“Really?” he said, not hiding the startled uptick in his tone.
She didn’t let herself waver. Maybe this was out of character, but this was her new life. She was tossing off fear of reprisal, embracing the freedom to follow impulse.
“I miss Greece. My aunt let us run wild here. In Katarini, not this island, but we’d do exactly this: tramp along the beach until we got hot then we’d strip to our underthings and jump in.”
“Your aunt was a nudist?” he surmised.
“A free spirit. She never married, never had children—” Here Adara faltered briefly. “I intend to emulate her from now on.”
She shed her shorts and ran into the water in her bra and panties, feeling terribly exposed as she left her decision to never have children evaporating on the sizzling sand.
The clear, cool water rose to her waist within a few splashing steps. She fell forward and ducked under, arrowing deep into the silken blur filled with the muted cacophony of creaks and taps and swishing currents.
When her lungs were ready to burst, she shot up for air, blinking the water from her eyes and licking the salt from her lips, baptized into a new version of herself. The campy phrase the first day of the rest of your life came to her with a pang of wistful anticipation.
Gideon’s head appeared beside her, his broad shoulders flexing as he splayed out his arms to keep himself afloat. His dark lashes were matted and glinting, his thick hair sleeked back off his face, exposing his angular bone structure and taking her breath with his action-star handsomeness. The relief of being in the cool water relaxed his expression, while his innate confidence around the water—in any situation, really—made him incredibly compelling.
She would miss that sense of reliability, she acknowledged with a hitch of loss.
“I’ve never tried to curb your independence,” he asserted. “Marrying me gained you your freedom.”
They’d never spoken so bluntly about her motives. She’d only stated in the beginning that she’d like to keep working until they had a family, but he knew her better after her confession today. He was looking at her as though he could see right into her.
It made her uncomfortable.
“Marrying at all was a gamble,” she acknowledged with a tentative honesty that caused her veins to sting with apprehension. “But you’re right. I was fairly sure I’d have more control over my life living with you than I had with my father.”
She squinted against the glare off the water as she silently acknowledged that she’d learned to use Gideon to some extent, pitting him against her father when she wanted something for herself. Not often and not aggressively, just with a quiet comment that Gideon would prefer this or that.
“You had women working for you in high-level positions,” she noted, remembering all the minute details that had added up to a risk worth taking. “You were shocked that I didn’t know how to drive. You fired that man who was harassing your receptionist. I was reasonably certain my life with you would be better than it was with my father so I took a chance.” She glanced at him, wondering if he judged her harshly for advancing her interests through him.
“So what’s changed?” he challenged. “I taught you to drive. I put you in charge of the hotels. Do you want more responsibility? Less? Tell me. I’m not trying to hem you in.”
No, Gideon wasn’t a tyrant. He was ever so reasonable. She’d always liked that about him, but today that quality put her on edge. “Lexi—”
“—is a nonissue,” he stated curtly. “Nothing happened and do you know why? Because I thought you were having an affair and got myself on a plane and chased you down. I didn’t even think twice about it. Why didn’t you do that? Why didn’t you confront me? Why didn’t you ask me why I’d even consider letting another woman throw herself under me?”
“You don’t have to be so crude about it!” She instinctively propelled herself backward, pushing space between herself and the unbearable thought of him sleeping with another woman. She hadn’t been able to face it herself, let along confront him, not with everything else that had happened.
“You said we don’t talk,” he said with pointed aggression. “Let’s. You left me twisting with sexual frustration. Having an affair started to look like a viable option. If you didn’t want me going elsewhere, why weren’t you meeting my needs at home?”
“I did! I—”
“Going down isn’t good enough, Adara.”
His vulgarity was bad enough, but it almost sounded like a critique and she resented that. She tried hard to please him and could tell that he liked what she did, so why did he have to be so disparaging about it?
Unbearably hurt, she kicked toward shore, barely turning her head to defend, “I was pregnant. What else could I do?”
How he reacted to that news she didn’t care. She just wanted to be away from him, but as her toes found cold, thick sand, she halted. Leaving the water suddenly seemed a horribly exposing thing to do. How stupid to think she could become a new person by shedding a few stitches of clothing. She was the same old worthless Adara who couldn’t even keep a baby in her womb.
The sun seared across her shoulders. Her wet hair hung in her eyes and she kept her arms folded tightly across her chest, trying to hold in the agony.
She felt ridiculous, climbing down to this silly beach that was impossible to leave, revealing things that were intensely personal to her and wouldn’t matter at all to him.
“What did you say?” He was too close. She flinched, feeling the sharpness of his voice like the tip of a flicking whip.
“You heard me,” she managed to say even though her throat was clogging. She clenched her eyes shut, silently begging him to do what he always did. Say nothing and give her space. She didn’t want to do this. She never, ever wanted to do this again.