Emelia felt the ice around her heart begin to crack. ‘I didn’t really want to leave you, Javier. I just felt I had no choice. And then the accident…’ She gulped and continued hollowly, ‘Maybe Peter would still be alive if it hadn’t been for me.’
He gripped her hands. ‘No, you must not think like that. I have heard from the police since you left. The accident was no accident. Peter’s lover was being stalked by her ex. He was following you and Peter, mistakenly believing you to be her. He ran Peter off the road. Charges are in the process of being laid. You were not at fault.’
She put a hand to her head and frowned as the memory returned. ‘I remember Vanessa. She was the best thing that had ever happened to Peter. They were so in love.’
He gave her a pained look. ‘I know. I am ashamed of how I reacted to that ridiculous press story. I should have trusted you. You’ve had to endure similar rubbish and yet you’ve always trusted me.’
‘Until that last time,’ she said. ‘The Russian singer.’
‘Yes, well, that was perfectly understandable,’ he said. ‘You were in the early stages of pregnancy. I had never made you feel all that secure in our marriage. I was always flying off to sign up some big business deal. But all that has to change—if you’ll only give me a chance.’ He tightened his hold of her hands. ‘Say you’ll come back to me, Emelia. Come back to me and be my wife. Be the mother of my children.’
Emelia blinked back tears. ‘We lost our little baby…’
He pulled her into his chest. ‘I know,’ he said, softly planting a kiss on the top of her head, her seawaterdamp and salty hair tickling his nose. ‘I blame myself for that. If you hadn’t been so worried about me coming to terms with being a father, maybe it wouldn’t have happened.’
She pulled back in his embrace to look up at him. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself. My father recently told me my mother had three miscarriages before she had me. I don’t know if it’s hereditary or not, but I’m sure we’ll have a baby one day.’
‘So you’ll come back to me?’ he asked.
She smiled as she linked her arms around his neck. ‘I can’t think of any place I would rather be than with you.’
His dark eyes melted as he looked down at her. ‘I know someone who is going to be absolutely thrilled to hear you say that.’
She gave him a quizzical look. ‘Who?’
‘She’s waiting in the car,’ he said. ‘She said something about BFF. What does that mean, by the way?’
Emelia’s smile widened. ‘It means best friends forever. She’s really here? Izabella came all this way?’
His smile was self-deprecating. ‘She didn’t trust me to be able to convince you to come home. She said if I didn’t succeed she would come in and do it for me. Do you want me to call her in?’
‘Of course I do.’ She ran to the window and, finding the hire car, waved madly to the young woman sitting inside chewing her nails.
Javier’s gaze warmed as he came over and looped an arm around her waist. ‘There’s just one thing I need to do before she gets here,’ he said, turning her around to face him.
‘Oh,’ Emelia said, smiling brightly. ‘What’s that?’
‘I think you know,’ he said and, before she could admit she did, he covered her mouth with a kiss that promised forever.
The Konstantos Marriage Demand
Kate Walker
KATE WALKER was born in Nottinghamshire, but as she grew up in Yorkshire she has always felt that her roots are there. She met her husband at university, and originally worked as a children’s librarian, but after the birth of her son she returned to her old childhood love of writing. When she’s not working, she divides her time between her family, their three cats, and her interests of embroidery, antiques, film and theatre, and, of course, reading. You can visit Kate at www.kate-walker.com.
For Abby Green with thanks for the inspiration over Kir Royales in the Shelbourne and for sharing Delphi Lodge
IN SPITE OF the driving rain that lashed her face, stinging her eyes and almost blinding her, Sadie had no trouble finding her way to the offices where she had an appointment first thing that morning. From the moment that she left the tube station and turned right it was as if her feet were taking her automatically along the route she needed, with no need to look where she was going.
But then of course she had been this way so many times before. In other days, some time ago perhaps, but often enough to know her way without thinking. Of course then she had been heading in this direction in such very different circumstances. In those days she would have arrived in a taxi, or perhaps a chauffeur-driven car, with a uniformed driver sliding the limousine to the edge of the kerb and opening the door for her. Then, the offices towards which she was heading had belonged to her father as the head of Carteret Incorporated. Now they were the UK headquarters of the man who had set out to ruin her family in revenge for the way he had been treated.
And who had succeeded far more than he had ever dreamed.
Burning tears mingled with the sting of the rain as Sadie forced her feet towards the huge plate glass doors that marked the entrance to the elegant building, blinding her so that she almost stumbled across the threshold. Bitter acid swirled in her stomach as the doors slid open and she recognised the way that the words Konstantos Corporation were now etched in big gold letters on the glass where once she had been able to see her father’s name—her family name—displayed so clearly.
Would she ever be able to come back here and not think of her father, dead and in his grave for over six months, while the man who had hated him enough to take everything he possessed from him now lorded it over the company that her great-grandfather had built up from nothing into the multimillion corporation it now was?
‘No!’ Drawing on all the determination she possessed, Sadie shook her head, sending her sleek dark hair flying, her green eyes dark with resolve, as she stepped into the wide, marble-floored foyer. Her black patent high-heeled shoes made a clipped, decisive sound as she made her way across to the pale wood reception desk.
‘No!’ she muttered under her breath again.
No way was she going to let cruel memories of the past destroy her now. She couldn’t let them take away the hard-won strength she had drawn on to get herself here. The resolve that was holding her upright and, she prayed, stopping her legs from shaking, her knees from giving way beneath her. She had come here today because it was her last—her only chance. She had to brave the lion in his den and ask him—beg him—to give them this one small reprieve. Without it the thought of the consequences was impossible to bear. For herself, her mother and her small brother. She couldn’t let anything get in the way of that.
‘I have an appointment with Mr Konstantos,’ she told the smartly dressed young woman behind the reception desk. ‘With—Mr Nikos Konstantos.’
She prayed that no tremor in her voice gave away how difficult she had found it to say the name—his name. The name of the man she had once loved almost to the point of madness. The name she had once believed would be hers too for the rest of her life—until she had realised that she was just being used as a pawn in a very nasty power game. A cruel game of revenge