Page 111 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

And that changed everything.

A long while later, Jolie left her cousin to settle in—and, she hoped, sleep off all the excitement and the travel and dream about the possibility that this long nightmare was truly over now. She went out into the hall, her pulse kicking into high gear.

It was time to find him.

It’s finally time,she thought as she let herself into the master bedroom, but he wasn’t there. She had to stop and breathe a little before she started hyperventilating.

Or sobbing.

When she thought she could keep herself together, she picked her way downstairs again, expecting that she would find him in the office. But he wasn’t there either.

There was a kind of panic growing within her as she made her way outside and across the drive to the hotel. But when she checked into the kitchens and offices where the staff congregated, there were the usual tasks and issues to handle, but no one mentioned Apostolis—which meant that he wasn’t already there, handling things.

Had he left again? Jolie couldn’t believe that.

When she went outside again, she stopped in the yard. The ocean breeze picked up the length of her hair and played with it. There were guests down by the pool, so she smiled and waved.

But she didn’t see Apostolis there with them, so she went the other way. She walked up to the edge of the cliff, where there were benches placed for taking in the sea. And that was where she saw him at last.

He was down below, standing alone in the rocky cove down at sea level where that picture of him and Dioni had been taken a lifetime ago.

Jolie started toward the stairs that had been carved into the side of the cliff to lead the family and now the guests down to the water, but by the time she reached them she was running. She hurtled her way down them as if every moment apart from him was torture—

Because it is,she thought, feeling almost feverish.

And then she was on the beach herself, running toward him.

It was reckless. She knew that.

But the truth was that she didn’t care how they’d left things. She wasn’t sure it would have matteredbeforeshe’d seen who he’d come home with. Now it couldn’t.

All that mattered was that he’d brought her Mathilde.

Jolie didn’t care why or how he’d done it, only that he had.

So when he turned, looking back over his shoulder just before she reached him, she didn’t think.

She launched herself toward him with every confidence that he would catch her.

Withfaith.

With trust, because sometimes thinking about things made it more complicated than it was.

Jumping in the air wasn’t complicated. It was a yes or no question.

And he answered it.

He caught her. And he held her tight in his arms for a moment, there against his chest.

And he looked as if it hurt him when he set her back down on the ground.

“Apostolis.”She breathed his name like a prayer. A prayer he had also answered. “How can I thank you enough? Thank you.Thank you.Thank—”

“Stop,” he urged her, though it was in a different sort of voice than the one he’d used that last night, so bitter and dark, when she’d knelt before him and believed that all was lost.

Herself most of all.

“Apostolis,” she tried again. “Please, you must—”

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