More than a Convenient Marriage?

She gathered herself to flee, but before she could pivot away, he rose with a menacing scrape of his chair leg on the paving stones. Drawing out the chair off the corner of his table, he kept a steady gaze on her to indicate he would come after her if she chose to run. He wanted to know everything about the man who thought he could steal from him.

So he could quietly destroy him.

“The rooms aren’t ready,” he told her.

“So they’ve just informed me again.” Adara’s mouth firmed to a resistant angle, but she moved forward. If there was one thing he could say about her, it was that she wasn’t a coward. She met confrontation with a quiet dignity that disconcerted him every time, somehow making him feel like an executioner of an innocent even though he’d never so much as raised his voice at her.

She’d never given him reason to.

Until today.

With the collected poise he found both admirable and frustrating, she set her purse to the side and lowered herself gracefully into the chair he held. He had learned early that passionate women were scene-makers and he didn’t care to draw attention to himself. Adara had been a wallflower with a ton of potential, blooming with subtle brilliance as they had made their mark on the social scene in New York, London and Athens, always keeping things understated.

Which meant she didn’t wear short-shorts or low-cut tops, but the way her denim cutoffs clung all the way down her toned thighs and the way the crisp cotton of her loose shirt angled over the thrust of her firm breasts was erotic in its own way.

Unwanted male hunger paced with purpose inside him. How could he still want her? He was furious with her.

Without removing her sunglasses or even looking at him as he took his seat, she opened the menu he’d been given. She didn’t put it down until the server arrived, then ordered a souvlaki with salad and a glass of the house white.

“The same,” Gideon said dismissively.

“You won’t speak Greek even to a native in his own country?” Adara murmured in an askance tone as the man walked away.

“Did I use English? I didn’t notice,” Gideon lied and sensed her gaze staying on him even though she didn’t challenge his assertion. Another thing he could count on with his wife: she never pushed for answers he wouldn’t give.

Nevertheless, he found himself waiting for her to speak, willing her almost, which wasn’t like him. He liked their quiet meals that didn’t beleaguer him with small talk.

He wasn’t waiting for, “How’s the weather,” however. He wanted answers.

Her attention lifted to the greenery forming the canopy above them, providing shade against the persistent sun. Blue pots of pink flowers and feathery palms offered a privacy barrier between their table and the empty one next to them. A colorful mosaic on the exterior wall of the restaurant held her attention for a very long time.

He realized she didn’t intend to speak at all.

“Adara,” he said with quiet warning.

“Yes?” Her voice was steady and thick with calm reason, but he could see her pulse racing in her throat.

She wasn’t comfortable and that was a much-needed satisfaction for him since he was having a hard time keeping his balance. Maybe the comfortable routine of their marriage had grown a bit stale for both of them, but that didn’t mean you threw it away and ran off to meet another man. None of this gelled with the woman he’d always seen as ethical, coolheaded and highly averse to risk.

“Tell me why.” He ground out the words, resenting the instability of this storm she’d thrown him into and the fact he wasn’t weathering it up to his usual standard.

Her mouth pursed in distaste. “From the outset I made it clear that I would rather be divorced than put up with infidelity.”

“And yet you sneaked away to have an affair,” he charged, angry because he’d been blindsided.

“That’s not—” A convulsive flinch contracted her features, half hidden by her bug-eyed glasses, but the flash of great pain was unmistakable before she smoothed her expression and tone, appearing unaffected in a familiar way that he suddenly realized was completely fake.

His fury shorted out into confusion. What else did she hide behind that serene expression of hers?

“I’m not having an affair,” she said without inflection.

“No?” Gideon pressed, sitting forward, more disturbed by his stunning insight and her revelation of deep emotion than by her claim. Her anguish lifted a host of unexpected feelings in him. It roused an immediate masculine need in him to shield and protect. Something like concern or threat roiled in him, but not combat-ready threat. Something he wasn’t sure how to interpret. Adara was like him, unaffected by life. If something was piercing her shell, it had to be bad and that filled him with apprehensive tension.

“Who did you come to see then?” he prodded, unconsciously bracing.

A slight hesitation, then, with her chin still tucked into her neck, she admitted, “My brother.”

His tension bled away in a drain of caustic disappointment. As he fell back in his chair, he laced his Greek endearment with sarcasm. “Nice try, matia mou. Your brothers don’t earn enough to build a castle like the one we saw today.”

Her head came up and her shoulders went back. With the no-nonsense civility he so valued in her, she removed her sunglasses, folded the arms and set them beside her purse before looking him in the eye.

The golden-brown irises were practically a stranger’s, he realized with a kick of unease. When was the last time she’d looked right at him? he wondered distantly, while at the same time feeling the tightening inside him that drew on the eye contact as a sexual signal. Like the rest of her, her eyes were understated yet surprisingly attractive when a man took the time to notice. Almond-shaped. Clear. Flecked with sparks of heat.

“I’m referring to my older brother.”

Her words left a discordant ring in his ears, dragging him from the dangerous precipice of falling into her eyes.

The server brought their wine. Gideon kept his attention fully focused on Adara’s composed expression and contentiously set chin.

“You’re the eldest,” he stated.

She only lifted her wine to sip while a hollow shadow drifted behind her gaze, giving him a thump of uncertainty, even though he knew she only had two brothers, both younger than her twenty-eight years. One was an antisocial accountant who traveled the circuit of their father’s hotel chain auditing ledgers, the other a hellion with a taste for big engines and fast women, chasing skirt the way their father had.

Given her father’s peccadilloes, he shouldn’t be surprised a half sibling had turned up, but older? It didn’t make sense and he wasn’t ready to let go of his suspicions about an affair.

“How did you find out about him? Was there something in the estate papers after your father passed?”

“I’ve always known about him.” She set aside her wine with a frown of distaste. “I think that’s off.”

“Always?” Gideon repeated. “You’ve never mentioned him.”

“We don’t talk, do we?” Golden orbs came back, charged with electric energy that made him jolt as though she’d touched a cattle prod to his internal organs.

No. They didn’t talk. He preferred it that way.

Their server arrived with their meals. Gideon asked for Adara’s wine to be changed out. With much bowing and apologies, a fresh glass was produced. Adara tried it and stated it was fine.

As the server walked away, Adara set down her glass with another grimace.

“Still no good?” Gideon tried it. It was fine, perhaps not as dry as she usually liked, but he asked, “Try again?”

“No. I feel foolish that you sent back the first one.”

That was so like her to not want to make a fuss, but he considered calling back the waiter all the same. Stating that they didn’t talk was an acknowledgment of an elephant. It was the first knock on a door he didn’t want opened.

At the same time, he wanted to know more about this supposed brother of hers. Sharing was a two-way street though and hypocrite that he was, he’d prefer backstory to flow only one way. He glanced at the offending wine, ready to seize it as an excuse to keep things inconsequential between them.

And yet, as Adara picked up her fork and hovered it over her rice, she gave him the impression of being utterly without hope. Forlorn. The hairs rose all over his body as he picked up signals of sadness that he’d never caught an inkling of before.

“Do you want to talk about him?” he asked carefully.

She lifted her shoulder. “I’ve never been allowed to before so I don’t suppose one more day of silence matters.” It was her conciliatory tone, the one that put everything right and allowed them to move past the slightest hiccup in their marriage.

What marriage? She wanted a divorce, he reminded himself.

Instinct warned him this was dangerous ground, but he also sensed he’d never have another chance to understand if he didn’t seize this one. “Who wouldn’t let you talk about him?” he asked gruffly.

A swift glance gave him the answer. Her father, of course. He’d been a hard man of strong opinions and ancient views. His daughter could run a household, but her husband would control the hotels. Her share of the family fortune wasn’t hers to squander as her brothers might, but left in a trust doled out by tightly worded language, the bulk of the money to be held for her children. The male ones.

Gideon frowned, refusing to let himself be sidetracked by the painful subject of heirs.

“I assume this brother was the product of an affair? Something your father didn’t want to be reminded of?”

“He was my mother’s indiscretion.” Adara frowned at her plate, her voice very soft, her expression disturbingly young and bewildered. “He lived with us until he left for school.” She lifted anxious eyes, words pouring out of her in a rush as if she’d held on to them for decades. “My aunt explained years later that my father didn’t know at first that Nico wasn’t his. When he found out, he had him sent to boarding school. It was awful. That’s all they’d tell me, that he’d gone to school. I knew I was starting the next year and I was terrified I’d be forgotten the same way.”

A stitch pulled in his chest. His childhood predisposed him to hate the thought of any child frightened by anything. He felt her confusion and fear at losing her brother mixed with the terror of not knowing what would happen to herself. It made him nauseous.

Her expression eased into something poignant. “But then we saw him at my aunt’s in Katarini over the summer. He was fine. He told me about his school and I couldn’t wait to go myself, to be away from the angry man my father had turned into, make new friends...” Her gaze faded to somewhere in the distance. “But I was sent to day school in New York and we saw Nico only a few more times after that. One day I asked if we would see him, and my father—”

Gideon wouldn’t have known what she failed to say aloud if he hadn’t been watching her so intently, reading her lips because he could barely hear her. Her tongue touched the corner of her mouth where a hairline scar was sometimes visible between her morning shower and her daily application of makeup. She’d told him it had come from a childhood mishap.

A wrecking ball hit him in the middle of his chest. “He hit you?”

Her silence and embarrassed bite of her lip spoke volumes.

His torso felt as if it split open and his teeth clenched so hard he thought they’d crack. His scalp prickled and his blood turned to battery acid.

“I didn’t ask again,” she said in her quick, sweep-it-under-the-rug way. “I didn’t let the boys say his name. I let it go. I learned to let a lot of things go.”

Like equal rights. Like bad decisions with the hotel chain that were only now being repaired after her father was dead. Like the fact that her brothers were still boys because they’d been raised by a child: her.

Gideon had seen the dysfunction, the alcoholic mother and the overbearing father, the youngest son who earned his father’s criticism, and the older children who hadn’t, but received plenty of it anyway. Adara had always managed the volatile dynamics with equanimity, so Gideon hadn’t tried to stir up change. If he had suspected physical abuse was the underbelly of it all...

His fist clenched. “You should have told me,” he said.

Another slicing glance repeated the obvious. We don’t talk.

His guts turned to water. No, they didn’t and because of that he’d let her down. If there was one thing his wife had never asked of Gideon, but that he’d regarded as his sacred duty, it was his responsibility to protect her. Adara was average height and kept herself toned and in good shape, but she was undeniably female. Her bones were smaller, her muscles not as thick as a man’s. She was preordained by nature to be vulnerable to a male’s greater strength. Given what had happened to his own mother, he’d lay down his life for any woman, especially one who depended on him.

“At any time since I’ve known you,” he forced himself to ask, “did he—”

“No,” she answered bluntly, but her tone was tired. “I learned, Gideon.”

It wasn’t any sort of comfort.

How had he not seen this? He’d always assumed she was reserved because she had been raised by strict parents. She was ambitious and focused on material gain because most immigrant families to America were. He was.

And compliant? Well, it was just her nature.

But no, it was because she had been abused.

He couldn’t help staring at her, reeling in disbelief. Not disbelieving she had been mistreated, but that he hadn’t known. What else did he not know about her? he wondered uneasily.

Adara forced herself to eat as though nothing was wrong, even though Gideon’s X-ray stare made her so nervous she felt as if her bones were developing radiation blisters. Why had she told him? And why did it upset her that he knew what she’d taken such pains to hide from the entire world? She had nothing to be ashamed of. Her father’s abuse wasn’t her fault.

Sharing her past made her squirm all the same. It was such a dark secret. So close to the heart. Shameful because she had never taken action against her father, trying instead to do everything in her power to keep what remained of her family intact. And she’d been so young.

Her eyebrows were trying to pull into a worried frown. She habitually noted the tension and concentrated on relaxing her facial muscles, hiding her turmoil. Taking a subtle breath, she begged the constriction in her throat to ease.

“He went by his father’s name,” she told Gideon, taking up the subject of her brother as the less volatile one and using it to distract his intense focus from her. “I found his blogs at one point, but since he had never tried to contact us I didn’t know if he’d want to hear from me. I couldn’t reach out anyway,” she dismissed with a shrug. “Not while my father was alive.” She had feared, quite genuinely, that he would kill her. “But as soon as Papa died, I started thinking about coming here.”

“But never told me.”

She flinched, always sensitive to censure.

Her reaction earned a short sigh.

She wasn’t going to state the obvious again though, and it wasn’t as if she was laying blame. The fact they didn’t talk was as much her fault as his, she knew that. Talking about personal things was difficult for her. She’d grown up in silence, never acknowledging the unpleasant, always avoiding points of conflict so they didn’t escalate into physical altercations. Out of self-defense she had turned into a thinker who never revealed what she wanted until she had pondered the best approach and was sure she could get it without raising waves.

“I didn’t tell anyone I was coming here, not even my brothers. I didn’t want anyone talking me out of it.” It was a thin line in the sand. She wouldn’t be persuaded to leave until she’d seen her brother. She needed Gideon to recognize that.

He didn’t argue and they finished their meals with a thick cloud of tension between them. The bouzouki music from the speakers sounded overly loud as sultry heat layered the hot air into claustrophobic blankets around them.

The minute the server removed their plates, Adara stood and gathered her things, grasping at a chance to draw a full breath. “Thank you for lunch. Goodbye, Gideon.”

His hand snaked out to fasten around her wrist.

Her heart gave a thump, his touch always making her pulse leap. She glared at the strong, sun-browned fingers. It wasn’t a hard grip. It was warm and familiar and she hated herself for liking it. That gave her the strength to say what she had to.

“Will you contact Halbert or shall I?” She ignored the spear of anguish that pierced her as she mentioned their lawyer’s name.

“I fired Lexi.”

“Really.” She gave her best attempt at blithe lack of interest, but her arteries constricted so each beat of her heart was like a hammer blow inside her.

He shifted his grip ever so slightly, lining up his fingertips on her wrist, no doubt able to feel the way her pulse became ferocious and strong. Not that he gave anything away. His fiercely handsome features were as watchful as a predator’s, his eyes hidden behind his mirrored aviators.

“She had no right to speak to you as she did.” His assertive tone came across as almost protective. “Implying things that weren’t true. I haven’t cheated on you, Adara. There’s no reason for us to divorce.”

As a spasm of agitated panic ran through her, Adara realized she’d grasped Lexi as a timely excuse. Thoughts of divorce had been floating through her mind for weeks, maybe even from the day she had realized she was pregnant again. If I lose this one, I’ll leave him and never have to go through this again.

“Actually, Gideon,” she said with a jagged edge to her hushed voice, “there’s no reason for us to stay married. Let me go, please.”

CHAPTER THREE

NO REASON TO stay married?

Gideon’s head nearly exploded as Adara walked away. How about the luxury cruise ship they were launching next year? The ultimate merger of his shipbuilding corporation and her hotel chain, it wasn’t just a crown jewel for both entities, it was a tying together of the two enterprises in a way that wouldn’t be easy to untangle. They couldn’t divorce at this stage of that project.

Gideon hung back to scratch his name on the bill while tension flooded back into him, returning him to a state of deep aggravation. Neither of them had cheated, but she still wanted a divorce. Why? Did she not believe him?

It was too hot to race after her, and his stride was long enough that he closed in easily as she climbed the road behind the marina shops. Resentment that he was following her at all filled him with gall. He was not a man who chased after women begging for another chance. He didn’t have to.

But the fact that Adara saw no reason to continue their marriage gave him a deep sense of ignorance. They had ample financial reasons. What else did she want from the union? More communication? Fine, they could start talking.

Even as he considered it, however, resistance rose in him. And at that exact moment, as he’d almost caught up to Adara, the stench of rotting garbage came up off a restaurant Dumpster, carried on a breeze flavored with the dank smells of the marina: tidal flats, diesel exhaust and fried foods. It put him squarely back in his childhood, searching for a safe place to sleep while his mother worked the docks in Athens.

Adara didn’t even know who she was married to. Divorce would mean court papers, identification, paparazzi... Marrying under an assumed name had been tricky enough and he lived a much higher profile now. He couldn’t risk divorce. But if he wasn’t legally married to her, did he have a right to keep her tied to him?

His clothes began to feel tight. “Adara, you’ll get sunstroke. Come back to the hotel,” he ordered.

She seemed to flinch at the sound of his voice. Pausing, she turned to face him, her defensive tension obvious in her stiff posture.

“Gideon—” She seemed to search for words around her feet, or perhaps she was looking for stones to scare him away. “Look, I’ve taken this time as vacation.” She flicked her thick plait back over her shoulder. “The gardener said my brother will be back in a few days. I’m staying until I meet him. In the meantime, I might as well see the sights. There’s a historical viewpoint up here. You can go back to New York or on to Valparaiso as scheduled. Legal can work out the details. I’m not going to contest anything. Neither of us will be bothered by any of this.”

Not bothered? He wished. He was shaken to the bone by what she’d revealed, not the least bit comfortable with the fact he’d been so oblivious. It gave him new eyes on her and them and yes, he could see that they’d foundered a bit, but this wasn’t so bad you abandoned ship and let it sink.

Apparently Adara was prepared to, offering up one of her patented sweep, fold, tuck maneuvers that tidied away all conflicts. Mama’s asking about Christmas. We can take two cars if you like, so you can stay in the city?

Her accommodating nature was suddenly irritating in the extreme, partly because he knew he should get back to work rather than standing here in the middle of the road in the middle of the Mediterranean watching her walk away. She might have lightened her workload in anticipation of coming here, but he hadn’t. Myriad to-dos ballooned in his mind while ahead of him Adara’s pert backside sashayed up the incline of the deserted street.

He wasn’t stupid enough to court heat exhaustion to keep a woman, but the reality was only a very dense man would let that beautiful asset walk away from him without at least trying to coax her to stay. Admiring her round butt, he recollected it was the first thing he’d noticed about her before she’d turned around with an expression of cool composure that had assured him she was all calm water and consistent breeze.

The rest of the pieces had fallen into place like predetermined magic. Their dealings with each other had been simple and straightforward. Adara was untainted by the volatile emotions other women were prone to. Perhaps the smooth sailing of their marriage was something he’d taken for granted, but she must know that he valued it and her.

Or did she? He was about as good at expressing his feelings as he was at arranging flowers.

Disquiet nudged at him as he contemplated how to convince her to continue their marriage. He knew how to physically seduce a woman, but emotional persuasion was beyond his knowledge base.

Why in hell couldn’t they just go back to the way things had been?

Not fully understanding why he did it, he caught up to her at the viewpoint. It was little more than a crosspiece of weathered wood in dry, trampled grass. A sign in English identified it as a spot from which ships had been sighted during an ancient war. It also warned about legal action should tourists attempt to climb down to the beach below. A sign in Greek cautioned the locals to swim at their own risk.

Adara shaded her eyes, but he had the sense she was shielding herself from him as much as the sun. Her breasts rose and fell with exertion and her face glowed with light perspiration, but also with mild impatience. She didn’t really give a damn about old ships and history, did she? This was just an excuse to get away from him.

He experienced a pinch of compunction that he’d never bothered to find out what she gave a damn about. She was quiet. He liked that about her, but it bothered him that he couldn’t tell what she was thinking right now. If he didn’t know what she was thinking, how would he talk her round to his way of thinking?

Her beauty always distracted him. That was the truth of it. She was oddly youthful today with her face clean of makeup and her hair in pigtails like a schoolgirl, but dressed down or to the nines, she always stirred a twist of possessive desire in his groin.

That was why he didn’t want a divorce.