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Her ability to be fair, even in the face of great provocation was something he should never have dismissed when she asked for his support against his mother and sister.
Alexandros had been unable to get past the against concept, never taking the next step to realizing how very necessary presenting a unified front had been and how very much his wife had deserved his support. Full stop.
“I told her that if I lost you because of her and Stacia, I would cut them both from my life permanently.” It was very little in the way of reparation for past mistakes, but he offered it with absolute sincerity.
Surprise flared in Polly’s beautiful blue eyes. “Did you mean it?”
“I did.” That she even felt the need to ask increased his anger with himself.
He should never have made her doubt her importance to him or where his ultimate loyalty lay.
“I appreciate that you feel so strongly, you would say something like that, but let’s not pretend. No matter what their machinations, if you lose me Alexandros, it won’t be their fault.”
Tension thrummed through Alexandros, his jaw tightening so it was hard to speak, but he managed it. “I know.”
“You’re the one who broke promises to me, who told me he loved me and then treated me like I didn’t matter too many times to discount.” She’d said things like this, back when they were first married. She’d said them with tears and she’d screamed them.
And he had not listened.
He was listening now, though his wife’s voice was void of emotion.
Alexandros gritted his teeth against a sound that wanted to come out of his own aching throat, the back of his eyes burning with impossible moisture. “I am sorry.”
“I wonder. Are you sorry? Do you believe you were genuinely in the wrong, or are you simply trying to prove that your brother is not a better husband than you?”
“Is that what you think this is about?” Alexandros asked, unexpected pain ripping through him.
Alexandros was not an emotional guy. He couldn’t afford to be.
“Yes.” That was all.
Just one word given in a flat tone from his overly emotional, voluble wife.
No overexplaining. No tears. No glaring.
He did not like this lack of emotion in her. One way she’d always been his complement was that Pollyanna could give voice to feelings he could not even admit having to himself.
“It
is true. I do not like thinking you see my brother as a better husband to his wife than I am to you. I am a competitive man,” he admitted, wondering for the first time in his life if perhaps that trait was not always a good thing.
Her lips twisted. “I know.”
Of course she did. Pollyanna knew him well, whereas he had lost sight of who she was and needed to learn her heart all over again. “I find it far more disturbing that you would consider me a poor husband at all, if you want the truth. I’m sure you think that’s very conceited of me, but you are the best wife I could ever imagine having.” He still marveled at the miracle that had them meeting. “That I would not be the same for you is not something I can accept.”
“That may change.”
He knew she wasn’t talking about him becoming her ideal of a husband. She didn’t believe he wanted that role badly enough to change. She was talking about her being his perfect mate. “I assure you, it will not.”
“I’m done making all the compromises,” she said in a tone that warned him more was coming. “For the next little while, I think I may be done compromising at all.”
“Tell me what you want, and I will see you get it.” It was another promise, but she would learn this one wasn’t empty.
“Even if it means I want six months to build our relationship without your mother’s or sister’s influence?” she asked, her voice laced with doubt in his sincerity.
CHAPTER TEN
ALEXANDROS’S KNEE-JERK REACTION was to deny such a thing. What would his father have said?
