He remembered too much. There were too many ghosts here, as if the walls themselves were soaked through with the happy memories he’d spent four years pretending had never happened.
“Nothing about us has ever been wise, Theo,” Holly said then, and he blinked, because that sounded far too much like sadness in her voice—but that was impossible. That was the product of too many memories merging with the soft Spanish evening outside his windows, wrapping around and contorting itself into wishful thinking.
It took him long moments to realize she’d ended the call. And Theo stopped thinking. He simply moved.
He hardly saw the polished gold elevator that whisked him back down to the grand lobby. He barely noticed the hushed elegance, the well-dressed clientele, the tourists snapping photos of the marble floors and the inviting-looking bar, as he made his way toward the attached restaurant. Nor did he pause near the maître d’—he simply strode past the station in the entryway, his eyes scanning the room. An obviously awkward date, a boisterous family dinner. A collection of laughing older women, a set of weary-looking businessmen.
Until finally—finally—he saw her.
And that was when it occurred to him to stop. To think for a moment with his head, not the much louder part of him that was threatening to take him over the way it had the first time he’d looked up in a crowded place to see her sitting there, somehow radiant, as if light found her and clung to her of its own volition.
Before it was too late all over again.
Because she was so pretty. Still. Theo couldn’t deny that and there was no particular reason that should have enraged him. And yet it did.
She looked smooth and edible in another one of those perfect little dresses that flattered her figure even as it made her look like a queen. Regal and cool and something like aristocratic, with her sweetly pointed chin propped in her delicate hand, her gaze focused out on the street beyond, and her other hand—the hand that still featured the two rings he’d put there himself, he noted, his temper beating in him like a very dark drum—toyed idly with the stem of her wineglass.
It reminded him—powerfully, almost painfully—of that too-bright afternoon on Santorini so many summers ago. He’d careened out of a strange woman’s bed at noon and staggered out into the sunlight, as was typical for him. He hadn’t headed to his family’s villa for another lecture on his responsibilities from the exasperated father he’d stopped listening to years before, when the issue of the old man’s character had been made abundantly clear. He’d walked up the hill to his favorite restaurant to charm the owner, one of his oldest friends, into plying him with good food to chase away the remains of another too-long, too-excessive night.
Instead, he’d found Holly, with her startled laughter and her bright, beckoning innocence, and his entire life had changed.
And she’d been sitting exactly like this.
Theo finally stopped moving then, right there in the busy aisle of the intimately lit restaurant, and forced himself to breathe. To think. To note that all of this was part of the little performance she was staging for his benefit—to achieve her own ends, at his continuing expense. She’d chosen to sit at one of the tables in the open windows over the busy, popular street, and Theo understood this was all part of her plan. Not simply to meet him in public, in a restaurant like their very first meeting a lifetime ago, but to do so while visible to the entire city of Barcelona, as if that might keep her safe.
She thought she was controlling this game. She thought she was controlling him.
It was in that moment that Theo decided to play. And to win.
He walked the rest of the way to her table and then slid into the seat across from her. He helped himself to her wine once he threw himself down, since they were dealing in echoes of the past. Why not do his part? He took a long pull from her glass, the way he would have back then, his mouth pressing against the small mark her glossy lips had left behind and then eyeing her over the rim.
He couldn’t read her dark blue eyes tonight. He couldn’t see her every last thought on her face the way he could have back then. Then again, given the way she’d played him, perhaps he’d never seen what he thought he had. It didn’t matter, he told himself then. This was a new game, and this time, he knew from the start that he was playing it.
There would be no surprises here. Not this time.
“Kalispera, Holly,” he said, and when she blinked at him, he got the distinct impression she’d known he was there the whole time, despite the fact she’d been looking in the other direction. From the moment he’d entered the restaurant, even. He stretched out his legs and was instantly aware of how she shifted, to keep her own out of his reach, as if even that mild a touch might set them both on fire. She wasn’t wrong and that, too, added fuel to the anger inside of him. And to his determination to win this thing, no matter the cost. “You look well enough. Spending my money clearly suits you. Is that polite enough to start?”
CHAPTER THREE
SHE’D DREAMED THIS a thousand times. More.
This is really happening, Holly told herself, trying to keep her expression blank. Or failing that, calm, which wasn’t easy with the wild and erratic dance her heart was doing inside her chest. This isn’t one of those dreams.
“Hello, Theo,” she said calmly, as if this wasn’t the first time they’d spoken face-to-face, in the actual flesh, in touching distance, in nearly four years. As if being back in Barcelona, at The Chatsfield of all places, meant nothing to her. As if she felt nothing at all—as if she really was the person she’d gone to such lengths to convince him she was. Just a little bit longer, she promised herself. “Did you have a pleasant flight?”
“Of course.” He was so much more in person. She remembered the way his sheer presence had always seemed to scrape the air thin all around him, and it was worse now. As if he claimed more than his fair share of oxygen, simply because he could. Because he was Theo. “I do not maintain a private plane with my own staff for an unpleasant flight, do I?”
“I feel that way about closing down shops on Fifth Avenue and Rodeo Drive to make use of your black Amex card.”
“So the dizzying bills remind me each time I see them.”
His face was still so fascinating. Harsh and male and undeniably Greek, yet so intensely beautiful she wasn’t surprised to see the way women and men alike reacted to him. The double takes. The second, longer glances. And none of them, she was sure, could see that ferocity in his dark eyes. The hint of violence she knew he’d never direct at her. Not physically, anyway, not in a way that would truly hurt her.
Sex, of course, was a different story—but she couldn’t let herself think about that. About that last time, right after her “confession,” so raw and possessive and furious...
“Is this small talk?” he asked softly. She wasn’t fooled by that tone. She could feel its lethal power deep in her bones, tightening around her like a noose. “I haven’t grown any more interested in such things, Holly. I told you four years ago what we would discuss if you dared face me again. Is this really where you’d like to have that conversation?”
“Far be it from me to direct you in anything,” she replied, angling her body back so she looked far more at ease than she was, and it was harder than it should have been to remember what she was doing here, when he was right there and her instinct was to protect herself. To keep him hating her, which hurt more in the moment but was safer in the long run. Safer and colder and emptier. So much emptier. Hadn’t she spent all these years proving that to herself—in case her childhood hadn’t taught her that lesson first? “I know it’s so
important to you that you remain in control.”
“I imagine that is the point of this charade, is it not?” He was stroking that wineglass the way he’d once stroked her body, and she was certain it was deliberate. That he knew exactly what that slow sweep of his tapered, too-strong fingers against the glass did inside of her. The streaks of fire. That deep, hard clench within. “The honeymoon suite, the clever little rose petals, like a forced death march down memory lane straight back into the fires of hell. And you have always done hell with such flair, have you not?” His gaze slammed into hers then. “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.”
“I told you I wouldn’t give you one. And it has not yet been those magical four years that would release you, anyway. You shouldn’t have come to Barcelona if that was really what you wanted. This resets the clock, does it not?”
“What does it matter if we’re in the same city?” she asked, more bravado than anything else, and she threw in a little scoffing sound, just to maintain the brittle facade a few minutes more. “We’re not staying together. We’re not even staying in the same hotel.”
That surprised him. Holly could see it in a brief flash of something before he shuttered that dark gaze of his, and that made her decision to stay in The Harrington, a luxurious boutique hotel in Barcelona’s famous Gothic Quarter, seem that much smarter. As if she was getting good at handling him, after all.
After so many years apart, perhaps she’d finally learned something.
“I’ll repeat—what do you want?” Theo’s voice was clipped, his gaze when it met hers again uncompromisingly direct. “It was obviously important to you that we do this. Here we are. You have three seconds to tell me what your agenda is.”
“Or what?”
Holly made her voice a taunt, though the truth was, she didn’t recognize this version of Theo, and that was making her feel far more uneasy than she’d imagined she would. He wasn’t the lazy, sun-drunk lover she remembered, and even though she’d read enough about him over the course of these past few years to have expected that on some level, the reality was much different. He had an edge now. He wasn’t remotely tame. Back then, he’d reminded her of nothing so much as a great, lazy cat—tonight, he was all claws and fangs. Maybe that was why she was drawing this out instead of coming clean immediately.
Or maybe she was still too afraid. That he wouldn’t believe her.
That he would.
“What can you possibly do to me that you haven’t already done?” she asked instead.
“Excellent,” he said silkily. “We’ve moved on to the blame portion of this conversation. And so quickly. Are you truly prepared to pretend that I carry any of it?” He laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound. It rushed over her, making her skin prickle and feel too tight. It was as dangerous as he was. “I’ll admit, I’m looking forward to the performance. Please, Holly. Tell me how I betrayed you.”
She couldn’t breathe. His gaze was too hot and too condemning, his mouth too grim. It was as if he’d chained her to her seat with the force of his fury alone, and she felt a dangerous weakness steal over her. As if she could simply surrender, right here...
But she knew better.
“I’m prepared to talk about our marriage,” she said then, when she’d battled herself back from that cliff, down to something resembling calm. Or, at least, a good facsimile of it that might propel her through these last, crucial moments. “Are you? Because the way I remember it, the last time we broached the subject there was nothing but yelling and punching walls.”
And then that wild, insane thing that had exploded between them, nothing as simple as mere sex—but she didn’t say that. Neither did Theo. But it was between them all the same, the terrible heat and the violent blast of it as intense as if it had only just happened. That indelible claiming. Holly could hear the sound of his shirt tearing beneath her hands, could feel his skin beneath her teeth, the rage and the fire, the betrayal and the thick, twisted emotion like a hundred sobs pent up inside them both, and then that slick, perfect thrust of him deep into her, rough and complicated, their own painful little poetry. Their own goodbye.
“By all means, let’s discuss our marriage.” Theo shifted then, leaning forward, making the small table feel like a box, a cage—as if the restaurant all around them and the city just outside simply disappeared, folded into their past that neatly. When nothing between them had ever been neat. “Allow me to summarize the whole of it. I worshipped you. You betrayed me. The end.”
“That’s a bit simplistic, don’t you think?”
“I find the truth always is.” He didn’t look entirely civilized then. Something raw and edgy stared out at her from his too-dark eyes, some kind of warning. Or invitation, a perverse part of her whispered. “And that’s the story of our marriage, Holly. If you remember it differently, perhaps you have me confused with one of your other lovers.”
“Have I graduated to lovers, then?” She’d meant to sound amused. Jaded. She missed both by miles, and he shook his head, as if he refused to let that sad tone of voice confuse him.
“I know you claimed there was only the one, but you’ll understand, I think, if I find that difficult to believe. Given the circumstances. Who cheats only once?”
He said that as if he had dark personal experience with it—but Holly didn’t want to think about that. Not now. Not when she was this close to telling the truth at last.
“Go on,” she said quietly, straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin, as if he was pounding those hard fists into her. Some part of her almost wished he would. It would be more honest than the rest of this. More real. It might even hurt less. “Get it all out, Theo. All that poison. I know you’ve wanted this opportunity for years now.”
“I have, in fact.”
And Theo’s smile was a blade that cut into her, deep. Not merely scarring her—it made her worry she would never be whole again.
But then, you’re nothing resembling whole now, are you? asked that low voice she imagined was her father’s, and she could only be grateful he hadn’t lived to see what she’d made of her life without him—though she thought he’d have understood. Perhaps too well. She was so much like him, after all.
“You dropped your bomb on me and were gone by morning,” Theo said. “In time, I came to understand that this was all part of your grand plan. Moreover, that you always had a plan, right from the start. That I was nothing but a mark. The word that best fits, I think you’ll find, is mercenary.”
“I sound evil indeed.”
Theo inclined his head. “Why discuss the details of your betrayal? It hardly mattered then, much less now. It was a means to an end, nothing more. I realized that what mattered to you was what you already had—my ring on your finger and access to my bank account.”
“You could have come after me, if you were so desperate to talk,” Holly pointed out.
On some level, she’d realized much later, she’d thought he would once the dizzy madness of their last encounter had faded. She’d had contingency plans in place to deal with him if he had. After all, he’d always pursued her so relentlessly before—wasn’
t that why she’d gone to these lengths to escape him? But he hadn’t. He’d simply let her go. It had taken her a long time to accept that. Longer still to understand that as much as she’d wanted him to believe her when she’d lied to him, as much as she’d wanted to escape their all-consuming relationship, there was a part of her that had believed he’d see right through her. That he wouldn’t let her do such a thing. That he’d known her better than she knew herself.
She’d twisted herself in so many knots that the only thing she’d known how to do was come back to him. “I told you I was going back to Texas. You always knew where I was.”
He reached over and took her hand, and even though it was a cold little parody of the way he might have done it years before, that simple touch slammed through her. It wrecked her from the inside out, sparks cascading through her, her stomach twisting, her breath catching. If she hadn’t been sitting down, she thought, she would have fallen over, and she knew there was no way he’d miss the way she trembled at his touch.
She hoped he’d think it was fear. Nerves. Not all of the rest of the things she knew it was.
Theo took the sapphire-and-diamond ring she wore—that he’d slid there himself, high on a Santorini cliffside as the wind toyed with her hair and the bright Greek sky kissed them with light—between his fingers and moved it gently this way and that, catching the candlelight and sending it dancing over the table, the way he’d always done in those first months, as if he was enchanted with it as she’d been.
Holly found she was holding her breath then. Waiting.
“That would have sent the wrong message,” he said softly. So softly, it couldn’t possibly be real. Holly braced herself, and his gaze moved up to meet hers with all that bright ferocity gleaming there, harsh and unmistakable. Pitiless. “I don’t want you. I want the sweet, innocent girl I married, but she never existed. Why would I chase after the deceitful little liar who pretended to be that girl? Why would I want you, whoever the hell you are?”
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