PJ muttered. But stranger things had happened. And she had been on his case recently.
“You’re old,” she’d said, shaking a disapproving finger at him last month when he’d seen her at his parents’ house on Long Island.
“I’m not old,” PJ had protested. “You’re the one who’s old!”
Yiayia had sniffed. “I already had my children. I want babies around. You will need to give me great-grandchildren.”
“You have great-grandchildren,” PJ told her firmly. “Four of them.” Besides Elias’s twins, there was Cristina’s Alex and Martha’s Edward. And Martha had another one on the way.
Yiayia had sniffed. “They are good,” she admitted. “But I want handsome babies like yourself, Petros, mou. It’s time.”
PJ knew what she meant, but resolutely he had shaken his head. “Forget it, Yiayia. Not going to happen.” Or the chances were a million to one that it would. “Forget it,” he said again.
But he could tell from her narrowed gaze and pursed lips that his grandmother hadn’t forgotten what he’d told her last year. And he began to regret sharing his plan with her. Surely she hadn’t decided to bring the battle to Brooklyn.
“Not your grandmother,” Rosie confirmed.
“I don’t know any other Mrs. Antonideses,” PJ told her irritably.
“That’s interesting,” Rosie said, looking at him speculatively, her dark eyes wide as her gaze flicked from him back through the open door toward the outer office beyond. “This one says that she’s your wife.”
“Mrs.… Antonides?”
For an instant Ally didn’t react to the name, just sat staring blindly at the magazine in her hand and tried to think of what she was going to say.
“Mrs. Antonides?” The voice was firmer, louder and made her jump.
She jerked up straight in the chair as she realized the secretary was speaking to her. “Sorry. I was just—” praying this would go well “—woolgathering,” she said, raising her brows hopefully.
The secretary was impassive. “Mr. Antonides will see you now.” But Ally thought she detected a hint of challenge in the woman’s voice.
Ally wet her lips. “Thank you.” She set down the magazine she hadn’t read a word of, gave the other woman her best hard-won cool professional smile and headed toward the open door.
Six feet of hard lean whipcord male stood behind a broad teak desk waiting for her. And not just male—a man.
The man she’d married, all grown up.
Ally took a surreptitious, careful, steadying breath. Then she swallowed, shut the door and pasted on her most cheerful smile. “Hello, PJ.”
Even though he was looking straight at her, his name on her lips seemed to startle him. He took a single step toward her, then stopped abruptly, instead shoving his hands into the pockets of navy dress-suit trousers. He dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Al.” The nickname he’d always called her by. His voice was gruff.
“Alice,” she corrected firmly. “Or Ally, I guess, if you prefer.”
He didn’t respond, left the ball in her court.
Right. So be it. “Bet you’re surprised to see me,” she added with all the brightness she could muster.
One brow lifted. “Well, let’s just say, you didn’t make the short list of any Mrs. Antonideses I might have been expecting.” His tone was cool, edged with irony.
And while a part of Ally wanted to throw her arms around him, she knew better. And any hope she’d entertained that they might be able to go back to being pals was well on its way to a quick and permanent death.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” she apologized quickly. “Shouldn’t have used your name, I mean. I don’t ordinarily use your name.”
“I didn’t imagine you did.” The edge again.
She let out a nervous breath. “I just … well, I didn’t know how busy you were. President. CEO.” She glanced back toward the main door where she’d seen a plaque with his name and title on it. “I thought you might not see me otherwise.”
His brows lifted. “I’m not the pope. You don’t need to request an audience.”
“Well, I didn’t know, did I?” she said with asperity, disliking being put on the defensive. “This—” she waved her hand around his elegant office with its solid teak furnishings and vast view across the East River toward Manhattan’s famous skyline “—is not exactly the ‘you’ I remember.”
It might not have been the Vatican, but it wasn’t a tiny studio apartment above Mrs. Chang’s garage, either.
PJ shrugged. “It’s been years, Al. Things change. You’ve changed. Grown up. Made a name for yourself, haven’t you?”
There was challenge in his words, and they set Ally’s teeth on edge, but she had to acknowledge the truth of them. “Yes.”
And she made herself stand still under the long, assessing gaze that took a leisurely lingering stroll up from her toes to her head, even as it made her tingle with unwanted awareness.
“Very nice.” A corner of his mouth quirked in a cool deliberate smile. “I’ve changed, too,” he added, as if she needed it pointed out.
“You own a tie.”
“Two of them.”
“And a suit.”
“For my sins.”
“You’ve done well.”
“I always did well, Al,” he said easily, coming around the desk now, letting her feel the force of his presence at even closer hand, “even when I was a beach bum.”
It was hard to imagine this man as a “beach bum,” but she knew what he meant. When she had known Peter Antonides, he had never been about the fast track, never cared about wealth and ambition. He’d only cared about living life the way he wanted—a life on the beach, doing what interested him.
“Yes,” she nodded. “I thought … I mean, I’m surprised you left it. It was what you liked. What you wanted.”
But PJ shook his head and shoved a lock of hair off his forehead as he propped a hip against the corner of his desk. “What I wanted was the freedom to be me. To get away from everyone else’s expectations but my own. I did on the beach. And I’m still free now. This is my choice. No one pushed me. I’m here because I want to be. And it doesn’t define me.” He paused, then fixed his gaze intently on her. “But I’m not the point. What about you? No, wait.” He shoved away from the desk. “Sit down.” He nodded to the armchairs by the window overlooking the East River. “I’ll get Rosie to bring us some coffee. Or would you rather have iced tea?”
She
