Not since Demetrius had died, at any rate, taking with him his cruel reversals, endless judgments, and what Constantine had always thought was a truly sadistic delight in the art of the sucker punch, both literal and figurative.
He had not missed any of that since he and Balthazar had buried the old man with all the pomp and circumstance of a monarch, according to his typically narcissistic instructions. Constantine had stood in the famed Metropolitan Cathedral in Athens that surely should have crumbled around him at his entrance, to say nothing of his father’s many offenses against God and man, and had tried to look suitably grim and somber.
When all he’d been thinking was, good riddance, old man.
He did not appreciate the return to unpredictability. He resented any and all memories of his father as it was.
It was one more charge to lay at Molly’s feet.
Constantine had been forced to sit about in that odd old house he’d never cared for, waiting. He had felt so worldly at twenty that he’d thought having to leave his admittedly nonchalant studies in London at all was a personal attack. He had especially disliked having to spend that first year’s holidays marooned on this island with a new family he’d despised, as his father had demanded. This time around, as then, he passed the time by outlining all the ways he would take out his retribution on Molly and her mother. It was an exercise that had once filled him with what he’d assumed was joy. By a process of elimination.
Surely it should have done so again, especially given the fact that this time, he had a great deal more leverage. Yet as the two days he’d given Molly dragged by, he found himself far more invested in her return to Skiathos than he should have been.
Because it was only one of the options he had before him, as well he knew. He should have been equally invested in all of them. Forcing her to sell that charming little Mews house of hers would deliver a serious blow, for example. He knew that. He should have been moving on that angle while he waited.
The problem was that now, having seen her in person again, Constantine was far more interested in the angles that involved the flesh. Her flesh and his. He had always viewed sex as akin to the hotel buffets he’d observed in the properties he owned—readily available and very, very rarely worth the trouble. He had certainly never had to convince a woman to sleep with him.
In point of fact, he was far more often engaged in scraping lovers off, not obtaining them.
Yet Molly was different.
He told himself it was because of their history. Because of her déclassé mother and the fact they’d all been forced to share space—this space. That was what made her an obsession. That was why he sometimes felt haunted by her. And had for years.
But he had the taste of her in his mouth now and he couldn’t seem to get past it.
And he had expected that Molly, in person, would prove the rule that photography was a very specific kind of magic. He’d expected her to look sallow. To have terrible skin, lank hair, or both. To make it clear, up close, that she had good bones but that all those pictures of her were simply make-believe.
Instead, he’d been astonished—and furious, frankly—to discover that if anything, the camera was unkind to Molly Payne.
Because she was far more beautiful in person than she’d ever been on film.
Constantine had been tempted to throw away all his plotting, keep on kissing her, and to hell with their past.
Really, that alone should have had him calling off this whole thing and moving against Isabel a different way. Because clearly, he was unprepared for the reality of his former stepsister, and the fact that he didn’t wish to accept that didn’t make it any less true.
That he’d woken in the night, his body hard and aching for her, his head filled with intense images of the two of them together, had not helped.
He’d stood out on his balcony in the dark, too aware that he need not suffer through his own desire if he did not wish it. He could go down into Skiathos Town and have his choice of women to slake his lust. If he listened, he could almost hear the sound of the island’s nightlife on the breeze. And it had been a very long time since he’d had to control his own desires, if ever. He was not certain he had ever waited for a specific woman in his life. There was never a need for specificity when the world was filled with so many options.
Go, he had ordered himself. Get a woman and get a handle on this madness now.
But he hadn’t taken his own advice.
And he did not wish to acknowledge the sense of something far too close to relief he felt when his staff announced Molly’s arrival. Precisely two minutes before her two days were up.
It wasn’t relief, he told himself now. It was merely a well-earned pleasure that his plan was continuing as it should, particularly now she’d returned.
He did not have her shown into his father’s wretched study this time. He had spent his morning dealing with any number of tedious business concerns and was now sitting out on one of the many terraces, taking in the sparkling blue of the cove below him. Still, he knew the moment she rounded the corner, taking the outside stair from the front of the house, draped in bougainvillea all the way. And this time, there was no click of high heels against the stones.
Constantine smiled, for he could only assume that meant the battle was on.
Sure enough, when Molly finally presented herself before him—clearly in no rush—she wore a black dress that had to be at least three sizes too large for her elegantly
