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

“Bet you’re glad he didn’t. Bet he is, too.” Martha shook her head. “Wow. What if you’d come back and found out you were already divorced? What if he’d married somebody else?” She looked appalled at the thought.

And Ally had to admit to a certain jolt when she thought about it, too. Of course it would have been easier. She could have married Jon without any of this ever happening.

“You wouldn’t be here now,” Martha said, making almost exactly the same mental leaps. Then she laughed. “And PJ would be facing a weekend with Connie Cristopolous.”

“She’s beautiful,” Ally protested.

“But not PJ’s type.”

Ally wasn’t sure what PJ’s type was. But before she could ask Martha’s opinion, the other woman went on, “So how did you find him?”

And Ally told her about going back to Honolulu, about her dad’s heart attack, about looking for PJ. “I thought he’d be there still,” she admitted. “But he wasn’t.”

“And so you had to track him down! How romantic is that?” Martha was clearly pleased.

Cristina thought PJ was the romantic. Martha thought she was.

“Eddie! Ack, no. Don’t put that in your mouth!” Martha swooped down and scooped her son up, taking whatever he’d been about to eat and tossing it into the water. “Kids! What will I ever do when I have two of them?” she moaned.

“Are you …?”Ally looked at Martha’s flat stomach doubtfully.

But Martha nodded happily. “Not till January, though. What about you guys? Have you talked about kids?”

“Not … much.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. They had talked about children—the ones she hoped to have with Jon, the grandchild she wanted to give her father.

But now in her mind’s eye she didn’t see a child she might have with Jon. She saw PJ as he had been with Alex that evening at his house in Park Slope or, for that matter, PJ now. He had one of Elias’s twins on his hip while he tossed a football with his brothers.

Martha’s gaze followed her own. “Well, it’s early days yet. You will.”

Ally didn’t reply. Her throat felt tight. The glare of the sun made her eyes water. She swallowed and looked away.

As a child, Ally had been a reader.

From the time she had first made sense of words on a page, she’d haunted the library or spent her allowance at the bookstore, buying new worlds in which to live. And invariably the worlds she sought were the boisterous chaotic worlds of laughing, loving, noisy families who were so different from her own.

Oh, she was loved. She had no doubt about that.

But the everyday life of her childhood had been perpetually calm, perennially quiet, perfectly ordered. When her mother had been alive, there had, of course, been smiles and quiet laughter. And even her normally dignified taciturn father had been known to join in. But after her mother’s death, after the number of chairs at the table had gone from three to two, mealtimes had become sober silent affairs. After her mother was gone, there had been no more light conversations, no more gentle teasing. There had actually been very few smiles.

Never a demonstrative man, after his wife’s death Hiroshi Maruyama became even more remote.

“He is sad,” her grandmother had excused him.

“So am I,” Ally had retorted fiercely. “Does he think I don’t miss her, too?”

“He doesn’t think,” Ama had said. “He only hurts.”

Well, Ally had hurt, too. And they had gone right on hurting in their own private little shells, never reaching out for each other, for years. Hiroshi’s way of dealing with his daughter was to give her directions, orders, commands.

“They will make your life better,” he told her stiffly, if she balked.

But they hadn’t.

Marrying PJ and running away from her father’s edicts was what had made her life better. Doing that had freed her, given her scope for her talents, new challenges that she could meet and, eventually, a life she loved and determinedly filled with her art and her work.

In the fullness of that life, she’d forgotten about the warm, boisterous families she’d read about and envied, the closeness she had yearned for all those years ago. She hadn’t really realized anything was missing until she’d come home after her father’s heart attack.

Then, forced to take a break, to slow down and look around during those long days in his hospital room, she had seen cracks in her well-developed life begin to appear. A chasm of emptiness opened up before her.

She was back with her father—in subdued silence. And longing for something more. That was why she’d been so glad to find Jon.

He was as addicted to work as she was. For his entire adult life he had been filling the empty spaces in his life with patients and professional demands on his time. Now he was thirty-five. It was time to marry, to have a family.

“One child,” he said. “I have time for one child.”

“Two,” Ally had responded instantly. “I want at least two.” There was no way she was going to subject a child of hers to the same loneliness she’d experienced.

Jon had looked doubtful and skeptical and as if he thought she was being irrational and irresponsible.

“Two,” Ally had repeated. “Or three,” she’d added in a moment of recklessness.

“No more than two,” Jon had stated firmly. “We don’t want chaos.”

But a part of Ally did.

And tonight on the deck of PJ’s parents’ house, she was reminded of it.

The whole day, from the moment she’d got out of the car to be swept into the embrace of his parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and assorted relations, she had felt a sense of déjà vu that was odd because she knew she’d never experienced anything like it before.

It wasn’t until after dinner, when she’d sat on a bench on the deck listening to Martha and Tallie compare toddler notes while in the kitchen the aunts discussed recipes, and in the dining room PJ’s father, Mr. Cristopolous and several friends compared golf swings and on the lawn little boys toddled about and bigger boys tossed footballs, and on the sand where PJ’s brother Lukas was deep in conversation with Connie Cristopolous and PJ and Elias were starting up a bonfire in the rock fire pit that Ally recognized what she was seeing—the families she’d read about in her books.

They were real—at least this one was. And for the moment—for this one single weekend—they were hers.

She smiled. Not just on her face, but all the way down to the depths of her soul.

“Come on, then, Ally.” Martha broke into her realization. “I’ll show you guys the mural I’m doing in Ma’s sewing room.”

And happily, willingly, Ally went with Martha and Tallie. She ran her hand along the oak banister as they climbed the stairs, certain that the wood beneath her fingers had been worn smooth by PJ and his brothers sliding down it. She paused to look at the family photos that lined the upstairs hall. They stretched back for generations, right to a couple of fiercely scowling men with bushy moustaches who looked as if they’d just got off the boat.

“My great-grandfather Nikos and his brother, right after they emigrated,” Martha said when she noticed the direction of Ally’s glance. “I want to do a mural of the whole family—” she waved her hand to encompass the myriad photos on both the walls “—sometime. Show all the generations. I did something like it out in Butte as a local history project. You would have loved this photo of a traditional Chinese bride one of the students brought in.”

Martha rattled on happily about that, while Ally and Tallie admired the ongoing mural in Helena’s sewing room. Martha had done small vignettes of children—the Antonides children. Here was Alex throwing a ball, Eddie taking his first steps, the twins smearing birthday cake all over their faces. And their parents, too, when they were children. All of Helena’s and Aeolus’s children were there.

“Is that PJ?” Ally asked, arrested by a small painting on the wall by the bay window of a young boy on a surfboard.

Martha laughed. “Who else?”

Who else, indeed? Ally moved closer, drawn to the picture of PJ as a boy, recognizing the triumphant grin and, in his expression, the sheer joy of being alive.

“Of all of us kids,” Martha said, “he was the one who loved it here the most. The one who loved the ocean the most. We always thought he was insane, going all the way to Hawaii when he had one out the back door. But—” she smiled at Ally “—I guess he wasn’t so crazy after all. Look who he brought home.”

And there was such warmth and such approval in her voice that Ally felt about two inches high.

She couldn’t respond to it, could only smile and feel betraying tears prick.

“Hey,” PJ’s voice came from the doorway. “I wondered where you’d got to.”

“Brought her up to show her family history,” Martha said. “You haven’t seen this, either.” She waved a hand around the room.

PJ ambled in and startled Ally by snagging her hand and drawing her along with him while he moved from vignette to vignette. She tried to look at them, too, but mostly she was aware of his hand wrapping hers.

She should tug it away. It was sending the wrong message, and not just to the onlookers, but to Ally herself. It promised a relationship, a future. A married life of love.

Experimentally she tried pulling her hand out of his. He hung on tighter. “They’re terrific,” he told Martha, nodding at her paintings. “Ma loves ‘em. Says she’s going to make you fill the whole room.”

“Yes, well, Theo and I are doing our part. Tallie and Elias are doing theirs. Up to you now,” she added giving him a significant look.

Ally tensed at her obvious inference, but PJ’s grip on her hand didn’t change. “All in good time,” he said easily. Then, as if he took it all in stride, as doubtless he did, he said to all of them, “Fire’s going. Sun’s set. Come on out.”

The scene around the firepit was even more reminiscent of all the stories she used to read. Most of the family gathered around it, sitting on blankets, laughing and talking as the evening lengthened and the sky grew deep and dark.

The breeze off the ocean turned the air cool, and Ally would have gone for her sweater, but before she could, PJ slipped his sweatshirt jacket over her shoulders.

“Come here,” he said, and drew her down onto the blanket, shifting around so that she sat in the vee of his legs and he tugged her back against his chest, looping his arms around her.

It felt far too intimate for Ally’s peace of mind. But at the same time, perversely, it felt like exactly where she wanted to be.

“Warmer?” His lips were next to her ear, his breath lifting tendrils of her hair.

She shivered again at the feel of it and, misunderstanding the cause, he wrapped his arms more tightly around her. “I can go get you a warmer jacket.”’

It would have got her out of his arms. Saying “Yes, please” would have been the sane thing to do, but Ally didn’t do it.

She couldn’t bring herself to destroy the evening. It was her dream come to life. The warmth and joy of the camaraderie, the laughter and easy music that began as Lukas picked up a guitar and began to play, and two of PJ’s aunts began to sing, enchanted her. And the hard strength of PJ’s arms around her simply enhanced the experience.

“I’m fine,” she said.

It was true. It was wonderful.

It lasted the rest of the night.

It was late when the party began to break up. Tallie and Elias had put the twins down to sleep. Martha had gone inside to rock Eddie. Yiayia had gone up to bed an hour earlier, but not before she’d stopped on her way in to smile down at Ally, snug in the embrace of PJ’s arms.

“Ne,” she said approvingly. And her fingers had brushed over the top of Ally’s head. A benediction of sorts?

“Night, Yiayia,” PJ said, tilting his head up to smile at her.

Yiayia said something to him in Greek that Ally didn’t understand. She was surprised when PJ seemed to.

His smile broadened and he nodded. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I will.”

His grandmother nodded and padded off into the house.

“What did she say?” Ally wanted to know.

“She said I shouldn’t forget to kiss you.”

Ally’s breath caught in her throat, knowing that PJ’s lips were a scant inch from her ear. But even as she held her breath, he made no move to kiss her.

Instead he eased back away from her and stood up, then held out a hand and hauled her to her feet. “Time to go up,” he said.

“Yes. It is late. Nearly midnight.” She felt stiff from having sat there so long, yet she was reluctant to leave. Lukas was still softly playing his guitar. And Connie, apparently oblivious to any machinations that would have directed her toward PJ, seemed enthralled with sitting at Lukas’s feet and listening to his music. Elias and Tallie had come back out and were sitting on the other side of the fire, their arms around each other as they stared into the magic of the fire.

Ally understood. She didn’t want to leave the magic, either.

But she could do exactly what she’d always done as a child after she’d read one of those books that made her dream impossible dreams. She could take her dreams to bed with her.

But first, she reminded herself as she followed PJ up the stairs so he could show her to her room, she should call Jon.

She hadn’t called him all day. But it wasn’t too late. With the time difference, he would probably just be getting home from the hospital. Maybe she could communicate a little of what she’d felt today to him—this feeling of family belonging, joy, connection. Maybe he would understand.

Maybe, she dared hope, he would share her dream.

PJ took hold of the handle on one of the doors in the hallway. “Here we are.” He pushed the door open and held it for her. “My old room,” he said with a grin.

“Yours?” She looked around, intrigued. It had obviously been redecorated since PJ had lived in it. The walls were a freshly painted pale sage green. But the bookcase still had some books that the young PJ Antonides would have read, and the hardwood floors showed evidence of being used for more than walking.

“Used to have bunkbeds, too,” he told her. There was a double-size bed in the room now, with a taupe-colored duvet and heaps of inviting pillows. “I had the top one. Always wanted to be on top. Luke was stuck with the bottom.”

She could imagine him in here, her mind’s eye seeing the boy on the surfboard that Martha had painted. She wondered about the dreams he had dreamed as a child. He needn’t have dreamed ones like hers. They’d been his reality.

Then she realized he was just standing there looking at her. “What?” she said.

He shook his head, smiling, too. “Nothing.” But still he made no move to go.

“Where are you going to be?” she asked him.

He blinked. “What?”

She shrugged. “I just wondered where you were sleeping? Which room?”

“This one,” he said. “I’m sleeping in here. With you.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

PJ WAITED for the inevitable, “No!” and the predictable protest that would follow.

Ally stood stock-still in the middle of the bedroom, staring at him, her eyes wide, looking stricken. She opened her mouth, and he prepared himself for the argument, the refusal, for more of her damn “rules.”

Then just as abruptly her mouth closed again.

Her expression shifted subtly, becoming unreadable. Or at least unreadable to him.

Ten years ago Ally Maruyama had been an open book. Serious and sunny by turns, yes, but still fathomable. PJ had always understood where she was coming from, what she hoped for, what her dreams were.

This Ally was as fathomable as cement.

She kissed him like she wanted him. Hell, the way she’d responded to his kisses had nearly burned him to the ground. And she hadn’t been immune, either. That much he did know.

And yet she persisted in wanting the divorce.

And now she was looking at him, not saying anything. Just looking.

“I suppose you think I should have got you a separate bedroom,” he said gruffly, scowled as he deliberately began unbuttoning his shirt.

“No,” she said with maddening calm. “I’m sure that would have been awkward. Your mother would definitely have asked questions. I guess it just … didn’t occur to me. I’m an idiot.” Then she shrugged as if it didn’t matter. And damned if she didn’t just take hold of the hem of her shirt and pull it over her head!

PJ’s mouth went dry. She wasn’t going to kiss him, but she’d strip for him? God Almighty.

She wasn’t baring anything yet that she couldn’t bare in public. Beneath her top she had on a lacy ivory bra. It was at least as discreet as any bikini top. But he hadn’t seen her breasts, even in that state of coverage in ten years. He remembered them as small ripe handfuls that had begged to be kissed. Now they were fuller, riper. A woman’s breasts.

And he needed to kiss them again—now.

Like a slow fire, his desire had been simmering all day. From the minute he’d spotted her in the hotel lobby, he’d felt a quickening in his pulse, an awareness that he never felt with any other woman. He’d told himself it was just the heat of the moment, that it would fade.

But the trip out to the Hamptons hadn’t really dampened it. Talking with her, listening to her, finding out more about who she’d become after all these years—even when they were doing nothing more than that—actually seemed to deepen his awareness of her.

Seeing her with his family had made it deeper still.

If she’d been stiff and silent, treating them with distant politeness, he would have backed off. But even though she’d looked a bit overwhelmed at times, she’d slipped into the pool of Antonides family warmth and hadn’t come close to drowning.

She’d talked sailing with his father, canning tomatoes with his mother, and had been thrilled to discuss quilting with his aunts Narcissa and Maria. She and his brother Lukas had compared notes about riding camels in the outback of Australia. From the shy girl she’d been when he’d first met her, she had clearly blossomed. She seemed to enjoy them all.

And he knew they had enjoyed her. Even his grandmother, whose reaction he’d been a little wary of, truth to tell, had warmed to her.

She’d taken him by the arm after dinner and said, “You surprise me, Petros.”

And he’d stiffened because he didn’t want to hear what she might have to say. “How so?” he’d demanded, a bit more belligerent than he usually was with his grandmother whom he adored.

“You swim in deep waters.”

He’d frowned and narrowed his gaze. “What are you talking about, Yiayia?”

“Your wife.”

Which was exactly what he’d been afraid they were talking about. “Don’t be cryptic,” he’d told her. “If you’ve got something to say, just spit it out. Not that it’s going to make a damn bit of difference,” he’d added gruffly.

Her brows had lifted. Dark eyes bored into his. A small smile touched her face. “You have it bad,” she’d said.

“I have a wife,” he’d retorted.

“A beautiful wife,” she agreed. “A strong wife. But a wife, I think, who is still finding her way. Ne, Petros?”

His jaw had tightened. He’d lifted his shoulders slightly. He didn’t speak.

He hadn’t had to. Yiayia had always known what he was thinking, had always known what was important to him. She’d put her small but still-strong fingers over his and squeezed.

“I like her,” she’d said. “Your Ally is honest. When she knows the truth, so will you.”

What he knew right now, staring at Ally in her bra and capri pants, was confusion.

“What happened to the ‘no kissing’ business?” he said hoarsely.

She was rummaging in her suitcase, taking out some sort of nightshirt that didn’t look very sexy at all but still managed to make his blood hot. At his question, she turned, looking over her shoulder at him. “Nothing happened to it.”

“We’re going to sleep in the same bed all night and nothing’s going to happen?”

She turned and straightened. “Well, I suppose you could force yourself on me.” The look she gave him was a defiant challenge.

His breath hissed through his teeth. “You know damned well I won’t do that.”

“I didn’t think you would.” She picked up the nightshirt and a toiletries bag and headed toward the bathroom, saying as off-handedly as she could manage, “I’m going to grab a quick shower. I’ll be right back.”

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