‘It’s your heritage,’ he said mildly, as if he was simply continuing the conversation from back at the fashion launch.

‘I never had a heritage. It was all about Giorgos.’

‘The King’s dead, Athena. He died without an heir. You know that.’

‘And that makes a difference how?’

‘It means the Diamond Isles become three Principalities again. The original royal families can resume rule. But you know this. By the way-did you also know that you’re beautiful?’ And he took her arm and forced her to stop.

She’d been striding. Angry. Fearful. Confused. Rain was turning to sleet. Her heels, her tight skirt and sheer pashmina wrap were designed for cocktail hour, not for street wear.

She should keep going but she wasn’t all that sure where to go. She couldn’t outwalk Nikos and she surely wasn’t leading him back to her apartment. She surely wasn’t leading him to her son.

She might as well stop. Get it over with now.

She turned to face him. A blast of icy wind hit full on, and she felt herself shudder.

Nikos’s ancient leather jacket was suddenly around her, warm from his body, smelling of old leather and Nikos and…home. Argyros. Fishing boats in an ancient harbour. White stone villas hugging island cliffs. Sapphire seas and brilliant sun. The Diamond Isles.

Suddenly, stupidly, she wanted to cry.

‘We need to get out of this,’ Nikos said. His hand was under her elbow and he was steering her into the brightly lit portico of a restaurant, as if this was his town and he wasn’t half a world away from where he lived and worked.

Nikos…

‘You call those clothes?’ he growled, and she remembered how bossy he’d been when they were kids, and how he was always right.

Bossy and arrogant and…fun. Pushing her past her comfort zone. Daring her to join him.

The number of times she’d ended up with skinned knees, battered and bruised because: ‘Of course we can get up that cliff; you’re not going to sit and watch like some girl, are you?’