Page 101 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

How could she explain to her innocent friend what it was like between them without tarnishing him in Dioni’s eyes?

Jolie found she couldn’t do it.

It was far better for Dioni to imagine that Jolie and Apostolis had sorted things out in the wake of their contentious wedding, and were now...reasonably content.

“I am no expert on happiness,” she told her friend now. “But every day dawns no matter what went on the day before, and that feels like a gift. The sun rises and when it sets again, I have very little to complain about.”

Dioni laughed from all the way across two seas. “What an ode to joy. You should open up a business in inspirational talks. Perhaps a line of greeting cards?”

“Areyouhappy?” Jolie asked her in return.

She heard Dioni pulling in a breath. “I am an Adrianakis,” she said after a moment. “Happiness is in our blood. Ask anyone who’s ever visited the Andromeda. Happiness is a requirement of residence.”

And Jolie sat on the window seat in the room she now shared with Apostolis for some time after they both rang off, frowning out at the place where the blue sky met a deeper blue sea.

Because neither one of them had answered the question, had they?

Still, she resolved to take it as a challenge. What she’d said to Dioni was true enough, or not a lie, anyway. She had nothing to complain about. She had decided to sleep with her husband. She had allowed it this time when he’d had the staff move her things back into this bedroom. She did not see it as a concession, but achoice.

That being so, why shouldn’t she be happy about it?

Whether it washate sexor not, the sex that she and Apostolis were having was extraordinary. She might not know the difference, but she had never heard stories that came close to the things they made each other feel. Every time they finished, he looked at her in the same wild astonishment. Sometimes he murmured revealing things into her ear.

You will be the death of me,he liked to say.I do not think we will survive this.

How can you be real?he had asked last night.

In Greek, which she still pretended not to understand.

Not because she wanted to deceive him—though she didn’t much mind if she did, to be clear. Not where language was concerned. But because she had discovered long ago that if she affected a charming inability to only mangle Greek, people found that delightful. It made them think she was silly. A little bit foolish. It allowed all of the guests, and even the villagers, to feel more comfortable around her.

Jolie knew that many women felt that they should not have to minimize themselves for any reason whatsoever. But she was far more sanguine. She liked any weapon she could find.

And as the days rolled on, one into the next with only the odd bit of weather to distinguish between them, the things he whispered grew more intense.

This is untenable. You are impossible.

Every night they seemed to reach a new and different kind of intensity. They did not necessarily speak to each other. They did notdiscussthe fire they danced in and through.

But Jolie often thought that the way they looked at each other left scars behind.

She could feel them forming all over her, both when they were in private and when they were playing their besotted roles of the newly wedded couple for the guests.

Sometimes he would take her hand and brush a kiss over her knuckles, and everything inside of her would go still, then quiver into goose bumps.

And she would feel it inside her, carving its way into her like every touch was a blade. It marked her just the same.

Those were the sorts of night when the people around the table would talk about their relationship in such disarming, magical phrases that she found herself believing the things they said. Even when she knew better. Even when she knew the truth.

“My wife is a beautiful woman,” Apostolis told a group of riveted guests one night. “This goes without saying. But she was married to my father for many years and my appreciation of her beauty was akin to that I have for the hotel itself.” He waved a hand at the Andromeda, bearing her graceful witness all around them. “And we take pleasure in that, Jolie and I.” The look he gave her was so warm. So bright with love and passion that it made reality seem to slip for her, or perhaps the trouble was, she wished it would slip and then stay. “Because if we had ever seen each other truly before, we could not trust each other now. We would always wonder.”

“There is nothing more important than trust,” one of the guest sighed happily.

“Sometimes,” Apostolis said quietly, “the most marvelous things are hiding in plain sight.”

Jolie had always prided herself on the armor she’d learned to wear over the years. But it was her heart that was betraying her now. The poor heart she’d thought was too broken to function after her grandfather died was still there, it seemed.

And it wasn’t tough enough for whatever game this was.

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