Greek's Last Redemption by Caitlin Crews Read Free Book Online

then?” She’d meant to sound amused. Jaded. She missed both by miles, and he shook his head, as if he refused to let that sad tone of voice confuse him.
    â€œI know you claimed there was only the one, but you’ll understand, I think, if I find that difficult to believe. Given the circumstances. Who cheats only once?”
    He said that as if he had dark personal experience with it—but Holly didn’t want to think about that. Not now. Not when she was
this close
to telling the truth at last.
    â€œGo on,” she said quietly, straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin, as if he was pounding those hard fists into her. Some part of her almost wished he would. It would be more honest than the rest of this. More real. It might even hurt less. “Get it all out, Theo. All that poison. I know you’ve wanted this opportunity for years now.”
    â€œI have, in fact.”
    And Theo’s smile was a blade that cut into her, deep. Not merely scarring her—it made her worry she would never be whole again.
    But then, you’re nothing resembling
whole
now, are you?
asked that low voice she imagined was her father’s, and she could only be grateful he hadn’t lived to see what she’d made of her life without him—though she thought he’d have understood. Perhaps too well. She was so much like him, after all.
    â€œYou dropped your bomb on me and were gone by morning,” Theo said. “In time, I came to understand that this was all part of your grand plan. Moreover, that you always had a plan, right from the start. That I was nothing but a mark. The word that best fits, I think you’ll find, is
mercenary
.”
    â€œI sound evil indeed.”
    Theo inclined his head. “Why discuss the details of your betrayal? It hardly mattered then, much less now. It was a means to an end, nothing more. I realized that what mattered to you was what you already had—my ring on your finger and access to my bank account.”
    â€œYou could have come after me, if you were so desperate to talk,” Holly pointed out.
    On some level, she’d realized much later, she’d thought he would once the dizzy madness of their last encounter had faded. She’d had contingency plans in place to deal with him if he had. After all, he’d always pursued her so relentlessly before—wasn’t that why she’d gone to these lengths to escape him? But he hadn’t. He’d simply let her go. It had taken her a long time to accept that. Longer still to understand that as much as she’d wanted him to believe her when she’d lied to him, as much as she’d wanted to escape their all-consuming relationship, there was a part of her that had believed he’d see right through her. That he wouldn’t let her do such a thing. That he’d known her better than she knew herself.
    She’d twisted herself in so many knots that the only thing she’d known how to do was come back to him. “I told you I was going back to Texas. You always knew where I was.”
    He reached over and took her hand, and even though it was a cold little parody of the way he might have done it years before, that simple touch slammed through her. It wrecked her from the inside out, sparks cascading through her, her stomach twisting, her breath catching. If she hadn’t been sitting down, she thought, she would have fallen over, and she knew there was no way he’d miss the way she trembled at his touch.
    She hoped he’d think it was fear. Nerves. Not all of the rest of the things she knew it was.
    Theo took the sapphire-and-diamond ring she wore—that he’d slid there himself, high on a Santorini cliffside as the wind toyed with her hair and the bright Greek sky kissed them with light—between his fingers and moved it gently this way and that, catching the candlelight and sending it dancing over the table, the way he’d always done in