Holly to sit and stew in the mess she’d made.
Again.
* * *
Theo strode into his suite at The Chatsfield, Barcelona, behind the efficient porter, frowning down at his mobile as he swept through his endless stream of messages and email, only to come to a swift stop when he recognized where he was.
He knew this suite. He’d spent an entire month here, and more than he cared to remember of that time without stepping outside. He knew every goddamned inch of it.
The same soaring ceilings. The same view over the fashionable Passeig de Gràcia, the Spanish answer to the Champs-Élysées, with the gleaming Mediterranean Sea in the distance. The same delicately luxurious furnishings that made the whole space sparkle with the restrained elegance The Chatsfield was known for all over the world. The small hallway adorned with bold local art leading to what he knew would be a master suite dominated by a wide, suggestive bed and a private balcony he’d used every last millimeter of back when. Every single millimeter. The same open lounge area scattered here and there with the same delicate rose petals that he remembered quite distinctly from four and a half years ago.
It was like stepping back in time. And he could hardly categorize the wild thing that surged in him then, chaotic and maddening. He only knew it nearly took him down to his knees.
This is unforgivable, he thought—but then, this was clearly Holly and her handiwork. There wasn’t a single part of what she’d done to him in all these years that wasn’t unforgivable. Unforgivable is what she does.
At moments like this he thought it was who she was.
Just like your father, said a small voice inside of him. She doesn’t care how much she hurts you. She doesn’t care at all.
“Is this the honeymoon suite?” he asked the porter. More brusquely than he’d intended, he realized when the poor man jerked to a stop as if Theo had slapped him across the face. Theo’s hand tensed as if he really had.
“Yes, sir,” the porter said. The man launched into a recitation of the room’s many amenities and romantic flourishes, only to taper off into a strained silence when Theo merely stared back at him.
Theo eyed him for a moment, then turned his attention back to the room—and the low table before the arching windows that let the gleaming Barcelona lights inside, where a bottle of champagne chilled in a silver bucket. He didn’t have to go over and look at it to know at once that it would be the very same vintage as the one he’d had waiting for them years ago. The one he’d poured all over Holly and then drank from her soft skin. From between her breasts, from the tender, shallow poetry of her navel. From the sweet cream heat between her legs he’d still believed, then, was only his.
Every last damned drop.
He thought for a moment that his temper might black out the whole of the city, if not the entirety of the Iberian Peninsula, the shock of it was so intense.
“Thank you,” he growled at the porter when he was sure he could speak without punching something, dismissing the man with a handful of euros.
Only then, only when he was alone, did Theo prowl over to the table and swipe up the card that sat there next to the silver bucket.
What a perfect place to begin our divorce at last, it read in Holly’s distinctively loopy handwriting, as if she really was the madcap, innocent thing she’d fooled him into thinking she was when they’d met. How clever of you to suggest it!
And beneath it, she’d jotted down the mobile number that he’d committed to memory a long time ago, though he hadn’t dialed it of his own volition in years. He was hardly aware of doing it now, but then it was ringing and then, worse, her husky voice was there on the line. And he was still standing by himself in a room where, the last time he’d been here, he’d thrust deep inside of her on every single available surface, again and again and again, because he hadn’t known where he’d ended and she’d begun and it hadn’t mattered. It had been pure joy.
Here, in this room, he’d truly believed he would spend the rest of his life enjoying that particular pleasure.
It was as if she’d catapulted him straight back into a prison built entirely out of his past illusions and he was certain she was well aware of it.
“How do you like your suite?” she asked as confirmation. Not that he needed any. And he supposed this was his fault for picking Barcelona in the first place.
“Come see for yourself,” he suggested, and there was no hiding the fury in his voice. Or the other, darker things beneath. “You’ll have to tell me if the furnishings are as you remember them. You were the one bent over most of them, as I recall, so you’d be the better judge.”
Holly only laughed, and it wasn’t that great big laugh of hers that he’d used to feel inside him as if he’d stuck his fingers deep in an electric socket. This was her Holly Tsoukatos laugh, more restrained and significantly less joyful, suitable for charity events and polite black-tie dinners.
Only a short, dull blade, then, as it cut into him.
“What a lovely invitation,” she murmured. “I’ll pass. But I’m down in the restaurant, if you’d like to come say a little hello. After all this time. As a casual introduction to our divorce proceedings. Who says we can’t treat this like adults?”
“In public,” he noted, and it took every bit of self-control he’d taught himself over these past years to tamp down on the roaring thing inside of him that already had him moving, as if the magnetic pull of her was too strong to resist. As if it had only ever been kilometers that separated them, nothing more. Nothing worse. “Do you think that’s wise?”
Her laugh then was a throaty thing, and his hand clenched hard around his mobile even as every part of him tensed, because he remembered that sound too clearly. It dragged over him like a physical touch. Like her wicked fingers on his bare skin. He remembered her legs draped over his shoulders and her hands braced against these same windows as he’d ridden them both into wild oblivion. He remembered her laughing just like this.
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
