“I thought my debt was paid in full,” she said, her voice going a bit echoey against the cobblestones.
Or maybe she was feeling a bit wobbly herself. She was clinging to the rail, though she told herself it was because it was his neck she would like to wring, not because her knees felt much weaker than they ought to have.
Because Constantine was here. Here, at her door. And he looked even more darkly beautiful than she remembered.
And all she seemed to do was remember him.
She had spent a lot of time imagining him in different places, and different poses—and a thousand different positions because her body longed for him in ways that made her shiver—but she hadn’t imagined him here. All of that simmering Greek glory, out on the cobblestones with London brooding about in the background. Rumpled and hot-eyed and almost too recklessly masculine to look at directly.
It was almost too much to take.
“This isn’t about debts,” he retorted.
A bit loudly, to her surprise.
Almost as if he...felt something.
But this was Constantine Skalas. There was more likely to be a sudden stampede of unicorns along her cobbled street than there was for him to catch a terrible case of feelings, like a bad flu. And it was even less likely that if he did, he would come here to share them with her.
After all, their relationship had been a lie when she was sixteen and more recently nothing but debts and dares. A hetaira indeed.
Because she’d looked that word up once she’d come home, thinking he’d used an endearment. She should have known better.
“Then there’s no reason for you to be here, is there?” she asked coolly, glaring down at him. “After all, ours was a transactional relationship at best.”
“I’m not here to talk about transactions!” he thundered at her.
Even more loudly.
She responded by going arctic. “My mistake. Are you here to talk? Do you do talking, Constantine? Is that part of your revenge fantasy?”
His eyes blazed. And she had the strangest notion he was about to explode. Right out in the open.
Molly wanted to see that more than she wanted her next breath. And equally wanted to protect him from it. She despaired of herself and her endlessly stupid heart.
“Do you truly wish to shout at each other?” he asked her, biting off each word as his gaze incinerated the world around him. “In public?”
And she had to think about it.
Because she was certain no good could come of letting that man into her house. No good could come of letting herself get close to him again. Physically, that was.
Does anyone get close to Constantine Skalas? the bitter voice inside her asked.
Still, the last thing she needed was to have someone make a video of this confrontation and splash it over the internet, which she knew they would. Because who needed the paparazzi when everyone had a mobile in their hand? She scanned the windows opposite her and didn’t see any telltale twitching curtains, but that didn’t mean anything.
Eyes were everywhere. That had been the first lesson Constantine had taught her.
She turned on her heel and slammed her way back into her house, running down the stairs to the front door and then waiting there a moment, desperately trying to get her breath under control.
But she gave it up as futile and tossed the door open.
Constantine brushed his way inside, then stood there, glowering at her in her own hallway as she slammed the front door shut, locking them in.
Together. And alone.
Not that it mattered if they were alone or with ten thousand people, surely. Not anymore.
Her heart, predictably, beat too hard anyway.
“There’s no reason for you to be here,” she told him, her voice hot and potentially unhinged, but she couldn’t worry about that. “The note you left me in Paris did all the talking you could ever need to do. My debt was paid. Is that how a hetaira’s term was usually ended? I’m not conversant on the finer points of relinquishing a courtesan.”
“A hetaira is not any old run-of-the-mill courtesan, Molly,” he began, frowning at her.
“Did you really come here to debate the finer points of an ancient Greek insult you were using as an endearment?” She actually laughed, and not in a way that indicated she found anything funny. “Because I would rethink that approach, if I were you.”
“You don’t understand.” He moved closer, but stopped, clearly reading the scowl on her face. Was she happy about that or disappointed? “Molly, you must know I didn’t leave you because you were some kind of courtesan and I was finished. I left you for your own good.”
It had to be said that she had not seen that one coming.
But she didn’t like it any better for being unexpected.
“How noble.” Her voice was scathing. “Next time, leave a tip.”
His face darkened, and she hated the part of her that couldn’t simply hate him the way she should. That wanted to make him feel better, even now.
“Everything I told you that night was the truth,” he said, his voice as intense as it was rough. “And it is mine to regret that it took me so long to understand that in all this time, what I thought was vengeance was never that at all. Never. It would have been far easier for me if it was. My curse all along was that I never hated you or your mother the way I thought I should have.”
That mapped a little too closely to what she’d been thinking, and she didn’t trust the way her heart kicked at the idea of a connection between them.
She scowled to cover it. “You have a very funny way of showing it, then. And yes, I’m aware you made some restitution, but that’s just money, Constantine. God knows you have far too much of that.”
It occurred to her then, as he glared down at her with too much of that ferocious intensity that shouldn’t have stirred her at all, that she was trapped with her back to her own front door. She couldn’t have that.
Molly pushed her way past him and didn’t look back as she marched back up her stairs. Then into her great room, where she swept up her wine along with the bottle. And then stood there, glaring balefully, as Constantine followed.
Because it just wasn’t fair. He had neglected to shave today and his jaw looked deliciously rough. His hair was its usual mess. He was wearing nothing interesting at all, a T-shirt and jeans, except it was instantly clear that neither item was the sort of thing a regular person could buy in a store. Just like he was no regular person.
He still looked like a statue that begged to be cast in marble. And now, despite everything, all she could think about was that she knew how he tasted. Every part of him. Looking at him again now, all she could think about was how he had moved inside her, changing everything.
Changing her.
And then he’d left her all the same. The way he’d warned her he would at the start.
He’d even warned her that she would fall for him.
And fool that she was, she had.
“I thought that you did it all rather beautifully, really,” she said as he stood there in the middle of the quiet, soothing retreat that she would now always remember with him in it. Damn him. She would have to move. “It all went according to plan. I knew better than to let my feelings get involved, and yet they did. And you left me, as you promised you would. Did you come here to pick apart the corpse?”
“Molly.” Constantine’s voice was urgent. His bitter coffee eyes wild. “I love you.”
Something inside her detonated. She could feel it. But Molly didn’t move, even as she felt everything inside her...liquefy. She clutched her wineglass in one hand, the bottle in the other, and thought very seriously about throwing the bottle directly at his head.
But she didn’t.
She didn’t know how she didn’t.
“That’s very flatterin
g,” she said, making her voice absolutely frigid. “But you don’t.”
“I do,” he said, frowning at her with a certain level of arrogant outrage, no doubt because she hadn’t flung herself prostrate on the floor before him in abject gratitude. “You must know that you’re the only reason I have feelings in the first place. It took me a long time to realize what they were, that’s all.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I had to let go of my mother. I had to see her for who she was, not who I wished her to be. I had to take a good, hard look at why I wanted her on a pedestal in the first place. But I did that, Molly. I did it and I even accepted how I felt about your mother, and why. When I tell you that I love you—”
Deep inside, she could feel a kind of tremor, but she fought it back.
And she had to shut him up before that tremor took her down. “Constantine. You’re just talking about yourself. You can hear that, can’t you? That’s not love, I think you’ll find. Though it might be some abnormal psychology that you should probably look into when you leave. Which I can only hope will be shortly.”
He stared at her as if she was the one acting erratically.
“You are mistaken,” he bit out. “I love you, Molly. I wonder if I always have.”
He wondered.
Molly felt everything inside of her...blow up.
She thought of that girl, lost and lonely, torn away from everything she’d ever known and shunted off to that blinding island, with the Greek sun that blazed on her only one of the things that shined too brightly to look at directly. She thought of the horror she felt when she’d realized what Constantine was truly about, when she’d read those stories he’d placed. And all the contortions she had gone through to convince herself that it had all been her fault, not his.
Then there were all the years in between, where she had made herself into the very thing that girl could never have imagined she’d become. Anti-beige. Anti-porridge. And all along knowing, somewhere deep inside of her, that she was doing it because of him.
At him.
He had made her feel small, so she became giant.
Epic.
She remembered when it had begun to occur to her how strange it was that her mother kept having so many runs of notably bad luck when, whatever else Isabel was, she had never been stupid. And how Molly had felt when she’d traced it all back to Constantine himself.
When he’d made certain she could trace it back to him.
And she could remember with perfect clarity leaving this very house that morning, so long ago now, to fly down to Skiathos and face him at last.
Molly had known the truth then, hadn’t she? She called it nerves. Anxiety. A history she wanted nothing to do with, she’d assured herself, but she’d known better.
She’d been excited.
Thrilled that she would see him again, at last, no matter the circumstances.
That was the long and the short of it. She had gone to Skiathos to confront him about the things he’d done to her mother and her, the campaign he’d deliberately waged against her family for years, and she’d been excited.
There had been those ten days spent naked in the sunlight, then dressed for his pleasure when the stars came out.
There had been their press tour, all those hours spent together flying from place to place, and the performance they both put on so well for the cameras. The dancing. The gazing.
All to be left on the very night she’d given him her innocence, called her a whore, and had abandoned her. Not in that order.
“The fact of the matter,” she hurled at him, slamming the wine bottle down on the nearest table and slightly surprised it didn’t shatter with the force she expended, “is that you should thank your mother. Because you’ve been using her as an excuse for your entire life.”
“Molly—”
But she was just getting started.
“You focus with all your might on blame and retribution, because that’s much better than asking yourself why it is you’ve been hiding behind that poor woman since you were a kid. Isn’t it, Constantine? You built a whole alternate persona based on sex and promiscuity, perceived indolence and carelessness. All the while hiding the truth of you, deep inside.”
“That feels a bit pot and kettle, wouldn’t you say?” he bit out. “Magda?”
“Magda is a stage name,” she snapped out. “It’s the difference between putting on a costume and taking one off, that’s all. I’m not hiding anything, Constantine. I’m not two people. I’m not hiding in Magda—she’s a part of me.” And she knew as she said it that it was true. Maybe it hadn’t always been true, but it was now. She leaned in. “She’s always been a part of me. It’s what I call the part of myself that can handle the bright lights, the applause, the strange and glorious things that come when your face is your currency. But that’s not what you’re doing.”
“Oh no? Then what is it I’m doing, if you are suddenly the expert on healthy and unhealthy divisions of personalities.”
“You’ll do anything to avoid feeling an emotion,” she said. Like she was handing down judgment. “Anything and everything. Everybody knows men who sleep around like that don’t feel, so no one expects you might, do they? Boys will be boys and so on.” She shook her head. “And left to your own devices, you think... You really, truly believe that a lifetime spent in a sick pursuit of vengeance against a stepmother who never did anything to you except try to take care of you is love.”
He looked like he might explode. Or as if he had. As if this was the explosion. Maybe it had claimed them both already.
Molly realized she might not be able to tell.
“I just told you I loved you,” Constantine thundered at her. “Do you think that’s easy to say? Do you imagine that I’ve ever said it to another living human being? Because I haven’t. It’s only you, Molly. Don’t you understand that yet? Whatever you call it, however twisted it’s been, it’s only ever been you. I love you, whether you believe that or not.”
She didn’t know where her wineglass had gone. Molly surged toward him, stopping herself just before she made a critical error and threw herself at him.
Because she knew, somehow, that would not end the way she wanted it to. She would not pummel him the way she wanted. She would end up kissing him and if she did, she would lose this moment forever.
Molly knew she couldn’t allow that to happen.
“You need to feel all the parts of love, Constantine,” she threw at him. “And you don’t. You can’t. It’s not just sex. It’s not just connection to another person. As wonderful as those things are, they’re only one half of the whole. You have to feel its opposite.” When he gazed back at her without comprehension, she made a small sound of frustration. “You have to feel the bad as well as the good to get the whole. Like loss.”
He jolted as if she’d slapped him, with a wall or two in her hand. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She moved closer to him, and she knew somehow, deep inside, that it was because she didn’t know how to stay away.
But that was future Molly’s problem.
“You loved your mother and you lost her,” she said, very intently. “And I’m not pretending that’s an easy thing. Or that I would know what to do if I lost my mother, because I know I wouldn’t.”
“My mother...” He shook his head. “I visited her just today. She—”
“You lost her,” Molly said again. Firmly. “As far as I can tell, you lost her again and again. And so you blamed my mother. Then you blamed me. And you arranged your entire life around revenge—on me, because I made you feel something when you thought only she could.”
“Not something,” he gritted out at her. “Love, Molly.”
“Have you ever stopped to take that in, Constantine?” she asked him then. “Have you ever allowed yourself a moment, just a single moment, to grieve?”
He was no more and no less than a man.
At last.
My man, a voice in her said, with a kind of certainty that seemed to ring deep inside her, like a bell.
And she stayed where she was, holding her breath, as he visibly fought to accept what she’d said to him. While between them, all the fury and explosiveness seemed to ease, until it almost felt as if they were back in Greece. Where there was nothing but a breeze from the sea, faintly calling wind chimes, and the sunlight all over the both of them like a blessing.
He stood there like that for some time. And when he found her gaze again, she could have sworn there was a different man there behind those dark, rich eyes.
He reached over and ran a finger down one cheek, and her foolish heart lurched.
“Do you love me, Molly?” he asked her, his voice a rough scrape. “Can you love me?”
She might have fought on, had he thundered at her some more. Had there been more of that exploding, that heat.
Had he not touched her like that, as if checking to see if she was real.
Had he not...simply asked.
“I should hate you,” she whispered. “I want to hate you.”
He nodded at that, a sharp movement. As if he had already accepted how this was going to go. Not in his favor.
“You have every reason to hate me. I can’t blame you.” He blew out a breath. “In fact, I think I ought to encourage you to hate me as much as possible. It’s only what I deserve.”
Molly searched his face, his dark gaze. Did she want to be strong—or did she want to be happy?
She knew the answer even as she asked it.
Carefully, deliberately, she reached across that space between them to take one of his hard, magical hands in hers.
“I’ve been really, really bad at hating you, Constantine. For as long as I’ve known you. I’m afraid it just doesn’t stick.” She looked down at his hand, because there was too much emotion behind her eyes and thick in her throat. “If you want the truth, I’ve been in love with you since I was sixteen years old. And all these things you’ve done to me, I forgave a long time ago. I suppose that makes me as naive and stupid as I’ve ever been, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Even if it is naivete, well, I prefer it to the sad and jaded alternative.”
Her Deal With The Greek Devil (Mills & Boon Modern) (Rich, Ruthless & Greek, Book 2) - Caitlin Crews Page 14