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"She's taking your suits to your new room."
"My new room?"
Now who was repeating words? "Yes. We're almost done moving you. I'll just transfer your things from our…I mean my bathroom and you'll be all settled in."
"I did not intend to move completely out of our bedroom."
"You'll be sleeping in another room, right?"
"For the time being."
"I'm sure you'll be more comfortable not having to go searching for your things between there and here…"
She'd never seen Aristide look lost for words, not in all the time she'd known him. She would have laughed if she wasn't hurting so much. He looked royally flummoxed now and that gave her a sense of grim satisfaction. He'd been standing her world on its ear since the day they met.
It was time she turned the tables a bit.
"If you will excuse me, I'll just collect your gear from the en suite?
"Damn it, Eden!"
"What is happening?" Phillippa stood in the doorway, her face creased with concern. "I saw the maid carrying Aristide's clothing into another room."
"Your son has decided he feels more comfortable sleeping elsewhere…for the time being. He seems to think you'll understand and no explanations are necessary. Should he be wrong, I suggest you ask him about it. He also made it clear he doesn't mind explaining if the need should arise."
Aristide watched as his wife spun on her heel and marched into the en suite.
His mother gasped. "Aristide?" she asked uncertainly.
"Yes?"
"Eden…"
"Has taken my desire to sleep in separate quarters at present to mean I no longer belong in our bedroom."
Her words to his mother had been filled with bitterness, but her eyes had reflected a pain that tore at something deep inside him. Did she think he didn't want her? Nothing could be further from the truth, but their relationship was too muddled as it was to confuse with sex. They both needed this time of adjustment.
From the expression on her face when she'd walked away, she didn't see it that way though. She was taking his desire to sleep in another bed as a form of rejection…one he had never intended. His usually superior brain had let him down when he assumed she would understand something he barely understood himself.
He cursed again and earned a censorious frown from his mother.
"You told her you wanted to sleep in a separate bed?" she asked, as if trying to take in a very shocking turn of events.
"Ohi," he affirmed.
She shook her head. 'That was stupid."
"There is enough confusion in our situation right now. We do not need it clouded with sex."
She stared at him like she doubted his sanity or intelligence, or maybe even both.
This was not a conversation he wanted to have with his mother. "My decision is not up for discussion."
"Do not take that tone with me, Aristide."
"I apologize if my tone was disrespectful, but you must allow me to handle my marriage as I see fit."
"The problem is that you are not handling it, my son. You are undermining it when you can least afford to do so. Know this, Aristide—if you mess up your marriage, you will have no one to blame but yourself." With that, she turned and left the room.
Aristide felt like he'd stepped into an alternate dimension where everyone but him knew the rules. In New York, his mother had as good as said Eden wasn't the wife she should have been and now she was thrusting the blame for any failure in his marriage squarely on his shoulders.
His head began to ache again.
Eden came out of the bathroom, her arms laden with his toiletries. "I'll just drop these off in your bathroom."
Even though she had been the one to initially say she did not want to make love while he could not remember her, rejected hurt emanated from her every lovely pore. Clearly, she had changed her mind and did not appreciate the fact that he now questioned the wisdom of sharing a bed.
However, instead of arguing his decision to sleep elsewhere like he would have expected from her reaction, she was intent on removing every trace of his occupancy from their bedroom.
The sense of foreboding that hovered around the edges of his marriage increased until he felt suffocated by it. "This is not necessary."
"I don't agree."
Desperation seared through him and fear clouded his thoughts until he was on the verge of recanting his desire to sleep in another bed. She didn't give him the chance, but marched from the room.
"Eden!" he called after her, that incomprehensible desperation lacing his voice.
Could she hear it? If she did, she ignored it as she continued down the hall as if he had never spoken.
He opened his mouth to demand she come back and then snapped it shut again. This was stupid. These feelings tormenting him were irrational and he would not be dictated to by them. He was stronger than that.
But he didn't feel strong…he felt like he was making a major tactical error here. Sleeping elsewhere had seemed so logical when he had been considering how to handle his aching desire for a woman he could not remember. He had to wonder if he'd been thinking straight.
Or was the problem that he was confused now? His usually superior brain felt like mush. His pride barely allowed him to acknowledge his possible mistake to himself, but no way could he admit it to her.
So there was nothing for it but to make his way to the guest room down the hall. It did not escape his notice that the bedroom was the furthest she could get him from the master suite without putting him in a different section of the villa entirely.
She walked out of the en suite as he entered the room. "You should be all set. Petra will unpack your case for you during dinner."
"Is that not a wife's job?"
"I don't think so," she mocked. "Besides, how can you have a wife if you don't feel like a husband?"
Eden hadn't been consciously baiting her husband, but as she watched the fireworks explode in his vibrant blue eyes, she realized this was exactly the reaction she'd been pushing for.
Something had snapped inside of her when he had told her so calmly that he wanted to sleep somewhere besides their bed. Coming from a man like Aristide, it was the ultimate rejection and she had been determined he feel at least the edge of its bite as well. And he had.
He didn't like having his things removed from their bedroom. It stung his pride and he deserved it. He'd lacerated hers along with her heart.
"Are you trying to imply you feel free to behave as if you are not married?" he asked in a deadly voice.
"No more than you do." He could take that any way he liked.
His eyes narrowed. He got it all right. "You do not think I take my vows seriously…you implied as much in the car."
She shrugged. "You said you weren't sleeping with Kassandra." Once. He'd said it once.
"But you do not believe me."
"I didn't say that."
Steel manacles masquerading as masculine fingers clamped down on her shoulders while rage vibrated around her. "But you think it, do you not? You believe I am having an affair with my assistant and for this reason, you think you have the right to similarly forget your promise of fidelity."
"We didn't make those promises at our wedding." And she was just now realizing how much she hated that, how she had felt slighted being married in a register office instead of a church.
"In Greece such promises are not part of the wedding ceremony. They are taken for granted."
"I wouldn't know. We had a ten-minute civil ceremony in New York. It was all the time you and my father could squeeze from your busy schedules."
"Surely not."
She sighed, the tension draining from her, leaving her exhausted in both body and spirit. "You left for a trip to England that night and he went back to the office after taking us out for a celebratory lunch."
"My mother would never have approved a register-office marriage."
"She didn't, but after you informed her I was already two months pregnant, she understood."
"I am sure she was ecstatic at the prospect of being a grandmother so quickly after our marriage."
"She made a few comments about neither of her sons seeming to get the whole 'first comes marriage and then comes babies' thing right, but, yes, she was very happy to have another grandchild on the way."
He was silent for a moment, seemingly letting go of his own nearly incandescent anger. "You did not realize you were pregnant immediately?" he asked, sounding wary.
"I figured it out within days of missing my period. I'm disgustingly regular in that department."
"Why did you wait to tell me?"
Funny how he just assumed she had, not that he had waited to marry her. It irked her that she could not fault him on that score. Right now, she wanted to fault him on everything, she was hurting so much.
