His Chosen Wife: Antonides' Forbidden Wife / The Ruthless Italian's Inexperienced Wife / The Millionaire's Chosen Bride

For a long time those memories had made her doubt that she would ever be able to look at another man.

The fact was, she hadn’t really looked at another man until she’d met Jon.

And she still had no idea if it would be the same with Jon as it had been with PJ. She hadn’t wanted to find out. She hadn’t made love with Jon.

“I can’t,” she’d told him firmly when she’d also told him that she was legally still PJ’s wife. “I can’t make love with one man when I’m still married to another.”

“I admire your scruples,” Jon had muttered. “Get the damn divorce so we can get married, then.”

And so she was.

She loved Jon. In his way he was exactly what she wanted and needed—a kind man, a caring man. A man who wanted a wife and a family. A man who was tired of being a workaholic, just as she was.

“We’re good for each other,” Jon had said not long ago. “We want the same things.”

They did. Something she and PJ had never done. Would never do. They wanted different things. As soon as the divorce was final, she was going to marry Jon, make a life with him. And she was going to have children with him. She was going to give her father the grandchild he longed for.

And she would make new memories, wonderful ones that would supercede those of one night in PJ’s arms.

“It was a deal we made,” she told PJ firmly now. “It was never a real marriage.”

“It was,” he said. “And you know it.”

She’d thought so then, but now she shook her head. “I was immature. Marriage is a lot more than one night in bed.”

“Of course it is. But it’s all we had. You left.”

“Would you have wanted me to stay?” she challenged. “I don’t think so! You didn’t want a marriage then, PJ, and don’t pretend you did! You wanted to surf and cut class and hang around on the beach. You know that.” She glared at him, defying him to contradict her.

His lips pressed together. And he didn’t speak for such a long time that Ally found herself sitting on the edge of her chair, wondering if he might actually do that.

But then he shrugged lightly. “You’re right.”

She let out a harsh breath, deflated and relieved at the same time. “Of course I’m right.”

But even knowing that, her gaze locked with his. And Ally couldn’t help it. She found herself once more remembering the night, the tenderness, the passion, the emotion, the unexpected intimacy—and how very real it had felt.

PJ cleared his throat and looked away. He took a long swallow of his iced tea and said briskly, “So who’s the lucky guy?”

“You remember Ken? That guy my dad wanted me to marry …”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Ally.” The words exploded from him. “You’re not going to marry him!”

“No, of course not! I’m not going to marry him! He’s already married. He has three kids. But he also has a younger brother. Jon’s a doctor.”

“A doctor.” The words dropped like stones into a pond.

“A cardiologist,” Ally clarified. “Very well respected. Not my dad’s doctor, but in the same practice. I met him when he was filling in on rounds and came to see my dad. We hit it off. We like the same things. We want the same things.”

“And so you’re going to marry him? Just like that?” PJ’s tone was scathing.

“I married you ‘just like that’! A whole lot faster, in fact.”

His mouth twisted. “For ulterior motives,” he reminded her. “Do you have ulterior motives this time, Al?”

“No!”

“So you’re in love with him?”

“Of course I’m in love with him!” she said quickly. “He’s a wonderful man. Hardworking. Intelligent. Clever. He cares about people. Tries to heal them. To give them a new lease on life. He respects me and what I’ve accomplished. I respect him. It’s a good match. And it’s the right time for both of us. We both want a home, a family, children. I don’t want my family to be just Dad and me. Neither does my father. He’s over the moon about Jon.”

“I’ll bet.”

She bristled at his tone. “I’d marry him even if Dad didn’t like him. Jon is a great guy.”

“Which doesn’t change the fact that you’re still married to me.”

And there they were—back at the divorce papers again. The divorce papers PJ wasn’t signing. The divorce papers that were sitting on the table between them. The divorce papers that even now he refused to look at. And Ally knew from the stubborn jut of his jaw—the same one she’d seen when he’d been determined to ride waves in surf sane men back away from—that he wasn’t going to change his mind now.

She let out a breath and stood up. “Fine. You don’t have to sign them.” She picked up her portfolio. “I can do it without your consent.”

A muscle ticked in his cheek, but he didn’t answer, just looked at her.

She plucked her business card out of the portfolio and tossed it on top of the divorce papers. “Really, PJ, I—”

But his expression was entirely shuttered. Okay, so she’d been wrong to come. Jon had been right when she’d told him where she was going. If he’d been taken aback that she was still married, he’d been even more upset at her notion of coming to see PJ and giving him the papers in person.

“Don’t open a can of worms,” he’d said. “You could get hurt.”

But she’d insisted it was the right thing to do. PJ had done her a favor once. The least she could do was say thank you when they ended their marriage.

At least, that had been the plan.

Now she said to PJ, “Call me if you change your mind. I’ll be in the city until Friday. Otherwise, I’ll see you in court.”

* * *

“You do have a wife.”

“I said I did,” PJ replied sharply.

It wasn’t news. He’d never said otherwise. It wasn’t his fault no one believed him. They’d always treated his assertion as if it were a joke.

It wasn’t a joke.

Or if it was, the joke was on him.

Sometimes he thought that his marriage to Ally was more like a dream—a distant recollection of one moment out of his life that seemed to have no connection to the rest of his life, except for one, which had ended badly.

He should have left it there. Or filed for divorce himself after their set-to at the gallery five years ago.

But he hadn’t. Why bother?

He’d certainly had no intention of marrying at the time. In fact having a wife in absentia had actually been convenient. He’d had a built-in reason for never getting serious. It had stood him in good stead in Hawaii back in his beach-bum days. But it had been even more of a godsend since he’d come back to New York and his parents had begun dragging out every available woman they knew.

“Don’t bother,” he’d said straight off. “I’m married.”

They hadn’t believed him, of course.

Where was his wife? Who was his wife? They’d dismissed it as a joke, too, until he’d shown them the marriage license.

Then they’d had a thousand questions, each nosier and more personal than the last. He’d only answered the ones he wanted to. He’d told them her name, where he’d met her, why he’d married her.

“A favor?” his father had sputtered. “You married her for a favor?”

“Why not?” PJ had said flatly, folding his arms across his chest. “She was between a rock and a hard place. She needed a way out. You’d have done the same,” he said bluntly. His father, for all his bombast, was a far bigger softie than any of his children. “Wouldn’t you?” he’d challenged the old man.

Aeolus had grunted.

“So when is she coming back?” he and Helena had both wanted to know.

“When she finds herself,” PJ had replied. That was probably the closest he’d come to telling a lie.

How the hell did he know when or what Ally would do? He’d have thought she’d be glad to see him when he’d turned up at her gallery opening. Instead she’d been stiff and remote and defensive.

She hadn’t even seemed like Ally. She’d been dismissive of Annie, completely misunderstanding his reason for bringing the other woman along. She hadn’t seemed at all like the girl he’d married. He’d told himself it didn’t matter, that he should just forget her.

But he couldn’t. She was always there—Ally and the one night they’d shared.

“You should go get her,” Yiayia told him. Yiayia was always full of ideas. The minute word of PJ’s marriage had come to her ears, she’d been busy figuring out how to bring them together again.

“No.” PJ was adamant. “Things are fine just the way they are.”

If he’d hoped they would be different, if now and then he had even begun to think about how to make them different, it wasn’t something he’d spent a lot of time dwelling on. Nor was he going to discuss it with Yiayia.

“Pah,” Yiayia had said. “What good is a wife when she is not here? It is not good for a man to be alone, Petros. And it is not good for a great-grandmother to be denied her rightful great-grandchildren, either.”

He’d glowered at her. “That’s what this is all about really,” he’d grumbled.

“Do you think so?” Yiayia said. Then she’d shaken her head in dismay. “You are hiding behind her skirts.”

“I am not! How the hell can I hide behind the skirts of someone who isn’t even here.”

“You use her not to deal with the women your father brings you.”

PJ shrugged. “I don’t want them.”

“Because you want her.”

“That’s not true!”

“So prove it. Not to me.” Yiayia cut off his protest before he could open his mouth. “For yourself. Go find her. See what she is like now. Bring her home. Or get a divorce.”

He ground his teeth, but Yiayia just looked at him serenely. Finally he’d shrugged. “Maybe I will.”

“‘Maybe’ builds no fires to keep me warm. ‘Maybe’ gives me no great-grandbabies.”

“Fine, damn it,” he said, goaded. “It’s our tenth anniversary in August. I’ll track her down. Take her out to dinner to celebrate.”

And sort things out once and for all.

Yiayia smiled and patted his knee. “Bring her home to meet us. It is good she meets your family, ne, Petros?”

PJ hadn’t answered that. But he knew she was right about one thing.

He was thirty-two years old now. Not twenty-two, or even twenty-seven. He was ready to be married to someone who was actually present in his life. And though some of the women his father turned up with were actually quite nice, he still hadn’t forgotten Ally.

And now Ally was back.

“She’s gorgeous,” Rosie said now.

“Yeah.”

In fact, gorgeous didn’t cover the half of it. Ally had always been amazing looking. He’d been struck by that the first time he’d seen her behind the counter at Benny’s taking orders.

The combined genes of her Japanese father and her Chinese-Hawaiian-Anglo mother had come together to make Alice Maruyama an absolute beauty with a porcelain complexion, high cheekbones beneath wide slightly tilted dark eyes, with the longest eyelashes he’d ever seen.

Her shining black hair had always been neatly tamed, nicely brushed, pinned down or pulled up.

Except for the night he’d made love to her. And then it had been a lavish black silk curtain, loose and lush, that begged him to thread it through his fingers, bury his face in it, rub his cheek against it.

The second she’d walked through the door this afternoon, his fingers had itched to undo that sleek librarian’s knot at the back of head, let down her hair and do all those things again.

Good thing he had a well-honed sense of self-preservation. Good thing he’d learned something from going to see her at her gallery opening wearing his heart on his sleeve. He’d been a fool for her once. He wasn’t doing it again.

But he wasn’t letting her walk blithely away, either.

There was still something between them. Electricity. Attraction. Unfinished business.

Had she ever spent a night like their wedding night with bloody Jon? His fingers balled into fists at the thought.

How could she just walk in here and toss divorce papers at him? Why should she want to marry another man?

What the hell was wrong with the one she had?

And how could she be sure their marriage wouldn’t work if they’d never even tried?

“—wants you to call her.” Rosie’s voice cut through his irritated thoughts. “She called while your, um, wife was with you.”

PJ’s thoughts jerked back to the present. “Who? What?”

Rosie gave him a long-suffering look. “Cristina,” she repeated patiently. “Your sister?” she added when he didn’t respond. “She said Mark just got back from San Diego and wants to discuss that new powerboat line he’s been looking at so she wondered if you’d like to come to dinner.”

Dinner. Cristina. Mark.

PJ dragged his brain back to business, determinedly putting Ally on a sidebar long enough to make sense of what Rosie was telling him.

His twin sister Cristina’s husband, Mark, worked for Antonides Marine as well. They had a brownstone not far from his place in Park Slope and sometimes it was easier to talk business over the dinner table than in the office. It was, after all, a family business.

Ally wanted family. She’d said so. She didn’t just want it to be her and her father anymore. She’d said that, too.

Well, hell, PJ thought, cracking his knuckles. If Ally wanted family, he had more than enough to go around.

“Call Cristina back and tell her I can’t make it,” he instructed Rosie. “Tell her I’ll catch Mark in the office tomorrow.” He smiled a cat-who’d-eaten-the-canary smile. “Tell her I’m busy tonight. I’m fixing dinner for my wife.”

“So, did you get it?” Jon asked.

“Not yet,” Ally said, pacing around her hotel room. She hadn’t wanted to call without things being settled, but when they didn’t she knew she had to call anyway. She just hoped she didn’t have to listen to Jon say, I told you so. “I will,” she promised, but it didn’t forestall the discussion.

“Didn’t you go see him? I thought you knew where he was.”

“I do know where he is,” she said. “I saw him. And I will get it. I just didn’t … think it was right to waltz back into his life and fling divorce papers at him first thing.”

“I knew this was a bad idea.”

“It was not a bad idea,” Ally retorted. “He was surprised.”

“To see you or to get the papers?”

“Well, both, I guess. Don’t worry. I’m sure he’ll sign them. PJ doesn’t react well to pressure.”

She should have remembered that. Should have recalled why he’d said he’d come to Hawaii in the first place: to get his family off his back.

She should have been less … pushy. She should have simply chatted with him, got him to talk, acted interested in what he was doing now, what had happened to him in the past ten years, how he’d come to be where he was and doing what he was doing.

The trouble was—and the very reason she didn’t do it was—that it wouldn’t have been an act.

She had gone to PJ’s office hoping that their encounter would be polite and perfunctory. In a best-case scenario she would have felt no more connection to him than she had to Jon’s brother, Ken.

She would certainly not have felt an instant stab of lust and longing. Her eyes would not have fastened on PJ’s well-dressed body and lingered, cataloguing every inch of it. And they would definitely not have mentally undressed that body while her brain wondered as they did so how the man in the suit would compare with the naked twenty-two-year-old she had spent her wedding night with.

Not something she should be contemplating now, either.

“So when?” Jon asked. “I’ll be having dinner with your dad tonight. He’ll want to know. I was hoping to be able to tell him it was a done deal and you were on your way home.”

“I won’t be home until the weekend. You both know that. I’m going to be visiting a gallery here, too, talking to Gabriela, the owner. This trip wasn’t all about PJ.”

“No. It’s about us,” Jon reminded her. “It’s about you finally putting the past behind you and moving on. You are moving on, aren’t you, Ally?”

“Of course I am.”

“Well, I’m only saying … your dad’s heart isn’t strong. It’s not going to hold out forever. And I know you—and I—wanted him to be at our wedding.”

Ally swallowed against the lump in her throat. Yes, she did know her father’s condition was delicate. And she knew how happy seeing her married to Jon would make him. And she did want him to be happy. She wanted them all to be happy.

“I’m working on it.”

“Good. I’ll tell him that. Then hurry up and get home. I miss you. I work twenty hours a day when you’re not here.”

Ally knew the feeling. “I’ll do my best,” she promised. “I’m getting another call. It might be Gabriela. I’d better take it.”

“Forget Gabriela. Forget the gallery. They aren’t that important. Not now. Get the papers signed.”

“Yes. Maybe this is PJ,” Ally suggested hopefully. “Maybe he’s already signed them and is telling me when to pick them up.”

“Let’s hope.” Jon sounded encouraged. “Talk to you tomorrow. I’ll tell your dad you’ve got everything under control.”

Ally hoped it was true. She punched the connect button on her phone. “This is Alice Maruyama.”

“Have dinner with me.” The voice was gruff and male and needed no identification.

She’d heard it only an hour before, but if she hadn’t heard PJ Antonides’s voice for ten years, she would have recognized it. There was a sort of soft, lazy, sexy edge to it that made her toes curl.

“Who is this?” she said with all the starch she could muster.

He laughed. “Check your caller ID. Come on, Al. Don’t be a bad sport. You never used to be a bad sport.”

“This has nothing to do with sports. It has to do with you signing the divorce papers.”

“So convince me over dinner.”

“PJ …”

“Are you chicken, Al? Afraid?” It was the same old taunt he’d used years ago. In the same teasing tone.

When she had met him she’d never surfed in her life, and he’d been appalled.

“Never surfed? And you live where?” He’d stared at her, stunned. She’d just handed him his order from the lunch counter and expected him to move along, but he stayed right where he was, ignoring the line behind him.

“Not everyone who lives in Hawaii surfs,” she’d said haughtily.

He’d shrugged. “Guess not,” he’d agreed. Then he’d slanted her a grin. “And why should you if you’re chicken?”

“I’m not chicken!”

“Then come out with me,” he’d suggested. “I’ll teach you.”

“I have work to do.” She’d waved her arm around, pointing out the fact that she had responsibilities, even if he didn’t. “I can’t just walk out and go play with you.”

“So come tomorrow morning. Better surf then anyway. I’ll meet you here at seven.” He’d tipped his head, the slow grin still lingering, green eyes dancing. “Unless you’re—”

“I am not chicken!” Ally said it then. She said it again now. “Fine. I’ll have dinner with you. We can catch up on ‘old times.’ And you can sign the papers. Where shall I meet you?”

“I’ll pick you up.”

“I’d rather meet you there.”

He paused, then said, “Fine. Suit yourself.” He gave her a street corner in Brooklyn. “You can take a cab or the subway. Either way, I’ll meet you at the Seventh Avenue subway stop.”

“I’ll go to the restaurant.”

“I’ll be at the subway stop. We can walk from there. Seven o’clock. It’s a date.”

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS not a date.

Ally had never been on a date with PJ Antonides in her life—unless you counted their date to meet at the courthouse where they got married, which she wasn’t, she thought irritably, jerking clothes out of her suitcase, trying to find something suitable to wear.

Not that it mattered. It wasn’t a date, despite what he had said. And they weren’t a couple!

She was annoyed. With PJ. But even more with herself. And even more that she was annoyed and had let him get to her.

She was kicking herself now for having done the polite thing and come to give him the papers in person. Jon was right. She hadn’t needed to. She could have sent them through the mail. And if he hadn’t signed them, oh, well. She’d have proceeded with the divorce anyway.

Of course, she still could. But it was worse now, having stirred the pot, so to speak. And she couldn’t understand why he was being obstinate. She’d thought her task would be simple.

She’d expected that PJ would be delighted to see her, that he would tease her a bit—as he always had done—then, still joking with her, he’d sign the papers, maybe buy her a cup of coffee, then give her a wink and a wave as she walked out the door.

Her only qualm about seeing him again had been wondering what her own reaction would be.

PJ had turned her world upside down the night he’d made love to her. He had made her want things she hadn’t suspected existed—things that she’d tried to put out of her mind ever since.

Worse, he had made her want him.

And, on a physical level, her body still did.

Which was why she was putting on a tailored black pantsuit and knotting her hair up on top of her head—tamping down and buttoning up—to remind herself that this was not about physical desire.

It was about commitment and family and eternity.

It was about ending their sham of a marriage so that she could move on and make a real one with Jon.

“Just remember that,” she told her reflection, staring intently into her dark eyes and willing herself to be strong. “PJ doesn’t love you. He’s just getting his own back.”

She was fairly sure that was what this reluctance was all about. He was making her pay, no doubt, for having been rude and distant the night he’d come to her opening.

“He doesn’t love you,” she repeated once more for good measure, then added severely, “and you don’t love him, either.”

The subway ride from her midtown Manhattan hotel to the Seventh Avenue stop in Brooklyn wilted her pantsuit. A straphanger’s charm bracelet snagged her hair. She was disheveled, unkempt and perspiring by the time she emerged onto the street. She wished he’d told her what restaurant they were going to so she could have gone there and repaired the damage before she met him again.

But he was already there waiting when she appeared. He was still wearing the trousers and shirt he’d worn at work. His jacket was slung over his shoulder. His tie was gone. The power was still there. It was like seeing the wild animal let out of his cage.

Ally caught her breath.

“Right on time,” he said approvingly. “No trouble getting here? You look great.”

That was so patently a lie that Ally laughed.

He grinned. “Ah, a real smile at last.”

“It’s just that I’m so delighted to be here,” she said sarcastically.

He laughed. And before she realized—or prepared, or dodged—he swooped around, ducked his head down and kissed her.

It was a quick kiss—a street-corner kiss. A smack of lips, an instant’s worth of the taste of enticing sexy male and nothing more. It was the sort of kiss that happened every day on thousands of street corners around the world. Nothing earth-shattering about it.

At least, no one else’s world shattered.

Only hers.

Because that one brief touch of PJ’s lips brought everything back. The memories she’d wallowed in at first, then spent years sublimating or suppressing, crashed back in on her as if the years of constructing defenses had never even happened.

That one instant, that one taste—his lips on hers, his scent filling her nostrils—and for a split second she was back in Hawaii, back in PJ’s apartment, back in his arms.

She swayed, stumbled.

He caught her before she could fall on her face. “Are you okay?”

Of course she was, but he kept his arm around her as she wobbled on knees of jelly. And she gripped his shirtfront as she righted herself, then let go as she straightened and pulled away. “I’m fine. It’s the heat. And … and I just t-tripped, that’s all.”