So was it because Alex’s looks could be attributed to them, since they shared physical characteristics with Aristedes? Or was it their hatred of him, their belief that she wouldn’t be so stupid as to sleep with the enemy that made them unable to acknowledge the similarities? Alex did have Aristedes’s hair and eyes and chin and dimple….
Her heart twisted in her chest. Seeing the two of them together tonight had been…devastating.
Since she’d discovered her pregnancy, she’d been unable to stop herself from wondering what it would have been like if things had been…different with Aristedes.
But things were what they were. And there was no changing them. As she’d known for twelve years now.
She’d always told herself her severe crush on him was a dead end because of her family’s hatred of him. But she’d faced the truth of late—that the unfeasibility had been on account of his never expressing any interest in her. When he’d seemed so…prolific in his—cruelly fleeting and impersonal—interest in any unattached female who had thrown herself at his feet. That was why she’d always called herself every kind of fool for being besotted with him, not because he’d been the worst man possible to have a crush on.
Then that fateful day had come when he’d suddenly taken an interest in her, shown her that her fantasies of him had been lukewarm and pathetic. Her condition had gone from severe to distressing after those two transfiguring days in his bed.
But she hadn’t been able to face waking up with him as real life reasserted itself, to await in person his verdict of how they would carry on from there.
Underneath the assured businesswoman she presented to the world was an only-and-youngest daughter of a patriarchal family. With her mother dying when she was only two, all the males in her life had thought they were compensating her by being overprotective. They’d ended up being restrictive and patronizing, even if unintentionally. She’d grown up fighting for every inch of independence she’d gained, every iota of self-confidence she’d developed.
When it came to men, after her one attempt at commitment, to escape the futility of her infatuation with Aristedes, she’d always kept her interactions with them light and distant. She’d been resigned by then that no man would ever approach her solely for her own charms, but mostly for her family’s wealth and clout. Complicating her situation was Aristedes’s very existence. Anyone faded to nothing in any comparison with him.
So, after the uninhibited intimacies they’d drowned in together, she’d walked away, her old self-consciousness taking hold. She’d needed him to reassure her, this man in a class of his own, that he could want her for more than a two-night stand.
But he hadn’t even spared her a phone call.
Still, after her initial humiliation, she’d made excuses for him. Even after he’d eliminated Louvardis Enterprises from the contended contract only a week after her father’s death, she’d been stupid enough to think that had nothing to do with them, that he’d had to do what was in his business’s best interests. She’d kept telling herself that she couldn’t have imagined the power of what they’d shared, that he’d been with her every step of the way, that he’d want to take up where they’d left off.
She’d burned for any contact from him for months before she’d been forced to face it. He was exactly what everyone said he was. An unfeeling, power-addicted, moneymaking machine. And what she’d thought so powerful had been another forgettable sexual encounter to him and she another interchangeable lay.
She’d also been unable to blame him for taking what she’d insisted on offering. There hadn’t been the slightest implication of anything more, and she’d been stupid for having illusions, especially when she’d always known the truth.
She’d grown up knowing what fast and hard players were, from her brothers’ example. She knew there was a subspecies of men who were all for intense but ephemeral flings, but who considered any kind of real intimacy a terminal disease. And Aristedes was worse than all of them combined. Their fling hadn’t been ephemeral. It had been dizzying, devastating. And it had ended. End of story.
At least, it had been for him. For her, the story had just begun and would never end.
After coming to grips with the emotional upheaval of discovering her pregnancy, she’d told her brothers. After being stunned that their ultraresponsible, cerebral Selene was accidentally pregnant, they reverted to typical Greek male mode, demanded to know who the father was. She’d told them it was none of their business, just like it wasn’t the father’s. The baby was hers. And she was keeping him. Period.
And she’d had Alex. Even with all the hardships being a single parent entailed, he was the best thing that had ever happened to her. There had been times when she’d been worn-out enough to wish that she could have a partner in this, that Alex could have a father—Aristedes—not just his uncles for father figures. But each time reality had reasserted itself as soon as the weakness wiled those impossible wishes into her exhausted psyche. And after the first trying months passed, forging her into someone capable of weathering the daily trials of motherhood, she’d gotten more certain by the day that Aristedes would never impinge on their lives. He was gone, and he’d stay gone.
Then she’d walked in the Louvardis mansion foyer hours ago, and there he was.
Her heart lurched again at the memory of her first sight of him after all this time.
Even with his back to her, even just hearing his voice locked in a testosterone-driven verbal brawl with Nikolas, he’d brought the tempest of longings and insecurities crashing back through her, scattering her stability and self-assurance.
Only the need to drive him away—before his presence caused a ripple effect that would mess up her orderly existence—had made her announce herself and attempt to speed up his departure.
It had turned out to be the worst thing she could have done.
Was it any wonder? She seemed unable to make one decision, take one action, have one thought that didn’t end in catastrophe where Aristedes Sarantos was concerned.
Instead of walking away, she’d confronted him. Instead of playing along, she’d defied him. Instead of clawing his eyes out, she’d almost succumbed to the ecstasy only he wielded.
And her challenge had reignited his interest. He’d even offered to make her his Stateside mistress. Another flavor in the assortment of eager bodies he no doubt had in every port.