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‘Where we’ll live, for starters. When we’ll marry. How we’ll announce it and tell your parents. These things matter.’
He was right. There were logistics to plan for. Only everything felt all wobbly. She’d been so sure this would be a businesslike marriage proposal and he’d completely redefined the borders of those expectations. Not to mention, coming face to face with Alex for the first time in four years made it impossible to forget just how much she’d used to worship him. That crush had become a source of so much embarrassment, so it was shocking to discover that she still couldn’t look at him without going weak at the knees.
She couldn’t have a second disastrous marriage to her name. She had to be sure they would make a go of this—and his idea of discussing the details made sense. This would work. It would be fine. ‘Okay,’ she said on a small exhalation. ‘Tonight.’
He had expected her to refuse. He’d goaded her, challenged her, thinking she’d turn her back on this whole preposterous idea and walk away. And now that she’d accepted, he had to make his peace with it, because she was offering him something he hadn’t even fully acknowledged to himself that he wanted.
‘You understand the limits of this?’ he pushed, just to be certain. She was Stavros’s sister, and, while the lines were getting blurred, he could still control the boundaries of their relationship. He had a lifetime of experience with that, after all.
‘Yes.’ It was as though a switch had been flicked. Now that she’d accepted his terms, the uncertainty had disappeared, leaving determination in her beautiful face. And she was beautiful, he contemplated with a tightening in his groin. As beautiful now as she had been then, as she had been as a gawky, uncertain teenager and she’d smiled at him as though he was the centre of the universe.
Stavros had always been protective though. ‘She’s way too young for you. Don’t even think about it.’ And she had been. Even the night they’d slept together, at twenty-two, she’d still been far too inexperienced and sheltered for a man like him—ten years older and far more worldly.
He’d used her.
She’d had a crush on him for years—he couldn’t have missed the way she’d used to stare at him, and when she’d walked through the hotel bar, distracted and grieving, he’d moved to intercept her, drawing her into his arms because he’d needed the contact, the physical connection, the distraction.
The taste of acid filled his mouth.
He disgusted himself.
Stavros had only been buried hours earlier and there was Alex disregarding his friend’s often stated warning, seducing his younger, innocent sister for his own selfish needs.
There had been other women in the bar that night, other women he could have turned to in order to slake his needs, and yet he’d chosen Tessa. He’d betrayed Stavros and Alex had never forgiven himself for that. He’d pledged he would never see Tessa again, that he’d never indulge that weakness, and he’d been right to avoid her. Only he thought of her often, not because of who she was, but because of the weakness she’d brought out in him, and how much he’d hated that. He should have turned her away the moment she’d arrived. He should have told his assistant to send her away. But he’d been curious, and wanting to see her, to see how she’d changed and grown.
Their marriage would be a gift to her parents, and so too would a child be. Surely even Stavros, then, would have approved of this? With a sound of frustration, he shook his head. There was no way his best friend would ever condone the marriage of Alex to Tessa. Stavros had always protected Tessa, and he knew, better than anyone, what demons pursued Alex. He knew about Alex’s parents’ marriage, the torment of living with a couple who could swing from wildly happy to murderously enraged in the blink of an eye, the torture of feeling that you were losing not one, but two parents every time they argued. The instability of growing up in a home split in half by emotional arguments, or vibrating with tension and silence. His parents had hated each other, but they’d hated the idea of separating even more, and so they’d stayed together, trapped in their loveless marriage, until they couldn’t survive another day, and finally they had parted, both destroyed in every way that mattered by the torment they’d put one another through.
Alex had known he would never marry, from a young age, and he had told Stavros this on many occasions. Stavros had teased him, saying it was only because Alex liked to bed a different woman each night, that he might feel differently if he actually got to know one of the women he slept with. But Alex had been resolute. Sex was sex, he saw no purpose in getting to know the women he slept with—and there hadn’t been any complaints from them, anyway.
But sleeping with Tessa had cheapened everything about his way of life. He’d been so angry with himself, and, unfairly, so angry with her, for being in the lobby, for walking past him, for looking at him as though he could fix everything, for understanding, as no one else could, what Stavros’s death had cost Alex. Hell, he’d even been angry at her for being a virgin—a twenty-two-year-old virgin! He hadn’t wanted that gift, the special uniqueness of what they’d shared. Betraying Stavros was bad enough, but being her first?
Goddammit.
They’d discussed a marriage without emotion, but Alex wasn’t a fool. For Tessa had been the only woman who’d ever invoked anything close to sentiment in him—even if they had been dark emotions—and he would now have to spend a lifetime ensuring it never happened again. Feelings had no place in his marriage—they never would.
