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“You’re saying you want something personally, for you?” she asked, clarifying.
“I’m saying I want something personal for me from you.”
Well, there could be no mistaking his intention with those words. “But what exactly?”
She still couldn’t fathom anything he could possibly want from her that he couldn’t get with a lot less effort and money than it would take to save Dioletis Industries.
“What if I were to tell you that I want something similar to the agreement five years ago?”
“Is that what you’re telling me?” she asked, not sure she could believe what her ears were telling her.
He’d had the divorce papers drawn up and ready for use, not her. And he’d made absolutely zero effort to contact her after she walked out of their apartment in Athens. She might have left him, but he’d shown no interest in getting her back.
And she was just now realizing how much she’d been hoping he would.
“Ne.” Definite. Affirmative. And in Greek.
He meant business. Literally.
“You want to marry me again?” Shock coursed through her and made her voice break.
It was quickly followed by sick dread as her imagination ran wild. Maybe he wanted to try the business-arrangement marriage again, but this time with her sister? And he needed Chloe to help him convince Rhea.
Only, hadn’t she made it clear that she was meeting him in the first place because ultimately Chloe wanted to see her sister’s marriage saved? Not destroyed by another business deal meant to save Dioletis Industries.
Ariston had said he knew everything about his business interests; perhaps he’d known about the cracks in Rhea’s marriage before even Chloe. And was counting on them?
They’d always gotten along, Rhea and Ariston. They had so much in common. More than she and Ariston had ever had.
Would Rhea do it? Marry Chloe’s ex, if it meant saving their father’s empire? She wouldn’t give Samuel up for the company, would she? Only a sinking feeling in Chloe’s gut said that Rhea just might.
She’d darn near done it already.
“Chloe … yineka mou … are you well?” Suddenly Ariston was there. Squatting in his sharply tailored suit and fresh shirt beside her dining chair.
His hand cupped her cheek oh so carefully, his cerulean eyes filled with a concern she knew she couldn’t let herself believe in.
“What is the matter?” he demanded.
She almost laughed, but was afraid if she started, she wouldn’t stop until the tears came. “You said … marry …”
And her brain had taken wing to a dark, ugly place, Chloe never, ever, ever wanted to live.
“Not marriage … not exactly.”
“Not exactly.” Not with Rhea? “What then, exactly?”
His hand dropped, but he remained where he was, his gaze boring into hers. “I want you in my bed.”
It didn’t even surprise her that he’d said it out loud in the middle of the restaurant. He wasn’t speaking loud enough for his voice to carry far, but she didn’t think it would matter to him if he had been.
Ariston didn’t live by normal people’s rules.
“I … that …” He wanted a mistress? A lover? What?
“Without the birth control,” he said with intense conviction. “I want the baby you withheld from me.”
“You knew.” Shock upon shock. She’d been so sure he wasn’t aware.
She couldn’t even begin to deal with his comment about a baby just that second.
“I told you.” He stood and returned to his seat. Still close, but a vast gulf of emotion and understanding between them. “There is very little about my business interests that I do not know.”
“I never felt like a business interest when we were together,” she said helplessly, her mind reeling. “Not until the end and I saw you planned to divorce me just as the contract said you could after three years and still keep the stocks.”
He said nothing, his silence speaking words she didn’t want to hear.
She shook her head, but her thoughts refused to settle as they spun endlessly around one simple fact. “I don’t understand how you could know.”
“I found your pills.”
“In my jewelry armoire?” But he never went through her things.
Only he must have. At least once.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Does it matter?”
“Maybe it shouldn’t … but I feel like it does.” If he had never trusted her and had spied on her, that put their marriage in a different light, even for her, didn’t it?
“I was planning a gift for you.”
“And you needed something in my jewelry armoire?” she asked with a fatalistic sense of doom.
