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

those first months, as if he was enchanted with it as she’d been.
    Holly found she was holding her breath then. Waiting.
    â€œThat would have sent the wrong message,” he said softly. So softly, it couldn’t possibly be real. Holly braced herself, and his gaze moved up to meet hers with all that bright ferocity gleaming there, harsh and unmistakable. Pitiless. “I don’t want you. I want the sweet, innocent girl I married, but she never existed. Why would I chase after the deceitful little liar who pretended to be that girl? Why would I want you, whoever the hell you are?”
    Holly pulled her hand from his, aware that he let her do it. His strength, his power, was like a bright light flooding through her. There was no mistaking it. There was no pretending he was anything but that ruthless, that damaging. Maybe he always had been. Maybe he’d hidden himself as much as she had.
    â€œIs this where you doubt even the things you know were true?” she asked him, forgetting the mask she’d worn all these years, the game she was still meant to be playing. Forgetting herself.
    â€œI take it you mean your convenient virginity, the great emblem of your trembling innocence.” He lifted a shoulder and let it drop, and it was meant to hurt, she knew. It was meant to be dismissive and cruel. He was better at this than she was. “Yes, Holly. I have my doubts.”
    She couldn’t pretend that was a surprise. Not really. And still, it made her feel empty. Broken and dirty.
    â€œCongratulations,” she said, aware she was giving him too much ammunition. Too much evidence to use against her. But she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “You really have become your father. I should have taken the payoff he offered me.”
    He shifted, and she saw some dark thing move over his face, as if she’d scored a direct hit. But before she could tell him she regretted that, too, it was gone.
    â€œI think we both know that a single lump sum could never have satisfied you.” He smirked at her, as if she’d imagined that darkness, and she was an idiot, wasn’t she, to be at all surprised that he looked like a stranger then. Not that man she’d loved—and who’d loved her—at all. “What I can’t understand is why you burned out so quickly. You had me completely fooled. Why not take it all the way? Why not make sure I was tied to you forever in the time-honored fashion? You must know I would never have abandoned my own child. That had you fallen pregnant I would have been forced to play these games with you forever.”
    It was a mark of how ill-suited she was to this game despite all these years of playing it, Holly thought then, that it had never occurred to her that he would honestly think she could do something like that. For a moment her head felt hollow and her ears rang, as if he really had hit her, after all. As if she was close to collapsing when she knew that, really, this had only just begun.
    She swallowed and it hurt. And worse, he was watching.
    â€œYour father asked me something similar,” she reminded him, and his expression iced over. “Right before I tore up his check and threw it in his face. I know you remember that as well as I do. Back then, you were outraged.”
    She reached for her wine, more to have something to do than to drink it, but she welcomed the tart slide of liquid when she took a deep pull. It was better than remembering that blindingly sunny terrace with the sea at her feet, Theo’s gruff and suspicious father, the things he’d said to her through Theo’s younger brother’s pointed and unfriendly translations, or the way she’d had to throw herself in front of Theo to keep him from taking a swing at his own family members. All of which she’d thought was worth it—then. Anything would have been worth it then, if it had meant she’d end up with Theo.
    Better to pray for