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“I am giving you everything,” he said slowly, “because you’re my wife. And there is no other woman who holds that position now or ever. No matter how the marriage started.”
“Thanks, Ajax,” she said, her voice a whisper, sadness in her eyes.
He wanted to offer her more. To offer her comfort. The problem was, he was the last person on earth who should ever be allowed to offer comfort. To give tenderness.
Because if he ever let the walls down, the darkness would start to bleed out.
* * *
Normally going back to Holt felt like coming home. But Leah didn’t feel at home when she walked through the glass revolving doors and into the familiar, gray-marble lobby.
It was the same, but everything had changed. Her father wasn’t here. He was in Rhodes. And while there was nothing too unusual about that—ever since her father had first visited the island, he’d been in love with it and had made it a second home—there was no longer a desk here with his name on it, and that did make it different.
Holt Enterprises had always been Joseph Holt’s domain. Now it belonged to Ajax. And it belonged to her. Interesting because she’d never imagined that happening. Now that it had...now that it had she realized how much she valued being a part of it.
Because Holt was important. To her, to her future children, to the people who worked here. And to Ajax. Ajax loved Holt. She couldn’t fault him there. He would do the very best he could by it, and if the success of Ajax’s personal corporation was any indicator, the best he could do was very good indeed.
His husband skills were a bit more murky.
But the vow he’d made to her in the study at his home, where he had made plain the importance he put on her position as his wife...that gave her hope at least. Hope that things could be good. Better than they were. And it made her want to lower her defenses a little bit.
It made her want to try.
As they walked through the reception area, almost empty at this hour of the night, most of staff gone home, she had a strange sense of déjà vu. How often had she followed him like this back when she’d been a teenager? Before she’d put up her walls. Before she’d been aware of how she looked to other people.
Trailing behind him, gabbing about something or another, soaking in every ounce of attention he gave her. Trying to get him to look at her. Trying to make him smile.
At the time, she’d felt like he was her friend. Like he might have feelings for her. As an adult, she saw herself for what she was: a delusional, chubby girl, following around an older, sophisticated man who had no time to listen to her drone on about her plans for her future candy shop.
And yet he had. He had never once been unkind or made her feel unwanted. If he had, she probably wouldn’t have retained her crush for so long.
Even now she wasn’t immune to him.
That kiss...
She followed him into an elevator and crossed her arms beneath her breasts while he pushed all the appropriate buttons. She’d had fantasies about him and elevators. All the times they’d ridden up in them together. In her very fevered teenage imagination she’d pictured him pulling her into his arms and bending her backward, kissing her neck, her lips.
All very impassioned at the time, but her imagination could do better than that now.
Yes, the fantasies she could spin about an elevator now were not half so innocent. They picked up where they’d left off the night before. With her against the wall. And her skirt shoved up around her hips—never mind that she was wearing dress pants at the moment—and him putting his hands between her thighs to help answer the pounding ache that was threatening to...
“So,” she said, overly bright, trying to blot out the images running rampant through her mind, “do you have any artwork picked out for your office yet?”
He gave her a strange look. “No.”
“Well, you’ll want to...personalize it, right?”
“No. I won’t be working from here. Someone else will be put in charge.”
“You’ll have an office, though.”
“Yes, but I won’t be spending much time in it.”
“Your lack of desire for frivolous things is sort of annoying, Ajax. Do you have any idea how obnoxious it is to try and make small talk with someone when they don’t seem to think about anything small?”
“I’m sorry I can’t accommodate your need for me to care about trivial things.”
“You suck at conversation—do you know that?”
“It’s not this hard with everyone.”
