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‘But you—’
‘My silence should have indicated my preference,’ he went on as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Which is to be left alone.’ Despite the sun gilding his skin, his expression was cold.
It seemed she was going to get rude Atticus Kalathes.
Well, no matter. She was here on a mission for Aristeidis and she wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of her goal, not even one beautiful naked man. She was determined if nothing else.
‘I’m afraid I can’t do that,’ she said crisply, pulling herself together. ‘I’m here on behalf of your father. He’s dying, Atticus. He wants you to come home.’
Atticus had known exactly who the little boat carried when he’d spotted it motoring steadily towards his island not half an hour earlier. He’d been out in the water catching his dinner for the evening and the sight of the boat had put him in a foul temper.
He’d purposefully ignored Elena’s emails and calls because the last thing he wanted was to have to deal with anything related to his father. He’d thought his silence would be enough to deter her. Apparently not.
Honestly, what was the point in living off grid, on an unnamed island that he’d made sure wasn’t on any maps, if people could find you so damn easily?
He hadn’t bothered with the niceties. If she was so insistent on coming here, to his territory, she could take him as she found him, which was naked, his preferred state on the island when he was catching his own dinner.
She was invading his home and she didn’t have an invite, and he’d be damned if he stopped fishing and got dressed to accommodate her.
At least, that was what he’d thought when the boat had pulled up to the jetty at last, and he’d seen her small figure, dressed in an inappropriate cream suit, picking her careful way along the shell path to his door.
Then he’d got a closer look and hadn’t been able to think of anything at all.
Sixteen years ago, she’d been a ragged little eight-year-old covered in blood, holding a knife in one small fist against the five men who had certainly meant to do her harm. Her clothes had been torn, her rich blonde hair in braids, her brown eyes full of fury.
He’d been in charge of a private army that helped governments during times of civil unrest or disaster, and had been searching the rubble for survivors. He’d spotted her immediately and the danger she was in, and had sensed that, despite the determination in her posture and the fury in her eyes, she was terrified. As she should have been, considering she was a child surrounded by looters.
He’d fired a couple of warning shots in the air to scatter the men around her, and he’d thought she might run after that because, in fatigues and carrying weapons, he was only likely to frighten her further. Yet she’d taken one look at him, her face bloody from the cut on her forehead, had dropped her knife and held out her little arms to him as if he weren’t a hardened mercenary, but her knight in shining armour instead.
He’d never forgotten that. Never forgotten the way his dead heart had given a shudder in his chest at the sight of her.
He hadn’t forgotten it now as she stood in front of him, flushed and damp with perspiration in a suit that was more appropriate for the boardroom than the beach of a tropical island.
She’d changed. She’d changed completely.
That rich blonde hair wasn’t in braids, but a neat bun on the back of her head, and her face had lost the roundness of childhood. She had a firm chin, a surprisingly lush mouth, a proud nose, and feathery blonde brows a shade lighter than her hair.
That tough, ragged little girl had grown up into a stunningly beautiful woman. A woman who was clearly suffering from the heat and also, he couldn’t help but notice, flustered by his nakedness.
That would have made him feel satisfied if she hadn’t been who she was, and he hadn’t taken a lover in so long he could barely remember the last time he’d touched a woman. His libido was as dead as his heart and he felt no need to resurrect it.
Besides, she wasn’t just any woman. She was the girl he’d rescued and left with his father. His father who was dying.
No, he hadn’t read any of the emails she’d sent him, but, despite his anger at her arrival, he’d known deep down as soon as he’d seen her boat that if she’d come all this way to find him, it was probably about something serious.
He hadn’t spoken to Aristeidis for sixteen years, and had planned on never speaking to him again, yet something unfamiliar stirred deep inside him as soon as the words ‘he’s dying’ were out of her mouth.
Atticus ignored it.
‘So?’ he asked, a heartless response, which made sense considering he didn’t actually have a heart.
Her warm brown eyes narrowed, making it very clear that she didn’t approve of his lack of concern. ‘What do you mean “so”? You heard what I said, didn’t you?’
‘That my father is dying and I need to come home? Yes.’ He hefted the fish on his shoulder. ‘One, I don’t care, and two, I’m not going anywhere, so why don’t you trot off back to where you came from?’
She blinked in surprise, golden lashes fluttering, and for a moment he thought she might indeed turn on one of her pretty heels and trot off back to the boat. But then those feathery brows arrowed down and that rounded chin got a distinctly determined look to it, and once again he was reminded of that eight-year-old girl, standing in the rubble, facing off five adult men as if she could fight all of them and win.
‘No.’ Her voice was cool and crisp as a winter frost. ‘One, I promised your father I’d bring you home and two, I’m not “trotting” anywhere.’
