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She had cursed that same quirk of her nature more than once.
He reached across the table and took her hand, his eyes filled with affection. “Thank you for not giving up.”
She shook her head, not wanting to cry. This was a date, darn it. Time to change the subject. “You talk like whether or not to keep the villa is all my decision.” She winked at him. “It’s a family decision surely.”
And he’d said he’d like to keep the villa, so they could still spend time in the country as a family.
He shrugged. “It is your property.”
“I was shocked when you told me that,” she said with a smile.
She couldn’t help wondering what might have been different for her over the past few years if she had known that from the beginning.
“So I noticed, though you must know your lack of knowledge of that fact surprised me.” The waiter unobtrusively and silently refilled their wineglasses, before stepping away from the table.
Alexandros brushed his thumb back and forth across the palm of her hand, sending jolts of electric current through her. Such a tiny touch to elicit such a response in her body.
“How was I to know?” she asked, realizing how much she enjoyed having her hand in his in this public setting. It felt good. Sensual, yes, but also romantic. Though she would not make the mistake of saying so.
“But I told you when we moved in.”
Confused, thinking maybe she’d missed part of the conversation while focused on the effect of his hand on hers. “Told me what?”
“That I’d bought the house for you.”
She thought back to that emotionally tumultuous time and tried to remember what he’d said, certain it had not been that the house was hers lock stock and barrel.
“What do you think, yineka mou? I bought it for you.”
What she’d thought had not been at all charitable, and the row that had followed had been one of their worst.
“I thought you meant you bought it for me to live in.” Any other interpretation had never occurred to her.
Alexandros let out a sound of frustration. “I am beginning to see that you and I have a real problem with communication.”
“You think so?” she asked teasingly.
But his expression was as serious as she’d ever seen it. “If you didn’t realize the villa was yours, yes, we do.”
“The prenup.” To her, those two words explained her belief entirely that he would not have bought such an expensive property and put it in her name.
He gave her a pained look. “The prenuptial agreement was not my way of saying I didn’t see our marriage as permanent. Nor was it intended to prevent you from enjoying the gifts I wanted to give you. It was in fact, intended to protect you as much as me, if the worst happened.”
“The worst?”
“Something happened that made staying married impossible.” He sighed. “It wasn’t a contract intended to make you think I thought that something would happen.”
“When I first signed it, I didn’t think that,” she admitted. She’d been living in a dreamworld of love at first sight, where she was his forever soul mate. “But later, after things changed between us and I realized where I fit on your list of priorities, it did seem like a pretty airtight agreement to govern the eventual and maybe even inevitable dissolution of our marriage.”
He winced when she mentioned his list of priorities, but only said. “That is the intention of a good prenup, but I saw divorce as neither eventual or inevitable.” His tone held the kind of conviction she could not simply dismiss.
His honesty deserved some of her own. “Your sister and your mom were aware of the fine details of the contract and used them to poke at me whenever the occasion arose. They wanted me to realize that you didn’t see me as a permanent fixture in your life.”
Rage flared in his dark gaze before it banked and only sincerity remained. “But that is a lie. I married you. I consider marriage a lifetime commitment.”
Which was something they had discussed during their whirlwind courtship. When had she started believing other people’s opinions about how her husband viewed the permanence of their marriage commitment?
Probably around the same time she realized that his mother’s and sister’s feelings and attitudes were more important to Alexandros than Polly’s were.
