LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘What are you doing? I didn’t invite you in—if you want to speak to me you will have to wait until tomorrow.’

      He waved a dismissive hand. ‘I will take ten minutes of your time and then I will leave. What we need to discuss will not take long.’

      Amalie bit into her cheek and forced her mind to calm. Panicked thinking would not help. ‘This is my home and you are trespassing. Leave now or I will call the police.’

      He didn’t need to know that her mobile phone was currently atop her bedside table.

      ‘Call them.’ He shrugged his huge shoulders, the linen of his black shirt rippling with the movement. ‘By the time they get here we will have concluded our conversation.’

      She eyed him warily, afraid to blink, and rubbed her hands up her arms, backing away, trapping herself against the wall. What could she use as a weapon?

      This man was a stranger and the most physically imposing man she had met in her life. The scar that slashed through his eyebrow only compounded the danger he oozed. If he were to...

      She wouldn’t be able to defend herself using her own strength. It would be like a field mouse fighting a panther.

      His top lip curved with distaste. ‘You have no need to worry for your safety—I am not an animal. I am here to talk, not to assault you.’

      Would the panther tell the field mouse he intended to eat her? Of course not. He would insist it was the last thing on his mind and then, when the little field mouse got close enough...snap!

      Staring into his striking eyes, she saw that, although cold, they contained no threat. A tiny fraction of her fear vanished.

      This man would not harm her. Not physically, at any rate.

      She dropped her gaze and rubbed her eyes, which had become sore from all that non-blinking.

      ‘Okay. Ten minutes. But you should have called first. You didn’t have to barge your way into my home when I was still sleeping.’

      An awareness crept through her bones. While he was freshly showered, shaved—minimal stubble today—and dressed, she was in old cotton pyjamas and a dressing gown, and suffering from a severe case of bed hair. Talk about putting her at an immediate disadvantage.

      He looked at his watch. ‘It is ten a.m. A reasonable time to call on someone on a Monday morning.’

      To her utter mortification, she could feel her skin heat. It might not be his problem that she’d had hardly any sleep, but it was certainly his fault.

      No matter how hard she’d tried to block him from her mind, every time she’d closed her eyes his face had swum into her vision. Two nights of his arrogant face—there, right behind her eyelids. His arrogant, handsome face. Shockingly, devilishly handsome.

      ‘This is my day off, monsieur. How I choose to spend it is my business.’ Her mouth had run so dry her words came out as a croak. ‘I need a coffee.’

      ‘I take mine black.’

      She didn’t answer, just stepped to the other side of the kitchen and pressed the button on the coffee machine she had set before she went to bed. It kicked into action.

      ‘Have you thought any more about the solo?’ he asked as she removed two mugs from the mug tree.

      ‘I told you—there’s nothing for me to think about. I’m busy that weekend.’ She heaped a spoonful of sugar into one of the mugs.

      ‘I was afraid that would be your answer.’

      His tone was akin to a teacher disappointed with his star pupil’s exam results. Something about his tone made the hairs on her arms rise in warning.

      Water started to drip through the filter and into the pot, drip by hot drip, the aroma of fresh coffee filling the air.

      ‘I am going to appeal to your better nature,’ Talos said, staring at Amalie, whose attention was still held by the slowly falling coffee.

      She turned her head a touch. ‘Oh?’

      ‘My grandmother was a composer and musician.’

      A short pause. ‘Rhea Kalliakis...’

      ‘You have heard of her?’

      ‘I doubt there’s a violinist alive who hasn’t. She composed the most beautiful pieces.’

      A sharp pang ran through him to know that this woman appreciated his grandmother’s talents. Amalie couldn’t know it, but her simple appreciation only served to harden his resolve that she was the perfect musician for the role. She was the only musician.

      ‘She completed her final composition two days before her death.’

      She turned from the coffee pot to face him.

      Amalie Cartwright had the most beautiful almond-shaped eyes, he noted, not for the first time. The colour reminded him of the green sapphire ring his mother had worn.

      That ring now lay in the Agon palace safe, where it had rested for the past twenty-six years, waiting for the day when Helios selected a suitable bride to take guardianship of it. After their grandfather’s diagnosis, that day would be coming much sooner than Helios had wanted or expected. Helios needed to marry and produce an heir.

      The last time Talos had seen the ring his mother had been fighting off his father. Two hours later the pair of them had been dead.

      He cast his mind away from that cataclysmic night and back to the present. Back to Amalie Cartwright—the one person who could do justice to Rhea Kalliakis’s final composition and with it, bring comfort to a dying man. A dying king.

      ‘Is that the piece you wish to have played at your grandfather’s gala?’

      ‘Yes. In the five years since her death we have kept the score secure and allowed no one to play it. Now we—my brothers and I—believe it is the right time for the world to hear it. And at what better occasion than my grandfather’s Jubilee Gala? I believe you are the person to play it.’

      He deliberately made no mention of his grandfather’s diagnosis. No news of his condition had been released to the public at large and nor would it be until after the gala—by decree from King Astraeus, his grandfather, himself.

      Amalie poured the freshly brewed coffee into the mugs, added milk to her own, then brought them to the table and took the seat opposite him.

      ‘I think it is a wonderful thing you are doing,’ she said, speaking in measured tones. ‘There isn’t another violinist alive who wouldn’t be honoured to be called upon to do it. But I am sorry, monsieur, that person cannot be me.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘I told you. I have a prior engagement.’

      He fixed her with his stare. ‘I will double the appearance fee. Twenty thousand euros.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Fifty thousand. And that’s my final offer.’

      ‘No.’

      Talos knew his stare could be intimidating, more so than his sheer physicality. He’d performed this stare numerous times in front of a mirror, looking to see what it was that others saw, but had never recognised what it might be. Whatever it was, one throw of that look was enough to ensure he got his own way. The only people immune to it were his brothers and grandparents. Indeed, whenever his grandmother had seen him ‘pull that face’, as she had referred to it, she’d clipped his ear—but only hard enough to sting.

      He missed her every day.

      But apart from those members of his family he had never met anyone immune to his stare. Until now.

      From Amalie there was not so much as a flicker, just a shake of her head and her long hair, which was in dire need of a good brush,

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