“He didn’t convince Nic he’d married him, did he? He didn’t sleep with Nic and make him believe in a fantasy!” He hadn’t resuscitated Nic’s heart back to life only to crush it under his boot heel. She could never, ever forget that.
“He didn’t take over the hotels the way he could have,” Theo challenged. “If anything, he kept us afloat until now, when we’re finally undoing the damage our father did. He could have robbed us blind the minute the will was read. We all owe him for not doing that. I haven’t slept,” Theo added gruffly. “Call me later if you want any clarification on that balance sheet for Paris.”
He left her staring at the envelope that seemed less snake oil and more snake, coiled in a basket and ready to strike the moment she disturbed the contents.
Throw it in the incinerator, she thought. Theo didn’t know what he was talking about. The difference here was that their mother had loved and lied while Gideon had purely lied. He didn’t love her. That final, odd comment he’d made about his ability to love not being in question had been a last-ditch effort to cling to the life he had built no matter what he had to do.
Thinking of their child growing up in the same hostile atmosphere she’d known made her stomach turn, though. She didn’t want to wield her sense of betrayal like a weapon, damaging everyone close to her.
Maybe if she understood why he’d done it, she’d hate him less. Theo was right about Gideon always being connected to her, no matter how awkward that would be. She would have to rise above her bitterness and learn to be civil to him.
Lowering to the sofa, she opened the envelope and shook out the printed screen shots of clippings and police reports and email chains. Through the next hours she combed through the pieces Nic had gathered, fitting them into a cracked, bleak image of a baby born from a girl abused by her stepfather. The girl’s mother had thrown her out when she became pregnant. A ragtag community of dockworkers, social services and street people had tried to help the adolescent keep herself and her beloved son clothed and fed.
It seemed Gideon had been truthful about one thing: his mother had possessed a strong maternal instinct. Delphi had been urged more than once to put him up for adoption, but was on record as stating no one could love him as much as she did. While not always successful at keeping a roof over their heads, she’d done all a girl of her age could, working every low-end, unsavory job possible without resorting to selling drugs or sex.
Sadly, a nasty element working the docks had decided she didn’t have to accept money for her body. It could be taken anyway. Adara cried as she read how the young woman had met such a violent end. She cried even harder, thinking of a young boy seeing his mother like that, beaten and raped and left to die.
Blowing her nose, she moved on to the account of Delphi’s friends from low places doing the improbable: going to the police and demanding a search for Delphi’s son. Here Nic had done the legwork on a trail that the police had let go cold. Taking the thin thread of Delphi’s last name, he had tied it to a crew list from a freighter ship dated years later. The name Vozaras was there too, but the first name was Kristor.
A side story took off on a tangent about smuggling, but nothing had been proven. The only charges considered had been for underage labor and somehow that had been dropped.
Adara wiped at a tickle on her cheek as she absorbed the Dickensian tale of a boy who should have been in school, learning and being loved by a family. He’d been aboard a freighter instead, doing the work of a man. No wonder he was such a whiz with all things sea related. He had literally grown up on a ship.
Considering the deprivation he’d known, the loss of his mother and lack of—as he’d told her himself once—anyone caring about him, it was a wonder he’d turned into a law-abiding citizen at all. When she thought of all the little ways he had looked out for her, even before Greece, when he’d do those small things like make sure she was under the umbrella or huge things like finagle her into running the hotel chain despite her father’s interference from the grave, she was humbled.
Perhaps he had been self-serving when he’d agreed to marry her, but he’d treated her far better than the man who was supposed to love and care for her ever had.
She’d been avoiding thinking back to Greece and all that had happened since, but she couldn’t ignore his solicitude and protectiveness any longer. He could have let her risk her neck climbing down that cliff alone; he could have sent her to her brother’s alone. His actions had gone above and beyond those of a man only wanting to manipulate.
And when she recalled the warmth in his smile when he’d gazed at Evie, the pained longing in him when he’d talked about the loss of their own babies...
Even after that, when they’d been waiting out this pregnancy here, more than once she had glanced up unexpectedly and found a smile of pride softening his face. Half the time his eyes were on her bulging stomach, not even aware she was looking at him. Other times he was looking at her and always seemed to grin a bit ruefully after, as if he’d been caught in a besotted moment and felt sheepish for it.
He couldn’t fake all of that. Could he? His shattered control, just from touching her that last night, hadn’t been the response of a man who was unmoved and repulsed. He’d been as swept away as she had. Laughing, teasing, pulling her into him afterward as though she was his cherished stuffie.
She swallowed.
Theo was right about a few things. Despite the lack of a truly legal marriage, Gideon had been behaving like a husband and father so well, even she had believed they had a chance for a lifetime of true happiness.
Perhaps they had.
If she hadn’t ruined it by throwing him out for daring to reveal the darkest secrets closest to his soul.
She bit her lip, distantly aware of the physical pain, but the emotional anguish was far sharper. It wasn’t fair to imagine there had been another time in their lives when they’d been close enough to risk telling each other something so deeply personal. Look how long she’d masked that her father was a brute. If Gideon hadn’t followed her to Greece, she might never have told him about that last miscarriage. He’d had as much right to know about their loss as she had to know his name.
Oh, God.
Scanning the scattered papers with burning eyes, she wondered if he even knew this much about himself. She hurt so badly for him, completely understanding why he’d wanted to escape being the boy who had gone through all this and become someone else.
She hadn’t even given him a chance to tell his side of things. She was just like their father—a man she had never forgiven for the hurts he’d visited on all of them.
But after acting just like him, she couldn’t ask Gideon for another chance. Not when he’d taken such a huge risk and she’d condemned him for it. How could she expect him to forgive her when she’d never forgive herself?
* * *
It killed Gideon to do it, but he put together the necessary declaration of his identity and the rest of what was needed to dissolve their fake marriage. Then he had the paperwork couriered to the penthouse.
Adara wasn’t taking his calls. The least he could do was make things easier on her. Karen was reporting that everything was progressing fine, but all he could think was that Adara must be devastated by the loss of her mother on top of what he’d done to her. He was eating his heart out, aching every moment of every day, but he couldn’t badger her for a chance to explain himself. What was there to explain? He’d lied.
He wasn’t her husband.
So why was he personally reframing the apartment below their penthouse, executing the plans his architect had drawn up once they’d decided to stay in the city and expand their living space to two floors, creating a single master bedroom with a nursery off the side?
Because he was a fool. It was either this or climb on the next boat and never touch land again. The option kept tapping him on the shoulder, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to take it.
He couldn’t be that far away from the woman he regarded as his wife.
He stopped hammering, chest vibrating with the hollowness of loss.
Actually, that was his cell phone, buzzing in his pocket.
Setting aside the hammer, he saw the call was from Adara. His heart stopped as he hurried to remove his leather glove and accept the call.
“Babe?” The endearment left his lips as if he was sleeping beside her.
Nothing. Damn, he’d missed it. He started to lower the phone and reconnect, but heard a faint “You said you’d be here.”
“What?” He brought the phone to his ear.
“You said I wouldn’t have to go through this alone and that you’d be with me every second and the pains have started but you’re not here. You lied about that too.”
Adrenaline singed a path through his arteries and exploded in his heart. “You’re in labor?”
A sniff before she gritted out a resentful “Yes.”