More than a Convenient Marriage?

by Dani Collins

  Except that, five minutes later, they were looking at a screen that showed an unmistakable profile of a baby’s head, its tiny body lounging in a hammock-like curve, one tiny hand lifting above its head to splay like a wishing star.

  Gideon cussed out a very base Greek curse. Not exactly appropriate for such a reverent moment, but Adara had to agree. This was unbelievable.

  “Is that a recording from someone else?” she asked, afraid to trust her eyes.

  “This is why we put you through those procedures during a miscarriage, Adara,” Karen said gently. “We look for things like a twin that might have survived. Given that this one has hung on past your first trimester, I’d guess he or she is exactly that. A survivor. This is a very good sign you’ll go to term.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  IF THEY’D WALLOWED in disbelief and shock last night, and tension had been thick on their way to see Karen, it was nothing to the stunned silence that carried them back to the penthouse.

  Adara sank onto the sofa without removing her jacket or shoes, totally awash in a sea of incredulity. She was afraid to believe it. They might actually have a baby this time. A family.

  An expansion of incredible elation, supreme joy, as if she had the biggest, best secret in the world growing inside her, was tempered by cautious old Adara who never quite believed good things could happen to her. She might have a solicitous husband who felt every bit as protective and parental toward his offspring as she did, but he wasn’t in love with her. Not the way she was tumbling into love with him.

  Shaken, she glanced to where he stood with hands in his pockets, the back of his shirt flattened by his tense stance, the curve of his buttocks lovingly shaped by black jeans, his feet spaced apart for a sailor’s habitual seeking of balance.

  “What are you thinking?” she invited hesitantly.

  “That I can’t believe I let you climb down to that beach in Greece. I’ve been on you like a damn caveman...” He ran a hand over his hair and turned around. His face was lined with self-recrimination. “I wish to hell I’d known, Adara.”

  She set her chin, not liking the streak of accusation in his tone. Sitting straighter, she said, “I’m not going to apologize for refusing to see a doctor before today.” Even though a lot of things would have been different if she had.

  Would she and Gideon have come this far as a couple, though?

  And was this far enough?

  She clenched her hands and pressed her tightened mouth against her crossed thumbs, trying to process how this pregnancy changed everything. While Gideon had shown no desire to discuss adoption, she had kept divorce on the table. Now...

  “It’s done anyway,” he said, pacing a few steps, then pivoting to confront her. “But moving forward, we’re taking better care of you. Both of you. I’ll start by informing your brothers you’ll be delegating your responsibilities. I want you working four-hour days, not twelve. Travel is curtailed for both of us. Chile will have to wait and Tokyo will go on hold indefinitely. The architect needs to start over and you can’t be here through renovations, so we’ll have to hurry the Hampton place along.”

  “Karen said everything is normal, that this isn’t a high-risk pregnancy,” she reminded, tensing at all he’d said. “I can still work.”

  “Do you want to take chances?”

  “Of course not. But I don’t want to be railroaded either. You’re acting like—”

  Imperious brows went up. “Like?”

  “Like it’s actually going to happen,” she said in a small voice. She watched the toes of her shoes point together. All of her shrank inward, curling protectively around the tiny flicker of life inside her.

  “You just said yourself, it’s not high risk.” His voice was gruff, but she heard the tiny fracture in his tone. He wasn’t as steady as he appeared.

  “It’s just...to make all these changes and tell people...What if something happens?”

  The line of his shoulders slumped. He came to sit beside her, angled on the cushion to face her while he pinched her cold fingers in a tight grip. “I’m going to move whatever mountains need moving to ensure nothing does. We’re going to have this baby, Adara.”

  She didn’t look convinced. Her brow stayed pleated in worry, her mouth tremulous. A very tentative ray of hope in her eyes remained firmly couched, not allowed to grow.

  Gideon clenched his teeth in frustration that sheer will wasn’t enough. “I realize you’re scared,” he allowed.

  “I may not be high risk, but there’s still a risk,” she insisted defensively.

  She was breaking his heart. “I’m not disregarding that. But my coping strategy is to reduce the chances of any outcome but the one I want and go full steam ahead.”

  “And the outcome you want is...a baby?”

  “Is there any doubt?” He sat back, unable to fathom that she’d imagine anything else.

  “I asked you what you were thinking and you started talking about architects and Tokyo, like this was a massive inconvenience to your jam-packed schedule.”

  His breath escaped raggedly. “I’m a man. My first thoughts are practical—secure food and shelter. I’m not going to hang my heart out there and admit to massive insecurities at not knowing how to be a father, or reveal that I’m dying of pride.”

  Her mouth twitched into a pleased smile. “Or own up to whether you’d prefer a boy or a girl?” Underlying her teasing tone was genuine distress. Adara would have had more value in her father’s eyes if she’d been a male, they both knew that.

  That wasn’t why he took her question like a lightning rod to the soul, though, flinching then forcing his expression smooth. “I’ve always wanted a girl,” he admitted, feeling very much as if his vital organs were clawed from him and set out on display. “So we could name her Delphi, for my mother.”

  Adara paled a bit and he knew he’d made a mistake. He could practically see her taking on responsibility for never giving him that.

  “Babe—”

  “It’s a lovely name,” she said with a strained, sweet smile. “I’d like it very much if we could do that.”

  But she wasn’t like him, willing to bet on long shots. Her cheekbones stood out prominently as she distressed over whether she could come through for him. He didn’t know how to reassure her that this wasn’t up to her. He had never blamed her, never would.

  “Will you wait here a minute?” He kissed her forehead and stood, leaving to retrieve the ring he’d wanted to give her last night. When he returned, he sat on the edge of the sofa again, then thought better and dipped onto one knee. “I bought this to mark our fifth anniversary, but...”

  Adara couldn’t help covering a gasp as he revealed the soft pink diamond pulsing like a heart stone of warmth from the frozen arrangement of white diamonds and glinting platinum setting.

  “No matter what happens, we have each other.” He fit the ring on her right hand.

  Her fingers spasmed a bit, not quite rejecting the gift, but this seemed like a reaffirmation of vows. She had been prepared to throw their marriage away a few weeks ago and didn’t know if she was completely ready to recommit to it, but she couldn’t bring herself to voice her hesitations when her ears were still ringing with his words about his mother. Every time she’d lost a baby, his mother had died for him again. Small wonder he didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve.

  Given time, would it become more accessible?

  He kissed her knuckles and when he looked into her eyes, his gaze was full of his typical stamp of authority, already viewing this as a done deal. The impact was more than she could bear.

  Shielding her own gaze, she looked at his mouth as she leaned forward to kiss him lingeringly. “Thank you. I’ll try to be less of a scaredy-cat if you could, perhaps, let me tell my mother before calling the architect?”

 
She glanced up to catch a flare of something in the backs of his flecked eyes that might have been disappointment or hurt, but he adopted her light tone as he said, “I’m capable of compromise. Don’t drag your feet.”

  * * *

  For a woman battling through an aggressive cancer treatment, as Adara’s mother, Ellice, was, the quiet of Chatham in upstate New York was probably perfect. For a man used to a nonstop pace through sixteen-hour days, the place was a padded cell.

  It’s only one afternoon, Gideon chided himself. Adara had tried to come alone, but he had insisted on driving her. Still reeling over yesterday’s news, he already saw that the duration of her pregnancy would be a struggle not to smother his wife while his instinct to hover over her revved to maximum.

  Letting her out of his sight when they’d arrived here had been genuinely difficult, but he respected her wish to speak to her mother alone. She had yet to bring up the topic of Nic. Ellice had been too sick for that conversation, but with doctor reports that weren’t exactly encouraging, Adara was facing not having many more conversations with her mother at all.

  Scowling with dismay at the rotten hands life dealt, Gideon walked the grounds of the property that Adara’s father had bought as an “investment.” The old man had really been tucking his wife away from the city, isolating her as a form of punishment because he’d been that sort of man. Gideon saw that now. Not that it had been a complete waste of money. The land itself was nice.

  Gideon wondered if either of Adara’s brothers wanted this place when their mother passed. With only a dried-up pond for a water view, it wasn’t Gideon’s style. He didn’t need a rolling deck beneath his feet, but he did like a clear view to the horizon.

  Maybe that was his old coping strategy rearing its head. Each time his world had fallen apart, he’d looked into the blue yonder and set a course for a fresh start. One thing he’d learned on the ocean: the world was big enough to run away from just about anything.

  Not that he was willing to abandon the life he had here. Not now.

  He stilled as he noticed a rabbit brazenly munching the lettuce in the garden. Bees were the only sound on the late-summer air, working the flowers that bordered the plot of tomatoes, beans and potatoes. The house stood above him on the hillock, white with fairy-tale gables and peaks. Below the wraparound veranda, the grounds rolled away in pastoral perfection.

  It was a vision of the American dream and he was exactly like that invasive rabbit, feeding on what wasn’t his.

  His conscience had already been torturing him before Adara had turned up pregnant. Now all he could think was that he’d be lying about who he was to his son or daughter along with his wife.

  But he couldn’t go back and undo all the things he’d done to get here. He’d barely scratched the surface of his past when he’d told Adara he’d started working young. Child labor was what it had been, but as a stowaway discovered while the ship was out to sea, he could as easily have been thrown overboard.

  Kristor had put him to work doing what a boy of six or seven could manage. He’d swabbed decks and scrubbed out the head. He’d learned to gut a fish and peel potatoes. Burly men had shouted and kicked him around like a dog at times, but he’d survived it all and had grown into a young man very much out for his own gain.

  By the time he was tall enough to make a proper deckhand, Kristor was taking jobs on dodgy ships, determined to build his retirement nest egg. Gideon went along with him, asking no questions and taking the generous pay the shady captains offered. He wished he could say he had been naive and only following Kristor’s lead, but his soul had been black as obsidian. He’d seen dollar signs, not moral boundaries.

  The ugly end to Kristor’s life had been a vision into his own future if he continued as a smuggler, though. Gideon had had much higher ambitions than that. He’d been stowing his pay, same as Kristor, but it wasn’t enough for a clean break.

  Posing as Kristor’s son, however, and claiming the man’s modest savings as an “inheritance” had put him on the solid ground he’d needed. Kristor hadn’t had any family entitled to it. Yes, Gideon had broken several laws in claiming that money, even going to the extent of paying a large chunk to a back-alley dealer in the Philippines for American identification. It had been necessary in order to leave that life and begin a legitimate one.

  Or so he’d convinced himself at the time. His viewpoint had been skewed to basic survival, not unlike Adara’s obdurate attitude when he’d first caught up to her in Greece. He’d been cutting himself off from the pain of losing Kristor in exactly the way he’d fled onto Kristor’s ship in the first place, running from the grief and horror of losing his mother.

  He couldn’t say he completely regretted becoming Gideon Vozaras. At sixteen—nineteen according to the fresh ink on his ID—he’d sunk every penny he had into a rusting sieve of a tugboat. He repaired it, ran it, licensed it out to another boatman and bought another. Seven years later, he leveraged his fleet of thirty to buy an ailing shipyard. When that started to show a profit, he established his first shipping route. He barely slept or ate, but people started to call him, rather than the other way around.

  Fully accepted as an established business by then, he’d still possessed some of his less than stellar morals. When he was ready to expand and needed an injection of capital, he started with a man known to let his ego rule his investment decisions. Gideon had walked into the Makricosta headquarters wearing his best suit and had his salesman’s patter ready. He’d been willing to say whatever he needed to get to the next level.

  He’d been pulled up by an hourglass figure in a sweater set and pencil skirt, her heels modest yet fashionable, her black hair gathered in a clasp so the straight dark tresses fell like a plumb line down her spine. She turned around as he announced himself to the receptionist.

  He was used to prompting a bit of eye-widening and a flush of awareness in a woman. If the receptionist gave him the flirty head tilt and smooth of a tendril of hair, he missed it. His mouth had dried and his skin had felt too tight.

  Adara’s serene expression had given nothing away, but even though her demeanor had been cool, his internal temperature had climbed. She had escorted him down the hall to her father’s office, her polish and grace utterly fascinating and so completely out of his league he might as well still have had dirt under his nails and the stink of diesel on his skin.

  Three lengthy meetings later, he had been shut down. Her father had refused and Gideon had mentally said goodbye to any excuse to see her again. No use asking her to dinner. By then he had her full background. Adara didn’t date and was reputed to be holding on to her virginity until she married.

  When she had unexpectedly asked to see him a few weeks later, he’d been surprised, curious and unaccountably hopeful. She’d shown up in a jade dress with an ivory jacket that had been sleek and cool and infuriatingly modest, not the sort of thing a woman wore if she was encouraging an afternoon tryst.

  “I didn’t expect to see you again,” he’d said with an edge of frustration.

  “I...” She’d seemed very briefly discomfited, then said with grave sincerity, “I have a proposal for you, which may persuade my father to change his mind, if you’re still interested in having him as a backer. May I have ten minutes of your time?”

  Behind the closed doors of his office, she had laid out what was, indeed, a proposal. She had done her homework. She had information on his financials and future projects that weren’t public knowledge.

  “I apologize for that. I don’t intend to make a habit of it.”

  “Of what?” he’d asked. “Snooping into my business or running background checks on prospective grooms?”

  “Well, both,” she’d said with a guileless look. “If you say yes.”

  He’d been self-serving enough to go along with the plan. The upside had been too good, offering access to her bu
siness and social circles along with a leap in his standing on the financial pages. And Adara had made it so easy. She had not only scripted their engagement and wedding, she’d known her lines. Their marriage had been perfect.

  To the untrained eye.

  He could look back now and see what a performance it had been on both their parts. From the reception to country clubs to rubbing shoulders with international bankers, they had set each other up like improv specialists, him feeding Adara lines and her staying on message.

  And she’d conformed to brand like a pro, elevating her modest style to a timeless sophistication that had put both the hotels and his shipyard in a new class. She’d delivered exactly what she’d promised in terms of networking, opportunities and sheer hard work, putting in the late hours to attain the goals he’d laid out.

  She had probably thought that’s all he’d wanted from her, he realized, heart clenching. It had been, initially, but somewhere along the line he’d begun to care—about a lot of things. She was an excellent cook and she bought him shirts he liked. Whenever they were about to leave for work or an evening event, she invariably smoothed his hair or straightened his tie and said, “You look nice.”

  Part of him had stood back and called her actions patronizing, but a needier part had soaked up her approval. It was all the more powerful because he had admired her so much.

  Adara set a very high standard for herself. Once he’d fully absorbed that, he’d begun taking it as a challenge to meet and exceed her expectations. Finally comfortable financially, he’d followed her lead and started helping others, selecting charities with thought for who he really wanted to help, creating foundations that benefited young mothers, street kids, and sailors unable to work due to disabilities.

  Meanwhile, pride of possession had evolved into something so deep, Adara’s seeming to cheat on him earlier this summer had shaken him to the bone.

  It wasn’t comfortable to be this invested. Sure he was a risk-taker, but not with his emotions. The way his heart had grown inordinately soft, especially in the last weeks, unnerved him, but he couldn’t help the way his chest swelled with feeling and pride every time he so much as thought about his wife.