by Penny Jordan
Her accommodating nature was suddenly irritating in the extreme, partly because he knew he should get back to work rather than standing here in the middle of the road in the middle of the Mediterranean watching her walk away. She might have lightened her workload in anticipation of coming here, but he hadn’t. Myriad to-dos ballooned in his mind while ahead of him Adara’s pert backside sashayed up the incline of the deserted street.
He wasn’t stupid enough to court heat exhaustion to keep a woman, but the reality was only a very dense man would let that beautiful asset walk away from him without at least trying to coax her to stay. Admiring her round butt, he recollected it was the first thing he’d noticed about her before she’d turned around with an expression of cool composure that had assured him she was all calm water and consistent breeze.
The rest of the pieces had fallen into place like predetermined magic. Their dealings with each other had been simple and straightforward. Adara was untainted by the volatile emotions other women were prone to. Perhaps the smooth sailing of their marriage was something he’d taken for granted, but she must know that he valued it and her.
Or did she? He was about as good at expressing his feelings as he was at arranging flowers.
Disquiet nudged at him as he contemplated how to convince her to continue their marriage. He knew how to physically seduce a woman, but emotional persuasion was beyond his knowledge base.
Why in hell couldn’t they just go back to the way things had been?
Not fully understanding why he did it, he caught up to her at the viewpoint. It was little more than a crosspiece of weathered wood in dry, trampled grass. A sign in English identified it as a spot from which ships had been sighted during an ancient war. It also warned about legal action should tourists attempt to climb down to the beach below. A sign in Greek cautioned the locals to swim at their own risk.
Adara shaded her eyes, but he had the sense she was shielding herself from him as much as the sun. Her breasts rose and fell with exertion and her face glowed with light perspiration, but also with mild impatience. She didn’t really give a damn about old ships and history, did she? This was just an excuse to get away from him.
He experienced a pinch of compunction that he’d never bothered to find out what she gave a damn about. She was quiet. He liked that about her, but it bothered him that he couldn’t tell what she was thinking right now. If he didn’t know what she was thinking, how would he talk her round to his way of thinking?
Her beauty always distracted him. That was the truth of it. She was oddly youthful today with her face clean of makeup and her hair in pigtails like a schoolgirl, but dressed down or to the nines, she always stirred a twist of possessive desire in his groin.
That was why he didn’t want a divorce.
His clamoring libido was a weakness that governed him where she was concerned. The sex had always been good, but not exactly a place where they met as equals. In the beginning he’d been favored with more experience. The leader. He wasn’t hampered by shyness or other emotions that women attached to intimacy. He’d tutored her and loved it.
Adara had maintained a certain reserve in the bedroom that she had never completely allowed to let slide away, however. While the sex had always been intense and satisfying, the power had subtly shifted over time into her favor. She decided when and how much and if.
Resentment churned in him, bringing on a scowl. He didn’t like that she was threatening him on so many levels. Yanking the rug on sex was bad enough. Now all that he’d built was on a shaky foundation.
Why? Did it have to do with her fear of her father? Did she fear him? Blame him? Apprehension kept him from asking.
And Adara gave no clue to her thoughts, acting preoccupied with reading the signage, ignoring him, aggravating him further.
She peered over the edge of the steep slope to where a rope was tied to the base of the wooden crosspiece and, without a word, looped the thin strap of her purse over her head and shoulder then maneuvered to the edge of the cliff. Taking up the rope, she clung to it as she began a very steep, backward descent.
Gideon was taken aback. “What the hell are you doing?”
She paused. Uncertainty made her bottom lip flinch before she firmed it. “Going swimming.”
“Like hell you are.” Who was this woman?
The anxiety that spasmed across her features transitioned through uncertainty before being overcome by quiet defiance. “I always did as I was told because I was scared my father would punish me. Unless you intend to take up controlling my behavior with violence, I’m doing what I want from now on.”
The pit of his belly was still a hard knot over her revelations about her childhood. He would never hurt her or threaten to and was now even more inclined to treat her with kid gloves. At the same time, everything in him clamored to exert control over her, get what he wanted and put an end to this nonsense. The conflicting feelings, too deep for comfort, left him standing there voicelessly glaring his frustration.
Despite her bold dare, there was something incredibly vulnerable in her stance of toughness though. An air of quiet desperation surrounded her as tangibly as the hardened determination she was trying to project.
She wanted to prove something. He didn’t know what it was, but bullying her into going back to the hotel wasn’t the way to find out. It wouldn’t earn him any points toward keeping their marriage intact either.
“It’s fine, Gideon. You can go,” she said in her self-possessed way. Papa doesn’t think the Paris upgrade is necessary. I’ll find my own way home after our meeting.
“And leave you to break your neck? No,” he said gruffly.
The way she angled a look up at him seemed to indicate suspicion. Maybe it was deserved. He was chivalrous, always picked up her heavy bags, but neither of them were demonstrative. Maybe he’d never acted so protective before, but she’d never tried to do anything so perilous.
“I won’t break my neck,” she dismissed and craned it to watch as she tentatively sought a step backward.
A completely foreign clench of terror squeezed his lungs. Did she not see how dangerous this was? He skimmed his hand over his sweat-dampened hair.
“Adara, I won’t hurt you, but I will get physical if you don’t stop right there and at least let me get behind you so I can catch you if you slip.”
She stared, mouth pursing in mutiny. “I don’t have to ask your permission to live my life, Gideon.” Not anymore, was the silent punctuation to that.
“Well, I won’t ask your permission to save it. Stay put until I get behind you.”
He sensed her wariness as he took his time inspecting the rope, approving its marine grade, noting it was fairly new and in good repair, as was the upright it was tied to. Assured they weren’t going to plunge to their deaths, he let his loose grip slide along the rope until his hand met Adara’s.
She stiffened as he brushed past her, making him clench his teeth. When had his touch become toxic?
Ask, he chided himself, but things were discordant enough. His assumptions about her were turned on their heads, her predictability completely blown out of the water. He didn’t know what to say or what to expect next, so he picked his way down the slope in grim silence, arriving safely on to the pocket of sand between monolithic gray boulders.
The tide was receding, but the cove was steep enough it was still a short beach into a deep pool. It was the type of place young lovers would tryst, and his mind immediately turned that way. Adara wasn’t even looking at him, though.
Adara shrugged against the sting of sweat and the disturbing persistence Gideon was showing. She thought they had an unspoken agreement to back off when things got personal, but even though she’d spilled way more of her family history than she’d ever meant to, he was sticking like humidity.
She didn’t know how to react to tha
t. And should she thank him for his uncharacteristic show of consideration in accompanying her down here? Or tell him again to shove off? He was so hard to be around sometimes, so unsettling. He was shorting out a brain that was already melting in the heat. She desperately wanted to cool off so she could think straight again, but she hadn’t brought a bathing suit and—
Oh, to heck with it. She kicked off her flip-flops and began unbuttoning her shirt.
“Really?” he said, not hiding the startled uptick in his tone.
She didn’t let herself waver. Maybe this was out of character, but this was her new life. She was tossing off fear of reprisal, embracing the freedom to follow impulse.
“I miss Greece. My aunt let us run wild here. In Katarini, not this island, but we’d do exactly this: tramp along the beach until we got hot then we’d strip to our underthings and jump in.”
“Your aunt was a nudist?” he surmised.
“A free spirit. She never married, never had children—” Here Adara faltered briefly. “I intend to emulate her from now on.”
She shed her shorts and ran into the water in her bra and panties, feeling terribly exposed as she left her decision to never have children evaporating on the sizzling sand.
The clear, cool water rose to her waist within a few splashing steps. She fell forward and ducked under, arrowing deep into the silken blur filled with the muted cacophony of creaks and taps and swishing currents.
When her lungs were ready to burst, she shot up for air, blinking the water from her eyes and licking the salt from her lips, baptized into a new version of herself. The campy phrase the first day of the rest of your life came to her with a pang of wistful anticipation.
Gideon’s head appeared beside her, his broad shoulders flexing as he splayed out his arms to keep himself afloat. His dark lashes were matted and glinting, his thick hair sleeked back off his face, exposing his angular bone structure and taking her breath with his action-star handsomeness. The relief of being in the cool water relaxed his expression, while his innate confidence around the water—in any situation, really—made him incredibly compelling.
She would miss that sense of reliability, she acknowledged with a hitch of loss.
“I’ve never tried to curb your independence,” he asserted. “Marrying me gained you your freedom.”
They’d never spoken so bluntly about her motives. She’d only stated in the beginning that she’d like to keep working until they had a family, but he knew her better after her confession today. He was looking at her as though he could see right into her.
It made her uncomfortable.
“Marrying at all was a gamble,” she acknowledged with a tentative honesty that caused her veins to sting with apprehension. “But you’re right. I was fairly sure I’d have more control over my life living with you than I had with my father.”
She squinted against the glare off the water as she silently acknowledged that she’d learned to use Gideon to some extent, pitting him against her father when she wanted something for herself. Not often and not aggressively, just with a quiet comment that Gideon would prefer this or that.
“You had women working for you in high-level positions,” she noted, remembering all the minute details that had added up to a risk worth taking. “You were shocked that I didn’t know how to drive. You fired that man who was harassing your receptionist. I was reasonably certain my life with you would be better than it was with my father so I took a chance.” She glanced at him, wondering if he judged her harshly for advancing her interests through him.
“So what’s changed?” he challenged. “I taught you to drive. I put you in charge of the hotels. Do you want more responsibility? Less? Tell me. I’m not trying to hem you in.”
No, Gideon wasn’t a tyrant. He was ever so reasonable. She’d always liked that about him, but today that quality put her on edge. “Lexi—”
“—is a nonissue,” he stated curtly. “Nothing happened and do you know why? Because I thought you were having an affair and got myself on a plane and chased you down. I didn’t even think twice about it. Why didn’t you do that? Why didn’t you confront me? Why didn’t you ask me why I’d even consider letting another woman throw herself under me?”
“You don’t have to be so crude about it!” She instinctively propelled herself backward, pushing space between herself and the unbearable thought of him sleeping with another woman. She hadn’t been able to face it herself, let along confront him, not with everything else that had happened.
“You said we don’t talk,” he said with pointed aggression. “Let’s. You left me twisting with sexual frustration. Having an affair started to look like a viable option. If you didn’t want me going elsewhere, why weren’t you meeting my needs at home?”
“I did! I—”
“Going down isn’t good enough, Adara.”
His vulgarity was bad enough, but it almost sounded like a critique and she resented that. She tried hard to please him and could tell that he liked what she did, so why did he have to be so disparaging about it?
Unbearably hurt, she kicked toward shore, barely turning her head to defend, “I was pregnant. What else could I do?”
How he reacted to that news she didn’t care. She just wanted to be away from him, but as her toes found cold, thick sand, she halted. Leaving the water suddenly seemed a horribly exposing thing to do. How stupid to think she could become a new person by shedding a few stitches of clothing. She was the same old worthless Adara who couldn’t even keep a baby in her womb.
The sun seared across her shoulders. Her wet hair hung in her eyes and she kept her arms folded tightly across her chest, trying to hold in the agony.
She felt ridiculous, climbing down to this silly beach that was impossible to leave, revealing things that were intensely personal to her and wouldn’t matter at all to him.
“What did you say?” He was too close. She flinched, feeling the sharpness of his voice like the tip of a flicking whip.
“You heard me,” she managed to say even though her throat was clogging. She clenched her eyes shut, silently begging him to do what he always did. Say nothing and give her space. She didn’t want to do this. She never, ever wanted to do this again.
“You were pregnant?” His voice moved in front of her.
She turned her head to the side, hating him for cutting off her escape to the beach, hating herself for lacking the courage to take it when she’d had the chance.
Keeping her eyes tightly closed, she dug her fingers into her arms, her whole body aching with tension. “It doesn’t matter,” she insisted through her teeth. “It’s over and I just want a divorce.”
Gideon was distantly aware of the sea trying to pull him out with the tide. His entire being was numb enough that he had to concentrate on keeping his feet rooted as he stared at Adara. She was a knot of torment. For the first time he could see her suffering and it made his heart clench. When had she started to care about the miscarriages? The last one had been called into him from across the globe, his offer to come home dismissed as unnecessary.
“Tell me—”
“What is there to tell, Gideon?” Her eyes opening into pits of hopeless fury. Her face creased with sharp lines of grief. “It was the same as every other one. I did the test and held my breath, terrified to so much as bump my hip on the edge of my desk. And just when I let myself believe this time might be different, the backache started and the spotting appeared and then it was twenty-four hours of medieval torture until I was spat out in hell with nothing to show for it. At least I didn’t have the humiliation of being assaulted by the people in white coats this time.”
She took a step to the side, thinking to circle him and leave the water, but he shifted into her path, his hand reaching to stop her. His expression was appalled. “What do you mean about being assaulted?”
&nbs
p; She cringed from his touch, her recoil like a knee into his belly. Gideon clenched his abdominal muscles and curled his fingers into his palm, forcing his hand to his side under the water even though he wanted to grip her with all his strength and squeeze the answers out of her. She couldn’t possibly be saying what he thought she was saying.
“What people in white coats?” he demanded, but the words sounded far away. “Are you telling me you didn’t go to the hospital?” Intense, fearful dread hollowed out his chest as he watched her mask fear and compunction with a defiant thrust of her chin.
“Do you know what they do to you after you’ve had a miscarriage? No, you don’t. But I do and I’m sick of it. So, no, I didn’t go,” she declared with bitter rebelliousness.
Horror washed through him in freezing waves.
“We need to get you to a doctor.” He flew his gaze to the cliff, terror tightening in him. What the hell had he been thinking, letting her descend to this impossible place?
“It was three weeks ago, Gideon. If it was going to kill me, it would have by now.”
“It could have,” he retorted, helplessness making him brutal. “You could have bled to death.”
She shrugged that off with false bravado, eyes glossy and red. “At the time that looked like a—what’s the expression you used? A viable option?”
It was a vicious slap that he deserved. While he’d been contemplating an affair, she’d been losing the battle to keep their baby. Again. And she’d been filled with such dejection she’d refused medical care and courted death.
The fact she’d let herself brush elbows with the Grim Reaper made him so agitated, he clipped out a string of foul Greek curses. “Don’t talk like that. Damn it, you should have told me.”
“Why?” she lashed out in uncharacteristic confrontation. “Do you think I enjoy telling you what a failure I am? It’s not like you care. You just go back to work while I sit there screaming inside.” She struck a fist onto the surface of the water. “I hate it. I can’t go on like this. I won’t. I want a divorce.”
