Page 52 of The Billionaire's Demand

He filled the room—filled so much more. She hung on to the door-jamb, just to give her strength. A strength that was ebbing away like ice on a hot stove, just as swiftly. Her mouth had dried, but she had to answer him.

‘Yes,’ she said.

His skewering gaze pinned her. The planes of his face were stark. Only once had she seem him thus—when she had slid his ring from his finger and walked out of his life.

‘I...I have to go,’ she said.

He frowned suddenly. ‘You’ve been evicted?’

She shook her head. ‘No... I’m just...just moving somewhere else.’

Weakness was flooding through her—and something quite different that had nothing to do with the dismay that was paralysing her. A longing so intense she felt faint with it. But it was a longing that had no place in her life.

‘Where?’ he demanded.

‘Just...somewhere else.’

She knew there was evasion in her voice. He’d heard it, she could see. See it in the sudden icing of his gaze. The narrowing of his eyes. The starkness of his cheekbones.

‘So tell me where.’

Her heart was thudding, her hand still splayed across the door-jamb, clinging to it for support.

‘It doesn’t matter where. Or why.’

He took a step towards her and she threw up a hand, as if to ward him off.

‘Leandros, it doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter where I’m going, or why. It isn’t...it isn’t anything to do with you.’

He stared at her. ‘You say that to me,’ he said slowly, ‘after Paris?’

Her face contorted. ‘Leandros—Paris was...was... Well, what it was...’ How could she tell him what it had been to her? ‘But it was never going to last—and you didn’t want it to either.’ She shut her eyes a moment, then sprang them open again. ‘Oh, Leandros...’ Her voice had changed...she heard anguish in it. ‘I know why you took me there. I know the memory of what I did to you six years ago has haunted you—poisoned you. At first I thought that I owed you Paris, and I was prepared to go through with it. But then... Well—’ she drew a ragged breath ‘—things changed. Maybe...’ she half lifted a hand towards him, then let it drop away ‘...even healed,’ she said. ‘Or...or something like that. Whatever it was, it was...good.’ Her voice dropped. ‘But it could never have lasted. It just couldn’t.’

‘Did you not want it to?’

His voice was hollow, as if something had been emptied out of it.

He stepped towards her. ‘Eliana, what happened in Paris—it was good! You know it was good. We made it good. I said to you that we could change, and we did—both of us!’ His voice was vehement—urgent. ‘Why lose it? Why walk away from it?’

How could she answer? It was impossible.

She took another ragged breath. ‘I wish you hadn’t come here...chasing after me. There’s no point.’

‘So where are you going? Why? And why do you not answer what I’ve asked you?’

She could see a nerve working in his cheek, the starkness in his face as she stayed silent.

Then suddenly, he gave an oath, his expression changing completely. ‘You’re going to someone else—’

There was no emotion in his voice, yet it chilled her to the core. Chilled her—and handed her what she desperately, despairingly, needed.

‘Yes,’ she said.

For one unendurable moment his eyes held hers, and in them was what she had seen only once before, on that unbearable day she’d handed him back his ring. Then, without a word, he walked past her.

Out of the apartment.

Out of her life—a second time.

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