by Maya Blake
Dinner that evening turned into a family celebration, one that hammered home to Perla just what she could be missing out on if she refused Ari’s proposal. All through the evening his eyes kept straying to her, the intent in their depths clear and determined.
By the time she excused herself and returned to her suite, her mind was in turmoil.
That turmoil continued for the next three days. Thankfully, she had no time to think.
From the moment the first luxury SUV rolled in with the guests her days turned manic. She barely saw Ari because he was equally busy entertaining guests in the plushly equipped casino while she dealt with organising the guests and directing the activities she’d planned for them.
She was busy sorting out the sky-diving group and pairing them with their instructors and guests on the last day when she heard a familiar voice.
She looked up to see Selena Hamilton heading towards her.
Perla’s mouth dropped open before she could stop herself.
‘So, what do you think?’ Selena trilled, patting her new russet-coloured curls.
Perla forced a smile. ‘You look great.’
Selena’s smile slipped a fraction. ‘I’m glad you think so. Roger thinks I look awful. What does he know, right?’ She forced a laugh that didn’t touch her curiously over-bright eyes.
Roger Hamilton strolled in at that moment. He completely ignored his wife and, grabbing Perla, kissed her on both cheeks.
‘Sign me up for whatever you’re organising, darling! I’m all yours.’
Behind him, Ari entered the room and froze to a halt. The thunderous look in his eyes made her stomach flip but she managed to keep the smile on her face as he walked to where she stood. Seeing the look he directed at Roger, she glared at him and shook her head once. His jaw clenched but he exchanged pleasantries until the instructor called for them to suit up.
Ari’s hand slid over her nape and tilted her head up to meet his descending kiss. It was hard and quick. ‘You take care of Hamilton, glikia mou. Or I will,’ he muttered. Then he was gone.
Breathing a sigh of relief, she turned around just as Selena returned to her side. Before she could utter a word, Selena grabbed her arm. ‘I think Roger is going to leave me,’ she whispered fiercely.
‘Are you sure?’
Her frenzied nodding made her curls bounce wildly. ‘I think he’s having an affair.’ Her scarlet-painted lips wobbled and her eyes widened.
‘You could be wrong...’
‘What if I’m not? I can’t live without him. He’s everything I’ve ever wanted but I can see him slipping away from me.’ Tears filled her green eyes.
‘Selena, I don’t think you should go sky-diving if you’re feeling like that.’
She swiped her tears with perfectly manicured fingers. ‘Nonsense. Roger wants to go sky-diving so I’m going with him.’
But a glance at Roger, who was busy flirting with a female instructor, suggested he had no interest in what his wife wanted. Perla glanced at Selena again and worry gnawed at her. Selena’s glazed eyes suggested she was under the influence of something other than unhappiness. But there was no diplomatic way to ask without causing offence.
Gnawing at her bottom lip, she followed the guests out to the air-conditioned buses that would take them to the airstrip. Then climbed in with them.
* * *
‘Where the hell is she?’ Ari demanded for the fifth time. The concierge manager paled and reached for his phone again.
‘I’m sorry, sir, but we think she may have joined one of the guest events.’
‘You think? Try her phone again.’
The manager hurried to do his bidding. When he shook his head regretfully, Ari curbed the need to punch a hole in the desk.
‘Giving your staff hell?’ came a droll voice from behind him.
‘Not now, Sakis.’
‘Why? What’s wrong?’
‘I’m trying to find Perla. No one’s seen her in the last hour.’
‘And this is worrying because...?’
Ari pursed his lips. ‘She’s supposed to be at the villa, having lunch.’
He looked up as the assistant manager hurried forward. ‘Mr Pantelides, I’ve just been told by one of the drivers that Mrs Lowell joined the sky-diving guests.’
For a moment, he couldn’t compute the information. ‘She what?’
The voices that responded were drowned out by the blood thundering in his ears. When his arm was grabbed in a firm hold and he was propelled down a hallway, he did not protest.
He heard a door shut behind him seconds before Sakis pushed him into a seat.
‘Talk to me, Ari. What the hell is going on?’
He speared both hands into his hair and tried to stem the terror rushing through him. ‘It’s probably nothing. She can’t possibly have gone sky-diving...’
‘Yeah...that’s what your man said.’
He tried to swallow. ‘Well...she can’t have.’
‘Why not? If she’s qualified—’
‘Sakis. She’s pregnant.’
His brother’s mouth dropped open seconds before the colour leached from his face. They both leapt for the phone on his desk but Ari was quicker. ‘I need your fastest driver out front in the next ten seconds.’
Sakis wrenched the door open. They passed Theo in the hallway and one dark look from Ari and his brother stemmed whatever wisecrack he’d been about to utter.
In silence, he fell into step beside them.
The journey to the airstrip was the longest of Ari’s life.
Horrific scenarios he couldn’t stem tumbled through his mind and the fingers that continually clawed through his hair shook uncontrollably.
Brightly coloured parachutes slowly loomed into view as their SUV roared down towards the designated area on the edge of the parachute landing site.
Theos, surely she hadn’t...
Ari was out of the car before it’d come to a screeching halt. He heard the thunder of running feet behind him as his brothers followed him.
One by one he watched the eight parachutes drop lower, his heart hammering as he rushed from one to the other.
None of them were Perla.
‘Ari?’ He whirled round to find her stepping down from the air-conditioned bus, Selena Hamilton following behind her. Relief was followed closely by volcanic anger. This time, there were no feet thundering behind him as he sprinted to the bus.
He skidded to a halt in front of her. She started to speak. ‘Not. One. Word.’
Her mouth dropped open. Without giving her a chance to respond, he swung her up in his arms and marched her to the SUV parked a hundred yards away.
‘Out,’ he growled. The driver jumped out and held out the keys. He placed her in the passenger seat, secured her seat belt and ignored his brothers as he got in and slammed the door.
‘I’m guessing we have to find our own ride back?’ Theo quipped to Sakis.
Ari turned the ignition and peeled out of the airstrip, his heartbeat a deafening roar in his ears.
The journey to the villa took less than ten minutes. This time he didn’t help her out. He headed straight into the villa and sought out the butler.
‘I want you and your staff to take a break. Don’t return until I tell you to.’
He returned to the living room to see the staff hurrying out and Perla standing in the hallway, her face pale and her teeth worrying her lower lip.
‘Ari, please. You’re scaring me.’
He threw the car keys across the room and watched them hit the wall and bounce on the marble floor.
‘I’m scaring you?’
Her arched brows spiked upward. ‘Can we try less snarling and more coherence?’
‘You left the resort with
out telling anyone, without telling me. I thought you’d gone sky-diving!’
She started to laugh, then stopped. ‘Wait, seriously? Why on earth would I? Anyway, I texted you to tell you that I didn’t think Selena Hamilton should be on her own. I think she might have taken something. Luckily, I eventually managed to talk her out of sky-diving—’
‘I didn’t receive a text and you seem to be missing the point here.’
‘Which is what, exactly? That I have to report my every move to you now? Well, you’ll be happy to know that, aside from talking his wife down from a possibly fatal jump, I warned Roger Hamilton that if his eyes strayed to my cleavage one more time I’d gouge them out. I was very diplomatic about it, of course.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Was there anything else you wanted to know?’
Ari couldn’t believe his ears. He’d been scared out of his wits. And she was giving him sass. ‘Are you serious?’
He watched her walk towards him until he could smell her. He raked a hand through his hair as she tilted her head and regarded him with steady eyes.
‘Ari, you’re seriously overreacting here. You can’t molly-coddle me through this pregnancy. I know what this child means to you but I won’t be wrapped up in cotton wool until the baby’s born’
He whirled from her and paced to the window. ‘You think I’m only concerned about the baby?’
‘Come on, be honest—would you be this worked up if it was just me on that plane?’
The air drained out of him and he reeled from the accusation thrown at his feet. He opened his mouth but no words came out. Because the realisation that was dawning on him—had been dawning on him all week—felt too overwhelming to make sense of.
‘Perla...’
‘You know what I was thinking when I was on the bus?’
Slowly, he shook his head.
‘I started off thinking perhaps I should count my blessings. My first husband was physically and emotionally unavailable but I could graduate to a physically available but emotionally unavailable one. And maybe, if this one doesn’t work out, I might strike it lucky third time round—’
‘There won’t be a next time. If you marry me, you’ll be stuck with me for this lifetime and the next.’
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. What I didn’t say was that the thought of an emotionally unavailable husband would never work for me. Not now. I’m learning very fast that I’m an all-in kind of girl. So I’m not willing to risk my future happiness on a man who won’t open up to me even a little.’
The emotion that slashed through him made his gut clench hard. He couldn’t breathe. Could only remain still as she stared defiantly back at him, dared him to react to the gauntlet she’d thrown down.
He opened his mouth; no words came out.
He shook his head, damning himself for ten kinds of a fool when pain rolled over her face.
‘Or you could just get lucky. Since you’re so determined to hammer home just how incompetent I am at taking care of myself, maybe I’ll just die and save you the trouble.’
* * *
Perla heard the words tumble from her lips and felt shock bolt through her.
Ari’s face whitened and he actually stumbled back a few steps. Horror gripped her at how callous she’d been.
‘Oh, God, I’m sorry.’ She rushed to him but he flung out his hand to stave her off. ‘Arion, I didn’t mean it.’
His hand slowly lowered and he stared at her as if she was a monster. Perla’s insides shredded as he took another step back.
‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated. Her stomach went into free fall when he remained silent. ‘Please, say something.’
‘Get out.’
‘No, Ari. Please—’
He jerked forward and caught her to him. The kiss he delivered was harsh and pain-filled and devastatingly breathtaking. But it lasted less than ten seconds before he pushed her away and strode from the room.
She refused to shed another tear even though her throat thickened painfully with the need for release.
Going to her bedroom, she sank onto the bed, tried to make sense of what had just happened.
Pain had made her lash out in the worst possible way and strike Ari where it’d hurt the most. She’d gone too far. She had to fix it.
She rose, smoothed her hand down her dress and left her room.
He was in his study, his shoulders rigid, fists clenched as he stared at the ocean.
‘Ari, we need to talk.’
He stiffened but didn’t turn around. Grateful for not being thrown out, she stepped further into the room.
‘We’ve both been through a lot. And our past is always going to be there. You were taking care of me the only way you knew how. I shouldn’t have said what I said.’
He remained silent for a full minute. Then he turned. ‘You want to know about my past? About Sofia?’
Heart in her throat, she nodded.
‘My father fought for years to stay out of jail. He used lawyers and manipulated the system to try to escape justice. But the authorities were equally determined. The economy was in the toilet and he’d been lining his pockets with ill-gotten gains. They were slavering to make an example of him. Just when I thought it was ending, some other charge would be added to the list and the circus would begin all over again. The only people who mattered were my brothers and my mother. But even I couldn’t protect them from the cruelty of the media and their so-called friends. Watching them suffer made me hate my father even more. Then he was convicted. Finally, I thought I could get some closure for my family. Before we could take a breath, he was gone.’
Perla frowned. ‘What do you mean, gone?’
‘He died in jail months into his thirty-year sentence.’
‘How?’
‘He caught pneumonia and refused treatment.’ He gave a sharp laugh. ‘After the chaos he’d caused, he went out with barely a whimper.’
‘And you felt cheated?’
‘I felt more than cheated. I wanted to hunt him down in the afterlife and strangle him all over again. I went on a month-long bender. I was on a very fast downward spiral when I met Sofia.’ His eyelids descended, veiling his expression. But she saw his hands form fists. ‘She...saved me.’
Perla’s breath stopped. ‘Oh...’
When he looked up again, his eyes were the darkest green, shadowed with pain. ‘She brought me back from the brink of rage and despair. And I rewarded her by ignoring all the danger signs.’
‘Surely, she must have known the risks of getting pregnant if she had a weak heart?’
‘She knew. But she was convinced she would survive it. She was an eternal optimist.’
‘Ari, you can’t keep blaming yourself for what happened to Sofia. You got her the medical care she needed and she made a choice. The outcome was unfortunate but—’
‘I could’ve insisted. I could’ve—’
‘Ordered her about, just like you’re trying to do to me?’
Colour slashed his cheeks and he looked away. ‘You can’t control everything, Ari. Sometimes you have to let go and let things play out.’
‘Is that what you’re suggesting I do with you? Let you run around until something unforgivable happens?’
‘You’re assuming that you’re the only one who cares for the welfare of this baby. But I want this baby more than anything else.’ It wasn’t strictly true. There was one thing she wanted equally as badly. ‘But in order to give this baby what it needs, we need to put the past behind us and move on or it’ll keep tripping us up, dictating our lives.’
‘Move on. Just like that?’ he asked through gritted teeth.
‘No, not just like that. It’s hard, I know, but I’m willing to give it a try.’
‘You’re willing to try when you’re pregnant with my c
hild but can’t even move on from wearing funeral black every day?’
Shocked, she stared down at her clothes. The idea that her all-black wardrobe was sending a particular message hadn’t even crossed her mind.
‘Moving on isn’t as easy as you think, is it, Perla?’ he queried in a soft voice lined with steel. ‘Come and talk to me about moving on when you change the colour of your wardrobe.’
‘I’m talking to you now. And I didn’t choose this wardrobe. You gave me a little more than a day to join you in Miami when I started this job. The stylist knew my history and she assumed I’d want to be decked out in black all the time because I was a widow, and frankly I didn’t think it mattered in the grand scheme of things.’
His jaw tightened. ‘It mattered.’
‘They’re just clothes, Ari. The fact of the matter is I want love. I wanted it when I married Morgan and I want it now.’
His gaze lasered on her. ‘Why did you stay married to him after you found out he was gay?’
Ice welled through her veins. ‘He told me on our wedding night that he’d married me because he didn’t want anyone to find out. Especially not his parents.’
‘The ones you continue to look after?’
She gave a slight nod. ‘They worshipped him but he knew they wouldn’t accept his sexual orientation. And...he knew how much I cared for them. I’d told him about my childhood and the foster system and he...he told me I could still have a family, provided...’
‘You kept his secret?’ he finished harshly.
‘Yes. I begged him to come out. I even fooled myself into thinking I was getting through to him last Christmas.’
Ari’s gaze sharpened. ‘How?’
‘He told me he was thinking about telling his parents. That he just needed time to sort out a few things first. Now, I realise he was probably planning something else.’
‘Something like what?’
She gave a jagged laugh. ‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe he was planning to emigrate to Timbuktu? Or New Zealand? He took a bribe to crash Sakis’s tanker so, whatever it was, it must have been worth the risk to him.’
He walked slowly towards her until he stood in front of her. His eyes were still shadowed but the agony had lessened. ‘He took advantage of your kind heart and your unfortunate past to prey on you. The bastard didn’t deserve you. You know that, don’t you?’
