Page 21 of The Billionaire's Demand

She simply nodded, saying nothing. His eyes rested on her for one last moment. She looked...frail. That was the word.

He shook it from him. He hadn’t brought her here to pity her, but to get closure—finally to achieve that.

He strode towards the door and was gone.

Eliana lay in bed. After Leandros had left for his dinner she’d stood a moment, wondering what she should do, feeling strange. Had she really just had a cocktail with Leandros, all dressed up in his dinner jacket, as effortlessly devastating as he always was in a tuxedo? But then, of course, he was devastating at any time—any time at all...

She felt emotions flicker—conflicting, confusing. But how could they be anything else at seeing Leandros again—having him physically in front of her, with the sheer overwhelming impact on her that he’d always had—but for that to be dominated by all that now separated them.

She went across to the sofa, sat herself down on it, sipping her G and T, wanting the alcohol to numb her nerve-endings.

There was a complicated-looking remote control on the low table in front of her and she picked it up, clicking it. The mirror above the fireplace sprang into life—a wall-hung TV. She channel-surfed idly, not engaging, and then let it settle to an English language news station. Perhaps the miseries of the world would take her mind off the moment. So, too, might ordering dinner for herself—drinking on an empty stomach was not wise.

She picked up another handset, placed on the side table by the sofa, and got through to Reception, gave an order for dinner. She’d asked for something she could eat while watching TV, and was duly obliged, with the politely attentive butler setting out her repast on the coffee table, then taking his leave.

She ate, then took her empty plates through to the kitchen that came as part of the Résidence, and busied herself washing them up. Then she made herself a herbal tea and went back to the sofa. She found a nature programme, and then a history one—they whiled away the time.

She ought to relax. Here she was in a luxury hotel, with nothing to do but indulge herself. Yet she was strung out like a piece of wire.

After a while she gave up on the TV and retired to her bedroom. There was a well-stocked bookcase in the drawing room, many books in English, and she’d selected an old favourite—Persuasion.

But as she sat up in bed, wearing the Victorian-style nightdress that she had worn long ago as a teenager, the soft mattress a world away from the lumpy bed in her studio apartment, propped up on luxuriant pillows, she thought maybe Persuasion had not been a good choice. Jane Austen’s heroine had ruined her own life over the lack of money. Turning down the man who’d loved her.

She got a second chance, though.

Bleakness sat in her eyes. Second chances did not always come.

They can’t for me. Leandros only wants closure—nothing else.

And so did she. Surely that was all she wanted? All that it was sane for her to want?

Wearily, she dropped the book, shut her eyes. She had committed herself to this—to being here in Paris with Leandros—but the more she faced the actual implications of what was going to happen now that she was here, the more tangled she became, emotions meshing and twisting, troubling and tormenting.

She gave a start—that was the door of the Résidence opening. She heard Leandros moving around...heard, she thought, the clink of a glass, then the sound of his bedroom door opening. Then silence.

For a long, endless moment she just went on lying there. Her heart was beating fast in her chest, she could feel it. Emotions, tangled and tormenting, twisted inside her. Wanting and not wanting. Not wanting and wanting...

Wanting...

Leandros was here—so close, a mere room away. Leandros who, for six long years, had been impossibly out of reach, impossibly distant. Leandros from whom, six years ago, she had walked away. And now... Oh, now he was back in her life—for whatever dark reason, whatever bitter purpose... He was here now, and so was she...

So close—so very, very close...

Leandros.

His name cried out in her head.

Without any consciousness of what she was doing, letting some impulse direct her—some impulse she could not repress, could not deny—and with her heart still beating audibly within her, the breath stopping in her throat, she felt herself slide out of bed. Set her feet on the floor. Cross the room. Open the door...step through it.

On leaden feet, impelled by the guilt that had consumed her for six bitter years, and impelled by so much more...by those tangled, twisting, tormented emotions...she headed towards the door of Leandros’s own bedroom.

It opened with a click, and she stepped inside.

Leandros was reading. The bedside lamp was sufficient to illuminate the text of the international business journal he was attempting to look at. Attempting was the only word that was appropriate. He couldn’t focus on the contents. His thoughts were all over the place.

Correction—they are in one place only...

The bedroom next to his.

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