More than a Convenient Marriage?

by Dani Collins

  A fine tremor began to work through her and she realized she was cold. Too bad. There was no cuddling up to her husband for a warm hug. This man was a stranger.

  The truth of that struck to her core.

  “We’re not married,” she breathed. Somehow it was worse than all the rest. She was a good girl. Always had been. She’d saved herself for marriage. They’d had a wedding. Her father had finally approved of something she’d done. There were photos of them taking vows. All those witnesses had seen...a joke. A lie.

  It was all a huge, huge lie.

  Gideon—the stranger—flattened his mouth into a grim line. “In every way that matters, I am—”

  “Oh my God,” Adara cried, shaking now as her mind raced through all that this meant. He must have called his bookie and put everything he owned on a long shot when she turned up in his office asking to marry him. What a fantastic idiot she was! “You never loved me. You didn’t even want me.”

  “Adara.” His turn to take a step toward her and it was her turn to back away.

  Whatever it took, I had to amass some wealth...

  She remembered exactly how shocked he’d looked when she’d suggested marriage, how quick he’d been to seize the chance. How accommodating and willing to go with the flow of everything she asked, from waiting until the wedding night to keeping separate bedrooms.

  She covered her mouth to hold back a scream. And last night she’d had to beg him to touch her. She’d had to plead because he’d been avoiding lovemaking—

  Humiliation stung all the way to her soul.

  “You’ve been laughing at me all this time, haven’t you?” she accused as emotion welled in her. Hot, fierce emotion that made her tremble uncontrollably. “No wonder you fought so hard to stay married. Where would all of this go if we divorced?” She flung out an arm to encompass the penthouse and work space and high living they enjoyed. “Who would half of it go to? Thank God I was pregnant, huh, Gid—” She choked, aware she didn’t even know his real name. “Whoever the hell you are.”

  Gideon’s world was dissolving around him, but it had nothing to do with penthouses in the top of a tower. “Calm down,” he said, grasping desperately at control, when he wanted to crush her to him and show her how wrong she was. “You’re going to put yourself into labor. We can get through this, Adara. Look how far we’ve come since Greece.”

  It was a weakly thrown life ring, one that failed to reach her.

  “How far?” she cried, rising to a new level of hysteria. “I thought we were learning to be honest. You might have mentioned this little secret of yours.”

  “I’m telling you now,” he insisted.

  “Because my brother extorted it out of you! If he hadn’t, I’d still be in the dark, wouldn’t I?”

  He grappled for a reasonable tone, worried about the way her face was reddening. Her blood pressure wasn’t a huge issue, but they were monitoring it. She’d complained of breathlessness a few times and her chest was heaving with agitation.

  “We were happy,” he defended.

  “The mark is always happy when she’s well and truly duped,” she cried. “How could you do that to me? To anyone? What kind of man are you?” She rushed him, looking as if she intended to pulverize him.

  He caught her arms and held her off. He didn’t care about his own safety. She could pummel him into the dirt if it made her feel better, but she and the baby were everything. If she didn’t get hold of herself, she was going to hurt one or the other or both.

  She struggled against his hold, but he easily used his superior strength to back her into the sofa, where he firmly plunked her into it, saying sternly, “Calm down.”

  “I have a criminal liar invading my home! I’m entitled to—oh, you bastard! I hate you.” She tried to rise and strike at him. “How could you do this? How?”

  He forced her back into the softness of the cushions. “You’re giving me no choice but to walk out of here,” he warned. “I’d rather stay and talk this out.”

  “And talk me round, you mean.” She slapped at his touch. “Get out of here then, you scumbag.”

  The names didn’t matter. The betrayal and loathing behind the words sliced him to the bone. He couldn’t bear to leave her hating him like this, but even as he stood there hesitating, she was trying to rock herself out of the cushions and swipe at him at the same time, breasts heaving with exertion.

  For her own safety, he couldn’t stay. Every step to the door flayed a layer of skin from his body, but he moved away from her, waiting for a pause in her tirade of filthy names to say, “It was never my ability to love that was in question, Adara.”

  “You should have said it last night when I asked. I might have fallen for it then, but not now, you phony. Get out. And don’t ever expect to see this child.”

  That was meant as a knife to the heart and it landed right on target, stealing his breath and almost taking him back into the fight, but as he glanced back, he could see how pale and fraught she was, obviously going into a kind of shock. He grabbed his cell phone on the way to the elevator and placed a call to Nic as the doors closed him out of his home.

  “Get over here and make sure she doesn’t lose our baby over this.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ADARA HAD A very high tolerance for emotional pain, but this went beyond anything she’d ever imagined. Even the news that her mother unexpectedly succumbed to her cancer didn’t touch it. Maybe because she’d prepared herself for that loss, she was able to get through it without falling apart, but in truth, she was pretty sure her heart was too broken to feel it.

  At least dealing with the funeral and out-of-town family gave her something to concentrate on besides the betrayal she’d suffered. Moving like a robot, she went through the motions of making arrangements while all three of her brothers stood as an honor guard around her.

  Nic hadn’t been sure of his reception, but she didn’t blame him for bringing Gideon’s lies to her attention. Nic understood how unacceptable and wrong hiding the truth was. He’d been right to force it into the light.

  As for the man she had thought of as her husband, she saw him once. He came to the service, not making any effort to approach her, but she felt his eyes on her the whole time.

  After the first glimpse, she couldn’t bear to look at him. All she could think about was how easy she’d been for him in every way, screwing up her courage to propose. Giving in to hormones and his deft proficiency with the female body. Feeling so proud to have a man at all, especially one who made women envy her. He’d played on all her biggest weaknesses, right up to his supposed shared pain over the miscarriages.

  Here her heart stalled, torn apart by the idea he’d been faking his grief. It was too unfair, too cruel. Was even a shred of what he’d told her about his childhood true?

  That thought weakened her, making her susceptible to excusing his behavior, so she cut herself off from considering it. She’d leaned on Theo’s wide chest and focused on the inappropriate dress worn by Demitri’s date. Leave it to her youngest brother to bring an escort to his mother’s funeral.

  Her brothers coped in very different ways, but they stayed close, protective in their way, getting her through those first few weeks of loss so she didn’t have to dwell on the fact her marriage had been an unmitigated fraud.

  But solitude arrived when they went back to work and Nic went home with his wife and baby.

  Adara had to say one thing about her fake of a husband. He’d provoked a new sense of responsibility in both her younger brothers. Demitri was still a wild card, but he hadn’t missed a single appointment in his calendar since he’d been informed of her pregnancy, and while she wasn’t always comfortable with his newfangled marketing campaigns, they seemed to be working.

  As for Theo, well, the middle child was always a dark horse, keepi
ng things inside. Epitomizing the strong silent type, he didn’t socialize or like people much at all. That’s why she was so surprised when he dropped by the penthouse on his way home from the airport, took off his jacket and asked if he could make himself coffee.

  “I can make it,” she offered.

  “Stay off your feet.”

  She made a face at his back, tired of a lifetime of being bossed by men, but also tired in general. Elevating her ankles again as she’d been instructed, she went back to studying a spreadsheet on her laptop.

  “Why are you working?” he asked when he came back to pace her living room restlessly, steaming cup in his hand.

  “I’m not checking up on you, if that’s what you think.”

  “Go ahead. You won’t find any mistakes. I don’t make them.”

  She lifted her brows at his arrogance, but he only held her gaze while he sipped his coffee.

  “We were never allowed to, were we?” he added with a lightness that had an inner band of steel belting.

  Her first instinct was to duck. Were they really going there?

  An unavoidable voicing of the truth had emerged in her dealings with her siblings once she’d pulled Nic back into their lives. With the absence of their mother’s feelings to worry about, perhaps they were all examining the effects of silence, asking questions that might hurt but cleansed ancient wounds.

  “No, only Demitri was allowed. And he made enough for all of us,” she added caustically, stating another unspoken truth.

  Theo agreed to that with a pull of one corner of his mouth before he paced another straight line across her wall of windows. “Which leaves me wondering if I should let you make this one.”

  Adara set aside her laptop and folded her hands over her belly. “Which one is that?”

  “The same one our father made.”

  A zing of alarm went through her, more like a paralyzing shock from a cattle prod, actually, leaving her limbs feeling loose and not her own. She clumsily swung her feet to the floor but didn’t have the strength to stand.

  “If you’re talking about Gid—that man who pretended to be my husband, he lied, Theo. That’s why our father was the way he was. Because Mother betrayed him. Trust me when I tell you it leaves a bitterness you can’t rinse out of your mouth.” Her heart ached every day with loss and anger and hurt.

  “Our father was a twisted, cruel bastard because he never forgave her. Is that what you’re going to do? Punish Gideon and take it out on his baby?”

  Adara set her hand protectively on her belly. “Of course not!” She wasn’t being that cutting and heartless. Was she?

  “Are you going to let him see his child, then?”

  She swallowed, unable to say a clear yes or no. The thought of seeing Gideon made her go both hot and cold, burning with anticipation and freezing her with fear that he’d hurt her all over again. She couldn’t bear the thought of facing him, knowing how he’d tricked her while part of her still loved the man she’d thought of as her husband. Deep down she knew she couldn’t deny her child its father, but the reality of sharing custody with a charlatan was too much to contemplate.

  Therefore, she was ignoring the need to make a decision, putting it off until she couldn’t avoid it any longer.

  “He’ll always be in your life in one way or another. Are you going to twist the knife every chance you get? Or act like a civilized human being about it?”

  “Stop it,” she said, hating the way he was painting her as small and vindictive. He didn’t understand how shattering it was to have your perceptions exploded like this. How much like grief it was to lose the man you loved not to an accident, but to duplicity. She rocked herself off the sofa and onto her feet. “Why are you defending him? What do you expect me to do? Lie down and let him wipe his feet on me the way our mother did? He abused my trust!”

  “But he didn’t abuse you. Did he?” It was a real question, one with a rare thread of uncertainty woven into his tone.

  “Of course not,” she muttered, instantly repelled by even the suggestion. Why? What did she care what other people thought of Gid—that man?

  “You make it sound like you wouldn’t have stood for it, but we all hung around for it,” Theo pointed out bluntly.

  She didn’t answer. There was nothing to say to that ugly truth. If she could see her toes, she knew they’d have been curled into the carpet.

  “I was scared for you, you know,” Theo said gruffly. “When you married him. We didn’t know him, who he was, what he was capable of. I watched him like a hawk, and I would have stepped in if he’d made one wrong move, but he didn’t. And you...” He narrowed his eyes. “You changed. It took me a while to figure out what was different, but you weren’t scared anymore. Were you?”

  Adara swallowed, thinking back to those first weeks and months of marriage, when she had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Gradually she’d begun to trust that the even temper her husband showed her was real. If the ground was icy, he steadied her. If a cab was coming, he drew her back.

  And she remembered very clearly the last time her father had touched her in anger, a few weeks after her wedding. She’d been trying to explain why the engineer needed to make changes to a drawing and he’d batted the pencil from her hand, clipping her wrist with his knuckles.

  Mere seconds later, Gideon had walked into the room, arriving to take her home.

  Her father had changed before her eyes, remaining as blustery as always, but becoming slightly subdued, eyeing her uneasily as she retrieved her pencil and subtly massaged her wrist.

  She hadn’t said a word, of course, merely confirmed with her father that they were finished for the day before she’d left with Gideon, but she’d realized she had a champion in her husband, passive and ignorant though he was to his role. As long as she had him, she had protection. Her father had never got physical with her again.

  That sense of security had become precious to her. That’s why she’d been so devastated when she had thought Lexi had snatched him from her, and now the hurt was even worse, when she knew his shielding tenderness had never existed at all.

  “It was in his best interest to keep me happy,” she said, voice husky and cold. “I was the facade that made him look real.”

  “Maybe,” Theo agreed, twisting the knife that seemed lodged in her own heart. “In the beginning. But... Adara, I would have done everything I could to help you through this pregnancy regardless of any threats from Gideon. You’re my sister. I know what this baby means to you. But the way he spoke to me when he called, that was not just a father speaking. He was worried about both of you. Protective. I’ve always had a healthy respect for him, but I was intimidated that day. There was no way I was going to be the weak link that caused anything to happen to you or this baby.”

  “Welcome to my world where you buy the snake oil and convince yourself it works,” she scoffed.

  He stopped his pacing to stare accusingly at her. “You fooled me, you know. Both of you. I looked at how happy you two were in the last few months and I was hopeful. I thought finally one of us was shaking off our childhood and making a proper life for herself. You made me start to believe it was possible, and now—”

  “He lied, Theo.”

  “Maybe he had reason to,” he challenged and moved to retrieve an envelope from the pocket of his raincoat. He dropped it on the coffee table in front of her. “That’s from Nic. He asked me to come through on my way back from Tokyo and bring it to you. I didn’t read it, but Nic pointed out that he changed his own name to escape his childhood so he shouldn’t have judged Gideon for doing it. Maybe you shouldn’t, either.”

  “He didn’t convince Nic he’d married him, did he? He didn’t sleep with Nic and make him believe in a fantasy!” He hadn’t resuscitated Nic’s heart back to life only to crush it under his boot heel. She
could never, ever forget that.

  “He didn’t take over the hotels the way he could have,” Theo challenged. “If anything, he kept us afloat until now, when we’re finally undoing the damage our father did. He could have robbed us blind the minute the will was read. We all owe him for not doing that. I haven’t slept,” Theo added gruffly. “Call me later if you want any clarification on that balance sheet for Paris.”

  He left her staring at the envelope that seemed less snake oil and more snake, coiled in a basket and ready to strike the moment she disturbed the contents.

  Throw it in the incinerator, she thought. Theo didn’t know what he was talking about. The difference here was that their mother had loved and lied while Gideon had purely lied. He didn’t love her. That final, odd comment he’d made about his ability to love not being in question had been a last-ditch effort to cling to the life he had built no matter what he had to do.

  Thinking of their child growing up in the same hostile atmosphere she’d known made her stomach turn, though. She didn’t want to wield her sense of betrayal like a weapon, damaging everyone close to her.

  Maybe if she understood why he’d done it, she’d hate him less. Theo was right about Gideon always being connected to her, no matter how awkward that would be. She would have to rise above her bitterness and learn to be civil to him.

  Lowering to the sofa, she opened the envelope and shook out the printed screen shots of clippings and police reports and email chains. Through the next hours she combed through the pieces Nic had gathered, fitting them into a cracked, bleak image of a baby born from a girl abused by her stepfather. The girl’s mother had thrown her out when she became pregnant. A ragtag community of dockworkers, social services and street people had tried to help the adolescent keep herself and her beloved son clothed and fed.

  It seemed Gideon had been truthful about one thing: his mother had possessed a strong maternal instinct. Delphi had been urged more than once to put him up for adoption, but was on record as stating no one could love him as much as she did. While not always successful at keeping a roof over their heads, she’d done all a girl of her age could, working every low-end, unsavory job possible without resorting to selling drugs or sex.