stable, uncomplicated home life.’
She stared at him in disbelief. ‘Is that what you think our marriage was like? Stable and uncomplicated?’ She wanted to laugh, except that it wasn’t even remotely amusing, just horribly familiar—for wasn’t this exactly why they’d got divorced? Because Aristo had made assumptions without so much as considering her point of view or her feelings.
‘I am not marrying you—remarrying you,’ she corrected herself.
Tipping back his head, he stared down into her eyes. ‘Why not? It’s not something you haven’t done before.’
She gaped at him. ‘And it didn’t work.’ She enunciated each word with painstaking emphasis.
His dark gaze roamed so slowly over her face that she felt it like a caress.
‘As I recall it worked very well.’
Her breath was trapped in her throat. ‘I’m not talking about that,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m talking about everything else about our marriage. None of that worked.’
‘Didn’t work last time.’ He dismissed her remark with a careless lift of his shoulders. ‘But engaging with past mistakes is crucial to an improved performance, and this time we’ll be operating from a position of experience, not ignorance.’
She felt her heart beat faster. He sounded as if he was presenting a business plan, not discussing getting married. But then, even before their marriage had ended work had already consumed his life to the exclusion of everything else—including her.
‘This isn’t some management strategy,’ she said witheringly. ‘This is my life, Aristo.’
His eyes didn’t so much as flicker but she felt a sudden rise in tension.
‘No, Teddie. This is our son’s life. A son who doesn’t know who I am. A son I’ve already let down. No child should feel like that.’
He stopped abruptly, his jaw tightening, and Teddie felt some of her anger deflate. There was something in his response that made her flinch inside, as though the words had been dragged out of him.
Aristo caught his breath. Remembering his own childhood, the constant nagging sense of not belonging, he felt suddenly sick. Whatever else happened, his son was going to feel wanted by both his parents.
‘You haven’t let him down.’
Teddie’s voice jolted him back into real time and he gritted his teeth. She might have been his wife, but he’d never discussed his childhood with her. But the past was history. What mattered was George.
‘I wasn’t there—’ He broke off and stared away, his face taut and set. ‘All I want to do is make it up to him. And that is going to take more than a couple of trips to the swings.’
‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’
Teddie stared at his profile, her heartbeat rocking back and forth like a boat on a choppy sea. She could sense pain beneath his stilted words and she felt ashamed. Up until that moment she hadn’t truly considered his feelings beyond shock and anger, and that had been unfair of her—for how would she be feeling right now if the situation was reversed?
‘Maybe we should go away somewhere. That way you and George can spend time getting to know each other and we can start being open and honest with each other, because that’s the only way we’re going to make this work.’
Her words echoed inside her head, and for a moment she couldn’t believe that they had actually come out of her mouth. But it was too late to take them back—and anyway, with a mixture of shock and relief she realised that she didn’t actually want to. She needed to know now if Aristo was capable of being the father he claimed he wanted to be. Not in a few months, when it would destroy George if he left, just as she had been destroyed whenever her own father had disappeared from her life.
‘Do you mean that?’ His eyes were on hers, almost black, steady and unblinking.
‘You want to get married again?’ She phrased it as a question deliberately. ‘Well, let’s see if we can manage to spend a week together without wanting to kill each other.’
His eyes on her face were dark and intent. ‘Or to tear each other’s clothes off.’
Her pulse jolted forward, her body rippling into life as a wave of heat skimmed over her skin. For a moment she couldn’t speak. Her brain seemed to have seized up and she stared at him in silence, stalling until finally she could lift her chin and meet his gaze.
‘It would mean you taking time off work.’ She tried and failed to keep the challenging note out of her voice.
There was a fraction of a pause. ‘How does next week sound?’ he said softly.
Her head snapped up. ‘Next week?’ The words made her feel giddy, but she could hardly back down now. ‘That sounds fine. But won’t it be a problem, going somewhere at such short notice?’
His eyes didn’t leave hers. ‘It won’t be a problem at all. You see, I have an island—near Greece—and a plane to take us there.’
His mouth curled at the corners, his smile knocking the air out of her lungs.
‘All you have to do is pack.’
‘LOOK, MOMMY, LOOK!’
Glancing up from the magazine lying open on her lap, Teddie smiled across the cabin to where George was waving a toy car at her.
‘I can see, darling. Oh, wow!’
She made a suitably impressed face as he made the car fly up and then crash land on the headrest of his chair.
Over the top of her son’s dark head her eyes met Aristo’s, and quickly she looked away, not quite ready to share the moment with him.
She was still coming to terms with the fact that she was sitting on a private jet that was flying above the Atlantic Ocean. Obviously it had been her idea that they take a holiday. But, aside from her foreshortened honeymoon in St Bart’s, she’d only ever been on day trips away. Now she was on her way to Greece! And not to the mainland but a private island—Aristo’s island.
Out of the corner of her eye she could just see his smooth dark head, his black hair and light gold skin gleaming in the sunlit cabin. He was dressed casually, in jeans and some kind of fine-knit grey sweater, but he still exuded the same compelling air of authority and self-assurance.
She felt her heart beat faster. Everything was moving so fast. A part of her was glad about that, for if she’d had longer to think she would probably have been paralysed with indecision. And yet something about the speed with which everything had been set in motion made her feel uneasy.
Tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear, she gazed meditatively out of the window at the horizon.
No doubt some of that feeling was down to being suddenly confronted by the
