then it had been too late. And would he understand what it was like to be a teenage girl in the throes of young passion? How she’d merely confided in someone she’d thought she could trust? Of course he wouldn’t. The Alexandros she’d known a long time ago might have…but this man wouldn’t.
She gave thanks for having held her tongue about Eleni…for not having blurted out the truth. Eleni’s situation meant that Kallie couldn’t use her as an easy excuse for vindication. She had to find out just what he wanted. Because that was as clear as the nose on her face. He wanted something.
Kallie hardened her heart. She had to. Those conversations he mentioned had belonged to another time, a more innocent time when she’d believed he’d had different sensibilities, like her own. But, she had to remind herself, once his father had died and he’d taken over running Kouros Shipping, he’d changed. Under his hands it had gone from million-dollar profits to generating billions. That wasn’t the same person she’d known who had confided a wish to go to art college. He’d obviously smelt the chance to make money, lots of it, and he’d changed.
But, pathetically, she couldn’t stand the thought that he would tar her with the same brush, despite the evidence she knew was stacked against her. ‘I didn’t…It wasn’t how you think…’ she said ineffectually, miserably.
He leant forward, his face hard. ‘Oh, and just how was it, Kallie?’
Now they were getting to it. Kallie felt something like relief flood through her. This she could handle. Alexandros being angry, hating her.
She looked at him slightly defiantly. She could, at least for the moment, be honest about this. ‘I never intended to hurt you, Alexandros. Believe what you want—you made up your mind that day.’
He was derisive. ‘Oh, you didn’t hurt me, Kallie. But you did wreak a trail of destruction with your careless, cruel actions.’
She swallowed painfully. She hadn’t been intentionally cruel. But he was right—she’d been careless, and foolish. She couldn’t argue with him about that.
‘Your uncle Alexei…’
He didn’t finish the sentence. His rapid changes of subject caught her off guard. He was like an opponent conducting some form of mental martial art. Immediately she was wary. She clenched her hands into fists under the table.
‘What about him?’
Alexandros shrugged negligently. ‘I hear he’s having some difficulties…’
Guilt flooded Kallie. She suddenly remembered her uncle’s words from the other night, how he’d mentioned he’d had to get in touch with Alexandros. It hadn’t occurred to her to question him, she’d been so distracted.
‘What kind of difficulties?’ she bit out. Hating Alexandros with passion at that moment. He was milking every single moment of this dinner. Her nerves were on a knife edge of sensation so acute that she thought she might break in two.
‘The kind that would be solved with a cash injection of a few million euros.’
Kallie tried not to let shock show on her face. She had a sudden very acute fear that they could be vulnerable to Alexandros, who was clearly out for some kind of revenge now.
‘You don’t even have your shares, do you?’
How did he know that?
She shook her head warily.
‘Apparently you couldn’t even wait until your parents were cold in the grave before you cashed them in…’
She gasped at the cruelty of his words. It had been nothing like that. She’d handed them over to Alexei and he’d cashed them in, giving her the small amount she’d needed to set up her business. She hadn’t wanted anything else to do with them and her uncle had needed them.
She leant forward, unaware of how it gave Alexandros a tantalising view of her cleavage beneath her shirt. She quivered with rage and injustice.
‘What I did or didn’t do with my shares is none of your business, Alexandros.’
He shrugged like he didn’t much care and Kallie felt impotent, wanted to walk around and slap the look of smug superiority off his face. It held all the arrogance of his forebears.
‘The fact of the matter is that your uncle has come to me for help…for a loan, if you will.’
Kallie sagged back against her chair. Oh, Alexei, what have you done? Her uncle had never been the brains behind Demarchis Shipping. That had been her father, until…Her mind slammed down on painful memories.
‘Look, Alexandros, what do you want? Surely…surely this can’t be because of what happened all those years ago?’
‘Why not, Kallie? Do you think that what you did wasn’t so bad after all? That time might have diminished it? You tried to seduce me and when it didn’t go your way, in a fit of spoilt pique you lashed out. You singlehandedly stopped a marriage from taking place—’
‘But, Alexandros.’ Panic was making her insides liquefy. ‘Surely Pia would have given you the benefit of the doubt, let you explain? I’m sure you could have convinced her that it meant nothing, was nothing…’ she had to stop for a second when her heart clenched in remembered pain ‘…if she loved you…’
Her remark caught him on the raw, caught him in a place he’d shut off long ago.
‘You’re priceless. Love? It was never about love, Kallie, it was a business arrangement. A merger between two families. Needless to say the merger never happened as soon as they lost faith in my ability to do the job. Thanks to your revealing titbits…’ The rage rose up again. ‘Theos, Kallie…’
She was speechless. She’d always assumed that he had loved Pia. And even though she hadn’t leaked the kiss-and-tell story to the paper, and had had nothing to do with the damning photo, she’d always felt guilty for trying to seduce Alexandros when he’d only wanted to be friends.
Her vulnerability and pathetic weakness for this man still made her blood boil. She opened her mouth, about to proclaim her innocence, and stopped. Eleni. And it wasn’t just Eleni. Even if he knew, Kallie was still in her own way responsible, too. She couldn’t say a thing…angrily impotent at the way she was trapped, she put down her napkin and went to stand but he reached across the table and caught her hand.
The feel of her smooth warm skin, the frantic pulse beating like a trapped bird, called to Alexandros, scrambled his brain for a second. He had to fight for control and remember what he was there to do.
‘I’m not finished with you, Kallie. In fact, we haven’t even started.’
She pulled her hand away, uncaring if people were looking. ‘There’s nothing starting here, Alexandros. I’m leaving.’
His voice was low and lethal. ‘No. You’re not. If you stand up, so help me, I will pick you up and carry you out of here over my shoulder. Don’t think that I won’t. So we can do this here and now, or we can cause a furore of interest, give the paparazzi outside something to photograph and do it back in my apartment.’
She had been in the act of standing and sat down again slowly. She knew without a doubt that she didn’t
