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However, no way was she going to cool her heels at the airport while he and Kassandra took off together. "Don't be silly. You don't want to have to drive all the way back to the airport from Kassandra's apartment before going home. I'm small and will fit in the backseat, even with an extra piece of luggage or two."
She turned and headed toward the car before either of her nemeses could argue.
CHAPTER SIX
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Eden was feeling slightly better after they dropped Kassandra off.
The other woman had attempted to cut Eden out of the conversation in the car, but this time it had been Aristide himself who foiled her ploy. He had asked numerous questions about Theo and the rest of the family that Eden answered with enthusiasm.
"Did the meetings go well?" she asked as he pulled away from Kassandra's home.
"As you heard."
So much for that topic. "I did a lot of thinking while you were gone."
"And did this thinking lead anywhere productive?"
"I believe so."
"Enlighten me."
"It occurred to me that I made a mistake refusing to make love to you in New York. I was being overly sensitive."
He tensed, his expression turning stoic in a way she'd always hated. It shut her out. "On the contrary," he said, "sex between us right now would be nonproductive."
"Nonproductive?" She couldn't believe what she was hearing.
His jaw set with granitelike hardness. "I've decided to move into a guest room for the time being."
"A guest room?"
"Do you plan to repeat everything I say from here on out?" he responded coldly.
"No." She forced her thoughts into working order so she didn't do it again, but flabbergasted didn't begin to describe the way she felt at his announcement. "Your mother and Vincent are staying at the villa."
"And?"
"Are you prepared to answer questions from her about why you are sleeping in a guest room?"
"I have no doubt she will understand."
"Before or after you explain it?" she asked helplessly.
"Does it matter?"
"No, I guess not." Not if he was willing to make the explanations. To her way of thinking, that little fact was as significant as the move itself. She shook her head, trying to clear it. He really was rejecting her sexually. She couldn't believe it. "But celibacy is not your style."
"I am not such a Neanderthal that I would insist on claiming my marital rights with a woman I do not remember marrying merely to satisfy my sexual urges."
"Maybe you plan to satisfy them elsewhere," she accused with pain-filled uncertainty. She knew only one thing for sure—her husband was less acquainted with sexual denial than he was with being poor.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"You told me in New York that you didn't feel married. Does that mean you don't feel bound by your vow of fidelity? Not that you even said one," she rambled in confused shock, "the marriage ceremony in a judge's office is somewhat truncated."
"I do not intend to have sex with another woman."
"You expect me to believe you are willingly embracing celibacy for the indefinite future?"
"Why not? I travel quite a bit. I assume you would not have stayed married to a man who strayed." Sarcasm dripped off his tongue like acid.
"You assume correctly."
"I may not remember you, or our marriage, but I know myself and I would not have had sex with any woman but my wife."
"Are you sure about that? Kassandra's more than willing. She's made it clear to me that she's eager and, according to her, you're already lovers. Presumably, you would remember that, since you remember her."
"She told me you had jealous delusions about us."
"Did she?" Eden stared out the window, the darkened landscape not registering. "Which means what—you naturally assume I'm lying when I say she told me you two were lovers?"
She could feel him looking at her, but she refused to return his regard. She couldn't quite bounce back from a rejection she had never expected. The one thing she'd been certain of in her marriage to Aristide was his desire for her. She'd doubted his emotional attachment, but never his physical need. Now he was saying he didn't need her.
Was he having an affair with Kassandra? She had to contemplate the possibility his decision to move into a guest room reflected a turn of events she would have given almost anything not to face.
"When are you alleging Kassandra told you this?"
She tensed at his choice of words, a familiar sense of impotent anger surging up inside of her. "I'm not alleging anything. I'm stating a fact. She was waiting for me when
I came out of your hospital room the day before you were discharged. We argued."
"And she told you we are lovers?" he asked, sounding disbelieving.
"Not exactly."
"Ah…"
She turned her head and looked at him then. His focus was on the road ahead, but she knew his peripheral vision was superior and she gave him a hot glare.
"Kassandra asked me point-blank if I was sure you weren't lovers. If that isn't an implication the two of you are having an affair, I don't know what is."
"Is that why you slapped her?"
"No." She opened her mouth to add more, but didn't know what to say.
Kassandra had been careful to lace her threats with innuendo. Repeating the conversation verbatim would not convince Aristide that Eden had been justified in her reaction. He would have had to have been there…and inside her heart, dealing with her pain to understand it.
And what were the chances Aristide would even begin to believe his precious Kassandra was intentionally undermining his marriage? Before the accident, they had been slim, but now that he didn't remember Eden or trust her at all, they were nonexistent.
Silence fell between them as she went back to looking out the window.
"Are you going to tell me why you did slap her?"
"I see no point in doing so."
"If it is something I need to discuss with her…"
"You've already made it clear who you blame for that altercation and it isn't your assistant."
"Maybe I did not have all the facts."
"It wouldn't make any difference if you did. You would still blame me because while you'll bend over backwards to give her the benefit of the doubt, you assume the worst about me and have done since waking up from your coma. I'm your wife, but you didn't stand by me and there's really nothing else to say in the face of that."
"Kassandra was there for me in the hospital when you were not. She is a devoted employee as well as a long-time friend. I would be a fool to trust the word of a woman I cannot remember over hers. After all, I did not wake from my coma having wiped her entirely from my brain. And I have to question why that was."
Pain ripped through Eden like a hurricane and she felt as ravaged as any debris-strewn coastline. She swallowed convulsively, her throat tight with tears. Because he hadn't just forgotten her, he'd forgotten their unborn baby as well. Somehow that made it ten times worse.
Not only had he obviously subconsciously wanted to wipe her existence in his life, but he'd also wanted to forget the tie an additional child between them would forge.
From the moment she had woken up in the hospital after the accident, she had been determined to fight for her marriage. Why? Because she loved Aristide so much she thought she might die inside without him. But he was tearing her heart to shreds and if she wasn't dying right now, she was certainly hurting.
Maybe it was time she faced that her love meant nothing in the face of his indifference.
What that meant for her future, for the future of her children and their life with her and their father, she didn't even want to contemplate. But one thing she knew—her hope was a dead weight in her chest, along with her leaden heart.
When they reached the villa, she left him to look in on Theo while she began moving his things from the master suite to a guest room down the hall. By the time he walked in forty-five minutes later, she and a maid had cleared out his dresser and most of his wardrobe.
He had his suitcase in his hand when he walked in. "What the hell is going on in here?"
"You're in the room at the end of the hall." She looked pointedly at his suitcase.
The maid came out of the walk-in closet carrying a big armful of his suits. Eden stepped out of the way so she could leave the room.
Aristide wasn't so obliging. "Where are you taking my things?" he asked in a dangerously soft voice.
The maid flinched, but Eden wasn't bothered by her husband's apparent anger. She was only doing what he wanted, after all.
