CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER NINE
T HEY WENT TO G REECE , spending a few nights in Athens, then Atlas flew them to the island of his birth as a mini honeymoon. Stella was curious about it and he discovered a surprising nostalgia in him as he drove her around, pointing out landmarks and the taverna and sharing memories from his childhood. The April weather was warm enough to swim in a cove and Stella seemed to enjoy poking around the shops in the village afterward.
“Life here seems idyllic,” she said as they ambled across a field toward some ruins the next afternoon. “Would you want to raise your family here?”
“Ours.” He caught the disconcerted look on her face at how quickly he’d made the assertion.
“Presumably,” she said, and rolled her lips together.
“I would like to raise our children here,” he decided as he scanned the horizon. The paparazzi had hardly bothered them while they’d been here and the pace of life was slower. “But I’m glad we’re waiting to start making them.”
“Oh?” Her expression sobered. “Why?”
“I wonder what sort of father I’ll make.” So did she. She had started birth control, allowing more spontaneity in their lovemaking, which he loved, but he understood it was her way of protecting herself against being locked into a life with him.
“Because of Oliver?” She frowned.
“Yes.” He felt a tic in his cheek and motioned her to keep walking.
“You’re not like him.”
“I married you with malice aforethought.”
“Not toward me.” They arrived at piles of rocks set in rectangular lines. They could have been the walls of an ancient temple or a bath, a stable or a home. It was impossible to tell. “The way you talk about him, it doesn’t sound like he engages in much forethought ever.”
“True,” he snorted. But he was still using their marriage as leverage with the board.
“You don’t have to model yourself on him, you know. What about your grandfather? It sounds like you were fond of him.”
“He was a good man,” he recollected, heart squeezing with grief and affection. “If you couldn’t afford coffee or a meal, he made sure you had one anyway. He encouraged my swimming.”
“He must have been very proud of you.”
“I guess.” He hesitated, then admitted, “Growing up, I felt like a burden on him as much as my mother. If I hadn’t held her back, my grandfather could have retired. Instead, they were chained to the taverna. That’s why I sold it when I could. It felt like something I had trapped them into keeping.”
“Did they really feel that way, though? Or are you projecting?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t talk about it much. The few times my mother brought up contacting Oliver to help out, my grandfather shut her down. It was a matter of pride, I think. My mother told me that when my grandfather told him she was pregnant, Oliver threatened him with a lawsuit that would have ruined him if they pursued a paternity claim. The taverna was all he had. I hate myself for taking all that Oliver has given me and turning on him with it, but I never want to be helpless against the Olivers in the world as my grandfather was.” He rubbed his jaw with agitation, then dropped his hand.
He could feel her studying his profile and tried to distract her.
“It’s too bad the road is so busy here.” He nodded at the abandoned building below. It had been scorched by wildfire, leaving the walls blackened and the surrounding olive grove charred but recovering. “Otherwise, this would be a good location for a villa.”
“Do you know what it was? It looks like it had a pool.”
“It was an inn. Most tourists want to be on the beach, but cyclists and backpackers liked it.” It had a stellar view and access to these ruins and other good hiking trails.
“Do you think it’s for sale? You promised me a hotel,” she reminded him, shading her eyes. “I was so angry at being fired, I was going to ask for something in Zermatt and compete against my old employer, but why be spiteful? The best revenge is to be happy, right?”
“Is that how you think I’m behaving with Oliver? Spiteful?”
“No.” She lowered her hand, brow crinkled. “Do you?”
“That’s what Kendall called me yesterday.” He was one of Oliver’s cronies on the board. “I told him I can strike a deal with Zamos if they put me in charge. He told me to quit being vindictive.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing that’s fit to repeat.” But there was a ruthlessness in him. He knew what he wanted and had come too far to give up. “Do you really want this place?” He jerked his chin at the eyesore that was the damaged building. “It’s a lot of work.”
“I know.” She wrinkled her nose, grinning. “But I think I do.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
* * *
They left for Australia a few days later, stopping by her stepmother’s home on the way. Grettina insisted on putting out a huge wedding lunch to welcome Atlas to the family, but everyone was on pins and needles with Pappa there.
At one point, Atlas encouraged Beate to visit them in Athens after she finished school.
“Stay the summer with us,” he coaxed. “Stella would enjoy that, wouldn’t you?” He looked at her. “We could take you on a cruise around the islands.”
“Beate is needed here,” Pappa insisted. “To help Grettina with the twins.”
“I understood Stella was organizing a housekeeper for you?” Atlas said to Grettina.
“Oh, I can manage,” Grettina demurred. “The children are older now—”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Pappa snarled at Atlas. “This is my family. I know what’s best for them. Keep your nose out of it.”
The ice that descended over the room froze everyone in place.
“Pappa,” Stella began, dying of embarrassment.
Atlas squeezed her hand. “I’m Stella’s husband. Her family is now my family. And let me make my position crystal clear, Herr Sutter. I will never prevent Stella from seeing any of the people she loves. In fact, I’ll create as many opportunities for that as possible. I will take every measure to ensure her loved ones are safe and well, up to and including calling the police if one of them is threatened in any way. Do you understand me?”
Pappa’s eyes widened with outrage before he turned on Stella. “Are you going to let him speak to me that way?”
“Atlas is his own person, Pappa. He’s not asking Grettina to control you , is he?” She managed to keep her voice steady even though her heart shook in her chest.
As her father looked fit to blow, Elijah stood. “I should get back to studying. I have an exam tomorrow. Let me take you home, Pappa.”
After a potent silence, Pappa threw his napkin over his plate. “In your new car?” He sent another scathing glance at Stella, who had purchased it for her brother so he could get to Grettina at a moment’s notice, if necessary.
Stella kept a look of equanimity on her face and rose to embrace her brother, thanking him for coming and, in a quiet look of understanding, for taking so much of the burden of their father on himself.
After Pappa was gone, the crackle of tension noticeably dissipated. They visited a little longer with Grettina. When they were preparing to leave, one of the twins shyly asked Atlas, “Can we visit you, too?”
“Of course. Do you like to swim? We have a pool,” Atlas said.
“Oh, dear,” Grettina chided. “I’ll never hear the end of it until we see it.” As she hugged Stella, she whispered, “I like him. I’m happy for you.”
“Thank you. And you don’t have to bring the twins,” she urged Grettina. “We could take them for a week and you could take time for you.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do with it,” Grettina dismissed.
Stella let it go, but would press her again when things calmed down.
“Thank you,” she said to Atlas when they were in the air, on the way to Australia. “I know that wasn’t pleasant, dealing with my father.” She was still mortified.
“My father hasn’t even spoken to you yet,” he reminded her, mouth thin with disgust.
“I worry that marrying you wasn’t enough to hold up my side of our bargain, though. You’re doing all these things for me, making it possible for me to look after my family. You’re ready to protect them yourself, but you don’t have what you were trying to get.”
“DVE? That’ll come.” He spoke with offhand confidence, but now he was looking at her in the way that made her skin feel too tight. “I definitely have what I wanted, though.” He leaned over and set a lazy, inciting kiss on her mouth. “Shall we go into the stateroom?”
They did, and undressed without ceremony, pulling back the covers to sprawl across the bed.
She released a sigh of pleasure at the simple act of lying naked with him, lazily kissing and caressing. She had thought their first few times were powerful and wonderful—often intense and mind-blowing—but it kept getting better. She was more confident now, sliding her thigh against the outside of his, arching and licking into his mouth, enjoying how he hardened against the thatch between her legs.
He knew how hard he could suck her nipple and that he could dominate her with the hot iron of his body pressed over hers. He knew how to caress her and when she was ready for him to push her legs open and thrust deep.
She gasped, eyelids fluttering at the electrified sensations.
“Too hard?”
“Perfect.” She danced her fingers along his ear and the back of his neck, tilting her hips so he was seated as deeply as she could take him. Then she opened her eyes, finding him watching her with a glittering look that was carnal and possessive.
“You could have had this without the ring,” she murmured. “It’s what I wanted, too.”
“I like the commitment.” The weight of his hips pinned hers while he trapped her hand to the mattress by weaving his fingers between her own, flexing his grip so they both felt the hard gold of her wedding band against her tender skin. “I like knowing you’re mine.” His mouth twisted. “That’s a primitive a thing to say, I know.”
“I think I was yours the moment I saw you,” she admitted, feeling defenseless as she admitted it, but it was true. She wasn’t just falling in love with him. She was deeply in love with him. Irrevocably. “It scares me how much I want to be with you. To be yours.”
He drew in a breath that swelled his chest, eyes glittering with satisfaction, but flashing, too. “Why does it scare you?”
“Because I fought really hard to support myself and feel secure and confident on my own. Now…” Now she was dependent on him in so many ways.
“You don’t trust me to look after you?” His expression grew taut with dismay.
“I do,” she said, but even she heard the hesitation in her voice.
His eyes narrowed.
“I believe I can trust you,” she amended. “Sometimes I think I’m losing myself, though. In you. Us. I don’t think it’s the same for you. That feels unequal. A lot of this feels unequal.” He possessed her heart, but he wasn’t offering his own.
He murmured something and let his head drop so he could feather his lips against the edge of her jaw, almost an apology.
“Being soft hasn’t served me, omorfiá mou . Any weakness I’ve shown has been exploited. You’re already a vulnerability on my part. I have to be careful how great a weakness I let you become.”
She couldn’t help her small sob of hurt.
His gaze filled with consternation. “Look at the way I coerced you into marrying me, so I could have this.” He slid his big body against her, domineering and thrilling as he withdrew and returned, every bit as overwhelming as always. “I want you exactly where you are, Stella. I’ll give you anything you want to keep you right here. That’s not the behavior of an honorable man.”
“I don’t want things, though. I only want you.”
She couldn’t have him, though. Not in the way he had her. She could see it in the way his expression remained impervious as he moved again, watching her, ensuring her pleasure with each thrust. Inflicting pleasure on her, tender but merciless, until she was digging her nails into his shoulder, cresting the hill, sobbing in joy.
Then he cradled her and murmured Greek endearments into her hair and did it again.
* * *
Atlas kept reminding himself that if he had engaged himself to Iris, Oliver still would have dragged out his retirement plans. The only difference would have been the amount of leverage Atlas would have had to make it happen.
By taking Stella as his wife, and making that declaration at Oliver’s party, Atlas had thrown down a gauntlet, putting pressure on everyone to pick a side. He didn’t have the luxury of patience, not if he wanted to strike that deal with Zamos.
Oliver, in typical fashion, didn’t see the wisdom of jumping on an opportunity. He was fighting Atlas’s efforts, gathering his forces and leaning on allies, trying to convince the board that Atlas had lost his judgment and that Stella had trapped him with her feminine wiles.
Atlas was on his own charm tour, proving that his leadership continued to be rock-solid, but he couldn’t help wondering if there was a grain of truth in Oliver’s snide accusations. He had married Stella for carnal reasons. He wanted her all the time .
He wanted to believe this frustrated urgency, this sensation that something remained beyond his reach, was caused by the tenuousness of his future with DVE. That once the board backed him, and he had what he’d sought for nearly two decades, he would finally feel settled.
But he had this feeling that Stella wasn’t his, even though she was at his side unfailingly. They spent two weeks in Australia where he shored up his position there and in the Asian sectors, then visited America on their way back to Europe.
Stella did everything she could to assist him. She dressed the part, played gracious hostess, learned who was who, and was always so sincerely curious about people they fell straight under her spell.
Her support felt strange to Atlas. He had never had a partner. He’d had a grandfather and mother who had sacrificed too much on his behalf. He had had coaches and teammates who encouraged him, but he alone had done the work in the water. His sister had always undermined him out of fear and his father had held him back out of a similar sense of vanity and threat. Even his allies on the board were more concerned with their own interests than his.
Stella wanted him to succeed. Not for her sake, but for his.
It was a disconcerting dynamic, especially because Atlas saw himself as her protector. He remembered what it had been like to come into the world of high society, of boys’ clubs and catty cliques. She might not be chronically shy, but she was sensitive and private and, because of his celebrity status, much of her life was already on display and up for judgment.
She faced all of it head-on with warmth and grace.
And, as of tonight, was helping him achieve a small win he doubted he would have had otherwise.
“Stella,” Alexandra Zamos greeted them as they entered the ballroom of an Athens hotel. “We’re so glad you two were able to make it. Hello, Atlas. It’s good to see you again. Congratulations on your recent marriage. How lovely.”
“Thank you for inviting us.” He kissed the cheeks she offered while Rafael did the same to Stella. He heard Stella ask after their son and Rafael assured her he was well.
“This is not my first fundraising event, sir,” Alexandra admonished cheekily. “New husbands are notoriously generous. I’ll leave you to peruse the jewelry in the silent auction while I introduce your bride to people she absolutely must meet.”
Alexandra pulled Stella into the crowd. The itch of her absence immediately got under Atlas’s skin.
“This invitation really was about raising money, then?” Atlas asked Rafael. He had made it clear he wouldn’t work with DVE so long as Oliver was in charge, but things might have changed on his end.
“Sasha is very passionate about helping teens and young women who’ve been preyed on by powerful men. She’s been wanting to check in with Stella.” Rafael brought his flinty gaze to Atlas, telling him those two statements were not unrelated. “Your marriage was very sudden.”
Atlas held his gaze, not flinching at the insult even though it felt like a spit in the face. “I just let her walk into the jungle with your wife. Should I be worried?”
“No.” Rafael’s gaze flashed with affront. “Sasha likes her.”
“So do I,” Atlas drawled. “We had our reasons for moving quickly.” One of which was definitely Rafael’s business, but he wouldn’t show all his cards.
“There are rumors your father is on his way out.”
“We’ll see.” Eighty percent of executive conversation was poker, but this was too important to bluff. “We’re heading to London next week for quarterlies. Announcements will be made then.”
Ah, there she was. His scanning gaze had finally spotted Stella conversing with a handful of people. She was smiling, looking relaxed and engaged. Some of his tension eased.
“I see some people I need to speak with, but there’s a tennis bracelet of blue and white sapphires I expect you’ll want for Stella. They’ll go nicely with her ring. Be warned. I plan to run up your bids. I like to see my wife smile, too.”
Atlas prickled, feeling caught revealing his crush on his own wife, but Rafael was already walking away.
The other man wasn’t wrong, though. It cost him a pretty penny, but the bracelet was perfect for Stella. He made sure that he won it for her.