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But no matter how Chloe attempted to paint the past in a new light, one in which she was not obliged to fulfill the unwritten expectations of their contract, she’d hidden the fact she was on birth control from him.
He would have understood a desire to wait a year, or two. He would have changed the original terms of the contract to five years, in that case.
He wouldn’t have liked it, but Ariston was a reasonable man. He would have done it.
But she hadn’t given him the chance.
She’d simply deceived him.
For three years. Well, almost three years. He’d been no more aware she’d gone off the pill than that she’d been on it in the first place.
Ariston didn’t like feeling ignorant any more than he did feeling weak. Even less so, if that were possible. Weakness he could control with his formidable will, but ignorance born of another’s deception?
That was something he couldn’t control and a complete anathema to him. And something he would make damn sure did not happen this time around with Chloe.
Regardless of recent revelations, he wasn’t going to make the mistake of blindly trusting her innocence again.
Chloe was busy supervising movers and quietly plotting the most effective way to murder her ex-husband for his impatience when her phone rang for the umpteenth time in an hour. She sent it to voice mail without even looking at who the caller was.
Avoiding the curious looks of the movers, Chloe sighed and rubbed her forehead.
The man simply wasn’t content to let her get on with putting things in order—he kept calling her.
First to tell her about the terms of the takeover. As if she cared. Bottom line? People kept their jobs and Rhea and Samuel’s marriage had a chance of surviving.
Samuel had called to thank her and Chloe had gotten off the phone and cried at how happy and hopeful her sister’s husband had sounded. Rhea had expressed her gratitude with heartfelt effusiveness when Chloe had dropped off Ariston’s deal proposal with her.
Her sister was happy and that made Chloe happy.
But Ariston had wanted to tell her all the nitty-gritty details of a merger that Chloe had zero real interest in.
As if her sister hadn’t kept Chloe on the phone for three hours the night before doing the same thing. Rhea had been ecstatic about some of the terms, but a little hurt about the marriage counseling requirement.
Samuel, on the other hand, had made it clear that was his favorite element to the proposal.
Chloe just wanted to forget about Dioletis Industries for the next few days while she got her own chaotic life in order.
She had had plenty to think about already. Plenty to keep her tossing and turning and sleepless for most of the night.
She’d still been zombielike and on her second cup of coffee when the movers arrived this morning.
Organizing her move was hard enough in her exhausted condition without Ariston’s constant phone calls.
Less than an hour after the one about the contract, he’d called to tell her about the apartment she’d be living in, after texting her enough pictures to fill up her text in-box storage.
The apartment was beautiful and bigger than what she was living in now, but really? She’d see it when she got there. Right?
And right now, she couldn’t care less about its original moldings and hardwood floors throughout. The urge to run away that she’d had in his office was back in full force.
No matter how much she wanted to be with Ariston, Chloe wasn’t so naive that she didn’t realize the risk to her heart was huge.
The call asking her which designer she currently favored had technically come from Jean, who wanted to set up appointments at several of New York’s boutiques.
But the source of the call had been Ariston.
Chloe was feeling pressed enough trying to button down her life in two weeks—she didn’t need the extra pressure of scheduling her new life in New York already on top of it.
He’d called at lunch time to make sure she was taking a break to eat. Seriously?
Ariston was the least likely candidate for that kind of solicitude she could imagine.
When she’d said something to that effect, he’d taken her crankiness as a sign she hadn’t eaten. He’d been right.
Arrogant, pushy tycoon.
The phone rang again and she went to press the forward-to-voicemail key, only to realize that it wasn’t her phone ringing. It was one of the movers’. That was it. She was definitely changing her ringtone to something more personal. Just as soon as she could get someone else to do it for her.
Technology wasn’t exactly her friend.
The mover who had answered his phone had a strange expression on his face and he was walking toward her.
“It’s … uh … Mr. Spiridakou. He … uh … wanted to talk to you.” The mover put the phone out toward her.
