CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER NINE

A RISTOPHANES SAT IN his Athens office, scowling at the schedule on his computer screen. His schedule. He’d thought he’d set aside ample time to help Nell settle in—an afternoon and an evening was plenty. Or so he’d thought. But given their conversation the previous night, he was now starting to wonder.

He couldn’t believe she’d walked away from him the night before. He’d only asked a question, wanting her to explain what she meant about love, and she’d just...walked away. It incensed him. Didn’t she know how rare it was for him to need something explained? Didn’t it matter to her? He’d have thought she’d jump at the chance, but no, she’d only looked tired and told him she ‘couldn’t be bothered’.

Unacceptable.

Perhaps she was genuinely tired? She’s pregnant with twins, remember?

That was true. Possibly he needed to be more understanding. Still, he was trying. He wanted to give her what she needed for her well-being and for that of the twins, yet this love business mystified him.

Most people were in love when they got married, he knew that, but some weren’t. For some it was an arrangement for legal purposes, which was what he’d been thinking when he’d asked her. He’d wanted some certainty for the future, and naturally legal protection and security for her, and he’d thought she’d see the logic behind the offer. But no, apparently not.

If he took into account her childhood and how miserable it had been, then he could almost see why it was important for her to feel loved. The difficulty for him, though, was that he didn’t love her. He wasn’t sure if it was even possible for him to feel love. He was certain he’d love his children—apparently that happened automatically the moment they were born—so he wasn’t worried about that. It was she who concerned him.

He wanted her to say yes to his marriage offer. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more imperative it was that she accept. It would make things much simpler in the long run if she was his wife. He’d never have to bother with finding and scheduling lovers again, not with Nell in his bed, because their chemistry was still hot and strong. And she’d have the advantage of having his name. She’d never have to work again if she didn’t want to, and if she did? Well, he’d create a school for her and she could run the place. Why not? The possibilities were endless.

Except if she didn’t accept his offer, there would be no possibilities at all.

The tension in his gut twisted and he bared his teeth in a soundless growl.

No, he couldn’t allow it. He had to get her to accept somehow and if that meant asking for some advice, then he’d ask for some damn advice.

Pulling his phone from his pocket, Aristophanes called Cesare.

‘Another phone call?’ Cesare said the minute he answered. ‘And the second within two days of the first. Astonishing. Have you turned over a new leaf, Ari?’

Aristophanes glared out of the window and across the cluttered streets of Athens’ downtown area. ‘I need advice,’ he said flatly.

‘Intriguing. About your impending twins?’

‘No, I’m sure that won’t be an issue.’ Aristophanes ignored his friend’s slightly strangled laugh since there didn’t seem to be anything amusing about what he’d said. ‘It’s about Nell. I have offered to marry her but...she refused.’

‘I see.’ Cesare’s voice was suspiciously expressionless. ‘How could that be? You’re rich as Midas, have your health and all your own teeth. Not to mention a full head of hair. What more could she want?’

‘I don’t know,’ Aristophanes replied, irritated. He hated not knowing something. ‘I offered because we needed some certainty for the future. I thought it would also give her legal protection, not to mention creating a family for us. It’s the next logical step.’

‘Logical, hmm? That sounds like you. And speaking of, is this something you actually want? A wife, I mean.’

‘Of course I want a wife. I wouldn’t have asked her to marry me otherwise.’

‘It’s just that you’ve never professed any interest in wives.’

‘I’m going to be a father, Cesare,’ he said curtly. ‘And you married Lark when you discovered she’d had your child.’

‘True,’ his friend admitted. ‘Though it did take some time to learn how to be a proper husband and father.’

‘I’m sure it will not be a problem for me,’ Aristophanes said, because he was sure it wouldn’t be. Again, if Cesare could do it, so could he. ‘I only need her to accept my proposal.’

‘Did she give you a reason for refusing you?’

Aristophanes was conscious of the ache in his jaw, a tight feeling running across his shoulders. ‘She wants to be loved,’ he said tightly.

Cesare sighed. ‘Of course, she does. So I suppose this means you’re not actually in love with her.’

‘No.’

‘And I suppose she’s not actually Satan incarnate and thus completely unlovable?’

‘Of course not,’ he growled, bristling with defensiveness. ‘She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. She’s intelligent, honest, stubborn, passionate and—’

‘Yes, yes,’ Cesare muttered. ‘I get the idea. Are you sure you’re not in love with her?’

‘I’m not’ he said, irritation becoming annoyance since this wasn’t about him. It was about her. ‘It isn’t me we’re talking about, Cesare.’

‘Fine, fine. So she wants to be loved.’

‘Yes. I told her that our children will love her, but apparently it wasn’t enough.’ He picked up a pen and toyed restlessly with it. ‘I wanted her to explain what kind of love she wanted, but she refused and told me she “couldn’t be bothered”.’

‘Hmm,’ Cesare said. ‘Difficult.’

‘Yes. And now I am at a loss. I want to change her mind, I want her to marry me, except I don’t know how to do it.’

‘I see. Well, you’re the genius, Ari. Why don’t you work it out?’

‘I have,’ he snapped. ‘If we could sleep together, it would be fine. I would just seduce her into taking my ring. But sex is forbidden until the babies are born.’

Cesare was silent a long moment and Aristophanes fiddled incessantly with the pen, impatience and frustration winding tight inside him.

‘You need to spend time with her,’ Cesare said at length. ‘Do some nice things for her. If you’re not in love with her, the least you can do is make her feel as if you are.’

‘Is that what you did for Lark?’

‘Yes. I spent time with her and our little one, took them all around Italy. Showed her some of my favourite haunts. Wandered around eating gelato, that kind of thing.’ His voice warmed. ‘It was wonderful, and she loved it.’

There were obviously happy memories there for Cesare, so Aristophanes tried to think about similar things he could do with Nell and failed. He didn’t have any favourite haunts. He didn’t like gelato. His life consisted of flying from office to office, playing around with numbers and attending the odd gala when he absolutely had to. Which was not, he suspected, what Cesare was talking about.

‘I don’t know...what she would like,’ he said at last.

‘Then, my friend, may I suggest you find out? Perhaps even have a conversation or two?’

‘I could just insist,’ Aristophanes muttered, even more aggravated. ‘Make her do what I said.’

‘Tell me, my genius friend, have you ever tried making a woman do something she doesn’t want to do?’ Cesare asked. ‘Not something I would recommend, not if you value any part of your manhood. And seriously, that would not be good for her well-being.’

Aristophanes threw the pen down on his desk in a snit. ‘Do you, in fact, have any suggestions? Or are you just wasting my time?’

‘You called me, remember?’ Cesare said calmly. ‘Good God, man. It’s like you’ve never seduced a woman before.’

‘I told you. We can’t have sex—’

‘I’m not talking about sex. Look, a woman isn’t an equation to be solved or an algorithm to compute. She’s a person. A human being. Find out what she likes to do, what her interests are. Listen to her. Remember, Ari, sometimes the most important gift you can give to a person is your time.’

Time. A precious commodity and that he understood. But did Nell even want his time? He’d told her about his schedule, about its importance, but would she understand if he gave her some of that?

Why does it matter that she understands you? This is about her, remember?

The thought sat in his head after he’d ended the call, and he found himself sitting and staring out of the window once again, his mind working feverishly. Thinking about Nell. Thinking about her childhood, about her aunt and uncle. About how she’d been made to feel as if her existence was something that went unnoticed and unappreciated.

Nell had survived without love, it was true, as he had. But she’d also said that surviving wasn’t living. And while he didn’t quite understand what she meant by that, he did understand that she’d had love once, before her parents had died. For her, love had been a good thing and she’d mourned its loss.

He couldn’t remember what love had been like for him. Perhaps the vague recollection of his mother’s embrace. A kiss on the head. A smile. Yet every one of those things had been negated by what had followed it. Sitting in an emptying church pew, waiting, waiting. The gradual realisation that his mother wasn’t coming to get him. The sense of a dark pit opening up inside him, a pit he was going to fall headlong into. Because she’d left him there. She’d left him there alone, unwanted—

He jerked his thoughts away. Again, this wasn’t about him. This was about Nell. He didn’t love her, but perhaps he could make her feel as if he did. Give her the things she’d missed out on in her life: attention and care and respect. Easy enough to do in bed, naturally, but he was going to have to think of different ways to do it now.

The thought galvanised him. He’d always loved a challenge and he had a couple of ideas already spinning in his head, so he leaned forward to his computer and, with a couple of mouse clicks, cleared his entire schedule for the next week.

Then he began planning.

Nell sat by the pool, on a lounger, trying to pay attention to the book she’d found in the villa’s library, and failing. It was annoying that she felt just as miserable now as she had when she’d gone to bed the night before, hoping a good sleep would help. Except she hadn’t had a good sleep. After leaving Aristophanes and the lovely dinner he’d laid out for her the night before, she’d gone to her bedroom and lain down, hoping oblivion would come. Instead, she’d tossed and turned, her head full of him and his marriage offer.

She shouldn’t have walked away from him. She should have stayed and tried to explain what she wanted, because it was clear he didn’t know, and that wasn’t his fault.

It wasn’t as if he’d had a normal childhood. He’d been abandoned by the one person who was supposed to love him, then gone from foster family to foster family, making no connections with anyone. Withdrawing into himself deeper and deeper, escaping into that wonderful mind of his.

A lonely man. A man who had no idea about love. And while he might be a genius with numbers and money, he was functionally illiterate when it came to emotions.

Last night it had all felt too much and she didn’t even know why she was staying here. She wasn’t a prisoner after all and, while he was offering a great deal of support for their children, it was obvious he didn’t care that much for her.

She didn’t know why she wanted him to, either.

Nell pulled the brim of the hat she was wearing down lower, so it shaded her nose from the hot Greek sun, and stared so hard at her book the print blurred.

Sex had blinded her, that was the issue. She’d been rendered so breathless by his touch and the way he made her feel physically that she’d expected the same feeling to follow on naturally out of bed as in it. And it hadn’t. Their interactions were fraught and stilted when sex was taken out of the equation, and she didn’t know how to make it better.

Yet you reached for his hand that night in Melbourne. And you reached for it again that day in New York when you thought you might lose the babies. And he took it. He held you as tightly as you held him.

This was true. As if something deep inside her, something wordless and instinctive, automatically reached for him in times of trouble, and found him.

She didn’t understand it. Words were supposed to aid communication and yet with her and Aristophanes, they got in the way. They communicated far better in bed than they ever did out of it, but sadly a marriage was about more than sex.

Nell let out a breath, finally giving up reading and watching the sun glint off the water of the pool.

Would it really be so bad being married to him? You’d be looked after financially and that would mean great security for the twins. You’d have all the passion you could stand once the babies are born too. You could insist on a career, he wouldn’t deny you that, and you could even have your own life apart from his.

All of that was true and all of it was attractive. Plus he hadn’t been wrong when he’d said the children would love her. She’d have them, at least. Then again, she didn’t want to put that kind of pressure on them. They didn’t exist to fulfil her need for love. They existed for their own sake and she would love them. This was all, after all, for them.

Still, she wanted a marriage to exist for its own sake too. Not for legal reasons or because she was pregnant. She’d wanted the kind of family she’d lost, the kind of marriage her parents had. She’d been only a child when they’d died, so she’d had no idea what their relationship had been like, but she did remember her mother kissing her father. Her father holding her mother. They’d been happy together, she was sure.

Was it so wrong to want that for herself? After years of being resented for her mere existence?

‘Nell.’

The deep, masculine voice cut through her thoughts, and she jerked her head up, her heartbeat going into overdrive as Aristophanes’ tall figure stepped out of the French doors and into the pool area, striding over to her sun lounger with his usual animal grace.

She pushed her hat back on her head and looked up at him.

He stood beside the lounger, tall and dark, the sun outlining his powerful figure like streams of glory around a god.

You might be in trouble here...

‘What are you doing back?’ she asked, ignoring both the thought and the husk in her voice. ‘I thought you were in Athens all week.’

‘I was.’ His eyes had taken on a familiar silver glitter, making her heartbeat even faster. ‘But I have decided something. I have a gala in London I have to attend, and I wondered if you would like to come with me. I thought we could visit my good friend Cesare in Rome first, then go on to London. Perhaps we could do some sightseeing, if you are up to it.’

A little shock washed through her. He wanted her company? And to introduce her to his friend? That was definitely not about the pregnancy. ‘Go with you?’ she said, a little uncertainly. ‘But I thought I was supposed to stay here. Be on bed rest.’

‘You are not limited to lying in bed, and, in fact, some exercise is good for you. The doctor will accompany us to London.’ He paused a moment, as if thinking something over. Then he went on, a little haltingly. ‘I...don’t wish to go to the gala. I get impatient with social functions and don’t enjoy them. However, it’s important for me to attend and so I would like...your company. We need only stay for a short time.’

Something in the region of her heart tightened. ‘But...why?’ she couldn’t help asking. ‘I mean, why do you want me there?’

Aristophanes’ gaze abruptly became focused and intense, making her breath catch. ‘Because you are beautiful and you are better with people than I am. I want you on my arm, dazzling everyone in a pretty gown and fine jewels, with your lovely smile. I want the entire world to know that this amazing woman is mine and no one else can have her.’

Her heart tightened even more, heat stealing through her cheeks at his praise, a bone-deep longing clutching inside her. To be on his arm in a wonderful gown, the centre of attention at an important party, in London. To be his...

‘Is that what I am?’ she couldn’t help asking. ‘Yours?’

‘Yes,’ he said without hesitation, an edge of finality in his voice that should have annoyed her, because she was no one’s, surely. Yet she wasn’t annoyed. For some reason it reassured her in a way she wasn’t expecting. ‘There will be media there,’ he went on. ‘And no doubt there’ll be some speculation about who you are, but I want everyone to be in no doubt that you’re mine. However, if you’re concerned for your and the twins’ privacy, I can make sure it is protected.’

She swallowed. ‘So...how am I yours? Am I your girlfriend?’

Again, silver flickered in his gaze. ‘What do you want to be? I would prefer you to be my fiancée, but I understand why you can’t.’

‘Do you?’ she asked, searching the hard lines of his face. ‘Do you really understand?’

Aristophanes stared down at her, quiet for a long moment. ‘You want to be loved, Nell,’ he said at last. ‘And yes, I understand why. At least, I think I do. You want what you lost when your parents died, what you never had from your aunt and uncle. And I have to be honest, but I can’t give that to you. I think when my mother left me, something inside me broke, something that can’t be repaired.’

The tightness in her chest gathered into pain. ‘Oh, Bear, I can’t—’

‘Hush,’ he interrupted softly. ‘I haven’t finished. I want to say that while I can’t give you what you want, I think I can make you feel as if you had it. I think I can make you happy.’ A muscle in his jaw leapt. ‘I’d like to try, if you’ll let me.’ His expression was intent, the full focus of his considerable attention turned on her, making her feel breathless. Making her feel as if she were the only person worth looking at in the entire world.

But it hurt too. Because perhaps it was true what he’d said, that he was broken. That when he’d been abandoned, a vital part of him had shattered, never to be repaired, and he certainly gave every impression of a man who’d had some vital emotional connection severed.

Yet, he wanted this; she could see it in his eyes. It was important to him; it meant something to him. She meant something to him.

She didn’t want to be a woman drawn to men in need of fixing. She’d really rather the man came fixed already. Yet she was in deep now, perhaps too deep. She’d seen his loneliness, even if he didn’t know the depths of it himself, and because she too was lonely, she knew how it felt. She knew how it hurt, and she didn’t want that for him.

That was why it was too late to leave him, she realised with sudden insight. That was why she hadn’t left the island already. Not only because of the lack of support and her anxieties about her pregnancy, but because of him.

And maybe he wasn’t broken, maybe he’d only been wounded. Which meant she didn’t need to fix him, but to heal him, and that was a different thing, that was something she could do. He obviously needed more than a kiss on the head and a sticking plaster, which was what she did for the kids she taught when they hurt themselves, but she could try. Perhaps even, in healing him, she’d find a measure of healing for herself too, such as being on his arm, in a beautiful dress, at an important party in London.

Perhaps he was even right that feeling loved was all she needed. It didn’t have to be real in order for her to be happy, and, if nothing else, at least she’d get a trip to London. So, she might as well go with him. What else did she have to lose?

Nell stared up at him, drawing out the moment shamelessly, because it wouldn’t do him any harm to wait a little for her answer, maybe even suffer a little. Then she eased herself out of the sun lounger and got to her feet, only inches between them. He smelled so good, making her breath catch and the hungry place between her thighs ache.

‘Nell,’ he murmured, soft and gravelly, the silver flames in his eyes leaping high. ‘You should not get so close to me. Especially when you’re only wearing a bikini.’

‘But if I’m going to be on your arm,’ she said, looking up at him from beneath her lashes, ‘we’re going to need to practise being close to each other, aren’t we?’

He smiled then, quick and blinding, the charm of it stealing her breath clean away, and perhaps taking her heart along with it.

Then it was gone, his features reverting to a slightly less tense version of his usual stony expression. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’ll have the staff pack for you. We’ll leave for Rome tonight. I’ll show you the schedule I have planned on the plane.’