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A pulse of unwelcome electricity arrowed down his spine.
People did not talk back to him. He was head of the largest charity in the world and had a great deal of power and social standing, and he ran Eleos like a military operation. There was a strict hierarchy and he expected his staff to follow orders without question, and they did.
They certainly didn’t stand there flushed and sweaty, ignoring a direct command to leave and surveying him with the most intensely disapproving look, as if he were in the wrong somehow.
‘It was not a request,’ Atticus bit out.
She straightened, a stubborn glint igniting in her dark eyes. ‘And I’m not one of your employees. I don’t have to do what you say.’
‘You are, however, on my property. If you don’t leave, I’ll have you removed.’
She looked around in an exaggerated fashion. ‘And who exactly is going to be doing the removing? I don’t see anyone else here.’
There was no one else here. He lived alone, which was how he liked it.
‘Then I’ll remove you myself.’ And he went to unhook his fish from over his shoulder as if to put it on the ground in preparation for grabbing her.
It was almost a bluff. Because he’d remove her if he had to. She’d turned up here unwanted and unannounced and so she’d have to deal with the consequences.
She must have believed him though, because her hands came up. ‘Wait,’ she said in a breathless voice. Perspiration glistened in the soft hollow of her throat and, as he watched, a drop slid slowly down over her skin, following the curve of one full breast. ‘I’m not here to fight you.’
For a second he didn’t hear her, distracted by that tiny, glistening drop as it slid further down into the shadowed valley of her cleavage, before abruptly realising what he was doing and jerking his gaze back up to her face.
‘Then why are you still here?’ he demanded. Annoyance had sharpened his voice, but he didn’t care. He didn’t want her here and a curious heat was running through him. A heat he hadn’t felt for a very long time and one he didn’t like, not one bit. His body was a machine he kept well oiled and in peak condition, and his command over himself was total. Physical desire was an indulgence and one he didn’t permit himself, so he shouldn’t be reacting to her like this, not even a flicker.
‘I promised him, Atticus,’ Elena said firmly. ‘I promised him I wouldn’t come home without you and so I’m not.’
His father, Aristeidis Kalathes. Head of the Kalathes family. Owner of a multimillion-dollar shipping company. Ex-military. Proud. Arrogant. And rigid as iron.
Aristeidis, a widower left to bring up his two boys after his wife had died far too young, hadn’t been any kind of father to Atticus for years, and even when he’d been a child, his father had always been about Dorian, Atticus’s beloved older brother.
Dorian who’d died when Atticus was sixteen.
Still grieving his wife, his father had never got over Dorian’s death either, and had never forgiven Atticus for being the reason Dorian had died, and Atticus had long since accepted that, because it was true. He was the reason Dorian had died, and Aristeidis had been punishing him for it for years.
His father had the right, that was clear. Yet that didn’t mean Atticus was going to stay and take it either, so he’d left Kalifos for good. His father had hated him for that too.
No, if Aristeidis wanted him home, it wasn’t to reconcile, no matter what he’d told Elena or what she believed herself. Atticus had no doubt the old bastard wanted to punish him some more, in which case he would be destined for disappointment. Atticus had paid for Dorian’s death. He’d paid for it a hundred times over, and he was done.
He was never coming home and that was final.
‘In that case—’ Atticus turned towards his house ‘—it looks like you’ll be in for a long holiday in Jamaica.’
Then he strode past her without another word.
CHAPTER TWO
ELENA STARED AFTER Atticus’s taut rear as he disappeared down the shell path and around behind the house, a very real anger coiling tightly in her gut.
Aristeidis had told her that getting Atticus home would be difficult, that their relationship had been broken long ago and it was his own fault. He should have been a better father to Atticus, but he’d let grief and bitterness after Dorian’s death drive his only remaining son away.
Now, as the cancer that was killing him made him sicker and sicker, all he wanted was to heal that broken relationship and tell his son how sorry he’d been for the way he’d treated Atticus all these years.
His regret and sadness had only added to the grief that Elena felt herself at his illness, and she couldn’t bear the thought that the old man who’d given her a home and a family after she’d lost her own would die without reconciling with his son. She loved Aristeidis. He’d given her so much and it didn’t seem like a big thing to bring his son back to him.
She’d thought that the moment she’d told Atticus about his father, he’d want to return. Not that he’d instantly drop everything, of course, but she’d thought he might be upset or at the very least be regretful.
Except he hadn’t been. He didn’t care, he’d said.
