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“Ahetairais 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.
Changingher.
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 flattering,” 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.”
Hewondered.
