He approached like advancing darkness, and his aura eclipsed her, made her insides quiver with a mess of reactions she’d never thought she’d experience again. If anything, time had faded her memories of his impact. Or had he grown more overwhelming?
But he can’t be here, her mind screamed, as her heartbeats spiraled into the danger zone.
The chips of steel he had for eyes captured hers, freezing her to the spot. Then they swept her from head to toe, engulfing her in simmering ice.
Her gaze careered down his body in return. From sun-gilded hair, to skin the texture and color of polished teak, to the slashes and planes and hollows of a face assembled with ruthless perfection. His body was shrouded in a suit that looked molded on him. She knew from extensive experience that the flesh beneath had been carved by a divine hand. But all that physical flawlessness would have never affected her if it hadn’t been imbued with a charisma and character that bent masses to his merest whim. This man, this force of darkness, commanded thousands, his every decision and action impacting millions. And he’d once had her completely in his power, to do with as he pleased. As she’d once begged him to.
She’d also once begged him to let her go. Because even then she’d feared she wouldn’t have the strength to walk away. What he’d done next, to spite her, to torment her, had had her swearing never again.
But she’d believed she had nothing to worry about. That he’d disappeared from her life forever. After his latest and most terrible transgression, she’d been certain she would never lay eyes on him again.
But there he was. Why? Why?
“What the hell are you doing here?”
She barely recognized the alien rasp that hissed out of her. Then she heard Hannah’s agitated voice.
“When I found him at the door, I assumed you instructed the concierge to send him up. And since you do know him, I let him in.” Even Hannah thought the extent of Naomi’s acquaintance with Andreas had merely been a few encounters when her sister had married his friend. “He led me to believe you did invite him, said he had to arrive early, but insisted I didn’t disturb you at work, and that he’d wait for you.”
Naomi turned to Hannah, barely processing her apologetic account, only one thing registering within the mass of shock her brain had become. Fury.
Before she could assure her the fault had all been Andreas’s, he spoke again, addressing the older woman. “Thank you for being the perfect hostess, Mrs. McCarthy. Tea was lovely. But now that Naomi is here, you can tend to your other business.”
He was dismissing her!
And Hannah, one of the strongest characters Naomi had ever known, was already obeying him without hesitation, not even pausing to catch her eye to check if that was okay with her.
This tipped her still reverberating shock over the edge into pure outrage.
She ground her teeth as she turned to him, pulling herself to her full height, even though it still left her almost a foot shorter than his six foot five. “Now that I am here, you can go.”
Andreas waited until Hannah disappeared, no doubt to the farthest recess of the apartment, then cocked his head at Naomi. “I will go...back to your family room. Or would you prefer we conduct this meeting in some other room?”
Some other room.
His words dripped with nuance. Not that he necessarily meant the bedroom. He’d once turned every square foot of wherever they’d met into a setting for intimacy. The sexual variety only, of course.
That he could imply any such thing now added another layer of blackness to his already dark-as-sin character.
“The only place you’ll go is out,” she gritted. “Whatever you’re here for, it’s way too late. Everything—everyone—is long dead and buried.”
The Andreas she once knew would have met her rebuke with nothing but blankness in his eyes. The one actual reaction she’d seen, apart from incinerating passion, had been the last time they’d been together. He’d shocked her with his anger then. It had infuriated him that she’d mustered the will to end whatever it was between them. She’d been his handy outlet and it had enraged him that she’d been the one to end it all, probably only before he’d been ready with a replacement.
But now she could read some response in his gaze. Within the unfathomable steel-gray of his eyes, there was the stirring of surprise, of calculation, of...amusement?
He found death and burials amusing? Probably. He must also be marveling at the puny human who dared defy the god that he was. If so, she’d give him some serious entertainment.
Turning on her heel, only rage holding her together, Naomi reached for her purse and phone. She punched three numbers.
With a finger hovering over the call button, she turned to him. “Get out right now, or I’m contacting the police and reporting that you conned your way in here, and are staying against my will.”
Looking totally unconcerned by her threat, he calmly said, “Once you hear why I’m here, you’ll beg me to stay.”
“I’d sooner beg a shark to devour me.”
Those lethal lips twisted so offhandedly that frustration expanded inside her. “Speaking of devouring... The last time I ate was that horrid meal on my flight here.”
“Whatever happened? Have you now joined mere mortals in suffering commercial flights?”
He gave a shrug of dismissal, since of course multibillionaire Andreas Sarantos had his own fleet of jets.
“Even food on private jets can be bad. At least it seemed that way as I sat for the past thirty minutes being tormented by Mrs. McCarthy’s mouthwatering cooking aromas. I bet she made enough to accommodate my presence. Let’s honor her efforts and have this conversation over dinner.”
Naomi shook her head, as if that might make this nightmare fade away. But it was really happening. He truly was here, disregarding her anger and threats, and inviting himself to dinner. It was so atrociously arrogant, it numbed her.
She shook her head again. “I know you believe everyone is a chess piece in the game you perpetually play. But if you think you can still move me around, you’ve progressed from being detached from humanity to detached from reality.”
He met her low-voiced tirade with a cool-eyed stare. She snapped her fingers in front of his face. “See this? I really exist and I’m done playing my role in an act where you have the only lines. Now for the last time—get out.”
She could almost see her wrath shattering against the indifference he wore like impenetrable armor. If a fallen angel did exist, he had to look and feel exactly like Andreas. Terribly beautiful, sinister and sublime at once, impossible to withstand or to look away from.
He tilted his head, causing his now collar-length hair to sift to the side with a sigh. She suppressed a shudder at the sound, her hands fisting at the memory of threading through those layers of silk.
Then he tsked in mock reproach. “After four years of separation, is this any way to talk to your beloved husband?”
Two
Husband.
The word—the lie—detonated inside Naomi’s head.
“Ex-husband!”
Her barked qualification had no impact on him whatsoever.
He only shrugged. “Technicality.”
His nonchalance as he reduced some of her life’s worst times to nothing exacerbated her fury.
“That ‘technicality’ is called divorce.”
And it hadn’t been the easy, quick one she’d