‘Yeah, that’s what I want to talk to you about. It’s time you came home.’ He handed her back her Martini. He drained his beer and ate his three bitesized blinis, then looked about for more. Two waiters were beside him in an instant.
He always had been charismatic, Athena thought. People gravitated to him.
She’d gravitated to him.
‘So how about it?’ he said, smiling his thanks to the waiters. Oh, that smile…
‘Why would I want to come home?’
‘There’s the little matter of the Crown. I’m thinking you must have read the newspapers. Your cousin, Demos, says he’s talked to you. I’m thinking Alexandros must have talked to you as well—or did you hang up on him, too?’
‘Of course I didn’t.’
‘So you do know you’re Crown Princess of Argyros.’
‘I’m not Crown Princess of anything. Demos can have it,’ she said savagely. ‘He wants it.’
‘Demos is second in line. You’re first. It has to be you.’
‘I have the power to abdicate. Consider me abdicated. Royalty’s outdated and absurd, and my life’s here. So, if you’ll excuse me…’
‘Thena, you don’t have a choice. You have to come home.’
Thena. He was the only one who’d ever shortened her name. It made her feel…as she had no business feeling.
Just tell it like it is and move on, she told herself. Be blunt and cold and not interested. He was talking history. Argyros was no longer anything to do with her.
‘You’re right,’ she managed. ‘I don’t have a choice. My life is here.’
But not in this room. All of a sudden the room was claustrophobic. Her past was colliding with her present, and it made her feel as if the ground was shaking underneath her.
She and Nikos in the same room? No, no, no.
She and Nikos in the same city? She and Nikos and their son?
No!
Fear had her almost frozen.
‘Nikos, this is futile,’ she managed. ‘There’s no use telling me to go home. My home is here. Meanwhile, I have things to attend to, so if you’ll excuse me…’ She handed her Martini glass back to him and, before he could respond she swivelled and made her way swiftly through the crowd.
She reached the door—and she kept on walking.
She hadn’t retrieved her checked coat. It didn’t matter. Outside was cold, but she wasn’t feeling cold. Her face was burning. She was shaking.
Maybe he’d let her be.
Or maybe not. He hadn’t come all the way from Argyros to be ignored.
It was raining. Her stilettos weren’t built for walking. She wanted to take them off and run. Because of course he’d follow.
Of course he did.
When he fell in step beside her she felt as if she’d been punched. Nikos…He threatened her world.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked mildly.
‘Nowhere you’re welcome.’
‘Is this any way to greet family?’
‘I’m not your family.’
‘Tell that to my mother.’
His mother…She thought of Annia and felt a stab of real regret. She glanced sideways at Nikos—and then looked swiftly away. Annia…Argyros…
Nikos.
She’d walked away from them ten years ago. Leaving had broken her heart.
‘It’s your heritage,’ he said mildly, as if he was simply continuing the conversation from back at the fashion launch.
‘I never had a heritage. It was all about Giorgos.’
‘The King’s dead, Athena. He died without an heir. You know that.’
‘And that makes a difference how?’
‘It means the Diamond Isles become three Principalities again. The original royal families can resume rule. But you know this. By the way—did you also know that you’re beautiful?’ And he took her arm and forced her to stop.
She’d been striding. Angry. Fearful. Confused. Rain was turning to sleet. Her heels, her tight skirt and sheer pashmina wrap were designed for cocktail hour, not for street wear.
She should keep going but she wasn’t all that sure where to go. She couldn’t outwalk Nikos and she surely wasn’t leading him back to her apartment. She surely wasn’t leading him to her son.
She might as well stop. Get it over with now.
She turned to face him. A blast of icy wind hit full on, and she felt herself shudder.
Nikos’s ancient leather jacket was suddenly around her, warm from his body, smelling of old leather and Nikos and…home. Argyros. Fishing boats in an ancient harbour. White stone villas hugging island cliffs. Sapphire seas and brilliant sun. The Diamond Isles.
Suddenly, stupidly, she wanted to cry.
‘We need to get out of this,’ Nikos said. His hand was under her elbow and he was steering her into the brightly lit portico of a restaurant, as if this was his town and he wasn’t half a world away from where he lived and worked.
Nikos…
‘You call those clothes?’ he growled, and she remembered how bossy he’d been when they were kids, and how he was always right.
Bossy and arrogant and…fun. Pushing her past her comfort zone. Daring her to join him.
The number of times she’d ended up with skinned knees, battered and bruised because: ‘Of course we can get up that cliff; you’re not going to sit and watch like some girl, are you?’
She never did sit and watch. Even when they’d been older and the boys from the other islands became part of their pack, she’d always been included. Until…
Let’s not go there, she told herself. She’d moved on. She was fashion editor for one of the world’s best-selling magazines. She lived in New York and she was fine.
So what was Nikos doing, here, ushering her into a restaurant she recognised? This place usually involved queuing, or a month or more’s notice. But Nikos was a man who turned heads, who waiters automatically found a place for, because even if they couldn’t place him they felt they should. He was obviously someone. He always had been, and his power hadn’t waned one bit.
Stunned to speechlessness, she found herself being steered to an isolated table for two, one of the best in the house. The waiter tried to take her jacket—his jacket—but she clung. It was dumb, but she needed its warmth. She needed its comfort.
‘What’s good?’ Nikos asked the waiter, waving away the menu.
‘Savoury? Sweet?’
‘Definitely something sweet,’ he said, and smiled across the table at her. ‘The way the lady’s feeling right now, we need all the sugar we can get.’
She refused to smile back. She couldn’t allow herself to sink into that smile.
‘Crêpes?’ the waiter proffered. ‘Or if you have time…our raspberry soufflé’s a house speciality.’
‘Crêpes followed by soufflé for both of us then,’ he said easily, and the waiter beamed and nodded and backed away, almost as if he sensed he shouldn’t turn his back on royalty.
Nikos.