by Olivia Gates
But throughout the day, he kept saying, in so many creative ways, how edible and sublime she looked. She discovered she couldn’t get enough of his praise, hungered for it with the same constant ache she did for him.
Thinking he had an itinerary planned, she was stunned when he told her he was putting himself in her hands. He’d never seen the city, wanted her to take him to the places that had witnessed her favorite experiences and formed chunks of her memories.
From then on, she had a constant lump in her throat. At the willingness with which he agreed to anything she suggested, the wholeheartedness in which he followed her as she took him walking along the pier, cycling across the Brooklyn Bridge and riding in a horse-drawn carriage, feeding birds and having a picnic beneath a gigantic oak tree in Central Park.
Hours later, after lunch, they’d just finished the hot cocoa he’d run two miles round-trip for when he pulled her to him, encompassed her back with the warmth and comfort of his expansive chest and covered her with his jacket.
She melted against him, inhaling the intoxicating amalgam of his freshness, vigor and unique brand of distilled testosterone. He rubbed his jaw on the top of her head, murmuring enjoyment, too.
“Thank you for showing me your city, Selene,” he rumbled against her temple. “This, along with yesterday, was the best time I remember ever having.”
Her heart expanded so fast, so hard, she felt it would burst. She twisted to look up into his eyes. “I can’t believe you’ve been here so many times and never been anywhere.”
“I never had anyone I wanted to be anywhere with. Now I do.”
The tightness in her chest, behind her eyes, became unbearable. That sounded scarily wonderful. He sounded terribly lonely.
As if hearing her thoughts, he sighed. “I never felt I was missing anything, though.” That unfurled the tension inside her. She was glad he hadn’t been suffering in his voluntary segregation. “Now I know I was.”
She pressed deeper into his hold, as if to absorb any pain he was feeling in retrospect. “I thought I knew the city I’ve lived in all my life. But experiencing it with you, I feel I saw it through new eyes, with a combination of your fresh perspective and—”
A bird flapped inches away, making her swallow the rest of her words. Good thing it had. Saying the beauty of seeing it with you was too premature to feel, let alone admit.
They shared a long, tranquil silence, even though, for her, it was charged with heart-clogging confusion.
Suddenly he inhaled. “Until we settle things, I think we should keep this all between us.”
She raised her eyes to him. Her expression must have betrayed her hesitation about how to take his request. He rushed to add, “I don’t want to introduce the volatile element of your family with their personal misconceptions and business tensions. They’d have nothing but a negative role right now.”
Truth be told, she wanted nothing more than to keep her family out of this. Still, when he’d been the one to spell it out, a frisson of disappointment and suspicion had zapped through her. The reasons would fill a book with the contrariness only Aris incited in her, the stupid insecurities and paradoxes only he unearthed.
She suddenly felt the need to be away from him. At her first wriggle, he let her go. She started to rise, and he was on his feet in an impossibly fluid move, helping her up.
She walked ahead. He followed, caught up with her.
Suddenly he jumped in the air.
She blinked in surprise. He’d caught a Frisbee that had flown their way. Then she heard the giggles. She followed their trajectory to half a dozen coeds, all cute and in clinging tops and skimpy shorts.
He handed it to the buxom blonde who advanced on him, all suggestiveness. He looked down at her and her group with that mild amusement of the supremely confident male he was, said something that had them howling with laughter.
The incident took no more than two minutes. But it was enough to plunge her mood into frost.
They walked on in silence, she wondering how she’d thought a man like him could have been lonely. Or that she was in any way different to him from the hordes who panted after him.
“You do that on autopilot, don’t you?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Enthrall women,” she elaborated.
“I can say the same about you, with men,” he shot back.
“I don’t affect men anywhere near the way you affect women.”
His eyes narrowed, raising the heat of his contention. “You mean you didn’t notice the dropped jaws littering the city in your wake today? I’m almost sorry I asked you to wear a skirt. Boosting your femininity was definitely overkill.”
“Oh, come on. Men aren’t throwing themselves at me.”
“No, since men need to be invited to make a move. Women have the luxury of ‘throwing’ themselves without being accused of harassment.”
“You mean you feel harassed by women’s pursuit? You don’t invite it? Don’t allow it, at least?”
“You think I invited or allowed it? Just now?”
“No. I mean in general. Your reputation as a playboy is legend.”
“More of an urban myth. But if we’re trading misconceptions, I’d recite the incidents where you left lasting devastation in the ranks of the far more fragile male population.”
She almost snorted. “Men are more fragile? Which planet are you living on?”
“This one, which you evidently haven’t truly inhabited if you don’t realize that women are far more resilient than men.”
This gave her pause. “So the stories about you aren’t true?”
“I was never promiscuous. I never had the inclination.”
“But you had plenty of one-night stands.”
“According to reports? But contrary to them, I can actually count the times I’ve had sex since I became sexually active at fifteen. In almost twenty-five years, I haven’t had near as many women. What turned out to be mostly one-night stands for me wasn’t because I wanted a new flavor the next time, but because I didn’t find that single taste I wanted to have over and over. In fact, most of my sexual encounters were aborted because…the taste didn’t appeal to me.” He looked steadily into her eyes, wiping her mind clean of her preconceptions of him, installing the version he was relaying. “The other major reason no man should think of being promiscuous even if he had the indiscriminate taste to be so is that women are people. Very complex and complicated people.”
That made her hoot. “Oh, thanks for that piece of revolutionary thinking!”
His huff was sardonic. “I mean a promiscuous man thinks women are pastimes, thinks he indulges himself only with the no-strings variety. But there’s no such thing. Women always have strings and require effort and time. I never had either to spare. So I didn’t. I only ever accepted invitations from those who made it clear to me what those strings were, things I could give without infringing on my priorities.”
She hated hearing him talk about his sex life with such brutal honesty, yet was relieved it hadn’t been quite as she’d imagined. “Material things?”
“I offered gifts to anyone, not only sexual partners, who I thought would appreciate it, and because I can. None of them was a favor for sharing my bed. Though the bed sharing here is metaphorical. I never did sleepovers.”
“You did with me,” she whispered.
His pupils suddenly engulfed the silver of his eyes. “And I wanted to keep on doing it. But you skipped out on me.”
“I didn’t know what to do next. Thought I’d let you decide.”
There. She’d admitted her insecurity.
His face froze. “You could have left me some indication that you didn’t think it the biggest mistake of your life.”
She bit her lip to stop its trembling. “You could have called me, if even only to say thanks for the good time. I might have let you know I wasn’t against repeating it.”
Silence reverberated in the field of tension that engulfed them.
At last he exhaled heavily. “So we both made a mistake. And lost ourselves eighteen months.”
“I’m sure you found…alternatives during that time.”
He gave her an irritable glance. “What for? Whatever little satisfaction other women used to offer no longer existed.”
Everything stilled inside her.
“Are you telling me you haven’t…since me?”
“No,” he simply said. “Have you, since me?”
She bit her lip again. “Uh, if you didn’t notice, I was busy being pregnant and having a baby.”
That mind-reading focus of his sharpened on her face. “And those are the only reasons you didn’t…date other men?”
“No,” she admitted as straightforwardly as he had. “But I can’t believe it was the same for you.”
His gaze grew so deep, she felt it penetrate her marrow. And that was before he said, “Why can’t you? I found no point in having less than what I had with you. Not when you were the taste I’ve always looked for and never stopped craving.”
After that admission sent her spiraling into turmoil, as if by unspoken agreement to lay off the soul-baring discussions, they exchanged nothing of consequence for the rest of the day.
Then it was time to see Alex before his bedtime.
Back at her condo, they found Caliope and Alex getting along like a house on fire. Alex shrieked his welcome at their sight, rushed to slobber on each of them equally.
Aris and Caliope stayed far beyond Alex’s bedtime, and Aris again cooked for his “ladies.” Caliope could barely speak with shock when she saw him heading to the kitchen. Then with each mouthful of the heavenly soufflé he’d prepared, she kept saying how the foundation of her life had been irreversibly shaken.
Aris received her amazement with an enigmatic smile, one that had Selene itching to know just what stories it was hiding.
At one o’clock, Aris pulled Caliope up to leave.
They went into Alex’s room first. Selene’s heart twisted as Aris lovingly kissed the tiny sleeping replica of himself, almost asked him to stay with him, with her. With them.
But no matter how incredible the past two days had been, that step was far too premature.
At the door, Aris stood aside as Selene and Caliope hugged and planned future get-togethers, with Caliope gushing over the perfect day she’d had not only with Alex but with her, and most of all, with the oldest brother she was discovering anew.
He then let Caliope precede him to the elevators before waving at Selene and turning away.
She stared after him, disappointment detonating inside her.
But he took only one step away before retracing it, coming to stand before her, his hands bunched at his sides.
“No kiss good-night this evening, just so you don’t go to work feeling as bad as I did this morning and make people bankrupt or send them to prison.”
Relief crashed through her. He was holding back for her.
He suddenly groaned, took her hand, raised it to his lips. “Do I get another day, kala mou?”
And she could only whisper a tremulous, “Yes.”
They didn’t get another day.
All they got during the next two weeks were sporadic hours. She saw Aris when she finished work, if his own business released him from its shackles. Which it didn’t the next two weekends.
But seeing less of him made her savor their time together more. She surrendered to the wonder of discovering him, learning things she’d never hoped to find in him, or with anyone else.
Then, on Friday, he told her he’d arrive at seven. He showed up at eleven, long after Alex had been in bed.
Her heart constricted again at finding him looking progressively more tired. Tonight he also seemed fed up, on edge.
The moment he sat down, his phone rang.
He apologized to her, walked to her veranda to take the call. She heard him growling with escalating aggression. She watched him from the kitchen as he came inside, flung the phone on the couch then strode with barely suppressed anger to her bathroom.
He came out with his hair wet. Seemed he’d needed to douse his head in cooling water.
She finally made her presence known, her heart twisting in her chest with the need to alleviate his tension.
He turned to her with a bleak tide turning his eyes black.
Then he muttered, “It’s no use, Selene. This is not working.”
Seven
“I-it isn’t?”
Selene heard her strangled rasp, didn’t know how it had been produced, let alone formulated words. Everything inside her had been flash frozen by Aris’s declaration.
She watched him, the numbness of dread spreading as he shook his head, his bleakness deepening. “I hoped it would, that I could make it work, but no, it certainly isn’t.”
She couldn’t think. Couldn’t feel or let anything sink in.
But he was driving the icicles deeper into her heart. “I was a fool to think I could arrange my schedule to have enough time to be with you. And that was when I didn’t know about Alex and the kind of time commitment he’d require.”
He was giving up on them already.
He was telling her it was over. Before it really began.
No. He couldn’t be. He’d seemed to want this to work so much. And they’d been doing so well. So they hadn’t continued as they’d begun. But they could organize themselves better. If they worked at it, they had the potential to become what those first two days had promised they could be. Happy to be with each other.
But she gazed into the twin thundercloud storms of his eyes and knew. He meant it. He was ending them.
He’d made his decision. And nothing would talk him out of it.
“I have to get away or I’ll do something drastic.” He ran spastic fingers through the thick locks of his damp hair, dug them into his scalp as if to defuse a pressure that would crush his skull. “I thought I’d take things slow, buy time, until I figured out how to make things work, with either everyone involved coming out winners, or at least suffering the least damage possible.”
So he’d been factoring in damages. But even with worst outcomes accounted for, he already thought it wasn’t working, was so at the end of his tether he wanted only to get away from them?
Up till two weeks ago, she’d been certain this would be his reaction to any personal closeness or responsibility. That he’d feel suffocated, would become contemptuous of, even disgusted with, those who needed him. She’d believed that Aris…Aristedes Sarantos was born to be a conqueror, never a nurturer.
But he’d showed her he had so much more to him than she’d thought. Things she couldn’t have dreamed of.
He’d given her a glimpse of…perfection.
Had he discovered it would take more than he was prepared to provide in the long run, so he was cutting things short, before the damages entered the level of the unacceptable?
She should be thankful that he’d discovered this early, that he was being honest.
She wasn’t. She only…hurt. Far more than she’d thought she would. She knew anger would come later. At herself. For letting him override her better judgment, for being so weak that she’d risked an injury she’d been almost certain she’d sustain.
But he probably thought, with her initial resistance and cynicism, that she’d been wading as superficially as he’d been, hadn’t invested enough yet to feel any loss.
Unaware of her condition, he was bent on making his point. “When I told everyone involved in the current negotiations war that I was postponing my decision, that I will resume talks in a month’s time, all hell broke loose. Instead of making everyone relax and take things slower, they think I’m going to orchestrate some unheard-of coup. Now everyone is pursuing me for any hint they can get out of me, any assurance for a piece of the action or at least shelter from the fallout when I finally make my move.”
She blinked dazedly. “You’re talking about the U.S. Navy contract?” The contra
ct Louvardis wanted to oust him of.
He gritted his teeth, muttered, “What else. It seems my reputation is too established that no one will consider I mean it when I say I’m postponing making offers because I’m not ready to make any. They all think this is a maneuver to pull the rug out from under whomever I’ve decided to eliminate. Now, instead of laying off, they believe the world is ending, when all I want is one damn month to think things through. Or not to think, for once.”
What did that have to do with deciding they were not working?
“Your brothers are behind the rabid reactions. They put their threat into action and are openly backing the Di Giordanos for a builder, and everyone who stands to lose a dime if I’m eliminated is chasing me like it’s a matter of life or death.”
She shook her head, tried to adjust her mind-set from the intensely personal to the purely business. “I almost have the draft we talked about done. My brothers will revise their stance if you offer it to them.”
He’d already said he couldn’t risk her involvement in his battle with her brothers. Not at the cost of having them suspect what was going on between them. He’d said he’d find another way around their adamant refusal to deal with him. But if things had gone this bad, this soon, maybe he’d reconsider.
He shut his eyes, opened them. She found them roiling with finality. “No. I have far more to lose by this maneuver than anything I stand to gain. For the moment I’ve made sure they can’t move without me making a move first. So I’ll leave things hanging, until I decide how to deal with it. Right now, for the first time ever, I can’t see a viable course of action. And the way I’m feeling, if I’m pushed, it will be everyone’s funeral.”
Having her and Alex in his life for two weeks had plunged him into such turmoil? They should be in some record book as the ones who’d caused the iceberg Aristedes Sarantos to lose his cool. And he wanted to get away as fast as possible to regain it.