LITMIR.BIZ

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to such extraordinary lengths to escape it, fearing—knowing—it would swallow her whole.

      “Noted,” she said calmly, amazed that she could sound so unmoved by what he’d said, and look it, too, in that tiny little box in the corner of her own screen that showed her cool expression. She was amazed she wasn’t shaking in reaction, more like, or falling to pieces—but she could do that later. When she was alone again, in this gray little prison she’d made for herself without him. When there was no one around to disbelieve everything she said, because there was never anyone around at all. “But you’re not understanding me.”

      “I doubt I’ve ever understood you,” he growled at her. “Why should that change in the course of one call I knew better than to take?”

      “I’m filing for divorce, Theo,” she told him evenly. “I will cite our estrangement as cause and I will further claim that you were the one who broke our vows.” She shrugged when he muttered something filthy in Greek. “I will be believed, of course. You were a famous playboy who’d slept with most of Europe. I was an inexperienced country girl on her first holiday abroad, completely out of my depth with you.”

      He ran a hand over his face. “Clearly.”

      She ignored his caustic tone. “The choice is yours. If you meet with me the way I’ve asked you to do, I’ll consider not taking a majority share of Tsoukatos Shipping in the divorce.”

      Holly had thought he was angry before. But the look he turned on her then was like lightning, electric and hair-raising, and she was suddenly very glad she was safe in Dallas, thousands of miles away from him and all the things that look of his could do.

      Not that distance made her safe. Nothing could. Not when Theo looked at her like that. Not when he thought such things of her. But at least distance could minimize the damage.

      Or so she hoped. The way she felt at the moment, it could go either way.

      “Fine,” he bit out after a long, simmering pause. It took everything Holly had to sit still, to keep her expression impassive, to keep up the sickening pretense. “You want to meet with me in person? I’ll subject myself to it, though I should warn you, you may find this reunion significantly less pleasant than you imagine.”

      “Less pleasant than four years of insulting calls about credit card bills to remind me whose leash I’m on or today’s charming philosophical exploration of the meaning of the word whore?” she asked drily, her impassive demeanor cracking more than she’d intended. She could feel the way her own eyes filled with a furious heat. Nothing so simple as tears, but telling all the same. “I find that hard to believe.”

      Something lit his gaze then, and she felt it like fingers down the length of her back, as if she’d unwittingly made herself his prey. Whatever works, she told herself resolutely. Either you’ll find a way back to him or you’ll finally be free to move on with your life, such as it is. It doesn’t matter how that happens, as long as one of them does.

      But of course it mattered. Nothing else mattered at all.

      “I’ll choose the venue,” he continued, that odd tension in him making him seem bigger again, and far more dangerous.

      “If you feel like that makes you in charge of this, then by all means,” she began, deliberately patronizing him, purely because she knew it would get under his skin.

      “Barcelona,” he said softly, cutting her off. And something of what she felt must have showed on her face then, as surely as if he’d kicked her in the stomach. Because he had. And she could see by the glint in his dark eyes and the harsh curve of his mouth that he knew it. That she wasn’t the only one who could play these nasty little games. “The Chatsfield Hotel in three days’ time. I believe you know it well.”

      He knew she did. He’d taken her there four and a half years ago for the best month of their marriage. Of her entire life, before or since.

      “You want to discuss our divorce in the same place we had our honeymoon?” she asked, stunned out of her usual careful iciness, too taken aback to guard her tone or her expression. And for a hectic moment, she didn’t care what he saw. Their weeks in Barcelona were the last, best memories she had of those long-ago days with him. Of the only real happiness they’d ever had, she’d often thought, and she’d held on to the silly idea he’d felt the same. “Theo...”

      “Barcelona in three days’ time, Holly, or not at all,” he said with evident satisfaction, and then he finally ended the call with a single harsh sweep of his hand.

      Leaving 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

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