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They’d had the same goals in life—to make something of themselves, to not let their pasts become hurdles in their lives, to make a difference in the world.
At least that’s what she had thought.
It hadn’t mattered that the match had been arranged by two sly old men or that Aristos himself had never asked her. He’d looked happy enough when he’d put the ring on her finger. Those dark gray eyes had shone with that wild fire when she’d kissed his cheek. He’d been his usual charming, aggressive social self at their engagement party.
She’d been incredibly naive at eighteen and the fact that love was nothing but a sweet, poisonous lie hadn’t completely taken yet. Luckily, Aristos had fractured her delusions of fantasy love the very night after their engagement party and the truth had come to light thanks to his cousin Kairos.
It had been a timely reminder that Aristos, like her father, was a man to whom everything in life—wealth, women, extreme sports—were challenges to be conquered and then moved on from. At least, her pride had remained intact as she’d never betrayed her foolish feelings for him.
The very next day, she’d called off the engagement, telling her grandfather that she’d realized getting married at eighteen would only hamper her ambition to become a doctor. To quote Thaata when Leo had complained, “No one can shake my stubborn, fierce granddaughter once she makes up her mind.” Her decision had been validated when Aristos hadn’t even asked her the reason for canceling the engagement.
But she’d never been able to erase Aristos from her heart. Never stopped wondering if everything they’d shared during their teen years when she’d visited Greece for long, glorious summers had been anything but a sham.
She’d kept obsessive track of his meteoric rise in the corporate world, his worldwide fame for his charities, his penchant for extreme sports and his escapades with women, eavesdropped on Leo Carides’s calls to her own grandfather over the uncontrollable devil that was his grandson.
The devil she had been determined to stay away from, despite Thaata’s constant urging that she give him another chance.
Only Aristos had walked back into her life one crisp September evening last year when she’d been in Vegas to watch over her sister Yana at her latest photo shoot.
He’d walked into her suite, all dark stormy eyes and sensuality, with the shocking proposition for a convenient contract marriage that served both their purposes. Because, of course, Thaata had shared her plan to have a child through an anonymous donor with Leo Carides, who had passed it on to his grandson.
Their contract marriage would give her the child she wanted, Aristos had argued, born of a father who didn’t mind being a part-time parent and the contingency of a support system should anything befall her. Being a doctor by profession, Mira saw enough devastating life changes to want to cling to that. Unnervingly, but unsurprisingly, shrewd of Aristos to capitalize on her needing such reassurance even when he hadn’t seen her in years.
For Aristos, it would give the illusion of settling down and stability that the board of Carides Inc. demanded he show, extremely put upon as they were by his constant exposure to near-fatal thrills. It would give him the heir for the Carides legacy that Leo Carides was desperate for. Since his “bloody grandson kept throwing himself off mountain cliffs and helicopters.”
Despite turning it around in her head, Mira hadn’t found a single reason to say no to him.
That it had appeased their mutual grandfathers, that they had seen it as some grand reunion of a romantic match, had been the icing on the cake. Not one soul knew about the quiet divorce they intended to acquire after five years. Or at least that’s what Mira had thought until she’d seen the scathing article online.
Aristos, with that annoying amusement that grated on her skin, had sprawled on a heavy recliner and watched her from under those thick lashes, as she’d planned their arrangement to a T.
It had taken Mira two months to realize that she hadn’t foreseen two small but important nuggets. That she might actually fall in lust with her own husband and that Aristos, per his behavioral patterns, would find it impossible to be faithful to her beyond a mere two months.
So when her grandmother had fallen sick, she’d come home running. Used it as an excuse to rid herself of the naive hopes and possessive fire his proximity raised in her. The silence on his end had only confirmed her suspicions that he regretted their arrangement. She’d been waiting with bated breath for annulment papers for months.
But he was here now, his mere presence like throwing fuel onto slumbering embers. Her grief at losing her grandparents back-to-back—the only real parents she’d ever known—the sense of restlessness that had haunted her the last few years, the debilitating fear that she’d always be lonely and all her worries came back with a vengeance.
Why? What was it about the blasted man that her own needs and desires took on new, hungry shapes around him? What was it about him that made all her vulnerabilities come crashing to the surface?
She looked across the vast, high-ceilinged room, her gaze immediately locking with Aristos’s. He hadn’t moved from his lounging position against the wall since he’d arrived. Only following and cataloging her every move like a quiet predator sizing up prey.
Dark gray eyes held hers, a mocking glint to them. As if he knew why she’d run away. As if he knew that beneath her wariness lay a thirst for something darker and more real than anything she’d known in...forever. As if he remembered the moment when the thin veneer of polite apathy between them had been knocked down with a single touch.
Awareness arced between them—as potent as it had been the one time they’d kissed as husband and wife.
The folded note in her fist called her attention, giving her the strength to look away.
A handwritten note from Thaata, who’d left notes for her, Yana and Nush, as if he’d known that his time had been near, that the three granddaughters he’d raised with such love and affection would be desperate for more from him.
Tears she’d somehow held at bay for weeks returned. Mira excused herself, ignoring Yana’s and Nush’s curious looks, and walked toward the large kitchen where she’d spent most of her childhood, hanging on to her grandmother’s words. Her fingers trembled as she unrolled the note and caressed the crisp stationery.
Nothing real can be built on a foundation of transactions, Mira. Or by burying your real desires. If you truly want the King, be the Queen I raised you to be.
Mira’s breath hitched. Laughter bubbled as she sank against the large island block where she and her half sisters had laughed and cried and fought and helped her grandmother cook a million meals.
Had Thaata known that marrying Aristos had been nothing but a glorified transaction? Had he known that Mira’s heart had never really left the cocoon of safety and comfort, petrified of being shattered if she used it? That her strength was only a mirage, hiding her deepest fears?
In this moment, it had left her with nothing but a desperate clawing for more.
