CHAPTER THREE
EMMIE’SHANDSWERE still trembling as the two of them went out into the sunlight as if nothing had happened, nothing at all.
After her startling words—startling to her, if not to him—Theo had given her a searching look, then he’d abruptly said, “I’m hungry. Let’s talk over lunch.”
Outside the church, the colors of her vibrant Queens neighborhood, tiny restaurants with fragrant, unrecognizable spices, and little shops with cheerful clothing fluttering outside swirled around her in a blurry carousel. She blinked, blinded by the blue sky. Blinded by the decision she’d just made.
“It’s over there,” Theo said, nodding.
“What is?”
“My bike.”
Following his gaze, Emmie saw an expensive motorcycle parked arrogantly in the fire lane halfway down the street, a single helmet hanging from the handlebars. “You expect me to ride that?”
“Why not?”
“How would I even hold on to you? With this belly!”
Theo considered her baby bump, then sighed, reaching into his pocket for his phone. “I’ll call Bernard.”
Bernard Oliver was Theo’s chauffeur in New York. But it would take at least thirty minutes for him to drive to Queens. And between them and the motorcycle, she saw clusters of her neighbors and friends in festive hats and their best jackets still filing out of the front steps of the church. Any moment now, they’d turn and see her and Theo at the corner.
She had no intention of spending a half hour answering questions from neighbors. Or letting them see her picked up by Theo’s chauffeured Rolls-Royce.
As Theo started to walk ahead, she grabbed his arm. “Let’s wait at my apartment. It’s not far. We can walk.”
His aquiline nose scrunched. “Walk?”
She snorted a laugh. For a man who spent countless hours in boxing gyms and ran marathons, it was hilarious how scandalized he was by the idea of a short walk down the street.
“Yes, walk.” She tugged his hand. “Come on.”
Emmie dropped his hand as soon as they turned and started walking. It was too hard to touch him. It did strange things to her. Not just her body but her heart.
The kiss he’d given her was still burning through her, from her fingertips to her hair to her toes. That kiss had been so shocking, so overwhelming, it had given her strength to say something the powerful Theo Katrakis almost never heard.
No.
She’d been scared to marry him, scared that he’d end up seducing her body and pillaging her soul, leaving her nothing but an empty husk for the rest of her life.
But when Emmie had gone back alone into the church, something made her change her mind and decide to marry Theo after all.
She’d found her father alone. He’d already told the guests no wedding would happen today so they might as well leave. He’d told his sons they’d already done what they could for Emmie, and they should leave and let the two lovebirds sort themselves out.
But Karl himself had lingered, just in case his daughter needed support. So when Emmie returned, she’d found him alone. They had spoken quietly in a half-shadowed, empty chapel.
“I can’t marry him, Dad,” she said bleakly. “He’ll never love me.”
“But you think you could love him?”
She felt a lump in her throat. “Yes.”
Her father looked down at the patterns of red and blue and yellow light from the stained glass, pooling against the cool flagstones. Then he lifted his head.
“Your mother was pregnant with you when I married her. You knew that.”
She bit her lip. They’d never talked about it. She nodded reluctantly. “I was born six months after your wedding date, so it wasn’t hard to figure out.”
Karl gave a crooked smile. “Margie didn’t love me, either. Not then. She said no the first three times I proposed to her.” He ducked his head to surreptitiously wipe his eyes. “When she finally said yes, I vowed to make her happy. And I think I did.”
“Of course you did.” It was startling to think of her romantic, idealistic mother ever not wanting to marry her father. Emmie put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Mom loved you with all her heart.”
“It took a while.” He gave her a watery smile, then sobered. “If she hadn’t said yes, your brothers would never have been born. We would never have been a family.”
The thought of that had been so awful, imagining her family disappearing, that Emmie caught her breath.
Her father tilted his head. “If you think you could love Katrakis, well, that’s a start, isn’t it? And as for him loving you...” His voice trailed off as he gave her a warm smile, his eyes gleaming suspiciously in the dim light. “How could he not? Just give him time.”
Time.Emmie didn’t think any amount of time could ever make Theo Katrakis love anyone. But in the time it took for her to say farewell to her father and walk back through the side door into the reception hall, Emmie changed her mind.
She would marry Theo. She couldn’t imagine not giving her own baby what she’d had: a happy childhood, in spite of all their money worries and the agony of her mother fighting cancer for ten years. How could she possibly justify saying no? Her baby’s happiness mattered more to Emmie than her own.
And as for her fear of loving Theo—
Why, it was simple, she thought suddenly as she followed him down the street now. Their marriage just needed a few conditions.
One of those conditions would be that their baby would never have siblings, which was a shame. But it would protect her from inevitable heartbreak—especially because she knew she’d never be enough for Theo and he’d soon grow bored with her anyway. So instead of a romantic, passionate partnership, what if, from the beginning, they strove instead for a deep friendship, based on mutual respect? And trust. Trust most of all.
It was the only way to make their marriage endure.
And yet...
Emmie’s memory lingered on that kiss of pure fire he’d given her at the altar. She touched her bruised lips. Her condition would mean there’d be no more kisses, luring her into being reckless, luring her into danger. For the rest of her life.
“Look out.”
Theo’s strong arm suddenly blocked her path. A beat-up car honked loudly as it whizzed past.
Emmie gasped, realized she’d almost stepped into traffic on the street.
With her center of gravity already so off-kilter, she stumbled back, staggering in her tight mermaid skirt, falling back to the sidewalk—
Theo caught her. As their eyes locked, her white veil was caught by the breeze, whirling around them, lifting upward.
Sunlight frosted his dark hair, framing him with blue sky, making his black eyes luminous. She felt the strength of his body against hers, his powerful chest beneath his snug black T-shirt. The shape and power of his thickly muscled arms beneath her hands.
Her gaze fell to his mouth, and she shivered, breathless with sudden longing...
No!
“Pull me up,” she gasped. Struggling, she said hoarsely, “Let me go!”
Wordlessly, he set her on her feet. Cheeks hot, she ducked her head, turning to point at a two-story building on the next corner. “That’s it.”
Careful not to touch him, she led him past the street-level store emblazoned with old neon from her grandfather’s day in loopy cursive lettering: Swenson and Sons Plumbing. They reached a nondescript door. Typing in the security code, she led him up the stairs to the three-bedroom apartment where her family had always lived.
“Come in,” she said. “It’ll only take me a minute to change.”
“I’ll call Bernard and tell him where...” Theo’s voice trailed off as he looked around the living room.
Following his gaze, Emmie saw their cozy, too-small home in a new light. It suddenly looked shabby and cluttered. In the mad scramble before the wedding that morning, the sofa bed where her brother Joe slept had been left a mess of tangled sheets. Dirty clothes from various brothers were strewn over the floor. The kitchen table was covered with piles of empty pizza boxes from last night’s dinner, with yesterday’s dirty dishes stacked in the sink.
Her cheeks went hot as she followed his gaze.
“I didn’t have time to cook last night or tidy up as usual,” she stammered. “I was busy with the wedding cake...”
“You made that? Yourself?” Theo’s dark eyebrows rose, then he licked his lips. “It was good.”
“How do you know?”
Not answering, Theo looked around. “You do the cooking and cleaning for your family,” he said slowly, “as well as supporting them financially?”
She stiffened, sensing some criticism of her father. She said defensively, “My family’s had a hard time since my mother died—”
“Even before that, you were sending your father most of your paycheck.” When she jolted in surprise, Theo tilted his head in amusement. “Do you think I didn’t know why you first agreed to work for me?”
Emmie ducked her head, embarrassed. “There were medical bills,” she mumbled. “My father’s hopeless with anything that doesn’t require a hand tool, and my brothers, well—” she smiled weakly “—they wouldn’t see a mess if they tripped on it.”
“I see.” He turned away, looking from the dated, worn furniture to the sparkling-clean windows and old carpet beneath her brothers’ discarded clothes, which still had lines from the vacuum cleaner she’d used yesterday morning. Faded photographs, school photos, and black-and-white images of her grandparents lined the walls, covering faded wallpaper.
She flinched a little. She could only imagine what he was thinking. Theo Katrakis could have his pick of gorgeous, glamorous women, heiresses, royalty, movie stars. Was he already regretting the surprise pregnancy that had forced him to propose marriage to a plain, plump nobody from Queens?
She turned away. “Wait here. It’ll just take me a moment to pack.”
“Don’t bother. You won’t need anything.”
Emmie turned back to him. “What do you mean? Won’t we live at your penthouse after we’re married?”
He looked over her wedding dress. “Tell me you’re not planning to wear that again.”
“No,” she said, insulted by his obvious opinion of her mother’s gown. Even if she herself had been thinking it was ugly earlier, that didn’t give him the same right.
Theo shook his head. “Then, there’s nothing for you to pack. Especially not those bargain-bin pantsuits.”
They’d been more than a bargain. She’d gotten the suits used from a thrift store for five dollars each. But he didn’t need to know that. She lifted her chin. “Maybe I like those bargain pantsuits. Did you ever think of that?”
His dark eyes challenged her. “Do you?”
She glared at him, then sighed. “No. Not really. But I have better things to think about and better ways to spend money.”
“I thought so. That all changes now. You’ll need an entirely new wardrobe as my wife.”
“Why?” she said suspiciously. “What do you expect me to do?”
Theo’s lips curved. “Be at my side at parties, charity balls, dinners with presidents and royalty.” Ticking off the items with his fingers, he tilted his head thoughtfully. “Be the hostess of my homes around the world.”
Worse and worse. Emmie had always told herself that her plain appearance didn’t matter, not as long as she was clean and tidy and competent. Her boss was the important one, not her. But that was when she’d been his secretary. As his wife...
She shuddered. There was no way she could compete with socialites and debutantes!
Theo stroked his chin, watching her as he continued. “You’ll be a leader of society,” he mused. “A noted tastemaker.”
She stiffened at the wicked gleam in his eye.
“In that case,” she responded tartly, “the style next season will be whatever’s on final clearance at Goodwill.”
He snorted, then came closer. Reaching out, Theo smoothed back a long tendril of her hair.
“Give your new life a chance,” he said softly. His dark eyes fell to her mouth. “It might be fun.”
Oh, no. She wasn’t going to let that happen, ever again. The kiss he’d given her at the altar still consumed her. Just his touch on the sidewalk, when he’d caught her in his arms to keep her from falling, had reverberated through her body. Nervously, she turned away.
“I’ll be just a minute,” she said again and fled down the hall to her bedroom, closing the door behind her.
The tiny bedroom, barely bigger than a closet, still had the travel posters of France and Greece she’d put on the walls as a teenager, long before her mother got sick. Old novels still lined the single shelf on the wall, beside a few beloved stuffed animals from her childhood. Her grandmother’s homemade quilt covered her twin bed.
Emmie bit her lip. There was no way she’d let Theo see this—the bedroom of a teenager, a decade old, still frozen in time. Turning away, she grabbed an old duffel from beneath her bed and packed a few precious things, photo books, her stuffed bunny from childhood, tiny onesies she’d already bought for her coming baby. After a moment of thought, she decided to leave the secretarial pantsuits behind. He was right. There was no way Mrs. Theo Katrakis could dress like that. She tossed in some underwear and socks, a few stretchy T-shirts and maternity shorts and some shoes. That was it.
Taking off her wedding dress and kicking off her three-inch white pumps, she exhaled, relieved to leave the hot, constricting clothing behind. She spread her mother’s gown carefully on her quilt. She’d have to arrange for it to be dry cleaned and packed away.
She pulled a loose cotton sundress over her ungainly body and stuck her feet into flip-flops. Going to the small shared bathroom, Emmie washed the makeup off her face and pulled all the bobby pins out of the bun, letting her hair fall in soft waves over her shoulders.
She felt like she was free, like she could breathe again.
As long as she didn’t think about the man she was about to marry. And what he’d say when he heard about her three conditions of marriage:
First, that they’d live in New York.
Second, that he’d help her family with anything they needed.
And third, that they’d never sleep together again. Ever.
Theo’s eyes widened as Emmie returned to the cramped living room of her family’s second-floor apartment.
That hideous wedding dress and veil were gone. Emmie now wore a simple sleeveless white cotton sundress and flip-flops. Her face was bare of makeup, her dark blond hair long over her shoulders. His gaze unwillingly lingered on the way it brushed over her collarbones and soft skin.
“Forget it,” he said abruptly into his phone. “We’ll find our own way. Just pick up the Ducati.”
“Who was that?” she asked as he hung up. She was struggling with the handles of a duffel bag that looked fifty years old. Coming around the sofa, he plucked it from her hands.
“Bernard,” he answered. “He says there’s some politician at the UN choking traffic. He’s stuck in congestion by the Midtown Tunnel.”
She tilted her head, smiling, and he thought how pretty she was when her violet-blue eyes glowed like that. “So how are you thinking we’ll get to Manhattan? Taxi? Rideshare?”
“Sit in the sticky back seat of some stranger?” He shuddered. Setting down the duffel, he typed a search on his phone.
“Subway?” she suggested. “The bus?”
“Bus.”He looked up, aghast, then saw her teasing grin. She clearly thought he was being rather silly, which he supposed he was, at least when it came to walking long city blocks or being packed like a sardine into mass transit. But his year living on the streets of Athens at fifteen, trudging sidewalks looking for food or work, trying to slouch in the back rows of buses and train stations long enough to sleep, had been enough for his lifetime. Not that he’d ever tell anyone about that. Turning back to his phone, Theo said, “There’s a car dealership two blocks from here.”
Emmie’s nose wrinkled. “I know. The gentrification is getting ridiculous. Some of my neighbors tried to fight it, but...where are you going?”
“I’m walking there.” He paused to let that sink in. He didn’t want to be too predictable. His gaze fell to her belly beneath her loose sundress. “Do you want to wait here? I can come back and pick you up.”
“I can walk two blocks,” she said dryly. “I just didn’t know you could.”
Carelessly lifting the bag with one hand, he flashed her a sharklike grin. “I’m willing to suffer for a good cause.”
As they walked side by side down the lively block, Emmie kept glancing at him through her lashes, as if she were trying to work up to something.
So was he. Theo had no idea how to convince her to sign the prenuptial agreement that would be waiting for them at his penthouse beside their lunch spread. But she had to sign it. His attorney had been very definite about that.
“No prenup, no marriage,” he’d insisted to Theo on the phone. “Do you understand, Mr. Katrakis? Do I need to remind you what happened to Bill Gates? Jeff Bezos?” He’d paused. “Robert Romero?”
Theo still shivered at the memory. It was true Bezos and Gates had lost a tidy bundle after prenup-free divorces, but at least those marriages had been long and their wives had helped create those fortunes.
Robert Romero was something else. The self-made frozen-foods tycoon had married a twenty-one-year-old waitress, only to have her file for divorce when they returned from their honeymoon. With her lawyer’s help, she’d taken most of the man’s fortune. Romero had ended up destitute, shamed, mocked; he died of a heart condition six months later. Whether his heart was broken from losing love or his fortune was an open question.
Mae Baker Romero, the young ex-wife, still lived in a high-rise not too far from Theo’s, in a swanky penthouse overlooking Central Park. Called Killer by her friends, she often appeared in gossip columns, flashing her big, bright smile and even bigger and brighter diamonds.
Theo shuddered. Every wealthy bachelor in New York knew the story of Robert Romero.
But how could he convince Emmie to sign the prenup, without her feeling insulted and telling him to forget the whole thing? How could he be diplomatic enough to soften the blow, and seduce, and persuade?
He slanted a sideways glance at her.
In bed, he thought. Obviously. When she was close—hell, even when she’d been thousands of miles away—it was difficult for Theo to think of anything but making love to her. He’d made shocking mistakes because his brain ceased working beneath the onslaught of his desire.
Surely, Emmie had the same problem with him.
Surely?
He recalled how she’d trembled beneath his kiss, her hands gripping him tight. When he’d released her, she’d looked up at him like someone newly woken from a dream. That decided it.
Bed.
Bed, his body agreed fervently.
Walking together through the neighborhood, they arrived at the small used-car dealership about fifteen minutes later. It only took five minutes for Theo to select the best on the lot, a pristine cherry-red 1971 Barracuda convertible. It would be a nice addition to his vintage collection, he thought, as well as quick transportation back to Manhattan. He reached for his wallet.
“No,” Emmie said.
Theo frowned, turning to her. The salesman stared at the credit card in his hand intently, vibrating like a dog waiting for a particularly choice bit of meat to drop to the floor. “What do you mean no?”
“I’m not getting in that thing.” She looked at the low convertible doubtfully. “Even if I could lower myself into the seat, I’d never get up again.”
“You’ll be fine—”
“Forget it.”
As they glared at each other, he suddenly missed the old days when he could override her, when he was demonstrably, undoubtedly the boss.
But even then, sometimes they’d battled, usually when she’d decided to stand her ground in order to prevent him from doing something foolish. Like when his private jet had landed for emergency repairs in Florida and he’d nearly bought thousands of acres of swampland out of sheer boredom. Or the time he’d nearly sold an expensive Tokyo property for a single yen because he’d been annoyed his favorite noodle shop was closed.
On second thought, maybe he should let her win this one. Even if it was damned irritating. Setting his jaw, he demanded, “What exactly do you have in mind?”
Her expressive eyes shifted past him on the car lot, and she smiled. “That.”