“If we were anywhere else but this room I’d be all over you, and you’re obviously not ready for that.”

A funny little frisson went through Adara as she took in the rugged, intimidating presence that was her husband. Gideon held out a commanding hand, as imperious and inscrutable as ever, but his words had an undercurrent of … was it compassion?

Whatever it was, it did things to her, softening her, but it scared her at the same time. She was already too susceptible to him.

And his desire for her was a seduction in itself. Her insecurity as a woman had been ramped up to maximum with everything that had happened, but things had shifted in the last twenty-four hours. She was looking at him, hearing him. His sexual hunger wasn’t an act. She knew the signs of interest and excitement in him. His chiselled features were tense with focus. A light flush stained his cheekbones—almost a flag of temper if not for the line of his mouth, softened into a hungry, feral near-smile.

Oh, God. If she stayed in this room she’d beg him to be all over her, and where would that lead beyond a great orgasm? She didn’t know what sort of relationship she wanted with Gideon, but knew unequivocally that she couldn’t go back to great sex and nothing else.

More than a Convenient Marriage?

Dani Collins

www.millsandboon.co.uk

DANI COLLINS discovered romance novels in high school and immediately wondered how a person trained and qualified for that amazing job. She married her high school sweetheart, which was a start, then spent two decades trying to find her fit in the wide world of romance writing—always coming back to Harlequin Mills & Boon®.

Two children later, and with the first entering high school, she placed in Harlequin’s Instant Seduction contest. It was the beginning of a fabulous journey towards finally getting that dream job.

When she’s not in her Fortress of Literature, as her family calls her writing office, she works, chauffeurs children to extra-curricular activities, and gardens with more optimism than skill. Dani can be reached through her website at www.danicollins.com

Recent titles by the same author:

NO LONGER FORBIDDEN?

PROOF OF THEIR SIN

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my sisters, ’cause they live far away and I miss ’em.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

GIDEON VOZARAS USED all his discipline to keep his foot light on the accelerator as he followed the rented car, forcing himself to maintain an unhurried pace along the narrow island road while he gripped the wheel in white-knuckled fists. When the other car parked outside the palatial gate of an estate, he pulled his own rental onto the shoulder a discreet distance back then stayed in his vehicle to see if the other driver noticed. As he cut the engine, the AC stopped. Heat enveloped him.

Welcome to hell.

He hated Greece at the best of times and today was predicted to be one of the hottest on record. The air shimmered under the relentless sun and it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. But the weather was barely worth noticing.

The gates of the estate were open. The other car could have driven straight through and up to the house, but stayed parked outside. He watched the female driver emerge and take a moment to consider the unguarded entrance. Her shoulders gave a lift and drop as though she screwed up her courage before she took action and walked in.

As she disappeared between imposing brick posts, Gideon left his own car and followed at a measured pace, gut knotting with every step. Outrage stung his veins.

He wanted to believe that wasn’t his wife, but there was no mistaking Adara Vozaras. Not for him. Maybe her tourist clothes of flip-flops, jeans chopped above the knees, a sleeveless top and a pair of pigtails didn’t fit her usual professional élan, but he knew that backside. The tug it caused in his blood was indisputable. No other woman made an immediate sexual fire crackle awake in him like this. His relentless hunger for Adara had always been his cross to bear and today it was particularly unwelcome.

Spending the week with her mother. This ain’t Chatham, sweetheart.

He paused as he came alongside her car, glancing inside to see a map of the island on the passenger seat. A logo in its corner matched the hotel he’d been told she was booked into. And now she was advising her lover where to meet her? Walking bold as you please up his million-dollar driveway to his billion-dollar house? The only clue to the estate’s ownership, the shields welded to the gate, were turned back against the brick wall that fenced the estate from the road.

Gideon’s entire body twitched with an urge to slip his reins of control. He was not a poor man. He’d got past envying other men their wealth once he’d acquired a certain level of his own. Nevertheless, a niggle of his dock-rat inferiority complex wormed to life as he took in what he could see of the shoreline property that rolled into a vineyard and orange grove. The towering stone house, three stories with turrets on each corner, belonged on an English estate, not a Greek island. It was twenty bedrooms minimum. If this was the owner’s weekend retreat, he was an obscenely rich man.

Not that Adara needed a rich man. She had grown up wanting for nothing. She had a fortune in her own right plus half of Gideon’s, so what was the attraction here?

Sex.

The insidious whisper formed a knot of betrayal behind his breastbone. Was this why she hadn’t shared that stacked body of hers with him for weeks? His hands curled into fists as he tried to swallow back his gall.

Dreading what he might see as he looked to the front door, he shifted for a full view. Adara had paused halfway to the house to speak with a gardener. A truck overflowing with landscaping tools was parked midway up the driveway and workers were crawling like bees over the blooming gardens.

The sun seared the back of Gideon’s neck, strong enough to burn through his shirt to his shoulders, making sweat pool between his shoulder blades and trickle annoyingly down his spine.

They had arrived early this morning, Adara off the ferry, Gideon following in a powerboat he was “test-piloting.” She’d been driving a car she’d rented in Athens. His rental had been negotiated at the marina, but the island was small. It hadn’t surprised him when she’d driven right past the nose of his car as he had turned onto the main road.

No, the surprise had been the call thirty-six hours previously when their travel agent had dialed his mobile by mistake. Ever the survivor, Gideon had thought quickly. He’d mentioned that he’d like to surprise his wife by joining her and within seconds, Gideon had had all the details of Adara’s clandestine trip.

Well, not all. He didn’t know whom she was here to see or how she’d met her mystery man. Why was she doing this when he gave her everything she asked for?

He watched Adara’s slender neck bow in disappointment. Ha. The bastard wasn’t home. Grimly satisfied, Gideon folded his arms and waited for his wife.

* * *

Adara averted her gaze from the end of the driveway where the sun was glancing off her rented car and piercing straight into her eyes.

The grounds of this estate were an infinitely more beautiful place to look anyway. Groomed lawn gently rolled into vineyards, and a white sand beach gleamed below. The dew was off the grass, the air moving hotly up from the water with a tang of salt on it. Everything was brilliant and elevating.

Perhaps that was just her frame of mind, but it was a refreshing change from depression and anxiety and rejection. She paused to savor the first optimistic moment she’d had in weeks. Looking out on the horizon where Mediterranean blue met cloudless sky, she sighed in contentment. She hadn’t felt so relaxed since... Since ever. Early childhood maybe. Very early childhood.

And it wouldn’t last. A sick ache opened in her belly as she remembered Gideon. And his PA.

Not yet, she reminded herself. This week was hers. She was stealing it for herself and her brother. If he returned. The gardener had said a few days, but Adara’s research had put Nico on this island all week, so he obviously changed his schedule rapidly. Hopefully he’d return as suddenly as he’d left.

Just call him, she cajoled herself, but after this many years she wasn’t sure he’d know who she was or want to hear from her. He’d never picked up the telephone himself. If he refused to speak to her, well, a throb of hurt pulsed in her throat as she contemplated that. She swallowed it back. She just wanted to see him, look into his eyes and learn why he’d never come home or spoken to her or her younger brothers again.

Another cleansing breath, but this one a little more troubled as she turned toward her car again. She was crestfallen Nico wasn’t here, not that she’d meant to come like this to his house, first thing on arrival, but her room at the hotel hadn’t been ready. On impulse she’d decided to at least find the estate, and then the gates had been open and she’d been drawn in. Now she had to wait—

“Lover boy not home?”

The familiar male voice stopped her heart and jerked her gaze up from the chevron pattern in the cobblestones to the magnificence that was her husband. Swift, fierce attraction sliced through her, sharp and disarming as always.

Not a day passed that she didn’t wonder how she’d landed such a smoking-hot man. He was shamelessly handsome, his features even and just hard enough to be undeniably masculine. He rarely smiled, but he didn’t have to charm when his sophistication and intelligence commanded such respect. The sheer physical presence of him quieted a room. She always thought of him as a purebred stallion, outwardly still and disciplined, but with an invisible energy and power that warned he could explode any second.

Don’t overlook resourceful, she thought acridly. How else had he turned up half a world from where she’d thought he would be, when she’d taken pains to keep her whereabouts strictly confidential?

Fortunately, Adara had a lot of experience hiding visceral reactions like instant animal attraction and guilty alarm. She kept her sunglasses on and willed her pulse to slow, keeping her limbs loose and her body language unreadable.

“What are you doing here?” she asked with a composed lift of her chin. “Lexi said you would be in Chile.” Lexi’s tone still grated, so proprietary over Gideon’s schedule, so pitying as she had looked upon the ignorant wife who not only failed as a woman biologically, but no longer interested her husband sexually. Adara had wanted to erase the woman’s superior smile with a swipe of her manicured nails.

“Let’s turn that question around, shall we?” Gideon strolled with deadly negligence around the front of her car.

Adara had never been afraid of him, not physically, not the way she had been of her father, but somewhere along the line Gideon had developed the power to hurt her with a look or a word, without even trying, and that scared her. She steeled herself against him, but her nerves fried with the urge to flee.

She made herself stand her ground and find the reliable armor of civility she’d grown as self-defense long ago. It had always served her well in her dealings with this man, even allowing her to engage with him intimately without losing herself. Still, she wanted higher, thicker invisible walls. Her reasons for coming to Greece were too private to share, carrying as they did such a heavy risk of rejection. That’s why she hadn’t told him or anyone else where she was going. Having him turn up like this put her on edge, internally windmilling her arms as she tried to hang on to unaffected nonchalance.

“I’m here on personal business,” she said in a dismissive tone that didn’t invite discussion.

He, in turn, should have given her his polite nod of acknowledgment that always drove home how supremely indifferent he was to what happened in her world. It might hurt a little, but far better to have her trials and triumphs disregarded than dissected and diminished.

While she, as was her habit, wouldn’t bother repeating a question he had ignored, even though she really did want to know how and why he’d followed her.

No use changing tactics now, she thought. With a little adherence to form they could end this relationship as dispassionately as they’d started it.

That gave her quite a pang and oddly, even though his body language was as neutral as always, and his expression remained impassive as he squinted against the brightness of the day, she again had the sense of that coiled force drawing more tightly inside him. When he spoke, his words were even, yet she sensed an underlying ferocity.

“I can see how personal it is. Who is he?”

Her heart gave a kick. Gideon rarely got angry and even more rarely showed it. He certainly never directed dark energy at her, but his accusation made her unaccountably defensive.

She told herself not to let his jab pierce her shell, but his charge was a shock and she couldn’t believe his gall. The man was banging his secretary in the most clichéd of affairs, yet he had the nerve to dog her all the way to Greece to accuse her of cheating?

Fortunately, she knew from experience you didn’t provoke a man in a temper. Hiding her indignation behind cool disdain, she calmly corrected his assumption. “He has a wife and new baby—”

Gideon’s drawled sarcasm cut her off. “Cheating on one spouse wasn’t enough, you have to go for two and ruin the life of a child into the mix?”

Since when do you care about children?

She bit back the question, but a fierce burn flared behind her eyes, completely unwanted right now when she needed to keep her head. The back of her throat stung, making her voice thick. She hoped he’d put it down to ire, not heartbreak.

“As I said, Lexi assured me you had appointments in Chile. ‘We will be flying into Valparaiso,’ she told me. ‘We will be staying in the family suite at the Makricosta Grand.’” Adara impassively pronounced what Lexi hadn’t said, but what had been in the woman’s eyes and supercilious smile. “‘We will be wrecking your bed and calling your staff for breakfast in the morning.’ Who is cheating on whom?”

She was proud of her aloof delivery, but her underlying resentment was still more emotion than she’d ever dared reveal around him. She couldn’t help it. His adultery was a blow she hadn’t seen coming and she was always on guard for unearned strikes. Always. Somehow she’d convinced herself she could trust him and if she was angry with anyone, it was with herself for being so blindly oblivious. She was so furious she was having a hard time hiding that she was trembling, but she ground her teeth and willed her muscles to let go of the tension and her blood to stop boiling.

He didn’t react. If she fought a daily battle to keep her emotions in reserve, his inner thoughts and feelings were downright nonexistent. His voice was crisp and glacial when he said, “Lexi did not say that because it’s not true. And why would you care if she did? We aren’t wrecking any beds, are we?”

Ask me why, she wanted to charge, but the words and the reason stayed bottled so deep and hard inside her she couldn’t speak.

Grief threatened to overtake her then. Hopelessness crept in and defeat struck like a gong. It sent an arctic chill into her, blessed ice that let her freeze out the pain and ignore the humiliation. She wanted it all to go away.

“I want a divorce,” she stated, heart throbbing in her throat.

For a second, the world stood still. She wasn’t sure if she’d actually said it aloud and he didn’t move, as though he either hadn’t heard, or couldn’t comprehend.

Then he drew in a long, sharp inhale. His shoulders pulled back and he stood taller.

Oh, God. Everything in her screamed, Retreat. She ducked her head and circled him, aiming for her car door.

He put out a hand and her blood gave a betraying leap. She quickly tamped down the hunger and yearning, embracing hatred instead.

“Don’t think for a minute I’ll let you touch me,” she warned in a voice that grated.

“Right. Touching is off limits. I keep forgetting.”

A stab of compunction, of incredible sadness and longing to be understood, went through her. Gideon was becoming so good at pressing on the bruises closest to her soul and all he had to do was speak the truth.

“Goodbye, Gideon.” Without looking at him again, she threw herself into her car and pulled away.

CHAPTER TWO

THE FERRY WAS gone so Adara couldn’t leave the island. She drove through a blur of goat-tracked hills and tree-lined boulevards. Expansive olive branches cast rippling shadows across bobbing heads of yellow and purple wildflowers between scrupulously groomed estates and bleached-white mansions. When she happened upon a lookout, she quickly parked and tried to walk off her trembles.

She’d done it. She’d asked for a divorce.

The word cleaved her in two. She didn’t want her marriage to be over. It wasn’t just the failure it represented. Gideon was her husband. She wasn’t a possessive person. She tried not to get too attached to anything or anyone, but until his affair had come to light, she had believed her claim on him was incontestable. That had meant something to her. She had never been allowed to have anything. Not the job she wanted, not the money in her trust fund, not the family she had briefly had as a child or the one she longed for as an adult.

Gideon was a prize coveted by every woman around her. Being his wife had given her a deep sense of pride, but he’d gone behind her back and even managed to make her writhe with self-blame that it was her fault.

She hadn’t made love with him in weeks. It was true. She’d taken care of his needs, though. When he was home. Did he realize he hadn’t been home for more than one night at a stretch in months?

Pacing between guilt and virtue, she couldn’t escape the position she’d put herself in. Her marriage was over. The marriage she had arranged so her father would stop trying to sell her off to bullies like himself.

Her heart compressed under the weight of remembering how she’d taken such care to ask Gideon for only what seemed reasonable to expect from a marriage: respect and fidelity. That’s all. She hadn’t asked for love. She barely believed in it, not when her mother still loved the man who had abused her and her children, raising his hand often enough Adara flinched just thinking about it.

No, Adara had been as practical and realistic as she could be—strengths she’d honed razor sharp out of necessity. She had found a man whose wealth was on a level with her father’s fortune. She had picked one who exhibited incredible control over his emotions, trying to avoid spending her adult life ducking outbursts and negotiating emotional land mines. She had accommodated Gideon in every way, from the very fair prenup to learning how to please him in bed. She had never asked for romance or signs of affection, not even flowers when she was in hospital recovering from a miscarriage.

Her hand went instinctively to her empty womb. After the first one, she’d tried not to bother him much at all, informing him without involving him, not even telling him about the last one. Her entire being pulsated like an open wound as she recalled the silent weeks of waiting and hoping, then the first stain of blood and the painful, isolated hours that had followed.

While Gideon had been in Barcelona, faithful bitch Lexi at his side.

She had learned nothing from her mother, Adara realized with a spasm in her chest. Being complacent didn’t earn you anything but a cheating husband. Her marriage was over and it left a jagged burn in her like a bolt of lightning was stuck inside her, buzzing and shorting and trying to escape.

A new life awaited though, unfurling like a rolled carpet before her. She made herself look at it, standing tall under the challenge, extending her spine to its fullest. She concentrated on hardening her resolve, staring with determination across the vista of scalloped waves to distant islands formed from granite. That’s what she was now, alone, but strong and rooted.

She’d look for a new home while she was here, she decided. Greece had always been a place where she’d felt hopeful and happy. Her new life started today. Now.

* * *

After discovering his room wasn’t ready, Gideon went to the patio restaurant attached to the hotel and ordered a beer. He took care of one piece of pressing business on his mobile before he sat back and brooded on what had happened with Adara.

He had never cheated on her.

But for the last year he had spent more time with his PA than his wife.

Adara had known this would be a brutal year though. They both had. Several large projects were coming online at once. He ought to be in Valparaiso right now, opening his new terminal there. It was the ticking off of another item on their five-year plan, something they had mapped out in the first months of their marriage. That plan was pulling them in different directions, her father’s death last year and her mother’s sinking health not helping. They were rarely in the same room, let alone the same bed, so to be fair it wasn’t strictly her fault they weren’t tearing up the sheets.

And there had been Lexi, guarding his time so carefully and keeping him on schedule, mentioning that her latest relationship had fallen apart because she was traveling so much, offering with artless innocence to stay in his suite with him so she could be available at any hour.

She had been offering all right, and perhaps he hadn’t outright encouraged or accepted, but he was guilty of keeping his options open. Abstinence, or more specifically, Adara’s avoidance of wholehearted lovemaking, had made him restless and dissatisfied. He’d begun thinking Adara wouldn’t care if he had an affair. She was getting everything she wanted from this marriage: her position as CEO of her father’s hotel chain, a husband who kept all the dates she put in his calendar. The penthouse in Manhattan and by the end of the year, a newly built mansion in the Hamptons.

While he’d ceased getting the primary thing he wanted out of their marriage: her.

So he had looked at his alternatives. The fact was, though, as easy as Lexi would be, as physically attractive as she was, he wasn’t interested in her. She was too much of an opportunist. She’d obviously read into his “I’ll think about it” response enough to imagine she had a claim on him.

That couldn’t be what had precipitated Adara running here to Greece and another man, though. The Valparaiso arrangements had only been finalized recently. Adara wasn’t that impulsive. She would have been thinking about this for a long time before taking action.

His inner core burned. A scrapper in his youth, Gideon had found other ways to channel his aggression when he’d reinvented himself as a coolheaded executive, but the basic street-life survival skill of fighting to keep what was his had never left him. Every territorial instinct he possessed was aroused by her deceit and the threat it represented to all he’d gained.

The sound of a checked footstep and a barely audible gasp lifted his gaze. He took a hit of sexual energy like he’d swallowed two-hundred-proof whiskey, while Adara lost a few shades of color behind her sunglasses. Because she could read the barely contained fury in him? Or because she was still feeling guilty at being caught out?

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.

His clamoring libido was a weakness that governed him where she was concerned. The sex had always been good, but not exactly a place where they met as equals. In the beginning he’d been favored with more experience. The leader. He wasn’t hampered by shyness or other emotions that women attached to intimacy. He’d tutored her and loved it.

Adara had maintained a certain reserve in the bedroom that she had never completely allowed to let slide away, however. While the sex had always been intense and satisfying, the power had subtly shifted over time into her favor. She decided when and how much and if.

Resentment churned in him, bringing on a scowl. He didn’t like that she was threatening him on so many levels. Yanking the rug on sex was bad enough. Now all that he’d built was on a shaky foundation.

Why? Did it have to do with her fear of her father? Did she fear him? Blame him? Apprehension kept him from asking.

And Adara gave no clue to her thoughts, acting preoccupied with reading the signage, ignoring him, aggravating him further.

She peered over the edge of the steep slope to where a rope was tied to the base of the wooden crosspiece and, without a word, looped the thin strap of her purse over her head and shoulder then maneuvered to the edge of the cliff. Taking up the rope, she clung to it as she began a very steep, backward descent.

Gideon was taken aback. “What the hell are you doing?”

She paused. Uncertainty made her bottom lip flinch before she firmed it. “Going swimming.”

“Like hell you are.” Who was this woman?

The anxiety that spasmed across her features transitioned through uncertainty before being overcome by quiet defiance. “I always did as I was told because I was scared my father would punish me. Unless you intend to take up controlling my behavior with violence, I’m doing what I want from now on.”

The pit of his belly was still a hard knot over her revelations about her childhood. He would never hurt her or threaten to and was now even more inclined to treat her with kid gloves. At the same time, everything in him clamored to exert control over her, get what he wanted and put an end to this nonsense. The conflicting feelings, too deep for comfort, left him standing there voicelessly glaring his frustration.

Despite her bold dare, there was something incredibly vulnerable in her stance of toughness though. An air of quiet desperation surrounded her as tangibly as the hardened determination she was trying to project.

She wanted to prove something. He didn’t know what it was, but bullying her into going back to the hotel wasn’t the way to find out. It wouldn’t earn him any points toward keeping their marriage intact either.

“It’s fine, Gideon. You can go,” she said in her self-possessed way. Papa doesn’t think the Paris upgrade is necessary. I’ll find my own way home after our meeting.

“And leave you to break your neck? No,” he said gruffly.

The way she angled a look up at him seemed to indicate suspicion. Maybe it was deserved. He was chivalrous, always picked up her heavy bags, but neither of them were demonstrative. Maybe he’d never acted so protective before, but she’d never tried to do anything so perilous.

“I won’t break my neck,” she dismissed and craned it to watch as she tentatively sought a step backward.

A completely foreign clench of terror squeezed his lungs. Did she not see how dangerous this was? He skimmed his hand over his sweat-dampened hair.

“Adara, I won’t hurt you, but I will get physical if you don’t stop right there and at least let me get behind you so I can catch you if you slip.”

She stared, mouth pursing in mutiny. “I don’t have to ask your permission to live my life, Gideon.” Not anymore, was the silent punctuation to that.

“Well, I won’t ask your permission to save it. Stay put until I get behind you.”

He sensed her wariness as he took his time inspecting the rope, approving its marine grade, noting it was fairly new and in good repair, as was the upright it was tied to. Assured they weren’t going to plunge to their deaths, he let his loose grip slide along the rope until his hand met Adara’s.

She stiffened as he brushed past her, making him clench his teeth. When had his touch become toxic?

Ask, he chided himself, but things were discordant enough. His assumptions about her were turned on their heads, her predictability completely blown out of the water. He didn’t know what to say or what to expect next, so he picked his way down the slope in grim silence, arriving safely on to the pocket of sand between monolithic gray boulders.

The tide was receding, but the cove was steep enough it was still a short beach into a deep pool. It was the type of place young lovers would tryst, and his mind immediately turned that way. Adara wasn’t even looking at him, though.

Adara shrugged against the sting of sweat and the disturbing persistence Gideon was showing. She thought they had an unspoken agreement to back off when things got personal, but even though she’d spilled way more of her family history than she’d ever meant to, he was sticking like humidity.

She didn’t know how to react to that. And should she thank him for his uncharacteristic show of consideration in accompanying her down here? Or tell him again to shove off? He was so hard to be around sometimes, so unsettling. He was shorting out a brain that was already melting in the heat. She desperately wanted to cool off so she could think straight again, but she hadn’t brought a bathing suit and—

Oh, to heck with it. She kicked off her flip-flops and began unbuttoning her shirt.

“Really?” he said, not hiding the startled uptick in his tone.

She didn’t let herself waver. Maybe this was out of character, but this was her new life. She was tossing off fear of reprisal, embracing the freedom to follow impulse.

“I miss Greece. My aunt let us run wild here. In Katarini, not this island, but we’d do exactly this: tramp along the beach until we got hot then we’d strip to our underthings and jump in.”

“Your aunt was a nudist?” he surmised.

“A free spirit. She never married, never had children—” Here Adara faltered briefly. “I intend to emulate her from now on.”

She shed her shorts and ran into the water in her bra and panties, feeling terribly exposed as she left her decision to never have children evaporating on the sizzling sand.

The clear, cool water rose to her waist within a few splashing steps. She fell forward and ducked under, arrowing deep into the silken blur filled with the muted cacophony of creaks and taps and swishing currents.

When her lungs were ready to burst, she shot up for air, blinking the water from her eyes and licking the salt from her lips, baptized into a new version of herself. The campy phrase the first day of the rest of your life came to her with a pang of wistful anticipation.

Gideon’s head appeared beside her, his broad shoulders flexing as he splayed out his arms to keep himself afloat. His dark lashes were matted and glinting, his thick hair sleeked back off his face, exposing his angular bone structure and taking her breath with his action-star handsomeness. The relief of being in the cool water relaxed his expression, while his innate confidence around the water—in any situation, really—made him incredibly compelling.

She would miss that sense of reliability, she acknowledged with a hitch of loss.

“I’ve never tried to curb your independence,” he asserted. “Marrying me gained you your freedom.”

They’d never spoken so bluntly about her motives. She’d only stated in the beginning that she’d like to keep working until they had a family, but he knew her better after her confession today. He was looking at her as though he could see right into her.

It made her uncomfortable.

“Marrying at all was a gamble,” she acknowledged with a tentative honesty that caused her veins to sting with apprehension. “But you’re right. I was fairly sure I’d have more control over my life living with you than I had with my father.”

She squinted against the glare off the water as she silently acknowledged that she’d learned to use Gideon to some extent, pitting him against her father when she wanted something for herself. Not often and not aggressively, just with a quiet comment that Gideon would prefer this or that.

“You had women working for you in high-level positions,” she noted, remembering all the minute details that had added up to a risk worth taking. “You were shocked that I didn’t know how to drive. You fired that man who was harassing your receptionist. I was reasonably certain my life with you would be better than it was with my father so I took a chance.” She glanced at him, wondering if he judged her harshly for advancing her interests through him.

“So what’s changed?” he challenged. “I taught you to drive. I put you in charge of the hotels. Do you want more responsibility? Less? Tell me. I’m not trying to hem you in.”

No, Gideon wasn’t a tyrant. He was ever so reasonable. She’d always liked that about him, but today that quality put her on edge. “Lexi—”

“—is a nonissue,” he stated curtly. “Nothing happened and do you know why? Because I thought you were having an affair and got myself on a plane and chased you down. I didn’t even think twice about it. Why didn’t you do that? Why didn’t you confront me? Why didn’t you ask me why I’d even consider letting another woman throw herself under me?”

“You don’t have to be so crude about it!” She instinctively propelled herself backward, pushing space between herself and the unbearable thought of him sleeping with another woman. She hadn’t been able to face it herself, let along confront him, not with everything else that had happened.

“You said we don’t talk,” he said with pointed aggression. “Let’s. You left me twisting with sexual frustration. Having an affair started to look like a viable option. If you didn’t want me going elsewhere, why weren’t you meeting my needs at home?”

“I did! I—”

“Going down isn’t good enough, Adara.”

His vulgarity was bad enough, but it almost sounded like a critique and she resented that. She tried hard to please him and could tell that he liked what she did, so why did he have to be so disparaging about it?

Unbearably hurt, she kicked toward shore, barely turning her head to defend, “I was pregnant. What else could I do?”

How he reacted to that news she didn’t care. She just wanted to be away from him, but as her toes found cold, thick sand, she halted. Leaving the water suddenly seemed a horribly exposing thing to do. How stupid to think she could become a new person by shedding a few stitches of clothing. She was the same old worthless Adara who couldn’t even keep a baby in her womb.

The sun seared across her shoulders. Her wet hair hung in her eyes and she kept her arms folded tightly across her chest, trying to hold in the agony.

She felt ridiculous, climbing down to this silly beach that was impossible to leave, revealing things that were intensely personal to her and wouldn’t matter at all to him.

“What did you say?” He was too close. She flinched, feeling the sharpness of his voice like the tip of a flicking whip.

“You heard me,” she managed to say even though her throat was clogging. She clenched her eyes shut, silently begging him to do what he always did. Say nothing and give her space. She didn’t want to do this. She never, ever wanted to do this again.

“You were pregnant?” His voice moved in front of her.

She turned her head to the side, hating him for cutting off her escape to the beach, hating herself for lacking the courage to take it when she’d had the chance.

Keeping her eyes tightly closed, she dug her fingers into her arms, her whole body aching with tension. “It doesn’t matter,” she insisted through her teeth. “It’s over and I just want a divorce.”

Gideon was distantly aware of the sea trying to pull him out with the tide. His entire being was numb enough that he had to concentrate on keeping his feet rooted as he stared at Adara. She was a knot of torment. For the first time he could see her suffering and it made his heart clench. When had she started to care about the miscarriages? The last one had been called into him from across the globe, his offer to come home dismissed as unnecessary.

“Tell me—”

“What is there to tell, Gideon?” Her eyes opening into pits of hopeless fury. Her face creased with sharp lines of grief. “It was the same as every other one. I did the test and held my breath, terrified to so much as bump my hip on the edge of my desk. And just when I let myself believe this time might be different, the backache started and the spotting appeared and then it was twenty-four hours of medieval torture until I was spat out in hell with nothing to show for it. At least I didn’t have the humiliation of being assaulted by the people in white coats this time.”

She took a step to the side, thinking to circle him and leave the water, but he shifted into her path, his hand reaching to stop her. His expression was appalled. “What do you mean about being assaulted?”

She cringed from his touch, her recoil like a knee into his belly. Gideon clenched his abdominal muscles and curled his fingers into his palm, forcing his hand to his side under the water even though he wanted to grip her with all his strength and squeeze the answers out of her. She couldn’t possibly be saying what he thought she was saying.

“What people in white coats?” he demanded, but the words sounded far away. “Are you telling me you didn’t go to the hospital?” Intense, fearful dread hollowed out his chest as he watched her mask fear and compunction with a defiant thrust of her chin.

“Do you know what they do to you after you’ve had a miscarriage? No, you don’t. But I do and I’m sick of it. So, no, I didn’t go,” she declared with bitter rebelliousness.

Horror washed through him in freezing waves.

“We need to get you to a doctor.” He flew his gaze to the cliff, terror tightening in him. What the hell had he been thinking, letting her descend to this impossible place?

“It was three weeks ago, Gideon. If it was going to kill me, it would have by now.”

“It could have,” he retorted, helplessness making him brutal. “You could have bled to death.”

She shrugged that off with false bravado, eyes glossy and red. “At the time that looked like a—what’s the expression you used? A viable option?”

It was a vicious slap that he deserved. While he’d been contemplating an affair, she’d been losing the battle to keep their baby. Again. And she’d been filled with such dejection she’d refused medical care and courted death.

The fact she’d let herself brush elbows with the Grim Reaper made him so agitated, he clipped out a string of foul Greek curses. “Don’t talk like that. Damn it, you should have told me.”

“Why?” she lashed out in uncharacteristic confrontation. “Do you think I enjoy telling you what a failure I am? It’s not like you care. You just go back to work while I sit there screaming inside.” She struck a fist onto the surface of the water. “I hate it. I can’t go on like this. I won’t. I want a divorce.”

She splashed clumsily from the surf, her wet underpants see-through, her staggered steps so uncoordinated and indicative of her distress it made him want to reach out for her, but he was rooted in the water, aghast.

He cared. Maybe he’d never told her, but each lost baby had scored his heart. This one, knowing he could have walked into the penthouse and found both of them dead, lanced him with such deep horror he could barely acknowledge it.

She was the one who had appeared not to care. The fact she’d been so distraught she hadn’t sought medical attention told him how far past the end of her rope she had been, but she’d never let him see any of that.

He followed her on heavy feet, pausing where they’d left their clothes.

She gave him a stark look, her gaze filling with apprehension as she took in that he was completely naked. Her fingers hurried to button her blouse.

Hell. He wasn’t trying to come on to her.

“Adara.” A throb of tender empathy caught in him like a barbed hook. He reached out to cup her neck, her hair a weight on his wrist.

She stiffened, but he didn’t let her pull away. He carefully took her shoulder in his opposite hand and made her face him, for once driven by a need deeper than sexual to touch her.

“I’m sorry,” he said with deep sincerity. “Sorry we lost another baby, sorry you felt you couldn’t tell me. I do care. You’ve always been stoic about it and I’ve followed your lead. How could I know it was devastating you like this if you didn’t say?”

She shivered despite the heat. Her blink released a single tear from the corner of her eye. Her plump mouth trembled with vulnerability, and a need to comfort overwhelmed him.

Gideon gathered her in. She seemed so delicate and breakable. He touched his mouth to hers, wanting to reassure, to console.

It wasn’t meant to be a pass, but she felt so good. The kiss was a soft press of a juicy fruit to the mouth of a starved man. He couldn’t help opening his lips on hers, sliding his tongue along the seam then pressing in for a deep lick of her personal flavor. Involuntarily, his arms tightened while greed swelled in him. Everything in him expanded in one hard kick. His erection pulled to attention in a rush of heat, fed by the erotically familiar scent of his wife.

The feathery touch of her hands whispered from his ribs to his shoulder blades. A needy sob emanated from her throat, encouraging him.

Here. Now. His brain shorted into the most basic thoughts as his carnal instincts took over. He skimmed his hand to the wet underpants covering her backside, starting to slide them down even as he deepened the kiss and began to ease them both to the sand.

Adara’s knees softened for one heartbeat, almost succumbing, then she broke away from their kiss with a ragged moan, stumbling backward a few steps as she shoved from him with near violence. Her flush of arousal dissolved into a bewildered glare of accusation and betrayal.

That wounded look bludgeoned him like a club.

Without speaking, face white, she gathered her things and moved to the bottom of the rope where she tried to force her wet legs into her denim shorts.

Gideon pinched the bridge of his nose, ears rushing with the blood still pumping hotly through his system, deeply aware that the distance had been closed until he’d forgotten that he was trying to comfort, not seduce. But the sexual attraction between them was something he couldn’t help. He wished he could. The fact that he couldn’t entirely control his hunger for her bothered him no end.

His thoughts were dark as they returned to the hotel, a fresh sweat on his salted skin as they came through the front doors, with not a word exchanged since the beach. The life he’d created with Adara, so easy on the surface, had grown choppy, teaming with undercurrents. She’d stirred up more emotion in him with this bolt to Greece than he’d suffered in years and he didn’t like it.

Part of him wanted to cut and run, but it was impossible now he understood what was driving her request for a divorce: grief. He understood that frame of mind better than she would suspect. He’d even bolted across the ocean in the very same way, more than once, but he was able to think more clearly this time. Losing the baby was heartrending, but he wasn’t left alone. He still had her. They needed to stick together. With careful navigation, they’d be back on course and sailing smoothly. When she came out the other side, she’d appreciate that he hadn’t let her do anything rash.

He hoped.

Adara blinked as they entered the artificial light of the hotel foyer. The temperature change hit her between the eyes like a blow. The boutique accommodation was the best the island offered, but nothing like the luxury service she took for granted in her thousand-room high-rise hotels. Still, she liked the coziness of this small, out-of-the-way place. She’d give serious thought to developing some hideaways like this herself, she decided.

Another time. Right now she felt like one giant blister, hot and raw, skin so thin she could be nicked open by the tiniest harsh word.

Desire had almost overwhelmed her on the beach. Gideon’s kiss had been an oasis in a desert of too many empty days and untouched nights. His heartfelt words, the way he’d enfolded her as if he could make the whole world right again, had filled her with hope and relief. For a few seconds she had felt cherished, even when his kiss had turned from tenderness to hunger. It had all been balm to her injured soul, right up until he’d begun to tilt them to the sand.

Then fear of pregnancy had undercut her arousal. Her next instinct had been to at least give him pleasure. She liked making him lose control, but then she’d remembered it wasn’t good enough.

It had all crashed into her as a busload of confusing emotions: shattered confidence, anger at her own weakness and a sense of being tricked and teased with a promise that would be broken. If she had had other men, perhaps she wouldn’t be so susceptible to him, but she was a neophyte where men were concerned, even after five years of marriage. She needed distance from him, to get her head straightened out and her heart put back together.

Gideon was given a room card at the same time she was.

As they departed the front desk for the elevators, she said in a ferocious undertone, “You did not get yourself added to my room.” They might share a suite, but never a room. She would die.

“I booked my own,” he said stiffly, the reserve in his voice making her feel as if she’d done something wrong. She hadn’t! Had she? Should she have been more open about the miscarriages?

She shook off guilt she didn’t want to feel. “Gideon—” she began to protest.

“What? You’re allowed a vacation, but I’m not?”

She tilted her head in disgruntlement. That was not what she was driving at. She wanted distance from him.

“Would you like to eat here tonight or try somewhere else?” he said in a continuation of assumptions that were making her crazy.

“It’s been a lot of travel getting here and already a long day. I’m going to shower and rest, possibly sleep through dinner,” she asserted, silently thinking, Go away. Her feelings toward him were infinitely easier to bear when half a globe separated them.

“I’ll email you when I get hungry then. If you’re up, you can join me. If not, I won’t disturb you.”

She eyed him, suspicious of yet another display of ultraconsideration, especially when he walked her to her room. At the last second, he turned to insert his card in the door across from hers.

Her heart gave a nervous jump. So close. Immediately, a jangle went through her system, eagerness and fretfulness tying her into knots. She locked herself into her room, worried that he’d badger her into spending time with him that would roll into rolling around with him. She couldn’t do it. She didn’t have it in her to risk pregnancy and go through another miscarriage.

Even though she ached rather desperately to feel his strong, naked body moving over and into hers.

Craving and humiliation tormented her through her shower and stayed with her when she crawled into bed. She wanted him so much. It made her bury her head under her pillow. She couldn’t live with a man she had no defenses against.

Steadfast to his word, Gideon didn’t disturb her. Adara woke to fading light beyond her closed curtains, startled she’d fallen asleep at all, head fuzzy from a hard four-hour nap.

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