by Penny Jordan
“If you’re talking about Gid—that man who pretended to be my husband, he lied, Theo. That’s why our father was the way he was. Because Mother betrayed him. Trust me when I tell you it leaves a bitterness you can’t rinse out of your mouth.” Her heart ached every day with loss and anger and hurt.
“Our father was a twisted, cruel bastard because he never forgave her. Is that what you’re going to do? Punish Gideon and take it out on his baby?”
Adara set her hand protectively on her belly. “Of course not!” She wasn’t being that cutting and heartless. Was she?
“Are you going to let him see his child, then?”
She swallowed, unable to say a clear yes or no. The thought of seeing Gideon made her go both hot and cold, burning with anticipation and freezing her with fear that he’d hurt her all over again. She couldn’t bear the thought of facing him, knowing how he’d tricked her while part of her still loved the man she’d thought of as her husband. Deep down she knew she couldn’t deny her child its father, but the reality of sharing custody with a charlatan was too much to contemplate.
Therefore, she was ignoring the need to make a decision, putting it off until she couldn’t avoid it any longer.
“He’ll always be in your life in one way or another. Are you going to twist the knife every chance you get? Or act like a civilized human being about it?”
“Stop it,” she said, hating the way he was painting her as small and vindictive. He didn’t understand how shattering it was to have your perceptions exploded like this. How much like grief it was to lose the man you loved not to an accident, but to duplicity. She rocked herself off the sofa and onto her feet. “Why are you defending him? What do you expect me to do? Lie down and let him wipe his feet on me the way our mother did? He abused my trust!”
“But he didn’t abuse you. Did he?” It was a real question, one with a rare thread of uncertainty woven into his tone.
“Of course not,” she muttered, instantly repelled by even the suggestion. Why? What did she care what other people thought of Gid—that man?
“You make it sound like you wouldn’t have stood for it, but we all hung around for it,” Theo pointed out bluntly.
She didn’t answer. There was nothing to say to that ugly truth. If she could see her toes, she knew they’d have been curled into the carpet.
“I was scared for you, you know,” Theo said gruffly. “When you married him. We didn’t know him, who he was, what he was capable of. I watched him like a hawk, and I would have stepped in if he’d made one wrong move, but he didn’t. And you...” He narrowed his eyes. “You changed. It took me a while to figure out what was different, but you weren’t scared anymore. Were you?”
Adara swallowed, thinking back to those first weeks and months of marriage, when she had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Gradually she’d begun to trust that the even temper her husband showed her was real. If the ground was icy, he steadied her. If a cab was coming, he drew her back.
And she remembered very clearly the last time her father had touched her in anger, a few weeks after her wedding. She’d been trying to explain why the engineer needed to make changes to a drawing and he’d batted the pencil from her hand, clipping her wrist with his knuckles.
Mere seconds later, Gideon had walked into the room, arriving to take her home.
Her father had changed before her eyes, remaining as blustery as always, but becoming slightly subdued, eyeing her uneasily as she retrieved her pencil and subtly massaged her wrist.
She hadn’t said a word, of course, merely confirmed with her father that they were finished for the day before she’d left with Gideon, but she’d realized she had a champion in her husband, passive and ignorant though he was to his role. As long as she had him, she had protection. Her father had never got physical with her again.
That sense of security had become precious to her. That’s why she’d been so devastated when she had thought Lexi had snatched him from her, and now the hurt was even worse, when she knew his shielding tenderness had never existed at all.
“It was in his best interest to keep me happy,” she said, voice husky and cold. “I was the facade that made him look real.”
“Maybe,” Theo agreed, twisting the knife that seemed lodged in her own heart. “In the beginning. But... Adara, I would have done everything I could to help you through this pregnancy regardless of any threats from Gideon. You’re my sister. I know what this baby means to you. But the way he spoke to me when he called, that was not just a father speaking. He was worried about both of you. Protective. I’ve always had a healthy respect for him, but I was intimidated that day. There was no way I was going to be the weak link that caused anything to happen to you or this baby.”
“Welcome to my world where you buy the snake oil and convince yourself it works,” she scoffed.
He stopped his pacing to stare accusingly at her. “You fooled me, you know. Both of you. I looked at how happy you two were in the last few months and I was hopeful. I thought finally one of us was shaking off our childhood and making a proper life for herself. You made me start to believe it was possible, and now—”
“He lied, Theo.”
“Maybe he had reason to,” he challenged and moved to retrieve an envelope from the pocket of his raincoat. He dropped it on the coffee table in front of her. “That’s from Nic. He asked me to come through on my way back from Tokyo and bring it to you. I didn’t read it, but Nic pointed out that he changed his own name to escape his childhood so he shouldn’t have judged Gideon for doing it. Maybe you shouldn’t, either.”
“He didn’t convince Nic he’d married him, did he? He didn’t sleep with Nic and make him believe in a fantasy!” He hadn’t resuscitated Nic’s heart back to life only to crush it under his boot heel. She could never, ever forget that.
“He didn’t take over the hotels the way he could have,” Theo challenged. “If anything, he kept us afloat until now, when we’re finally undoing the damage our father did. He could have robbed us blind the minute the will was read. We all owe him for not doing that. I haven’t slept,” Theo added gruffly. “Call me later if you want any clarification on that balance sheet for Paris.”
He left her staring at the envelope that seemed less snake oil and more snake, coiled in a basket and ready to strike the moment she disturbed the contents.
Throw it in the incinerator, she thought. Theo didn’t know what he was talking about. The difference here was that their mother had loved and lied while Gideon had purely lied. He didn’t love her. That final, odd comment he’d made about his ability to love not being in question had been a last-ditch effort to cling to the life he had built no matter what he had to do.
Thinking of their child growing up in the same hostile atmosphere she’d known made her stomach turn, though. She didn’t want to wield her sense of betrayal like a weapon, damaging everyone close to her.
Maybe if she understood why he’d done it, she’d hate him less. Theo was right about Gideon always being connected to her, no matter how awkward that would be. She would have to rise above her bitterness and learn to be civil to him.
Lowering to the sofa, she opened the envelope and shook out the printed screen shots of clippings and police reports and email chains. Through the next hours she combed through the pieces Nic had gathered, fitting them into a cracked, bleak image of a baby born from a girl abused by her stepfather. The girl’s mother had thrown her out when she became pregnant. A ragtag community of dockworkers, social services and street people had tried to help the adolescent keep herself and her beloved son clothed and fed.
It seemed Gideon had been truthful about one thing: his mother had possessed a strong maternal instinct. Delphi had been urged more than once to put him up for adoption, but was on record as stating no one could love him as much as she did. While not always successful at keeping
a roof over their heads, she’d done all a girl of her age could, working every low-end, unsavory job possible without resorting to selling drugs or sex.
Sadly, a nasty element working the docks had decided she didn’t have to accept money for her body. It could be taken anyway. Adara cried as she read how the young woman had met such a violent end. She cried even harder, thinking of a young boy seeing his mother like that, beaten and raped and left to die.
Blowing her nose, she moved on to the account of Delphi’s friends from low places doing the improbable: going to the police and demanding a search for Delphi’s son. Here Nic had done the legwork on a trail that the police had let go cold. Taking the thin thread of Delphi’s last name, he had tied it to a crew list from a freighter ship dated years later. The name Vozaras was there too, but the first name was Kristor.
A side story took off on a tangent about smuggling, but nothing had been proven. The only charges considered had been for underage labor and somehow that had been dropped.
Adara wiped at a tickle on her cheek as she absorbed the Dickensian tale of a boy who should have been in school, learning and being loved by a family. He’d been aboard a freighter instead, doing the work of a man. No wonder he was such a whiz with all things sea related. He had literally grown up on a ship.
Considering the deprivation he’d known, the loss of his mother and lack of—as he’d told her himself once—anyone caring about him, it was a wonder he’d turned into a law-abiding citizen at all. When she thought of all the little ways he had looked out for her, even before Greece, when he’d do those small things like make sure she was under the umbrella or huge things like finagle her into running the hotel chain despite her father’s interference from the grave, she was humbled.
Perhaps he had been self-serving when he’d agreed to marry her, but he’d treated her far better than the man who was supposed to love and care for her ever had.
She’d been avoiding thinking back to Greece and all that had happened since, but she couldn’t ignore his solicitude and protectiveness any longer. He could have let her risk her neck climbing down that cliff alone; he could have sent her to her brother’s alone. His actions had gone above and beyond those of a man only wanting to manipulate.
And when she recalled the warmth in his smile when he’d gazed at Evie, the pained longing in him when he’d talked about the loss of their own babies...
Even after that, when they’d been waiting out this pregnancy here, more than once she had glanced up unexpectedly and found a smile of pride softening his face. Half the time his eyes were on her bulging stomach, not even aware she was looking at him. Other times he was looking at her and always seemed to grin a bit ruefully after, as if he’d been caught in a besotted moment and felt sheepish for it.
He couldn’t fake all of that. Could he? His shattered control, just from touching her that last night, hadn’t been the response of a man who was unmoved and repulsed. He’d been as swept away as she had. Laughing, teasing, pulling her into him afterward as though she was his cherished stuffie.
She swallowed.
Theo was right about a few things. Despite the lack of a truly legal marriage, Gideon had been behaving like a husband and father so well, even she had believed they had a chance for a lifetime of true happiness.
Perhaps they had.
If she hadn’t ruined it by throwing him out for daring to reveal the darkest secrets closest to his soul.
She bit her lip, distantly aware of the physical pain, but the emotional anguish was far sharper. It wasn’t fair to imagine there had been another time in their lives when they’d been close enough to risk telling each other something so deeply personal. Look how long she’d masked that her father was a brute. If Gideon hadn’t followed her to Greece, she might never have told him about that last miscarriage. He’d had as much right to know about their loss as she had to know his name.
Oh, God.
Scanning the scattered papers with burning eyes, she wondered if he even knew this much about himself. She hurt so badly for him, completely understanding why he’d wanted to escape being the boy who had gone through all this and become someone else.
She hadn’t even given him a chance to tell his side of things. She was just like their father—a man she had never forgiven for the hurts he’d visited on all of them.
But after acting just like him, she couldn’t ask Gideon for another chance. Not when he’d taken such a huge risk and she’d condemned him for it. How could she expect him to forgive her when she’d never forgive herself?
* * *
It killed Gideon to do it, but he put together the necessary declaration of his identity and the rest of what was needed to dissolve their fake marriage. Then he had the paperwork couriered to the penthouse.
Adara wasn’t taking his calls. The least he could do was make things easier on her. Karen was reporting that everything was progressing fine, but all he could think was that Adara must be devastated by the loss of her mother on top of what he’d done to her. He was eating his heart out, aching every moment of every day, but he couldn’t badger her for a chance to explain himself. What was there to explain? He’d lied.
He wasn’t her husband.
So why was he personally reframing the apartment below their penthouse, executing the plans his architect had drawn up once they’d decided to stay in the city and expand their living space to two floors, creating a single master bedroom with a nursery off the side?
Because he was a fool. It was either this or climb on the next boat and never touch land again. The option kept tapping him on the shoulder, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to take it.
He couldn’t be that far away from the woman he regarded as his wife.
He stopped hammering, chest vibrating with the hollowness of loss.
Actually, that was his cell phone, buzzing in his pocket.
Setting aside the hammer, he saw the call was from Adara. His heart stopped as he hurried to remove his leather glove and accept the call.
“Babe?” The endearment left his lips as if he was sleeping beside her.
Nothing. Damn, he’d missed it. He started to lower the phone and reconnect, but heard a faint “You said you’d be here.”
“What?” He brought the phone to his ear.
“You said I wouldn’t have to go through this alone and that you’d be with me every second and the pains have started but you’re not here. You lied about that too.”
Adrenaline singed a path through his arteries and exploded in his heart. “You’re in labor?”
A sniff before she gritted out a resentful “Yes.”
He threw off his hard hat and safety goggles. “Where are you?”
Silence.
“Adara!”
“In the apartment,” she groused. “And you’re not.”
“Where in the apartment?” he demanded, running up the emergency stairs two at a time to the service entrance. “Don’t scream if you hear someone in the kitchen. It’s me. Did you change the code?”
“What? How are you in the kitchen? I’m in the bed—” She sucked in a breath.
He stabbed the keypad and the light went green.
He shot through the door, into the kitchen, and strode to her room, ears pounding at the silence. Her bedroom looked like a crime scene with clothes tossed everywhere, nylons bunched on the floor, slippers strewn into the corner, but no Adara. He checked the bathroom.
“Where are you?” he demanded.
“Here,” she insisted in his ear. “By the bed.”
He’d been on both sides of her bed and rounded it again, but she wasn’t there. “Damn it, Adara.” He lowered the phone and shouted, “Where are you?”
“Here!” she screamed.
Her voice came from the other side of the penthouse. He ran
through the living room to his room. Their room. A faint part of him wanted to read something significant into that, but when he entered, he didn’t see her there either.
Was she torturing him on purpose—?
Oh, hell. He spotted one white fist clinging to the rumpled blanket. Her dark head was bent against the far side of the mattress.
“Oh, babe,” he said, and threw his phone aside to come around to where she knelt, bare shoulders rising and falling with her panting breaths. She had a towel around her, but nothing else. Her hair was dripping wet.
“Okay, I’m here. You’re sure this is just labor?”
“I know what labor feels like, Gideon.”
“Okay, okay,” he soothed. “Can I get you onto the bed?” He was afraid to touch her. “Are you bleeding?”
“No, but my water broke. That’s why I had a shower.” She kept her forehead buried against the side of the mattress. “I’m not ready for this. It hurts. And I’m so scared the baby will die—”
“Shh, shh.” He stroked her cold shoulder with a shaky hand. “Have you felt the baby move?”
She nodded. “But anything could happen.”
“Nothing is going to happen. I’m right here.” He prayed to God he wasn’t lying to her about this. Shakily he picked up her phone and ended their call. “Have you called the ambulance? Karen?”
“No.” She swiped her eyes on her bare arm, and peeked over her elbow at him, gaze full of dark vulnerability and a frightened longing that put pressure on his lungs. “I just thought of you, that you said you’d be here with me. Where were you? How did you get here so fast?”
“Downstairs,” he answered, dialing Karen’s personal line from memory. In seconds he had briefed her and ended the call. “She’ll meet us at the hospital. An ambulance is on the way.”
“Oh, leave it to you to get everything done in one call.”
“Are you complaining?” He eased her to her feet and onto the bed, muscles twitching to draw her cold, damp skin against him to warm her up, but he drew the covers over her instead. Sitting beside her on the bed, he rested one hand on the side of her neck and stared into her eyes. “You know me. I won’t settle for anything less than the best.”
