Greek's Last Redemption

by Caitlin Crews

  Returning to the marriage bed

  Waiting outside her estranged husband’s lavish office, ready to demand a divorce, Holly Tsoukatos can’t remember ever being so scared. Not even when she told Theo the words that destroyed their union.

  Seeing Holly again, Theo hates how much he still desires her. If she wants to talk, he’ll choose the venue: The Chatsfield, Barcelona, where they spent their honeymoon!

  Being so close again is delicious torture. Holly might have fled their all-consuming chemistry once before, but this time, Theo won’t let her run away so easily...

  Welcome to The Chatsfield, Barcelona!

  “I imagine that is the point of this charade, is it not?” Theo was stroking that wineglass the way he’d once stroked her body, and Holly was certain it was deliberate. That he knew exactly what that slow sweep of his tapered, too-strong fingers against the glass did inside her. “What do you want from me?”

  “I told you what I wanted.”

  It was hard to keep her voice even when he was on the other side of such a tiny little table, his intense physicality, his rampant maleness, like an industrial-force magnet. Holly had forgotten that, somehow. She’d forgotten that so much of being near Theo was being utterly helpless and under his spell. In his thrall. She’d had to leave him or disappear into him, never to be seen again, and she remembered why, now. She could feel it, like a black hole, sucking her in all over again—the same way this same kind of destructive love had sucked in her father all those years ago. She’d watched how this ended before. Why did she think it could be different now?

  She kept her gaze level on Theo’s, and tried not to think about her parents. “A divorce.”

  The world’s most elite hotel is looking for a jewel in its crown and Spencer Chatsfield has found it. But Isabella Harrington, the girl from his past, refuses to sell!

  Now the world’s most decadent destinations have become a chessboard in this game of power, passion and pleasure...

  Welcome to

  The Chatsfield

  Synonymous with style, sensation...and scandal!

  With the eight Chatsfield siblings happily married and settling down, it’s time for a new generation of Chatsfields to shine!

  Spencer Chatsfield steps in as CEO, determined to prove his worth. But when he approaches Isabella Harrington, of Harringtons Boutique hotels, with the offer of a merger that would benefit them both, he’s left with a stinging red palm-shaped mark on his cheek!

  And so begins a game of cat and mouse that will shape the future of the Chatsfields and the Harringtons forever.

  But neither knows that there’s one stakeholder with the power to decide their fate...and the identity will shock both the Harringtons and the Chatsfields.

  Just who will come out on top?

  Find out in:

  Maisey Yates—Sheikh’s Desert Duty

  Abby Green—Delucca’s Marriage Contract

  Carol Marinelli—Princess’s Secret Baby

  Kate Hewitt—Virgin’s Sweet Rebellion

  Caitlin Crews—Greek’s Last Redemption

  Michelle Conder—Russian’s Ruthless Demand

  Susanna Carr—Tycoon’s Delicious Debt

  Melanie Milburne—Chatsfield’s Ultimate Acquisition

  Eight volumes to collect—you won’t want to miss out!

  CAITLIN CREWS

  Greek’s Last Redemption

  USA TODAY bestselling author and RITA® Award-nominated author Caitlin Crews loves writing romance. She teaches her favorite romance novels in creative writing classes at places like UCLA Extension’s prestigious Writers’ Program, where she finally gets to utilize the MA and PhD in English literature she received from the University of York in England. She currently lives in California with her very own hero and too many pets. Visit her at caitlincrews.com.

  Books by Caitlin Crews

  Harlequin Presents

  At the Count’s Bidding

  Undone by the Sultan’s Touch

  Not Just the Boss’s Plaything

  A Devil in Disguise

  In Defiance of Duty

  The Replacement Wife

  Princess from the Past

  Vows of Convenience

  His for Revenge

  His for a Price

  Royal & Ruthless

  A Royal without Rules

  Scandal in the Spotlight

  No More Sweet Surrender

  Heiress Behind the Headlines

  Self-Made Millionaires

  Katrakis’s Last Mistress

  Bride on Approval

  Pure Princess, Bartered Bride

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  To Pippa Roscoe, for being her fabulous self, especially in Texas.

  And to Kelly Conroy, for sharing her Barcelona with me. I hope I brought it to life, at least a little bit!

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BPA

  EXCERPT

  WELCOME MS CREWS

  WELCOME MR TSOUKATOS

  CHAPTER ONE

  THEO TSOUKATOS SCOWLED when his office door swung open despite the fact he’d given strict orders that he wasn’t to be disturbed. He expected his orders to be followed—and they usually were, because no one who worked for him enjoyed the consequences when they were not.

  He was becoming more like his widely feared father by the day, he thought grimly. Which he could tolerate as long as that was only true here, in the business sphere. God help him if he ever acted like his father in his personal life.

  Never, he vowed, as he had since he was a child. I will never let that happen.

  “I trust the building is on fire?” he asked his secretary icily as she marched inside, because it could only be a crisis that brought her in here against his instructions, surely. He glowered at her. “Or is about to be?”

  “Not as far as I’m aware,” she retorted, appearing utterly unperturbed by his aggressive tone. Mrs. Papadopoulos, who reminded him of his hatchet-faced, steely-haired and pursed-mouthed aunt and acted about as enamored of Theo as Aunt Despina always had been, was meant to keep him from distractions rather than cause them. “But it’s early yet.”

  Theo sighed his impatience. He was in the middle of compiling the rest of his notes on fuel efficiency and trim optimization strategies for the meeting that he’d be running in his father’s stead today, now that wily old Demetrious Tsoukatos was focusing more on his mounting medical issues than on the family business. He glanced out the wall of windows surrounding him and saw all of Athens arrayed at his feet, the sprawling commotion and hectic madness of the greatest city in Greece serving as a reminder, the way it always did.

  That all that rose must fall—before rising again, stronger than before.

  That was the unspoken Tsoukatos family creed. It was the story of Theo’s own life, certainly. It was built into every inch of the proud Tsoukatos tower, where Theo now sat. Just like the steel girders themselves that made the building an imposing
physical testament to his shipping magnate father’s searing vision and ruthless success in the face of all obstacles, from sworn enemies to the faltering economy.

  These days, the tower stood as a marker of Theo’s own growing reputation as a fearless risk taker and out-of-the-box thinker in a business cluttered by those who played it safe straight into bankruptcy. That wasn’t going to happen to the Tsoukatos fleet. Theo might have acted the spoiled heir apparent for most of his twenties, but in the past four years he’d dedicated himself to proving he was every bit as formidable and intimidating as the old man himself.

  It turned out he was good at this. As if ruthless power really did run in his veins the way his father had always assured him it did. Or should.

  And he’d decided he could emulate his father here, in the boardroom, where that kind of ruthlessness was a positive thing. Theo’s own personal life might have been a mess, such as it was, but not for the same reasons Demetrious’s had been. I may not be happy, he often told himself fiercely, but at least I’m not a liar, a cheater or a hypocrite.

  He was surrounded by too many who couldn’t say the same.

  Theo aimed his most ferocious glare at Mrs. Papadopoulos as she came to a sharp stop on the other side of his wide desk. She eyed him right back with her special brand of mild judgment and automatic condemnation, which, perversely, he quite enjoyed. The woman was his own, personal version of the proverbial hair shirt and Theo was nothing if not the kind of man who liked to keep his sins as close as possible to his skin.

  “It’s your wife,” Mrs. Papadopoulos said crisply, speaking of his sins, and Theo stopped enjoying himself. With a great thud that he was momentarily worried was actually audible.

  His wife.

  Holly.

  Theo was so used to that flare of dark rage, that thunderbolt of pure fury, that he told himself he hardly noticed it any longer as it careened through him, setting off a string of secondary explosions. It had been almost four whole years since he’d laid eyes on his errant wife. Almost four years since they’d been in the same room, or even in the same country. Four years since he’d last touched her, tasted her, lost himself in her—which he never would again, he reminded himself coldly, as it was, not coincidentally, also four years since he’d discovered the truth about her. And the mockery she’d made of their marriage.

  You did not discover the truth about her, he reminded himself darkly. Pointedly. She presented her confession to you, as if on a silver platter...

  But God help him, he couldn’t let himself go down that dark path. Not today. Not here, in his place of business, where he had become renowned for his icy calm under any and all forms of pressure. Not anymore.

  Not ever again.

  He should have been over this by now, Theo thought then, the way he always did. But instead he had to order himself to breathe, to unclench his fists, to relax the instant, furious tautness of his body against his chair and pretend he was as unmoved as he should have been after all this time.

  “If it is my wife, then I am not only busy, I am uninterested,” he said, making no attempt to hide the crack of temper in his voice. “You know better than to bother me with such drivel, Mrs. Papadopoulos. My wife is to be diverted to voice mail or email, which I check as little as possible and certainly no more than once every—”

  “Sir.” And Theo didn’t know what surprised him more. That the woman dared interrupt him or that, when he stared at her in astonishment, the rigid yet normally obedient Mrs. Papadopoulos stood her ground. “She insists that it’s an emergency.”

  The last thing in the world Theo wanted to think about, today or ever, was Holly. His downfall—the more uncharitable might call her his comeuppance, and in his darker moments he found he agreed, because he’d married a liar just like the one he’d sworn he’d never become—in one smooth and deceitful and much too pretty female form.

  Because the sad truth was that he already spent a significant portion of every day not thinking about her. His predawn hours in his private gym, beating his endless fury into the hanging bag or the occasional sparring partner. The brutal miles he logged on his treadmill. Not thinking about her betrayal of him with, she’d told him so distinctly, some tourist whose name she hadn’t bothered to catch. Not imagining those same sickening scenes over and over again, all etched into his brain as if he’d actually witnessed her betrayal himself. Not wondering how he could have fallen so completely for the lies she’d told him when he should have known better, when he should have been far too jaded to be taken in by her artless little act...

  For four years he’d thrown himself into the family business with the express purpose of thinking of something other than the lying, cheating creature he’d married so foolishly and the many ways she’d ruined him. She’d made him a laughingstock. That smarted, but she’d also ripped out the heart he’d never been aware he’d possessed before her. That was infinitely worse. And more than that, she’d tricked him into reenacting his own parents’ doomed marriage, which he couldn’t find it in him to forgive. For four years he’d focused all of the feelings he refused to call by name into something tangible: the comprehensive decimation of all Tsoukatos business rivals and the unquestionable success of the company against what should have been insurmountable odds in these troubled times.

  No one had called Theo Tsoukatos, once a proud member of Europe’s entitled dilettante contingent with the notches on his bedpost to prove it, a spoiled and pampered playboy in a very long while. No one would dare.

  But Holly was his living, breathing, walking and talking failure. The crowning achievement of his wasted youth. The embodiment of the pointless creature he’d been back then, a grave disappointment to his father and an epic, permanent stain upon his family name.

  He did not want to think about how hard he’d fallen for the dizzy little blonde thing from the United States who’d pretended to adore him at first sight, how desperately he’d pursued her after their initial week together on the island or how deeply and callously she’d betrayed him a mere six months after the wedding that he’d been blind enough to consider romantic not despite its speed but because of it.

  He especially did not want to recollect the unpleasant truth: that he had no one to blame for any of these things but himself.

  Everyone had warned him, after all. At length. Everyone save Theo had seen supposedly gauche and charmingly naive Holly Holt, touring Europe all on her own following her father’s death, for exactly who and what she was. One more American gold digger with Texas dirt on her feet and her calculating blue eyes set on the biggest and best catch she could find.

  On Santorini that summer, that catch had been Theo.

  “You are my successor and the heir to the Tsoukatos fortune,” his father had told him sternly, over and over again and to no avail. “This girl is nobody. This can never be anything more than a holiday romance, Theo. You must understand this.”

  His father and his brother, Brax, had lined up to tell him not to be a fool, but Theo had hardly been inclined to take advice from the man who’d destroyed Theo’s own mother with his infidelities, much less a younger brother he’d thought of then as little more than a child. And then, when it was clear that he was determined to prove himself a colossal fool, anyway, they’d begged him to at the very least take the necessary steps to protect his fortune, his future, the company, on the off chance that he was thinking with his groin instead of his head... And Theo had ignored them all, the way he always had done th
roughout his hedonistic twenties, because he’d cared about nothing and no one but himself.

  Nothing but himself and one curvy little blonde girl with deep blue eyes to rival the Aegean Sea itself. She’d had the widest, sweetest, most open smile he’d ever seen, and he’d lost himself in it. In her. And there had been nothing, it turned out, but a deceitful heart beneath all that sweet shine.

  This, then, was his reward for his impetuousness. His penance. This humiliation of a marriage that he held on to only because he refused to give her the satisfaction of asking for a divorce, despite what she’d done to him and then thrown in his face so unapologetically. He refused to let her see how she’d destroyed him over the course of that long, rainy season on Santorini years ago.

  It had been nearly four and a half years since they’d married in far too much haste in the height of the dry Greek summer, almost four whole years since they’d been within the same walls, and Theo thought he was still coldly furious enough to stretch it out to ten, if necessary. He might not want her any longer, he might have vowed to himself that he would fling himself from the Santorini cliffs before he’d let her work her evil magic on him again, but he’d be damned if he’d let her have her freedom from him unless she begged for it.

  Preferably at length and on her knees. He was a simple man. An eye for an eye, and a humiliation for a humiliation.

  “My wife has never had a minor upset she couldn’t fluff up into a full-scale catastrophe,” Theo bit out now, venting his spleen on his rigid secretary and not much minding if it made her bristle visibly. He paid her a not-inconsiderable fortune to tolerate him and his many black moods, after all. It was a great pity he hadn’t taken the same amount of precautions when choosing his first wife. “Her version of an emergency generally involves her credit limit.”

  “I think this is different, Mr. Tsoukatos.”