Greek's Last Redemption Read Free

colors he
remembered. Her dress was a masterful little exploration of classic, understated
elegance and suited this new version of her perfectly.
    Holly Holt was gone. Theo doubted she’d ever truly existed.
    In her place was this woman. This shrewdly manufactured,
ruthlessly accessorized creature. Holly Tsoukatos, who was such a committed
philanthropist indeed with her absent husband’s money forever at her disposal,
he thought derisively. Holly Tsoukatos, who’d made herself known as the
gracefully estranged wife of one of Europe’s favorite former playboys, and who’d
become more and more fashionable and sought after now that Theo was regarded as
a force as dangerous and successful as his famous father.
    He hated her, he told himself then, and he hated this. And most
of all he hated the fact that he still wanted that gloriously over-the-top,
unrestrained and uncultured little American girl who’d captivated a seasoned
sophisticate like him in a single searing week.
    But, of course, that Holly had been a lie. Why couldn’t he
remember that? She had never existed outside the virtuoso performance she’d put
on for him four and a half years ago.
This
version of his wayward wife,
this studiously well-mannered ice queen who’d built herself an entire little
empire of lies thanks to his money and her commitment to spending it, was the
real Holly. Staring at her frozen image, Theo acknowledged the fact that he
didn’t like remembering that harsh truth—it was one of the reasons he’d only
spoken to her on the telephone and very rarely at that these past four
years.
    That and his unwieldy temper, which she alone seemed able to
kick-start and send into overdrive with very little effort. But he hauled that
dark, simmering, betrayed thing in him under control again, and he didn’t care
if it left marks as he did it. He’d rather die than show her anything but his
dislike—the colder and more distant, the better. It wasn’t the only thing she’d
earned from him, not by a long shot, but it was the only thing he’d allow her to
see.
    He hit the button to unfreeze her and didn’t bother masking his
irritation.
    â€œWhat do you want?” he said by way of greeting after all these
years of nothing but infrequent telephone calls. His voice was blunt and
unfriendly and even that wasn’t enough to assuage the lick of his fury, that
deep and dark current of a primal need to strike back at her however he could.
“Have you managed to bankrupt me yet?”
    * * *
    This video call was a serious tactical error.
    Holly realized it the moment the screen before her burst into
life and color and sound again. Her courage and her determination—and much
worse, her voice—deserted her in a sudden rush.
This was a terrible
mistake
, the latest in a long line of terrible mistakes where this man
was concerned...
    Because she wasn’t prepared for
him
in all his almost
violent perfection. She never had been.
    Because he was
Theo
and he was
right there
on
her enormous desktop computer monitor after all these years, big and brooding
and
beautiful
, bursting straight into her lonely little life with all
that force and fire...
    And he was still so very angry with her.
    So deeply, encompassingly, seethingly angry, it felt like being
plunged into a dark cloud without his having to say a single word. Though the
words hurt, too—harsh and furious, each like a separate slap.
    Looking at him was like a contact sport. It always had been. It
was worse now, with all that fury making him seem to
burn
right there
before her eyes.
    Holly had heard it on the phone during their short and hostile
calls regarding her deliberately outrageous credit card bills these past
years—always spaced out according to his ever more busy schedule, one per
quarter at most and never long enough for any kind of real discussion. But now
she could
see
it, burning like a fierce heat in his