CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SIX

T HE WAR WAS now begun in earnest, making it clear only minor skirmishes had happened before. All antes were upped. Survival was the only goal, and it was no foregone conclusion.

Apostolis had never felt so alive.

He told himself it was the thrill of his impending victory coming in hot, whether she thought that he would win or not.

He knew that he would.

Or in any case, that was what he told himself as the season rolled on. As one set of guests left and another arrived. As he was involved with handling the daily issues that cropped up at the hotel that he had only observed before from the distance his father insisted upon.

And was forced to face an unpalatable truth.

Jolie was not simply a trophy, as he’d thought. Or perhaps as he’d hoped.

She was an integral part of the hotel’s operation.

In all the ways that mattered, she was the proprietor, and given the way the staff deferred to her in all things, clearly had been.

Perhaps since her marriage to his father.

It was entirely possible that was one of the reasons Spyros had married her, when he had never bothered to marry the other women he’d taken as lovers over the years.

He was forced to view the woman—his stepmother, his wife, his co-proprietor—in an entirely new light and he found himself longing for the dark.

Because the fact that Jolie was both good at the guest-facing parts of her job—the consummate hostess, a study in effortless and yet engaging mystery—as well as all the things that happened behind the scenes...annoyed him. It would have been easier if she’d been a disaster, or as useless as he’d expected—but then, if she had been, the hotel would have been in dire straits and that wouldn’t have been any kind of victory.

Apostolis found himself torn between wanting to do nothing but come to a kind of reckoning with Jolie—and trying to understand his own relationship to the hotel that had stood as a cornerstone of his family for so long.

He talked often with Alceu, for a variety of reasons but also because his friend lived in what was more or less a fortress—though it was more delicately termed a castle —on the island of Sicily.

“You know what it is to care for a house that is more than a house, and that is considered more important than the family that lives in it,” he said one day.

“It is called a legacy,” Alceu replied in his usual arid tones. “A word I believe you are familiar with. And legacies require care and maintenance. Sometimes this is inconvenient. Very seldomly does it involve the attentions of supermodels or paparazzi, which I know is a significant lifestyle change for you.”

“Thank you,” Apostolis replied, perhaps more stiffly than he might have wished. “I am aware.”

What he wanted to say was something like Et tu, Brute?

Though he knew that wasn’t fair. Alceu had always been the more serious of the two of them. Or, perhaps, what he really meant was that Alceu had always known that his legacy was secured—and more, that said legacy would be his to steward.

He had not had to perform for his father’s attention the way Apostolis had.

It was something Apostolis found seemed to weigh on him more and more, especially when his relationship with the co-owner of his hotel was fraught with all the other battles they were waging.

He found her in the office one morning, going through paperwork that he was certain he’d mentioned he had intended to get to himself.

Once he accepted that until now, she had been doing it in front of him and he had willfully ignored the possibility that she was actually...working.

It filled him with something he knew too well was not temper. Temper was easy. This lingered in his gut. It was too thick.

“Do you do this deliberately?” he asked her as he took in what she was working on, there in the large office suite in its own wing of the carriage house. “Do you ignore what you are told because it makes you feel better to think you’re doing this all by yourself?”

“This might come as a great shock to you,” Jolie replied to him in that sharply serene manner of hers, complete with that smile that might as well have been a dagger, “but I do not spend a great deal of time thinking about you at all.”

He stopped at the desk where she was sitting, and leaned back against it so she had no choice but to lift her gaze to him. “Liar.”

Jolie sat back in her chair, and he thought that while she might have looked languid from a distance—he was closer than that. That meant he could see the awareness in her gaze. He could see the faint hint of color in her cheeks.

No matter what she said, she was not unaffected.

And that, in turn, affected him.

Tremendously.

But he knew better than to show his hand again so soon. That night when she’d teased him and left him standing there in the hall, wild with frustrated need, haunted him.

In more ways than one.

Back when he’d believed she was a useless bit of fluff he could simply maneuver around as he pleased.

“What is it that you want from this interaction, Apostolis?” she asked, and there was a hint of impatience in her voice—perhaps more than a hint—but he could see the truth in her gaze. There was a heat there that had nothing to do with impatience . He could read that, clear as day. “I walked into the office this morning, these things weren’t done, and so I’m doing them. That’s all it is. Not everything is a plot against you.” She shook her head as if she’d never heard of something so silly. “Why do you think that it is?”

Apostolis thought about the conversation that he’d had with Alceu. And he also thought about strategy. He told himself it had nothing to do with the fact that she wasn’t looking at him as if he was a science experiment when she asked the question.

Not at the moment, anyway. She looked as if she was genuinely interested.

“Have you not heard?” he asked lightly. “My father was always disappointed in my business acumen. I feel certain he would have mentioned it. He and I spoke of very little else on the rare occasions we spoke.”

“Your father liked cocktail parties,” she replied in the same tone. “He left the business to me. And that was a fairly overwhelming task, most days, so I did not spend a lot of time worrying about anyone else’s business acumen .”

He frowned at that. “What are you saying? He can’t possibly have let you run the whole of the hotel business all on your—”

But he cut himself off, because why was he astonished to hear such a thing? He was well-versed in his father’s hypocrisy. He had lived it.

“Your father had a business manager many years ago to do all of this. Firing him was one of the first things I did when I arrived.” Her smile sharpened as she looked up at him, as if defying him to argue once again that none of this could be true. That he still doubted what he had seen unfold in all parts of the hotel, before his very eyes, since their marriage. “And if you’re wondering if anyone took a young woman like me seriously at first, the answer is no. Of course they didn’t. But it didn’t matter. Your father wanted to continue on as he had always done. He liked to be the life of the party, but he didn’t like to plan the party. And as it turns out, my education made me a perfect fit for party planner extraordinaire.”

They both seemed to realize they were actually talking to each other for a change at the same time. It clearly shook her as much as it did him.

Jolie stood. Apostolis straightened from the desk.

For a moment, maybe two, they frowned at each other as if there was a trick , here. As if one of them had done something to force this unheard-of moment of accord.

“And here I thought your marriage to my father was blissful in every regard,” he heard himself say, but it wasn’t as scathing as he’d meant it to be.

Surely he’d meant it to be.

“It had its ups and downs.” Jolie’s chin rose just slightly as she said it. Just enough to hint at defiance without entirely committing to it. “You seem overly interested in my previous relationship. If I were you, I’d worry a little bit more about this one.”

“But I have heard your relationship with my father described as affectionate,” he reminded her, with, perhaps a little too much sardonic inflection in his voice, if such a thing existed. “Surely this cannot all have been a mirage.”

Her eyes flashed and he expected her to strike back at him—but instead, she shook her head. A bit as if she despaired of him. Or was exhausted by him.

Not the reaction most women had to his presence, he could admit.

“You think that everything is about greed,” she said in her quiet way that still managed to land hard. “That tells me that the only thing you think about is greediness—maybe other people’s, maybe your own. Meanwhile, there are other reasons in this world to do things that others might find unpalatable. That you might find hard to bear yourself. I’m happy for you, Apostolis, that you’ve never had to make such choices.”

This was as close to an admission that things had not been wonderful with his father as she’d ever given him.

“Tell me,” he said, suddenly seized with an urgency that he did not understand. “Just once, tell me the truth. Why did you marry him?”

Something exquisitely sad moved over Jolie’s face at that, and as if she knew it, or sensed it, she looked away. Out the window toward another bright and sunny Mediterranean day unfolding spectacularly before them. The sunlight outside fell on her face and he was struck once more by the fact that this woman was truly flawless.

That even bright, direct light did not reveal her. It only enhanced her beauty.

“I made a practical decision,” she told him, as if this topic made her tired. “And I would make the same decision again.” She looked back at him then, but the expression on her face had changed. It was more opaque now. There was no trace of any sadness . “I had no idea you were such a romantic, Apostolis. I confess, I’m shocked.”

“The chasm between mercenary and romantic is almost as vast and wide as your capacity for lying,” he said, but almost...conversationally. As if they were having a friendly chat. Almost . “What I wonder is if you’re lying to yourself as well as everyone else.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly, but that was the only reaction she saw on her face. Her lovely, flawless face, like a work of art.

“Mercenary is such an interesting word,” she murmured.

She crossed her arms in that neat way she had that made it look like an elegant way to hold them, not a gesture stemming from any kind of anger or negative feeling. Everything with her was that kind of performance, he knew. Everything about her was calculated.

He wasn’t sure what the matter was with him that he should find that something to admire.

“Is it really all that interesting?” he asked. “Or does it describe a set of behaviors—for the sake of argument, let’s say your behaviors—perfectly?”

She let her mouth curve into something gracious. She did not unfold her arms. “For the sake of argument, let us take the son of a very wealthy man. A case study, if you will. A son who had the very best of everything, always. An upbringing of well-documented ease, waited upon hand and foot by servants, and then sent off to some of the finest schools in the world.”

She lifted a hand and he realized that he was frowning. Possibly even scowling. “This is not to say that there were not stumbling blocks,” she allowed. “Or periods of grief and disappointment. It is a life, after all. But let’s say that time goes on for our wealthy man’s son. Some people would be forced to find employment. Others might decide that they need employment. Not for money, in the case of our heir to everything, but because every person needs some form of industry to feel fulfilled as a human.” She shook her head, almost fondly. “But not our golden son. He prefers instead to live off the proceeds of his various trust funds. He wafts about, making a case for gluttony and self-indulgence, year after year after year. Because, of course, there is no point in him chaining himself to some other profession when his true profession awaits. Like any little princeling, his entire life involves marking time, waiting for his father to die. Only then can he assume control of the whole family fortune, not merely his little sliver of it. Only then can he truly do something with his life, such as it is, and assuming he knows how to go about it after all that laziness.”

Again, that curve of her lips. “But you have the audacity to call me mercenary.”

The urge to simply strike back at her was so intense that Apostolis was shocked it didn’t take him from his feet.

Instead, he thought of her hand, tracing its way down the length of his torso. He thought of the way she had gripped his sex, just enough to make him imagine the kind of things that they could do to each other—and in more detail than he already had by that point.

He had thought of little else since.

And it was growing harder and harder to convince himself that these thoughts had a basis in anything but the most intense desire he had ever known.

Then again, Apostolis acknowledged that sometimes, choosing the less obvious weapon was the better strategic choice. It couldn’t all be rocket launchers and carpet bombs.

“I shouldn’t be surprised that you are so imaginative,” he drawled, choosing not to focus on desire . “It almost hurts me to tell you that I’m afraid you’ve got it all wrong. I’ve never touched any of the money held in trust for me. And not, I can admit, by my own choice. Not at first.”

He was questioning the wisdom of this line of conversation, so he turned away from her, going over to look out of the window himself. The Andromeda rose, stately and reserved, as if some kind of counterweight to all of that impossible Mediterranean sunshine that streamed all around it so recklessly.

While in the distance, always, glinted the deep blue of the sea.

And as always, these things soothed him. No matter how many ghosts there might have been hanging about. No matter how many memories and regrets seemed to sink into his skin, simply by his being here again.

“Old Spyros felt that my attitude was lacking,” he said, staring out at the sea but seeing only those ghosts and regrets. Those memories he’d never been able to shake. “Or perhaps, that week, he didn’t like my tone. It’s so hard to remember. But at some point, not long after I left university, he decided that cutting me off would be the making of me.”

He looked back over his shoulder to find her watching him, and decided that it would do him no good to attempt to categorize the expression she wore her face just then. It would haunt him enough as it was, with that ferocious way she was listening to him. As if it took the whole of her body.

“The irony, you understand, is that Spyros himself never worked a day in his life,” he continued. “He was committed to behaving atrociously right up until my grandfather died. Entirely to be done with him, some claim. But by the time I had the temerity to enjoy myself, too, he fancied himself quite the man of business. No son of his, etcetera. So there I was. The princeling you imagine, but tragically with no access to the funds that could keep me in the lifestyle I preferred.”

“He cut you off?” She was frowning now herself. “That’s not the way he told it.”

“As such a fan of great fictions yourself, I would have thought you would understand by now that there were few more dedicated storytellers than my father. Particularly when it came to his own behavior.” He turned to face her fully then, leaning back against the windowsill and watching the sunlight dance all over her, lighting her up. “I could have come back here and spent the past years loafing about the islands, making myself disreputable beyond any reasonable doubt. Instead, my friend Alceu, no stranger to familial disputes himself, suggested that rather than waste our twenties in the manner of so many of our peers, we might go about making our own money. So that whatever happened in the future, we would never have to depend on handouts ever again.”

He was shocking her, and he liked it, though it did make him wonder what exactly his father had told her.

Not because he cared what Spyros had said about anything. That realization surprised him, because it came with another, even more shocking one. It was because he cared what she thought.

That this was a clear indication that he was, perhaps, not as in control of this particular skirmish as he might wish was obvious. But there was no stopping now. “Alceu is formidable. Always. I am...charming. Together, we make a rather devastating team. No one ever sees us coming.”

“What is it you do?” she asked.

And something shifted inside of him, down deep. Because he’d expected her to laugh at the idea, he realized, the way his father had when he’d even hinted that he and Alceu were handling themselves, thank you.

But it was more than that. He would have sworn on any stack of holy books offered to him that this was the very first time Jolie had ever asked him a completely honest question, without any edge to it.

He wanted to savor it. Instead, he shrugged. “We buy things,” he told her. “And we saw that sometimes the things we bought required...refurbishment. So we took it upon ourselves to provide it. When we’re done, we sell them on.”

That was more or less true.

“Are you talking about...antiques? Or something more like a corporation?”

“Alceu is particularly well attuned to locating the wounded,” Apostolis said after a moment’s consideration. “It is as if he can sniff them out. Whether it is an estate, a hotel, a corporation, it doesn’t matter. If it has a weakness, Alceu will know it. Often before the entity in question does. In the beginning, we were concerned with selling ourselves to these entities, to prove what we could do. Now we simply offer something too good to be refused.”

Her blue eyes glinted. “And this is what you do. You swan about bullying people and making money off of misery.”

“Never that,” he said, instantly. “We fix broken things, Jolie. We paste them back together and make them better than new. And when we leave, we leave the things we’ve fixed happier than when we found them.” He laughed when he saw her skeptical expression. “You do not have to believe me. I cannot say that I care if you do or not.”

That was...not as true as he wanted it to be, so he pushed on. “But I can tell you that Alceu informed me some years ago that if he did not know me personally, he would have put the Andromeda on our list.” This was the sticky bit, and he was almost unwilling to do it. He reminded himself that this was a strategy, that was all. It was an admission that he had been forced to make to himself once he’d realized the truth. And then, today, the extent of that truth. “Before you, that is.”

He heard her sharp, indrawn breath. He saw the way she stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do.” He waved a hand over the desk where she’d been sitting. “My father cared only about the party, as you said. This is not under dispute. But seven years ago, there was suddenly a steady hand on the wheel. And now the hotel is no longer bleeding out its resources in every possible direction. I know exactly who is responsible for that.”

“Your father gave me free rein with the office work,” she said, though she looked guarded. “I assume that might be one of the reasons he left me part of the hotel. He clearly knew that you didn’t need his money.”

“But you did need the money,” he said, softly. He had anticipated playing this particular card later, but something told him it was better to do it now. “Did he tell you to take a salary?”

“He insisted upon it.”

“It is not very difficult to track money, if you know where to look,” Apostolis said softly. Very softly, and he saw her spine straighten. That was what happened when secrets were exposed. “What I have noticed is that every time money goes into your account, you take ninety percent of it and send it back out again.” He watched her closely. “Why?”

And for a moment, she looked...panicked.

It was the only word that fit, and he wasn’t sure that he quite believed it. Jolie Girard Adrianakis... panicked? He couldn’t imagine what that meant. It was certainly not the response of the hardened mercenary he’d expected. Or that of the Andromeda’s proprietor and personal savior.

If he had been under the impression that she was somehow larcenous, which he hadn’t been, he might have expected to see a hint of panic—but not like this. Apostolis had intended to simply note that there were no more secrets between them. That he knew every move she made.

And, yes, he had wanted very much to watch her reaction to that reality.

Now she looked as if he’d gone over and punched her in the stomach.

Looking caught was different from this, whatever this was.

He almost moved toward her, but held himself back—and it was harder to do than it should have been.

“What does it matter what I do with money I’ve earned?” she asked, but her usual fire was gone. If anything, she sounded shaky.

“You should consider trusting your husband,” he replied.

“But I don’t.” And her chin tipped up, as if she was remembering herself in her defiance. “I don’t trust my husband. I didn’t trust my first husband and I trust my second husband even less.”

“As someone who knew Spyros well, I find that difficult to believe.”

“Spyros was always exactly who he said he was,” Jolie told him with a laugh. Though it sounded strained. “For better or worse, what you saw was what you got. The same can’t be said about you.”

He did not give in to the urge to interrogate her on that—though he realized that she wanted him to. She wanted him to lose the thread of this conversation, so that they got back to talking about him instead of her.

“You do not send this money to the same place every time,” he said, to make sure she knew he wasn’t bluffing. That he really did know. “But you send it all the same, like clockwork.” He considered her. “Who are you paying off? Who knows the truth about you, what is that truth, and why would you pay so much to keep it hidden?”

He could see that he taken a wrong turn, because her shoulders inched down from her ears. “Everyone deserves their own secrets, Apostolis. Even me.”

He shook his head. “You do understand that I’m going to find out these answers on my own, I hope. And I’ll tell you right now, Jolie, that it can only go better for you if I hear them from you first.”

But he’d lost her. There was no hint of panic anywhere on her now. On the contrary, she looked almost lazy and amused, instead.

“Well then,” she said, as patronizingly as possible, “I certainly hope I wrap up all of my nefarious doings before that occurs. Though what do you think will happen either way? We still have to be married to each other the next five years. Or have you forgotten?”

“I cannot imagine that I will ever forget,” he shot back.

“Did you think the exchange of confidences would make me confide in you?” she asked, as if astonished. “You did, didn’t you? You thought you would lead me, all unknowing, into some or other moment of vulnerability.” She sighed at that. “Haven’t you learned yet? I’m better at this game than you are.”

“I’m glad you think so,” he replied, and he was. “Because all that means to me is that you’re not ready for what’s coming. Given we both already know you’re not clever enough to keep all your trespasses hidden.”

And to his surprise, then, and something else—something like the light that was dancing all over her like it was specifically attracted to her—Jolie tossed back her head and laughed.

It wasn’t a soft laugh. It was sharp and pointed and he was certain he could feel its talons, deep inside him.

“You’ve caught me,” she said after a little too long with all that laughing. “I’m an idiot. Aren’t you smart, Apostolis, to work that out so quickly.”

She couldn’t have been more sarcastic if she tried.

And maybe that was why he found himself closing the space between them.

The only thing he could think about was giving her back that laugh, with interest. All he could think about was restitution, especially when her blue eyes took on that challenging gleam that he’d last seen when her hand was on his sex—

And he didn’t know what might have happened if the door to the office didn’t open then.

If one of the staff members didn’t stand there, looking apologetic. “I’m so sorry to interrupt,” the woman said, looking back and forth between the two of them in a mix of alarm and speculation. “But the guests are asking for a host?”

“Allow me,” murmured Jolie. It was only as she stepped around him that he realized how close to her that he had been standing. How much his hands actually twitched with the desire to get them on her, and all over her.

She glanced back at him when she reached the door as if she expected Apostolis might lunge after her. As if he was that far gone.

Then again...wasn’t he?

Moving her into the carriage house had been a tactical error. He was certain that she disturbed the very air that he breathed, simply by existing in the same space. Sometimes he thought he could find traces of her scent...everywhere.

In rooms she wasn’t in. When he woke in the night, his heart pounding thanks to one more distractingly detailed dream about the two of them wrapped together, rolling over and over each other in his bed.

Literally anywhere and everywhere, she made her presence known.

Maybe she could see these things stamped all over his face. Because once again, her lips curved and her blue eyes gleamed. And then she shut the door behind her.

Quietly, as if to indicate that she was unbothered by this thing between them.

But she left him with a puzzle to solve, above and beyond the maddening fact that he wanted this woman who seemed determined to keep him at a distance.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want him. He knew better than that. And that wasn’t his ego talking, though he was fully aware that he possessed one of remarkable size.

He didn’t have to put his hands on her to know a truth as stark as the one they’d both tasted when he’d kissed her. The same one he’d showed her the night she’d run her hand down his body.

Apostolis wasn’t sure when he’d accepted that he was not only attracted to her, but that he always had been. It had been its own slow simmer. And it was difficult not to torture himself with wondering if she’d known exactly how he ached for her since the very beginning of her marriage to his father. If his father had known it. If it was that bleedingly obvious to everyone else alive.

But that didn’t matter.

He crossed back over to the window and this time, he braced his hands on either side of the glass.

What mattered was that it was only a matter of time before he had her.

He understood that. And he couldn’t know if Jolie had accepted that inevitability yet, but he had. There was a certain peace in that, because there was no need to push for something that was inevitable. There was no need to worry himself over something that was as unavoidable as day following night.

It was only a matter of time.

But that being so, finding out what secrets she was keeping became more important than ever.

He went over to his laptop, taking his chair at the obnoxiously huge desk that took over the room, a monument he’d placed here to annoy his father when he was not around to do it himself.

But he wasn’t thinking about Spyros. He was determined that this time, he would know the answers to the questions he asked her before he asked them. The better to plan how and when to ask them at all.

Because there was no better way to break someone down than to peel them open.

And when it came to the frustrating enigma that was Jolie, his wife in almost no way but legally, he had to believe it was the most important weapon of all.