by Marian Tee
She was different from the others – she was special – and she had to consciously remind herself of this as their lunch came to another unsatisfyingly platonic end. Like always, Andreus had insisted on walking her back to her car, and also like always, they spoke a little bit of this and that, topics that Monique had carefully selected because she knew Andreus were interested in them.
Even so, something about Andreus’ demeanor still nagged at her.
Even though he appeared attentive as ever, and her heart still did its usual leap when he bent down to press another careless kiss on her cheek, she just couldn’t help but think that something was wrong. That he was looking at her without really seeing her –
And so it was, only Monique wasn’t to know this yet.
When they reached her car and Andreus started to bend down to open the door for her, Monique heard herself blurt out, “Wait.” She couldn’t help but wet her lips as she watched Andreus straighten to his full height, couldn’t help but feel aroused even as her concern grew for him.
I want him so bad, Monique thought. So damn bad that she had a feeling if she could get away with it, she probably would have risked spiking his drink just so she could finally fuck him. And when he woke up the next day, she would tell him he was the one who had his way with her, and he might have gotten her pregnant. He would have to marry her, of course, and after that they would live happily –
“Monique?” Andreus’ slightly sharp tone yanked Monique out of her fantasies, and she could feel her whole face turning red as she realized the rather amoral lengths she was willing to go just to have this man in her bed.
I really am obsessed with him, Monique realized.
“Did you forget to tell me something about the deal?” Andreus prodded impatiently.
“I…um…yes.” Deciding it was better to lie, Monique told Andreus about fictional papers that her father had emailed and which he wanted Andreus to look over.
Andreus struggled to concentrate on Monique’s words, but the way the sun was glaring down at them insisted on distracting him. Its scorching blaze felt like a sickeningly tangible reminder of Hallie’s smile, and Hallie’s hurt face became an indelible vision in his mind.
“Shall I bring the papers over to your place, do you think?”
Monique’s last words, despite him not hearing what she had said before them, were all too easy to see, and Andreus’ first instinct was to deny her. Both of them knew she was simply using the papers as an excuse to spend more time with him. While she wasn’t the type to come on to him, Monique hadn’t made any attempt to coyly hide her feelings for him either. She had been quietly open about it from the start, and while he had liked that about her, he had also been careful enough never to give the woman a reason to hope for anything serious.
It was basically the opposite of how he had treated Hallie over the years – but maybe the time had come to change this.
“Drop by on the weekend,” Andreus heard himself say. “Yuri’s throwing a party. I’ll have your name added to the list if you want.”
“Of c-course.” It was rare for Monique to stammer, but she simply couldn’t help it. This wasn’t her first time to indirectly ask Andreus out on a date, but this was definitely the first time he had actually accepted her invitation. “May I ask what the occasion is?”
“A welcome home party,” Andreus answered shortly. “His sister’s returned from Tokyo.”
“Oh.” Monique fought hard to keep her face expressionless. While numerous publications had printed sly speculations about Andreus and Hallie Athanas over the years, not a single one of them had been verified to be the truth. And yes, there had been rare photos of Andreus laughing in her company, but the other girl was Yuri’s sister. It was possible Andreus also saw her in the same light. Right?
“Andreus?” She waited until his dark gaze met hers before asking hesitantly, “Are you sure it’s okay if I come?”
“Why won’t it be?”
“Because she might…” Monique noticed the hardening of Andreus’ expression and lost the courage to finish what she had to say. “Never mind,” she said quickly. “I’ll be happy to come if the invitation still stands?”
Andreus watched Monique drive away a few minutes later, his inscrutable expression yielding not a single clue to the rising sense of agitation inside of him. And it would only get worse once Hallie and Monique came face to face.
He would be hurting Hallie again, but one day, one goddamn day – once he had lost it all – she would know that all of this was for her sake.
Andreus’ phone started to ring insistently just as he got into his truck, and his heart thudded against his chest when he saw Drake Morrison’s name show up on the screen.
“We found him,” the FBI agent said as soon as he answered the call. “I’ve got a squad on its way to take him down, and I’m heading up to join them.”
Andreus couldn't speak.
“This isn’t a prank, Economou.” It was as if the other man had sensed his inner turmoil, or maybe it was just that Morrison had read his file, and so he also knew how much this meant to Andreus. “Your life is yours again.”
Chapter Four
For most people, hope was like the air they breathed – familiar and barely noticed because it had always existed for them. But for those who hadn’t seen the light at the end of the tunnel for a long time, hope was almost worse than fear. Deep down inside, people always knew how much it would cost to defeat their fears; in a way, it was why they were so terrified in the first place.
Hope, however…it was a make-or-break kind of thing. Hope was one of those things that was completely out of a person’s hands, and the worst thing about it was when hope turned out to be a lie. There was simply no greater cruelty than life giving a person reason to hope – only for him to realize in the end nothing he believed in would come true.
There was no going back from that, no way to put the pieces back together again, and it was this thought that had Andreus’ knuckles turning white as his grip kept tightening around the steering wheel. He had made it back to Claymore Plantation over an hour ago, but fear of believing in false hopes had him paralyzed in the driver’s seat.
All these years…all these years he had never allowed himself to hope that this moment would ever come. All these years he had never allowed himself to dream that he could ever be free from the mistakes he committed in his youth. He had even come to accept it as a fact of his life, a consequence of his own actions and not something he could ever blame God for. He had trained himself from the very start to believe that only a solitary existence was in the cards from him – so what the fuck was he to do when life told him differently now?
He leaned his head back against the seat as he closed his eyes, and an image of the only girl who mattered to him came to Andreus as easily as the blood that ran nonstop through his veins.
Dare I dream, baby doll?
To be with her was to reach for the stars – hell, the right to just stand next to her would be no better than claiming the whole damn sky. And for so goddamn long, that right to even be in the same world with her had been nothing but an illusion, a fucking pipe’s dream that was doomed to go nowhere.
And yet now –
Life was telling him he had a fucking chance.
The odds weren’t great – he had hurt her a great deal, over and over, and though he had made it clear enough to Hallie that he had to keep his distance for her sake, both of them knew that wouldn’t make all the things he did hurt any less. And then there was that Sir Asshole. Andreus was insanely jealous at the way the man, whoever the hell he was, could make Hallie smile so damn easily. What if Sir Asshole had found a way to take Andreus’ place in Hallie’s heart?
What if he was fucking too late?
Andreus slowly forced his fingers to release its death grip on the wheel.
Only one way to find out, Economou.
Andreus’ banging on the main doors of the plantation’s southwest wing was
so loud it had the twins bursting into tears from the next-door wing. While MJ quickly gathered the twins close to comfort them, Helios angrily went out to see what the ruckus was all about.
He stopped dead when he saw who it was trying to break down the Athanas’ main doors. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m looking for Hallie,” Andreus answered in a hard voice, “and I think Yuri---”
“Is not keeping his baby sister away from you,” Helios interrupted dryly, “regardless of what your obvious paranoia has you believing.” A dark flush overcame Andreus’ cheeks, and Helios’ golden eyes narrowed in keen appraisal at his friend. “Something’s happened, hasn't it?”
At Andreus’ curt nod, Helios relayed, “Yuri and Kalli are away. That’s why the doors are locked. And as for Hallie---” He jerked his head towards the back of the house. “She’s at the pool.” He hadn’t even finished speaking when Andreus abruptly turned to walk away, but this only made Helios smile, and he waited until the other man had almost reached the hallway leading to the pool when he said, “She’s been there since seven.”
Andreus stiffened. That meant Hallie had been at the pool for four damn hours. “Are you telling me she has company?”
“I’m telling you she’s been swimming nonstop because of you.” Helios’ voice was even.
Andreus whipped around at the unexpected accusation, and the inscrutable expression on the older guy’s face only made his irritation grow. “I don’t have any fucking time for games, Andreadis. What the hell do you mean by that?”
“She cried herself to sleep last night.” This time, Helios’ voice was cold. “It was obvious to all of us when she joined us for breakfast this morning, and when she found out you left for your meeting with Monique Pratt, she looked like she was about to cry again.”
Andreus still had no fucking idea what Helios was getting at. “If this is some kind of game---”
“She told MJ that since swimming will mean her eyes would stay wet, you wouldn’t have to know she was crying.”
Hallie flipped to her back in the pool as she moved her arms in reverse. She was on her twentieth and final lap on backstroke, and before this she had done twenty laps each on breaststroke and freestyle. While the easy pace she maintained had allowed her to survive the punishing workout, she could already feel her muscles starting to protest. She knew she would have to rest sooner or later, but she didn’t want to. Every time she surfaced from the water, the tears just started falling. It had been so for hours, and she would rather die than take the chance of having Andreus walk in on her while she was bawling her eyes out for him.
She might have promised herself she would no longer lie about her feelings for him, but she did have some pride left. He had hurt her again, and he knew it. That was enough honesty, wasn’t it? There was no need –
The sound of someone diving into the pool to join her made Hallie quickly get off her back, but when she looked around, she could see no one at all.
The pool area, housed snugly under a modular glass structure, was completely empty, and the hairs at the back of her neck began to stand up. It suddenly occurred to her that if she were to scream for help, no one would be able to hear her. The pool area was too far away from the main house, and unlike how they had lived in Miami, they had decided to scale back in hiring staff. Everyone had wanted to live a “normal life”, and honestly she had felt the same…until now.
What if an intruder had managed to sneak in? What if it was something worse – like a ghost?
As soon as the thought occurred to her, fingers wrapped around her ankle underwater, and Hallie let out a scream.
“AAAAAAAAH!”
Andreus burst out of the water with a loud splash, but Hallie was still shrieking.
“Hallie, it’s me.”
He had to give her a few hard shakes, but it still took a while before she stopped screaming her head off, and as he waited for her to calm down completely, he allowed himself the privilege of letting his gaze roam hungrily over her.
Wet locks of her hair framed her lovely face, and its tips fell all the way to the hint of cleavage exposed by the modest neckline of her one-piece swimsuit. It was plain and dark-colored, reminding him of the school swimsuits worn by Japanese schoolgirls, and his jaw clenched. Had Sir Asshole put her up to wearing this?
When he looked at her again, he saw sanity returning to her gaze, but before he could say another word, she had already extracted her vengeance by delivering a swift, hard kick to his shin underwater.
Hallie was barely mollified by the way Andreus grunted in pain. “You’re lucky I didn’t aim for your thing.” Even now, she could barely hear herself over the mad thumping of her heart, and she still felt like she was about to go into cardiac arrest.
“My thing?” Andreus grinned down at her, and the sight had several realizations belatedly kicking in.
Andreus was here.
Alone.
And…topless.
Andreus’ eyes gleamed when he saw Hallie’s gaze immediately dip downwards, and as soon as her blue eyes flew back up to his, he asked silkily, “Disappointed I’m not naked?”
Her senses swam at the rough, sexy burr of his voice. Oh God. Hallie’s heartbeat changed its tempo, fear and anxiety turning into acute excitement, marred only by the frailest thread of confusion. Why was he talking to her this way? She could recognize that dark, sensual inflection in his words anywhere. She could recognize it even with her eyes closed, and she’d still be able to recognize it even if a thousand years had passed.
She knew it so well because it was the one way he had never talked to her…until now.
Nervous confusion had her unconsciously wetting her lips, and an aching sensation squeezed her entire body when she saw the heat flaring in his gaze.
“A-Andreus?”
There was the softest hint of a whimper in her voice, but it was more than enough to have him harden, and Andreus’ teeth gnashed in his effort to keep his hands to himself. One damn step at a time, he reminded himself forcefully. He owed her that at the very least.
“I want to explain about last night.”
Hallie could feel herself turn pale. Last night? Was he saying he was going to talk to her about Monique Pratt?
Her heart threatened to shatter at the very idea, and Hallie panicked when she saw his lips start to move again. She beat him to speaking, blurting out, “I have something to ask you first.”
“Alright.” Andreus’ voice was calm and soothing. Although he wanted to hash everything out all at once, the apprehension that still lingered in her eyes had him focusing on Hallie’s needs and prioritizing them over everything else.
“I…” Her mind went blank as she found herself in danger of drowning in the seductive depths of Andreus’ eyes. Holy. Shit. It was rare for Hallie to curse so eloquently, but she couldn’t think of any better situation that would deserve such an expletive. This man had broken her heart too many times to count. He had done it last night, and he was about to do it again.
So why was it that she could still find his eyes so temptingly beautiful?
It only means one thing, Hallie Athanas.
You’re one big incurable idiot where Andreus Economou is concerned.
Always was and always will be.
“Hallie?”
Seeing his frown, she said the first thing that came to her mind. “I…I want to talk to you about my vacuum cleaner.” She saw him blink in bemusement and cringed inside. Yes, she absolutely knew that was such a stupid thing to say, but surely that was better than having to talk about the latest woman to make it to his bed?
“Your…vacuum cleaner?” Andreus seriously wondered if he had heard her correctly, and his puzzlement only grew when she actually nodded. “What about your vacuum cleaner?”
“It’s, umm, very old.”
“I…see.” Andreus struggled to contain his impatience. Why the fuck were they talking about an old vacuum cleaner?
“I was hoping you’d buy it.”
“You are?”
“It’s been gathering dust, you see.” She gave him a weak smile at the end of her punchline, but Andreus’ lips didn’t crack the slightest smile back, and the words had only turned his dark gaze glacial with anger. Okaaaaay. While she certainly hadn’t been holding her breath for him to laugh at her jokes, she certainly hadn’t thought it would earn his ire.
“That bad?” she asked lamely.
“I’m guessing you got it from Sir,” Andreus snapped.
Oh.
Everything made sense at once.
OH.
She stared up at him in astonishment. “You’re jealous?”
“Damn well I am,” he snarled back, and Hallie’s disbelief turned into shock.
Was it time to start pinching herself? It was not like him at all to admit he was jealous.
“He’s the reason why you never cared to call me, isn’t he?”
OH.
“Who the fuck is he, Hallie?” Andreus grated out.
“I…”
“How well do you even know this guy? Does your brother know about him?”
“It’s not…” Hallie gulped. “It’s not what you think.”
“If you really have an idea about what I want to do to that asshole, then you should let him know he better not show his face---”
“He can’t.”
His lip curled. “So the asshole’s a wimp, too---” Hallie started shaking her head as soon as he spoke, and his chest tightened in a mixture of fury and pain. She was defending the other man to him, and it was like being repeatedly stabbed in the heart.
The sudden release of Andreus’ fingers from her shoulders made Hallie jerk. Only when his touch was gone did she realize how right it felt to have him hold her – and how empty she now felt without it.