“I’m afraid that the recent attention you’ve received in the papers was a direct result of the inappropriate actions of one of our Harrington employees,” the woman said, and on some level, Holly admired the way she got right to the point. “Obviously we’ve removed this gentleman from his position and are considering what further disciplinary actions might be appropriate.” She paused and coughed delicately. “If it helps at all, he thought he was helping the hotel, in direct response to similar actions from an employee at The Chatsfield. He didn’t realize his actions could be interpreted as an unacceptable attack on one of our hotel guests. I don’t expect this to make a difference to you, Mrs. Tsoukatos, nor should it when you’ve been victimized by his poor decision-making, but his heart truly was in the right place.”
“What does that mean? What does a heart have to do with it? With anything?” Holly asked without realizing she meant to speak. She saw the other woman’s smooth brow crease and, worse, saw her own reflection in one of the great mirrors rimmed in deep, old gold that lined the far wall.
She looked like a lunatic. That was a fact. She looked unkempt and wild—very much as if she’d spent all day rolling around in bed with a man and had then raced off across the city to get away from him without so much as taking a comb to her hair.
Which, of course, she had.
If she was honest, she looked the way she’d always looked, way back when. Like a regular person, a small voice whispered then. No hours spent bored to tears in salons achieving the kind of high gloss that screamed high-class to the sorts of people who cataloged such things. No ruthless armor of the right clothes, the right shoes, even the right facial expressions, to blend in with the kind of women who lived the life Holly did following her departure from Santorini. The empty and terribly, terribly shiny life she’d made for herself in the years since she’d left Theo.
It’s not losing yourself you fear, he’d said—but she couldn’t let herself think about that. She couldn’t let his words take root. She was too afraid that once they did, once they leveled her completely, there would be nothing left.
“Excuse me,” Holly said then, before the other woman could try to cover the awkwardness that hung between them with more apologies. “I appreciate your apology, I do. But I’m afraid I must check out. Immediately.”
“While The Harrington fully understands your position, Mrs. Tsoukatos, and regrets it, I want to assure you that steps have been taken and will continue to be taken to make certain that this kind of...”
Holly shook her head, raising a hand to her temple, and the woman cut herself off.
“Please,” Holly whispered, and for once she didn’t care what she sounded like. Or even if anyone overheard her. “Have a car out front in ten minutes.”
“Of course,” the woman said.
And finally Holly spun away, making for the elevator bank and hoping against hope that she could slip inside before the fog taking over her sight spilled out into tears. You mean more tears, she reminded herself sharply, but she didn’t want to think about that, either. The way Theo had cradled her in his arms, still moving so slow and deep inside of her, holding her close while she shattered. While she broke. While she lost herself and everything she’d thought she knew...
Holly jabbed the button repeatedly, aware that she was in a panic, that everyone else in the lobby could no doubt see that she was losing it—but then, as she felt the hint of heat at the corners of her eyes, a kind of desperate chill stole over her, and just like that, she didn’t care.
She didn’t care about anything, she thought firmly—fiercely—as the elevator doors finally opened and she catapulted herself inside, squeezing her eyes shut and breathing hard as she rode up toward her suite. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her, she told herself as she burst into her room and packed her things in a wild, frenetic whirl, as if she thought demons might descend upon her and carry her off if she wasn’t out of the hotel in mere moments. She didn’t care what she thought of herself, she assured herself as she lugged her own bags back down to the lobby and into the waiting car, because that hardly mattered any longer when she was fairly certain she’d left the last bit of who she was in Theo’s bed. In his arms.
She wrapped herself in the pashmina she always carried in her travel bag, though it was anything but cold on such a warm summer’s evening. Then she curled up in the backseat of the car, and she directed the driver to take her to the airport as quickly as he could, and then, only then, did she cry.
She cried and she cried.
And Holly didn’t care about that—about indulging in an emotional breakdown in a semipublic place, no matter that the car’s windows were tinted—either. Because the truth was, she didn’t care about anything but putting as much distance between her and Theo as possible.
She couldn’t care about anything else, because she couldn’t think of anything else.
It’s not losing yourself you fear, he’d said, damn him, and she could hear him as plainly as if he was sitting right there with her in the car, next to her in the leather bucket seats. She could see him as if he was still delivering those words to her like a prison sentence from up on high, looking at her with challenge and pity and some other dark thing in his gaze she was afraid to identify. It’s finding yourself whole. Whole and happy and loved.
She wrapped her arms around herself, and let the past wash over her. Her sad, lonely childhood, spent alone on their remote spit of ornery Texas land, just Holly and her mournful father and the ghost of the woman who had wanted neither one of them at all.
Her earliest memories were of the relentless, endless chores and her own guilt that her father had her to deal with in addition to the land that gave him so little. Guilt and shame that her mother hadn’t wanted her enough to take her or fight for her or even keep in touch with her once she’d gone. And guilt that no matter how hard she’d worked, no matter how dedicated she’d been to him, her father had never loved her as much as he’d loved the land itself and the woman who’d left him there to rot on it.
In the car, hurtling toward the airport, Holly sucked in a sharp breath, one hand moving to massage that hollow place that had opened up in her chest.
Oh, her father had loved her. Holly knew that he had, as much as he’d been able. As much as he’d had left in him.
But Theo had been right. Her father’s love had been a furious thing, wounded and scarred. It had been love laid prostrate to someone who would never want him back, much less love him in return. It was a life lived for the one who left, not the ones who stayed behind.
And it had never occurred to Holly to question that. It had never crossed her mind to think about how unhealthy that kind of life was. She’d shut down any thoughts of her upbringing a long time ago. She’d refused to think of her father as anything but the good man she knew he was. Because that part was true. He was a good man, a decent man. He had a deep sort of faith and he’d treated others fairly, and he’d taught Holly to do the same.
But he was a man first, a human being, and those were complicated creatures, never all one thing or another. Gabe Holt had been harsh and silent. Stubborn like the damned land that had broken him down year in and year out. And he had never let go, not of anything—the ranch, his wife, his determination—no matter how much it hurt him. No matter what damage it did. No matter if it was hard to tell, after a decade or two, if it was love or hate that drove him.
“Stop,” Holly whispered, and she didn’t know who she was talking to any longer.
The ghosts in her past? The unhealthy creature who squatted in her mind and insisted she had to be as unhappy as the people who’d raised her? That their brand of pain was familiar and that made it better, somehow? Or at least right?
That if she wasn’t racked with pain, she wasn’t alive?
Outside the windows, the day was bright. Warm. And yet she was still so cold.<
br />
And Holly knew then that all of this was her fault. That no matter what Theo might have done, she’d done it first.
Because Theo had loved her, deeply and passionately, from the moment they’d met. He’d fought his family. Ignored his critics. He’d been a famous playboy before her and yet when he’d found her, he’d been utterly faithful until she’d convinced him she wasn’t. It had been her lie, her determination to escape their marriage because she was afraid of losing herself, that had caused all of this.
She had never understood, until now, that what she was afraid of losing was the pain.
The pain she’d been raised with. The deep hurt that infused every last moment of her childhood. The agony had hung like smoke in the dark rooms of her childhood home, sneaking into her clothes, her skin. It had pressed into her and weighed her down like the famous Texas heat, until she’d had no idea that it wasn’t a part of her. Until she’d believed that, without it, she was unrecognizable.
Because without it, Holly didn’t know who she was. The society maven, capable of extraordinary elegance even when she used it as armor? Or the unsophisticated, untutored naïf who had careened around Europe in her own dizzy bubble, which she hadn’t understood until now was its own kind of costume?
She didn’t know who she was, but for the first time in as long as she could remember, Holly had a very clear idea of who she wanted to be instead.
And that was why she didn’t shake at all when she sat up straight and wiped her eyes. When she tucked her pashmina back in her bag and smoothed down the blouse she remembered Theo removing with such bone-melting patience.
That was why her voice was strong and smooth when she asked the driver to turn them around and take her back into the city, after all.
To The Chatsfield, Barcelona.
To Theo, if he’d have her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HOLLY HAD NO particular plan.
She arrived at the hotel, had the porters deal with her luggage, and then she was standing there once more, surrounded by gleaming marble on all sides, sparkling chandeliers above, everything so perfectly luxurious it made her try to breathe more quietly, the better to blend.
You’re stalling, she acknowledged.
Her rings caught the dancing light from above her, and Holly stared at them the way she had when Theo had first put them there, high on a cliff with only the gorgeous Greek sea below. She remembered the way they’d caught her eye, so bright and happy, just like the fizzy way she’d felt inside every time she’d looked at Theo.
She remembered how powerful she’d found the wearing of them, because they were more than simply pretty stones set against graceful bands. They were more than jewelry. They were promises forged into precious metal.
They were vows that were never meant to come off.
And she might have broken her promises in a hundred ways since she’d made them, but the rings were still right there. She’d never removed them, not in all these years. As if her subconscious had been trying to tell her the truth this whole time.
It was time to make good on that truth. Past time.
She’d started toward the elevator when she heard a Greek curse, uttered in a rich, low voice she’d recognize anywhere. A voice that moved in her the way it always had and always would.
Like heat. Like home.
“Let me make something clear to you,” Theo told a diffident hotel employee who stood before him as if awaiting—even anticipating—a hard kick. “I don’t care about Spencer Chatsfield or his issues or the misbehavior of his employees. I want...”
Holly felt it when he saw her. It was harder than any kick. It lit her up, making her entire body shift into bright red.
Theo waved the Chatsfield man away and moved toward Holly instead, his expression fierce at first and then, as he drew close, shuttered. She noticed his bags behind him on a golden hotel trolley and told herself that was nothing to be upset about. She’d left first.
“Where are you going?” she asked, and she had to swallow hard, her throat was so dry. “Back to Athens?”
He studied her for a moment in that way of his, as if he could see straight through her. As if he could see deep inside her bones. And for the first time, she welcomed it. Theo blinked.
“Yes,” he said. “To Athens.” He didn’t reach out to her then, he simply shifted slightly, and Holly didn’t know why she felt as if he’d touched her. As if he’d held her close, somehow, without even laying a finger on her. The corner of his mouth curved. “By way of Dallas.”
Something uncurled inside of her, warm and fragile at once. It flooded her, making her feel weak and powerful all at once.
“I got the distinct impression that you were letting me go,” she whispered. “And who could blame you?”
“I was,” Theo agreed. “But I didn’t say I wouldn’t follow right behind you.” He shook his head. “You were right, Holly, about so many things. I should have followed you then. I never should have let that last night stand as the only conversation we ever had about our marriage. I was filled with ego, with hurt pride...”
“How could you be anything else?” she said, all the things she’d waited all these years to say falling over one another as she tried to speak, to get them out at last. “You were the only person in all my life who loved me back, Theo. It terrified me. It still terrifies me. I don’t know how to do anything but run as far away from it as I can, hurting both of us in the process. Again and again.”
“But you keep coming back.”
“Ineptly.” She laughed, an uneven sound. “Half-assedly.”
“Yet here you are,” he pointed out, all that warmth in his dark gaze making her feel wrapped in gold. Something like cherished, though she hardly dared think that word. “That must mean something.”
He moved again, pulling her hands into his, and then, simply, everything was better. So much better, it was like moving from deep shadows into the bright noonday sun. It was cold become heat, that easily. Holly gazed down at his strong hands wrapped around hers, then up to his face again.
And it was as if they were thrown back in time, back to that breeze-touched cliff in all the soaring Santorini sunshine. His hands had held hers, just like this. She’d gazed up at him, just like this. And she’d made promises to him she’d never meant to break.
This time, she’d do it better, she vowed. This time, she’d stay strong.
“I love you,” she told him then, and now, even as they mixed together in her head. “Though you have no reason to believe me.”
“But I do,” he murmured, taking one of her hands to his mouth and pressing a kiss there, like a boon. Like an act of faith, of love. “I do believe you. I believe you always have loved me, in your own way.”
“I think you love me, too,” she continued, her voice barely audible, though she knew he heard her when his dark eyes took on that bright golden gleam again, deeper and more powerful than before. “Though I can’t think of a single reason why.”
“I can think of a thousand,” he assured her. “But I don’t need reasons, Holly. I’ve always loved you. I always will. Reasons change behavior, perhaps, but they can’t change a heart. And mine is yours. Still and always, yours.”
“I want to love you the way I should,” she told him fiercely. “I want to love you so much I never think of running again. I want to keep my promises to you, and never give you cause to break yours again.” Her eyes stung then, but she forged on. “I want to go back in time and do it over, take it back...”
“We met and married too fast,” Theo sai
d, pulling her closer, so she propped herself against him with her hands on his chest. “We needed to grow up. Our problem is that we did this apart, that’s all. Every couple must grow, Holly. That’s the only way to survive.” He shifted, running his hands along her sides, bringing them up to trace something like wings on her back, as if he thought she could fly if she wanted to and here, in his arms, she believed she could. She believed. “And we will survive. I have every confidence.”
“How can you?” she asked, her voice small. “After everything that’s happened?”
“Because this time it took you a mere hour to come back to me,” he said, his fine mouth curving gently in one corner. “Next time, perhaps you won’t leave at all. And that’s what matters, Holly. Everything else, we have the rest of our days to work out as best we can. Fighting. Dancing. Rose petals and forced marches down memory lane...”
She slid her arms high and looped them around his neck, and though she could feel the cool kiss of tears against her cheeks, she smiled at him. She felt that smile all the way to her toes.
Because he looked like forever.
She thought that maybe, this time, that’s what they were.
“That sounds tempting,” she said now, tilting her head back and looking at him. Really looking at him. Her beautiful husband. Whom she would learn how to love without making it hurt like this, she promised herself then. Whom she would learn to love as he deserved, or die trying. “Or, of course, you could kiss me.”
Theo’s smile spread over his lean cheeks and lit up his eyes. It filled Holly’s heart and spilled out everywhere else, making her shine. Making her feel as bright as he was, as if between them they burned brighter and hotter than the whole of the Spanish summer ahead.
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