Page 54 of The Billionaire's Seduction Revenge

“You will need to sign a few documents, while you are here,” the woman said gently. “And then we can handle the rest.”

Vasilios swung his eyes to her fiercely, trapping her with the intensity of his gaze.

“Are you saying Emma did not return your calls?”

The woman floundered, evidently having forgotten all about the other beneficiary of the will.

“She called me back,” the third lawyer, who’d tried to speak earlier, finally interjected. “Yesterday. She thanked me for letting her know about the reading of the will but said that there could be nothing in it of interest to her. She asked that we not call her again.”

Vasilios’s hand formed a fist beneath the table.

“Do you happen to have an address for her?”

“In fact, I do. I have to send her some papers, for her to sign away her interest in the inheritance formally.”

“Email that address to me immediately,” he demanded, scraping his chair back and leaving the room without another word. They stared at him with mouths open, the victims, in a sense of a small, highly localised cyclone. “Good day.”

Emma tilted her face to the sun, enjoying the warmth on her skin, sighing as she focussed on the sounds around her. The distant hum of traffic, the closer noise of children playing, the smell of freshly cut grass courtesy of the council workers who’d come through only a few hours earlier, and the taste of just-made lemonade. By focusing on everything she felt in those moments, she could push Vasilios from her mind. It was a trick she’d worked hard on these last few weeks and she was becoming more and more adept at it.

Sometimes.

Not at night.

Never at night.

No matter how much she concentrated on the noises of the city, she couldn’t push Vasilios out of her thoughts at night. He was stubbornly there, a part of her, an awful, aching absence, the pain of their last conversation, the strangeness of his neglect for the last few days at Costa’s, sinking her into the depths of despair, contrasting so completely with the sensual perfection of everything that had come before.

When she’d first heard from those lawyers in Rome, she’d actually contemplated going. She’d imagined surprising him by appearing, staring across the table at him, showing him with her eyes how much she hated him for the way he’d treated her.

But in the end, it had been impossible to know with any certainty if she’d manage to look at him with cool detachment or the desperate hunger and all-consuming love that were stitched into her soul, so she’d stayed away.

She’d never wanted anything from Costa but his friendship, and he’d given her that.

Nonetheless, knowing where in the world Vasilios was, and when, meant her mind had been singularly focussed for the last two days, and after the meeting would have finished, Emma could have kicked herself for staying away.

Once the opportunity to see Vasilios was gone, it was all she could think of, all she wanted. Just a glimpse. But she wouldn’t have been able to stop at a single glance; staying away had been wise.

Eventually, she’d move on. She’d forget. Wouldn’t she?

She was so achingly beautiful, at first, he couldn’t move. Relief at finally having found her seeped through him. He’d been to the room she’d rented, and they’d directed her to a nearby café she liked to frequent. It was the man behind the coffee machine who’d suggested Vasilios try this park:She likes to sit there. For hours, sometimes.Vasilios’s insides had churned with now-familiar emotions: jealousy, and mostly, emptiness, because Emma was out of his life and in other people’s. He’d lost her.

She was like a fantasy, an angel, a statue, so still, sitting in a park bench with her face tilted towards the sun, just as the barista had said she would be, her legs crossed, her hands folded in her lap, and all he could do was stare.

To drink in the sight of her and reassure himself that no matter what he’d said to her, how he’d treated her, she was fine.

He hadn’t destroyed her.

He hadn’t ruined her.

She was okay.

Wasn’t she?

Then why hadn’t she come to the reading?

She could still have walked away, but she could have at least heard what Costa wanted her to have, could have heard the words he’d written for her.

If she was so fine, so over it all, why not simply come to the damned lawyers’ office?

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