aside,” he said as if the coffee discussion had derailed them from talking about what really mattered. “Entering such an arrangement with unexpressed resentments for its terms wasn’t very ethical of you, was it?” he chided.
Ethical? Was the man serious?
Needing to move, she jumped up and walked over to the nearest wall of windows. She stared down at the city, people and cars made tiny by distance. “Do you honestly believe I didn’t express my unhappiness at the idea of quitting art school and being forced into what amounted to a medieval marriage bargain to my father?”
Before she’d met Ariston and realized that dreams could change.
“Eber implied to my grandfather that you were entirely on board with the plan.” Ariston spoke from behind her.
She wasn’t surprised that in her agitation, she hadn’t realized he’d moved.
She didn’t bother to turn and face him, however. “Right. And you both believed him. It never occurred to you that he might have simply cut funding to my schooling and living expenses, effectively getting me evicted from my dorm?”
Instead of the city below, she saw the face of the dean of her college when the older man had been forced to give Chloe the news. They’d been midway through the term and she’d been sure her father couldn’t demand his money back.
But apparently powerful men could do things other mere mortals couldn’t.
“I suppose you never guessed he might freeze my accounts because they were all in his name, too? No, I doubt you even thought about why I agreed to that barbaric bargain.”
“Bargains such as ours are common enough among the world’s powerful in both business and politics. You needn’t act as if you were sold into marriage in some medieval contract in which you had no say or personal rights.”
She spun to face him, old anger brought about by a feeling of utter helplessness rising to the fore. “Wasn’t I? I was a twenty-year-old college student, Ariston! I’d only ever worked part-time in an art supply store for hobby money. I had no clue how to even begin going about getting my life back when he took it away.”
Ariston’s handsome face set in unreadable lines, but emotion she couldn’t name flickered briefly in his blue eyes. “You never told me any of this.”
“By the time I met you, both my father and my sister had put the emotional screws in.” And Chloe had forgiven Rhea, though she doubted she ever would her father. Rhea’s motives hadn’t all been about the company; she’d believed the marriage would be good for Chloe, too.
Chloe laughed harshly. “Rhea made it clear that if she weren’t already married, she would have willingly sacrificed herself for the good of our family and our heritage. That’s how she and my father see the company, as if it is a living entity deserving of every manner of sacrifice and effort.”
She didn’t blame her sister. Not even a little. They’d both been raised in the same emotional wasteland and each of them had found different ways to cope.
Rhea had sought their father’s love and approval the only way she’d known how—through the business. The one and only thing he ever had truly loved.
“I am aware.”
“Then I met you.” And against all odds and what her mind told her was possible, Chloe had fallen for her Greek tycoon on first sight. Fully, irrevocably and completely.
His hands fisted at his side as if he wanted to reach out, but he forced himself not to. “And expressed none of your concerns.”
“No. You and my father had made your plans, but I had hopes that complying with them might lead to something else.” Foolish, youthful hopes that she now knew for the ridiculous fantasies they were.
She dropped her head, not wanting to see his face. Not being able to bear it right then.
“Look at me,” he commanded, as if he’d read her mind and was truly bothered by her thoughts.
She considered denying him, but what was the point? This conversation had to happen so they could have the one she’d come for. Rhea’s happiness depended on it.
And Rhea deserved to be happy. In her own way, she’d sacrificed more than Chloe ever had because she’d never walked away.
Chloe lifted her head, and whatever Ariston saw in her face made his crease in a frown. “What hopes?”
“They don’t matter anymore.” They never had, not to him … not to her father.
“I would still prefer to know what they were.”
“No,” she said with absolute implacability. She’d shared all the confidences she was going to with this man.
His look assessed her. “You have changed.”
“Yes.”
He stepped closer. “In every way, I wonder?”
Shock paralyzed her as his nearness brought a wholly unexpected reaction. She’d thought her libido had died with her marriage, but her body was telling her just how wrong she’d been.
She wanted him.
She managed to move back, but somehow she gained no distance between them as he matched her step for step until she stood against the window. His scent and the heat of his body surrounded her, bringing back memories that haunted her dreams, that made her body ache with a longing she’d thought gone forever.
Long masculine fingers curved around her nape, his thumb brushing the sensitive flesh behind her ear. “There was a time when this drove you crazy. Does it still, I wonder?”
She shook her head, but not to deny it, simply to try to clear her mind enough to speak. To tell him to let her go, to move back. For heaven’s sake.
Only the words didn’t come. Couldn’t come.
Because no matter what her mind screamed she should say, she desperately wanted to beg him to do more, move closer, touch her … give her what she’d once had the right to every night.
Ariston’s head lowered. “I wonder,” he said again. “Will your lips taste as sweet as they did two years ago?”
She had no answer for him, but a reciprocating question spun round and round in her mind as his lips covered hers. Would he taste as good? Would he taste like love, even if he didn’t love her—like he’d used to?
Would this kiss hurt or heal?
Would it make it harder or easier for her to continue in her quest to move on? Cutting herself off from him without any sort of closure certainly hadn’t worked.
Only risking it would give the answer to that one, and something Chloe had never been was a coward. She let the kiss come.
It was not tentative, but sought to determine her susceptibility. She wondered what he found even as her mind warred with her heart over the wisdom of letting this melding of lips continue. He kissed her as if he had every right to do so, as if they were still
