Chapter Three
Archimedes stared at his new wife, sitting in the seat opposite him. They were in his jet, on their way to the private Cycladic island he’d bought a couple of years earlier when he’d been investigating his parents. Or rather, his father.
His mother, who’d walked away when he was five, he’d decided not to bother with since she’d made it so clear that she wanted nothing to do with him.
But his father, he did want to know about.
While Archimedes had been working for the Russians, he’d had some contacts track Julius Athineos down.
He’d eventually been located in an Athens prison doing time for murder, so that had been that.
Archimedes hadn’t even bothered with a visit.
He’d then decided he was his own person and had nothing to do with the two people who’d made him, and as such, he’d make his own home for himself in his country of origin.
So when a beautiful jewel of an island had come up for sale, he’d bought it.
He never spent much time on Kythea since he never spent much time in any one place, but he liked that he had it.
Zoe hadn’t appreciated him ordering her to go there with him, though.
In retrospect, he supposed he could have worded it better, but her insistence on staying in London had been ridiculous.
All she’d wanted was to get out of London and away from Banks—at least when she was a kid that was all she’d wanted, in addition to her travel dreams. Perhaps things were different now she was adult.
Whatever, the last thing he’d wanted was to stand around arguing about where they were going to live, and so he’d made a decision.
Not in London, with Banks constantly looking in, but on an island away from Banks entirely.
If she ended up not liking it, well, she could go back to London and he wouldn’t argue.
But if she did, well. She’d end up thanking him, he was sure of it.
She was sitting cross-legged in the seat, her attention fixed on her laptop screen.
He’d gone to her flat—and he’d been right, it was cramped—to find that the only bag she was bringing was a duffel bag full of clothes and her laptop.
That was it. He hadn’t questioned it, privately thinking that if she needed anything he could always get it for her.
On the trip to the airport and now, in the plane, she kept her attention firmly on her laptop, not bothering to say more than a couple of words to him.
He was surprised to find that it annoyed him. Not that he was a fan of small talk, but it would have been nice if she’d at least greeted him. They weren’t complete strangers, after all. They were actually married.
It was a strange thought, her being his wife.
It had been strange standing at the altar with her, no matter how many times he told himself that it meant nothing.
Strange to put the ring he’d bought—because rings were part of the wedding ceremony—on her finger.
The ring meant nothing, too. Just as the vows he’d made meant nothing.
They were empty. They weren’t going to love or cherish each other till death did them part, or look after each other in sickness and in health.
And they definitely weren’t going to be forsaking all others. Though, kissing her had been a mistake.
He’d known she was expecting him not to, so naturally he’d decided that he would.
She’d been needling him since the moment she’d walked into the church, and he wasn’t above getting a little of his own back.
When he’d turned her face up and bent to brush his mouth over hers he’d expected to feel absolutely nothing.
But that hadn’t happened. Instead, he’d been abruptly and forcefully made aware of how soft her lips were and how warm they felt beneath his.
How he’d wanted to deepen the kiss just to see what she tasted like.
A stupid move. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. When they got to Kythea, he’d call Celeste, get her to join him for the evening. Perhaps he’d even fly her out to the island. Zoe wouldn’t care.
‘Stop looking at me,’ Zoe said without looking up. ‘You’re distracting me.’
He shifted in his seat, annoyed by how aware he was of one long, black lock of hair that had fallen forward over her shoulder and was now curling around the curve of one breast.
‘Then stop being distracting,’ he said.
‘I’m doing nothing but sitting here.’
Archimedes shifted again. He hated flying, and not because it made him nervous. He hated being constrained in a long metal tube with nothing to do but sit. Normally, he’d be walking up and down in the aisle making phone calls, yet for some reason he’d found himself studying Zoe instead.
‘Why did you say yes?’ he asked, curious.
‘Say yes to what?’ Her gaze remained on her laptop screen.
‘Yes to coming to Kythea.’
‘I mean, you didn’t give me much of a choice.’
‘I gave you a choice. You didn’t have to come.’
‘Banks wanted us to live together so if you were going to be in Greece I also had to come to Greece. Anyway, I decided it didn’t matter to me that much.’
He studied her face, noting the lines of concentration on her forehead.
When she’d been young, she’d used to bite her tongue in concentration and he’d used to tease her about it.
He glanced down at her mouth, the lips he’d kissed just a few hours earlier, and sure enough, she was biting her tongue.
The sight made a strange warmth settle somewhere behind his breastbone, even as it made other parts of him tighten in reaction.
He ignored those parts of him.
‘Then why did you argue?’ he asked, because he thought that wasn’t true. She actually did mind quite a bit, but didn’t want him knowing that.
‘Because you were being a complete dick.’
He decided to let that go since he couldn’t argue with it.
He had been a dick. Then again, he wasn’t exactly known for his winning way with people.
After leaving Banks’s house, he’d developed into a shark—he’d had to, dealing with the Russians—and had remained one.
Anyway, he was impatient and was tired of bickering with her.
‘What is Banks offering you?’ he asked instead. ‘To buy into this stupid scheme of his.’
‘None of your business.’ She started typing very fast, the keys making soft clicking noises. The sound of his childhood.
‘So is that how we’re going to do things?’ he asked, not sure why he was pushing this. Perhaps because he had nothing better to do. ‘We’re not even going to talk?’
‘I don’t want to talk,’ she said calmly. ‘What I want is to do my work and be left alone.’
‘And the child?’
This time her attention wavered and finally, she glanced over the top of her screen at him, a bright flash of silver. ‘What about it?’ Her tone was flat and unfriendly.
‘Well, we’re going to have to conceive a child somehow over the course of this year.’
Her gaze flickered and he found himself going very still.
Had her thoughts gone to the bedroom at the mention of conception?
Was that what she was thinking? There had been that moment in the church, after all, when they’d stared at each other and he’d known that she’d felt the tension between them wind tight.
And then there had been that instance when he’d taken her fingers in his to slide her ring on, and she’d looked up at him, her grey eyes wide.
Also, that kiss, and he’d felt her go very, very still…
But no, he wasn’t going to think about any of that. Whatever the jolt that went through him the moment his mouth brushed hers had meant, it wasn’t something he’d pursue. Even if he’d been sure he saw her eyes darken in response.
‘Parthenogenesis,’ she said without missing a beat.
Amusement curled through him for the second time in twenty-four hours, which was unheard of.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Sadly, that only happens with plants and some invertebrates, not human beings. You will need a donation from me.’
‘If you want to sleep with me,’ she said, returning her gaze to the laptop, ‘the answer is no.’
‘Sleeping with you was the last thing on my mind,’ he replied, both to her and to a thin thread of desire that was slowly winding through him, no matter how many times he ignored it. ‘I’ll be engaging a fertility doctor.’
‘There we are then. Problem solved.’
‘That will involve us meeting.’ He didn’t know why he was insisting on talking about this.
‘No, it won’t,’ she disagreed. ‘You make your “donation” in one room, I’ll do whatever I need to do in another. We won’t have to see each other at all.’
Archimedes shifted yet again, annoyed for reasons he couldn’t explain. She was being very calm and measured, not at all the little spitfire she’d been in the church, and it made him restless. It made him want to keep needling her, keep pushing her until he made her grey eyes spark again.
‘What if I insist we have dinner together?’ he said. ‘Every evening.’
‘No, thank you.’
That made him even more restless and now irritated into the bargain. Both with himself for pushing and with her for not even looking at him while they were having this discussion. So he leaned forward, reached out and pushed her laptop closed.
Her head jerked up, and yes, there it was, the outrage glittering in her eyes. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
He held her gaze. ‘Dinner. With me. Every night.’
She didn’t look away. ‘Why?’
‘Because I said so.’ Again, he couldn’t really articulate his reasons for demanding they have dinner together every night, apart from a childish, bloody-minded reaction to her refusal to even look at him. Whatever, now he’d said it, and now she’d denied him, he was going to insist.
‘In that case, definitely not.’
Archimedes gritted his teeth. ‘Put it this way, would you prefer to come of your own free will, or be escorted to the dinner table by one of my security guards?’
Zoe scowled. ‘What are you going to do? March me there at gunpoint?’