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He rose an hour later to an empty bedroom and a dull headache. He checked his phone and listened to his mother’s voicemail.

“We’re coming for dinner. Lambros has business to discuss with you.” She knew the rules, yet still she tried.

Lambros did not want to discuss anything with him. He wanted to snoop for evidence that Spiro’s marriage was as bogus as he suspected.

We have plans, Spiro texted in reply.

Then he called Florian to make plans. He went into his office and tried to turn his mind to work, but he couldn’t concentrate.

It had nothing to do with his headache. It was his situation. His marriage. Alia.

I know what men expect when they buy me dinner, but you made it clear you don’t want sex.

He damned well did, but he wasn’t sure he wanted the emotional entanglements that came with it, especially if he was her first lover. Her expectations of him would be sky-high—not just for the act, but their relationship in general. He wasn’t sure he could live up to whatever she would want or need after that.

He’d been short with her in the street because he resented the implication that he was trying to get something from her by showering her with gifts. He didn’t see himself as cold-blooded and transactional, but maybe he was.

Past lovers had accused him of being emotionally distant, materialistic and incapable of trust. All he’d heard in those words was that he wasn’t meeting their expectations.

But he also maintained firm boundaries. After losing so much as a teen, he liked to be in control of what people took from him. The women he typically dated were socialites and heiresses and CEOs. They bought their own flowers and diamond earrings if they wanted them. The jewelry he’d bought for Alia today had been on par with those standards, not a bribe or anticipated compensation for anything.

Jewelry was never an expression of warm sentiment for him, though. It was a way of implying he valued a woman’s place in his life without having to express authentic emotion. Which was what ultimately prompted his partners to move on.

He couldn’t help that he was pathologically self-sufficient, though. He liked sex and chatting with a pretty face across a dinner table, especially if they had deep cleavage, but he didn’t need a life partner. That’s why he hadn’t sought marriage before his brother had dropped him into this one.

He was still coming to terms with this. He didn’t know how he should feel about having a wife, let alone Alia specifically.

He’d been angry and suspicious when he had opened his eyes, but he still didn’t know how much he could trust her. She had lied straight into his face and installed herself in his house, in his bedroom, in his bed.

None of that sat well.

But he wanted to be able to trust her. He wanted her.

The way she caught fire when they kissed was unexpected and thrilling. Their chemistry was incendiary. If they had sex—and yes, he would like that very much—it had to be because she wanted it as much as he did. Which he thought she did, if her reactions so far had been real.

Were they?

Where the hell was she, anyway?

He texted her.

* * *

Alia wallowed in the discord of her argument with Spiro. She hated when someone was angry with her. Strong emotions stressed her out. They made her feel like something bad would happen even if she wasn’t to blame.

Spiro had curtly announced he needed to lie down when they arrived back at the villa. She had changed and had come down to spend time with Yaya, but she was distracted, still ruminating on all that had happened today, wondering if she had overreacted.

Did it matter if he wanted to buy sexual favors from her? She was offering them up regardless. Fantasies of making love with him had danced in her mind from the first moment she’d seen him.

Those initial imaginings no longer fit the man she was coming to know, though. When he’d been in his coma, she had imagined his personality to be more like his brother’s—intelligent and considerate and friendly. She had thought Spiro was attractive, but in a very unthreatening way.

He was a force, though. Like a storm that made the air crackle. She had the feeling that when he was at his best, his mind didn’t stop. He was used to being in charge and he was not friendly. He was barely polite, but he had the ability to charm and possessed a sexual magnetism that easily overwhelmed her. He could sensually destroy her. Which was as terrifying as it was intriguing.

We’re newlyweds. What do you we should do?

Her phone pinged with a text. Dinner res @7.

They were going out again? Was he trying to kill himself?