by Lucy Monroe
“We had something better than love.”
“Only you would think a contract made up for an emotional connection.”
“We were connected.”
“In bed.”
“And out of it. We got along, Chloe. You complemented my life. I made yours more interesting.”
Perhaps he had known her better than she’d thought. “And this time you’re not offering marriage.”
“Not at first, no.” There was something in his expression she couldn’t read, but she thought maybe she didn’t need to.
“You don’t trust me.”
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
She thought about it. She hadn’t … when she’d left him, she hadn’t trusted him at all. Or she would have stayed to talk it out as he’d planned to do.
Did she trust him now? Two years on and hopefully wiser. “You’re like my father in more ways than I thought in the beginning.”
“But not his mirror image. I will be a true papa to my children. Not like my father, not like yours.”
In this, Chloe believed Ariston completely. “You had one of the best role models.”
“Pappous. Yes.”
“I wonder how your father turned out the way he did?” she mused.
“Nature over nurture.”
Chloe had to agree. Takis would never have raised his son to be so congenitally selfish. “Bad genes somewhere back in the family line.”
“Everyone has them.”
“No doubt.”
“Will you risk it?”
Would she? Risk going after what she wanted when she knew heartbreak might well be at the end of her journey? “My sister?”
“I’ll do my best by her. I’ll even require couples counseling between her and her husband as part of the deal if that will make you feel better.”
Chloe laughed, but nodded. “You know, I think it would. Neither of us grew up with a role model for what constitutes a good marriage.”
“Then it will be done.” He got up and walked purposefully to his briefcase.
He pulled out a pen and then grabbed the red bound document. Flipping it open, he leafed through the pages until he reached the one he was looking for. Then, he wrote something on a page about a quarter of the way in.
“You’re really adding that?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll do it.”
“To guarantee your sister gets marriage counseling?” Ariston asked with some amusement.
“To give her the best hope at happiness in her future. Sinking under the burden of Dioletis Industries isn’t it.”
“Tell her. Forty-eight hours.” Ariston tossed the red folio back to Chloe.
She caught it. “What if Rhea wants clarification, or to negotiate?”
“It’s completely unambiguous, but she can call if she has a question. As for negotiation, she’s got nothing I want.”
“You said you wanted me.” After the mind-blowing sex they’d shared the night before, she knew that was still true.
“On your terms, not hers.” He settled back onto the bed beside Chloe, his fingertip tracing the edge of the sheet covering her breasts. “If you have stipulations, I will listen to them.”
She pushed his hand away, unable to think while he was doing that. “Are you going to keep Dioletis Industries as its own concern?”
It wasn’t a stipulation. She was just curious. More so than she’d thought she’d be. Again she thought Ariston might know her better than she’d given him credit for, maybe even better than she knew herself in some instances.
“The company will retain its name, but will become a subsidiary of SSE. I will be requiring a much bigger block of shares this time around. Major restructuring will have to take place to make the company profitable again.”
“Rhea said as much.”
He nodded. “I can’t guarantee all the employees will keep their current positions, but I will keep as many within Dioletis Industries as possible. Those that lose their places entirely will be put in my company’s job reassignment program. Eighty percent of the employees placed in the program find new employment within Spiridakou and Sons Enterprises.”
“Thank you.”
He shrugged. “It is what you came to me for, isn’t it? To keep people employed.”
“Yes.” But mostly for Rhea, though Chloe was aware that made her every bit as self-serving as the next person. “Will Rhea retain a position within the company?”
She couldn’t make it a condition of the agreement, not with so many people’s livelihoods, not to mention Rhea’s own future, riding on Ariston’s goodwill. However, Chloe couldn’t help hoping he would show her sister more mercy than her own father had ever shown either of his daughters.
“She will be CEO, but the job will alter significantly with the takeover. She’ll work with a team, her own duties more specific than they are now. Just like my other top management, she’ll be required to take courses in not only team management strategy, but efficient delegation and work life effectiveness as well.”
“That sounds amazing.”
“I’m glad you think so. Ultimately, she will also answer to me, as all my other top management does. The survival of the company will no longer rest on her shoulders.”
No, it would rest on Ariston’s and Chloe had no doubts that not only could her tycoon husband handle the added pressure, he would guide Dioletis Industries into the modern global economy with great success.
“Thank you.” It was far more than Chloe had expected.
He shrugged. “I prefer you content with our arrangement. It is give and take.”
“But not with Rhea.” Chloe indicated the proposal that he’d said was nonnegotiable.
“My policy has always been to limit my negotiations with principals only.”
And despite the fact that Rhea was now the majority stock controller in Dioletis Industries, from Ariston’s viewpoint she was not a principal.
As he’d said, Rhea had nothing he wanted.
He didn’t consider Chloe an unwitting pawn to be used at his discretion. In that way, at least, Ariston was definitely not like her father.
“Takis always said you lived in a black-and-white world, while the rest of us existed with shades of gray,” she said, rather than revealing any of her tumbling thoughts.
“Perhaps in some things. Others I am willing to compromise on. Like I would prefer to have you in my bed from tonight forward, but I will wait until your sister accepts the terms of my offer.”
“I can’t make a permanent move that quickly!” This impatience was one of the few things she hadn’t missed about Ariston. “I’ve got a business.”
“The small art supply store and gallery in Oregon.”
She didn’t take small to be a pejorative term. Her shop and gallery were literally small in both store size and business conducted. She could live off the proceeds, but nothing like as lavishly as she had done with him, or even growing up with her father. “Yes.”
“You cannot run a business on the West Coast and be my lover.” There was no particular edge to his tone, but there was no give either.
“I know.” Just as she couldn’t be a student and his wife. “The gallery is just starting to thrive, though.”
The art supply shop had been a success from the start. She’d done her homework and discovered that though there was a thriving artist community in the town she wanted to settle in, they had to drive nearly an hour for decent supplies. Now she drew both the amateur and professional artists from up and down the coast because she carried what they liked, what serious artists looked for in the way of charcoals, paints and other supplies.
She wasn’t sure the fact her small gallery was paying its own mortgage and for a part-time employee would register with the billionaire businessman, though.
“I am aware. You should be proud of building such a sturdy concern.” No surprise at her success or mockery tinged his voice.
She found herself smiling with pleas
ure at his approval. “Thank you. I don’t want to lose it.”
“I would not ask you to.”
But he had. Well, as good as.
“I have found an artist with a business degree who will run it for you. Her husband was forced into early retirement and she is keen for the opportunity. The fact you have an apartment above the gallery is of particular note, as they are days from eviction.”
He offered this with the attitude of a man who had done his best to stack the deck and was pleased with his own efforts.
She had to admit she was impressed.
Both by his acumen and his unshakable confidence.
The fact he’d found yet another screw to put to her conscience in the form of a couple facing homelessness was barely a blip on her radar. Not in the face of the unavoidable truth that he had planned all of this on the assumption that not only would she come to him, but that she would accept his terms for the business rescue.
“You really are a master manipulator.”
He seemed pleased by the questionable compliment. “I prefer to think of myself as fully prepared for every contingency.”
“What would have happened to that couple if I had refused your terms?” she demanded, amusement warring with sheer awe at his determination to get his way.
“We’ll never have to know now.”
“Tell me you would have helped them somehow.”
“You are the bleeding heart, not me.”
“No. No one would accuse you of having a bleeding heart.” But it would have helped hers if he’d admitted to having one at all.
“So?”
Hadn’t they covered everything? They’d be having sex for the foreseeable future, without birth control, in the hopes of her getting pregnant.
And he would save hundreds of jobs and thereby the people connected to them as well as Rhea’s marriage. “What?”
“Will you join me for dinner this evening?”
She discovered she wanted to say yes, but knew she couldn’t.
“I’ve got a flight home this afternoon.” And now, more than ever, she needed to keep it. “If I’m going to move to New York to become your lover for the next three years, there’s a lot I’ve got to get put in order.”
Not least of which was preparing to train the couple he’d found to take over her gallery and store. Perhaps Chloe should have been more upset at his high-handedness, but her predominant emotion was relief.
Relief that the store would be there for her if she needed it, and she hadn’t had to figure out how to make that happen on her own. She didn’t think she had it in her for a more dramatic reaction. Over the past twenty-four hours, her emotions had been wrung out and pegged up to dry.
“You have two weeks.”
The ease of his capitulation shocked her. Nevertheless, she shook her head, trying for more time. “I’ll need at least a month.”
“The movers will be there to pack your things for delivery to your apartment in upper Manhattan tomorrow.”
No wonder he hadn’t pushed about her flying home. He’d already arranged movers.
He’d had no doubts at all that she would agree to his plan.
“I’m to have my own apartment?” Which, admittedly, was nearer his offices than the home they’d shared during their marriage, but she had not considered that sharing his bed did not equate to sharing his life.
“You’re no longer my wife.”
Right. Of course she wouldn’t live with him.
There could be benefits to this arrangement, though. “I won’t have to attend all the boring business dinners,” she said with some satisfaction.
His lips twitched, but it wasn’t in amusement—more like annoyance. “You never complained about them before.”
“As you said, I was your wife then. I’m not now.”
“Is that why you did not want our marriage to be permanent? Because you didn’t like the social obligations that came with being a billionaire’s wife?”
“I never said I didn’t want our marriage to last.”
“Your actions spoke for you.”
“What actions?” Not only had she never complained about the aspects of her life as his wife she found onerous, she’d never once shirked them either.
“You were on birth control from the beginning.”
“I had my reasons.”
“Yes, you didn’t feel obligated to keep your end of the bargain.”
“Are you insane? I gave up my education, my dreams and the life I knew to follow through on that unholy contract between you and my father.”
“And that contract stipulated a child.”
“It stipulated what was to happen if there was a child, not that one should exist.”
“The expectation was implied.” He shifted on the bed, as if he wanted to move away, but he stayed where he was.
“But not spelled out.”
“Is that how you plan to explain it to my grandfather?”
“Why should I explain it to him?”
“He’s the reason I made that bargain with your father. My grandfather wanted great-grandchildren.”
“And you set about getting them for him in the only way you knew how. Through a business deal.”
“It was the most honest way, at least on my part.”
Wow. He did sanctimonious almost as well as arrogance. “I wasn’t dishonest with you. I never said I wouldn’t use birth control.”
“You never said you would either.”
“You never asked.”
“The contract implied—”
“Right, like you’d allow any supposed implication in a contract dictate your actions in business. You’d do what was best for you and your company and you know it.”
“You are saying you believe not getting pregnant with my child was best for you?” Something moved in the depths of his eyes, but he wasn’t letting it surface enough for her to read what it meant.
“I was twenty, gaga over a man who considered me part of a business deal and resentful of my father’s manipulations and the sacrifices I’d been forced to make for a company that had brought nothing but grief to me and my mother before me.”
“You are in much the same situation now. Why agree to these terms yet again?”
Again, wow. He hadn’t even reacted to her admission that she’d been crazy about him and had as good as implied he knew she still was.
She tugged the sheet higher and looked past him, toward the bedspread piled on the floor, left there the night before when they’d been frantic to get to the bed. “They aren’t the exact same terms, though, are they?”
“You will not use birth control this time.”
“I said I wouldn’t.” That wasn’t the only thing different, but he didn’t need her pointing out the nuances of his proposition.
“Because it was spelled out as part of the deal,” he mocked.
“Precisely.” And he wasn’t going to make her feel bad about her past choices.
She had enough of her own regrets on that count.
“And you will not attend boring business dinners with me.”
“I might … if you ask nicely.”
“You have changed.”
“Having your heart broken will do that to a person.”
“Who broke your heart?” he asked in a dangerous tone.
“Who do you think?” He really had no clue how much she’d loved him.
Because to him, she had been nothing more than part of a business deal. She still was, only one he’d spelled out more precisely.
Something she’d do herself no favors forgetting.
“Are you trying to imply it was me?” he asked with a full measure of disbelief.
“My father had his own fair share of the responsibility in that regard, but yes, you.”
“How did I break your heart?”
“Losing you hurt. A lot.”
“But you walked out.”
Because she’d felt she had no choice. “Because you saw me as
nothing more than a business asset.”
“No, I did not. However our marriage came into being, it was a marriage. I treated you with respect and consideration as my wife.” His tone dared her to deny it.
She couldn’t and didn’t want to. If his words hadn’t been true, she wouldn’t be agreeing to this new deal, not even for the sake of the sister she loved so much and hundreds of faceless employees that relied on her family’s company for their livelihood.
He brushed his fingers along the edge of the sheet again, heat filling his azure gaze. “I do not think you can blame me for your broken heart.”
He was right. She was the one who’d walked out. She just hadn’t realized how much it would hurt to do so—and to stay away, or how much she’d been hoping he’d come after her. He finally had, but not in a way she could have expected.
Though she probably should have.
Ariston was no knight in shining armor, seeking the heart of a fair damsel. He was a pragmatic tycoon with his own agenda and unique sense of honor.
“So, the movers are coming tomorrow,” she commented, rather than continuing a discussion that would only lead to revelations she had no desire to make.
“Yes.”
“But you said I had two weeks.” And she’d asked for more and he’d just ignored her.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to live out of a suitcase at the local hotel in the interim.”
Amazing. He was beyond self-assured. He was scarily confident of getting his own way, but then wasn’t she letting him have it?
“How did you know I would come to you?” Much less that she would agree to his deal.
“You made the appointment with my secretary last week.”
“But still … you made all these plans in a week?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Let me rephrase. It does not matter.”
“Seriously?” It was all she could do not to roll her eyes at him like a teenager, but really, did he have to try so hard to bring that out in her? “You haven’t gotten any less arrogant in two years.”
“Why should I?”
“Life usually handles that for most people.”
“My life has shown me that I must make the things happen that are necessary.”
“Mine has shown me that no matter how much I want some things, no matter how hard I work, I’ll never have them.”
