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Her skin jumped as he watched her with those brooding eyes. ‘What?’ she asked tentatively.
‘I got an initial impression from the tour on the yacht. And it seems I’m gathering a distinct picture that we don’t sleep in the same room. Or even share the same apartment. Why is that,matia mou?’ he murmured. But it was a deadly sound that raised every hair on her nape. Reminding her—as if she needed it—that this man in front of her was just a different facet of the Zeph she knew.
She licked her lower lip, a motion that seemed to make his midnight eyes gain even more depth and mystery. Hesitation would be deemed evasion. She knew that.
So she scrambled to deliver a true but partial version of their circumstance. ‘It was your idea. You travelled a lot for business. And you were used to having your space, and this apartment was available. We didn’t see a need to change the status quo where it didn’t need to be changed.’
A flash of something she would’ve termed displeasure in anyone else’s eyes came and went just as quickly. ‘How long had we been married before we were parted?’
We were parted.
As if theirs had been an emotionally charged and heartbreaking severance instead of the cold, shocking mystery his disappearance had truly been. A disappearance that had come within a whisker of turning suspicious eyes on her until the authorities ruled her innocent. ‘A little over a year.’
This time the emotion lingered a fraction longer in the nostrils that flared. ‘So I left a relatively new bride behind?’
Why on earth did the murmured words send a heated blush flowing into her cheeks? She was the daughter of a brash and brazen Texan who’d had a dim view of the female of the species to the point of pretending they didn’t exist until needed. Which meant that she’d been familiar with cuss words long before she’d shed her braces.
Imogen was silently repeating one of those unladylike cuss words when he spoke again.
‘I have a lot to make up for and catch up with, then, in that case.’
‘I...what? No, you don’t,’ she said, a little too hurriedly. Because her blaring instinct warned she didn’t want to know what that meant.
He slowly prowled towards her as he spoke, causing her to retreat. Until the desk blocked her. She was clinging to the edge when he smiled down at her.
‘I believe I do. I can’t wait to begin. Did we have a honeymoon?’
‘I...no.’
‘Just as I thought. Then I can’t think of a better place to start than with the honeymoon we didn’t have.’
CHAPTER FOUR
VERYEARLYINthe mysterious journey that was his new reality, Zeph had decided to trust his gut instinct. Sure, he relied on his other senses when needed. His reasoning, observation and strategy had turned Petros’s mediocre fishing business from a two-vessel, barely ticking over concern into a ten-vessel growing business in a matter of months. A factor he knew deep down had played into the older man’s desire to keep him around, perhaps even pushing his daughter into a commitment she hadn’t been totally ready for.
It was why he didn’t need his gut to tell him Imogen wasn’t being entirely truthful about their sleeping arrangements. Perhaps even keys areas of their married life.
But it was that pure gut instinct that had prodded him just now.
It was partly why he’d delivered that statement about a honeymoon he hadn’t even thought of before it came spilling out. But once uttered, there was no taking it back.
And his wife’s quickly masked shock only deepened the need to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding his marriage, doctor’s advice be damned. He might not know himself through and through, but he knew enough to know he wasn’t a man who sat around and waited for things to go his way or for opportunities to fall into his lap.
For a moment the searing reminder that he had no immediate family to provide insight pained him. Had he inherited that characteristic from his mother or father? Perhaps even a loving grandfather or uncle?
Accepting the futility of such thoughts, he pushed the sensation away. The same way he’d been pushing away the urge to go digging for answers. After all, if his parents were dead and he had no close relatives to paint a picture for him, wasn’t he just as lost now as he had been twenty-four hours ago?
He would tackle one problem at a time.
For now, his instincts insisted the one in front of him held supremacy.
Watching Imogen cycle through a myriad emotions, he decided to go one better. Up the stakes to unravel whatever this conundrum was. ‘Or you can come clean with everything.’
‘E-everything?’ she echoed, then frowned as if hating herself for the shakiness in her voice. He’d seen echoes of that self-disgruntlement. As if even a hint of a flaw was anathema to her.
He shrugged inwardly. He didn’t need instinct or the influx of memories to tell him he was the same. Perhaps that was part of the attraction between them?
‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’
