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 throughout 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.”
Theo was losing what little patience he had left—a virtue for which he was not widely renowned to begin with. This was already far more focused and specific attention paid to Holly and thus his marriage than he liked to permit himself outside the stark truths he otherwise faced only in his gym. He could see emails piling up in his inbox out of the corner of his eye, he still had to sketch out the rest of his presentation and the last thing in the world he had time for was his own, personal albatross and whatever her latest scheme was.
“Why?” he asked, aware that his voice was unduly hostile when Mrs. Papadopoulos stiffened further, a feat which should have been anatomically impossible. He shrugged. “Because she said so? She always does.”
“Because she’s videoed in.” Mrs. Papadopoulos placed the tablet Theo hadn’t noticed she was carrying down in the center of his desk. “Here you are.” She stepped back, and her voice was as crisp as the look in her eyes was steely. “Sir.”
Theo blinked, then eyed the tablet—and the frozen image there—as if Holly herself might leap forth from the screen and stick another knife deep into his back. Deeper this time, no doubt. Perhaps a killing blow at last. It took him a moment to remember that Mrs. Papadopoulos still stood there, exuding her typical brusque disapproval, and when he did he waved her off before he betrayed himself any further.
A video call was certainly different. That was the truth.
And when it came to Holly, “different” was never good. “Different” always came with a heavy price and Theo always ended up paying it.
She was his costliest mistake, by far. Of all the many follies of his overindulged and deeply entitled youth, Holly Holt from somewhere as improbable to him as Texas ranch country, with the wide smile and the big laugh that had broken him wide-open and left him nothing but a goddamned fool in a thousand discarded pieces, was the one he regretted most.
And daily, whether he permitted himself to think about her directly or not.
“Control yourself,” he snapped out loud, glaring down at the tablet on the polished expanse of his desk before him.
He moved to end the call without taking it, the way he knew he should, but her image taunted him. Even frozen into place and slightly pixelated, she was like a hammer to the side of his head. He could feel her everywhere, her claws still in him, deep.
Hating himself for his weakness didn’t do a damned thing to change it.
And she wasn’t the raw, unformed creature she’d been when he’d met her, all sun-kissed limbs and that unsophisticated beauty that he’d found so intoxicating. So mesmerizing. He studied the frozen image before him as if it might offer him a clue to her—to the truth of her he’d spent years telling himself she’d already shown him. Gone was the exuberant hair, the cowboy boots she’d once told him she loved more than most people, the open and carefree expression that had made her shine brighter than the Santorini sun.
She’d grown sleeker over the past few years. He’d seen it in the photographs he couldn’t always avoid, scattered in this or that paper, but it was more obvious now that he was looking at her directly. That curvy figure of hers that had once made a simple bikini into a lush little scandal and had made him her slave bordered on skinny now. Her hair was still that sunny blond but it was straight and ruthlessly slicked back into a tasteful chignon today, her cosmetics minimal and wholly lacking in the sparkle or too-bright colors he remembered. Her dress was a masterful little exploration of classic, understated elegance and suited this new version of her perfectly.
Holly Holt was gone. Theo doubted she’d ever truly existed.
In her place was this woman. This shrewdly manufactured, ruthlessly accessorized creature. Holly Tsoukatos, who was such a committed philanthropist indeed with her absent husband’s money forever at her disposal, he thought derisively. Holly Tsoukatos, who’d made herself known as the gracefully estranged wife of one of Europe’s favorite former playboys, and who’d become more and more fashionable and sought after now that Theo was regarded as a force as dangerous and successful as his famous father.
He hated her, he told himself then, and he hated this. And most of all he hated the fact that he still wanted that gloriously over-the-top, unrestrained and uncultured little American girl who’d captivated a seasoned sophisticate like him in a single searing week.
But, of course, that Holly had been a lie. Why couldn’t he remember that? She had never existed outside the virtuoso performance she’d put on for him four and a half years ago. This version of his wayward wife, this studiously well-mannered ice queen who’d built herself an entire little empire of lies thanks to his money and her commitment to spending it, was the real Holly. Staring at her frozen image, Theo acknowledged the fact that he didn’t like remembering that harsh truth—it was one of the reasons he’d only spoken to her on the telephone and very rarely at that these past four years.
That and his unwieldy temper, which she alone seemed able to kick-start and send into overdrive with very little effort. But he hauled that dark, simmering, betrayed thing in him under control again, and he didn’t care if it left marks as he did it. He’d rather die than show her anything but his dislike—the colder and more distant, the better. It wasn’t the only thing she’d earned from him, not by a long shot, but it was the only thing he’d allow her to see.
He
