toxic aftermath of what she had done to him all those years ago, he had never been more distant...

Sadness filled her. Yes, she had decided...chosen...resolved to come to him now, like this, for the reasons she had justified to herself and for the sake of the freedom that they must somehow find from each other. It had been her choice—and yet now the reality of it weighed her down. Mocked her.

Had this been our honeymoon six long years ago...flying to Paris, newly wedded, setting off on our life’s adventure together...oh, how blissful it would have been.

Instead...

She suppressed a sigh. There was no point in looking back. She had destroyed a past that never was—now she had to cope with the present.

She took another mouthful of champagne. It would likely make her light-headed, but it would provide an insulating layer over her ragged emotions.

Leandros had got some kind of business journal out of his briefcase and was immersed in it. She was glad of it—it gave her time for her breathing to steady, her colour to subside. She helped herself to the salted almonds, feeling a pang of hunger. She’d been far too stressed to eat today, trying to summon the nerve to actually get to the airport at all. She hoped that some kind of meal would be served on the flight. Presumably there would be dinner that evening. And then afterwards, later on—

Her thoughts cut out—absolutely cut out. She could not think ahead to the coming night—dared not. The resolve she’d felt as she’d sent that fateful text to Leandros last week seemed impossible to believe in now.

She felt the aircraft push back, the engine note change. They were taxiing towards the runway. Airborne, she leant back in her seat, closed her eyes. Perhaps Leandros would think her asleep. It would be easier if he did. Though ‘easier’ was a relative term...

‘Are you all right?’

Leandros’s voice made her open her eyes, turn her head towards him. He was frowning.

‘Thank you, I’m fine,’ she said. Her voice was clipped.

‘I’ve never flown with you before,’ he said slowly. ‘When we went to Crete we went by sea.’

Memory was instant and painful. Standing on the deck of the ferry, leaning on the rail, the wind in her hair, Leandros’s arm around her, her head nestled against his shoulder, not a care in the world. And so incredibly happy.

She dropped her eyes, reached for her champagne again. No point remembering that happiness. It was gone. She had destroyed it and it could never return. Never.

‘So, are you a nervous flyer?’

She couldn’t say there was concern in his voice, but the fact that he was asking at all showed something—though what it was she had no idea.

She shook her head. ‘No, though I haven’t flown much. When my mother was alive we went to England sometimes, to visit the relatives who hadn’t objected to her marrying my father, and for her to catch up with friends from her youth. But after she died that all stopped, really. I just stayed with my father, because—’

She stopped. Her mother’s death when she was eighteen had devastated her father, and she had centred her life around him, forgoing college, keeping him company in their beautiful but isolated house out in the countryside. It had been a quiet existence.

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