Greek's Last Redemption

by Caitlin Crews

  Holly pulled her hand from his, aware that he let her do it. His strength, his power, was like a bright light flooding through her. There was no mistaking it. There was no pretending he was anything but that ruthless, that damaging. Maybe he always had been. Maybe he’d hidden himself as much as she had.

  “Is this where you doubt even the things you know were true?” she asked him, forgetting the mask she’d worn all these years, the game she was still meant to be playing. Forgetting herself.

  “I take it you mean your convenient virginity, the great emblem of your trembling innocence.” He lifted a shoulder and let it drop, and it was meant to hurt, she knew. It was meant to be dismissive and cruel. He was better at this than she was. “Yes, Holly. I have my doubts.”

  She couldn’t pretend that was a surprise. Not really. And still, it made her feel empty. Broken and dirty.

  “Congratulations,” she said, aware she was giving him too much ammunition. Too much evidence to use against her. But she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “You really have become your father. I should have taken the payoff he offered me.”

  He shifted, and she saw some dark thing move over his face, as if she’d scored a direct hit. But before she could tell him she regretted that, too, it was gone.

  “I think we both know that a single lump sum could never have satisfied you.” He smirked at her, as if she’d imagined that darkness, and she was an idiot, wasn’t she, to be at all surprised that he looked like a stranger then. Not that man she’d loved—and who’d loved her—at all. “What I can’t understand is why you burned out so quickly. You had me completely fooled. Why not take it all the way? Why not make sure I was tied to you forever in the time-honored fashion? You must know I would never have abandoned my own child. That had you fallen pregnant I would have been forced to play these games with you forever.”

  It was a mark of how ill-suited she was to this game despite all these years of playing it, Holly thought then, that it had never occurred to her that he would honestly think she could do something like that. For a moment her head felt hollow and her ears rang, as if he really had hit her, after all. As if she was close to collapsing when she knew that, really, this had only just begun.

  She swallowed and it hurt. And worse, he was watching.

  “Your father asked me something similar,” she reminded him, and his expression iced over. “Right before I tore up his check and threw it in his face. I know you remember that as well as I do. Back then, you were outraged.”

  She reached for her wine, more to have something to do than to drink it, but she welcomed the tart slide of liquid when she took a deep pull. It was better than remembering that blindingly sunny terrace with the sea at her feet, Theo’s gruff and suspicious father, the things he’d said to her through Theo’s younger brother’s pointed and unfriendly translations, or the way she’d had to throw herself in front of Theo to keep him from taking a swing at his own family members. All of which she’d thought was worth it—then. Anything would have been worth it then, if it had meant she’d end up with Theo.

  Better to pray for wisdom, baby girl, her father would have told her in his gruff, remote way. Better for your soul than a wish granted.

  She wished he was still alive. She always would. Just as she wished she still didn’t know what he’d meant by that. But then, life wasn’t about what she wished, or what her lonely father had wished, either. They’d both learned that the hard way.

  “Outrage fades,” Theo was saying, his voice like cut glass, to match the winter she could see on his face. “Especially in the wake of four years of proof that my father was absolutely right about you.”

  “Back then, you thought he was more than half a thug,” she pointed out. She nodded at him, at the crisp shirt he wore, the perfectly fitted jacket. “Now look at you. You might as well be another one of his goons.”

  She saw his temper dance along the edges of his body, all of those stark, male lines drawing taut and hard, and a hint of something much darker besides. But he only laughed again, and she knew it wasn’t optimistic advertising or hopeful PR on the part of his family’s company, which she could admit she’d monitored much too closely over the years. Theo really had become as formidable as his terrifying tycoon of a father. He’d become the Tsoukatos he’d always claimed wasn’t in him.

  “Is that meant to insult me?” Theo laughed again, though there was nothing like levity in the sound, or anywhere near those too-dark eyes of his. “I forget, you think you know me.”

  “I did know you, for a time.” Holly had no idea why she said that. It couldn’t help anything and, in fact, was likely to do nothing at all but infuriate him.

  Which it did. She watched the storm break in his dark eyes, across his taut face, and felt it deep inside of her. That electric awareness—as if he’d changed the weather all around them.

  “You knew a pathetic, weak creature who allowed a gold-digging tramp to walk all over him,” Theo gritted out at her, every word like a lash. Like another blade, deep into her gut, and she’d brought this on herself, she knew. Maybe that was how she could survive it. “That man is dead. If in my resurrection I’ve become like the toughest man I know—the man who warned me away from a grasping American with dollar signs in her eyes, little though I listened to him when I should have done—I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “You can take it any way you like,” she said, forgetting herself for another moment and letting too much emotion creep into her voice. She struggled to bring herself back under control. “It was an observation.”

  “Here’s another one.” He sat back, and it was a confident victor’s pose. It was the body language of a man who thought he’d long since won the battle, and Holly didn’t like that at all. It made her shiver—then, as quickly, fight to restrain it. “You no longer have that power over me. I look at you and see nothing but an interchangeable blonde creature with too much money and too little soul. There are hundreds of women exactly like you. The only difference between you and the great sea of the rest of them is that the money you spend is mine.”

  “You are a poet, Theo. Truly.”

  “You should have kept your distance.” He shrugged in that profoundly Greek way, though his dark eyes glittered. “Here, now, I am bored. If you want a divorce, you’re welcome to it. I have only one caveat.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “You must tell the truth.” He smiled then, though it came nowhere near his eyes. “I know that might prove an obstacle for you, after all these years of games and lies, but there it is. Simply admit your infidelity in open court and we’re done. It is as simple as that.”

  And this was it. This was the point of all of this, because he was wrong. She did know him. Perhaps not as well as she once had. But well enough to know he didn’t walk away from a challenge. She’d suspected he would do exactly this, hadn’t she? It was what she’d worked toward. It was why she’d wanted to meet him in person to do this—though she would never have picked Barcelona, of all the cities in the world. Not the one place she’d held sacred between them. But then, she supposed she should have anticipated that, too.

  Because he would push the point. She’d known he would. Which meant she could finally tell him the truth.

  There was no reason her throat should feel so dry. There was no reason she should feel that shaking thing deep inside of her, like a new kind of fear.

  “And what if the truth isn’t what you think it is, Theo?”

  He sighed. “I don’t care, so long as you tell it for a change. That is what I want. What I insist upon. Or I will keep you chained to my side like the family dog until you are so old you resemble that twisted, benighted soul inside of you.” His dark gaze met hers, fierce and triumphant. “This I promise you.”

  She could still feel his hand against hers, his fingers on that ring he’d placed there himself fo
ur and a half years ago, as if he’d burned his touch deep into her flesh.

  “I told a lie, yes,” she said quietly. Why was this so hard? She’d practiced this. She’d imagined it a thousand times. Why did she feel as if his hand was wrapped around her throat, constricting her very air? “But not the one you think.”

  “Wonderful,” he said caustically, his mouth flattening. “Did you sleep with the whole island, then? Not merely the one British tourist? I told you, I already suspected as much. I certainly don’t need all the details now. Merely the admission in legal documents.”

  “I didn’t sleep with anyone.” She felt sick, somehow, as if she’d said too much, made herself too vulnerable in five little words. Or maybe it was that he’d know, now. The enormity of what she’d done. Of how far she’d been willing to go—and had gone—to escape him, and all the implications of that. “That was the lie.”

  Holly didn’t know what she’d expected.

  It had taken four years to say those words. Four years and a lot of time spent shifting through her motherless childhood and her father’s take on that kind of loss, and thinking about how that had all led inexorably to the awful mess she’d made of both her and Theo’s lives. She’d always imagined something would happen when she finally faced him again—because she’d known, hadn’t she, that she’d never be able to look him in the eyes without telling him the truth. She’d barely survived telling him that huge lie when she’d done it initially four years ago.

  Theo wasn’t the only one who’d gone to great lengths to avoid this reunion.

  She’d expected the world to stop spinning for a beat or two, perhaps. A moment of silence, of acknowledgment. Something—anything—to mark this literal moment of truth between them after all the darkness and misery of these past few years.

  But the restaurant was cheerful and loud all around them, and Theo only rolled his dark eyes.

  “I think we’re going to need more wine,” he muttered, and then he signaled the waiter, as if she hadn’t said anything of importance.

  Because, Holly realized then with an unpleasant shock, he didn’t believe her.

  It had never occurred to her that he wouldn’t. He’d believed her instantly and completely when she’d told him that initial lie. He’d never doubted it for a moment since.

  She didn’t know if it was a laugh or a sob that escaped her lips then. “You don’t believe me.”

  His own laugh was laced with pure derision.

  “Why would I?” He rubbed one hand over his face, lingering on the dark shadow along his jaw that always turned up by the end of the day, and she could remember, in an unwelcome flash, the sweet scrape of it against the tender skin of her inner thighs. The perfection of that sting. “I’m not interested in all of these theatrics, Holly. Just tell me what you want and we can both go about our business. I’ve said you can have the divorce. I am nothing if not reasonable.”

  She couldn’t breathe. She felt caught in him, trapped, as surely as if he held her in his own hands.

  “And I suggest you take advantage of it,” he murmured, that lash in his voice again. “I very much doubt it will last.”

  “I can’t stand up in court and confess that I was unfaithful to you,” she told him, and she knew he could hear the conviction in her voice. She saw the way his dark eyes narrowed, the way his sculpted shoulders shifted beneath his jacket. “Because I wasn’t.”

  He sighed again, but there was speculation in his gaze, and something much hotter and much more dangerous.

  “Then why would you claim you were? You were so certain, as I recall.”

  “I was insistent,” she said, with more emotion in her voice—more temper, if she was honest—than she’d meant to show him. “You were certain. There’s a difference.”

  “Such a tangled web, is it not?” he murmured, and he took the wine bottle from the waiter who brought it and waved him away, pouring his own drink. His voice was harsh when he continued, and mocking besides. “Tell me, agapi mou, why would you do such a terrible thing? Why would you tell your besotted husband such a hideous story, calculated to make yourself look so bad?”

  “Because, Theo,” Holly said, and there was no reason her pulse should be that loud, and so hard that she thought it might choke her. There was no reason that she should be this terrified of a little bit of honesty here and now, when she’d thrown herself headfirst into such a damaging lie four years ago. But it was only her voice that shook. Her gaze, at least, stayed steady on his. She told herself that had to mean something, to count for something. Surely. “I knew there was no other way you’d ever let me go.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THEO LAUGHED THEN, and he could see the way she jerked in her seat, as if she could feel the darkness in that sound, the way it welled up within him and felt too much like poison. Like a deeply twisted need.

  It was as if he’d touched her, though not particularly gently, and that fanged thing in him liked that a little too much. As if he really was—what had she called him?—a goon, after all.

  As dark and as twisted as his own father.

  “You were correct.” He stood then, staring down at her, his usual fury mixing with something like pity, and he didn’t know if it was for her or for him. He didn’t know why he’d come here. Why he always acted first and thought second where this woman was concerned. Only that finally—finally—he was ready to end it. Once and for all. “But never fear, Holly. I have resigned myself to your absence. In fact, I prefer it. Allow me to demonstrate.”

  He expected her to follow him as he strode back out of the restaurant and she did, of course, catching up to him in the grand Chatsfield lobby. He heard the click of her heels against the marble floors and turned back when she was nearly upon him, letting his mouth curve into something even he could feel was vicious.

  “How times change,” he bit out as she rocked to a stop a little too close to him, a startled, wary sort of look on her face. “Now it’s you chasing me across the world. Life is truly amazing, is it not? Its gifts never cease.”

  He watched her swallow, hard, but he couldn’t read a single thing on her face. He told himself that was all the better. That he’d only ever imagined he could read anything in her in the first place. That it had all been a part of the games she’d played with him, games he’d lost spectacularly and no longer cared to indulge. Not after this latest bit of attempted deceit, to what end, he couldn’t imagine.

  “I had no idea you’d become so philosophical over the years,” she said after a moment, in that too-calm voice of hers he’d already decided he hated, though he didn’t care to explore his reasons for that. “I’m not sure it suits you.”

  He inclined his head. “I’ll be certain to give your input the consideration it deserves.”

  They stared at each other, and the quietly exultant lobby seemed to fade around them. But the driving fury that had brought him here from Greece, the focused rage that had catapulted him from his suite down into the restaurant, had settled into something else. Something slick and hot that wound inside him and yet made him feel calmer than before. Different.

  “Is this it?” he asked after a moment dragged by and she only stared back at him. “This is why you insisted we meet? You wanted to tell me fairy tales about what you did four years ago?”

  “It’s true.” Her voice was quiet, but he could hear the scrape in it. The hint of far darker, even painful, things beneath. “I spent a long time trying to unravel myself from you, Theo. I used every weapon I could think of, and then, at last, the only one I knew would work.”

  He wanted to shake her, and loathed himself for the urge. He was not that kind of man. He was no cave-dwelling animal. He hated that in her presence he needed to keep reminding himself of that.

  “For future reference, may I suggest a simple statement of intent? ‘I want to leave you,
Theo,’ you could have said. It’s remarkable how a handful of words could have accomplished the same thing and with much less carrying-on.”

  “You weren’t exactly easy to talk to,” she grated at him, as if her throat was constricted. “Then or now.”

  “Ah, yes. I knew it must all be my fault, somehow.” Theo all but bared his teeth at her. “I caused your infidelity, obviously. I forced you onto another man’s penis.”

  He heard the breath she sucked in then, as if she was winded.

  “I lied about that.”

  “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I believe you,” he said, leaning in closer to her, which was not smart. Or at all strategic. He could smell the scent of her skin, that hint of vanilla and spice, and it made him so hard it hurt. He ignored it. “What does it matter now?”

  She jerked where she stood, tilting her head back to look up at him, and for a moment, she looked lost. She looked like the Holly he remembered—the Holly he’d created in his own head and knew better than to believe.

  “What?”

  This is her game, he roared at himself. This is what she does. She is no more lost than you are.

  “It has been four years, Holly. What did you think this announcement of yours would accomplish?”

  Again, that artless look of confusion that was truly masterful, he had to admit. It not only made him hunger for her as if he didn’t know any better, it made him want to gather her close and protect her. She was frighteningly good at this.

  She swallowed. “I just... I thought you should know.”

  “I see. How did you imagine this would play out? I wonder.” He crowded her, moving until she had no choice but to back up, until he reached out and took her shoulders in his hands. He ignored the shock of it, the searing kick of sensation. Their chemistry wasn’t the point here, and that startled glint of awareness in her gaze was likely feigned—because he knew better. He did. He learned from his mistakes, damn it. “Am I meant to fall to my knees? Sing hosannas? Jump up and down with joy?”