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?”
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
