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‘Do we know each—?’ He stopped and turned fully. Black brows pulled together, frowning.
It was her! The woman…But he knew her…
His eyes raked her up and down. They both knew that the way she had said his name had been more than just the banal recognition of someone famous.
Kallie, while praying he wouldn’t recognise her, was conversely stung somewhere very vulnerable when he clearly had no idea who she was. She forced her stricken limbs to move, to try and get away. She couldn’t believe her awful luck. Why hadn’t she just stayed where she was? Why hadn’t she taken more notice of where she was going? Why was he looking at her like that? She had to get away.
‘Sorry…’
She turned and just when she thought she could let her breath out, when she’d taken a couple of steps, her arm was taken in a punishing grip. His deep voice rang with stunned incredulity.
‘Kallie Demarchis?’
She closed her eyes. The worst thing had just happened. Her breath came back but it was painful. She longed to be able to keep going, to walk away. The burning humiliation was still so vivid that she had to open her eyes again to halt the images rushing through her mind. His grip was painful on her arm and yet it lit tiny fires that raced up and down over her skin. She finally turned, with little choice to do anything else.
She turned, hitched her chin and looked up. ‘Yes.’
His face was unreadable, but she saw something flare in the depths of his dark eyes. Anger. Shock and anger. He moved his intense gaze from hers and looked her up and down, slowly and thoroughly.
‘Well, well, well. Little Kallie Demarchis. All grown up.’
He spoke almost musingly, as if to himself. ‘Your eyes give you away. They’re such a distinctive colour. Blue and green. Only for that, I don’t think I would have recognised you. You must have had work done. If I remember, you always were insecure…but it’s definitely been worth it.’
It was only when his eyes insolently dropped to her breasts that Kallie gasped with outrage, welcoming it because it crashed through the numbing shock. She finally managed to tear her arm out from his grip. ‘How dare you? I’ve done no such thing. I’m sorry I bumped into you, believe me, but I’m sure you’ll be only too happy to excuse me.’
‘Don’t you mean you’re sorry for wrecking my engagement all those years ago…or sorry for dragging my name through the tabloids…or sorry for publicly humiliating me, for getting me thrown out of your house like a common thief?’
So much for hoping, or even praying that he might have forgotten…
Two spots of colour burned in her cheeks and her eyes flashed. Alexandros had to suck in a breath against his will.
She was magnificent…and how had she transported him back to a time he had believed he’d forgotten for good, so easily and so quickly?
He reeled. Reeled with the shock of coming face to face with the very woman who’d captivated him across the room. Reeled with the force of her beauty up close. And now reeled with the knowledge that it was Kallie Demarchis. The girl who had taken petty spite and used it to almost ruin him. He looked down at her. Except now she wasn’t a girl. She was a woman. A very sexy woman. A woman who was making the blood hum in his veins and an arrow of desire shoot straight to his groin. An instant chemical reaction.
Kallie had opened her mouth again to speak, but before she could do, a blonde vision appeared beside Alexandros, a scarlet-tipped hand on his arm. A blatant indication of ownership. And who could blame her? Kallie thought fuzzily, closing her mouth, words dying unsaid. Even without studying him—she didn’t have to—he was the most handsome man in the room, head and shoulders above all other men. A perfect, potent specimen of manhood, sexual energy radiating off him in waves that she fancied were almost visible to the eye.
He’d been a gorgeous young man but now…he was quite simply devastating. The years had filled out his frame, had added maturity to his face, the lines starker, harder but no less beautiful. He now had an edge of sexual charisma that came only with age, confidence and experience. His hair still had the curls of his youth though, and that made something poignant erupt in Kallie’s chest. The other woman’s slightly, delightfully accented tones broke through Kallie’s reverie.
‘Darling…aren’t you going to introduce me?’
Alexandros couldn’t stop staring at Kallie. Again. He’d been mesmerised again. To the exclusion of everything else. He could see Kallie flounder, too. As if they’d both forgotten they were in a public place, surrounded by people. But Isabelle had to be attended to. Kallie cut in, though, before he could speak. She looked apologetically at Isabelle, cutting out Alexandros.
‘Please, excuse me. I have to catch someone before they leave. It was…nice to see you again, Alexandros.’
And she was gone, had melted into the crowd. All he could see was her shining head every now and then as it bobbed and weaved away from him. The urge to snatch her back was strong. Very strong. And the gnawing, clawing feeling of boredom that Alexandros had felt earlier was gone. As though he’d just been injected with vital energy. And desire. The kind of desire he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. The fierce elemental kind that made his insides burn for completion, for fulfilment.
Reluctantly responding to Isabelle’s urging to go, he was already making plans in his head. Plans that didn’t involve her, but that did involve Kallie. He couldn’t be
lieve how she’d strayed into his path, like a plump, succulent piece of fruit.
He hadn’t thought about her in years—hadn’t had the time—and only fleetingly had she crossed his mind when her uncle had approached him recently. Agreeing to meet with her uncle, he’d congratulated himself that he’d left all that behind…until now.
Kallie Demarchis.
He couldn’t stop repeating her name in his head.
He’d seen her uncle earlier, and had acknowledged him briefly across the room, but who would have known that she’d have come there, too? Who would have known that she’d be the very woman who was stoking the dying embers of his desire? And who would have known that he’d ever get the chance to do something about her petty, spiteful act all those years ago? An act with ripple effects that had vastly eclipsed the actual incident involved. She’d never been made accountable for those actions. The feelings of betrayal and anger from those days surprised him now with their resurgence, with their freshness. He didn’t like being reduced to such primitive emotions.
