Let’s not go there, she told herself. She’d moved on. She was fashion editor for one of the world’s best-selling magazines. She lived in New York and she was fine.

So what was Nikos doing, here, ushering her into a restaurant she recognised? This place usually involved queuing, or a month or more’s notice. But Nikos was a man who turned heads, who waiters automatically found a place for, because even if they couldn’t place him they felt they should. He was obviously someone. He always had been, and his power hadn’t waned one bit.

Stunned to speechlessness, she found herself being steered to an isolated table for two, one of the best in the house. The waiter tried to take her jacket-his jacket-but she clung. It was dumb, but she needed its warmth. She needed its comfort.

‘What’s good?’ Nikos asked the waiter, waving away the menu.

‘Savoury? Sweet?’

‘Definitely something sweet,’ he said, and smiled across the table at her. ‘The way the lady’s feeling right now, we need all the sugar we can get.’

She refused to smile back. She couldn’t allow herself to sink into that smile.

‘Crêpes?’ the waiter proffered. ‘Or if you have time…our raspberry soufflé’s a house speciality.’

‘Crêpes followed by soufflé for both of us then,’ he said easily, and the waiter beamed and nodded and backed away, almost as if he sensed he shouldn’t turn his back on royalty.

Nikos. Once upon a time…

No. Get a grip.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she muttered into the silence. ‘You can’t make me go back.’

Nikos smiled again-his smile wide and white, his eyes deep and shaded, an automatic defence against the sun. His smile was a heart stopper in anyone’s language. Especially hers.

‘You’re right. I can’t make you. You need to decide yourself. But that’s why I’m here-to help you to decide that you need to come home.’

‘My home’s here.’

‘Your career until now has been here,’ he agreed. ‘You’ve done very well.’

‘There’s no need to sound patronising.’

‘I’m not patronising.’

‘Like you’d know about my career.’

He raised his brows, half mocking. ‘There were seven candidates for the position you’re now in,’ he said softly. ‘Each of them was older, more experienced. You won the job over all of them and your boss believes he made a brilliant decision.’

‘How do you know…’

‘I’ve made it my business to find out.’

‘Well, butt out. There’s no need…’

‘There is a need. There was always a chance that you’d inherit, and now you have.’

‘I have no intention of inheriting. Demos wants it. Demos can have it. It should be you, but if that’s not possible…Demos.’

‘It was never going to be me.’

‘You’re nephew to the King.’ ‘You know the score,’ he said evenly. ‘Yes, my mother was the King’s sister, but the King’s lineage has to be direct and male. That’s me out. But the individual island crowns have male/female equality. First in line for the throne of Argyros is you. Princess Athena, Crown Princess of Argyros. Sounds good, hey?’ He smiled and tried to take her hand across the table. She snatched it away as if he burned.

‘This is crazy. I’ve told you, Nikos, I’m not coming home.’

‘Can I ask why not?’

‘I don’t belong there.’

‘Of course you do. My family has always welcomed…’

‘Your family,’ she interrupted flatly. ‘Of course. How’s your wife?’

Why had she asked that? What possible difference did it make? But suddenly-she had to know.

Nikos didn’t answer directly. He’d given up trying to take her hand. Instead he’d clasped his hands loosely on the table top. He flexed them now, still linked. Big hands and powerful.

He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

She shouldn’t even care. She shouldn’t have asked.

But she had asked, and there was something in his face that said the answer was never going to be easy. For a couple of moments she thought he wouldn’t answer at all. But finally he beckoned a waiter, ordered a beer and answered.

‘Marika and I are divorced. She’s remarried and left the island.’ His gaze was expressionless, not giving a clue if this still had the power to hurt.

Ten years ago-two months after she’d left the island-her aunt had written.

By the way, Nikos has married Marika. Rumour is there’s a baby on the way, but I guess no one worries about such things any more. You know, I always thought you and Nikos would marry, but I know King Giorgos would hate that. So you’re best out of it.

Until then she’d hoped, desperately, that Nikos would follow her. But when she’d read that…

Marika was a distant relation of Nikos, giggly, flirtatious and ambitious. She’d always thought Marika was in love with her cousin, Demos-but obviously it had been Nikos all the time.

She’d been so shocked she’d been physically ill.

Then, four months later her aunt had written a much shorter note. ‘A baby. A little girl for Nikos and Marika…’ Her note had trailed off, unfinished, and the writing on the envelope had been scrawly.

It was no wonder. The letter had been delivered two days after her aunt’s death.

She’d wept then, for not going home in time, for not guessing her aunt was ill until she’d received the letter, for knowing her last link to the island was ended. And if she’d wept for the fact that Nikos had a baby with Marika, then so be it, the whole thing was grey.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said now, feeling useless. ‘How…how long?’

‘How long ago since she left? Nine years. It wasn’t what you might call a long-term marriage.’

His tone was bitter. Oh, Nikos, she thought. You, too? Wounds might heal, but scars remained.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, but then made a belated attempt to pull herself together. ‘But…it’s nothing to do with me. Nothing from the island’s anything to do with me. My aunt was the last family I had, and she’s dead.’

‘The whole island’s your family. You rule.’ It was said explosively, with passion, and Athena flinched and couldn’t think how to reply.

The crêpes arrived, light and hot, oozing a wonderful lemon liqueur and doused with clotted cream. This was everything she most denied herself in food. Nikos picked up a fork and started in-then paused.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I didn’t really want these.’

‘You’re ill?’

‘No.’

‘Then eat,’ he said. ‘You’re stupidly thin.’

‘I am not!’

‘Are, too,’ he said, and grinned and suddenly there it was again-the bossiness, the arguments, the fun. Childhood with Nikos had been wonderful. Magic.

‘Can’t make me,’ she responded before she could help herself, a response she’d made over and over as a kid.

His dark eyes gleamed with challenge. ‘Want to bet?’

‘No!’

‘Eat your crêpes, Thene.’

She smiled, despite herself, picked up a fork and ate.

How long since she’d indulged in something this full of calories? They tasted fantastic.

‘You’re not a model,’ Nikos said, halfway through his crêpes and finally pausing for breath. ‘Why starve?’

‘It’s expected,’ she said. ‘You can never be too rich or too thin.’

‘Yeah, I’ve heard that, too,’ he growled. ‘So, they’ll fire you if you gain a pound or six?’

‘That party we were at tonight…If I’d turned up as a size fourteen, you think I’d get a foot in the door?’

‘You’re invited to write about it. Not be it.’

‘I’m part of the scene. They like their scene perfect.’

‘And this is a career you like?’

‘It beats pulling craypots.’

More silence. But he wasn’t angry, she thought. He kept on eating, as if she’d just commented on the weather. She’d never been able to needle him.

Oh, she’d missed him. For ten long years it had felt like an ache, a limb missing, phantom pains shooting when she least expected. Watching him now, it felt as if she was suddenly whole again. He was intent on his pancake, maybe giving her space-who knew with Nikos?

He’d fitted right in with the people at the party, she thought. But then she thought, no. She’d got that wrong.

Nikos was an embodiment of what the people she worked with wanted to be. They went to gyms and solariums and plastic surgeons and every other expensive way to get their bodies to where Nikos had his.

All they had to do was haul fifty or so craypots a day for life, she thought, and found she was smiling.

‘What?’ he said, and she was suddenly smiling straight at him, almost pleading for him to return the smile.

And he did. In force. His smile had the capacity to knock her sideways.

The waiter, about to descend to take away their plates, paused with the strength of it. This was a classy establishment. Their waiter knew enough not to intrude on such a smile.

‘I’ve missed you, Thene,’ Nikos said, and his hand was reaching over the table for hers.

No. She found enough sense to tug her hands off the table and put them sensibly in her lap. But she couldn’t stop herself saying the automatic reply. ‘I’ve missed you, too.’

‘So come home.’

‘Because I’ve missed you?’

‘Because the country needs you.’

Here it was again. Duty. Guilt.

‘No.’

She closed her eyes and the waiter decided it was safe to come close. He cleared the plates and set them again, ready for soufflé. Maybe Nikos was watching her. She didn’t know.

Duty.

It had torn her in two ten years ago. To go back now…

“You know Demos wants to open the diamond mines again?” he said, almost conversationally, and her eyes flew open.

‘What the…Why?’

“He’s wanted to for years. It was only Giorgos’s greed that stopped him. Giorgos wasn’t fussed about mining them-he had more money than he knew what to do with, thankfully. But the royal money chests have gone to Alexandros on Sappheiros. There’s little money in the Argyros exchequer.”