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his
responsibilities from the exasperated father he’d stopped listening to years
before, when the issue of the old man’s character had been made abundantly
clear. He’d walked up the hill to his favorite restaurant to charm the owner,
one of his oldest friends, into plying him with good food to chase away the
remains of another too-long, too-excessive night.
    Instead, he’d found Holly, with her startled laughter and her
bright, beckoning innocence, and his entire life had changed.
    And she’d been sitting exactly like this.
    Theo finally stopped moving then, right there in the busy aisle
of the intimately lit restaurant, and forced himself to breathe. To
think
. To note that all of this was part of the little performance
she was staging for his benefit—to achieve her own ends, at his continuing
expense. She’d chosen to sit at one of the tables in the open windows over the
busy, popular street, and Theo understood this was all part of her plan. Not
simply to meet him in public, in a restaurant like their very first meeting a
lifetime ago, but to do so while visible to the entire city of Barcelona, as if
that might keep her safe.
    She thought she was controlling this game. She thought she was
controlling
him
.
    It was in that moment that Theo decided to play. And to
win.
    He walked the rest of the way to her table and then slid into
the seat across from her. He helped himself to her wine once he threw himself
down, since they were dealing in echoes of the past. Why not do his part? He
took a long pull from her glass, the way he would have back then, his mouth
pressing against the small mark her glossy lips had left behind and then eyeing
her over the rim.
    He couldn’t read her dark blue eyes tonight. He couldn’t see
her every last thought on her face the way he could have back then. Then again,
given the way she’d played him, perhaps he’d never seen what he thought he had.
It didn’t matter, he told himself then. This was a new game, and this time, he
knew from the start that he was playing it.
    There would be no surprises here. Not this time.
    â€œ
Kalispera
, Holly,” he said, and when she blinked at
him, he got the distinct impression she’d known he was there the whole time,
despite the fact she’d been looking in the other direction. From the moment he’d
entered the restaurant, even. He stretched out his legs and was instantly aware
of how she shifted, to keep her own out of his reach, as if even that mild a
touch might set them both on fire. She wasn’t wrong and that, too, added fuel to
the anger inside of him. And to his determination to win this thing, no matter
the cost. “You look well enough. Spending my money clearly suits you. Is that
polite enough to start?”

CHAPTER THREE
    S HE ’ D DREAMED THIS a thousand times. More.
    This is really happening
, Holly told herself, trying to keep her expression blank. Or failing that, calm, which wasn’t easy with the wild and erratic dance her heart was doing inside her chest.
This isn’t one of those dreams.
    â€œHello, Theo,” she said calmly, as if this wasn’t the first time they’d spoken face-to-face, in the actual flesh,
in touching distance
, in nearly four years. As if being back in Barcelona, at The Chatsfield of all places, meant nothing to her. As if she felt nothing at all—as if she really was the person she’d gone to such lengths to convince him she was.
Just a little bit longer
, she promised herself. “Did you have a pleasant flight?”
    â€œOf course.” He was so much
more
in person. She remembered the way his sheer presence had always seemed to scrape the air thin all around him, and it was worse now. As if he claimed more than his fair share of oxygen, simply because he could. Because he was Theo. “I do not maintain a private plane with my own staff for an unpleasant flight, do I?”
    â€œI feel that way about