Page 26 of The Billionaire's Demand

Leandros let her be and she continued her exploration, wanting diversion. As she returned from her circuit he said, pleasantly, ‘Seen enough?’

She nodded, and they made their way out again.

He glanced at his watch. ‘We should be getting back. You’ll need time to get yourself ready—we’re going to the opera. Puccini’s Manon Lescaut. It should suit you.’

That was definitely a dig—it was an opera about a poor girl who rejected her equally poor lover in favour of a wealthy suitor. She wanted to protest, riposte, find some way of answering back. But how could she? Like Manon, she had chosen wealth over love.

Not that that had stopped her first love from wanting her to want him still.

As she got into the car that Leandros had summoned to their side his words from the night before were in her head—how he did not want her to make a sacrifice of herself. Taunting her that she would be eager for him.

He wants me to want him.

Her eyes shadowed as she pulled her seat belt across. The man she wanted was the man she had once known, so long ago. The man she had once loved—and rejected. This man now—this Leandros—was not that man. And she was not the woman he had once loved either.

So what is there left? Nothing that I want.

That was the truth of it, she thought bleakly. Leandros here, now, only wanted a sexual affair with her—she had forfeited anything more. But for herself...?

Her eyes went to him now, in profile, as they crossed over the river to the Left Bank. Emotions flowed within her as turbid as the waters of the Seine—and as unknowable.

She gave up on her thoughts, which were as hopeless as her emotions to try and untangle, as the car made its way through the Paris traffic. Leandros was studying his phone messages, absorbed and silent.

Back at their hotel, in their suite, he spoke.

‘The Paris opera is very grand, so look your best. Wear one of the new evening gowns. I’ve taken a box—a loge—and there will be people there this evening whom I know.’

She nodded acquiescently, before disappearing into the sanctuary of her bedroom. It would take time to get herself ready.

Memory played tormentingly of how once she had rejoiced in making herself as lovely as she could for an evening with Leandros, taking endless trouble with her hair, her make-up, wanting to look wonderful for him, wanting...longing...to see his eyes light up when he saw her. Light up with love.

And now...

Now it will only be with desire.

Pain twisted inside her and, knowing how useless it was, she went to select from the three evening gowns Leandros had bought her. All were fabulous—and revealing. Designed specifically to show off her beauty—and her body.

She picked the pale blue one, because its décolletage, though low cut, was draped, and she could pin it higher than it would otherwise fall. For all that, when she finally slipped it over her head, letting the silk glide down her body, the bias cut clung to her hips, the length of her thighs. Her shoulders were all but completely exposed by the thin straps.

She wished she had a shawl, or a stole of some kind, but there was only a luxuriously soft fake fur evening jacket, which would have to be discarded once they were seated.

She gave herself one last look in the floor-length mirror on the wall, her expression troubled. Even after pinning her bodice higher, she still felt it was too low. She also knew that with her ice-blue slinky evening gown, her full maquillage, and her hair in a sophisticated upswept style, it was almost as if she were a different person. A new person. Not the drab, work-worn pauper living the poverty-stricken life forced upon her, not the jewel-laden trophy wife of Jonas Makris’s son, and nor—she felt a painful pang go through her—the youthful self she had once been, romantically gowned, her hair loose and flowing, wide-eyed and adoring for the man she loved.

Now she was the woman Leandros wanted her to be—alluring, tempting, a femme fatale...

The only way he wants me to be now.

Her expression changed.

And what do I want to be now?

The question hung there, unknowable and unanswerable, all part of the tangled mess of her emotions, confusing and conflicting.

A sharp tap on the bedroom door made her turn away from her disturbing reflection, her disturbing thoughts. She slid her bare arms into the short fake fur jacket, picked up the satin evening clutch bag in matching ice-blue, and walked to the door on heels much higher than she was used to. Outside waited the man who had once loved her—then hated her.

Now he only desired her.

A poisonous, toxic mix.

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