From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed someone on the other side of the display case. She looked up from her phone for a split second, glancing quickly at the person standing in frontof her, then returned her gaze to her phone screen before their identity registered in her mind.
She looked back up, and there he was, staring at her with cerulean eyes once more.
“Hey, Juicy,” he said, placing his hand on the glass.
Dani sucked in a breath—and passed out.
Chapter
Three
Theo
Well…that didn’t go as expected.
Theo rushed to the other side of the museum display case in the exhibition room, empty except for the two of them, and dove to his knees, lifting Dani’s limp body in his arms. The warmth of her soft skin and her sweet vanilla scent released a flood of hope and memories.
She was here.
God, Dani was a sight for sore eyes.
Though based on her reaction, maybe the same couldn’t be said for him. Seeing as he’d envisioned Dani running into his arms for a hug, the fact that she’d looked at him like she’d seen a ghost didn’t give him much confidence in what people probably thought of his fate back home, even though he already assumed they imagined the worst.
“Dani,” he said, cradling her in his arms and jostling her body. Nothing.
He lowered his ear to her face, listening for breathing. The light air from her breaths tickled the hair on the back of his neck, and he turned his head ever so slightly, their noses now almost touching. Theo scanned her face, taking in each feature that he could probably recite from memory. Her long, thick eyelashes. The tiny scar on her left temple from the time she fell out of the boat and hit a rock when they went white-water rafting. Her full, wide lips, which Theo had stared at more times than he could count and more often than her brother’s best friend should have.
He brushed a few wisps of hair from her forehead and whispered again. “Juicy?” he said this time.
Still nothing.Shit.He needed to figure something out and fast. It was only a matter of time before Maurice and Louis came looking for him.
After his last couple of paltry escape attempts, it wouldn’t take long for them to realize Theowasn’tin the bathroom where he said he’d be five minutes earlier before he slipped around the corner when their backs were turned. But he had to try one more time. Because this time was different. This time he might actually have a chance.
What had it been? Seven months? Ten since he’d gone missing? He’d lost track of time. Counting the days, weeks, and months only increased Theo’s anxiety and hopelessness. He didn’t need anything else keeping him awake at night. After all, being held captive by unknown criminals and being forced to search for an artifact that Theo had absolutely no clue how to find didn’t exactly make for a peaceful night’s sleep.
By that point, he’d given up expecting that someone would recognize him as the Greek American archaeologist who’d disappeared after a boat accident. Crete was miles away from thearea where he’d gone missing. No one would be looking for him here. And even though his picture had been plastered all over the news and the papers for the few months after his disappearance, apparently his beard—something he’d never sported before—was as good as a fake nose-glasses-mustache Halloween getup. By now people had mostly stopped searching. So a few months ago, once his handlers, Maurice and Louis, deemed the coast clear, they set him to work searching for the Minotaur at the behest of “the boss.” Neither they nor Theo presumed anyone would recognize him all the way over in Heraklion.
When he lay awake at night for all this time, he liked to think about how he’d react if he saw someone he knew in the rare circumstances that Maurice and Louis allowed him to be seen in public. Would he scream for help? Would he merely pray that they reported the sighting to the authorities? Or, after his last attempt to escape left him with a broken nose and a black eye, would he pretend he was someone else, too afraid of what Maurice and Louis might do if he tried to get away again? Up to this point, he’d survived by playing dumb, hoping his failure to make any discoveries would eventually lead to his release.
He honestly never thought he’d have the opportunity to find out how he’d react, until he saw Dani at Knossos the day before. Had he been dreaming? Because seeing her face? Seeing her beautiful brown eyes seemed almost impossible. And not only because he didn’t think he would ever seeanyof his friends and family ever again.
Because it was her. Daniela Guiterrez, the woman he’d always wanted but could never have. Not after making that ridiculous teenage pact with Eddie twenty years ago after what they’d termed Operation Juicy-Gate.
We can never, under any circumstances, date each other’s sisters. EVER. Deal?
Of course, the odds of Theo’s sister, Ophelia, taking an interest in Eddie were about a thousand to one. By the time they’d made that agreement, Ophelia was already out of the house, finished with college, dating her future husband, and referred to Eddie as “Edweirdo.” And according to Theo’s parents, he was supposed to marry a Triple G: a “Good Greek Girl.” Plus, Theo was only seventeen at the time. He wasnotinterested in Eddie’s fifteen-year-old sister.
But after he’d taken Dani to her prom a few years later, something had changed. Theo would never forget the first time he got that flutter in his stomach that night. The feeling only grew more intense in the years after—and so did the echo of Eddie’s words in his head whenever she was near.
Even now as Dani lay passed out on the cold marble museum floor, the flutter had returned, and Theo had to tamp it down.
Though primarily because he didn’t havetimefor those feelings right now. Not with Maurice and Louis soon to be hot on his trail. With the two of them determined to find the woman who’d spotted them at Knossos and after they’d been following her all morning from her hotel through the streets of Heraklion and finally into the museum, he needed to get her out of there and as far away from them as possible so they could get to the US consulate.
Theo shook Dani once more, and when she didn’t flinch, he gathered her in his arms and lifted her from the ground. “Okay, Juicy,” he said to her even though she was out cold, “we’ve got to get you out of here.”
Without further hesitation, Theo exited the room and hightailed it through the museum, moving as fast as he could without causing Dani to flop around too much.
“Sir, is she okay?” an older woman asked in English, clearly a tourist, as he whizzed by.
