Greek's Last Redemption Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.
    â€œWhat 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?”
    â€œIn 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.
    â€œNothing 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 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