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Not Just the Greek's Wife
LUCY MONROE
Dares she defy the terms of her marriage?Ariston Spiridakou had one reason and one reason only for marrying Chloe: he needed a biddable bride to provide the requisite heir. Yet three years later Chloe’s status as good Greek wife is a distant memory – and her defiance has had her cast out of Ariston’s life…Infuriatingly, Chloe now finds herself at Ariston’s mercy – but his help comes with a wicked price: the unyielding condition that he won’t even consider her request until she’s shared his bed…and is expecting his baby!�Lucy Monroe does it again, great dialogue and lots of angst. One of the best writers of romance.’ – Stacey, 39, Australia
“What would you call a one-way ticket to New York in the same envelope as a petition for divorce?”
“Expedient.”
She cursed, and her hand flew to cover her mouth. She never used language like that, and honestly she hadn’t even called him that in her own mind. But hearing him downplay the most painful day of her life to mere expedience was more than she could handle.
He didn’t take offense. In fact he laughed. “You wouldn’t be the first to think so.”
Ariston in business mode was dangerous enough, but when he reverted to charming and approachable …? Perfectly fatal to her heart.
“Let me get this straight,” she said, needing to get the topic of their conversation back on track. “You’ll refrain from selling your shares in Dioletis Industries and provide the infusion of capital necessary, as well as the savvy business direction to keep it solvent, if I play the part of your mistress for the next three years?”
About the Author
LUCY MONROE started reading at the age of four. After she had gone through the children’s books at home, her mother caught her reading adult novels pilfered from the higher shelves on the bookcase … Alas, it was nine years before she got her hands on a Mills & Boon
Romance her older sister had brought home. She loves to create the strong alpha males and independent women who people Mills & Boon
books. When she’s not immersed in a romance novel (whether reading or writing it), she enjoys travel with her family, having tea with the neighbours, gardening, and visits from her numerous nieces and nephews.
Lucy loves to hear from her readers: e-mail LucyMonroe@LucyMonroe.com, or visit www.LucyMonroe.com
Recent titles by the same author:
HEART OF A DESERT WARRIOR
FOR DUTY’S SAKE
THE GREEK’S PREGNANT LOVER
THE SHY BRIDE
Did you know these are also available as eBooks?Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Not Just the Greek’s Wife
Lucy Monroe
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
EVEN in her exquisitely tailored designer suit, Chloe Spiridakou felt out of place in her ex-husband’s swank office waiting area.
Like their marriage, the classic pink tweed skirt and blazer were two years past their runway date and didn’t quite fit any longer. Stress and grief had taken their toll and peeled pounds she couldn’t afford to lose from her already willowy figure.
She’d never had the best relationship with food, but after leaving Greece, Chloe had found it nearly impossible to force herself to eat at all. Some days had gone by when she simply hadn’t.
But Rhea had stepped in, literally saving Chloe’s life. And Chloe wasn’t going to let her sister down now.
No matter how hard this meeting was for Chloe. No matter how ill-equipped she felt to deal with her ex-husband again.
It didn’t help that she felt awkward and unattractive. Rail-thin, she’d also hardly slept since making this appointment and had dark circles under her eyes to prove it.
Not that Ariston was likely to notice how she looked. The fact that he was seeing her at all was still hard to fathom. Chloe had the distinct feeling that somehow her sister had got it wrong. Ariston had made no move to contact her since the day she’d walked out on their marriage—not even to ask why she’d done it.
Rather par for the course in a relationship that was by turns scorchingly passionate and emotionally distant.
Her husband had been attentive in his own way, even borderline kind at times and definitely an amazing lover, but Ariston had kept his feelings to himself. Period.
Chloe had this awful feeling that his secretary, Jean, had made the appointment and somehow forgotten to mention to Ariston who it was with.
Chloe was not looking forward to getting kicked out of his high-rise corner office once he realized it either. The urge to flee strong, she rubbed her damp palms down the pink tweed.
After everything, she’d been absolutely certain she wouldn’t ever see him again, no matter how she might wish otherwise in the deepest recesses of her heart.
Yet, here she was. Waiting in his anteroom and feeling very much as if she’d like to throw up.
Or run.
Neither was an option.
“Ms. Spiridakou …”
Chloe was already standing from the first sound of Jean’s voice. She swallowed convulsively. “Yes?”
“Mr. Spiridakou will see you now.” Jean smiled, the expression one she reserved for the “real” people in Ariston’s life.
Not feeling all that “real,” Chloe returned the smile—her own effort not nearly so natural. “Thank you.”
It was only a matter of a couple dozen feet to the tall double doors that led to Ariston’s inner sanctum. Yet the time it took to cross the plush office carpet felt both too long and too short for Chloe’s rapidly beating heart and the thoughts whirling like a dervish in her head.
The older woman opened the door on the left and ushered Chloe inside with another warm, encouraging smile.
Chloe wanted to say thank you again, for that smile, for the sympathy lurking in the older woman’s eyes, but couldn’t make her throat work. So she simply nodded before turning to survey her ex-husband’s domain.
Easier to maintain her composure if she focused on the room and not its occupant.
Ariston’s New York office was exactly as Chloe remembered it. An imposing dark mahogany desk the size of a small dining table sat in the center. Two leather armchairs faced it with an occasional table between them.
On the other side of the large room, two deep burgundy leather sofas faced one another across a large hand-stitched Turkish rug that had taken a group of four women six months to finish, working on it daily. Chloe had bought it for Ariston on their honeymoon and was surprised he’d kept it, but then she shouldn’t be.
He wasn’t a sentimental guy and it did match the perfectly appointed office decor just as well today as it had five years ago.
Near the corner wall of windows, the sofa grouping made an unexpectedly intimidating place to hold a meeting. Ariston had once told her he used the psychology of it to set to the tone for certain business dealings.
Chloe was marginally relieved that Ariston’s cerulean-blue gaze met her green one across his monolith of a desk instead. That tiny bit of relief did nothing to strengthen suddenly water-weak joints in her knees as their eyes met for the first time in two years.
She’d missed him. A lot. The constant ache inside her had barely diminished in its intensity in the twenty-four months spent trying to forget him.
The psychobabblers claimed time healed all wounds, but Chloe’s felt nearly as raw and excruciating as they had the day her marriage ended. She could feel every inch of ground she’d gained sliding away as emotions she didn’t want to experience, much less acknowledge, washed over her.
One dark brow quirked and he asked, “Would you like coffee, or is this a flying visit?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but closed it again without saying a word, her attention wholly caught by the man in front of her.
He hadn’t changed. He should have, shouldn’t he?
She had. Her five-foot-eight-inch form was scarecrow skinny now and though she still highlighted her chocolate brown hair, she wore it longer in waves that settled against her shoulders.
He’d commented more than once that he liked long hair, but she’d refused to grow it out while they were married. She wasn’t sure why now. Only that then, it had made her feel more independent. As if despite the fact she was in love with her business-marriage husband, she remained true to herself.
That sense of independence had been little comfort after she’d walked away from him.
Though she hadn’t had a choice. After three years of marriage, she’d discovered he’d had divorce papers drawn up. As per their initial agreement. Even so, the discovery had been a crushing blow and leaving him had taken every ounce of her stubborn resolve. But her pride had demanded she make the first and irrevocable move.
Doing so hadn’t been the healing balm she’d hoped. She was only twenty-five, but pain and worry had etched tiny lines around her eyes.
However, there were no new worry or laugh lines on his face, no early gray hairs to mark his advent into his thirties. It remained espresso dark, almost black, kept short but with a style that screamed power and money. The only hint to his Greek heritage, the slight curl in that perfectly styled hair.
Ariston was still just as devastatingly gorgeous as he’d ever been, his expression equally impossible to read and his manners impeccable.
Unexpected emotions slammed through her. Want and love and need and pain, all of it so strong, she had to force herself to keep breathing.
She hadn’t left because she wanted to. She’d gone because she had to.
It had been two years, but shockingly, she craved him as strongly as if she’d walked out the door of the apartment in Athens yesterday.
Even sitting and wearing an impeccably tailored suit, it was clear his six-foot-three-inch frame sported the same well-honed muscles that she had enjoyed exploring so very much in their marriage bed. Not only a virgin, but wholly innocent on her wedding night, Chloe had known passion with only one man. This one.
An angel … a devil … a man capable of stirring things in her she could not afford to feel.
That dark brow rose again, his mouth tilting just the tiniest in sardonic amusement and she realized she still hadn’t answered.
“No, I … I mean, yes, coffee would be lovely.”
He gave the instruction to Jean and then focused that all-consuming gaze back on Chloe. “Perhaps you would care to take a seat?”
It was only then that she realized she’d frozen only a step over the threshold. Heat suffused her cheeks. “Oh, yes, of course.”
She managed to make it into one of the armchairs without incident and didn’t even bother stifling her sigh of relief as she did so. She’d always been rotten at games like poker. Everything she felt played across her face.
Why had Rhea thought this was a good idea again? Oh, yes, because Ariston had insisted. And what Ariston Spiridakou wanted, the Greek business mogul got.
Two years ago he hadn’t wanted Chloe. For some inexplicable reason, now he did. Or at least to meet with her.
“To what do I owe the honor of this visit?” Ariston asked when the silence between them had stretched long enough for Jean to have come and gone, leaving aromatic coffee in her wake.
“Are you playing the cat to my mouse?” she asked with no attempt to hide her censure. “You told Rhea you wouldn’t meet with her.”
“Yes, but the purpose of that meeting has yet to be broached.”
Oh, he was enjoying this. Playing corporate shark with the wife who’d had the audacity to walk out on him first.
Chloe fixated on preparing her drink so she didn’t have to look at Ariston. If she did, she might very well give in to her sudden urge to toss her coffee cup right at his head. “Do you really need to ask?”
“It appears I do.”
“Right.” She took a fortifying sip of coffee. It was her favorite Sumatran blend with the hint of vanilla and cinnamon.
Jean had remembered, bless her.
Unwilling to appear the coward or play his little games, Chloe forced her eyes to meet those of her ex-husband. “I’m sure you know exactly why I’m here, but maybe you’re wondering why I thought coming would be of any use? To be honest, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be, but I had to try.”
There. He could put that in his pipe and smoke it. If he smoked. Which he didn’t. Darn it, her mind was running away with her again.
She consciously reined in her wayward thoughts.
“For your father’s sake.” Ariston’s tone was flat, his mouth drawn in a line that could have been disapproval, or just as easily apathy. “You would do anything for your father.”
A sound of dark humor spilled from Chloe’s lips before she could even think of stifling it.
Seriously? Had Ariston gotten to know her at all during the brief three years of their marriage? She had never once tried to pretend a closeness with her father that did not exist. That had never existed.
She wasn’t the business-minded protégée Rhea was, garnering their father’s attention in a way Chloe could never compete with. Chloe had always been the artsy one, like their mother whose paintings had hung on the walls of their home years after death had taken her from their lives.
“I haven’t seen or spoken to my father in almost two years.” More vehement than she intended, Chloe took a deep breath and let her gaze shift to the original El Greco hanging on the wall behind his desk in its gilt-edged frame.
She had always loved it, but the old masterpiece held no solace for her today.
Her father had sold her into marriage with no care for her feelings. When they’d been ripped asunder, rational or not, she’d laid a good portion of the blame at his door.
She might have been able to forgive him for setting her up for such heartache, but not what came after.
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Really?” She shook her head, finding it difficult to believe even now that Ariston was so ignorant of her feelings, and let their gazes meet again.
His was assessing.
Was it possible that despite the fact she’d never tried to hide it, Ariston simply hadn’t noticed how little interaction she had with her father? The two men had a closer relationship than she’d ever shared with the man who’d fathered her.
She was convinced Ariston knew the other businessman better than she ever would.
“Eber Dioletis only ever deigned to notice my existence when he needed a daughter to fulfill the business contract he thought would save his crumbling empire.” He hadn’t even sounded sorry when he’d informed her over the phone of her then-husband’s actions in having divorce papers drawn up, but then Eber had had his own plans, hadn’t he? “Do you know what he said when I called to tell him I was returning to New York?”
Chloe snapped her mouth shut. She hadn’t meant to ask that, had had no intention of ever sharing that final humiliation with anyone. She’d never even told Rhea.
“What?” Ariston asked, his attention sharpening as if he realized she’d let something slip she didn’t want to.
Hurting and lost after making the only decision she could once she’d found out about Ariston’s plans to divorce her, Chloe had called her father and told him she was on her way home. She’d intended to return to the house she’d grown up in, familiar if not a warm haven of memories.
That hadn’t happened.
Because her father had been and would always be a coldhearted man.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I must disagree. You brought it up.”
She had.
And unlike her parent, or even Ariston, Chloe was no master prevaricator. “He had another prospect in mind for once the divorce was final.”
Another arranged marriage waiting in the wings, an older businessman worth tens of millions, if not a few billion like her ex-husband. Eber had known the marriage wasn’t going to last beyond its three-year term and had sought to take advantage of that fact.
To this day, she didn’t know how her father had found out about the divorce papers Ariston had drawn up in New York before that final trip to Greece. She only knew that he’d had proof. The morning Ariston had flown to Hong Kong for what was supposed to be a short business trip, Eber had sent Chloe a fax—divorce papers signed by her husband and dated not two weeks before their arrival in Athens.
Though they hadn’t yet been filed, much less served, there was only one interpretation of her husband’s actions and once Chloe had made it, her own decisions at the end of her marriage rose up to torment her with just how naively hopeful she’d been.
“This upset you?” Ariston didn’t look or sound in the least surprised by news of Eber’s backup plan.
Chloe had to wonder if he’d known about it. Those two were peas in a pod, knowing things they shouldn’t when it came to one of their business ventures. And hadn’t her marriage to Ariston been nothing but that?
She’d tried to convince herself otherwise toward the end, but ultimately she’d been proven spectacularly wrong.
“Yes,” she bit out, unable to believe even Ariston could have thought otherwise.
But then, he’d never known her as she knew him. He hadn’t made the effort to do so because he’d never loved her as she loved him.
Needing some distance, even if it was contrived, she dipped her head and took a sip of her coffee. “My father said his business associate was looking for the right trophy wife. It wouldn’t even matter that I hadn’t managed to get pregnant during my three years of marriage to you, since he already had three full-grown children.”
“He believed you incapable of conception?” Ariston asked carefully.
“Yes.” She hadn’t told anyone, even her sister, about using birth control, though Rhea had been the one to suggest it in the beginning.
Rhea had believed the idea of becoming a mother immediately was why Chloe had balked at the idea of being married in a business deal. Her sister had spoken to her privately about taking measures to give herself some time before taking on the responsibility of children.
Eber would have been furious if he’d known—either about the conversation, or that Chloe had ultimately decided to act on her sister’s advice. For her own best interests, something her father cared nothing about.
“And his plans for you to marry again came as an unwelcome surprise to you?” Ariston asked as if checking his facts.
“I already told you that.”
Ariston’s expression turned thoughtful. “He was disappointed by the results of our deal and was making the best of it.”
“I’m not surprised you would see it that way. You probably would have agreed with him about the divorce settlement.”
But she hadn’t and in this one instance, her will had prevailed.
“I’m sorry?”
“He thought I should sign the check over to him. He said it was the least I could do for the company after you ended up with a big chunk of stock and he didn’t get a billionaire son-in-law out of the deal anymore.” Her voice bled not only some bitterness, but pain and she made a concentrated effort to pull her emotions back in check as she sipped her coffee.
Ariston made a sound as if she’d finally shocked him. “You didn’t sign the check over, though. If you had, you couldn’t have financed your new life on the West Coast.”
“No. During that phone conversation, I accepted that my father sees me as nothing more than an asset to exploit,” she admitted. “And I was done being treated like a bargaining chip. I wanted nothing to do with him or his company ever again.”
Chloe had hung up on her father and that conversation was the last time they’d spoken.
For as much as Eber’s indifference during her childhood had hurt, that knowledge hurt even more, adding more pain than she could handle to her already devastated soul.
Chloe had just lost the love of her life, even if it had ultimately been her decision, and her father’s only concern had been adding to the financial coffers of Dioletis Industries. Again.
She hadn’t been surprised at all to discover that Eber now expected Rhea to sacrifice her happiness to the altar of Dioletis Industries. Chloe was here to make sure that didn’t happen.
Her own marriage had been a bust, but Rhea’s could be saved. If her sister could get out from under the burden of a failing empire and their father’s expectations.
It wasn’t just Rhea who had asked Chloe for help either. Rhea’s husband, Samuel, had come to Chloe, desperate to save his marriage but equally certain there was only one chance to do it. A chance he wasn’t sure Rhea would take even if it was offered.
Samuel wanted his wife back from the grasping jaws of Dioletis Industries. He wanted a family, something Rhea had said she wanted as well … before she’d been forced to take over chairmanship of the company.
Now Rhea was too busy trying to run a failing company to see the cost to her personal life and Chloe knew that without intervention, her beloved sister could turn out way too much like their father. And not even realize it.
“You never expressed discontent with your lot while we were married … at least not verbally.” Ariston interrupted her thoughts in a precise New York drawl that showed none of his Greek heritage.
Her gaze flew back up to his. “Why would I have told you how I felt about being used as a bargaining chip in a business deal?”
It wasn’t his problem and the truth was, she’d been almost certain it wouldn’t matter to him.
Besides, in the beginning, she’d considered they were in a similar boat—her father pushing her into marriage for the sake of the company, Ariston’s grandfather pushing for him to settle down with a nice Greek girl.
More American than Greek in many ways, Ariston had insisted on a woman raised in his adopted home country.
Chloe had met both men’s requirements, her Greek heritage and family winning approval from the older Spiridakou and her American citizenship garnering Ariston’s acceptance. The fact that marriage to her would get him significant shares in what had looked like a thriving private concern at the time hadn’t hurt anything either.
“Perhaps you owed it to me, since I was the other side of that bargain and it resulted in our marriage.”
“A marriage you would have cheerfully jettisoned? Give me a break. We didn’t share confidences and you certainly weren’t interested in my heart.” Whatever she was doing here, they weren’t going to rewrite history to his specifications.
“I’m not the one who walked out.”
“You had divorce papers drawn up and ready to serve. No doubt they attempted to do so while you were in Hong Kong, but I’d already left for New York.” At least she’d assumed that had been his plan.
She hadn’t even bothered having her own papers created, knowing his were sufficient to the task. The speed with which she’d been served upon returning to the States had certainly implied she’d been right.
“What are you talking about?” Ariston asked in a tone that could have frozen rolling lava.
“Stop it,” she demanded. “I’m not playing these games with you.”
“Explain yourself.”
“You. Had. Divorce. Papers. Drawn. Up,” she enunciated very slowly and clearly. “Before we ever left New York for our spring trip to Athens.”
Following Ariston’s lifelong practice since reaching adulthood, he and Chloe had lived one month in four in Greece. It made for a lot of travel, but she hadn’t minded.
And multinational tycoon that he was, that sort of thing was simply everyday living for Ariston.
“How did you know that?” he asked with unperturbed curiosity, making no effort to deny it at least.
“My father faxed me a copy.”
“And he got them how?”
“I have no idea. Probably through the same underhanded channels you use.”
“I do not engage in corporate espionage.” Ariston sounded genuinely offended.
She was hard-pressed not to give in to a gallows-style humor. “Call it what you like.”
“Highly developed business acumen and contacts.”
“Fine.”
“So you left because you believed I was going to file for divorce?” he asked with a very odd inflection to his tone.
She wanted to scream, Yes, that’s right, but she simply shrugged. “I left because that was the only course open to me at that point. Our marriage wasn’t working.”
“I thought it was working very well.”
“You would.” And still he’d had the papers drawn up, presumably because in the one important area, to him at least, their marriage had been a bust.
She hadn’t gotten pregnant.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
She shook her head, not about to admit her love for him and how the emotional distance between them had killed her a little more each day. “We wanted different things.”
“On that I would have to agree.” Again the strange tone, but this time it was tinged with an inexplicable anger.
Right. Their marriage hadn’t been what either of them had wanted. She’d known that. Hearing him say it shouldn’t hurt now. It did. But it shouldn’t.
One thing was certain—she needed to move forward with her life. Irrevocably.
She’d thought she’d done that—leaving him, accepting the divorce without contest. Moving across country and opening her shop and gallery had been her way of cementing the break.
But if she couldn’t get a handle on the memories and emotions that had hurt far more than they’d ever helped, she was never going to be free of him, Chloe realized with awful clarity.
CHAPTER TWO
ARISTON sipped from his cup—matching china to hers that probably cost more than most of the paintings she had for sale in her gallery—and made a face. “I never understood your taste for flavored coffee.”
“Surely Jean could have made you the dark Arabic blend you prefer.” Chloe had always thought his beverage of preference tasted like espresso even when it was prepared in the automatic drip.
And to her way of thinking, espresso belonged in gourmet coffees with lots of milk and yummy flavorings. The thought of drinking it straight out of one of those tiny cups always made her shudder.
He dismissed her suggestion with a wave of his hand. “That would have required preparing two pots, not one.”
Chloe sincerely doubted it. If Jean didn’t have one of those fancy single-cup coffeemakers in the small kitchen behind her own office, Chloe would be shocked.
Which meant that Jean had served Ariston Chloe’s favorite on purpose. Why?
“You told her ahead of time to make my favorite,” Chloe guessed, gobsmacked at the idea and wholly unable to understand what he hoped to gain by doing so.
She was the first to admit she didn’t begin to operate on the Machiavellian level he did when it came to business, but this was beyond her. It was as if he was trying to be accommodating and when it came to business, she knew her ex-husband was anything but.
Maybe he was trying to lull her into a false sense of complacency? To what purpose? He held all the cards in the deck, not just the good ones, and they both knew it.
“Naturally. It was only polite.”
“If you say so.” Realizing how rude that sounded, which had not been her intention, she added, “Thank you.”
“That aside,” he said as if the coffee discussion had derailed them from talking about what really mattered. “Entering such an arrangement with unexpressed resentments for its terms wasn’t very ethical of you, was it?” he chided.
Ethical? Was the man serious?
Needing to move, she jumped up and walked over to the nearest wall of windows. She stared down at the city, people and cars made tiny by distance. “Do you honestly believe I didn’t express my unhappiness at the idea of quitting art school and being forced into what amounted to a medieval marriage bargain to my father?”
Before she’d met Ariston and realized that dreams could change.
“Eber implied to my grandfather that you were entirely on board with the plan.” Ariston spoke from behind her.
She wasn’t surprised that in her agitation, she hadn’t realized he’d moved.
She didn’t bother to turn and face him, however. “Right. And you both believed him. It never occurred to you that he might have simply cut funding to my schooling and living expenses, effectively getting me evicted from my dorm?”
Instead of the city below, she saw the face of the dean of her college when the older man had been forced to give Chloe the news. They’d been midway through the term and she’d been sure her father couldn’t demand his money back.
But apparently powerful men could do things other mere mortals couldn’t.
“I suppose you never guessed he might freeze my accounts because they were all in his name, too? No, I doubt you even thought about why I agreed to that barbaric bargain.”
“Bargains such as ours are common enough among the world’s powerful in both business and politics. You needn’t act as if you were sold into marriage in some medieval contract in which you had no say or personal rights.”
She spun to face him, old anger brought about by a feeling of utter helplessness rising to the fore. “Wasn’t I? I was a twenty-year-old college student, Ariston! I’d only ever worked part-time in an art supply store for hobby money. I had no clue how to even begin going about getting my life back when he took it away.”
Ariston’s handsome face set in unreadable lines, but emotion she couldn’t name flickered briefly in his blue eyes. “You never told me any of this.”
“By the time I met you, both my father and my sister had put the emotional screws in.” And Chloe had forgiven Rhea, though she doubted she ever would her father. Rhea’s motives hadn’t all been about the company; she’d believed the marriage would be good for Chloe, too.
Chloe laughed harshly. “Rhea made it clear that if she weren’t already married, she would have willingly sacrificed herself for the good of our family and our heritage. That’s how she and my father see the company, as if it is a living entity deserving of every manner of sacrifice and effort.”
She didn’t blame her sister. Not even a little. They’d both been raised in the same emotional wasteland and each of them had found different ways to cope.
Rhea had sought their father’s love and approval the only way she’d known how—through the business. The one and only thing he ever had truly loved.
“I am aware.”
“Then I met you.” And against all odds and what her mind told her was possible, Chloe had fallen for her Greek tycoon on first sight. Fully, irrevocably and completely.
His hands fisted at his side as if he wanted to reach out, but he forced himself not to. “And expressed none of your concerns.”
“No. You and my father had made your plans, but I had hopes that complying with them might lead to something else.” Foolish, youthful hopes that she now knew for the ridiculous fantasies they were.
She dropped her head, not wanting to see his face. Not being able to bear it right then.
“Look at me,” he commanded, as if he’d read her mind and was truly bothered by her thoughts.
She considered denying him, but what was the point? This conversation had to happen so they could have the one she’d come for. Rhea’s happiness depended on it.
And Rhea deserved to be happy. In her own way, she’d sacrificed more than Chloe ever had because she’d never walked away.
Chloe lifted her head, and whatever Ariston saw in her face made his crease in a frown. “What hopes?”
“They don’t matter anymore.” They never had, not to him … not to her father.
“I would still prefer to know what they were.”
“No,” she said with absolute implacability. She’d shared all the confidences she was going to with this man.
His look assessed her. “You have changed.”
“Yes.”
He stepped closer. “In every way, I wonder?”
Shock paralyzed her as his nearness brought a wholly unexpected reaction. She’d thought her libido had died with her marriage, but her body was telling her just how wrong she’d been.
She wanted him.
She managed to move back, but somehow she gained no distance between them as he matched her step for step until she stood against the window. His scent and the heat of his body surrounded her, bringing back memories that haunted her dreams, that made her body ache with a longing she’d thought gone forever.
Long masculine fingers curved around her nape, his thumb brushing the sensitive flesh behind her ear. “There was a time when this drove you crazy. Does it still, I wonder?”
She shook her head, but not to deny it, simply to try to clear her mind enough to speak. To tell him to let her go, to move back. For heaven’s sake.
Only the words didn’t come. Couldn’t come.
Because no matter what her mind screamed she should say, she desperately wanted to beg him to do more, move closer, touch her … give her what she’d once had the right to every night.
Ariston’s head lowered. “I wonder,” he said again. “Will your lips taste as sweet as they did two years ago?”
She had no answer for him, but a reciprocating question spun round and round in her mind as his lips covered hers. Would he taste as good? Would he taste like love, even if he didn’t love her—like he’d used to?
Would this kiss hurt or heal?
Would it make it harder or easier for her to continue in her quest to move on? Cutting herself off from him without any sort of closure certainly hadn’t worked.
Only risking it would give the answer to that one, and something Chloe had never been was a coward. She let the kiss come.
It was not tentative, but sought to determine her susceptibility. She wondered what he found even as her mind warred with her heart over the wisdom of letting this melding of lips continue. He kissed her as if he had every right to do so, as if they were still married.
As if she was his.
It was strange and horribly wonderful and wholly unexpected.
And she let him, trying to determine if in that moment he still felt as if he was hers, and coming to the abrupt and almost awful revelation that he did.
His lips moved over hers, his tongue gliding along the seam of her mouth, gently demanding entrance.
Chloe’s mind screamed for her to protest this assault on her senses. It was too dangerous, she realized perhaps too late.
Finally her mouth opened to do it, but that only gave him the opportunity he wanted.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly what she’d intended after all.
His tongue plundered, his lips moving against hers, and drew forth a response only this man had ever engendered. Desire like liquid fire pooled deep inside her and she moaned against his lips. He made a harsh sound of approval, deepening the kiss—if that was possible.
The one outcome to this meeting she’d never expected would be that Ariston would kiss her, or that his nearness and touch would reawaken the sexual hunger within her.
It was too much and not enough.
His free hand pressed against her back, so their bodies came into full, glorious contact. It electrified her.
And made her see a truth she’d hidden from.
For two years she’d craved this very thing, but with a gut-wrenching certainty that it would never again be hers. So she’d suppressed her desires to hold the pain of unrequited need at bay.
Now he was offering to assuage that need and her body was letting her know she’d gone too long without. After three years of a marriage that had included a steady diet of truly mind-blowing sex, she’d cut herself off completely.
And her carefully suppressed libido wasn’t happy.
Not even a little bit.
She was no slave to her body’s desires, or at least she didn’t think she was, but the reasons for not letting him do this were disappearing in the mist of lust boiling through her.
And in a moment of clarity she realized she wasn’t going to give this moment up. Not for the sake of propriety, or what it might cost her, or anything else. No matter how temporary, whatever came later, or however long this physical connection lasted, she was giving herself up to it for now.
She deserved it.
She might even need it, this chance to say goodbye that she hadn’t given herself the first time around.
She already knew the pain of loss and she was strong enough to withstand it again, but she deserved some pleasure for all her pain.
She wasn’t worried that this would make it harder to get over him, or undo the strides she’d made forward in doing so. Because one thing that had become painfully obvious from the moment she walked into his office and looked him in the eye for the first time since leaving Greece, she was not over this man and there were no strides forward.
There was just learning to live without. Which she had done and could do again, but not right now.
The aftermath would come soon enough.
For once, she was going to take something for herself before worrying about the interests of others. She could still ask Ariston what Rhea needed her to. And he would most likely say no, just as he would have before this amazing kiss, but that was for later.
Right now was for them, well, for her … but he certainly seemed every bit as into it as she was.
With that thought, Chloe let her body relax into his, feeling the evidence of his arousal pressing against her stomach. Oh, yes, he was most definitely enjoying himself, too.
He made a sound of triumph and lifted her, carrying her to the couch without ever once breaking the all-consuming kiss. He laid her down, but pulled away.
“No.” She reached for him; she knew he wanted it, too.
His eyes burned with a passion she’d become very familiar with during their short marriage. “I must lock the door. It would not do to shock Jean’s sensibilities.”
It was so like something he’d said once before when they’d made love … had sex … in this very office during their marriage. Chloe was overwhelmed by a sense of déjà vu and couldn’t respond.
He didn’t wait for her to anyway, but moved quickly to the door. The sound of the lock clicking into place was loud in the cavernous office, silent but for their excited breaths.
He had already removed his tie and was working on his shirt buttons by the time he came back to her and Chloe’s breath stalled only to start again with a quick pant. “I’d forgotten how efficient you can be.”
“Did you really?” he asked, sounding like he didn’t believe it at all.
“Maybe not.” Honesty compelled her to admit, “You’re not very forgettable.”
“Nor, yineka mou, are you.”
He’d used to call her that all the time. It could mean “my woman,” or “my wife,” depending on the intent. Neither fit any longer, but she wasn’t going to argue about him getting possessive during sex.
She liked it too much. Besides, he’d told her she was hard to forget, too.
She didn’t mind hearing that at all.
He finished undressing without an ounce of false modesty, his eyes caressing her with a heated stare the whole time. He didn’t suggest she do likewise and she wasn’t surprised, or worried.
Apparently he still liked the idea of undressing her as much as he used to.
So she lay there, getting her own Greek tycoon striptease and enjoying every second of it. Even if it was done with moves more efficient than overtly sexual, her excitement escalated to near unbearable levels.
Her body vibrated with the need to have him inside her, her nipples ached to have his lips on them, her core convulsing involuntarily as if in memory of what it felt like to be joined.
She loved him. She’d never been able to stop. But right now? She just wanted him.
“You look very pleased with yourself.” He didn’t quite smile, but he didn’t seem to mind either.
She shrugged. “Pleased with what I see, more like. You keep your body in amazing shape, Ariston.”
He had changed in this one way. He’d been gorgeously muscular before, but now his body was hard all over and while he didn’t look like some kind of muscle bound Hulk, he clearly took his regime more seriously these days.
“I work out every day. Cardio in the morning, weights at night.”
“That’s pretty dedicated.” He’d used to only work out once a day, five days a week.
“It helps me sleep.”
“I don’t remember you needing much sleep.”
He didn’t answer, but dropped to his knees beside her, his hand reaching to caress her under her suit jacket. “Undressing you is like unwrapping a present.”
He’d used to say that too and she found herself suddenly too choked to answer. So she just smiled, the first one that came naturally to her since arriving in New York.
“Do you look the same under these layers?” he asked as his lips whispered down the side of her face to her neck.
“I’m a little thinner.”
He stopped moving, lifting his head to stare at her. “Surely you had no extra weight to lose.”
For the first time, trepidation filled her. She looked a bit more like a scarecrow than sexpot these days, not that she’d ever had a curvaceous figure.
He didn’t give her anxiety a chance to build. Showing he read her, at least in the bedroom, every bit as well as he’d ever done, he kissed away her worries as his hands began work on her blouse.
Words whispered against her skin that she could not quite make out as he took off her clothes, his fingertips leaving a heated trail of pleasure as he touched each newly revealed patch of skin.
By the time he had her completely naked, she was shivering with need. He’d very purposefully not touched her most erogenous zones, but had still managed to bring her to the point of begging.
Only biting firmly on her bottom lip was keeping the words inside.
He lifted his head to smile at her, his expression knowing. “You never were very patient the first time out of the box.”
“Since this may be our only time, maybe you should get a move on,” she gritted out, though in sexual frustration, not anger.
His expression turned intent. “You think so, do you?”
“You live in New York, when you’re even in the country. I live in Oregon. We’re not exactly well suited for casual hookups.”
“On that, at least, we agree.”
She didn’t get a chance to ask what he meant by that because he touched her breasts. Finally. And she nearly climaxed without him ever going near her clitoris.
But he remembered exactly what kind of touch to her nipples and breasts pleasured her the most and was intent on giving it to her. In abundance. He used his hands and mouth to bring her body taut like a bowstring and then one hand slipped between her legs.
Her mouth opened to scream and he kissed her, swallowing the sound as the ultimate pleasure crashed over her in a tsunami of bliss.
He pulled back, his fingers still touching her, but gently, causing small aftershocks to wrack her body. “It has been a while for you, I think.”
She might be blissed out. She might even still love him. But no way was she answering that implied question. “None of your business.”
“Your body does not lie.”
“Think what you like.” She looked away, knowing her expression would tell him the truth even if her mouth didn’t.
Then a very disturbing thought occurred to her. Was he using sex to disturb her equilibrium further in this business game only he seemed to know the rules to?
A gentle hand brushed her cheek. “Hey, stay with me, Chloe. We are far from finished.”
“No more questions about my private life.”
“Only one.”
She glared at him, sealing her lips.
“Are you in a relationship?”
“Surely whatever spies you have watching your business interests told you the answer to that.”
“I do not have investigators watching you.” By his tone, he considered he’d shown restraint and expected her to appreciate that fact.
She, on the other hand, couldn’t think of a reason he would have wanted to in the first place.
Something of her thoughts must have shown on her face because he said, “There is very little related to any of my business interests that I do not know.”
Okay, but again, why? She wasn’t one of his business interests any longer. Even though he still held a big chunk of shares in Dioletis Industries, she had nothing to do with the company and even less to do with him.
Their currently somewhat intimate circumstances aside.
“Arrogant much?” she asked with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
She used to find his arrogance charming. Maybe part of her still did, but really—what had she been thinking?
He merely smiled.
Well, Mr. Arrogance hadn’t known she was on birth control during their short-lived marriage. And technically, it had been just another business arrangement. So, he didn’t know everything now, did he?
Despite falling head over heels for the gorgeous jerk, the one thing she’d been adamant about was that she wasn’t trapping him or herself into marriage through a child. Not unless they both wanted to be there permanently, and obviously he hadn’t.
“Do you honestly think I’d be on this couch if I had someone waiting for me back in Oregon?” she asked, to get her mind back where it needed to be.
She wanted this, and even she wasn’t going to ruin it for herself.
“No, but I would appreciate hearing the words.” He almost sounded humble.
Which was enough of a shock for her to acquiesce that much. “I’m not in a relationship.”
“Good.”
“I assume you aren’t in one either?” Not that she thought for a minute they defined the word the same way.
They certainly hadn’t agreed on what it meant to be married.
“No.”
“Then we can continue without guilt.”
“Ne. We will continue.” That single slip into Greek to say yes indicated more than his body coiled tightly with sexual tension, or even his hard-on, that Ariston was not in absolute control.
And then the tension snapped and the whirlwind that was her tycoon lover for the afternoon swept over her with touches and kisses and bodies rocking together until she spread her legs, silently begging him to enter her.
He grabbed a condom from the pocket of his slacks and she tried very hard not to think why he might carry those around. “Help me put it on.”
She nodded, and with trembling hands, did exactly that. He groaned as her fingers rolled the condom down his generous length.
Stilling above her, he implored, “Don’t move. Not your hand, not your body. Nothing. Please.”
It was as out of control as she’d ever seen him and she did as he asked. His eyes shut, his head thrown back in repose, he took several deep breaths, letting each one out more slowly than the last.
When he looked down at her again, his azure eyes were dark with desire. “Now.”
“Yes.”
He pressed inside her and her body convulsed around him. Not in climax, but in absolute pleasure and relief at finally being connected to him in this way again. For her, it was a moment so profound, she could not speak.
He did not look as if he needed words, but seemed lost in his own passion, and for that she was grateful.
Even more so when that passion took them on another journey to fulfillment, this time her orgasm gripping her entire body in contractions so intense that though she opened her mouth to scream again, no sound came out.
He muffled his own shout of completion in the juncture of her neck and shoulder, kissing her over and over again between words like Yes, and So good, and Fantastic.
Afterward, they cleaned up in his office’s en suite, neither speaking, but the silence between them not really awkward at all.
It should have been.
She should be having all sorts of regrets, but she wasn’t. She’d wanted this and had enjoyed it far more than even she had thought possible.
She realized he wasn’t feeling quite so sanguine when he looked up from buttoning his shirt, his expression clearly chagrined. “I did not intend to jump you in my office like that.”
“I’m not complaining.”
“Yes, well …” He seemed at a loss for words at her response.
“We’re both adults, Ariston. Whatever else was between us, the sex was always good.”
“Better than,” he agreed firmly.
She found herself grinning, really grinning, for the first time in a very long time. “Much better than.”
“Have dinner with me tonight.”
Without thinking, she reached out to straighten his tie. “Okay.”
They still had to talk about the company and his shares and what he planned to do with them.
“Good.” He stepped back, forcing her hands to drop away. “Jean can give you restaurant and time details. We can discuss whatever it is you came here to see me about then. We seem to have used up our time with other things.”
“I’ll stop by her desk on the way out.”
“I will see you then.” He left the bathroom and was back into full business mode, even taking a call when she followed him a few moments later.
She’d needed time to collect herself.
So the silence hadn’t been awkward, but she wasn’t giving him five stars on postorgasmic afterglow either.
He took a sip of what had to be cold coffee by now and grimaced. A small tendril of satisfaction unfurled in her. Ariston wasn’t picky about the temperature of his coffee, just the taste.
And right now he was suffering through her favorite. Whatever the reason for that, it made her feel just a little like she was getting her own back.
CHAPTER THREE
ARISTON set the phone down, the need for pretense gone now that Chloe had left his office.
Feeling unsettled in a way that was totally alien to his nature, Ariston cursed volubly in Greek. Just like the first time around, nothing was as it seemed with Chloe.
None of the motives he’d attributed to her actions during their marriage withstood the revelations she’d made in his office. And damn it to hell, he hadn’t intended to have sex with her. Not yet.
No matter how much he’d enjoyed it and knew the pleasure to be reciprocal, he didn’t like being out of control. And he had been. He didn’t like deviating from the plan. And he had done.
Frustration and a touch of something he absolutely refused to acknowledge, but someone else might label fear, went through him. He took a deliberate sip of his coffee and the unwelcome flavor pouring across his tongue hit him as another testament to his loss of control.
With another low curse, he threw the cup against the bulletproof glass of his oversize office windows. The sound of shattering crockery was a lot more satisfying than his own thoughts.
Jean opened the door almost immediately. “Is everything all right in here?”
“Is she gone?” Ariston demanded.
“Yes.”
“You gave her instructions for where to meet for dinner?” Plans he’d made before Chloe ever set foot in his office this morning.
“I did.” Jean looked at the broken china cup and coffee spilled against the window. “I know you don’t like that blend, but was that entirely necessary?”
“Have maintenance in to clean it up when I’ve left,” he instructed without answering her gentle gibe.
She nodded, her expression revealing concern he had no desire to see. “Do you need anything?”
“Just privacy.” The words came out harsher than intended, but he wasn’t about to apologize.
Jean, being the highly efficient and intelligent PA that she was, closed the door with a soft snick, disappearing on the other side.
His meeting with Chloe ran over and over in his mind, his superior brain having difficulty aligning newly discovered realities with beliefs he had held for two years.
She hadn’t confirmed it, but he now believed there was a strong possibility that his wife had walked out on him because of the divorce papers her father had told her about.
Divorce papers Ariston had drawn up in his absolute fury at discovering Chloe’s deceitful actions.
Actions that no longer fit into the scenario Ariston had first assigned to them, but behavior that was no less a heinous betrayal of both his grandfather and himself regardless of what had motivated it.
How else could he see her use of birth control when one of the major reasons for their marriage contract was to provide his grandfather with the certainty of the next generation of Spiridakous?
Ariston had believed that marrying Chloe as part of a business bargain would take the messy emotional side out of his need for children to pass the Spiridakou empire onto. His own father had messed up spectacularly in that arena repeatedly.
And Ariston’s one foray into the world of romance had had him crashing and burning, not to mention losing several million dollars on a business deal gone bad in the bargain.
So when his grandfather had come to him and asked him to consider a contractual marriage to ensure the next generation, after careful consideration, Ariston had agreed. As he’d reminded Chloe, it wasn’t so uncommon among the men at his level of power and wealth.
He knew Eber Dioletis was looking for a single investor to infuse capital into his company.
Eber didn’t want to give enough shares of the company for the investment capital he expected in return, but the marriage deal made it possible for both men to find a win-win.
Emotions were messy and devastating.
Business was something Ariston understood and knew how to control, so finding a wife as the result of a business deal appealed very much.
He now realized his certainty that a business marriage would come without the complications he’d sworn off, not once, but twice in his life—first because of his parents’ devastating mistakes and then because of his own—was one of the reasons he’d been so livid with Chloe for lying to him.
She’d let him down personally, but more important, Chloe had betrayed him on a business level, just as Shannon had done. Only this time, Ariston’s grandfather had been hurt as well and Ariston found that untenable.
The one person in his life he could trust and wanted to protect, and Chloe had betrayed them both.
Ariston hadn’t discovered what she’d been up to until a couple of months before their third anniversary. He’d been looking for his wife’s favorite pair of earrings so he could have a complementary necklace and bracelet made as a gift to celebrate the occasion.
He’d also hoped to use the jewelry to soften her toward having fertility tests done. Ariston hadn’t said anything, but he’d been to his own doctor and tests had confirmed that there should be no problem with conception coming from his side.
He’d thought Chloe might need fertility treatments because three years of sex at least once a day, often more frequently, should have resulted in pregnancy.
For a woman not on birth control.
Ariston had never found the earrings. What he had found was a partially used packet of birth control pills in the upper drawer of Chloe’s jewelry armoire.
No matter how she wanted to look at it, Chloe had affirmed to both Ariston and his grandfather that she wanted children before she ever signed the contract they’d negotiated with Eber Dioletis.
She’d tacked on an eventually, but Ariston had assumed the eventually would come within the initial three-year parameter of their marriage contract.
Apparently, he’d been wrong.
What was bothering him now was the possibility—no, probability—he’d been equally wrong about other things, as well.
Chloe had not been on board with her father’s idea of marrying her off in another business contract advantageous to Dioletis Industries. Ariston had known the older man’s plans in that line had fallen through, but he’d assumed it was because of actions on Ariston’s part.
He’d made subtle but unmistakable promises regarding the future of the other man’s business interests if he married Chloe. Ariston had followed that up by allowing his displeasure at the thought of his ex-wife married to someone else leak into the financial community.
It would take a brave or very stupid man to buck the Spiridakou empire.
No one had. Or so he thought.
It had never occurred to Ariston that Chloe might have refused any other marriage deal outright, that those threats might be unnecessary.
However, that made a lot more sense of the fact that she’d made a new life for herself across country. Her claim she’d had nothing to do with her father or Dioletis Industries in two years rang true and was too easily checked. As she had to know it would be.
He’d told Chloe he hadn’t had her watched by a private investigator, and he hadn’t, but now he regretted that choice.
He’d been too focused on Eber and Dioletis Industries and maneuvering her father into an untenable situation for which there was only one out—giving Ariston what he wanted. He hadn’t been focused enough on the woman who had been his wife.
Most telling, for Ariston at any rate, was that he had no trouble adjusting his view of her to something other than a mercenary witch, willing to defraud a trusting old man to get what she wanted for her father’s company, that he’d believed her to be for the past two years.
His instincts had told him Chloe was an innocent, but he’d allowed his knowledge of her deceit to override them.
His new view cast his full-on revenge plans in a different light and opened the door to other possibilities he hadn’t considered.
He hadn’t gotten where he was by ignoring potential avenues and opportunities either. In fact, he was known for his ability to change his train of thought to a new track with lightning speed and efficiency.
Their discussion earlier today would imply that whatever Chloe’s reasons for using the pill, unswerving loyalty to her father and his company was not one of them.
He had no choice but to acknowledge that it appeared she’d been far more her father’s pawn than the black queen on Eber’s side of the chessboard as Ariston had once believed.
Well before their last trip to Greece, Ariston had known Eber was courting other businessmen for another monetarily motivated wedding for his daughter.
At first, he’d assumed the rumors were about his oldest, Rhea, whose marriage Eber had never approved of. The marriage was the only thing Rhea had ever bucked her father’s will regarding and Ariston wouldn’t have put it past the other man to force his daughter into a divorce.
Only later, after discovering the birth control, had Ariston taken Eber’s rumored overtures as irrefutable proof of Chloe’s duplicity. He’d believed that she planned to walk away from their marriage as soon as the contract was completed.
It had surprised him that the family would give up stock in the still privately held company so easily. According to the terms of the contract, Ariston controlled the shares placed in a trust for the first three years of their marriage. If, after three years, either he or Chloe filed for divorce, he kept the rather large chunk of stock.
Well worth the fifty-million-dollar investment.
If Ariston had divorced Chloe before the three-year term, though, he would have forfeited the stock, and vice versa if Chloe had filed for legal separation or divorce during that time.
However, if a child resulted from their marriage, said child would then own the shares, which Ariston would only be trustee of until the child’s twenty-first year.
In addition, the terms of any divorce settlement would change significantly in Chloe’s favor once a child had been conceived. She had every monetary reason in the world to get pregnant and Ariston had wanted it that way, assuming the incentives would be enough to dictate the direction of their relationship.
He’d been wrong and he did not enjoy that state of events. At all.
Regardless, whatever it had been, he now very much doubted that Chloe’s use of birth control had been part of a plot to bilk him and his grandfather of fifty million dollars.
Because he still owned the stock as per the agreement and even if they didn’t realize it, the precarious state of Dioletis Industries did not rest on Eber’s shoulders. No matter how archaic some of his business practices.
As ignorant of the birth control as Ariston, Eber must have assumed Ariston would be the one to end the marriage at the three-year mark because Chloe had not conceived. Hence his investigations into Ariston’s legal actions.
Make no mistake, Ariston had every intention of finding out how the other man had gotten hold of the papers, but he understood the attempts to do so now.
A small spark of satisfaction flared at the knowledge Eber had been no more aware of his daughter’s efforts to prevent pregnancy than Ariston had been.
Ariston arrived at the restaurant right on time for the eight-o’clock reservation, but Chloe had already been seated.
Her now shoulder-length brown hair with its golden highlights was an unmistakable beacon at his favorite table. She appeared to be enjoying a jumbo shrimp cocktail. A mutual favorite of theirs.
“I am not late, I hope,” he said as he took the chair across from her.
She looked up, a wry twist to her lips. “You know you aren’t. But since you divorced me, I’ve been living more like a normal person and I usually eat dinner around six. I was starving, to tell you the truth.”
He was pleased to see her eating at all and thought her claims she normally ate somewhat of an exaggeration.
She had lost weight since the divorce and he would prefer to see her put it back on. For her health’s sake. Not because her overthin figure had turned him off. He wasn’t sure anything could.
For whatever reason, his libido was turned to her signal to near devastating effect.
But she’d never had much spare weight to begin with, having an indifferent attitude toward food that he had wondered about at times during their marriage.
The slightest cold or flu had her off her feet and losing pounds she couldn’t afford off her willowy five-foot-eight-inch figure.
He should inquire as to whether she’d been ill recently. That would account for her more gaunt appearance now.
For the present, he simply said mildly, “Well, that looks good. I hope you ordered me one as well.”
Her green eyes twinkled as she nodded at the waiter, hovering nearby. “Oh, I thought you could do without.”
The waiter arrived with Ariston’s matching appetizer. They took a moment to order their entrées.
“You like to tease the bear.” Ariston gave her a mock frown. “I had forgotten that.”
“Really? I thought you said I was memorable.” Something shifted in her expression, but then she was smiling again, if with less sparkle than he remembered. “But you meant sexually, didn’t you?”
He was too smart to agree with her. He might have played the fool during their marriage, but he wasn’t one. Not really.
“There are many things I remember about you, Chloe.” That, at least, was the truth.
Her green gaze narrowed speculatively. “I imagine I was the first woman to ever leave you. That would have made me memorable, I suppose.”
“That’s the thing about imagination. It’s not real.”
Her shock was palpable. “I didn’t know you’d had any serious relationships. I can’t believe she ditched you either.”
“Why not? You did.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Because we wanted different things,” he mocked. “Perhaps my memory is faulty, but it was you in those discussions with me and my grandfather via video conference saying you wanted children eventually and that you agreed to the marriage.”
“I’m not the one who filed for divorce.”
“I wouldn’t have been either, if you’d still been there when I got back from Hong Kong.”
Both her expression and the sound that came out of her mouth said she didn’t believe him.
“Shannon was my one and only serious girlfriend,” he said, rather than trying to convince Chloe of something Ariston would rather forget himself.
“When?”
“A long time ago. I was younger than you were when we married.”
Interest burned bright in Chloe’s emerald gaze. “How young?”
“Nineteen.”
“How old was she?” Chloe asked, proving an insight he didn’t expect.
“Twenty-seven.” And Shannon had had an entire universe worth more experience than he had with sex and the male-female thing.
He’d avoided it because of what he’d seen in his parents’ marriages, so he’d been entirely unprepared for a piranha like Shannon to come into his life.
Chloe stopped eating, fiddling with her silverware instead. “How long did it last?”
“Long enough for her to gather enough inside information so her father could steal a multimillion-dollar deal out from under me.” Long enough for him to tell Shannon that he loved her and wanted to be together always.
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