by Lucy Monroe
“I never felt like a business interest when we were together,” she said helplessly, her mind reeling. “Not until the end and I saw you planned to divorce me just as the contract said you could after three years and still keep the stocks.”
He said nothing, his silence speaking words she didn’t want to hear.
She shook her head, but her thoughts refused to settle as they spun endlessly around one simple fact. “I don’t understand how you could know.”
“I found your pills.”
“In my jewelry armoire?” But he never went through her things.
Only he must have. At least once.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Does it matter?”
“Maybe it shouldn’t … but I feel like it does.” If he had never trusted her and had spied on her, that put their marriage in a different light, even for her, didn’t it?
“I was planning a gift for you.”
“And you needed something in my jewelry armoire?” she asked with a fatalistic sense of doom.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Is that really important?”
“Probably not.” The fact that he had known was the only thing that really mattered.
Because somehow she was beyond certain his discovery of the packet of pills had led to those divorce papers being drawn up. The only question she didn’t have an answer for was, why had he waited to have the papers served?
But then maybe she had her answer already—in their contract, the clause that stipulated he had to wait until they’d been married exactly three years to divorce her, or forfeit the stocks in Dioletis Industries.
Suddenly the whys and wherefores of his discovery and what she thought it had led to faded into the background as the full implication of his words hit.
“You want me to give you a child.” The horrified shock she felt infused every word and she made no effort to hide it.
His brows drew together as if her response puzzled him, but he said, “Yes.”
“I won’t do it.” She shook her head adamantly and then went to take a fortifying sip of the wine she’d ordered with dinner, only to have the glass shake so badly in her trembling fingers she was forced to give it up. “I won’t.”
His blue gaze narrowed, both his expression and tone taking on a calculating cast. “Not even for your sister and all of those employees you supposedly care so much about?”
“You would have me give up my own child in order to save other families?” she hissed across the table at him with a depth of pain she hadn’t realized he was still capable of drawing forth in her.
“You would not want to give up your child?” he asked, as if curious in a merely academic way.
The jerk. The world-class, professional jerk.
“Surely you know me well enough to know that?” She’d accepted he knew her with far less intimacy than she’d sought to know him, but this was ludicrous.
Even the postman knew Chloe well enough to know she’d never give up her child. Well, okay, maybe not. But the principle was true anyway.
“It is not something one can simply make assumptions about.”
“I’m not your mother, Ariston. She and your father are both idiots, if you want my opinion.” It was one she’d never voiced during their marriage, but really?
That generation of Spiridakous were a mess and Ariston had to realize it. He had almost nothing to do with them himself.
That didn’t mean he enjoyed hearing her say it out loud.
He went stern on her. “I did not ask for it.”
“No, you merely judged me by standards of behavior they set. You know me … or at least you did. You have to know that’s not something I could do.” She took a deep breath, but it didn’t help the anxiety building inside her. “I just can’t.”
“I came to realize that I did not know you at all.”
He for sure hadn’t, if he could suggest something so monstrous. Something that no matter the incentive she would not, or rather could not do.
Standing on shaky legs, she shook her head again, not wanting to look at him, but equally incapable of looking anywhere else. “No. I won’t do it.”
CHAPTER FIVE
FEELING as if she was starring in her own one-act tragedy, Chloe headed out of the restaurant.
How could he expect her to give up their child? Not only a part of her, but a part of him?
Her eyes burned, her throat going tight. She hadn’t hurt this much since the day she’d left Greece.
Even the day their divorce had become final, her grief had been muted by the knowledge she’d had no choice but to leave and the divorce had been inevitable.
His having the papers drawn up had been irrefutable proof to her that no matter how hot the sex between them, no matter how tenderly he sometimes treated her, the reality was that Ariston had seen her as nothing but a business deal. When she’d finally really accepted that, she’d known she had to walk away before she lost herself as her mother had done.
Only she’d now learned that her own actions had precipitated one of the most painful moments of her life—reading those coldly precise divorce papers.
She’d thought she was protecting herself, but in reality she’d undermined her own chances with the man she loved.
She knew how his brain worked. He would have decided she was a cheat, an operator out for what she could get without giving what she promised.
She knew she had every intention of giving the Spiridakous the heir they were so keen on—just not until he admitted he wanted her for more than three years. But he wouldn’t have assumed any such thing.
He did not have a trusting nature.
Realizing Ariston had discovered her use of birth control gave their entire marriage and the end of it a different interpretation. She’d said it didn’t matter when he’d found out, but realized that it did.
Very much.
Had he known from day one? Nausea rolled through her at the prospect.
He hadn’t said so, but she knew Ariston had to have been beyond furious once he’d learned of the birth control. And yet, she’d never even guessed he knew.
Either Ariston was an amazing prevaricator … or she’d meant so little to him that even what he would have seen as betrayal didn’t impact how he treated her.
Not that that would be a surprise. Not anymore.
However, the knowledge that he’d had sex with her—repeatedly—while thinking she was a cheat and a liar made her body clammy with sweat as the nausea made her stomach cramp.
His emotions had never been engaged with her. Not even a little. Not even when she’d been so sure they were.
She remembered a party they’d attended together toward the end of their marriage. They’d gone because Ariston wanted to make a business contact. He’d even said so.
But when she’d come down from their bedroom dressed in a teal sheath that dipped with a sexy cowl in the back and hugged her curves in all the right places, Ariston’s eyes had heated with something she’d been sure at the time was more than lust.
“You look beautiful tonight.”
Chloe smiled up at her husband, her heart rate jumping at the look in his gorgeous cerulean eyes. “Thank you. You clean up pretty nicely yourself.”
He looked amazing in his tailored tuxedo.
“I wish we didn’t have this party to go to tonight.”
His words shocked and thrilled her and Chloe beamed. “Maybe we won’t stay too late?”
“Maybe they’ll be lucky if we remain through the appetizers,” he growled as he kissed her with a tender passion he’d been showing more and more lately.
“Your grandfather called and wants us at his house in Piraeus this weekend,” she said after reapplying her lipstick and straightening his black silk bowtie.
“He adores you and it is easy to understand why. You are good to him.”
“I’m good to you, too,” she teased.
Ariston grinned,
the smile reaching his eyes as it didn’t with most people. “Yes, yineka mou, you are.”
On the way to the party, he surprised her with a very special gift. “I’ve arranged for you to take drawing lessons from …” He named an eminent artist Chloe would have been in awe over meeting, much less taking any sort of lesson from.
“I didn’t know he went in for private tutoring.”
“He does not.”
“But he made an exception for you,” she guessed. “He made the exception for you, my very precious wife.”
They didn’t even stay at the party long enough for the main course to be set out on the buffet. Ariston missed the opportunity to talk to the businessman he’d intended to meet, but had dismissed Chloe’s concerns with a wave of his hand as he ushered her out of the crowded mansion. “Some things are more important than business.”
In that moment Chloe had believed she was one of them.
When she’d learned the contrary, the emotional devastation had left her existing in a wasteland that nearly cost her health.
Coming back into the present, Chloe felt her knees buckle and she stumbled, bumping into a man on the sidewalk. He said something to her, but she didn’t hear him. She was too focused inward.
He grabbed her arm and shouted something about snotty rich bitches thinking they owned the sidewalks. She raised her head, thinking she needed to apologize, but she didn’t get the chance.
Ariston was there, yanking the man away, his bodyguards closing in to put a protective barrier between Chloe and everyone else.
Warm hands cupped her face. “You’re freezing.” He cursed in Greek and English. “You’re in shock.”
She didn’t say anything, just stared at him while too many thoughts vied for her attention. She had no hope of grasping hold of any single one of them.
“So, the prospect of having a child does this to you. Even now? Or is it the thought of having my child?”
“It’s not that,” she denied, her voice made weak by her distress, but the emotion behind her words vehement enough to make her brain work again. “I can’t believe you found …” She shook her head. “You would have been so angry.”
“I was livid,” he admitted, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “No man likes to be played the fool.”
Especially not a business shark like him. “No. You wouldn’t. But I never knew.”
“I guess we both were good at hiding things.”
“How good was I?” She needed to know. She didn’t care if he thought it mattered. It did to her.
“What do you mean?”
“When did you find out?” she asked, only now realizing he’d been moving her toward a limousine with its back door open the whole time they’d been talking.
He tried to usher her inside, but she balked. “Tell me.”
“A month before we left New York.”
“No …” It was almost funny in a macabre kind of way.
Because by then, she’d decided even if it was a baby holding them together it was worth keeping her marriage to the man she loved with her whole heart. She’d stopped taking her pills almost a month before that, but hadn’t gotten pregnant.
She wasn’t sure at first, though—those first two weeks after returning to the States she’d lived in a state of dread. The idea of staying married to him under the circumstances had been untenable. Not only that, but the contract hadn’t specified what happened if she had a baby after the marriage ended.
All custody parameters might have been negated by her timing.
She climbed into the limo without further protest, her movements clumsy and awkward.
They’d driven in silence for several minutes when he made a sound of exasperation. “I did not say you would have to give up our child. You are the one who suggested it.”
He still believed that’s what she was upset about? She was. Really upset. The very idea horrified her. But even such a despicable plan paled in comparison to the knowledge that her effort to protect herself had been the reason she lost her marriage and the love of her life.
She tried to tell herself it had been for the best. What kind of life would they have had together with him caring so little for her?
More memories of the life they had shared flashed through her mind, taunting her with how happy she’d been. Yes, there had been moments of pain, days she’d despaired in her unrequited love, but there’d been so many more when she’d simply been blissfully happy.
It was no use trying to deny it. She would have taken that life and with gratitude.
Two years on, she was no longer convinced love on one side wasn’t enough. Not when the other side respected their marriage vows and provided the kind of passion in intimacy that most women only dreamed about.
Okay, so he hadn’t adored her, or anything like that, but he’d been kind to her—when he remembered she existed. No question his position with SSE had come first, but she’d never expected anything different.
Yes, it hurt to love unrequited, but Chloe now knew how much more it hurt to walk away from that love. Especially when his lack of emotional commitment to her had not shown itself until she’d read those divorce papers.
Ariston had done marriage really well.
She couldn’t change the past, though. No matter how much she might want to. She couldn’t say, “Oops, maybe I should have waited to walk out.”
Even now, knowing everything, she was still fairly certain she’d done the right thing.
She dashed at eyes now spilling. She had to get herself together. And get out of this limousine.
He made an exasperated sound and she looked up at him.
“Stop looking so damn tragic. If you become pregnant and carry my child to term successfully, I will marry you.”
“What?” Nothing was making sense here. He had not just offered her the world on a platter. Him and a baby, too. “You said not marriage.”
“I told you, a modification of our original agreement.”
“That agreement was never between you and me.” And hadn’t that been part of the problem? “We were our family’s pawns.”
“I do not play chess, Chloe. You know this. I will never play the pawn.” He reclined against the opposite seat, his body’s relaxed pose belied by the tension in his blue eyes.
“But you only married me because your grandfather wanted great-grandchildren.”
“Considering all that he has done for me, is it so strange I should seek to give him what he wants? Even now?”
So, it was still about his grandfather. She could not be surprised. The fact that Ariston wanted Chloe to be the mother of the grandchild he was determined to provide the old man was, however.
“You are so sure I would be willing to marry you in that case?” Even she didn’t know what she’d do in that case.
“You will sign an ironclad contract to that effect, one that will guarantee you lose primary custody of our child should you refuse to do so,” he said with the air of a man who had recently discovered his biggest bargaining chip and had no hesitations about using it.
“I—”
“Come, you know you were content enough to be my wife before. In certain cases, even passionately so.” The look he gave her said he referred to their incredible compatibility in the bedroom. “Do not deny it. You walked out because you thought I planned to divorce you. This is our chance at a do-over.”
“You did plan to divorce me, and I walked out because our marriage was a business sham.”
“Our marriage was more compatible than any I’ve seen based on so-called love.”
“Rhea and Samuel—”
“Are on the brink of divorce.”
She couldn’t deny it. “But there are loads of people who are happily married and love each other.”
“Not in our world.”
“Even in our world. What about Leiandros Kiriakis and his wife, Savannah? They’ve been married for nearly a decade and are still very much in love.”
“You barely
know them. You only see the surface of their relationship.”
“It’s real. The love between them is real.” Even knowing them as little as she did, she couldn’t doubt it. “Besides, they aren’t the only ones. There’s Demitri and Alexandra Petronides. You remember the scandal around their marriage, but they weathered the storm and are still very much in love.”
Ariston frowned. “We aren’t talking about our acquaintances right now, Chloe. We have things far more personal to discuss.”
“What is more personal than love?”
“For us? A great deal.”
She stared at him, trying to understand why he was so against the concept of marital love. His parents had a lot to answer for, she knew, but after what he’d shared in the restaurant, she wondered if Shannon might have even more to do with it.
But if he wanted to focus on them, that’s what she’d do. “If I had been content, I never would have left Athens without you.”
“Your father instigated that, and now I have to wonder if he didn’t do it on purpose.”
A shard of pain went through her heart as Chloe realized how very real that possibility was. Her father had made his plans and her marriage wasn’t going to stand in the way. “It doesn’t matter. He didn’t make up the divorce papers. You had them drawn up.”
“Surely you expected nothing else. You prevented any hope of our marriage lasting beyond the three years by preventing the conception of my child.”
She’d come to that conclusion herself and found it no less palatable having him say it aloud. “I did not think you would stick to the letter of the contract.”
“Why should I do anything else?”
No reason. Certainly not because he loved her and needed her in his life, or anything. She swallowed back any reply she might want to make and turned her face toward the window.
He sighed from the other side of the car. “I had the papers drawn in a fit of rage, but I would not have served you with them without clarifying matters between us first.”
That got her attention back on him. “What?”
“Unlike you, I had no intention of throwing away our marriage without first finding out why you’d been using the birth control.”