Page 18 of The Billionaire's Demand

He made a noise in his throat. ‘Don’t go complaisant on me, Eliana. You never used to be—and I always liked you for speaking your mind. Other girlfriends...’ there was a cynical twist to his mouth now ‘...they always agreed with everything I wanted—tediously so. You never did, and that was part of your appeal to me—your honesty. Be honest now. So, do you want to do the cultural stuff, or the historical stuff, or just stick to spending my money?’

Only with that did an edge creep into his voice. She heard it, but did not respond. ‘I’d like to see anything of Paris,’ she said civilly. ‘Even the touristy things. It will all be new to me.’

‘We can see beyond Paris too, if you like, and if the weather holds.’

His voice was civil now, too, and she was grateful. Maybe if they could just continue to talk in this way, without him cutting at her all the time—as though I don’t know what I did to him, how badly I treated him!—being with him would be more bearable. Less unbearable...

‘What about Versailles?’ he went on. ‘We had that high on our list, as I recall—’

He broke off abruptly, reaching for his wine and taking a hefty draught.

Eliana paid attention to her food. Somehow she’d drunk her champagne, and now she was starting to sip her chilled white wine. Another layer of insulation over her nerve-endings.

‘Then there’s the Trianons, too, near Versailles—we could do them...the Grand and the Petit Trianons,’ Leandros was saying, back in the same conversational tone.

‘Yes,’ said Eliana politely, ‘we could do that.’

We could do a lot of things, but all you’re really taking me to Paris for is sex.

She felt her throat close, anguish clenching it tight, and felt her eyes blinking suddenly.

This might have been our honeymoon together! Starting our lives together. Living our dream together.

But she had made that dream impossible. All that was left to her—and to Leandros, claiming from her the one thing he still wanted of her—was this poisoned present.

Nothing else.

She reached for her wine again. To conceal the tears that threatened...

CHAPTER FIVE

THE PARIS TRAFFIC was bad as they crawled around the Périphérique to make their slow way into the centre. They were staying, so Leandros had told her, on the Left Bank, near Les Invalides.

‘You can add Napoleon’s tomb to your sightseeing list,’ he remarked. ‘Our hotel is one of the former grand residences of the city. Once owned by one of Napoleon’s marshals, so I understand.’

He was being civil, making conversation, and though Eliana was glad he was not making any more cutting remarks to her, his politeness was detached, impersonal.

I could be anyone—anyone at all.

But how could it be otherwise? she thought painfully. Since she had tugged his ring from her finger, her voice stilted, telling him of her change of plan, everything they had once had between them had been obliterated, as if an axe had fallen. All intimacy severed for ever.

The car was gaining the centre of Paris, familiar from a hundred films, and she craned her head to catch a glimpse of the sights. Leandros pointed them out to her and she realised he must, of course, be far more familiar with the city than she was. She had not travelled abroad much with Damian—his father had liked to keep him close by and under his watch.

An unexpected start of excitement pricked at her now as the iconic Eiffel Tower came into view nearby. She was here, in Paris, and however...difficult...the reason, it was something to be here—and a change, she had to acknowledge honestly, from the dreary, dismal, endlessly grinding impoverishment to which she had been confined since Damian’s death.

A sudden yearning smote her.

If only... If only I were here with Leandros as we should have been!

She crushed it down. There was no ‘if only’ possible. Face set, she kept on gazing out of the window, not looking at Leandros, the man she had betrayed and abandoned. Who would never, could never, forgive her...

The hotel was, as Leandros had said, a former grand townhouse, and as they arrived Eliana looked about her with pleasure at the way past and present were intermingled in the luxurious interior.

‘We’re in the Résidence,’ Leandros said to her as he checked them in. ‘The main top floor.’

He guided her into the lift, inset beside a grand staircase sweeping upwards, and Eliana felt her nerves start up. The reality of what she was doing was hitting her...the reason for her presence here. At their floor, they emerged on to a wide landing set with a pair of gilded double doors, which Leandros opened with a flourish.

She stepped inside into a beautiful drawing room—there was no other word for it—eighteenth-century in style, with a carpet in rich hues of blue and gold and furniture which, although modern, looked as elegant as the rest of the room, and was styled for comfort as well as elegance. Paintings adorned the walls—again, a skilful mix of modern and classic—and there was a large mirror above the marble fireplace. Long blue silk curtains graced the French windows which, she realised, led onto a little Juliet balcony, overlooking a narrow formal front garden and the quiet street below.

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