Page 28 of The Billionaire's Demand

She had only the glass of champagne he had bestowed upon her.

She took a mouthful, ignoring the delicate mousse, simply swallowing it down, needing to feel its impact. Yet for all that she could still feel her eyes sting, and she lowered her gaze, letting her mascara-laden eyelashes veil it from him. What good would it do to let him see her pain at his scathing taunt? He would only think she deserved to feel it.

And I know I have no defence to make.

She took another mouthful, welcoming its effervescence in her mouth, in her suddenly constricted throat, as she swallowed it down. She felt its kick and was glad. Grateful.

Leandros was taking the seat beside her—too close, far too close—angling his long legs away from her, then handing her a programme, which presumably had been delivered along with the bottle of champagne.

She was grateful for the programme, which gave her something to do other than knock back her champagne. She balanced the glass carefully on the unoccupied chair on her other side and bent her head to peruse the programme. It was in French, and she had to focus on trying to understand its explanation of the contents of each act. But she knew the sorry tale well enough—even though Manon had never been a favourite Puccini for her. How could it be with such a heroine?

Though ‘heroine’ was scarcely the word for her. She was vain and conceited and unrepentant, as well as faithless and venal.

Does Leandros truly think me as despicable as she was?

She reached for her champagne again to block the anguished question. As she did, she realised that the house lights were starting to dim, and the audience had taken their seats. The orchestra was done with tuning up, and a hush was descending over the auditorium. The emergence of the conductor—a famous name, she knew—heralded the start of the performance.

Setting aside her programme, she held the champagne glass instead, finding some comfort in sipping from it as the music sprang into life and the curtain rose on the first act, where the hapless lover, des Grieux, would meet the woman who would destroy his life.

Despite the innocuous opening scene, with its cheerful crowd and carefree students, how could she possibly enjoy so sad and sordid a story? Only when the tenor singing des Grieux—another famous name—launched into the celebrated aria, one of the best known of the opera, did she feel unwilling emotion welling up in her as the familiar cadences caught at her, caught her up in des Grieux’s headlong plunge into total, overwhelming love at first sight, swept away by so fatal an indulgence.

Yet it wasn’t des Grieux that she was thinking of.

I’m thinking of myself—falling for Leandros the very first time I set eyes on him.

The memory was in her head...instant—indelible.

‘Donna non vidi mai...’

Never did I see such a woman... sang the tenor, and the joy and wonder and passionate yearning in his voice soared above the orchestra, out over the audience, reaching up towards her.

Echoing within her.

For, just like des Grieux, never before had she seen someone who made it impossible to turn her head away. At that party in Glyfada, where they’d met, she’d fallen so totally in love in that very moment.

She felt her head turn now, powerless to stop it. Felt her gaze go to Leandros’s profile, carved as if from stone. Felt, as Puccini’s music soared around her in passionate voice and swelling orchestra, filling her head, her heart, something call from her out of nowhere, it seemed to her. And she was unprepared, unwarned...with emotion rising up in her—an emotion she had thought long extinguished, smothered and lifeless, for six long, bitter, painful, endless years.

But it had not been banished, not extinguished. It was still there, hidden deep inside her—and it was summoned now, against all reason, by the passion of the music. It powered up inside her, all the emotion that had once filled her and which she had thought could be no more, thought impossible. And she could not stop it—could not force it back, force it down, force it back into the oblivion where it needed to be—where it must be. For how else could she go on living?

For a moment she was blind as it swept over her, possessing her entirely. Repossessing her.

And then suddenly, unstoppably, it was sweeping from her, sweeping away all the tangled, tormenting, confusing and conflicting emotions that had plagued her since the moment she had set eyes on Leandros again, made the fateful decision to come here to Paris with him. And they had plagued her every hour since. Now they were simply gone—as if they had never been. Swept away to leave uncovered, unhidden, one emotion—only one—that had been there all along. That always would be...

She tore her gaze away, forced it back to the stage below as the aria ended. And yet she was shaken to the core, to the very core of her being, as she realised, saw and knew the truth that had been there all along, concealed in the heart of that tangled confusion of emotions.

Six years might have passed—she might have walked away from Leandros and she might have been wed and widowed since, might have buried the man she had married, with tears for his sad, sad fate—but nothing could now conceal from her what she knew, what blazed within her.

What she still felt—would always feel, could never not feel for Leandros, whatever happened, whatever life did to her...

I am here with him now, here with him again after so, so long. And though all he wants of me is what he has declared, that cannot, will not, and does not change what I now know—the truth I now know. About myself.

Unconsciously, she started to sip at her refilled glass again, letting her eyes rest on the stage below, watching the events unfolding that would eventually lead the lovers to their doom. Unconsciously, she let the music take over, flowing over her even as what was happening to her inside was flowing through her.

She knew they were the same—that they shared the same name, the same truth.

That however flawed, however doomed, however one-sided, love always survives somehow—impossible though it must seem.

And now she knew, with a certainty that filled her, that it was still true.

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