CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVEN

I T WAS LOWERING indeed to realize that if it weren’t for Mathilde, she would have run.

Locked away in her little room some few evenings later—and still not sure if she was locking him out or herself in—Jolie found herself grappling with that deeply unflattering and unpalatable truth.

“Then again,” she muttered aloud, glaring out her window toward the Andromeda, “if it weren’t for Mathilde, I could have moved to any city in Europe and found myself some kind of job after I graduated.”

Sometimes she dreamed about the life she might have had if she’d gone that route—but it was something she’d discussed at length with the headmistress over the course of her last year at the school. She’d gone around and around about her prospects.

Until the day the older woman had looked at her, once again with entirely too much knowledge in her gaze.

Listen to me, she had said. I believe that all women should be as independent as possible, but there is a fine line between independent-minded and foolish. Right now you are penniless.

She had said that with the precision of a knife thrust in deep.

It would be different if you had something to fall back on while you looked for an appropriate situation somewhere, but you don’t. The rest of these girls, with their trusts and their funds and their wealthy families...

She had shaken her head, her gaze kind—but certain.

They have more options than you do, I am afraid. It’s not that I think you can’t find a decent life for yourself, Jolie. I just worry that you don’t have enough time.

I’m hardly over the hill just yet, Jolie had protested.

I’m not talking about your prospects. The headmistress had shaken her head. I’m talking about poverty. Everyone thinks that there is a huge gap between the rich and the poor, but the truth is that there is not as far to fall as most imagine. For most people, it’s a very thin line. And the reality, my dear, is that you’re already living on borrowed time. Your grandfather paid your tuition in full years ago, but you have nothing extra. You have no savings. How would you establish yourself somewhere in order to begin even looking for the kind of job you want? If you managed to secure a job, how would you afford a flat? Food? Transport?

The headmistress had waved around at the castle-like building where she kept her office.

I worry that when you meet the real world, it will flatten you.

I’ve already survived— Jolie had started to argue.

But the headmistress had laid both her hands flat on the top of her desk. I am not an heiress, Jolie. I grew up working-class. I had to scrape and worry over every bill, every day, when I was your age. And I had significantly more resources than you have right now. Do you understand what I’m telling you?

The headmistress hadn’t come out and said that she should think hard and fast about whether she wanted to find herself in the position of having to sell herself on a street corner to pay her rent. When she could instead make a bargain with a rich man who would keep her comfortable in most of the ways that mattered.

It was easy enough to tell which was the better option when it was offered to her.

And maybe the fact that she’d understood that there were worse things out there than a controlling old man and all his many demands had made it easier to inhabit her role as Spyros’s scandalous younger wife. She had not found him surprising . He had not done a single thing she would call unexpected in the whole time she’d known him.

Except, she supposed, dying. She had expected him to live forever, if only to spite his son.

It was that son who was the problem.

It was Apostolis who had surprised her—floored her, completely, and not only because he wasn’t the wastrel that she imagined. She had checked on that, of course. She certainly hadn’t taken his word for it . But then, it hadn’t taken much digging to find that everything he’d told her was true. She was forced to acknowledge that it had been Spyros who had asserted that Apostolis was a waste of space and she’d believed him, when the evidence was easily accessible all along. And worse, he and his forbidding friend were not the soulless corporate raiders she’d imagined, but rather, saviors.

That was what the people they saved called them. That was how the companies and hotels and sometimes families they’d helped thought of them.

That had been upsetting enough.

But he also knew about the money she sent to her revolting aunt and uncle. Monthly.

Jolie couldn’t risk that. She couldn’t risk him knowing what she was doing because she was certain that if he did, he would somehow disrupt her payment plan—and then what would she do?

It had been made clear to her years before that even the slightest hiccup would be interpreted as a green light to go right ahead and use their daughter’s greatest asset to enrich themselves as best they could.

And somehow, she very much doubted that her loathsome aunt and uncle would find a way to marry Mathilde off to a rich man the way Jolie had managed to do. She suspected it might be significantly more unsavory than that—possibly even those street corners that had haunted her all these years.

Even the thought of Mathilde at risk like that made her furious.

But she was running out of ways to control what was happening here. She knew that. She could feel the noose of all that awareness and fury between them tightening by the day.

“Too bad,” she told herself sternly. “You don’t get to mope about in your feelings.”

Because it was already evening, and she had her duties to attend to, like it or not. She blew out a breath and got to her feet, then set about getting dressed for the night ahead. More drinks, more laughter. More confidences and effortless hostessing, whether she felt effortless or not.

And still more game playing, where her husband was concerned, which was...dangerous.

Because only Jolie knew, down deep in a place that she did not like to examine in the light of day, that sometimes, while she was playing this role for their guests, she pretended that it wasn’t a role after all. She pretended that it was real, what she and Apostolis supposedly had together.

That they were lovestruck newlyweds, hardly able to bear not touching each other. All those lingering looks. Hands that found their way together and were difficult to part.

She pretended far too much, too often, and she very much feared that one of these days she was going to forget to disengage herself on the walk back to the carriage house. That she was going to forget to put her mask back into place when they were alone.

Worse still, there was a part of her that wanted that day to come. Even though she knew that was nothing short of madness.

Because every time she thought about surrendering to Apostolis Adrianakis in any regard, something deep inside of her sounded out a low, wild sort of tone. It seemed to reverberate all through her body, taking her over until all she could do was shake.

Deep inside where no one saw it, but she could feel it.

Some days she felt nothing else.

And yet she knew that if she surrendered to him, she would never be the same.

Jolie padded down the circular stair, the shoes she wore barely a whisper over her feet so that she was entirely too aware of the feel of the steps beneath her feet. And as she walked through the open house toward the door, she was aware of everything else, too. The way the simple dress she’d decided to throw on seemed to caress her as she moved. The way the cool breeze from outside rushed in through the open glass doors to whisper its way over her skin. Even the necklace around her neck seemed to press against her the way his hand might flatten against the wall beside her head—

She rolled her eyes at her own fancy, something close enough to amused at her inability to keep her attention where it belonged. Or at least, away from the places where she knew better than to let it go.

Outside it was another magical Mediterranean evening. As she walked across the drive and the yard, it was so easy to let the beauty of this place wash away all the rest of it. It was so easy to pretend that these moments would be the bulk of the five years looming ahead of her, and not...the other moments. The more difficult ones.

She could hear the sounds of the guests before she rounded the corner of the hotel, and it felt natural for her lips to immediately curve into the specific shape she used for her public-facing duties. When she was doing her best to be enigmatic and alluring, the consummate hostess, beloved and yet a perfect, blank canvas for the guests to fill in as they pleased.

For a moment, right there at the corner of the building, she stopped. And she stood there, just beyond the terrace where she could see everyone there beneath the pergola wrapped in vines and twinkling lights, but no one could see her. Not unless they were looking for her specifically.

Their guests at present were a very famous singer and his expansive entourage of friends, backup singers, and longtime band members, some of whom stayed in the nearest village and went back and forth from there as they pleased. It meant that the terrace was filled with sparkling conversation, spontaneous bursts of music, and the sort of laid-back luxury that could only be achieved with a tremendous amount of money. Many of the faces she recognized, and not because she’d seen them here before. But because everyone had seen them, everywhere.

Yet her gaze skipped past all those famous visages and found him.

Apostolis, looking right back at her as if she was standing in a beaming spotlight instead of the shadows of the evening.

As if it was only the two of them out here tonight. As if the only thing between them was the sultry Greek air.

And even across the brightly clad, sophisticated group of cocktail partiers, Jolie could feel the weight of the way he looked at her. It was as if he trailed his fingers all over the surface of her skin from afar and she had no choice but to hum in reaction.

As if it was that or combust where she stood, eaten alive by all that sensation.

She felt certain he knew it, though there was only that faint curve in the corner of his mouth to make that clear. It occurred to her that she knew how to read him by now. And more, that the fact she could suggested a measure of intimacy with him that she wanted, badly, to deny.

But she couldn’t.

And instead of walking onto the terrace to take up her duties, Jolie watched Apostolis instead—impressed despite herself that he was far better at this job than his father had ever been. At least during her tenure at the Andromeda.

She imagined the old man would turn over in his grave at the very thought. But that didn’t make it any less true. Spyros had been overly impressed with his own legend. Toward the end of his life, he had believed that part of what the guests were paying for when they came here was his notoriety. His own considerable star power. The hotelier himself.

Apostolis did not sit as Spyros had done in his favorite corner of the terrace, holding court. He did not set himself apart from the guests, as if he was the guest of honor.

All the things that had made him such a tabloid staple, he put to good use here, with the guests. He made them laugh. He leaned closer as they poured out their confidences to him. More than one set of guests had already left convinced that they had become best friends with the next generation of Adrianakis men.

Yet he called her the actress.

Part of her ached at that, because surely, since they were both so surprisingly good at this, they should have been able to band together. To work with each other, not against each other. Surely there had to be some way to make themselves a team instead of dire enemies, forever and ever, amen.

But even as she thought that, she felt something bitter twist her lips.

Who was she kidding? She was the too-young woman who had married his father. She should count herself lucky that he was able to maintain the level of civility he already did. Maybe she would have to learn how to be thankful for that.

And besides, she had duties to perform. She couldn’t keep hiding out here, not when there was so much at stake. Not when she knew that he would take anything she did and make it negative.

So Jolie welded her smile into place and did what she did best. For years now.

She made herself indispensable.

The sun took its time sinking all the way down to the horizon. It stretched out as it went, shooting glorious hues as far as it could reach. Oranges. Pinks. Deep tendrils of violet.

When it was dark at last, the singer was prevailed upon to gift a few songs to the assembly. Everyone gathered around, listening as he played. The first two songs were contemplative. Almost mournful, like quiet elegies into the night as it settled around them.

And once again, Jolie found herself drawn to Apostolis’s gaze—only to find that that he was closer now.

He smiled at the person beside him as if they had bonded, soul to soul, and then made his way over to Jolie.

Because, she reminded herself sternly, that was what a married couple would do. That was what people were truly intimate did. They went out of their way to be close to each other even when that closeness had nothing to do with sex.

Hadn’t she watched her grandparents model this behavior for years?

Jolie thought that it must have been the music that was making her think about her grandparents now. About grief and loss, and how it was woven so tightly into every moment that came after that, perhaps, it became its own complicated tapestry. Made up of joy and despair, because that was what made a life. Without them, what would living be but boring?

Maybe that was why, when she felt that blast of heat beside her that she knew by now was Apostolis, come to stand next to her, she risked tipping back her head to look at him directly.

He was already gazing back down at her. And beneath all the lights that were strung about the pergola, there was no pretending she couldn’t see all the different shades of deep, rich, brown and black his eyes were. That bittersweet gleam with something magical shot through it all, as if he was made of the same gold that they’d all watched dance over the waves tonight. A part of the sun’s last breath before it surrendered to the night.

The crowd jostled slightly then and she found herself pressed up against the length of Apostolis’s body—in a way that truly married people would not mind in the least.

She made herself smile. She made herself laugh a little, as if this was the time of her life, because she needed people to believe it was. That was one of her most important duties.

So she did her best. When he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. When he tucked her up against him so that she was straddling the side of his body. When she was stood there like that, one hand on the front of his chest and the other at his side.

And the fact that they were touching like this in public, paradoxically, seemed to her like the most intimate they had ever been.

Maybe it was because the touching wasn’t the point.

They weren’t locked up in that carriage house, slugging it out in yet another round of their endless battle. This was the sort of offhanded intimacy that long-term couples accepted as their due. This was the kind of familiarity that simply happened over time and togetherness.

This was as if they actually were the story they pretended they were for the guests.

And when the music changed and the singer began to sing something silkier and more suggestive, it was as if the melody...simply swept them away.

Everyone began to dance. All around them, people paired up into couples, and then everything was that sway, that silk, that sultry little song. How could she resist?

Jolie didn’t.

And it was something perilous and precious indeed to be in Apostolis’s arms, then. To have this music to move them, but to be aware of very little else but that look on his face, the heat in his gaze, and the way they fit together so perfectly.

She was not exactly surprised to discover that he was an excellent dancer. She supposed that both of them had been trained for that, one way or another. What surprised her was that it didn’t feel in the least bit awkward.

What it felt like, she almost didn’t dare think to herself, was that if they could just stop talking—stop sniping, stop looking for weaknesses—they might actually be perfect for each other.

There and then, because perfect was too scary to contemplate with a man sworn to destroy her, she decided instead to stop worrying where all this would lead.

It was one night. It was one song.

It was just a dance, that was all.

And though it wasn’t a total surrender, she still felt as if that was what she did, here. She surrendered to the music. She surrendered to the sparkling lights up above her and the stars beyond. She surrendered to the lure of the grand hotel and the sultry invitation of the singer’s music.

She surrendered to the press of the crowd around her and the current of joy and excitement that ran through every one of them, at the same time, when the other singers joined in and brought out their own kind of percussion—on tables, with their hands, whatever worked.

And all the while, she and this man who had already claimed more of her than she’d intended to give away, danced and danced and danced.

It was much later, after a leisurely meal, too many drinks, and several more wild, unpredicted dances around the terrace that even the staff joined in, that Jolie finally left the main hotel building to head for the carriage house.

And she wasn’t alone.

Apostolis was with her, his arm slung over her shoulder as it had been far too much this night. She could feel the weight of him, pressing into her, making her walk at a different pace. Making her feel as if she was a part of all his heat and lean muscle.

They didn’t speak. The night was too hushed all around them. The stars were too close.

He led them over to the door and opened it, then walked her inside without untangling his body from hers.

And then there was that moment. The moment that grew harder and more unwieldy every night. The moment where they had to decide if they would drop their act...or not.

If they would perhaps...let it linger. If there would be a hushed, drawn-out moment—

Usually one of them broke it by starting up the usual hostilities.

But tonight, it didn’t seem to work that way. He didn’t turn the lights on. She didn’t pull away.

They stood there in the shadows of the hall and somehow he had turned her so that she was facing him. They were standing almost as if, at any moment, they might break into a new kind of dance. One that didn’t need any music. One that would simply be...theirs.

They were so close now. And they had danced so much tonight that she felt she knew him in a whole different way. Her breath began to hurt as it moved in and out of her body and she was fairly certain that the pulse she felt inside her skin was his. As if hers matched his completely, making a kind of beat all their own now, too.

“Jolie...” he began.

Normally that would be the start of something. A spark that would quickly flare, and then they could both gain some distance with harsh words, with accusations, with this thing between them.

This architecture she was beginning to think was a whole lot of scaffolding disguised to hide a terrible truth. A fragile, impossible swelling of something that was nothing like hate at all.

Or even anything as relatively simple as attraction.

It felt a lot more like hope.

And that was why, before he could puncture it, she said something she’d vowed she never would. Certainly not to him. Because she preferred to let him think whatever he liked. Because that said far more about him than it ever could about her.

“My marriage with your father wasn’t what you think,” she told him.

His breath escaped him in a rush, as if to suggest she might as well have kneed him in the gut. Or lower still.

“This is the conversation you wish to have? Right now?”

She knew she couldn’t let him throw gasoline on the kindling she could hear in his voice. Because once he did, when would they feel like this again?

When she thought about it that way, five years felt like an eternity.

“I thought it would be what you imagined it was,” she said.

They still hadn’t turned the lights on, and that was a help. It encouraged her. She could feel how taut he was as he waited for her to go on. She understood without him having to say a word that she was running out of time. That there was only so much space he would give to whatever stories she wanted to tell him before he moved them back to familiar footing.

“You already know that I met him at your sister’s and my graduation,” Jolie said. “There were events beforehand, and all that week he paid particular attention to me. So I paid particular attention back. And yes, I had no money. None. My situation was dire and I knew it, but your sister had already invited me to spend the summer here. And I had already accepted, thinking that on an island like this, surely I could find something—or, yes, someone —who might be a good prospect for the kind of life I wanted.”

“A life of ease and comfort, with your every whim catered to?” he asked, but very sardonically, because of course he thought he already knew the answer.

“The headmistress had made my situation very clear to me.” Jolie found his face in the shadows. “When I said I had no money, I don’t mean I had only a little. All I had was the kindness of friends, and you and I both know that people find it very easy to be generous to those who don’t appear to need it. And somewhat less easy to be equally generous to those who do need it, especially if their need is obvious. I was grateful for your sister, but I was nervous about what came next. I already knew that it would be difficult to spend a life like that, drifting from friend to friend and then, perhaps, to the questionable kindness of strangers.”

“Because a job was out of the question, of course.”

“It wasn’t out of the question at all,” she retorted. “That was actually what I was hoping I could find here.”

He shifted against the wall, leaning back and crossing his arms as he regarded her in that narrow, dark way of his. She still couldn’t understand why he, out of all the people in the world, could make her shake with the need to prove to him that his opinion of her was wrong. “I assume that the moment you arrived here, you raced down into each and every village and put yourself about, shaking the olive trees for employment.”

“That would not be effortless, would it?” She said it softly, and though he didn’t reply, she could tell he understood what she was getting at. “That was the trouble, of course. I was afraid that if your sister saw how desperate I truly was, she would ask me to leave. I decided to wait for opportunities and then take them where I could. In the meantime, I spent a lot of time with your father.”

“I bet you did.”

Jolie sighed. “Did it occur to me that he might want to marry me? Absolutely not. I assumed that he might be interested in an affair.” She sighed, remembering. “He had showed no interest in marrying any of the other women he was linked to over the years. It never occurred to me that he might wish to marry me .”

“So you thought you could get what you wanted if you just rolled around with him a bit,” Apostolis summarized. Witheringly. “Give the old man a little sugar and see if he paid for the pleasure.”

She was already regretting the urge that had led to this. “Your sister is actually the one who played matchmaker. Dioni thought it would be fun if she got to keep a friend here with her, which wouldn’t happen if I was just another affair. They all tend to storm off, sooner or later. So one night she laughed quite loudly while your father was telling me some story, leaned in close, and said, Father, really. If you’re going to captivate my friend’s attention every time you see her, why not marry her yourself? ”

Apostolis looked as if he wanted to claim she was lying about Dioni, too.

“I don’t know if that was the first time he considered it,” Jolie told him. “But I do know that he changed his approach after that. He asked me to marry him that August. And I accepted.”

“Of course you accepted. It would be foolish to turn away a meal ticket.”

“But this meal ticket is not quite the one you think it was,” she made herself tell him, because she’d started this, hadn’t she? And there was no point telling only half the story. “After he proposed, and once he understood that I was prepared to accept, he didn’t sweep me off for some romantic evening. He sat me down and had a long talk with me about what he wanted. What he demanded of me, and would expect of a wife.”

Apostolis’s bittersweet gaze flared. “I’m certain he did exactly that, and I’m equally certain that I would rather not hear of it in any detail.”

“It’s not as lurid as the things I read about you in widely circulated newspapers,” she tossed back at him, with more heat than she wanted to show him. She tried to compose herself. “First and foremost, he regretted to inform me that—to his great regret— that part of his anatomy was not in service.”

Apostolis made a strangled sort of sound. “I... That’s not better.”

“What he wanted was a daydream. A fantasy. A beautiful young woman on his arm, who could convince the world by her very presence that he was still the man that he liked to see when he looked in the mirror. A pretty girl who could charm his guests, laugh at his jokes, and make him feel like a king for whatever time he had left. He told me he doubted very much that he would make it ten years. I assumed that meant he would last at least fifteen and more probably, twenty.” Jolie squared her shoulders. “The only thing he required from me was my assurance that I would never let anyone know the truth. That ours was not the intense, wildly sexual connection he wanted them to think it was. The connection you seem to be sure it was. The connection I think I wanted to pretend it was, too, because that was better than the truth. Better than a transaction .”

“And...” Apostolis’s voice was so soft. But she shivered, because she could hear the menace in it. “Do you expect me to believe that the two of you were simply... playing charades for seven years? That my father, who made a point of pushing what he liked to call his earthiness on anyone who strayed near, was involved in this...chaste bit of dinner theater? You must think I am the most gullible fool who ever drew breath.”

“He was more my boss than my husband.” Jolie told him this quietly. “He was not entirely unkind. But both of us knew who was in control. Of everything. Every night he would critique my performance and to be honest with you, I don’t think he was very much interested in sex by then. Earthy or otherwise. Not when total control of another person was so much more exciting to have.”

That control had even extended to Mathilde, not that she wished to so much as whisper to Apostolis that her cousin existed. But Spyros had been very clear that Jolie was to exist out of time and only for him. He liked that she was an orphan, just as he liked that she was penniless. No family. No connections aside from his own daughter.

He wanted her entirely focused on and dependent upon him.

That she sent money to Mathilde was of no matter to him—but woe betide Jolie if she ever reminded him that her cousin existed. Or that she spent even one moment in his presence thinking of her.

Across from her, Apostolis muttered something dark and very Greek that she found she was perfectly happy not to understand.

“If you think about it, Apostolis,” she said in the same low voice, “I’m sure you’ll realize that what I’m telling you is the truth. He liked to manipulate people. He liked to watch everyone around him dance to his tune. It didn’t matter if it was a happy thing or a sad thing or if they hated it. He just wanted to see what he could make other people do. So it wasn’t charades, it was a puppet show. Does that make it better?”

Apostolis ran a hand over his face. Then he let out a dark black laugh that filled the hall, and worse still, filled her as well.

Then he pushed off the wall and came toward her—all of one step, then another.

Her throat seemed to clench tight at that, because he was as close as he could get. Because he was right here , and not one part of her body cared how dark the expression on his face was.

What she wanted, more than anything, was to pretend that this was a part of the dancing they’d been doing all night—

Especially when he slid an arm around her waist and hauled her even closer, so she sprawled into his chest and had to prop herself against that hard, muscled wall when all she really wanted was to melt into all his heat and strength.

“Jolie,” he murmured. Then he said her name a few times, as if he was chanting it, like some kind of prayer, a breath away from her lips. “I don’t believe a word you say.”

She jolted, as if he’d tossed her off the cliff and into the sea far below. “But—”

“Not one single word,” he said, his voice a rough thread of sound.

And then he closed what distance was left and licked his way to her mouth.

Making everything within her, everything she was, nothing but fire and desire.

It was a punch of need so bright and so hot that it threatened to take her down.

So wild that she was tempted to forget that he could hear the truth from her own lips and doubt it—

He kissed her, then kissed her again, as if he didn’t mean to stop.

And she understood that despite everything, she didn’t want him to.

Apostolis pressed her back against the wall and held her wrists beside her head, and Jolie arched up against him, exulting in this. In every bit of heat and dark need and wild temptation. As if only when this man held her still did she feel most free.

His mouth moved on her, consuming her, and she knew that she should fight him. That she should push him away and gather up her weapons, point them in his direction and start firing them, one after the next.

She knew that she should handle this the way she’d handled everything since she’d married Spyros. He had called it her maddening dignity . He had never come close to piercing it in all their years together.

He had never gotten past her walls.

She had let him play his puppeteer games and had smiled through it all. And never, not ever, had she let him see that he got to her. Jolie couldn’t tell if he’d loved her for that or hated her for it, toward the end.

But she didn’t know if she had it in her to keep that up. Not with Apostolis.

Not with the man who kissed her like this, as if devouring her whole. The man who could say, straight to her face, that she was a liar and he didn’t believe her—then kiss her as if he couldn’t bear the thought of another breath without the taste of her in his mouth.

This was the one game she didn’t know how to play.

So she kissed him back.

And she told herself it wasn’t hope that swelled in her, but that fascination that—if she was scrupulously honest—she’d always felt toward him. From the very start, there had been something about the way Apostolis disliked her. The way he’d made sure she knew it.

This dynamic between them had always excited her.

She could admit that tonight.

And she had five years of this ahead of her. She had told him the truth, he didn’t believe it, and now there was this.

She kissed him back, their tongues started their own war, and this time she knew that there was no winning. That either way, win or lose or draw, it was the same thing—and maybe it needed to end up naked. Maybe it had always needed to go straight to bed.

Maybe this was seven years overdue.

So when he swept her up into his arms and carried her up the stairs, then down the hall to his bedroom—where she had refused to set foot—she let him.

Because if she couldn’t have hope , she might as well have him .

In whatever way she could manage.