AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Would he have followed through with the divorce after she admitted why she’d put off getting pregnant? With his attitude toward love, her confession might actually have tipped him toward filing the papers rather than having them shredded.
They would never know what would have happened two years ago if they’d talked out his anger and her worries, but they had a chance at a new future now.
Did she want to take it? Did she have a choice? If she turned him down, Rhea and the employees of Dioletis Industries would all pay the price.
“Chloe?” Ariston prompted.
“Just thinking.”
“About my offer?” he asked.
“Yes. And the past.”
“The past has little bearing on the present.”
“I think you’re wrong.” She’d walked away from him and with her best efforts, admitted—if only to herself—that the life she’d been living the past two years had been muted.
Dulled by grief at losing her best chance at love, drained of the sparkle being around a man as dynamic as Ariston had given to her days.
“I made a life for myself,” she said softly. “It’s not empty.” It really wasn’t. Not as exciting as her life with him, but absolutely not without its own benefits. “I have friends, an occupation I find both interesting and challenging, a position within my community.”
“But you do not have me.”
“You talk like you think I love you.”
The familiar look of derision at the mention of that word came over his features, but then it morphed into a smile. “You enjoyed our life together. You enjoyed being my wife.”
“And yet I walked away from it.”
“Why?” he asked, sitting on the side of the bed, his intense focus wholly on her in a way it rarely had ever been except when making love. “You said we wanted different things. You thought I wanted a divorce.”
“I wanted love,” she admitted, thinking this might well be the moment he tossed that red folio back into his briefcase and walked out of the hotel room.
“We had something better than love.”
“Only you would think a contract made up for an emotional connection.”
“We were connected.”
“In bed.”
“And out of it. We got along, Chloe. You complemented my life. I made yours more interesting.”
Perhaps he had known her better than she’d thought. “And this time you’re not offering marriage.”
“Not at first, no.” There was something in his expression she couldn’t read, but she thought maybe she didn’t need to.
“You don’t trust me.”
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
She thought about it. She hadn’t … when she’d left him, she hadn’t trusted him at all. Or she would have stayed to talk it out as he’d planned to do.
Did she trust him now? Two years on and hopefully wiser. “You’re like my father in more ways than I thought in the beginning.”
“But not his mirror image. I will be a true papa to my children. Not like my father, not like yours.”
In this, Chloe believed Ariston completely. “You had one of the best role models.”
“Pappous. Yes.”
“I wonder how your father turned out the way he did?” she mused.
“Nature over nurture.”
Chloe had to agree. Takis would never have raised his son to be so congenitally selfish. “Bad genes somewhere back in the family line.”
“Everyone has them.”
“No doubt.”
“Will you risk it?”
Would she? Risk going after what she wanted when she knew heartbreak might well be at the end of her journey? “My sister?”
“I’ll do my best by her. I’ll even require couples counseling between her and her husband as part of the deal if that will make you feel better.”
Chloe laughed, but nodded. “You know, I think it would. Neither of us grew up with a role model for what constitutes a good marriage.”
“Then it will be done.” He got up and walked purposefully to his briefcase.
He pulled out a pen and then grabbed the red bound document. Flipping it open, he leafed through the pages until he reached the one he was looking for. Then, he wrote something on a page about a quarter of the way in.
“You’re really adding that?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll do it.”
“To guarantee your sister gets marriage counseling?” Ariston asked with some amusement.
“To give her the best hope at happiness in her future. Sinking under the burden of Dioletis Industries isn’t it.”
“Tell her. Forty-eight hours.” Ariston tossed the red folio back to Chloe.
