He found himself scowling down at Molly’s beautiful form, laid out for his pleasure. And was too aware that Balthazar was perhaps the one man alive who would fully understand what he was about here. But that didn’t mean Constantine knew how to go about telling him.
Money was easier. It was either made or lost. The numbers never lied.
They also never had opinions.
“I ran into Isabel at a charity thing some years back,” Balthazar said, sounding nonchalant and conversational. Two things he had never been before his wedding. Constantine did not know whether to applaud or ask if Balthazar was feeling well. “She seemed far less of a gorgon than I recalled, it must be said.”
“You are mistaken,” Constantine bit off, staring at the gorgon’s daughter. “She remains every bit the horror show she was then. Did you forget what she did?”
“I’ll never forget what she represented,” Balthazar said, with a not particularly subtle inflection on that last word. “But what did she do, really, except marry a man neither one of us liked much either?”
Constantine took that as an opportunity to steer the conversation away from the thorny topic of Isabel Payne, but he was still brooding about it when he and his brother ended the call.
And he continued to brood about it until dinner that night with Molly.
Because he liked her to dress in the evenings, he also allowed his staff in then. He had his cook prepare them the kind of meals he always preferred when he was by the sea. Light and fresh, assembling local ingredients and letting the dishes they ate look as colorful as the table they ate them on.
Tonight he waited for her on the low terrace, the one set even further down the cliffside than the pool. It was accessible only by a winding path, meandering this way and that, with nothing but the sea there below. At night it was lit by lanterns, all of them making little halos against the hill when he looked back up toward the house.
How had he failed to notice how beautiful it was here when he was younger?
But then, he knew. Every moment in this house had been a trial, and when he’d stormed off to Skiathos Town in the evenings, his focus had been on oblivion, not taking in the sights. And he didn’t like to think about what his brother had said. He didn’t want to ask himself what Isabel or her daughter had actually done.
They had been here. That was enough.
As always, he heard her coming a few moments later. And was perhaps too grateful to turn from his thoughts to watch Molly as she moved in and out of the halos strewn across her path. Then stepped onto the terrace that had lanterns everywhere, casting her in a golden glow that seemed to beat back the night sky.
For glow she did. Still. Perhaps always.
Her blond hair swirled all around her and the dress he had chosen for the evening was a splash of a deep blue that made her look almost otherworldly.
“Your dress-up doll is reporting for duty,” Molly said. Then executed a sharp pirouette, swirling around before him in a manner he knew she meant to be mocking.
But he did not feel in the least bit mocked. Because the way this particular dress clung to her was a revelation. The fabric clung and swung, both calling attention to and yet concealing everything at the same time.
Constantine had discovered that the more she was dressed or undressed according to his whim, the more possessive he became. And he enjoyed knowing that she wore nothing but the dress, as he had requested.
As if he might, at any moment, have his hands all over her. He liked her to spend a lot of time, every day, thinking about that possibility.
He knew he did.
“I apologize that my sartorial selections do not live up to those of a woman renowned the world over for her style,” he said dryly. “Which, as far as I can tell, involves wearing extraordinarily ugly things as a measure of defiance.”
“You’re not wrong,” Molly agreed. She drifted closer to him and accepted the glass of wine he handed her. “But fashion is a self-conscious art by its very nature. Style is innate.”
“Now you sound like one of those dreadful magazines. I thought you were more often seen draped across their covers.”
Molly took a sip of her wine and, not for the first time, he was struck by her total lack of self-consciousness. She was disarming, this stunning woman who should have been prostrate in her room, weeping at the cruelty being visited upon her here. Instead, she seemed effortlessly charming—as she had been each and every one of the past ten days.
As a strategy, he was forced to admire it. Because she chose to engage with Constantine as if he was her host. Not her jailer.
When she was naked, it was easy to remember their actual roles here. But these dinners blurred the lines. They made him almost forget why they were really here—and he knew he couldn’t allow that. He should put a stop to any part of this that did not serve his vengeance.
But though he told himself the same thing every night, he kept on with these dinners anyway.
He chose not to ask himself why.
Molly was studying him, her gaze cool but not unpleasant. It was clearly a part of her charm offensive—and he assured himself he was merely learning how she operated. Her weaknesses and fragile spots. Her surprisingly effective weapons.
“When you wake up of a morning,” she said, “I doubt very much that you preen about in front of your mirror until you have achieved exactly the right level of casual chic. Mixed liberally with contempt at the very notion of casual chic, obviously. I think you likely...just get dressed.”
“I
