Page 102 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

Despite her best efforts, it kept onhoping.

She found herself sitting on the terrace of the Andromeda, night after night, laughing with this or that collection of shining, resplendent people who loved to come here and gleam out into the Mediterranean. Every night was another bit of brightness, making her feel lit up as if the stars themselves had found their way inside her—even though she knew that they would turn those stars inside out later.

Every sweet moment, every loving gesture, every hint that there were all these beautiful emotions between them had a price.

And Apostolis was a master at exacting those prices, each and every night.

She would forget, all the same. Or she would wrap it all up in the same big bow. Or her foolish heart would beat too hard, because all she could think, more and more with each passing day, was...what if?

What if they really could love each other the way they pretended they did?

What if the truth of them was somewhere between the romantic stories they told the enraptured guests about a couple who was not quite them and what he calledhate sex,which she had never foundhatefulat all?

What if all his talk oftrustwas an olive branch? She, after all, had been the one married to his father. Maybe it was up to her to extend one herself.

Once she started thinking that way, it was the only thing she could think, as if every shuddering beat of her hopeless heart was forcing her to hold nothing else in her head.

It might have scared her if it didn’t feel so good.

“You seem distracted today,” he said one morning as they waited for the staff to gather for the usual new guest rundown. He eyed her with a certain knowing heat. “Perhaps it is because you screamed yourself hoarse last night, poor thing.”

He did not sound the least bit apologetic.

Jolie could feel her cheeks flush as the memories of last night’s intensity swept through her, though by now she should have been free of any maidenly blushes. The way he took her apart was so comprehensive that it was a wonder she had any modesty left in her at all.

Then again, it was possible that the way she flushed had nothing to do with shame and everything to do with anticipation. Because every night was only a day away.

Her heart thumped at her, urging her on. “I was just thinking...” she began.

But all her years of necessary and prudent self-preservation kicked in then, hard.

It was as effective as a hand over her mouth. Her pulse sped up. Her whole body tensed.

Was she really ready to risk everything? On a man who had risked nothing at all?

“I prefer it when you are incapable of thought, my darling wife,” Apostolis murmured in that dark way that never failed to shower her in sparks, and she wasn’t sure if she was grateful or despairing when the staff began to assemble to help create the service profile that would help their new guests imagine that the Andromeda anticipated and exceeded their every need and fancy.

But the urge to tell him things she shouldn’t didn’t go anywhere.

What she couldn’t decide was whether she wanted to tell him for the right reasons. Did she truly believe that she could trust him? Or was she trying to get ahead of the other shoe that she knew he was holding in reserve, so that he could drop it on her when she least expected it?

After all, he was the one who’d brought up the money she paid her aunt and uncle that first night they’d slept together. He hadn’t brought it up again since. She would have been very grateful indeed if she’d thought that he’d forgotten it.

She tried to remind herself that he hadn’t. Thatof coursehe hadn’t. And more, he had never given her the slightest reason to imagine he might let anything go.

But her heart keptthumpingat her all the same.

That night Apostolis got caught up talking to one of the guests as the night was drawing to a close, so Jolie walked over to the carriage house on her own. As that hadn’t happened in a while, she indulged herself. She tipped her head back to let the stars shine all over her. She breathed in the sea air. The she let herself into the hall, switched on the lights, and found herself examining the photographs once more. The wall that was a march of time and lives, or whatever it was that such captured moments were so many years and lives later. Unknowable without context. Changeable according to memory or the stories told about them.

She looked at each of them, wondering what was performance and what was real, and carried on down the hall until one caught at her.

It was a picture of Apostolis down on the beach at the foot of the cliff where the hotel stood, holding tight to the hand of a little girl. Dioni.

He could not have been more than twelve in the picture. Dioni was still a toddler. He was looking down at her with so much obvious affection that it never failed to make Jolie’s treacherous heart beat a little faster. Years ago, when she’d first seen it, she’d assumed her reaction was because she’d always wanted the kind of older brother Dioni said that Apostolis was to her.

She’d always wantedsomeone. Anyone.

Instead, she supposed, she’d found a way to be that person for Mathilde. As best she could from so far away.

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