Chapter Ten #3
She knew that at some point, she’d have to walk away. The terms of their divorce were already agreed upon, after all, and she couldn’t lose sight of that fact, no matter how good it felt to just be with him again. But for now, she wanted this.
‘You look stunning,’ he murmured, when she walked into the kitchen wearing a red dress with a low-cut neckline. ‘If a little overdressed.’ He indicated his own attire—just a pair of shorts.
Anxiety trembled inside of her—aware that she was on the brink of upsetting the apple cart and desperately wanting not to—but she pushed it aside.
They’d come so far; she could be honest with him, without ruining the good thing they had going on.
‘Actually, I’m going out,’ she said. ‘I have a dinner.’
His expression was immediately closed off to her—familiar, though she hadn’t seen him react like that in a week and a half. ‘I see.’
She could practically hear the questions forming inside his mind—questions she didn’t want him to ask, because she didn’t want to lie. ‘I won’t be late,’ she said, hoping it would assuage whatever he was going to say, and strolling around to put a hand on his chest. ‘Wait up for me?’
His eyes raked her face, a frown touching the corners of his lips, as he nodded once: a crisp, curt acknowledgement.
She let out a soft breath of relief then kissed him, her body immediately stirring to life. He pulled away though, his eyes distant. ‘Have fun.’
Her chest hurt as though a bag of cement had been pressed against it. She turned away quickly, wishing, more than anything that she could stay here with him instead.
Her hand was on the door, when he caught up with her. ‘You’re not going to say where you’re going?’
She closed her eyes against that, before turning to face him, lifting a hand to play with the diamond necklace she wore. ‘A birthday party,’ she said, after a beat.
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘For a friend?’
Her eyes were hooked to his. She wished he hadn’t asked. She shook her head, slowly.
‘I see. Someone I know?’
‘Theo—’
‘You weren’t going to tell me?’
‘It’s—’
‘Your father’s birthday.’
She pressed a hand to her brow, trying to think. ‘How did you know?’
‘Is it a secret?’
She bit into her lip. ‘No, but—’
‘I remember the date, Annie—it is a week before my foster mother’s birthday,’ he said, reminding her of that fact.
She swallowed past a constricted throat. ‘I have to go—you don’t.’
‘He’s my father-in-law,’ Theo pointed out.
‘Yes, but we both know how you feel about him.’
Silence sparked between them, the weight of what they were both feeling making it hard to wade through.
‘Are you forgetting why I suggested this marriage, agape?’ he asked, almost conversationally. ‘The whole point was to show your father, at every opportunity, that he lost, and I won. That he was wrong about me—about us.’
She felt like her heart was undergoing a series of electric shocks as she shook her head.
It was the truth, and yet she wanted to argue against it, to deny it.
That couldn’t really be at the heart of why he’d suggested this.
Not after the last week and a half. Not after how everything had changed between them.
Surely, that same angry hate didn’t still consume him?
‘It’s his birthday,’ she said, weakly, as her mind tried to keep up with this development.
‘And?’
She pressed a hand to his chest, eyes imploring. ‘Don’t do this, Theo.’
But his eyes were glittering with dark determination, and she barely recognised the man he’d become. ‘I will be ready soon. Knowing your father, I presume it’s black tie?’
She closed her eyes on a wave of despair. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Don’t pick this fight.’
But when she blinked up at him, Theo was gone.
A stone seemed to drop, right through her body, landing hard in her gut.
She pressed her back against a wall, sucking in a deep breath that hardly seemed to touch her lungs.
All Theo could do was stick to the plan. It was, as he’d pointed out to Annie, the reason he’d proposed this marriage. The thought of throwing their relationship in the face of the man who’d once told Theo that he was ‘pure scum and always would be’, was something he’d relished the thought of.
As for Annie, she’d just have to cope with that.
And yet, glancing across at her, as the car slid through the streets of Athens towards her family home, something gnawed at the edges of his gut, as awful as the pervasive hunger he’d known as a child.
Tension radiated from every line of her slim body.
It was evident in the way she clasped her hands in her lap, the way she refused to look at him.
He ached to do something to stir feelings in her, so she’d appear more like the wild, passionate, beautiful woman he’d been lusting after nonstop.
But sex—no matter how good—was just sex, and Annie was a woman he’d married as a means to an end. He owed himself this. Nothing could trump that—not even their chemistry.
So he sat in stony silence beside her, not reaching for her, not even to hold her hand.
There was no comfort he could give anyway, and he wouldn’t pretend otherwise. For as long as his plan was to hurt her father, to make him eat crow, using Annie as a tool for that, he could hardly expect Annie not to mind.
As the car pulled to a halt in the busy driveway of their mansion, he did reach for her though, putting a hand on her knee and drawing her churning gaze to his face.
‘I want you to remember two things, Annie,’ he said, his voice heavy with loathing for the words he was about to speak. Hating himself then, even when he didn’t dare question his commitment to this plan.
She was almost unrecognizable, with her pretty face so pale and pinched. ‘Yes?’ Her voice was barely a whisper.
He clenched his jaw, hesitating a moment, to draw strength.
‘At the end of this marriage, your father will be a very rich man again. That’s all you care about, remember? That’s why you came to me. You’re getting what you wanted. What you agreed to.’
She fidgeted with her fingers so violently he had to fight an urge to reach out and clamp his hand over them.
‘And the second?’
‘We have a deal. You play your part, just like we agreed, or the arrangement’s off.’
Her lips parted in surprise and whatever had been gnawing at his gut burst it apart completely. He put a hand on his door, opening it before he could take the words back, or at least apologise for what he was about to put her through.
Theodoros Leonidas didn’t do regret, or uncertainty or compassion. He was stronger than steel, determined and ruthless. Those things had stood him in good stead—he wouldn’t change now, not even for Annie.