expression went from furious to something like thunderstruck, then back to a hardness that should have left her in tatters. Maybe it did. Maybe the truth was that she couldn’t tell the difference any longer.
“I beg your pardon?” His voice was icy, but there was no mistaking the threat beneath it. “I didn’t realize it was time for our long-overdue conversation regarding each other’s character flaws. Are you certain you’re ready for that?”
“Blah blah blah,” she said, rolling her eyes and waving a hand dismissively, wishing she felt even a tiny bit that relaxed or casual. “Just call me a whore already, Theo. You’ve been dancing around it for almost four years now.”
THEO’S DARK EYES blazed to a molten fury and it amazed Holly that he could still make her lose her breath, that easily. Even when he thought so little of her.
And she was such a fool—because a sane woman, Holly knew, having done what she’d done, having lied so extravagantly in order to escape this man the only way she’d thought she could, would not have looked at that flare of fury in his dark eyes and read it as some sliver of hope for the future she’d torpedoed herself.
Because fury wasn’t the same thing as indifference. Fury meant he still felt something for her, no matter how twisted and painful.
But then, Holly was aware that a sane woman wouldn’t have gone ahead and married the dark Greek lover who’d swept her up in a kind of sensual tornado that summer, either, stealing her innocence and her heart and her good sense along with it. So maybe sane wasn’t in the ballpark here.
Maybe she should stop pretending it had ever been a possibility where proximity to Theo was concerned.
“Let me guess,” he said, his voice controlled in a way that made her wonder exactly how he’d grown in all these years. Exactly how he’d changed, when the Theo she’d known had been as impetuous and wild as he’d been rich and pampered. She’d been completely out of her league with this man from the start. “You decided to purchase a jet. An island. A couture house and half of Paris to go with it. I don’t care, Holly. Your allowance is yours. Do what you want with it and leave me the hell alone.”
He moved in his chair, his hand reaching toward her, and she knew he was about to end the call. That there was nothing tender there in that gesture, despite what it looked like for a brief second—what she wanted it to look like, fool that she still was.
“I want to see you,” she said, before he could cut her off. Before she lost herself in these tiny little moments and the daydreams that went with them and completely forgot why she was doing this. Because she didn’t need him to tell her that he wouldn’t answer a call like this again. She knew it.
Theo shifted in his chair then, in a way that suggested he was preparing for a fight, those dark eyes seeming to laser into her. He seemed bigger, suddenly. Darker. “You’re seeing me right now. Witness the glory of technology. And my surpassing joy.”
“In person.”
He laughed, a harsh scrape of sound that lodged in places it shouldn’t. “No.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She smiled again, even more icily, because this was how she had to play this. No matter how tired she was of it or how sick it made her. “That wasn’t a request. Did it sound like one?”
“It wouldn’t matter if it was a formal summons from God himself,” Theo remarked, almost idly, but she could see his expression and knew there wasn’t anything idle about this man any longer. Had she done that, too? “The answer is still no.”
“Theo.” She shook her head as if he disappointed her, hiding her clenched hands in her lap, out of sight. “There’s no reason we can’t pretend to be civilized. Some things require a face-to-face meeting whether you want to admit it or not. You don’t want to make me do this on a video call, do you?”
“It has been perfectly clear to me and to most of the world, I’d imagine, that I can’t make you do anything,” he replied in that lethally soft tone that sent spears of ice down the length of her spine and a hot curl of shame deep into her belly. “Certainly not behave as a wife should. You couldn’t even manage to remain faithful to me for six short months. What, pray, could I possibly make you do now?”
Holly didn’t flinch. How could she, when she’d told that lie to his face? Deliberately and with a full understanding of what would happen once she did? She was all too aware she’d brought this on herself.
“I want a divorce,” she said now. Simply and distinctly.
As if it were true.
“My answer is the same as it has ever been,” he replied in the same cool tone with all that rampaging fire beneath it. “You can’t have one. Is that the reason for all this theater today? You could have spared us both. In future, I suggest you do.”
“We don’t have much of a future left, is the thing,” she told him then, as his hand moved toward his screen again. Again, he stopped. When he only glared at her, she summoned that hard-edged smile again and aimed it at him as if this was all somehow amusing to her. As if she really was the woman she’d pretended to be these past four years. The woman, she knew, he fully believed she was. “I know that we’ve had fun these past few years—”
“Is that what they call it in Texas?” he asked, his voice even softer but no less vicious. “That is not the word I would choose for any of this.”
“—playing all these games, scoring points, all this tug-of-war nonsense.” She shrugged. “But all good things come to an end, I’m afraid.”
“I’m not giving you a divorce, Holly. I don’t care what argument you trot out. And, as I believe I’ve made perfectly clear with your generous monthly allowance and the life you live without any interference from me, I really don’t care what you do. Or who.”
“So you say,” she murmured.
But she didn’t believe him. She couldn’t believe him. A harsh, predatory light flared in his eyes then, turning them volcanic with that edgy fury of his, making Holly’s heart jolt and then catch inside her chest. Once again, she chose to call that hope.
“The only thing I will not give you is your freedom.”
“And why is that?”
“Because it is the only thing I know you want, agapi mou,” he said, his voice harsh and cold, especially when he called her my love. Holly couldn’t let herself dwell on the way the endearment sounded now, when he didn’t mean it at all. Not when she was sure they could both remember too well how he’d sounded when he’d meant it with every last shred of his heart, his soul. Not now, while he could watch her reactions. “Aside from my money, of course.”
“Goodness,” she drawled, and put a theatric hand to her chest, because that was the best way to cover the sensation of it being ripped straight out from behind her ribs and then stamped on. She ought to be used to that by now, having done it herself the first time. “So possessive, Theo. Be still my heart. I’m tempted to believe you still have feelings for me.”
“I don’t.” His voice was a growl. “I told you this four years ago, and I meant
