by Dani Collins
“We are friends,” Tanja assured her huskily. “Please join us anytime.”
* * *
Leon was both pleased and disgruntled at his mother visiting, proclaiming, “She owed you an apology, but she had no right to invite herself into our home.” Then he added gruffly, “How was it?”
“It was nice,” Tanja said, privately breathless over him saying “our” home.
Everything seemed to be smoothed over two nights later when they invited Ophelia and Cornelius to dine with them. Cornelius was comfortable to be around, engaging and easygoing and smitten with Ophelia. She wasn’t the most effusive person. Her tension around Leon seemed to feed his own so there was a constant static in the air, but she seemed sincere in her desire for Tanja to feel more comfortable in her world and offered gentle advice.
Ophelia’s support bolstered Tanja’s confidence when she and Leon attended Georgiou’s wife’s fund-raiser.
Tanja kept hoping she and Leon would find a comfortable set of boundaries, clear lines they couldn’t cross, but they were blurry and forever shifting. They made love before they dressed and sent each other sly looks filled with sizzling memory, but she had to keep reminding herself this wasn’t real. Tanja could put on a figure-hugging strapless gown in diaphanous pink with gorgeous beadwork in metallic silver and rose gold, but that didn’t make her Leon’s wife any more than it made her the movie star who ought to be wearing this for her own performance.
No one else seemed to notice she was a phony, though. She received dozens of compliments and was warmly welcomed by everyone they met.
It helped that Leon never left her side, ensuring any awkward questions were quickly fielded and the conversation steered into neutral topics. Overall, it was a pleasant evening, and she was even invited to join the board of directors for the foundation that Georgiou’s wife ran.
“Do you want to do that sort of work?” Leon asked when she mentioned it the next day. “Because I have two corporate boards I could put you on immediately if you’re interested. Paid, not volunteer.”
“I don’t want you to give me some placeholder job out of nepotism.”
“Tanja.” He clicked off his tablet. “You have a degree in accounting. You’re not only qualified to provide knowledge and oversight, I trust you. One of the organizations I’m thinking of is run by a CEO who worked for my father. He wouldn’t be with us if I had reason to distrust him, but extra reassurances are always appreciated. The other has a young woman at the helm who has star power, but she could use support while she finds her feet. Having another woman with solid business sense as a sounding board would set her up for success.”
“You really trust me that much?” She was ridiculously flattered.
“Are there stages of trust? I thought it was one or the other and, yes, I trust you.” He seemed to brace himself. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Of course. I—” The words I love you caught in her throat, causing a full-body sting at holding back the enormous surge of emotion. Maybe she didn’t entirely trust him. There were levels of trust. She knew she was physically safe with him. She would entrust her daughter’s life, as well as her own, to him, but she wasn’t sure how he would react if she made her declaration aloud.
Actually, maybe she knew him well enough—trusted him enough—to be confident he would withdraw from such a declaration and look pained at not being able to reciprocate.
“You what?” he prompted, touching her cheek to coax her face up so she couldn’t avoid his searching gaze.
Her heart was right there, pounding in her throat.
“I do trust you. And the job sounds interesting, but what happens when...” She swallowed, voice fading to a husk. “When we’re over?”
A flicker of something bleak flashed in his eyes before he dropped his hand and hooded his thoughts behind an impassive expression.
“That could be a year or two from now. You shouldn’t put your career on hold if you want to pursue it. This would be valuable experience. If the postings interest you, take them.”
He sent her the details a little while later. One was a solar power corporation, the other a fair trade importer. Both were different enough from anything she’d taken on before to be intriguing and challenging. Commitment-wise, the demands would be light enough to fit around Illi’s needs and dovetail with her social obligations with Leon.
Things fell into place very quickly. Soon Tanja was dressing in a business suit once or twice a week to attend meetings. She spent another in jeans and a T-shirt, answering emails and reviewing reports, then put on couture for evenings with Leon. When he had commitments in Rome, they took Poseidon’s Crown since Illi’s passport situation hadn’t been sorted yet and anchored offshore.
When Leon had meetings in Singapore, he went alone. Tanja had feared she would feel like a guest if he wasn’t here with them, but the penthouse was beginning to feel like her home. Like their home. Illi’s room was a proper nursery with duckling wallpaper and an infant swing, a play saucer and every other toy Leon could find online. Tanja had a desk of her own in Leon’s office, and they often worked there very companionably.
She missed him intensely while he was gone, though, and had to fight saying so when he called her over the tablet. She missed him because she loved him. She couldn’t deny it when it overwhelmed her in waves of euphoric angst. When her daughter tried to drop her face through the tablet screen to get to him and Tanja wanted to do the very same thing.
Perhaps he missed them, too. He walked in late on a Wednesday evening when she hadn’t been expecting him until Thursday afternoon. He surprised her in her pj’s watching an old rom-com, fighting her lonesomeness with a glass of wine and a bowl of popcorn.
He exhaled a huge sigh as he saw her. Before she could do more than set aside the bowl and rise to say, “You’re home,” he had planted a kiss on her that nearly made her faint.
Heart hammering, exchanging no other words, they peeked in on the sleeping Illi, then hurried to the master bedroom where they ravaged the hell out of each other. When he reached for the nightstand, she said, “It’s okay. I saw the doctor. I have an IUD.”
He fell on her and their naked joining took them to a new level of intimate pleasure, one that left her in a state of elation for days after.
Tanja began to believe he was coming to love her, too. Maybe, despite all the trials and tribulations and the five years of separation, she was married to her soul mate?
* * *
Leon sorted through the courier envelopes on his desk, separating out the ones addressed to him from the ones addressed to his wife.
He had half expected to feel bothered by sharing his home. He’d never lived with anyone so closely and had always liked his space just so.
Tanja was fairly tidy by nature, but her cosmetics turned up on his side of the bathroom sink and her purse landed on his desk and sometimes the shirt he wanted was already on her back. As for Illi, she had a very attentive nanny, but still needed a lot of care and attention, often at the most inconvenient times, and for someone who had only mastered rolling, she was very good at scattering toys far and wide.
He had missed that small sense of disarray while he’d been away on his business trip. He should have embraced the time alone. He’d always preferred to answer to no one, but he’d been irritated that Tanja and Illi hadn’t been able to come with him. He had felt as though he was holding his breath the whole time, annoyed at the way people rushed to do his bidding while each minute of the clock dragged.
The last thing he wanted was to become dependent, but he had rushed back early. Which disconcerted him. Tanja was the furthest thing from cruel, but she didn’t have to be. She had the power to hurt him anyway, and that knowledge, that anticipation that she would, hung over him like a blade that could drop at any second.
It whistled down upon him when he opened the envelope from Georgiou.
>
“How would you feel if I invited my father to visit?” Tanja asked, coming in while he was still absorbing what his lawyer had sent.
Leon’s blood was pounding so hard in his ears he barely heard her.
“What’s wrong?” Her tone plummeted into something cold and filled with dread.
He gave himself a mental shake, wiping his face clean of whatever was causing her cheeks to grow hollow and her eyes to widen with apprehension.
“Nothing,” he stated. It felt like a lie. A grave one. “Georgiou’s email the other day said things were going well with the officials in Istuval. He said we should have something soon. I thought this was the finalized postnuptial, but it’s also Illi’s adoption papers.” He showed her the official certificates.
Tanja’s eyes latched on to the Canadian passport and she snatched it up. “Oh, my God! When he asked me to get her photo taken for this, I thought it would take weeks.”
She flipped it open, saw Illi’s name and clasped the passport to her heart. Her eyes welled. “She’s mine? Really? Oh, my God, Leon. Thank you. Thank you.”
She hurried around to throw herself against him in a shaking mass of every emotion—joy and relief and things he couldn’t identify.
“It’s okay.” Leon reflexively closed his arms around her and ran soothing hands over her back. “Yes, she’s yours now.”
“I feel terrible for being this happy,” she said through her sniffles. “I mean, her mother should have her, right? And Brahim is still out there—”
“You’re still allowed to be happy, Tanja.” He wondered sometimes how such a slender body could contain such a big heart. “You want her to be safe and loved, and she is.”
“I just wish I could give him this, too. Bring him with us when we take Illi h-home.”
He stiffened slightly.
She felt it and jerked her head up, fighting to get hold of her emotions. “We are taking her home, aren’t we?”
He was tempted, so tempted to give in to what he wanted despite knowing it was the worst possible thing he could do to her. He refused to lead her on again, though. No matter how much he wanted to let this play out until what could only be a bitter end.
“You are.” His body was bracing so hard against the inevitable pain that was coming that he felt as though hairline fractures were creeping through his limbs and torso and neck.
“But—” Here came the hurt, the flash of betrayal that cut him in half, the profound anguish that filled him with guilt. “What do you mean? We’re a family. Aren’t we?”
His arms wanted to squeeze her in, but he made himself drop them away.
“You and Illi are. It’s time you took her to meet the rest of yours.”
“But—”
“This is what we knew would happen, Tanja.” He spoke over her. “It happened sooner than later. That’s good. I’m glad you didn’t have to wait years to know she’s indisputably your daughter. But this is what we agreed, that you would take her home when the time came.”
“But I don’t have to, Leon! I mean, I want to go home. I miss everyone and I want to meet my nephew and introduce Illi to everyone, but we could all go. And then—”
She stopped speaking, not saying aloud that they could come back here.
Because he was already dismissing the notion with a pained shake of his head.
“Think about this clearly, Tanja. This is the best outcome. It’s not a fight. We’re ending things on a civil note with a clean settlement already worked out.” He waved at his desk where the postnuptial contract sat, thick and heavy and not nearly as satisfying as he had anticipated.
“So I’m supposed to just leave? With Illi? And we’ll never talk to one another again? You don’t even care that I’m taking her away from you?”
That was a knife to the vitals that gave such a hard wrench he could hardly breathe. He waved again at the document he had thought would make all of this easy, but it wasn’t easy at all. He had to fight to hold on to a level tone.
“I have the right to expect regular updates. Photos and occasional visits.” It wasn’t enough. He already felt cheated. “We’ll each provide for her in our own way, but we’re both ensuring she has the best life we’re capable of offering.”
“And that’s enough for you?” she cried with disbelief, backing off a few steps as though she could hardly take in all the ways he was disappointing her. “A couple of photos and the assurance that she’ll have a good education is all you want from either of us? Don’t you feel anything else? You acted like I was your salvation the other night!”
It had felt that way, and that was why he had to let her go before he couldn’t.
“The goal was to end this on a civilized note,” he reminded her, dredging up the cool ruthlessness he’d been raised on. “Can we?”
She flinched at his tone, making him feel like a bastard, but that was exactly why they had to end this. How did she not see that, eventually, this was what their marriage would devolve into, only so much worse?
Tanja stood before him with her hands in knotted fists, her body trembling with impotence, mouth working with hurt. Angry tears in her eyes.
“You have put me in an impossible position, Leon.” Her voice was thick with outrage. “If I fight for you, for us, you’ll see it as me trying to prolong this argument, which will only drive you away. So fine. I won’t fight. If you want me to leave, I will. As soon as I can book a flight. But know this.” She held up a trembling finger. “I am leaving because... I love you. I’m doing this for you, because I want to give you the thing you think will make you happy.”
She started to walk out, paused at the door.
“But I won’t wait five years again.”
* * *
Leon spent the next weeks traveling. Each time he walked into his empty penthouse, he couldn’t stand the silence, the lack of clutter or the profound absence. He found excuse after excuse to leave town, but only felt emptier and emptier as time wore on.
Tanja, damn her, had sent one text to say they’d landed safely and nothing else.
He hadn’t reached out, either. They were back to the stalemate of their first five years of marriage.
Until she ended that, too.
When Georgiou sent him the notice that she’d finalized the papers and taken Leon’s ten-million-euro settlement, Leon was knocked onto his ass. He sat down to get drunk and couldn’t even do that. He just sat there with his bottle of ouzo on the coffee table, staring at the spot on the carpet where Illi had spit up and left a stain.
He should only feel satisfaction that she had taken the money. He wanted to provide for her and Illi, and some integral part of him was pleased he was able to do that much for them, but he genuinely hadn’t expected her to take his money.
Even though she had told him she wouldn’t wait for him, he hadn’t expected her to end it. That was the stark truth. She had said she loved him, and some distant part of him had known in those seconds that he loved her, too. That the emotional connection between them would never die. It couldn’t.
He had also known he didn’t deserve her. He was the one who’d been in the impossible position. If he gave in to longing and let their marriage go on, he would only be proving what a selfish self-serving ass he really was—exactly like his father.
Letting her go had been the only way to prove he was worthy of the love she’d offered him.
But she had gone through with the divorce. Why? To be free of him, as she’d once told him she wanted to be? Had her love died that quickly?
Unable to bear his own brooding, he abruptly had the helicopter take him to the island where he’d spent his earliest years. This was his mother’s domain, where his father had mostly left her alone.
Leon’s first thought on landing was to wonder what Tanja would think of it. Why hadn’t he brought her here? It was pretty and quiet
and might have quelled some of her homesickness, given its seaside location. The beach was beautiful. Once Illi was walking, they could have enjoyed it to no end.
If they’d been a family.
They weren’t in his life anymore. It was such a punch in the chest each time he faced it that he could hardly stay on his feet. Illi wouldn’t smile at him like he was a white night rescuing her from a tower when he walked in to collect her from her crib. Tanja wouldn’t set him aflame with a sexy glance or make him laugh out of the blue or settle against him on the sofa and just make everything in his world...right.
“Leon.” His mother gave him a frown that might have indicated concern if they were the type to express that sort of thing toward one another. “How was London?”
“Hmm? Oh. I don’t know.” He supposed that’s where he’d been. It was all such a blur. “Cornelius here?” he asked politely.
“He’s staking the tomatoes. You walked right by him, said hello and asked what kind they were. What’s wrong?” Her dark brows drew together.
“Nothing,” he insisted, trying to convince himself it was true. “Tanja and I are officially divorced. I thought I should tell you.”
“I know. I’m so sorry.”
That took him aback. “How do you know?” Was it on the gossip sites already? How humiliating.
“We video chat.” His mother clasped her hands and pressed her lips into a self-conscious line. “Tanja said she wasn’t certain you would tell me and thought I should know.”
Leon swore and flung himself to face the window, then veered out the doors to the terrace, uncomfortable with his mother seeing how tortured he was by all of this. He braced his fists on the stone balustrade and stared at the green-blue sea, but he couldn’t have picked out if there were boats upon it or giant squids. His entire body was aching. Writhing in agony.
“Are you angry I’ve kept contact with her?” his mother asked warily as she came to stand beside him. “It seemed rude to ignore her.”