Page 78 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

Because she might have won some points, reminding him that his role here had more to do with the longevity of the hotel and less to do with his childhood here. And that much of that longevity relied upon the kind of legend he built in the wake of his father’s.

He hoped he was man enough to take good advice when he heard it, no matter the source, because he’d always prided himself on that before.

Because he was here to make sure that the legend his mother had given her life to could sustain itself despite Spyros. That it could carry on, long after Spyros was entirely forgotten—the most fitting end to the story of his narcissistic father he could imagine.

And later tonight, after committing himself to a role he’d once vowed he would never take—Because I want more than to run ahotellike a servant, he had sneered at his father, when he’d imagined such words could hurt Spyros’s feelings, back when he was young and assumed his father had any—he intended to win a decisive battle in this war with his wife.

Once and for all.

CHAPTER FIVE

ONTHEOFFchance that he had merely said thatman and wifenonsense for the pleasure of alarming her—and how she hated to admit he’d succeeded—Jolie took the fifteen or so minutes she had left before evening drinks usually began to go and see for herself.

Surely even Apostolis would not bethatperemptory.

But he’d been telling the truth. The back house where she’d lived and worked for seven years now looked like...any other part of the hotel. Quietly welcoming and richly appointed to best suit the island and the Andromeda’s reputation for elegance, but stripped of anything personal.

Her heart hit against her ribs so hard it was a wonder a bone didn’t crack from the impact.

With a sense of mounting horror—because surely that was what all the warring sensations inside her were, that weight in her belly and a tingle that was much too close to a kind of shiver radiating out from it—she left the back house and went over to the carriage house instead, walking in briskly the way she always did.

She had always thought of this house as a temple to all the things that were wrong with his family, and Apostolis specifically. There was the office that she now shared with Apostolis, that Apostolis had claimed with a huge, black desk years ago. It took up the lion’s share of the space in the office and was a particularly odd choice for a man who...had not worked here until his father had passed.

Then again, he seemed to think she was only there to play on the internet, as if she didn’t have a mobile.

Though she would have died before commenting on it.

But the house announced itself in the entry hall. It started with the row of black-and-white photographs that lined the walls, framed to better proclaim their self-importance, as each and every one had been taken by a world-famous photographer who had been a guest here. Spyros had liked to say that he’d traded the bill for their stays for the photographs, but Jolie didn’t have to be familiar with the hotel’s books to know that was untrue.

Spyros loved a good story, but he loved money more.

Her heart was performing cartwheels inside her chest now that she’d made her way inside. She told herself—rather sternly—not to react to the place as if it, too, was waging a battle against her.

“It’s just a house,” she told herself crossly.

That was true. It was a house. That worked well enough when she was here to deal with hotel business. But it washishouse. And tonight she was here because he’d movedherinto this house.

Withhim.

Instead of heading down the hall to the office, she turned the other direction instead, and hated it.

The ground floor was lovely, having long ago been opened up to let in the light, and was now a flowing, open space that included a kitchen, a dining area, and a living room with doors that led out to the carriage house’s private patio. She walked through all the white and blue and vivid accents, aware of the sea watching her from outside the windows and the excruciatingly modern art on the walls that always seemed to sit in judgment of her.

“Three splashes of paint on a canvas cannotjudgeanyone,” she muttered as she passed a particularly snobbish painting on her way to the open, winding stair that rose up from the ground floor to the open gallery that ran above it.

Jolie ran up the steps, her feet tapping out a staccato that was still too slow to match her pulse. Upstairs, there were low-slung leather couches and views of the ocean, and sculpture pieces in recessed alcoves.

But she was here to check the bedrooms for her things, so that was what she did. Jolie’s heart was still clattering about, but she was starting to feel almost...giggly. That was new and shocking enough to make her stop short.

Then she remembered the sort of silly games she and the other girls had got up to at school, sneaking about the place after curfew for the sheer joy of...not being where they were supposed to be.

It felt like breaking the rules to be up on this floor, and it must have always felt that way, because she’d never come up here before.

“Focus,” she ordered herself, marching down the hall that led off the gallery and opening up doors as she went.

One room was clearly a guest room, and given Apostolis’s lack of guests, Jolie doubted it had been used in years. The next room looked as if it could be converted into guest quarters if necessary, though it was currently doing duty as another sort of library, with books stacked neatly on every surface, which made her feel...odd.

Was Apostolis a reader? Or was this overflow from the Andromeda’s library? She didn’t know which answer she wanted more. She didn’t know which one would make her feel better. Or worse.

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