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Aristide's blue eyes darkened with displeasure. "Why not? You certainly were not here to do it."
How dare he throw her absence from his hospital room back on her? If it had been up to her, she would have been here non-stop from the moment the doctor had said it was all right. "You didn't ask for me."
"And that stopped you from coming to the side of your husband's hospital bed?" he derided. "You are here now and still I have not asked for you."
Kassandra got up and walked toward Eden. "I think this is my cue to leave. I don't want to be the cause of another domestic disturbance."
She implied there'd been many, when in fact Eden had tolerated far too much in the name of harmony. She gritted her teeth to stop from saying so. Adam had made it clear that she was not to upset his patient, going so far as to instruct her unequivocally not to tell Aristide about the baby.
Bad enough Aristide had forgotten their child, but she must refrain from reminding him of the baby's existence. It was just another poisoned dart of pain that had found its way with the unerring accuracy of a bull's-eye to her heart. As kind as Adam had been to her, his concern for her husband was just as acute.
Kassandra's smug expression worried Eden and she couldn't help wondering what the poisonous witch had been telling Aristide. Eden waited until the other woman was less than a foot away before stepping aside to let her leave the room.
She turned and spoke in a low voice that would not carry to her husband's ears. "You get what you give, Kassandra."
The other woman's eyes widened, as if she couldn't believe Eden had dared to say anything in front of Aristide, then she smiled maliciously. "Oh, I will get what's coming to me all right. Just as soon as you let go of him."
It was the first time Kassandra had stated her intentions so blatantly, but they didn't surprise Eden, not by a long shot.
"That's not going to happen. I'm never letting him go. Not ever."
Kassandra smiled, her expression mocking. "I think you will. Besides, who said you would get a choice in the matter?"
Without another word, Eden spun on her heel and headed toward the bed and a husband that did not remember her, but whom she loved with every fiber of her being.
She wasn't letting Kassandra have him without a fight, but she couldn't help feeling she shouldn't have to fight for a man who had promised her a lifetime of fidelity. She'd kept her end of their marriage bargain, giving him a son and her heart.
She only hoped he had kept his. Ever since she'd come to the conclusion that he married her for the sake of their child, she had wondered if his feelings had never engaged for her because they were held elsewhere. Only, if he loved Kassandra, why had he made Eden his lover?
Was it a Greek thing? It was hard to believe, but maybe Kassandra was still a virgin. Aristide would not take her to bed without marrying her in that case. The thought she'd been nothing more than a sexual diversion gone wrong made bile rise in her sensitive stomach.
She stopped when her legs brushed the side of his bed. "The doctor said you would be released tomorrow."
He stared at her through eyes that had always had the power to mesmerize her, his expression impassive. "Yes." He shoved the tray of hospital food away. "I will finish the meetings here that the accident interrupted and then return to Greece."
Not we, but I. Looking for a distraction from the disturbing syntax, she focused on his hardly eaten lunch. "Is that all you plan to eat?"
"Yes."
"Surely you shouldn't be skipping meals. You need to regain your strength."
"I am fine. And if you are so concerned about my health, perhaps you should not have been so quick to frighten off the woman convincing me to eat this tasteless mess."
Her frighten Kassandra? Not in this lifetime.
"Are you telling me you need someone to entice you to eat?" Eden mocked.
"Maybe I do. Are you prepared to take on the job?" His tone said he didn't see how she could cajole him into anything.
She'd been married to him for sixteen months and raising his son, who was very much like him, for nine of those months. He might not remember her, but she wasn't so handicapped. A woman who cared could learn an awful lot about her husband in that amount of time, and Eden cared…a lot.
She slipped her coat off and laid it over the chair beside the bed before taking the place Kassandra had vacated. Gritting her teeth at the scent of the other woman lingering around her, Eden reached out and touched his lips in a move he would have recognized as quite daring for her.
If he'd been able to remember.
"I know how to feed all of your hungers, darling." Her voice was husky with a promise she hoped he would remember on an instinctual level.
His eyes turned a familiar midnight-blue and his jaw went taut like it did when he was trying to hold back desire.
She wasn't unaffected either. Even this small touch sent electric jolts of remembered intimacy throughout her body. It had always been like this—their reaction to one another had been cataclysmic and instantaneous from the first moment.
Without warning, Aristide jerked his head back, his eyes narrowing, the contempt in them unmistakable. "Is this how you trapped me into marriage? Using your body?"
CHAPTER THREE
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The shock those words caused reverberated through her.
She let her hand drop. "I wasn't the one doing the seducing in our relationship."
"Kassandra implied you trapped me into marriage with the oldest trick in the book. Is that true?" he asked, sounding disgusted. "Did I marry you because you were pregnant with my child?"
So, Kassandra had been busy spreading tales. Eden wasn't surprised, but it hurt to think Aristide had listened with both ears open to the other woman's vitriol.
Eden gritted her teeth, wishing she could deny his accusation, but she couldn't. Not now that she herself had come to accept the truth. "Yes. You married me because I was pregnant with Theo. But it was no trap. I did not get pregnant on purpose."
Aristide frowned fiercely at her, his disbelief obvious. His attitude was far removed from that of the lover she had known for nearly three years. He had never once doubted her word before, not even when she told him she was pregnant with his baby. He could have accused her of seeing someone else while he was gone on his frequent and often extended business travels, but he hadn't.
He hadn't even implied it was a possibility.
He'd always treated her with respect, like she mattered. Maybe not as much as Kouros Industries, but more than an afterthought he couldn't be bothered to see while he was in hospital.
Had his patience toward her and proclaimed acceptance of her role in his life all been an act?
It was hard to believe anything else now.
"You love your son," she couldn't help saying, as if somehow that affection should reflect on her as well.
She knew it didn't. Hadn't she always known? But still there was a part of her that persisted in hoping.. How stupid was that?
Aristide's expression hardened. "I am aware of it. I remember him."
Well, that was telling her. Sharpened talons of pain clawed through her, piercing the barely inflated balloon of hope. "Yes, of course."
Her quiet acknowledgement seemed to make him uncomfortable and he shifted restlessly in the bed. "If nothing else, I owe you gratitude for giving me such a wonderful child."
His thanks was the last thing she could bear. She needed his love and now she didn't even have his memory. She stood up, unable to withstand any more. It had been a mistake to come here. One more in a long line of them, starting with her agreement to marry a man who had never once told her he loved her.
"You owe me nothing. I love our son every bit as much as you do." She grabbed her coat and started putting it back on.
But he seized her arm, stopping her from finishing the task. "Where do you think you are going?"
"Back to the hotel. It's obvious my company is surplus to requirements." She hated the weakness the catch in her voice revealed to him.
She had to get out of there.
"Like hell. You are my wife and this is the first time you have deigned to visit me in three days. You are not walking out after a perfunctory five minutes."
"You didn't want me to come." She could not stop hot tears from filling her eyes, but she tried to blink them back. "Y-you told the doctor."
"And that upset you?" he asked with a supreme lack of tact.
"Of course it did." How could he be so cruel? Even if he didn't remember her, was he totally insensitive to what a woman in her position would be going through right now? "I love you. How could this not upset me?"
"You love me?" he asked with derision she did not deserve. "The evidence is not in your favor. You were nowhere around when I was in a coma. No one told you to stay away then."
