Not Just the Greek's Wife

by Lucy Monroe

  But she hadn’t and in this one instance, her will had prevailed.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “He thought I should sign the check over to him. He said it was the least I could do for the company after you ended up with a big chunk of stock and he didn’t get a billionaire son-in-law out of the deal anymore.” Her voice bled not only some bitterness, but pain and she made a concentrated effort to pull her emotions back in check as she sipped her coffee.

  Ariston made a sound as if she’d finally shocked him. “You didn’t sign the check over, though. If you had, you couldn’t have financed your new life on the West Coast.”

  “No. During that phone conversation, I accepted that my father sees me as nothing more than an asset to exploit,” she admitted. “And I was done being treated like a bargaining chip. I wanted nothing to do with him or his company ever again.”

  Chloe had hung up on her father and that conversation was the last time they’d spoken.

  For as much as Eber’s indifference during her childhood had hurt, that knowledge hurt even more, adding more pain than she could handle to her already devastated soul.

  Chloe had just lost the love of her life, even if it had ultimately been her decision, and her father’s only concern had been adding to the financial coffers of Dioletis Industries. Again.

  She hadn’t been surprised at all to discover that Eber now expected Rhea to sacrifice her happiness to the altar of Dioletis Industries. Chloe was here to make sure that didn’t happen.

  Her own marriage had been a bust, but Rhea’s could be saved. If her sister could get out from under the burden of a failing empire and their father’s expectations.

  It wasn’t just Rhea who had asked Chloe for help either. Rhea’s husband, Samuel, had come to Chloe, desperate to save his marriage but equally certain there was only one chance to do it. A chance he wasn’t sure Rhea would take even if it was offered.

  Samuel wanted his wife back from the grasping jaws of Dioletis Industries. He wanted a family, something Rhea had said she wanted as well … before she’d been forced to take over chairmanship of the company.

  Now Rhea was too busy trying to run a failing company to see the cost to her personal life and Chloe knew that without intervention, her beloved sister could turn out way too much like their father. And not even realize it.

  “You never expressed discontent with your lot while we were married … at least not verbally.” Ariston interrupted her thoughts in a precise New York drawl that showed none of his Greek heritage.

  Her gaze flew back up to his. “Why would I have told you how I felt about being used as a bargaining chip in a business deal?”

  It wasn’t his problem and the truth was, she’d been almost certain it wouldn’t matter to him.

  Besides, in the beginning, she’d considered they were in a similar boat—her father pushing her into marriage for the sake of the company, Ariston’s grandfather pushing for him to settle down with a nice Greek girl.

  More American than Greek in many ways, Ariston had insisted on a woman raised in his adopted home country.

  Chloe had met both men’s requirements, her Greek heritage and family winning approval from the older Spiridakou and her American citizenship garnering Ariston’s acceptance. The fact that marriage to her would get him significant shares in what had looked like a thriving private concern at the time hadn’t hurt anything either.

  “Perhaps you owed it to me, since I was the other side of that bargain and it resulted in our marriage.”

  “A marriage you would have cheerfully jettisoned? Give me a break. We didn’t share confidences and you certainly weren’t interested in my heart.” Whatever she was doing here, they weren’t going to rewrite history to his specifications.

  “I’m not the one who walked out.”

  “You had divorce papers drawn up and ready to serve. No doubt they attempted to do so while you were in Hong Kong, but I’d already left for New York.” At least she’d assumed that had been his plan.

  She hadn’t even bothered having her own papers created, knowing his were sufficient to the task. The speed with which she’d been served upon returning to the States had certainly implied she’d been right.

  “What are you talking about?” Ariston asked in a tone that could have frozen rolling lava.

  “Stop it,” she demanded. “I’m not playing these games with you.”

  “Explain yourself.”

  “You. Had. Divorce. Papers. Drawn. Up,” she enunciated very slowly and clearly. “Before we ever left New York for our spring trip to Athens.”

  Following Ariston’s lifelong practice since reaching adulthood, he and Chloe had lived one month in four in Greece. It made for a lot of travel, but she hadn’t minded.

  And multinational tycoon that he was, that sort of thing was simply everyday living for Ariston.

  “How did you know that?” he asked with unperturbed curiosity, making no effort to deny it at least.

  “My father faxed me a copy.”

  “And he got them how?”

  “I have no idea. Probably through the same underhanded channels you use.”

  “I do not engage in corporate espionage.” Ariston sounded genuinely offended.

  She was hard-pressed not to give in to a gallows-style humor. “Call it what you like.”

  “Highly developed business acumen and contacts.”

  “Fine.”

  “So you left because you believed I was going to file for divorce?” he asked with a very odd inflection to his tone.

  She wanted to scream, Yes, that’s right, but she simply shrugged. “I left because that was the only course open to me at that point. Our marriage wasn’t working.”

  “I thought it was working very well.”

  “You would.” And still he’d had the papers drawn up, presumably because in the one important area, to him at least, their marriage had been a bust.

  She hadn’t gotten pregnant.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  She shook her head, not about to admit her love for him and how the emotional distance between them had killed her a little more each day. “We wanted different things.”

  “On that I would have to agree.” Again the strange tone, but this time it was tinged with an inexplicable anger.

  Right. Their marriage hadn’t been what either of them had wanted. She’d known that. Hearing him say it shouldn’t hurt now. It did. But it shouldn’t.

  One thing was certain—she needed to move forward with her life. Irrevocably.

  She’d thought she’d done that—leaving him, accepting the divorce without contest. Moving across country and opening her shop and gallery had been her way of cementing the break.

  But if she couldn’t get a handle on the memories and emotions that had hurt far more than they’d ever helped, she was never going to be free of him, Chloe realized with awful clarity.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ARISTON sipped from his cup—matching china to hers that probably cost more than most of the paintings she had for sale in her gallery—and made a face. “I never understood your taste for flavored coffee.”

  “Surely Jean could have made you the dark Arabic blend you prefer.” Chloe had always thought his beverage of preference tasted like espresso even when it was prepared in the automatic drip.

  And to her way of thinking, espresso belonged in gourmet coffees with lots of milk and yummy flavorings. The thought of drinking it straight out of one of those tiny cups always made her shudder.

  He dismissed her suggestion with a wave of his hand. “That would have required preparing two pots, not one.”

  Chloe sincerely doubted it. If Jean didn’t have one of those fancy single-cup coffeemakers in the small kitchen behind her own office, Chloe would be shocked.

  Which meant that Jean had served Ariston Chloe’s favorite on purpose. Why?

  “You told her ahead of time to make my favorite,” Chloe guessed, gobsmacked at the idea and whol
ly unable to understand what he hoped to gain by doing so.

  She was the first to admit she didn’t begin to operate on the Machiavellian level he did when it came to business, but this was beyond her. It was as if he was trying to be accommodating and when it came to business, she knew her ex-husband was anything but.

  Maybe he was trying to lull her into a false sense of complacency? To what purpose? He held all the cards in the deck, not just the good ones, and they both knew it.

  “Naturally. It was only polite.”

  “If you say so.” Realizing how rude that sounded, which had not been her intention, she added, “Thank you.”

  “That aside,” he said as if the coffee discussion had derailed them from talking about what really mattered. “Entering such an arrangement with unexpressed resentments for its terms wasn’t very ethical of you, was it?” he chided.

  Ethical? Was the man serious?

  Needing to move, she jumped up and walked over to the nearest wall of windows. She stared down at the city, people and cars made tiny by distance. “Do you honestly believe I didn’t express my unhappiness at the idea of quitting art school and being forced into what amounted to a medieval marriage bargain to my father?”

  Before she’d met Ariston and realized that dreams could change.

  “Eber implied to my grandfather that you were entirely on board with the plan.” Ariston spoke from behind her.

  She wasn’t surprised that in her agitation, she hadn’t realized he’d moved.

  She didn’t bother to turn and face him, however. “Right. And you both believed him. It never occurred to you that he might have simply cut funding to my schooling and living expenses, effectively getting me evicted from my dorm?”

  Instead of the city below, she saw the face of the dean of her college when the older man had been forced to give Chloe the news. They’d been midway through the term and she’d been sure her father couldn’t demand his money back.

  But apparently powerful men could do things other mere mortals couldn’t.

  “I suppose you never guessed he might freeze my accounts because they were all in his name, too? No, I doubt you even thought about why I agreed to that barbaric bargain.”

  “Bargains such as ours are common enough among the world’s powerful in both business and politics. You needn’t act as if you were sold into marriage in some medieval contract in which you had no say or personal rights.”

  She spun to face him, old anger brought about by a feeling of utter helplessness rising to the fore. “Wasn’t I? I was a twenty-year-old college student, Ariston! I’d only ever worked part-time in an art supply store for hobby money. I had no clue how to even begin going about getting my life back when he took it away.”

  Ariston’s handsome face set in unreadable lines, but emotion she couldn’t name flickered briefly in his blue eyes. “You never told me any of this.”

  “By the time I met you, both my father and my sister had put the emotional screws in.” And Chloe had forgiven Rhea, though she doubted she ever would her father. Rhea’s motives hadn’t all been about the company; she’d believed the marriage would be good for Chloe, too.

  Chloe laughed harshly. “Rhea made it clear that if she weren’t already married, she would have willingly sacrificed herself for the good of our family and our heritage. That’s how she and my father see the company, as if it is a living entity deserving of every manner of sacrifice and effort.”

  She didn’t blame her sister. Not even a little. They’d both been raised in the same emotional wasteland and each of them had found different ways to cope.

  Rhea had sought their father’s love and approval the only way she’d known how—through the business. The one and only thing he ever had truly loved.

  “I am aware.”

  “Then I met you.” And against all odds and what her mind told her was possible, Chloe had fallen for her Greek tycoon on first sight. Fully, irrevocably and completely.

  His hands fisted at his side as if he wanted to reach out, but he forced himself not to. “And expressed none of your concerns.”

  “No. You and my father had made your plans, but I had hopes that complying with them might lead to something else.” Foolish, youthful hopes that she now knew for the ridiculous fantasies they were.

  She dropped her head, not wanting to see his face. Not being able to bear it right then.

  “Look at me,” he commanded, as if he’d read her mind and was truly bothered by her thoughts.

  She considered denying him, but what was the point? This conversation had to happen so they could have the one she’d come for. Rhea’s happiness depended on it.

  And Rhea deserved to be happy. In her own way, she’d sacrificed more than Chloe ever had because she’d never walked away.

  Chloe lifted her head, and whatever Ariston saw in her face made his crease in a frown. “What hopes?”

  “They don’t matter anymore.” They never had, not to him … not to her father.

  “I would still prefer to know what they were.”

  “No,” she said with absolute implacability. She’d shared all the confidences she was going to with this man.

  His look assessed her. “You have changed.”

  “Yes.”

  He stepped closer. “In every way, I wonder?”

  Shock paralyzed her as his nearness brought a wholly unexpected reaction. She’d thought her libido had died with her marriage, but her body was telling her just how wrong she’d been.

  She wanted him.

  She managed to move back, but somehow she gained no distance between them as he matched her step for step until she stood against the window. His scent and the heat of his body surrounded her, bringing back memories that haunted her dreams, that made her body ache with a longing she’d thought gone forever.

  Long masculine fingers curved around her nape, his thumb brushing the sensitive flesh behind her ear. “There was a time when this drove you crazy. Does it still, I wonder?”

  She shook her head, but not to deny it, simply to try to clear her mind enough to speak. To tell him to let her go, to move back. For heaven’s sake.

  Only the words didn’t come. Couldn’t come.

  Because no matter what her mind screamed she should say, she desperately wanted to beg him to do more, move closer, touch her … give her what she’d once had the right to every night.

  Ariston’s head lowered. “I wonder,” he said again. “Will your lips taste as sweet as they did two years ago?”

  She had no answer for him, but a reciprocating question spun round and round in her mind as his lips covered hers. Would he taste as good? Would he taste like love, even if he didn’t love her—like he’d used to?

  Would this kiss hurt or heal?

  Would it make it harder or easier for her to continue in her quest to move on? Cutting herself off from him without any sort of closure certainly hadn’t worked.

  Only risking it would give the answer to that one, and something Chloe had never been was a coward. She let the kiss come.

  It was not tentative, but sought to determine her susceptibility. She wondered what he found even as her mind warred with her heart over the wisdom of letting this melding of lips continue. He kissed her as if he had every right to do so, as if they were still married.

  As if she was his.

  It was strange and horribly wonderful and wholly unexpected.

  And she let him, trying to determine if in that moment he still felt as if he was hers, and coming to the abrupt and almost awful revelation that he did.

  His lips moved over hers, his tongue gliding along the seam of her mouth, gently demanding entrance.

  Chloe’s mind screamed for her to protest this assault on her senses. It was too dangerous, she realized perhaps too late.

  Finally her mouth opened to do it, but that only gave him the opportunity he wanted.

  And maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly what she’d intended after all.

  His t
ongue plundered, his lips moving against hers, and drew forth a response only this man had ever engendered. Desire like liquid fire pooled deep inside her and she moaned against his lips. He made a harsh sound of approval, deepening the kiss—if that was possible.

  The one outcome to this meeting she’d never expected would be that Ariston would kiss her, or that his nearness and touch would reawaken the sexual hunger within her.

  It was too much and not enough.

  His free hand pressed against her back, so their bodies came into full, glorious contact. It electrified her.

  And made her see a truth she’d hidden from.

  For two years she’d craved this very thing, but with a gut-wrenching certainty that it would never again be hers. So she’d suppressed her desires to hold the pain of unrequited need at bay.

  Now he was offering to assuage that need and her body was letting her know she’d gone too long without. After three years of a marriage that had included a steady diet of truly mind-blowing sex, she’d cut herself off completely.

  And her carefully suppressed libido wasn’t happy.

  Not even a little bit.

  She was no slave to her body’s desires, or at least she didn’t think she was, but the reasons for not letting him do this were disappearing in the mist of lust boiling through her.

  And in a moment of clarity she realized she wasn’t going to give this moment up. Not for the sake of propriety, or what it might cost her, or anything else. No matter how temporary, whatever came later, or however long this physical connection lasted, she was giving herself up to it for now.

  She deserved it.

  She might even need it, this chance to say goodbye that she hadn’t given herself the first time around.

  She already knew the pain of loss and she was strong enough to withstand it again, but she deserved some pleasure for all her pain.

  She wasn’t worried that this would make it harder to get over him, or undo the strides she’d made forward in doing so. Because one thing that had become painfully obvious from the moment she walked into his office and looked him in the eye for the first time since leaving Greece, she was not over this man and there were no strides forward.