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Aristide glared at her and then the nurse who had the effrontery to flirt with a married man. She'd been nauseatingly coy all morning.
"By all means, follow me with that thing and escort me, but I will not be sitting in it." He strode from the room to the sound of the nurse's anxious arguments and his wife's mocking laughter.
Eden sat in the backseat of the Mercedes and listened to Aristide and Sebastian talk business on the way to the hotel.
Aristide was every bit as savvy as he had ever been. This further evidence that he remembered everyone and everything but her added to the hurt roiling inside of her. Hurt that seemed to grow like a mushroom cloud after a nuclear explosion… out of control and with no end in sight.
Even the way he had so naturally projected the united front to his brother and the hospital staff that he had mocked in his hospital room gave her pain. He'd opened the door for her and helped her inside the car despite the fact he was the discharging patient. It had effectively made his position as her husband clear to the hospital staff and even Sebastian.
Knowing it had more to do with his pride than any real desire to align himself with her, the casual touches had nevertheless left her breathless. Her lips still tingled from his kiss as well, but she wasn't foolish enough to think that had been personal either.
She knew what that kiss had been about and it had nothing to do with undying love, or even a primal recognition that happened at a level deeper than the conscious mind. She wished she could believe it did, but she'd spent enough time in a fantasy world where her husband was concerned.
Reality was that though Aristide was a thoroughly modern man in some ways, he was as traditional as they came in others. He was also a competitive alpha male who would chase and conquer without conscious thought. He might not remember her, but he knew she was his wife. As such, he expected a certain openness from her toward him.
She'd known the mistake of her remote stance the minute that look of predatory intent came into his eyes. But she'd been angry at being taken to task over Kassandra, without ever once being asked for her own side. Eden was not a violent person. Aristide used to know that.
Telling herself he didn't remember didn't help. He never would have accused her of such a thing when they first met and were practically strangers.
So, she'd held herself aloof when she arrived in his room, only to regret her stance instantly. Only by then, it had been too late to stave off his natural instinct to establish his role as her mate. He'd kissed her and she had fallen into it like she always did, proving once again she had almost no self-protection where he was concerned.
It was not a pleasant revelation.
Phillippa cried as she hugged Aristide. "It is so good to see you out of the hospital, my baby boy."
"Hardly a baby, Mama."
"Always…until the day I die."
Eden couldn't help smiling at the exchange…she'd seen it so many times before. "I'm sure Aristide is happy to be out of the hospital as well. We all know how much he despises confinement of any kind."
Aristide looked at her, a strange expression on his face.
Rachel grinned and hugged her big husband. "It's a Kouros male trait."
"There is one notable exception, agape mou." Sebastian leaned over and brushed a kiss across her brow. "Don't you think?"
"What's that?" Eden asked with a smile for the other couple, despite the prick of envy in her chest.
Sebastian looked at her while tucking his wife close into his side. "Why, marriage, of course."
Eden lost her smile and noticed Aristide had too.
"Are you all right, Eden?"
She forced a smile for her mother-in-law. "Yes. Of course."
"It is good to have him out of the hospital, is it not?"
"Yes."
Then Phillippa grimaced as if she had only now realized that for Eden having Aristide "home" was not quite the same as it was for the others.
The sound of her son talking to himself in the other room told Eden that Theo had woken from his nap. She used the excuse of fetching him to get out of the suddenly laden atmosphere.
Theo was sitting up in his portacrib. His favorite purple dinosaur in his chubby little hands, he jabbered at the stuffed animal a mile a minute in baby talk.
Taking after his father's large stature, her sturdy son was already quite a handful and Eden groaned playfully as she lifted him. "You're such a big boy."
He grabbed her shirt and tried to stand in her arms. "Mama…Mama…Mama.
Her son's repertoire of words was by no means extensive, but what he knew he used.
Taking a firmer grip on his squirming form, she cuddled him into her body and kissed his baby-soft cheek. "How is Mommy's little man? Hmm? You are such a good baby."
She kissed him again and he hugged her around her neck.
"Mama," he sighed with obvious baby delight.
She grinned at her name on her son's lips. This was one male she never had to wonder if he loved her. Her dad's love and Aristide's might be suspect, but not this precious bundle of joy.
"Is your diaper wet, honey?" she asked as she laid him on the makeshift changing table.
He grinned and kicked his feet.
She managed to get his PJ bottoms off without incident, but then he squealed and twisted with such glee he almost fell off the changing pad. "Da…da…da…da…"
Aristide's deep laugh alerted her to his presence close behind her and a second later his big body was so near, he surrounded her with his heat.
He reached past her to brush his fingers down their son's cheek. "Hello, agape mou."
Theo squealed again and twisted toward his daddy. Aristide put his hand on the baby's strong little body and held him in place, talking to Theo in Greek while Eden finished changing him. It was like so many times before that, for a second, it was as if he'd never lost his memory.
Then he stepped back and allowed her to lift the baby from the table and the sense of closeness was gone.
"Let me take him." She nodded and handed the baby over, sucking in a pain-filled breath when her husband carefully avoided touching her.
Aristide walked into the bedroom, drying his hair with a towel, and stopped dead in his tracks. "You are sleeping in here?"
Eden adjusted the blankets over her nightgown-clad form. It was a new purchase, just as the pajamas she'd worn at the hospital had been. She hadn't worn nightwear to bed since becoming his lover, but something about sleeping naked with a man who didn't remember her left her feeling too vulnerable.
"Where else would I sleep?" she asked in genuine confusion.
"Shouldn't you be sleeping in Theo's room? As you said in the hospital, our son has been through a lot of upheaval this past week."
"I've slept in the room with him the last four nights and he's been fine." Not that Theo had noticed. Their son slept like a log. "Besides, your mom and Vincent are sleeping in there now that you are here."
"Wouldn't he be more comforted if he woke in the night to find you there?"
"Theo stopped waking in the night when he was four months old."
"But these are unusual circumstances."
"Not now they aren't."
"Because I am out of the hospital?"
"Because I am and have been for the past few days. Theo is used to his daddy being gone."
Aristide frowned. "I have a job."
"That comes before everything else. I know."
"And you do not like that?"
"What woman would?" She sighed, not willing to get into something that could have no resolution in the current situation. "Look, none of that matters right now."
"It is our marriage…I do not consider that of no import."
"You don't even remember getting married."
"Which does not equate to me dismissing my responsibilities as a husband."
"Look…it's a waste of time to discuss a past you don't remember. It's not as if you're going to take my word for the way things were."
He'd made that clear enough.
He shrugged, confirming her suspicions.
Then something occurred to her that probably should have earlier, but she had not even considered it. "Do you feel awkward about sleeping with a woman who is for all intents and purposes a stranger? Of course you do. I'm such an idiot not to have thought of it before. I'll move to one of the spare rooms."
"Do not be ridiculous. You are my wife."
"But still a stranger."
He didn't say anything, but his silence was all the answer she needed.
She couldn't believe she had been dumb enough to climb into their bed as if nothing had changed between them. She'd been so wrapped up in the shock of him seeing her as a villain that she hadn't realized his questions could be masking feelings of vulnerability. Aristide would rather be boiled in oil than admit weakness.
