She breathed out slowly. ‘I know that you want this week to be some kind of first step towards me changing my mind about marrying you, but that’s not why I’m here,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m happy for you to be in George’s life but, honestly, something truly incredible—unimaginable, in fact—would have to happen for me to want to be your wife again. So could we drop this, please?’
He didn’t respond, but she could sense a shift in his mood, sense something slipping away.
‘What alternative is there?’
The bluntness of his question caught her off-guard. ‘I don’t know. The usual options, I suppose. Shared custody. Holidays and weekends—What?’
He was shaking his head and she felt a flare of anger.
‘We don’t work as a couple. You know that.’ She stared at him, a beat of frustration pulsing in her chest. ‘So stop pretending that marriage is an option.’
His eyes hardened. ‘Only if you stop being so stubborn and try see it from my perspective for once.’
She glared at him. ‘We should never have got married in the first place, so why would I ever want to do it again? In fact—’ she took a breath, and straightened her shoulders ‘—why would you ever want to do it again? No, please, Aristo—just explain to me why you’d want to do something that made you so unhappy and angry.’
Aristo stared back at her in silence, his heart pressing against his ribs, caught off-guard by this unexpected and startling assessment of their relationship. ‘I wasn’t angry,’ he said finally. ‘I was confused because you were so dissatisfied.’
He watched her shake her head.
‘Angry...dissatisfied...what does it matter anyway? We were both unhappy, so why would we do it again?’
His chest tightened and he felt a rush of anger and frustration with her for pushing—and with himself for thinking she would understand.
Before he could stop himself—before he even fully understood what he was about to do—he said, ‘Because I know what it feels like when your father turns into a stranger.’
Listening to his words bounce around the quiet cabin, he felt his back tense and a hum of panic start to sing inside his head. What was he thinking? He’d never discussed his past with anyone. Ever. So why choose this of all moments to start spilling his guts about his childhood?
There was a tiny, sharp silence, like a splinter of ice, and through his dark lashes he could sense her confusion.
‘I thought you inherited the business from your father?’ she said slowly.
‘I did.’ His voice sounded sharp, too sharp, but he didn’t care. He just stared past her, his back aching.
‘So, when did he—?’ She stopped, frowned, and then tried again. ‘How is he a stranger? Did something happen? Did you argue?’
Looking up, he found her watching him, and for a second he felt light-headed, almost as though he was floating. He was shocked to see not just confusion in her wide green eyes, but genuine concern too.
He hesitated. Now the words were out, he wasn’t sure what to say next, or what Teddie was expecting to hear. The truth, probably. But the truth was way more complex and revealing than he could bring himself to admit, and to Teddie most of all.
‘No, we didn’t argue,’ he said finally, with a firmness that he hoped would dissuade further discussion. ‘Just forget about it.’
Teddie stared at him uncertainly, her mind doing cartwheels. She felt as if she had stepped through a wardrobe into a strange new country. This was not the Aristo she knew.
But then what did she really know about her aloof, uncompromising ex-husband? Their relationship hadn’t been based on mutual interests or friends. The first few weeks of their affair had been carried out long-distance, and those long phone calls that she’d so come to enjoy had been about the present—his latest deal, her hotel room—and how much they missed one another, how much they missed making love.
They had never once been about their pasts or their families. She hadn’t asked and he hadn’t volunteered—and in a way hadn’t she been grateful? In fact, she might even have encouraged it. She’d certainly discouraged speculation about her background and awkwar
d conversations about her own parents. Maybe a part of her had even found it romantic that he’d wanted it to be just about the two of them.
Now, though, it seemed his reticence had been based not on romance, or the speed of their relationship, but something more fundamental.
Watching Aristo rub the corners of his eyes, Teddie felt a sudden ache of misery, for it was exactly the same gesture that George made when he was tired or upset. And suddenly she knew why he was so insistent that they remarry.
‘Did they get divorced?’
The question sounded ludicrously, simplistically trite, but she didn’t know how else to begin—how else to get past that shuttered expression on his face. All she knew was that it had taken six months of a failed marriage and four years of separation to get to this moment, and she wasn’t about to back off now. Even if that meant nudging at the boundaries of what he clearly considered off-limits.
Finally, he nodded. ‘When I was six.’