‘You look cute,’ he said, raking her from head to toe.

Right. She’d gone to some trouble with her outfit. Her tiny red skirt was clinging in the right places, she’d managed to make her unruly black curls stay in a knot that was almost sophisticated, but in this crowd of fashion extremists she knew she disappeared.

‘Go away,’ she said, and he shook his head.

‘I can’t do that, Princess.’

‘Don’t call me that.’

‘It’s what you are.’

‘Please, Nikos, not here.’

‘Whatever,’ he said easily. ‘But we need to talk. Phones don’t work. You keep hanging up.’

‘You don’t hang up phones any more.’ Very knowledgeable, she thought. What sort of inane talk was this?

‘On Argyros we hang up telephones. After we talk to people.’

‘I don’t live on Argyros.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I want to talk to you about. It’s time you came home.’ He handed her back her Martini. He drained his beer and ate his three bite-sized blinis, then looked about for more. Two waiters were beside him in an instant.

He always had been charismatic, Athena thought. People gravitated to him.

She’d gravitated to him.

‘So how about it?’ he said, smiling his thanks to the waiters. Oh, that smile…

‘Why would I want to come home?’

‘There’s the little matter of the Crown. I’m thinking you must have read the newspapers. Your cousin, Demos, says he’s talked to you. I’m thinking Alexandros must have talked to you as well-or did you hang up on him, too?’

‘Of course I didn’t.’

‘So you do know you’re Crown Princess of Argyros.’

‘I’m not Crown Princess of anything. Demos can have it,’ she said savagely. ‘He wants it.’

‘Demos is second in line. You’re first. It has to be you.’

‘I have the power to abdicate. Consider me abdicated. Royalty’s outdated and absurd, and my life’s here. So, if you’ll excuse me…’

‘Thena, you don’t have a choice. You have to come home.’