been waiting for him in the bar.
With the watch she’d removed from his wrist.
Seven weeks later they had been married, and six months after that they’d been divorced.
Angry and hurt, he’d cast her as the villain, believing that she’d seen him as a warm-up act—a means to gain access to the kind of society where there would be rich pickings for a beautiful, smart and sexy woman like Teddie Taylor.
Now, with hindsight, he could see that it had been easy to persuade himself that those were the cold, hard facts, for there had been a deeper anger there. An anger with himself. Anger because he’d allowed himself to be drawn to a woman like her after all he’d been through and seen.
He frowned. Four years ago it had all seemed so simple. He’d thought he understood Teddie completely.
Now, though, it was clear that he’d never really understood her at all. Worse, his previous assessment of her seemed to bear no relation to the woman who had been so worried about him on the plane. Or to the woman who had financially supported herself and their child on her own.
A light breeze ruffled the white muslin curtains and he turned towards the window, his eyes lingering on the calm blue sea that stretched out to the horizon in every direction. Had the single-mindedness that had always been his greatest strength actually been a weakness? Had he put two and two together and made minus four?
Frowning again, he stepped towards the window, pondering how that could be the case.
Although he’d condemned her as shallow and grasping when they’d split up, he couldn’t ignore the facts, and the truth was that Teddie had neither challenged the modest settlement she’d received at the time of their divorce—a settlement which had obviously not included raising George—or pursued him for more money.
In fact she had successfully supported both herself and their son without him, and reluctantly, he found himself contemplating the astonishing possibility that he might actually have misjudged Teddie. That maybe he’d cut and pasted his parents’ mismatched and unhappy relationship onto his own marriage, making the facts fit the theory.
But what were the facts about his ex-wife? What did he really know about Teddie?
He breathed out slowly and started walking towards the door. Judging by that conversation on the plane, not as much as he’d thought he did. Or as much as he should.
Teddie had been his wife. He might not remember his vows word for word—there had been too much adrenaline in his blood, and a sense of standing on the edge of a cliff—but surely her husband should have been the person who knew her best.
Thinking about her baffling remarks on the plane, he felt his shoulders tense.
Yesterday she’d as good as admitted that she wanted him—why, then, had she held back? And what had she meant by telling him that she couldn’t have everything she wanted?
He felt his heartbeat slow.
In principle, this holiday was supposed to be all about getting to know his son, but clearly he needed to get to know his ex-wife as well. In fact it wasn’t just a need—he wanted to get to know Teddie, to get close to her.
His legs stopped moving, and something exploded inside his chest like a firecracker as he realised that he wasn’t just talking about her body. No, what really fascinated him about his beautiful, infuriating, mysterious ex-wife was her mind.
His heartbeat doubled, a flare of excitement catching him off-guard.
Last time they hadn’t got to know each other as people. It hadn’t been that kind of relationship, or even any relationship really—just desire, raw and intoxicating as moonshine.
Marriage had been the furthest thought from his mind. Even now he didn’t understand why he’d done it. Watching his father be taken for a fool should have been warning enough to steer clear of matrimony, but Teddie had slipped past his defences.
And now she was the mother of his child, and the logical and necessary consequence of that fact was that they should remarry, for it was his job to take care of his child and the mother of his child.
Only, this time it would be different—more like a business deal. There would be no messy emotions or expectations. He would set the boundaries, and there would be no overstepping them, and then he would have it all—a global business empire, a beautiful wife and a son.
All he needed to do now was convince Teddie to give him a second chance.
He blew out a breath. Judging by her continued resistance to even the possibility of renewing their relationship, that was going to be something of a challenge—particularly as he didn’t know where or how to start.
But so what if he didn’t have all the answers? What he did know for certain was that as of now he was going to do whatever it took to find out what made Teddie Taylor tick.
And, feeling calmer than he had in days, he started walking towards the door again.
* * *
‘Wait a minute, George.’ Turning her son gently to face her, Teddie rubbed sunscreen into the soft skin of his arms, marvelling as she did every morning that she’d had anything to do with producing this beautiful little human.
His small face was turned up towards hers, the dark eyes watching her trustingly, and she felt her heart contract not only with love but at the knowledge that she had never felt as her son did. He had been raised to feel secure in a world where he was loved and protected. Whereas she had known nothing but a life spent in flux, with parents who had been absent either in body or mind.
She thought about herself at the same age. Of her mother, drifting through the house in a haze of painkillers, barely registering her small daughter. And then she thought of herself a few years later, at school, when her constant fear had been that her mother’s fixed smile and narcotised stare would be obvious to others.
It had felt like a dead weight inside her chest, a burden without respite—for of course her father had been away, his wife and daughter no match for whatever get-rich-quick scheme he had been chasing.
‘Mommy, are we going in the pool now?’
‘We are.’ She smiled down at her son’s excited face. He had been talking about nothing else since he’d woken up. ‘Just let me find your hat.’
He frowned. ‘I don’t want to wear it.’
‘I know,’ she said calmly. ‘But it’s hot outside and you need to protect your head. I’m going to be wearing my hat.’ She pointed to the oversized straw hat she’d seen and then impulse-bought in a shop on her way home from work.
George stared up at her. ‘Does Aristo have a hat too?’
Her smile stiffened. ‘I don’t know. He might do.’
Looking down into her son’s dark eyes—eyes that so resembled his father’s—Teddie felt her stomach flip over, as it did every single time George mentioned Aristo’s name.
But it was a small price to pay for being permitted into paradise, she thought,
