Chapter Eleven #2
And then where would she go? Truthfully, she didn’t want to go anywhere except back to the moment before Antaeus had made her realise the depth of her own stupidity. When her hopes and dreams were still intact.
Her gaze moved over her desk. She was a CEO, a woman who had built and led a business, and yet she felt small and defeated. As he’d promised when he stepped into this office, Antaeus had taken everything.
No, he hadn’t taken everything, she corrected herself. He might be in the process of dismantling her business and breaking it up for scrap, and he might have taken her heart and trampled on it, but he had not broken her spirit. She wouldn’t let him.
‘Cassie?’
Her head jerked up.
Antaeus was standing in the doorway, his broad shoulders filling the frame, his blue eyes fixed on her face.
She pushed up from the seat, her hands pressing into the top of the desk, lungs slamming into her ribcage as if she had just run a marathon. ‘How did you get in here?’
‘I asked John to let me up.’
‘Good. Then you can ask him to let you out.’
Her heart was racing with pain.
‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Then I’ll leave.’
‘Cassie.’ He shut the door, blocking her exit with his body.
‘So we’re back to this.’ Her mouth curved in contempt. ‘You trapping me—’
‘That’s not why I’m here.’
‘No, you came to gloat.’ She stumbled back into a corner of the room.
‘I just want to explain.’ His face, his beautiful liar’s face, was doing concern, doing it so well that she wanted to fall into his arms. But it would be perverse to crave comfort from the man who was the source of her pain.
‘And I don’t want to hear your explanations. That’s why I left.’
‘You can’t just leave.’
‘I can do what I like. You’re not my jailer anymore.’
‘But I am your client still, and I’m doing what you told me to do.’
‘I never told you to break my heart.’
‘You told me to be transparent and proactive. That’s why I’m here. Because I need to say some things.’
‘You said enough.’
‘I made a mistake.’
‘I made more.’ She shook her head. ‘You know, I actually believed that you wanted this. Wanted us. Me.’
‘I do want that. I want you.’
‘No, you had sex with me as some kind of payback.’
‘The first time, yes.’
She looked at his stricken face and thought she might be sick.
‘For a heartbeat. But after that, it was you that I wanted. I wanted you even when I didn’t want to want you. That’s why I challenged you to change my mind. Why I brought you to Greece. Why I kept you prisoner at my house.’
The strain in his voice momentarily fazed her, but then she remembered what he’d said in her apartment.
‘Then why did you end things?’
Antaeus could feel his heart beating in his throat as Cassie stared up at him.
He’d spent a decade or more building his business, years forming a plan to avenge his father, but nothing had ever mattered as much as finding the right words to prove to Cassie that he loved her.
If he didn’t fix this, she would be gone.
If ever they met again afterwards, her gaze would burn through him.
His heartbeat reared up to match the sirens of a passing police car.
‘I was too scared.’
‘Of what?’ She was trying to hold it together. But he could hear the ache in her voice, soft like rain.
‘Of having you taken from me. Everyone I’ve ever loved or needed, I’ve lost. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you when I only just found you.’
‘So you pushed me away.’
‘Yes, because I knew you’d be taken away. Or you’d be hurt—’ His voice splintered. ‘And I couldn’t bear the idea of you being hurt. Because I love you, Cassie. I didn’t think I could. After my mum died, I was so scared of caring for anyone. Of letting anyone get close.’
‘I know. That’s why you bought the house in Pelion.’
‘And it worked. Until I took you there, and you kept pushing and pushing back until I was outside the walls. You freed me. And then I messed it up anyway. I broke us apart before we even had a chance to be together.’
Cassie breathed out shakily. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said in Greece? I fix the unfixable.’
Tears burning in her eyes, she took his hand and placed it on her breast, letting him feel the fierce beat of her heart. ‘Not that anything needs fixing. I mean, that doesn’t feel broken to me.’
Her gaze was bright and flawless, open to his eyes, unflinching as he took her hand and placed it on his chest. As she felt his equally strong, unyielding heartbeat beneath her fingertips, her beautiful mouth turned up at the corners into a smile that knocked the air out of his lungs.
‘I love you,’ he said softly.
‘Kai se agapó ki egó. And I love you too.’ Cassie’s eyes were a fierce, unguarded green. Leaning in, he pressed his mouth against hers and kissed her hungrily.
Applause broke out behind them. Pulling apart, they found the cleaning crew clapping and smiling.
‘Are they clapping me or you, do you think?’ Cassie said softly.
He leaned in and brushed his lips against hers. ‘They’re clapping us.’ And then she was pulling him closer, and they were kissing again, and they were still kissing long after the cleaners had left the office, and the moon had replaced the sun in the sky above the crowded skyscrapers.