LITMIR.BIZ

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that most of his female staff were, like the majority of his employees, teenagers, and so automatically off limits, he didn’t want the messiness that inevitably came about when he ended a relationship to spill into his sanctuary.

      Melina, his kickboxing instructor, had blatantly flirted with him when she’d first started work here and—despite her being in her mid-twenties, and attractive to boot—he’d frozen out all her innuendoes until she’d got the message.

      The endorphins released during a vigorous workout always made him crave sex, but he disciplined himself with the iron will Kalliakis men were famed for. Except for his father. The Kalliakis iron will had skipped a generation with Lelantos... Lelantos had been weak and venal—a man who had allowed his strong libido and equally great temper to control him.

      It killed Talos to know that of the three Kalliakis Princes, he was the most like their father.

      The difference was that he had learned to control his appetites and the volatile temperament that came with it. Boxing had taught him to harness it.

      Tonight, though, the endorphins seemed to have exploded within him, and the primal urge to sate himself in a willing woman’s arms was stronger than ever. And not just any woman. This woman.

      Theos, just watching Amalie eat made him feel like throwing her over his shoulder, carrying her to the nearest empty room and taking her wildly.

      ‘Do you consider yourself French or English?’ he asked, wrenching his mind away from matters carnal. He needed to concentrate on getting her mentally fit to play at his grandfather’s gala, not be imagining ripping her clothes off with his teeth.

      ‘Both. Why?’

      ‘You speak English with a slight accent. It made me curious.’

      ‘I suppose French is my first language. I grew up bilingual, but I’ve never lived full-time in England. My father’s always kept a home there, but when I was a child we used it more for holidays and parties than anything else.’

      ‘Was that because of your mother’s influence?’

      ‘I assume so. My mother definitely wore the trousers in that marriage.’ A slight smile, almost sad, played at the corners of her lips.

      ‘I have heard that she’s a forceful woman.’

      He’d heard many stories about Colette Barthez, not many of them complimentary. It was strange to think that the woman before him—a woman who tried desperately to fade into the background—was a child from the loins of the biggest diva on the planet. He had to assume she took after her father who, he’d learned, was regarded as a quintessential Englishman, with a dry humour and calm manner.

      Amalie chewed on a chip, disliking the implication in his words and the way he’d delivered them. She, better than anyone, knew just how ‘forceful’ her mother could be in getting her own way, but that didn’t stop her loving her and despising the people who would put her down.

      ‘You don’t become the most successful and famous mezzo-soprano in the world without having a strong will and a thick hide. If she were a man she would be celebrated.’

      The scarred eyebrow rose in question.

      She shook her head and pushed her plate to the side. ‘She sold out Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall three nights in a row last year, but every article written about those concerts just had to mention her three ex-husbands, numerous lovers and so-called diva demands.’

      The black scarred brow drew forward. ‘That must be very hurtful for her to read,’ he said, his tone careful.

      ‘If it was the French media it would devastate her, but in France she’s revered and treated as a national icon. With the rest of the world’s press, so long as they aren’t criticising her voice or performance, she doesn’t care—she truly does have the hide of a rhinoceros.’

      But not when it came to love. When it came to affairs of the heart, her mother felt things deeply. Bored lovers had the power to shatter her.

      ‘But they upset you?’ he said, a shrewdness in his eyes.

      ‘No one wants to read salacious stories about their mother,’ she muttered, reaching for one more chip and popping it in her mouth before she could unloosen her tongue any further.

      Her family and personal life were none of his concern, but she felt so protective when it came to her mother, who was passionate, funny, loving, predatory, egotistical and a complete one-off. She drove her up the wall, but Amalie adored her.

      ‘That is true,’ Talos agreed. ‘My family also live under the spotlight. There are occasions when it can burn.’

      She leaned back in her chair and stared at him through narrowed eyes. ‘If you know how much the spotlight can burn, why would you push me back under it when you know it hurts me so much?’

      ‘Because you were born to play under it,’ he replied, his deep bass voice no-nonsense.

      And yet she detected a whisper of warmth in those light brown eyes she hadn’t seen before.

      ‘It is my job to put you back under it without you gaining any new scars.’

      ‘But the scars I already have haven’t healed.’

      There was no point in shying away from it. She’d seen enough psychologists in her early teens to know that she’d been scarred, and that it was those scars still preventing her from stepping onto a stage and performing with eyes upon her.

      ‘Then I will heal them for you.’

      A shiver ran through her as an image of his mouth drifting across her skin skittered into her mind, shockingly vivid... Talos healing her in the most erotic manner. It sent a pulse of heat deep into her abdomen.

      She blinked rapidly, to dispel the unbidden image, and was grateful when another member of the gym chose that moment to come over to their table and chat with him.

      Passion was something she’d always avoided. After her parents’ divorce she’d spent her weekend and holiday visitations watching her mother bounce from lover to lover, marrying two of them for good measure, engulfed in desire’s heady flames, trying to recapture the magic of her first marriage. Watching her get burned so many times had been pain itself. The guilt of knowing she was responsible for her mother’s heartache—and her father’s—had only added to it.

      Her father had never brought another woman home, let alone remarried. Though he would always deny it with a sad smile, the torch he carried for her mother was too bright to extinguish.

      If it hadn’t been for that horrendous incident in front of her parents and their friends and its aftermath, when their child prodigy could no longer perform like the dancing seal she’d become, her parents would still be together today—she was certain of it. On the occasions when they were forced together, Amalie would watch them skirt around each other; her mother showing off her latest lover with something close to flamboyant desperation, her father accepting this behaviour with a wistful stoicism.

      Amalie liked her quiet, orderly, passionless life. It was safe.

      Talos Kalliakis made her feel anything but safe.

      * * *

      Talos rapped loudly on the cottage door for the second time, blowing out a breath of exasperated air. Just as he was about to try the handle and let himself in the door swung open and there Amalie stood, violin in hand and a look of startled apology on her face.

      ‘Is it that time already?’ she said, standing aside to let him through. ‘Sorry, I lost track of time.’

      He followed her through to the cosy living room. The baby grand piano sat in the corner, covered with sheets of paper and an old-fashioned tape recorder. Next to it stood a music stand.

      She looked what could only be described as lively—as if she had springs under her feet. In the four days she’d been in Agon he’d never

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