Her Deal With The Greek Devil (Mills & Boon Modern) (Rich, Ruthless & Greek, Book 2) - Caitl Caitlin Crews (well read books txt) 📖

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.”

He wondered.

Molly felt everything inside of her...blow up.

She thought of that girl, lost and lonely, torn away from everything she’d ever known and shunted off to that blinding island, with the Greek sun that blazed on her only one of the things that shined too brightly to look at directly. She thought of the horror she felt when she’d realized what Constantine was truly about, when she’d read those stories he’d placed. And all the contortions she had gone through to convince herself that it had all been her fault, not his.

Then there were all the years in between, where she had made herself into the very thing that girl could never have imagined she’d become. Anti-beige. Anti-porridge. And all along knowing, somewhere deep inside of her, that she was doing it because of him.

At him.

He had made her feel small, so she became giant.

Epic.

She remembered when it had begun to occur to her how strange it was that her mother kept having so many runs of notably bad luck when, whatever else Isabel was, she had never been stupid. And how Molly had felt when she’d traced it all back to Constantine himself.

When he’d made certain she could trace it back to him.

And she could remember with perfect clarity leaving this very house that morning, so long ago now, to fly down to Skiathos and face him at last.

Molly had known the truth then, hadn’t she? She called it nerves. Anxiety. A history she wanted nothing to do with, she’d assured herself, but she’d known better.

She’d been excited.

Thrilled that she would see him again, at last, no matter the circumstances.

That was the long and the short of it. She had gone to Skiathos to confront him about the things he’d done to her mother and her, the campaign he’d deliberately waged against her family for years, and she’d been excited.

There had been those ten days spent naked in the sunlight, then dressed for his pleasure when the stars came out.

There had been their press tour, all those hours spent together flying from place to place, and the performance they both put on so well for the cameras. The dancing. The gazing.

All to be left on the very night she’d given him her innocence, called her a whore, and had abandoned her. Not in that order.

“The fact of the matter,” she hurled at him, slamming the wine bottle down on the nearest table and slightly surprised it didn’t shatter with the force she expended, “is that you should thank your mother. Because you’ve been using her as an excuse for your entire life.”

“Molly—”

But she was just getting started.

“You focus with all your might on blame and retribution, because that’s much better than asking yourself why it is you’ve been hiding behind that poor woman since you were a kid. Isn’t it, Constantine? You built a whole alternate persona based on sex and promiscuity, perceived indolence and carelessness. All the while hiding the truth of you, deep inside.”

“That feels a bit pot and kettle, wouldn’t you say?” he bit out. “Magda?”

“Magda is a stage name,” she snapped out. “It’s the difference between putting on a costume and taking one off, that’s all. I’m not hiding anything, Constantine. I’m not two people. I’m not hiding in Magda—she’s a part of me.” And she knew as she said it that it was true. Maybe it hadn’t always been true, but it was now. She leaned in. “She’s always been a part of me. It’s what I call the part of myself that can handle the bright lights, the applause, the strange and glorious