Chapter Seven #2
And then she’d found out the truth about who she was and she had moved to New York, and whenever she thought about food, there were just so many things she couldn’t eat because they reminded her of home. Reminded her of everything she had taken for granted, when none of it had been hers to take.
‘Then, let’s eat,’ he said simply. And maybe because he made it sound that simple, she found to her surprise that she hadn’t lied earlier. She was hungry.
And the food was astonishingly good. Hamilton’s had an excellent chef, but this was a cut above the beach barbecues the hotel was famous for.
There were green beans with grilled apricots and goat’s curd.
Sliced tomatoes flecked with tiny black olives and samphire.
Bonito carpaccio with cucumber and boukovo.
And to finish, caramelised tsoureki pudding with pistachio and ice cream.
‘That really was incredible. I think I could eat that ice cream every day, all day.’
‘Have more, if you want.’
‘No, it’s fine.’
He raised his hand languidly. It was a mark of wealth, moving like that.
Her family were comfortably off, but they owned one successful hotel, not a global empire.
And although they had staff, they mucked in.
But the super-rich didn’t muck in or rush or wave at people to get their attention.
Someone was always watching them attentively, poised and ready to swoop in and meet their every need.
Now Iona appeared as if she had indeed been waiting in the wings.
‘Another ice cream for Ms Hamilton, please, Iona. And an espresso for me.’
‘Do you always eat like this?’ she asked as the housekeeper disappeared into the villa.
‘I usually skip dessert unless my sister is here.’ His face softened. ‘She has a sweet tooth.’
Iona returned, and they waited as she set down another bowl of ice cream and a cup of coffee.
‘But you don’t?’
This conversation was a first, she realised watching Ares’s lips close around the rim of his cup.
Every other interaction had been fraught with tension.
Combative. Weighted. Even at Thea’s, he had only relaxed momentarily.
Now though, she wondered if this was Ares when he wasn’t focused on trying to protect his sister. Or his family name. Or his empire.
‘My preferences are a little more complex.’ His grey eyes rested steadily on her face. ‘I like sweet and hot and something with a little bit of bite.’
She felt her body tighten, remembering how she had nipped his shoulder, her teeth shuddering against his skin as she arched against him.
They hadn’t talked about what had happened in the olive grove on the way back to the villa.
But what was there to talk about? It wasn’t planned, but nor was it random.
It had been building for days, weeks really, like a wave far out at sea.
At some point, it had to come crashing onto the shore.
That was what waves did. It was inevitable, an irresistible law of nature in action.
Her pulse twitched. Ares felt like an irresistible force of nature. Especially when he was sitting so close to her.
Picking up her glass, she took a sip of chilled sparkling water. Time to change the subject. Time maybe to reinforce those boundaries and remind herself why she was here. Time to put on her metaphorical wig and gown.
‘I was wondering, did you manage to arrange a time for us to talk to Ariana? I know she’s still in Mexico, but it would speed things up if we could get her input.’
‘She was being a bit vague about when would work, but I’ll try and pin her down today.’
And then it would be time to return to London.
Her throat tightened around the lump that kept forming every time she allowed herself to think about that. The lump was part of a wider set of symptoms that felt a lot like homesickness. Which showed how destabilising elevated hormones could be.
She nodded. ‘Thank you. In my experience, nobody likes paperwork. At this stage, a lot of clients get impatient with the process. They just want to get the prenup signed and get on with their lives. Which is why this is the riskiest period. In their rush to get to the finishing line, people lose sight of what’s at stake.
I find talking it through, step by step, making it real can be very sobering.
And as I said before, this is Ariana’s prenup, for her marriage. ’
His cup made a tiny chink as he placed it back on its saucer.
‘It is. But it isn’t Ariana’s marriage that I want to discuss right now.’ There was an expression on his face that was familiar but jarring. It was serious, meditative. And then she remembered where she had seen it before.
Robert had looked like that when he’d sat down with her at the hospital and told her he wasn’t her father.
Her heart felt spongy like the driftwood that sometimes washed up on the beach back in California.
‘I should warn you that I don’t work on a Write One, Get One Free basis when it comes to prenups.’ It was a joke. But he wasn’t laughing, and she felt suddenly unanchored.
‘Whose marriage do you want to talk about, then?’
She knew the answer before he replied, but it was just so many levels of crazy that her brain wouldn’t process it.
‘Ours,’ he said quietly. ‘I want to talk about our marriage.’
* * *
It wasn’t on her to-do list. Even before she started to shake her head, Ares had known that by the stunned, incredulous expression on her small oval face.
‘Our marriage?’ There was an infinitesimal stammer in her voice. ‘We’re not getting married.’
She meant it as a statement of fact, and in that sense she was right.
But he had meant it as a statement of his intentions.
And walking back from the olive grove it had all made perfect sense.
All of it, that night in the Clarendon, forcing Willa to work for him, bringing her to Kallos, finding out she was pregnant, it was not who he was.
Before she had walked into the road in front of his car, his life had been as ordered and smooth as the swing of a pendulum.
Now it felt like a ball spinning on a roulette wheel.
‘You don’t know that you’re the father.’ She spoke slowly as if her words were pearls she was stringing together to make a necklace.
He shrugged, knowing it was important to stay calm. ‘Judging by your reaction at Thea’s, I’m guessing that the DNA test will be a formality. And obviously if I’m not the father, then there will be no need for us to marry.’
‘There’s no need if you are. This isn’t the Middle Ages, Ares. Women don’t marry men because they’re pregnant.’
‘Some do. Others marry out of duty. For others it is a strategic decision to forge an alliance. And then, there’s love.’
Love. The word was a serrated blade against his skin.
All his family made it look so easy. His grandparents, his parents.
Even Ariana. But for him, love was a foreign language written in an entirely different alphabet.
And whenever he thought about loving someone, it would take him straight back to Zoe’s apartment in Athens and the engagement ring he’d given her glittering treacherously in the afternoon sunlight.
Willa was staring at him. ‘But you don’t love me. And I don’t love you,’ she added as if he had accused her of doing so. ‘Honestly, I can’t think of a single reason why we would marry.’
‘How about that it’s the right thing to do?’
He pictured the noisy, laughter-filled meals at the summer house in Ekali; his father teaching him to sail; his mother showing him how to hold Ariana when she was a baby; his grandfather reading him Jason and the Argonauts. Memories now, but no less magical.
‘Children need parents. They need to know where they come from. They need to belong. We both had that ourselves, and we know that its value is incalculable. For what reason, therefore, would we deny our child that same experience?’
And not just their child.
Like any disaster, Zoe’s betrayal, and his handling of it, had hurt more than just the people at the epicentre.
There had been far-reaching consequences for his family.
Painful, shaming consequences. There was nothing he could do to atone for the pain he had caused his parents, but this was his chance to give his grandfather and Ari the happily-ever-after he knew they craved for him.
And then there was Willa.
His pride would never allow him to admit it aloud, but with Zoe, he had been hapless and blind to what was going on. But he and Willa had found out at the same time that she was having a baby. They were feeling their way in the darkness together.
Only it was more than that. From that very first meeting in that sunlit street in London, he had wanted to pin Willa down. Then, as now, she evaded him. She was an itch he could never quite scratch.
Marriage would bind her to him.
And that was different too. With Zoe, he had slipped into getting engaged unthinkingly, just as if he was climbing into the first cab at a taxi rank. With this proposal, he was making a conscious choice.
None of which he was prepared to share with Willa. Instead, he said firmly, ‘You are carrying my baby. That makes you my responsibility.’
Her face stiffened, and he could almost see her retreating back into her forest of thorns.
‘I don’t belong to you. We’ve had sex. Twice. And currently I am rewriting your sister’s prenup. That is the extent of our relationship.’
‘So you admit that we have a relationship?’
She held his gaze. ‘You know you can’t keep doing this.’
‘Suggesting we marry?’
‘No. Pushing me into doing things I don’t want to do. Things I’m not ready to do.’
‘Pushing how? You gave me the code to the roof terrace at the Clarendon. You had sex with me without contraception.’
She flinched, then steadied herself, but he could read the hurt in her eyes. ‘That’s not fair.’
It wasn’t. But he didn’t feel fair. He felt thwarted and out of control.
‘Yeah, it’s really unfair being offered an all-expenses-paid way out of single motherhood.’