by Penny Jordan
Which hadn’t made her less vulnerable, just more bereft.
She couldn’t stomach feeling that isolated again, not when she had so much of herself on the line. Still, she wasn’t sure how to open herself up to help either.
“If you really want to, then okay. That’s fine. But no guarantees,” she cautioned. “I’m not making any promises.”
He flinched slightly, but nodded in cool acceptance of her terms.
CHAPTER FIVE
GIDEON WAS A bastard, in the old-fashioned sense of the word and quite openly in the contemporary sense. When he wanted something, he found a way to get it. He wasn’t always fair about it. His “bastard” moniker was even, at times, prefaced with words like ruthless, self-serving, and heartless.
When it came to other men trying to exercise power over him, he absolutely was all of those things. He fought dirty when he had to and without compunction.
He had a functioning conscience, however, especially when it came to women and kids. When it came to his wife, he was completely sincere in wanting to protect her in every way.
Except if it meant shielding her from himself. When Adara’s brother, “Nic,” he had called himself, had invited them to take a room at his house, that was exactly what Gideon had heard. A room. One bed.
Normally he would never take up such an offer. Given the unsavory elements in his background, he kept to himself whenever possible. He liked his privacy and was also a man who liked his own personal space. Even at home in New York, he and Adara slept in separate beds in separate bedrooms. He visited hers; she never came to his. When she rose to shower after their lovemaking, he took his cue and left.
That had always grated, the way she disappeared before the sweat had dried on his skin, but it was the price of autonomy so he paid it.
Had paid it. He was becoming damn restless for entry into the space Adara occupied—willing to do whatever it took to invade it, even put himself into the inferior position of accepting a favor from a stranger.
Irritated by these unwanted adjustments to his rigidly organized life, he listened with half an ear to the vineyard manager’s wife babble about housekeepers on vacation and stocked refrigerators, trying not to betray his impatience for her to get the hell out and leave them alone.
The nervous woman insisted on orienting them in the house, which looked from the outside like an Old English rabbit warren. Once inside, however, the floor plan opened up. Half the interior walls had been knocked out, some had been left as archways and pony walls, and the exterior ones along the back had been replaced by floor-to-ceiling windows. The remodeling, skilled as it was, was obvious to Gideon’s sharp eye, but he approved. The revised floor plan let the stunning view of grounds, beach and sea become the wallpaper for the airy main-floor living space.
“The code for the guest wireless is on the desk in here,” the woman prattled on as she led them up the stairs and pressed open a pair of double doors.
Gideon glanced into a modern office of sleek equipment, comfortable workspaces and a stylish, old-fashioned wet bar. A frosted crest was subtly carved into the mirrored wall behind it. In the back of his mind, he heard again the male voice identifying himself when he had called the hotel, the modulated voice vaguely familiar.
It’s Nic...Makricosta. I’m looking for my sister, Adara. Gideon had put the tiny hesitation down to anything from nerves to distraction.
Now, as he recognized the crest, he put two and two together and came up with C-4 explosive. A curse escaped him.
Both women turned startled gazes to where he lingered in the office doorway.
“You told me your brother had changed his name. I didn’t realize to what,” Gideon said, trying for dry and wry, but his throat had become a wasteland in the face of serious danger to his invented identity.
“Oh,” Adara said with ingenuous humor. “I didn’t realize I never...” A tiny smile of sheepish pride crept across her lips. “He’s kind of a big deal, isn’t he? It’s one of the reasons I hesitated to get in touch. I thought he might dismiss me as a crackpot, or as someone trying to get money out of him.”
Kind of a big deal? Nicodemus Marcussen was the owner and president of the world’s largest media empire, not to mention a celebrated journalist in his own right. His work these days tended toward in-depth analysis of third-world coup d’état stuff, but he was no stranger to political exposés and other investigative reporting in print or on camera. Running a background check would be something he did between pouring his morning coffee and taking his first sip.
Gideon reassured himself Nic had no reason to do it, but tension still crawled though him as they continued their tour.
“My number is on the speed dial,” the woman said to Adara. “Please call if you need anything. The Kyrios was most emphatic that you be looked after. He’s hurrying his business in Athens as best he can, but it will be a couple of days before he’s able to join you.” She made the statement as she led them into a regal guest room brimming with fresh flowers, wine, a fruit basket, a private balcony with cushioned wicker furniture and a massive sleigh bed with a puffy white cover. “I trust you’ll be comfortable?”
Gideon watched Adara count the number of beds in the room and become almost as pale as the pristine quilt. She looked to him, clearly expecting him to ask for a second room. Any day previous to this one he would have, without hesitation. Today he remained stubbornly silent.
Color crept under her skin as the silence stretched and she realized if anyone made an alteration to these arrangements, it would have to be her. He watched subtle, uncomfortable tension invade her posture and almost willed her to do it. He wanted to share her bed, but he suddenly saw exactly how hard it was for her to stand up for herself.
She gave a jerky little smile at the woman and said, “It’s fine, thank you,” and Gideon felt a pang of disappointment directed at himself. He should have made this easy for her. But he didn’t want to.
The woman left. As the distant sound of the front door closing echoed through the quiet house, Adara looked to him as if he’d let her down.
“Do we just take another room?” A white line outlined her pursed mouth.
“Why would we need to?” he challenged lightly.
“We’re not sharing a bed, Gideon.” Hard and implacable, not like her at all.
“Why not?” he asked with a matching belligerence, exactly like himself because this issue was riling him right down to the cells at the very center of his being.
Her gaze became wild-eyed and full of angry anxiety. “Have you listened to me at all in the last twenty-four hours? I don’t want to get pregnant!”
“People have felt that way for centuries. That’s why they invented condoms,” he retorted with equal ire. “I bought some before we left the hotel. Do you have an allergy to latex that I don’t know about?”
She took a step back, her anger falling away so completely it took him aback. “I didn’t think of that.” Her brows came together in consternation. “You really wouldn’t mind wearing one?”
He stood there flummoxed, utterly amazed. “You really didn’t think of asking me to use them?”
“Well, you never have the whole time we’ve been married. I wasn’t with anyone else before you. They’re not exactly on my radar.” She gave a defensive shrug of her shoulders, averting her gaze while a flush of embarrassment stained her cheekbones.
Innocent, he thought, and was reminded of another time when they’d stood in a bedroom, her nervous tension palpable while he was drowning in sexual hunger.
Anticipation was like a bed of nails in his back, pushing him toward her. On that first occasion, she had worn a blush-pink negligee and a cloak of reserve he’d enjoyed peeling away very, very slowly.
Don’t screw this up, he’d told himself then, and reiterated it to himself today. The first n
ight of their marriage, he’d had one chance to get their intimate relationship off on the right foot. He had one chance to press the reset button now.
The primal mate in him wanted to move across the room, kiss her into receptiveness and fall on the bed in a familiar act of simple, much-needed release.
But it wouldn’t be enough. He saw it in the way her lashes flicked to his expression and she read the direction of his thoughts. Rather than coloring in the pretty way he so enjoyed watching when he suggested a visit to her room, she paled a little and her lips trembled before she bit them together.
“You don’t...” Licking her lips, she looked to him with huge eyes that nearly brimmed with defensiveness. “You don’t expect me to fall into bed with you just because you’ve got a condom, do you?”
Expect it? The animal in him howled, Yes.
“It’s always been good, hasn’t it?” He bit out the words, perhaps a little too confrontational, but his confidence was unexpectedly deserting him.
She crossed her arms, shoulders so tight he thought she’d snap herself in half. “It’s always been fine.”
“Fine?” he charged, gutted by the faint praise.
She sent him a helpless look that made him feel like a bully.
“I can hardly deny that I’ve enjoyed it, can I?” she said, but the undertone of something like embarrassment or shame stole all the excitement he might have felt if she’d said it another way. “I just...”
“Don’t trust me.” He ground out the words with realization. It was an unexpectedly harsh blow. “Come on,” he said, holding out his hand before he lost what was left of his fraying self-control.
She stilled with guardedness. “What? Where?”
“Anywhere but this room or I’ll be all over you and you’re obviously not ready for that.”
A funny little frisson went through Adara as she took in the rugged, intimidating presence that was her husband. He held out a commanding hand, as imperious and inscrutable as ever, but his words had an undercurrent of...was it compassion?
Whatever it was, it did things to her, softening her, but it scared her at the same time. She was already too susceptible to him.
And his desire for her was a seduction in itself. Her insecurity as a woman had been ramped to maximum with everything that had happened, but things had shifted in the last twenty-four hours. She was looking at him, hearing him. His sexual hunger wasn’t an act. She knew the signs of interest and excitement in him. His chiseled features were tense with focus. A light flush stained his cheekbones—almost a flag of temper if not for the line of his mouth softened into a hungry, feral near smile.
Her body responded the way it always did, skin prickling with a yearning to be stroked, breasts tightening, loins clenching in longing for him.
Oh, God. If she stayed in this room, she’d beg him to be all over her, and where would that lead beyond a great orgasm? She didn’t know what sort of relationship she wanted with Gideon, but knew unequivocally she couldn’t go back to great sex and nothing else.
She moved to the door, not expecting him to fall in beside her and take her hand. A zing of excitement went through her as he enveloped her narrow fingers in his strong grasp. Stark defenselessness flared and she wanted to pull herself away. Why?
“It’s not that I distrust you,” she said, trying to convince herself as much as him while they walked down the stairs, her hand like a disembodied limb she was so aware of it in his. “I know you’d never hurt me. You can be stubborn and bossy, but you’re not cruel.” It still felt strange to speak her mind so openly, increasing her sense of vulnerability and risk. Her heart tremored.
“But you don’t trust me with who you are,” he goaded lightly.
Her hand betrayed her, wriggling self-consciously in his firm grip. He eyed her knowingly as he reached with his free hand to slide open the glass door on the back of the house.
An outdoor kitchen was tucked to the side of a lounge area. A free-form pool glittered a few steps away, half in the sun, the rest in the shadow of the house. The paving stones dwindled past it to a meandering path down the lawn to the beach. The grounds were bordered on one side by the vineyard and by an orange grove on the other.
“Swim?” he suggested as they stood at the edge of the pool staring into the hypnotic stillness of the turquoise water.
Working up her courage, she asked softly, “Do you trust me, Gideon?”
His hold on her loosened slightly and his mouth twitched with dismay. “I don’t wholly trust anyone,” he admitted gruffly. “It’s not because I don’t think you’re trustworthy. It’s me. The way I’m made.”
“The “it’s not you, it’s me” brush-off. There’s a firm foundation.” Disgruntled, she would have walked away, but he tightened his hold on her hand and followed her into the sunshine toward the orange grove.
“Would it help to know that I’ve been more open with you than I’ve been with anyone else in my life? Ever? Perhaps you learned to keep your feelings to yourself because you were afraid of how your father would react, but after my mother died, no one responded to what I wanted or needed. Even when she was alive, she was hardly there. Not her fault, but I’ve had to be completely self-sufficient most of my life. It shocks me every time you appear to genuinely care what I’m thinking or feeling.”
The sheer lonesomeness of what he was saying gouged a furrow into her heart. She might have a stilted relationship with her younger brothers, but they would be there if she absolutely needed them. She unconsciously tightened her hand on his and saw a subtle shift in his stony expression, as if her instinctive need to comfort him had the opposite effect, making him uncomfortable.
“You never talk about your mom. She was a single mother? Constantly working to make ends meet?”
His face became marble hard. “A child. I have a memory of asking her how old she was and she said twenty-one. That doesn’t penetrate when you’re young. It sounds ancient, but if I can remember it, I was probably five or six, which puts her pregnant at fifteen or sixteen. I suspect she was a runaway, but I’ve never tried to investigate. I don’t think I’d like any of the answers.”
She understood. At best, his mother might have been shunned by her family for a teen pregnancy, forcing her to leave her home; at worst, he could be the product of rape.
A little chill went through her before she asked, “What happened after you lost her? Where did you go?”
His mouth pressed tight.
Her heart fell. This was one of those times he wouldn’t answer.
He surprised her by saying gruffly, “There was a sailor who was decent to me.”
“A kindly old salt?” she asked, starting to smile.
“The furthest thing from it. My palms would be wet with broken blisters and all he’d say was, ‘There’s no room for crybabies on a ship,’ and send me back to work.”
She gasped in horror, checking her footstep to pause and look at him.
He shook his head at her concern. “It’s true. It wasn’t a cruise liner. If you’re not crew, you’re cargo and cargo has to pay. If he hadn’t pushed me, I wouldn’t be where I am today. He taught me the ropes—that’s not a pun. Everything from casting off to switching out the bilge pump. He taught me how to hang on to my money, not drink or gamble it away. Even how to fight. Solid life skills.”
“Does he know where you are today? What you’ve made of yourself?”
“No.” His stoic expression flinched and his tone went flat. “He died. He was mugged on a dock for twenty American dollars. Stabbed and left to bleed to death. I came back too late to help him.”
“Oh, Gideon.” She wanted to bring his hand to her aching heart. Of course he was reticent and hard-edged with that sort of pain in his background. Questions bubbled in her mind. How old had he been? What had he done next?
She bit back pressing him. Baby steps, she reminded herself, but baby steps toward what? Their marriage was broken because they were broken.
She frowned. The future they’d mapped out with such simplistic determination five years ago had mostly gone according to plan. When it came to goal achievement in a materialistic sense, they were an unstoppable force. A really great team.
But what use was a mansion if no patter of tiny feet filled it? Without her father goading for expansion, she was content to slow the pace and concentrate on fine-tuning what they had.
She wasn’t sure what she wanted from her marriage, only knew she couldn’t be what Gideon seemed to expect her to be.
Where could they go from here?
The sweet scent of orange blossoms coated the air as they wandered in silence between the rows of trees. Gideon lazily reached up to steal a flower from a branch and brought it to his nose. A bemused smile tugged at his lips.
“Your hair smelled like this on our wedding night.”
Adara’s abdomen contracted in a purely sensual kick of anticipation, stunning her with the wash of acute hunger his single statement provoked. She swallowed, trying to hide how such a little thing as him recalling that could affect her so deeply.
“I wore a crown of them,” she said, trying to sound light and unaffected.
“I remember.” He looked at her in a way that swelled the words with meaning, even though she wasn’t sure what the meaning was.
A flood of pleasure and self-consciousness brimmed up in her.
“That almost sounds sentimental, but the night can only be memorable for how awkward I was,” she dismissed, accosted anew by embarrassment at how gauche and inexperienced she’d been.
“Nervous,” he corrected. “As nervous as you are now.” He halted her and stood in front of her to drift the petal of the flower down her cheek, leaving a tickling, perfumed path. “So was I.”