There’s no way she can be my soulmate, right?
Chapter Three
Daphne
I collapse onto my pink, frilly bed and clutch my pillow to my face, feeling every bit the preteen fool I last was when I did this, except now I’m almost thirty. The bed shifts under Valentina’s slight weight, and I feel her soft hand on my back. Both of us are still in our gowns and full makeup, though our masks are discarded in a pile on the bedside table, remnants of this strange night.
“Do you want to talk about him?” she asks.
I roll over onto my back and stare up at the pink canopy over my bed. “Not really,” I say, but it’s a lie. There’s nothing I want to talk about more, but not with her. With him.
Theodore Latsis.
How is it possible that my Prince Charming, the one man I could actually imagine in my Italian villa life, is the one guy most forbidden to me? It makes sense that he would understand me though when I talked about the pressure of obligations and responsibilities. What’s most surprising is how he really seemed to empathize with my desire to run away. Could it be that he and I both long to break free of the feud and end the family drama?
Or is it all some devious Latsis plan to get the inside scoop on my company and my family? I try to remember the image I had in my head of the boy who beat up Ty, and it just doesn’t fit the boy who rescued me from the dull, insipid Philip Pemberton. Who kissed me so sweetly and made my heart race. Who made me believe the impossible, a man who sees and appreciates me and not my name, could be real.
Valentina stands and pulls two make-up removal wipes off of my dresser, tossing me one. I take it and start cleaning my face.
“When we were talking about the Latsis boys earlier,” Valentina says, “I never imagined it could actually happen.”
“Me neither,” I admit.
“But I’ve never seen you more alive,” she adds, looking at me pointedly.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, repeating my sentiment from earlier in the evening before I’d met Theo. “I know who he is now, and he is not for me.”
We had previously arranged for Valentina to stay the night, so even though I don’t feel like having company, I force myself to get up and be a good hostess. We hang up our gowns, dress in shorts and t-shirts, and climb into bed together. Sensing my mood, Valentina thankfully changes the subject, going on about how she and Ty danced almost the whole night until Ty spotted Mac Latsis across the room and ran off after him. Mac also ruined my night, revealing the truth and ripping Theo away from me.
She rolls and wraps an arm around me, her soft hair falling against my neck. “Stupid Latsis boys,” she whispers, and I can tell she’s drifting off. A few minutes later, her breathing evens out and she’s asleep.
I lie there for a long while after that, tracking the moon through the window. It’s full tonight, rising quickly, casting a beam of white light into my room. Unable to sleep, I slip out from beneath Valentina and quietly open the doors, stepping out onto the balcony. Leaning on stone and iron railing, I look up at the moon, my one constant companion. When I was younger and would get homesick, I would take comfort in the fact that just hours before, that same moon had looked down on my mother or my father or my friends across the world. Now, I think about how it watched Theo all those years, too.
“Did you know?” I ask the moon. “When I was longing for home, did you know I would find it in the one person I’m supposed to hate?” Laughing at myself, I run my hands down my face and groan. To my family, I’m a pawn, little more than my name, but to Theo…he wanted me before he knew my name. And now that he knows it, what? That’s the end to what we started tonight? Over before it even began.
My family would kill me if they knew we even shared a dance. How can I betray their trust this way? How is it that I felt so comfortable and safe in his strong arms when I’d never been in more danger before?
“Couldn’t he have been anyone else?” I ask aloud, not sure if I’m asking it of the moon or of myself.
In answer, the light from the moon bounces off of the pool below, and in the reflection, I see something move. I go still, my eyes searching the darkness. Then, a figure emerges. At first, I’m expecting a security officer, but as he steps into the light, he takes the form of Theodore Latsis—tall, with dark hair, a scruffy beard, and broad shoulders that seem strong enough to carry the weight of the world on them. I’d thought maybe my memory had been exaggerating his perfection, but no—he is just as handsome as I remember.
“Daphne,” he says in a loud whisper. My name sounds delicious on his full lips. “Can I come up?”
I glance over my shoulder. Valentina is still sleeping in the bed. Turning back, I tell him, “Wait there. I’m coming.”
My heart races as I sneak out of my room and down the long hall of bedrooms. I hope that my parents and Ty and whoever else stayed here for the night is too drunk or too tired to hear me as I do my best to avoid the squeaking floorboards of the old house. I descend the stairs and run softly through the kitchen, emerging into our back courtyard.
As soon as the door closes behind me, Theo emerges from the shadows, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me against him. Our mouths come together frantically, and the responsible part of me that had reasoned away our attraction just an hour ago fades into oblivion. His strong hands grab my ass and lift me against him. My legs wrap around his hips, and my hands tousle his already messy hair. He’s warm, a raging inferno against my cool skin.
Gasping, I tip my head away from his only to have his mouth find my neck.
“How did you get in here?” I ask. The house is in historic South Square, and the garden is surrounded by tall stone walls.
“I had to see you,” he says, and I can hear the same sad desperation in his voice that I felt just moments before. “To see if this thing between us was real.”
He lets me down slowly until my feet touch the concrete again, but I don’t step away. I can feel our hearts pounding between us, the beats racing in tandem. “It is, isn’t it? Real? You’re not…using me to get to my dad?”
His brow furrows as he grips my face in one of his large hands. “For the first time ever, this has nothing to do with my dad.”
I push up onto my tiptoes and kiss him, the rough hairs of his beard tickling my chin.
He slides his hands up my back, winding them in my loose hair. Through my kisses, he says, “I don’t care about our parents. I don’t care about our companies. I just want this feeling to last forever.”
“A hundred years,” I remind him.
“Longer.”
“But how?” I ask, thinking of my family, of my company, of my dad who trusts me.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “I can’t—I can’t think with you…” He trails off as my fingers finish unbuttoning his shirt and slide inside, tracing the lines of his hard abs and dipping behind the buckle of his pants, making him shiver.
He’s not the only one having trouble thinking. My mind feels frozen while my heart races, pounding in my ears, drowning out my thoughts. I’m on fire for him, burning to have him touch me, to have him inside of me.
With a growl, he pushes me off of the concrete patio around the pool and lifts me onto the wooden picnic table. I open my knees and he steps between them. His hands pull up my shirt, exposing my breasts.