Harlequin Presents--February 2020--Box Set 2 of 2 by Dani Collins

Author:Dani Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2019-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWO

RETREAT. REGROUP.

For the dozenth time in what felt like the longest afternoon of my life, I shook my head.

‘You don’t agree, Mr Xenakis?’

I refocused on the leader of the Brazilian marketing team gathered around the conference table and wondered what I’d missed while my brain was stuck in that endless cycle of life-altering words uttered by the most captivating creature I’d ever seen.

I’m sorry… I’ve destroyed…everything.

To think I’d been convinced she was pranking me. Or, even more amusing, that she had latched on to an inventive method of getting my attention, since most feminine ploys left me cold these days.

My steep drop in interest in the opposite sex hadn’t gone unnoticed in recent years. Socialites who’d smugly decided they were an integral part of my healing process were scratching their heads, wondering why I’d permanently lost their numbers. Heiresses who’d eagerly and blatantly sought an alliance with the newly unengaged Xenakis bachelor were left stunned as every avenue of contact was firmly rebuffed.

It hadn’t even been worth the time to inform them that the thrill of the chase had stopped being, well…thrilling. That the eighteen months I’d spent sowing every wild oat I could had left me ashen mouthed and even more jaded than I’d been when I woke up in that hospital to the cruellest betrayal.

To think I’d imagined that was the worst moment of my life.

The stark reality of Sadie Preston’s presence in my penthouse—as per Willa’s confirmation, minutes ago—attested to that moment having well and truly been usurped.

Was this how my brother Axios had felt when presented with the noose-like proposition he’d faced almost a year ago?

No, Ax’s sentence was finite. It would end…or rather should have been ending in a matter of weeks, had his bride of fewer than twenty-four hours not fled from him and vanished without a trace, leaving him bewildered and stuck in limbo.

Christos. If he’s feeling even a fraction of what I’m feeling now…

But then the bride he’d acquired hadn’t been wanted. Whereas what Sadie Preston had taken from me was…priceless.

The dreaded cancer diagnosis which had precipitated my sperm donation in anticipation of radiation might have turned out to be a false alarm when I was twenty-five, but the scars marring my skin beneath my clothes were a reminder of why that visit to the Phoenix Clinic had turned out to be a pivotal, life-affirming event for me. A light in the bleak darkness of the blissful ignorance I’d lived in for almost a year, before the blindfold had been ripped from my eyes almost as ruthlessly as the accident that had attempted to rob me of my life.

Anger and pure, unadulterated disbelief flashed like lightning through my system. I shook my head again, aware that I was attracting bewildered stares from the marketing gurus I’d hired to promote the interests of Xenakis Aeronautics in Brazil.

It had taken a draining amount of mental dexterity to get through my other two meetings, and now a quick glance at the presentation slide brought me up to speed with what I’d missed.

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