Chapter Three
AS THE PLANE came to a stop on the runway, Cassie glanced across the cabin and tried to relax the tension in her spine.
There was no turning back now. She was here in Greece.
No greeting or explanation. Just an order. An imperative.
Her throat tightened.
The text had appeared in her inbox in the same way that he had appeared in her office, without warning, breaking the laws of physics, pulling her off course, forcing her to adopt his chosen trajectory, bending her to his will.
Ever since Antaeus had left her staggering and disoriented in her office, she had been expecting a text or email, and she spent the intervening hours alternately ignoring her phone and then frantically checking it for messages.
What she hadn’t expected was to be summoned to Greece.
As the other passengers began to stir, pulling open the overhead lockers to grab their carry-ons, a flight attendant, a woman with a practiced, neutral smile, approached her.
‘Excuse me, Ms Appleton. Mr Tsiartas’s representative is waiting for you,’ she said quietly. ‘Let me get you your bag.’
Cassie got to her feet. Trying to breathe normally, to act normally, she followed the woman down the aisle.
Now that this moment was here, she was glad she’d brought her heels.
It was stupid to rely on props, but heightism was a thing.
Generally people took a taller person more seriously and tended to defer to them.
More importantly, if she wasn’t wearing heels, Antaeus would tower over her, and she wanted to be able to meet his gaze head-on.
Or perhaps she didn’t, she thought a beat later.
Picturing Antaeus’s dark eyes watching her as he told her he was going to shut down her business, she felt her belly clench and unclench. Somehow she doubted that he had ever deferred to anyone, heels or not.
As she stepped out into the sunlight, the heat was momentarily suffocating after the cool, recycled air of the cabin.
But then she felt a whisper of a breeze and with it the scent of the sea.
Despite it all, the threats, the fear, the humiliation, she couldn’t help but breathe it in.
Because this was Greece. One of the most beautiful countries in the world.
She had been once before, years ago on a girls’ holiday to Mykonos.
En route, they had spent one day in Athens.
After a hectic night dancing at the city’s clubs, her friends had stayed sleeping at the hotel, but she had climbed the Acropolis and spent the afternoon gazing in wonder at the Parthenon.
It was not nearly enough time, and she’d promised herself that she would come back to see more of the real Greece.
Her chest tightened around the knot of panic and resentment that had been building there since Antaeus’s text. Obviously this wasn’t what she’d had in mind.
But there was one positive to being here. She wasn’t sitting at home having to fake smiles and come up with lies to reassure her mom while picturing her staff emptying their possessions from their desks.
The downside, of course, was that she was going to have to spend time with Antaeus.
Then again, maybe he would get bored. He was certainly mercurial in temperament, volatile in fact, and this challenge he’d set her to change his mind was a front, she was sure.
All he really wanted was to make her dance to his demented tune for just a little more time.
It was the longest of long shots that he would decide to keep Trojan Princess up and running and keep her staff in their jobs.
But he had made a promise.
They had made a deal. And most likely he would come up with a reason she had failed. She had to try, though. Unlike Henry, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she took the easy way out and threw her staff to the wolves.
Or in this case, a very specific wolf.
Despite her not wanting it to, her body did that weird, hyper-alert thing it seemed always to do whenever she thought about Antaeus, and in particular that moment in his office when everything had seemed to shrink in on them.
It lasted thirty seconds at most, but she could remember exactly when her heartbeat had stopped and how she was suddenly scrabbling for purchase on her breath.
She had felt momentarily unanchored from the earth, all bearings lost, and yet her body had known exactly where it wanted to be, exactly what it wanted.
Who it wanted.
Her cheeks burned. Because her body was wrong. Antaeus was so not her type. And yet she had never felt that with any man before, that strange, gravitational pull between them.
And there was a very good reason, she told herself firmly. That meeting had been an emotionally charged encounter on so many levels. But it would be different now, here in Thessaloniki. She could leave behind the woman she was in that single, intense moment.
As for Antaeus—
Obviously his beauty was undeniable, but it had been the first time they’d met, and everyone knew that the human brain was wired to notice new things.
This time that jolt of his physical beauty would be lessened, its power depleted like a catchy song you loved the first time you heard it on the radio and then quickly bored you.
As they reached the bottom of the stairs, the flight attendant greeted someone in Greek and then turned, still smiling, towards Cassie. ‘Enjoy your stay in Greece.’
A dark-haired man in a suit stepped forward. He didn’t smile, merely nodded. ‘Ms Appleton. My name is Dimitri. I work for Mr Tsiartas. If you would come with me,’ he said, reaching to take her overnight bag.
Peeling away from the other passengers, Dimitri led her through a labyrinth of back hallways, away from the bustling terminal.
She could still hear the distant roar of engines, but in this section, it was silent, the air cool and sterile again.
She knew she was being fast-tracked through the system.
‘This way, please.’ Dimitri pushed open a door, and she stepped out onto another wide strip of asphalt, the sun warm and bright on her face.
A black Mercedes S-Class was waiting, its engine idling.
The driver, also in a suit, held the back door open for her.
She slid in. Having deposited her bag beside her, Dimitri closed the door with a final nod.
The car moved with measured speed, weaving through the airport’s service roads and away from the main terminal building. Finally it pulled to a stop. About thirty metres away, a sleek black helicopter sat on a helipad, its rotors motionless in the sun.
And standing next to it, a stripe of darkness across his beautiful face in the shadow of the rotor, was Antaeus.
He was wearing another of those dark suits. Even from a distance, his posture was unmistakably that of a man used to wielding power. He turned as she stepped from the car, and the morning sun illuminated the intensity of his gaze. Her feet stuttered against the hot asphalt.
It was hard to believe that this was happening to her.
If only it was a dream. But it wasn’t. It was real.
Somehow she managed to close the distance between them.
As she stopped in front of him, she was grateful that she had swapped out her trainers.
Even in heels, she was still a good three inches shorter than him.
As for the power of his beauty being depleted—who was she trying to kid? If anything, the sunlight wrapping itself lovingly round his face and throat seemed determined to highlight the symmetry of his features and the sculpted quality of the bone structure beneath the smooth golden skin.
It was impossible not to look at him and marvel in the same way that you might marvel at the Parthenon.
Obviously there were those cheekbones and that jaw that looked as though they were carved from the same luminous marble.
And he was tall, taller than the other Greek men on the plane, with an athleticism that was a visual reminder of his invisible, unyielding will, an air of authority that commanded attention.
But it was more than just his enviable physique or even that aura of power he wielded so casually.
There was something about him that seemed almost from another age, a vital masculinity and intensity of focus that made it easy to imagine him striding across a battlefield, a sword in one hand, a shield in the other.
Which was great if he was on your side. Unfortunately for her, he wasn’t. Her throat tightened.
‘Mr Tsiartas.’
Lifting her chin, she held out her hand, wanting to keep things on a formal footing between them, and then regretted it as his fingers curled over hers and an unwelcome but undeniable jolt of heat snapped against her skin.
It was immediate, electric. A deeper shiver, completely involuntary, traced its way up her wrist.
His grip tightened, grew firmer, more possessive. For a fleeting moment, neither of them moved. ‘Ms Appleton.’
Eyes the colour of a fathomless sea met hers, and as if that was some unspoken cue, she heard the Mercedes engine turn over and then fade into silence as it drove away. For a few seconds, they both watched as one of his security detail stowed her overnight bag in the helicopter.
‘You travel light.’
The fingers of her other hand tightened around the handle of her purse. ‘I’m only here for a night.’
The word made flickers of feeling dart over her skin. Maybe he felt them too, because his gaze lingered a moment on the set of her jaw before moving down her body and the elegant lines of her dress in a way that made her breathless, buzzing from the inside out.
She had dressed formally. Not New York formal. This was Greece. The light was different, and it was several degrees warmer, but she was here to persuade Antaeus that her business was worthy of saving, so she needed to project competence and control.