Page 18 of A Diamond Deal
She’d demand a divorce.
Konstantinos’s skin prickled.
He didn’t need to turn around to know her gaze was locked on him. It bored into his back. So aware was he of his wife, of her smell, her presence, his body hummed from the balls of his feet to his scalp.
He swallowed thickly and pulled free a crystal stopper from the decanter, and spilt two fingers’ worth of a deep amber-coloured spirit into two glasses. He collected them, and only then did he turn.
Her back straight, her knees together, she sat in a high-back, winged chair. Her slender arms resting on the white velvet, she met his gaze dead on. She didn’t look towards the floor-to-ceiling window, or the view of the Eiffel Tower right outside.
He’d tracked her here.Her rings. He’d lost her again, the trail cold, but he’d known she was still here. In France. He could feel it. He’d boughtthispenthouse, because so sure had he been he’d find her. In this place they’d met.Paris.
Never would he have considered she was with Léon.
He gritted his teeth. He should have stayed away all those years ago. Away from the Durands. Away fromher.Because when the opportunity had arisen to claim her, he had. He’d offered her a job close to him. Everywhere he’d gone, so had she.
He’d thoughtthatwould be enough.
He’d convinced himself the more he saw of her, the more she’d become commonplace.Invisible.It would ease, he’d told himself. The need to have her. But it didn’t. In London, her mouth had been too near. The pink pout, burnt onto his retinas, had been too tempting.
He’d leaned in too far—
Fire shot through his veins.
He’d noticed her long before she’d come to be in the meeting at Durand Towers. He’d fearedshewas the reason he kept going back, doing deals he never usually would for a glimpse of her. But he’d dismissed it. He did not want blindly. His lovers were usually widows—women who didn’t want what he wouldn’t give.Marriage.
Their affair had been like nothing he’d ever experienced. He’d met no one like her. So strong in her convictions had she been.Her rules.Their relationship would not interfere with her job. She wanted him.Only sex.She didn’t want love or emotion. She didn’t want marriage, or children.
She had been his mirror image.
Rules. They were so important to them both.
Her dad had been an adulterous bastard. He’d made Poppy feel unsafe in her own home. In a home that should have been her haven, he’d made her walk on a knife’s edge, waiting for the next affair. Always making her feel at risk he’d leave.Thatwas the power of love. It was selfish. It made others hurt.
It killed them.
Hislove had killed his mother.
He’d promised he would never hurtPoppy.
He would never have the power to, because he’d never love her, as she had promised never to love him.
They’d both wanted the same thing…a life led honourably alone.
He had told her things—confessed things he’d told no one. His hatred for his father. It was their commonality.
She’d become his confidante.His friend.
She’d been hiding in plain sight. Out there. So close.
He walked towards her.
She didn’t blink, and neither did he.
She wouldn’t bolt again.
Not until he knew she was safe.
He wouldn’t have another death on his conscience. His mother’s death pressed on his shoulders every day. A weight he carried through each stroke of his morning swim.
