Chapter Seven #2
‘You should’ve had security with you, at least.’
‘The worst thing that happened to me was meeting your ex again,’ Tabby recounted, moving into the blessedly cool air-conditioned interior of the villa with a relieved sigh. ‘And now I’m tired and I’m going for a nap—’
‘How did you run into Imogen?’
‘She approached me in the taverna and I’m not repeating anything she said. If there’s ever a next time, though, she’s getting a bottle of water thrown over her,’ she threatened as she stomped up the stairs.
‘I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to put up with her nonsense,’ Aristide grated. ‘She’s my past—’
‘Who still wants very much to be your present,’ Tabby mocked.
‘I think she just can’t stand the idea of me moving on.’
But he hadn’t moved on, had he? Not when he wouldn’t even talk about his former fiancée.
His father had told her more. He had shared Imogen’s family relationship to the ailing fisherman, whom he and Aristide had gone to visit, and the telling fact that the gorgeous blonde had grown up on the island with Aristide.
So, childhood sweethearts, Tabby could only assume.
Was she right in assuming that Imogen was the woman in his past who had fallen pregnant and miscarried?
Tabby was past wanting to know, past trying to talk about what he wouldn’t talk about.
She reached the bedroom, kicked off her sand-stained canvas shoes and flopped down on the bed, rejoicing in the chill of the bed linen and the cool air.
Aristide strode in, curly black hair tousled as though he had been running his fingers through it, dark eyes fired up with angry defensiveness.
‘Eight years ago, after I’d broken off the engagement, Imogen and I signed mutual non-disclosure agreements not to talk about each other.
I stuck to the letter of the law with you.
I suspect that was a mistake,’ he breathed in a raw undertone, knowing that until that moment he had actually never wanted to tell anyone about Imogen.
What was it about Tabby’s angry, defeated aspect that tore at him to such an extent?
‘When you actually know it was a mistake, let me know,’ Tabby muttered tiredly as the phone in her pocket began an incessant ringtone. It was Violet’s signature tune and, with a sudden flashing smile, she reached for her phone to answer it.’ It’s my sister. Can we continue this later?’ she pleaded.
Aristide went into grudging retreat, more because she looked tired and drawn than because he wanted to back away. He wasn’t doing such a great job of looking after her, he conceded grimly. Twice, she had been exposed to Imogen and had undoubtedly been abused or undermined in some way.
‘So,’ Violet began, all bubbly and upbeat and oh-so welcome in Tabby’s ear, ‘you’re in Greece and not far away. We’re holding a big flashy summer ball the day after tomorrow. Tore has offered to send a helicopter to pick you up—’
‘But I’ve got nothing to wear!’ Tabby gasped, her heart soaring at the welcome dream of being reunited with her sister, particularly when she was feeling so low and kind of hopeless about Aristide and his situation in which Imogen loomed large.
‘I’ll get you a dress. Can you be picked up tomorrow? Then we can have a girls’ night before the ball.’
‘So I’d be away just two nights?’ Tabby chimed, suddenly awash with excitement. ‘Yes, I think I could sell that to Aristide… It’s not like there’s anything much fun happening here. What time?’
The first Aristide knew about the summer ball in Italy was the sight of Tabby racing downstairs very much like an overexcited child, burbling about helicopters and dresses and seeing her sister and niece again.
He was shell-shocked by the sudden rage that gripped him and burned like flames on his flesh.
Tore freaking Renzetti, barging in with his offer of helicopters and fancy dresses on Aristide’s territory.
‘I’d only be away two nights,’ Tabby bargained. ‘You wouldn’t miss me because you’d be working anyway.’
Boring old Aristide, slogging away at his laptop, while his woman danced the night away in some Renzetti-bought dress with Italian men!
‘I will provide the transport and the dress,’ Aristide finally cut in, burying the anger before it could betray him. ‘And I’ll be your partner for the ball.’
Her wide blue eyes widened even more. ‘Oh…’
‘I wasn’t actually invited, was I?’ Aristide guessed between clenched teeth.
‘No. It wasn’t a deliberate omission,’ Tabby insisted. ‘Violet didn’t think. She would never be rude or unkind. Maybe I gave her the wrong impression of you and she thinks you don’t go out and don’t want to be put to the trouble of entertaining me here. I just feel like a break…’
Forty-eight hours and she needed a break from his private island and his company.
Aristide felt as though she had punched him in the chest until he thought about all that had happened since their arrival.
He had been a lousy host and a failure as a fiancé, but he fully intended to change that and level the score.
‘Away…’ Tabby waved an uneasy hand to indicate her need for an escape. ‘Away from Imogen and the drama and the bad feeling and the arguments.’
‘I’ll organise it and arrange for some dresses to be flown over tomorrow for you to try.
I’ve also got some jewellery you could borrow.
You’ll be the best-dressed woman at the ball,’ Aristide declared with confidence.
‘But before we go anywhere tomorrow, you ought to have your ultrasound and hopefully we’ll find out the gender of our babies—’
Tabby’s head was whirling. It had never occurred to her that Aristide would step up to make her dreams come true and wave a metaphorical wand like a sorcerer.
She had even thought that that sort of glitzy occasion might not be to Aristide’s taste and that he might be thankful to see her leave for a few days.
‘It’s too soon for the ultrasound again,’ she told him. ‘You’re too impatient. We’ll know eventually. It doesn’t have to be right now.’
‘We’ll do it when we return, then,’ Aristide conceded, although he could have admitted that he had already calculated every relevant date of her pregnancy, but it didn’t seem to be the moment to confess that he couldn’t wait to see how their twins were developing.
‘Phone your sister back and tell her that I will bring you to their ball.’
‘All right,’ she agreed, unable to see how she could possibly dissuade him in their particular circumstances. ‘I suppose it might look odd to your family if you let me go alone to something like that…and anyway, you ought to meet Tore, Violet and Belle as they’re my family.’
‘Do they know about our engagement?’ Aristide enquired.
‘Yes, but they know it’s fake.’
‘It’s as fake as we want it to be,’ Aristide contradicted, making her frown as she tried to work that answer out and came up unsatisfied, wishing that he didn’t talk in riddles.
‘I thought it was totally for show,’ Tabby muttered uncertainly.
‘I don’t make that kind of commitment for show,’ Aristide asserted. ‘I brought you here to work out whether or not we could be a real couple.’
Tabby nodded slowly. ‘Like a sort of try-before-you-buy trial,’ she assumed in a tone of gathering condemnation as her temper began to spark.
Aristide breathed in deep and slow before he spoke in a sudden driven rush. ‘Please try to remember that you’re dealing with a guy who made the most horrendous error the last time he chose to commit to a woman. Maybe he’s been running scared since the moment he met you…’
At that unexpected speech, Tabby gazed up at him in unconcealed amazement and her anger drained away as though it had never been.
In that moment, there was something so deep, real and emotional in Aristide’s brilliant dark eyes that her heart pounded and her chest tightened.
Imogen—the most horrendous error? Yes, she could get behind that opinion.
Running scared? Aristide? Of course, he would be apprehensive about getting seriously involved with a woman again.
Afraid of trusting his own judgement, uncertain of what he had probably once been so sure of years earlier when it came to reading a woman’s character.
Having got it so badly wrong once, he was much more likely to walk the other way when it came to commitment.
But it also went unspoken that she had to be the first woman to seriously attract him since Imogen and that was an intoxicating idea.
Or was the truth far more prosaic? she wondered.
He had got her pregnant. Would she ever have seen or heard from Aristide Romanos again if that hadn’t happened?
That was a more sobering thought and that fast she wasn’t feeling intoxicated by Aristide any more.
‘I shouldn’t have shouted at you earlier,’ Aristide commented over their delicious evening meal served on a deck overlooking the glimmering sea at his father’s opulent hotel. ‘But I was genuinely afraid that something had happened to you.’
‘It’s a flat beach and a straight walk into town. What were the chances of anything happening to me?’ Tabby countered ruefully.
‘Accidents do happen.’ He shrugged. ‘My mother tripped in her heels on the stairs and broke her neck—’
‘But nobody could’ve prevented that,’ Tabby reasoned in a pained undertone at that untimely reminder. ‘That was a freak accident. Most would sprain an ankle or end up with bruises but they wouldn’t die from it. Your mother was very unlucky.’
‘How was I to know that you didn’t go down to the beach today to swim?’ Aristide shot back at her unanswerably. ‘You didn’t tell anyone where you were going or when you expected to be back.’
‘You didn’t know,’ Tabby accepted, irritable at having to make that concession, dropping her blonde head while shooting him an accusing look. ‘You just can’t let me win an argument, can you?’
‘And you can’t stand anyone telling you when you’re in the wrong,’ Aristide completed drily.
That was true but torture wouldn’t have persuaded Tabby to admit it to him. He had a mind like a steel trap and unforgiving principles.
‘And this is why we’re fighting,’ she pointed out quietly. ‘You like the last word—as do I. You can tell you’re an only child. You’ve never had to compromise with someone different from you. You’re a perfectionist. You won’t consider human error or oversight as an excuse.’
‘But I can change into a more user-friendly version of myself,’ Aristide quipped with helpless amusement at the way she had summed him up and delivered her verdict. ‘Only it won’t happen overnight. It will take practice.’
Tabby stiffened. ‘People don’t change.’
‘They mellow when they have to. It’s the only way to build relationships with others. The art of compromise doesn’t come naturally to me, but you know that we will both change when we become parents.’
There was an infuriating truth to that assurance.
Instinct warned Tabby that motherhood would rearrange her priorities and alter her outlook.
Hadn’t she already watched Violet change as she grew into being Belle’s mother?
She surveyed Aristide, so achingly beautiful even in casual clothing.
Even more beautiful out of them, a little inner voice reminded her, and she reddened as a flush of inner heat enveloped her entire body.
She wasn’t about to allow herself to think that way any more about him.
That was a victim mentality, wasn’t it? To imagine that she had no real choices of her own?
And she was determined to choose a path that kept her safe from emotional harm or deep regret and, when it came to Aristide, that meant avoiding temptation and keeping the insanity of crazily good sex out of it.
‘You have another private jet,’ Tabby whispered as she boarded the sleek plane with its black upholstery.
‘No, we’re borrowing my father’s,’ Aristide informed her with amusement, watching her pick a seat in a whirl of impatient movement.
A helicopter had transferred them to the private airfield where his father kept his jet.
Tabby was clad in loose linen trousers and a floaty pink top, blonde hair restrained to a neat braid down her slender spine, a slick of lip gloss her only concession to cosmetics.
He had never known a woman so little concerned with her appearance.
She barely glanced in mirrors, selected clothes to wear and pack according to practicality and could choose a ball gown from a rail of fabulous offerings in five minutes flat.
He had assumed she would spend the entire morning choosing her gown and deciding what to pack but she had packed before she came down to breakfast and had contrived to pick her gown for the summer ball before he had even left the room.
‘Why are all the dresses some shade of blue?’ was the only question she had deigned to ask.
‘I love seeing you in blue and I have sapphires for you to wear at the ball—’
‘Matchy-matchy. That’s kind of controlling behaviour,’ she had complained, shooting him a mocking wide-blue-eyed glance, teasing him because it was her favourite colour. ‘What if I don’t like wearing blue?’
‘The next time, I’ll take that possibility onboard and give you more of a choice,’ Aristide countered without hesitation.
‘Have you met my sister’s husband before?’ Tabby asked, finally settling into her seat opposite him.
‘I’ve never spoken to him but I’ve seen him at events I’ve attended.’
‘Violet said he’s kind of a serious guy.’
‘Most titans of industry are…goes with the territory.’
‘I can’t wait to see Violet,’ she confided unnecessarily, her eyes sparkling at the prospect of the coming reunion. ‘And Belle. She’s walking now. I can’t wait to see that either!’
‘You like children,’ Aristide appreciated.
‘I’ve always liked them. I just didn’t expect to have any of my own this side of thirty,’ she confided ruefully.
‘But I’m not thinking about that any more.
It’s pointless. I’m pregnant. The babies will eventually arrive and I will get used to the idea of being a young mother.
If Violet can adjust to becoming a mum for Belle, so can I. ’