CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SIX
Tessa
T HE ELEVATOR DOORS CLOSE . The car rises, so slowly and with an occasional grinding noise that makes my jaw tense. Exhaustion from the whirlwind of the last five minutes has me leaning against the wall for support. After what feels like an eternity, the elevator finally reaches the top floor. The doors slide open to reveal Rafe leaning casually against the doorway, the lingerie thankfully out of sight. Maybe he threw it in the trash. I’m too tired to care right now.
I move past him, keeping my eyes focused on my door and off my husband’s dark, brooding handsomeness.
“Did you take the stairs two at a time?”
“I should have waited at the bottom in case it crashed.”
“It’s not the Ritz,” I shoot back over my shoulder, “but it’s functional.”
I jam the key into the lock and twist. The door swings open and I walk into my own version of paradise.
Ever since I first walked into what the Realtor called “the apartment under the eaves,” I knew a sense of calm I had never experienced before. From the white crown molding and tan wood floors, to the small fireplace with a mirror hung above it and the huge windows with dormers that looked out over the city, it was love at first sight. Every morning, I’m treated to a view of Paris’s rooftops dusted with the rose gold of sunrise. All I have to do is glance out my living room window to see the Eiffel Tower. The tiny balcony off the bedroom I’ve converted into my office is just big enough for a tiny table and chair. My bedroom used to be a linen closet long ago, the bed extending out of a wall made up of numerous shelves. The entire apartment is half the size of my bedroom back in Santorini.
I love every square inch of it.
I move into the small kitchen and set my bag on the counter, conscious of my husband glancing around my space as I put groceries away. Evaluating, analyzing, assessing. He can look all he wants. I know it’s not the luxury he’s grown up in all his life. I doubt he’ll understand the value of my surroundings, the peace it’s brought me even as I’ve adapted to a different style of living.
I brace myself against the counter and pull the bag holding my wheelchair out of the closet.
“May I carry that for you?”
I stiffen. After my experience with Thomas and the lobby, my nerves are stretched tight. But I also know if it were anyone else offering, I would accept it.
“Thank you.”
I hand him the bag. Surprise passes over his face. “It’s light.”
“Thirteen pounds and foldable.” I grab my crutches and head for the door. “Much better than that massive thing my mother used to push me around in.”
“Wait.”
I glance back over my shoulder, confused by the sudden intensity on his face. “What?”
“Where’s your wedding ring?”
My stomach drops. I yanked the ring off in the taxi on the way to the airport the night of our wedding and shoved it into a spare makeup bag I’d had tucked in my purse. I hadn’t put it back on since, couldn’t even bear to look at what I’d once seen as a symbol of possibility. Of love conquering all odds.
“In my purse,” I finally say with a nod to the black bag hanging from a hook by the door.
“Bring it.”
My fingers tighten around my handgrips. “I’m not wearing it.”
“Not yet.”
A different tension builds between us as we face off.
“Why is it so important to you?” I finally ask.
He moves toward me, each step ratcheting up my heart rate until it’s pounding so hard I wonder if he can hear it in the quiet of my apartment.
“You’re my wife.”
“For now.”
His eyes harden into shards of blue ice. “For now,” he repeats. “If I’m even going to entertain the possibility of your proposal, you will wear the ring.”
I want nothing more than to walk to my balcony and throw that ring as far as I can. An urge, I acknowledge with no small degree of irritation, that would only shoot myself in the foot.
“I’ll put it on if we reach a mutual agreement.”
“Done.”
He grabs the purse and offers it to me. Grudgingly, I take it. He reaches around me and opens the door, his eyes never leaving mine. I’m the first one to blink, the first one to look away. Foreboding whispers across the back of my neck as I make my way out into the hallway. An apprehension that I’ve just agreed to something that will be harder to walk away from than I can comprehend.
The car ride is short and silent. I frown as we pull up outside the glass pyramid in front of the Louvre.
“We’re negotiating here?”
“I reserved the Denon Wing for an hour.”
My jaw drops. “You did what?”
He stares at me for a moment before getting out of the car. I watch in stupefied silence as he gets my wheelchair out of the trunk and unfolds it before opening my door and extending a hand. I want to take it, which is why I don’t and instead shift myself from the car into the wheelchair.
We enter the museum and are quickly whisked past world-renowned paintings and sculptures to the Denon Wing, an ornate hall that plays host to crown jewels, sculptures by Michelangelo, and a trove of Da Vinci paintings. Our guide speaks quietly with Rafe before heading back toward the reception desk.
Leaving us alone among priceless works of art.
“Did you do this just to prove how much money you have?”
Rafe’s lips twist into a cold smirk. “No.”
I whisper the word liar in my head instead of saying it to his face. I don’t think for one second he did this out of the kindness of his heart. But I can’t help but feel awed by the art surrounding us. I’m surprised, too, how intimate it feels to be viewing works like a famous Greek statue or a Rembrandt painting without anyone else in the wing.
Rafe seems content to let me set the pace. I take my time, making use of the lack of other guests and plenty of room to stare at oil paintings, ancient statues and other incredible works.
It’s not until we’re in the domed room that houses the infamous Mona Lisa that he speaks again.
“Why Paris?” he asks quietly.
I stare at the iconic painting, the hint of a smile, the cool confidence in the eyes. My mind is racing nearly as fast as my heart. I don’t know why he’s asking these questions. Why he’s acting like he cares now.
“Haven’t you heard? Everyone wants to go to Paris.”
I swear I can feel the warmth of his body on my back, as if he’s standing just a breath behind me.
“Why did you come here?”
After you fled our wedding.
He doesn’t say the words out loud. But they’re there, a phantom hovering between us. I hinted at my reasons last night. I don’t want to share. But I also have a feeling that if I don’t give him something, he’ll go back to Greece and fight me every step of the way on our divorce.
“Last year, Katie came back from her first semester at the Sorbonne. She talked about Paris so much I found myself yearning for a place I’d never seen.” Even now I can see her at Christmas as we’d unwrapped our gifts, describing the little store in a street market in Le Vésinet, eyes glowing as she’d talked a mile a minute. “I wanted to go by myself. But every time I would bring it up, my mother would tear up or just cry until I told her I wouldn’t go.”
“She controlled you.”
I blew out a harsh breath. “Yes. I don’t know how much was about control and how much was about fear that I would fall again. Metaphorically speaking,” I add with a slight smile, trying to take the edge off the dark turn in our conversation.
“Does it matter when the end result is the same?”
There’s something in his voice that tells me he, too, has been at the mercy of someone else’s erratic emotions before. Probably his father. A man who made my mother look like a saint.
“I finally stopped bringing it up. Katie tried to whenever she would call, but I told her to stop, too, because it just made things worse. But the desire was still there.
“The day we got married, I realized I had said yes for the wrong reasons. I was angry at my parents, especially my mother, for being so overly protective to the point that she was controlling my life. It was a miracle that she didn’t try to dissuade me from marrying you.” I sigh. “I’m sorry, Rafe.”
He arches one dark brow. “Sorry?”
“I used you.”
“One could argue I did the same to you. Proposing marriage to get your father to finally agree to a merger my father had been trying to talk him into for nearly twenty years.”
“Yes, but you were upfront with me about your reasons. I wasn’t.”
“Is that why you left?” he asks as he closes the distance between us and crouches down, much as he did that night at his family’s villa when I saw him as his own person instead of Gavriil’s older brother. “Out of guilt?”
I start to tell him what I overheard, the horrible words that stripped away any last remaining hope.
But what’s the point? What will it change?
“Yes. That and the need to have my own life, one I built myself.”
His eyes crinkle slightly as he gives me a crooked smile. “How did you do it?”
My eyes drift down to his mouth before I can stop myself. “What?”
“How did you leave the island?”
“Oh.” My tongue darts out and I wet my lips. “Your housekeeper, Sybil, arranged for a boat back to Santorini. I bought a ticket to Paris and called Katie on my way to the airport. She was staying with my parents for the wedding.”
I’d always loved my sister. But that night, as I’d sat in the back of the taxi and sobbed out my story, a new bond had formed between us. She’d listened to me for a solid five minutes before she’d cut me off to ask where I was. When she learned I was en route to the airport, that I was actually following through with my dream of going to Paris, she’d told me to give her fifteen minutes. She’d called me back in ten with a suitcase in the back of a taxi. She held my hand as the plane lifted off and Santorini faded from view, a light-strewn speck against the black blanket of the sea at night.
“And now you’re here.”
“And now I’m here.”
“Why did you ask me to be your first lover?”
The impact of his question hits me out of nowhere, so blunt and unexpected that I answer without thinking.
“Because I know you. I’ve known you for years. You’re also, conveniently, my husband.” I hesitate, wondering if I should voice the rest, then decide to throw caution to the wind and just go with blunt honesty. “I know you never really saw yourself getting married or having kids. But I want a family of my own one day. In order to achieve that, I’ll have to date and…”
My voice trails off. This is awkward, telling my husband that one day I plan on sleeping with someone else.
“I know how babies are made, Tessa.”
His dry tone erases my guilt.
“I’ve never dated. Our kiss on our wedding day was my first and only kiss.”
His eyes widen. “What?”
“Don’t pity me.” I hold up a hand. “Please. Unless I count your brother—”
“What?”
I lean away from the harsh change in his tone.
“What? Gavriil kissed me when I was nine years old—”
“Which would have made him twelve,” Rafe snaps as he moves to the other side of the room, “old enough to know better.”
I roll my eyes. “Can you focus, please? He was a kid. It was a dare. It lasted less than a second. My point is I have no experience and absolutely no confidence in my ability to date, let alone find someone I can spend the rest of my life with. I know some people are going to be put off by my mobility—”
“Those people aren’t worth your time.”
“No,” I agree, touched by his defense, “but it doesn’t make it any less hurtful. If I have experience with sex, if I’m introduced to it by someone I know and trust, it will give me more confidence when I start dating. It might help me find the person I want to spend my life with.”
The words roll off my tongue, bitter and cold. Less than a year ago, I wanted Rafe to be that person. Heck, just a couple months ago, I still wanted it to be him. It wasn’t until the wedding I finally accepted that wasn’t going to happen.
I sigh. “Look, Rafe, I—”
“I accept your proposal.”
It takes a moment for his words to sink in. When they do, all I can manage is blank stare.
“I… Is this a joke?”
“No.”
I frown. “Is this you being impulsive? Because last night you told me—”
“My knee-jerk reaction was impulsive.” The way he says the word sends a delicious shiver down my spine. “It surprised me. But on further reflection, I made an updated and more practical decision. You get what you want, I get what I want, and we both receive mutual pleasure as a bonus.”
I can’t help it. I lean back into my chair and laugh.
“I’m sorry,” I say as he stares at me. “Only you could turn something like sex into something so…businesslike and efficient.”
He smiles. Truly smiles. One that makes the sharp contours of his cheekbones even more prominent as his teeth flash white against tan skin.
Did I think I could keep my emotional distance? Because if just a smile makes me feel this breathless as it sparks a heavy, tingling sensation between my thighs, I can only imagine what actual sex might do to me.
“Applying business principles to sex is actually an excellent idea.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it.”
His chuckle rolls through me, a deep sound that reverberates through my body and settles in my core. My breath catches as he crouches down in front of me.
“Think about it, Tessa. If I were to simply kiss you here,” he says as he leans forward and lays a finger on my mouth for a second, the warmth of his skin pressing against my lips, “as I did on our wedding day, it might give you a moment of passing pleasure.
“But,” he continues as he moves his finger from my mouth and traces a slow, teasing path down the side of my neck, “if I kiss you here, taking my time, paying attention to every gasp, every little movement you make, it will be far more pleasurable for both of us.”
I sway toward him even as panic slivers into the desire pumping through me. When I had this mad thought less than a day ago, I knew I was attracted to Rafe. He’s the only man I’ve ever had a sexual fantasy about. It’s not like there were many candidates to choose from. It’s hard to fantasize about men who barely glance at you, and Gavriil has always been a friend, the brother I never had.
Yet even in my daydreams, there was the safety of inexperience. Of innocence sugarcoating what I imagined sex would be like.
Reality check: it’s nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the flames slowly burning inside me.
“How do we proceed?”
Is that my voice? Breathless, almost sultry?
“There’s eight months left until our anniversary.”
The spell he wove is broken as he slips back into the Rafe I know, his voice level, his face smooth. It doesn’t matter. Now that I know what truly lurks beneath the surface, I’ll never be able to look at him the same way again.
“I’m aware.”
“I have numerous demands on my time. Given the nature of our agreement,” he says with the hint of a smile on that last word, “I think it best if you accompany me to Corfu for the next few weeks.”
Desire flees, replaced by a tightness that threatens to strangle me. My breathing quickens as I fight to stay composed.
“Tessa?”
“I’m fine,” I lie. “I’m just very busy myself. I’m doing professional renderings for Juliette’s house, and one of the new clients I’m working with wants to move fast on the programming phase.”
He cocks his head to one side. “I’m unfamiliar with interior design. You could tell me about the phases you work through on our flight to Greece.”
Warmth blooms in my chest at the fact that he has even a cursory interest in my work. My father never bothered to ask, and my mother only looked at my work long enough to say “That’s beautiful, dear,” before turning the conversation to something else.
But going back to Greece… I swore I wouldn’t step foot there for at least a year, if not longer. Greece holds nothing for me right now except painful memories.
“In the interest of efficiency, we could just go back to my apartment,” I half joke.
His eyes heat as his expression intensifies.
“Efficiency is important. But it’s not my primary focus when it comes to this arrangement.”
God help me.
His eyes sharpen as he watches me. “Is there a reason you don’t want to go back to Greece?”
I look away. “Paris has become home to me. I can’t imagine waking up and not seeing all of this.”
What I don’t say is that Greece represents everything I want to leave behind me. And the man in front of me is a huge part of that.
Doubt creeps in. Should I just tell him I’ll wait eight months? That he can go back to Greece without me and I won’t pursue the divorce until after our anniversary?
No . I asked for this, and by some miracle, Rafe is agreeing. He wants me to go with him to Corfu, not Santorini. I won’t be running into my parents there. With the stages I’m in for my two primary projects, I can work almost anywhere. I’ll miss my cozy studio with its postage stamp of a balcony. But it’ll be waiting for me when I come back. As will the rest of Paris.
“No. No reason.” I smile. “Where do I sign?”
He offers me his hand. I’m catapulted back to another time and place, one where Rafe’s earthy, smoky scent wrapped around me with an intimacy I’d never experienced. A night when I pitched headfirst into love.
Resolve hardens in my veins. I remind myself of all the reasons why loving Rafe was a bad idea. Of why a marriage between us will never last. I use them as a shield against any wayward emotions and instead focus on the growing sensations of desire. The blood flowing through my veins, the heaviness of my breasts, the crackle of awareness across my skin.
When I accept his hand, I concentrate on the physical feelings, savor them as his fingers wrap around mine.
“May I help you stand?”
Shock renders me speechless. I blink up at him, surprised and touched that he’s asking. Confused by this display of feeling. Empowered that, unlike Thomas, he’s giving me a choice.
I nod. I secure my chair and then hold out my other hand. My tongue grows thick in my mouth as I give him instructions. “It’s best if I put my arms around your neck.”
He leans down, his eyes focused on mine. I slide my arms around him, the movement bringing our faces within inches of each other. He pulls me up in one fluid motion. One hand settles on my back while his other arm encircles my waist and pulls me flush against his body.
His tall, lean, hard body.
“Given the unique nature of our contract, I suggest a kiss to seal the deal.”
I glance around the gallery. “What if someone comes back—”
“They won’t.”
He speaks with such casual dominance that I can’t do anything more than nod. His eyes stay locked on me, the unbroken contact almost more intimate than the feel of my breasts pressed against his chest.
And then his lips cover mine. Warm, firm, a kiss that fills me as I lean into his embrace, my hands gripping his shoulders as I surrender myself to his touch. It’s intense yet tender, teasing and light.
It’s perfect.
I sigh, my lips parting slightly beneath his. His muscles tense beneath my hands.
And then his mouth opens. I gasp as his tongue teases the seam of my lips. He takes advantage and grazes his teeth across my lower lip. Sensation shoots through my body, leaving my nipples hard and my lower belly tight as I arch against him, feel his hardness pressed against my thighs. The world fades. Everything fades as I grip his shoulders, hanging on to him for dear life as my body responds to our mutual desire.
Finally, he breaks the kiss, slowly easing me down in my chair. I sit there, my mind whirling. It’s been just under twenty-four hours since Rafe walked back into my life. In one day I’ve gone from thinking I would be divorced in a matter of months to proposing a business arrangement that revolves around my husband introducing me to sex so he can inherit a multibillion-dollar company from his depraved and deceased father.
It sounds impossible. But so did my moving to Paris. Living on my own. Starting up my own business. Judging by how incredible our first real kiss just was, our agreement is going to exceed my wildest expectations.
So long as I can keep my heart locked up tight.
Rafe walks behind my chair. I know what he’s pulling out of the small pocket on the back. He circles back around, my purse in hand.
“The ring.”
I stare at the purse for a long moment. Then, slowly, I extend my hand. I pull out the little black makeup bag and unzip it. Diamonds set into the silver band glitter up at me. Rafe holds out his hand. I avoid his eyes as I set it in his palm.
He kneels in front of me. Tension wraps around my head and squeezes, pressing in on my temples as a burning sensation builds behind my eyes. There’s absolutely nothing romantic about what he’s doing. It’s merely a formality, a stipulation of a contract.
I tell myself this over and over again as he takes my hand in his and slides the ring onto my finger.
It doesn’t stop the ache.
“I’ll take you back to your apartment to pack.”
Rafe thankfully turns the conversation to my company as we move back down the hall, asking questions about the process of redesigning a room versus a house, how I work with clients requesting changes for accessibility. It relaxes me enough to make the ride home bearable.
But it’s not until he drops me off at my apartment and I close the door behind him that I’m finally able to step back from the emotional cliff he dragged me to. A cliff I nearly allowed myself to slip over once more.
Hesitation nearly makes me speak. But I stop myself. I want this. Want it for myself, for my future.
I move to my balcony. Sadness seeps in as I look out over Paris one last time, knowing tomorrow my view will not be of terra-cotta chimneys and lattice balconies, but of an impossibly blue sea and thick-branched olive trees standing guard on rocky cliffs.
But beneath the sadness is a restless excitement. I know Rafe can’t offer me anything beyond this. We are destined to live separate lives. But right now, he wants me, too. And I intend to take everything he’s offering.