AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Very much.
Had he known from day one? Nausea rolled through her at the prospect.
He hadn’t said so, but she knew Ariston had to have been beyond furious once he’d learned of the birth control. And yet, she’d never even guessed he knew.
Either Ariston was an amazing prevaricator … or she’d meant so little to him that even what he would have seen as betrayal didn’t impact how he treated her.
Not that that would be a surprise. Not anymore.
However, the knowledge that he’d had sex with her—repeatedly—while thinking she was a cheat and a liar made her body clammy with sweat as the nausea made her stomach cramp.
His emotions had never been engaged with her. Not even a little. Not even when she’d been so sure they were.
She remembered a party they’d attended together toward the end of their marriage. They’d gone because Ariston wanted to make a business contact. He’d even said so.
But when she’d come down from their bedroom dressed in a teal sheath that dipped with a sexy cowl in the back and hugged her curves in all the right places, Ariston’s eyes had heated with something she’d been sure at the time was more than lust.
“You look beautiful tonight.”
Chloe smiled up at her husband, her heart rate jumping at the look in his gorgeous cerulean eyes. “Thank you. You clean up pretty nicely yourself.”
He looked amazing in his tailored tuxedo.
“I wish we didn’t have this party to go to tonight.”
His words shocked and thrilled her and Chloe beamed. “Maybe we won’t stay too late?”
“Maybe they’ll be lucky if we remain through the appetizers,” he growled as he kissed her with a tender passion he’d been showing more and more lately.
“Your grandfather called and wants us at his house in Piraeus this weekend,” she said after reapplying her lipstick and straightening his black silk bowtie.
“He adores you and it is easy to understand why. You are good to him.”
“I’m good to you, too,” she teased.
Ariston grinned, the smile reaching his eyes as it didn’t with most people. “Yes, yineka mou, you are.”
On the way to the party, he surprised her with a very special gift. “I’ve arranged for you to take drawing lessons from …” He named an eminent artist Chloe would have been in awe over meeting, much less taking any sort of lesson from.
“I didn’t know he went in for private tutoring.”
“He does not.”
“But he made an exception for you,” she guessed. “He made the exception for you, my very precious wife.”
They didn’t even stay at the party long enough for the main course to be set out on the buffet. Ariston missed the opportunity to talk to the businessman he’d intended to meet, but had dismissed Chloe’s concerns with a wave of his hand as he ushered her out of the crowded mansion. “Some things are more important than business.”
In that moment Chloe had believed she was one of them.
When she’d learned the contrary, the emotional devastation had left her existing in a wasteland that nearly cost her health.
Coming back into the present, Chloe felt her knees buckle and she stumbled, bumping into a man on the sidewalk. He said something to her, but she didn’t hear him. She was too focused inward.
He grabbed her arm and shouted something about snotty rich bitches thinking they owned the sidewalks. She raised her head, thinking she needed to apologize, but she didn’t get the chance.
Ariston was there, yanking the man away, his bodyguards closing in to put a protective barrier between Chloe and everyone else.
Warm hands cupped her face. “You’re freezing.” He cursed in Greek and English. “You’re in shock.”
She didn’t say anything, just stared at him while too many thoughts vied for her attention. She had no hope of grasping hold of any single one of them.
“So, the prospect of having a child does this to you. Even now? Or is it the thought of having my child?”
“It’s not that,” she denied, her voice made weak by her distress, but the emotion behind her words vehement enough to make her brain work again. “I can’t believe you found …” She shook her head. “You would have been so angry.”
“I was livid,” he admitted, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “No man likes to be played the fool.”
Especially not a business shark like him. “No. You wouldn’t. But I never knew.”
“I guess we both were good at hiding things.”
“How good was I?” She needed to know. She didn’t care if he thought it mattered. It did to her.
“What do you mean?”
