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“That he could push her into working for him so she didn’t work for the enemy.” She air-quoted.
“God forbid she ever works for him.” Angela put a hand to her forehead like a swooning romance heroine.
Teresa waved her fingers. “She won’t. But here’s what I have to say about your ex-husband.” Teresa had never liked or trusted Donald. “His manipulation and underhandedness used to be more subtle. Now he seems to think he can lie with impunity, as if no one’s going to challenge him.” She leaned closer. “You need to tell Sienna the truth before he does. I think he’s planning something.”
Angela felt that arrhythmia again. “He said something like that when I confronted him about the wedding. I told him I didn’t like him using my name to spread his lies.” She breathed in slowly, let the air slide out again. “And he made a crack.”
“About telling her?”
Angela nodded.
Teresa nodded too. “He’ll slap her with it and make you look as bad as possible.”
Angela bit down on her inner lip. “I wanted Sienna to come to Santorini with me and feel what it was like to be young and free and on the trip of a lifetime. And how things could just happen. I’ve already decided it’s the perfect spot to tell her the truth.”
“That’s a couple of months away. You better hope he doesn’t get to her first.”
“I’m certainly hoping. Once she knows, it’ll give me a whole new sense of freedom,” Angela whispered. “Even though I’m worried about how Sienna will react, Donald can no longer hold this secret over me.”
Teresa brought her brows together. “You’re not going back to Santorini to find him, are you? Or introduce Sienna to him?”
Angela didn’t need to ask who Teresa meant. “I was supposed to meet him in June.” But she hadn’t gone back to Santorini. Everything changed, and she’d never seen him again. This trip was like a pilgrimage to the mistakes of her past.
“You’re thirty years too late.” While the words were harsh, Teresa’s tone was gentle.
“I’m too late, period,” Angela said.
“Then why go back and torture yourself?”
She didn’t know how to explain it. “I just want to remember how it felt. To be young. To be in love. To have hope.” She dipped her head, focused on the cooling coffee in her cup. “I want to believe that it’s possible to experience that feeling again, now that I’m divorced.”
Teresa snorted. “I wish Donald was out of our lives forever. He’s like a bad smell that keeps hanging around.”
It was such an apt description that they laughed. Donald was the bad smell that had everyone looking around to see who’d done it. Only they can’t figure it out.
Teresa sobered. “I just don’t think you can go back to a place where you’ve lost everything and expect to feel better. If you want to start over, do it here.”
“I don’t expect to feel better,” Angela insisted. “But I also don’t think I lost everything there. I gained Sienna. And I learned what genuine love was.”
Teresa tutted. “You knew him for three weeks. That’s just starry-eyed lust. And because you didn’t love Donald when you married him, you turned this guy into a fantasy that no one can live up to. Even if you found him, he wouldn’t be the man you dreamed him into.”
She’d certainly had her fantasies. Even with Donald, she’d been caught up in the romance of being the sole focus of his attention along with the glitter of his lifestyle, just like her mother was. It was only on Santorini that she saw how she mistook being desired for true love.
“You’ll never be able to understand, Teresa, because you’ve been with the man you love for so long. But love can happen just like that.” Angela snapped her fingers.
She’d seen him, and she’d fallen. Hard. Never to recover.
“Have you ever Googled him?”
Angela poured herself another cup of coffee. “An internet search would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“Seriously? How many Xandros Daskalakis can there be?”
Xandros. His name slipped off her tongue when he touched her. Tall and muscular and beautiful, with dark wavy hair and the most piercing blue eyes she’d ever seen. She’d always thought black hair meant brown eyes, but his eyes reflected the Santorini blue of the water. When he looked at her, it was as if he knew her soul. And she knew his. It wasn’t some tawdry romance between a girl on vacation and her tour guide. She didn’t truly believe Xandros picked up a new woman every tour, despite what her mother had convinced her when she was young.
Teresa, on the other hand, had always believed Angela when she said that his love was true. She’d just never thought it could last.
Angela could still hear her mother’s voice all those years ago. “You stupid, stupid girl. How could you let this happen?”
