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Zeph gave a low laugh. ‘Minimum stress,’ he echoed. ‘That might be easier said than done.’
‘Then I must insist on frequent monitoring. Perhaps once a week.’
Imogen nodded, eager to dispel that faint alarm she’d experienced. ‘We’ll be here so we can arrange for you—’
‘No, we won’t,’ Zeph slid in smoothly but firmly.
Her eyes widened as she stared at him. ‘Why not?’
He shrugged, then cast a look around the living room. ‘I like it on the boat. We seem to have everything we need on board. For now, I’d like to make that my primary residence.’
‘But... I need to be in Athens. I have work to do and I can’t just abandon it to go live on the yacht.’
‘From what I’ve seen everything you need to work is on board. We’ll continue to do that. What isn’t available will be organised, I’m certain.’
She wanted to snap that he couldn’t just turn up and start ordering her life. But that would be a lie. She had stepped into his shoes because her new surname dictated she step up. She still had a responsibility to see it through. If nothing else, for the sake of expediting the one thing she craved above all else. The freedom she’d attain in a little over a year.
As her protest died on her lips, the doctor nodded in agreement. ‘If that’s where Kyrios Diamandis feels most comfortable then I recommend you heed it.’
Immie stopped herself from rolling her eyes, but not so much attempting to halt the flared panic and fizz of...something that broke beneath her skin.
While the yacht was a sprawling vessel with plenty of room, she couldn’t help but feel as if she’d been...trapped.
In Athens, she had the safety of her office or the separate apartment she’d had to herself within Zeph’s luxury penthouse. There, they’d lived separate lives, rarely seeing each other unless some social function or other dictated their joint attendance. Beyond that, she’d seldom interacted with Zeph.
Every week, he’d been away on some international business trip while she had been working furiously to get Callahan Shipping back on firmer ground.
But it had been one of those necessary but rare social gatherings that had thrown them together on the yacht the weekend he went missing ten months ago.
‘I think you were already doing so, weren’t you,kyria?’
She blinked and focused on the doctor. ‘Hmm?’
The older man smiled. ‘I have heard it straight from Zephyr in the past that the yacht is his preferred place to relax.’
Her eyes widened as Zeph’s own eyebrows shot up. Apparently neither of them believed he’d divulged something so...mundane but personal to the good doctor.
‘I told you that?’ Zeph mused.
The doctor smiled wryly. ‘I may have suggested that you slow down once or twice in the past during your biannual physical. And the impression I got from you was that the yacht was the most desirable form of relaxation.’
Zeph’s quietly intense gaze swung back to her. ‘Then it’s decided.’
Imogen opened her mouth, but every argument that arose sounded like opposition against the very tool that might aid Zeph’s healing. Besides, if there was one thing she remembered clearly from the two brief but searing meetings during which Zeph had laid out his plans for their convenient marriage, it was that in the eyes of the public they were to appear like any married couple, any hint of animosity a violation of their agreement.
Leaving her newly returned-from-the-dead husband to fend for himself on a yacht while she remained in Athens would seem callous and uncaring at best and intensely cold-hearted at worst.
Beyond that she needed to remember that one day, sooner or later, Zeph would regain his memories. And while she would fight to retain the independence she’d gained in his absence, she didn’t want to place herself in his worse books by denying him what he wanted now.
So she cleared her throat. ‘I’ll need to put a few things in place but...yes, if that’s what’s needed, then we will return to the yacht.’
She tried to ignore the blaze of triumph in his eyes and the unnerving sensation that she’d set herself on a risky path whose destination she couldn’t quite see. Fixing her eyes on the doctor, she cleared her throat. ‘Is there anything else I...need to know?’
The doctor shook his head. ‘Nothing else. I will stress, though, that this is a waiting game, so patience is very much imperative.’
She didn’t realise she was knotting her fingers harder until she saw Zeph’s gaze drop to take in the action.
‘I think my wife wants me back. Very much,’ he drawled, speculative heat in his gaze.
