Page 83 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

But that was too close to surrender.

So she ran to the room that she’d chosen for herself, the guest room she’d made sure the staff had come and arranged for her while she’d been playing hostess games—taking all of her things out ofhisbedroom as if she’d never been there in the first place—and locked the door behind her.

Though as she lay there on the bed she’d made, wide awake and staring at the ceiling for far too long, she had to ask herself—had she really been lockinghimout?

Or herself in?

CHAPTER SIX

THEWARWASnow begun in earnest, making it clear only minor skirmishes had happened before. All antes were upped. Survival was the only goal, and it was no foregone conclusion.

Apostolis had never felt so alive.

He told himself it was the thrill of his impending victory coming in hot, whethershethought that he would win or not.

Heknew that he would.

Or in any case, that was what he told himself as the season rolled on. As one set of guests left and another arrived. As he was involved with handling the daily issues that cropped up at the hotel that he had only observed before from the distance his father insisted upon.

And was forced to face an unpalatable truth.

Jolie was not simply a trophy, as he’d thought. Or perhaps as he’d hoped.

She was an integral part of the hotel’s operation.

In all the ways that mattered, shewasthe proprietor, and given the way the staff deferred to her in all things, clearly had been.

Perhaps since her marriage to his father.

It was entirely possible that was one of the reasons Spyros had married her, when he had never bothered to marry the other women he’d taken as lovers over the years.

He was forced to view the woman—his stepmother, his wife, his co-proprietor—in an entirely new light and he found himself longing for the dark.

Because the fact that Jolie was both good at the guest-facing parts of her job—the consummate hostess, a study in effortless and yet engaging mystery—as well as all the things that happened behind the scenes...annoyed him. It would have been easier if she’d been a disaster, or as useless as he’d expected—but then, if she had been, the hotel would have been in dire straits and that wouldn’t have been any kind of victory.

Apostolis found himself torn between wanting to do nothing but come to a kind of reckoning with Jolie—and trying to understand his own relationship to the hotel that had stood as a cornerstone of his family for so long.

He talked often with Alceu, for a variety of reasons but also because his friend lived in what was more or less a fortress—though it was more delicately termed acastle—on the island of Sicily.

“You know what it is to care for a house that is more than a house, and that is considered more important than the family that lives in it,” he said one day.

“It is called a legacy,” Alceu replied in his usual arid tones. “A word I believe you are familiar with. And legacies require care and maintenance. Sometimes this is inconvenient. Very seldomly does it involve the attentions of supermodels or paparazzi, which I know is a significant lifestyle change for you.”

“Thank you,” Apostolis replied, perhaps more stiffly than he might have wished. “I am aware.”

What hewantedto say was something likeEt tu, Brute?

Though he knew that wasn’t fair. Alceu had always been the more serious of the two of them. Or, perhaps, what he really meant was that Alceu had always known that his legacy was secured—and more, that said legacy would be his to steward.

Hehad not had to perform for his father’s attention the way Apostolis had.

It was something Apostolis found seemed to weigh on him more and more, especially when his relationship with the co-owner of his hotel was fraught with all the other battles they were waging.

He found her in the office one morning, going through paperwork that he was certain he’d mentioned he had intended to get to himself.

Once he accepted that until now, she had been doing it in front of him and he had willfully ignored the possibility that she was actually...working.

It filled him with something he knew too well was not temper. Temper was easy. This lingered in his gut. It was too thick.

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