“Five years,” he suggested.
“That still puts me at thirty before I’m divorced and looking for a suitable father. No.”
“Five years, separation after three.”
“Are you really willing to go three years without sex? Or are you proposing an open arrangement?” She didn’t know why she asked. Yes, she did. Because it would humiliate her to sit at home while he was out getting his jollies with someone else. For the first time in her life, she felt a pinch of empathy for Odessa, forced to raise the consequence of her husband’s habitual wandering eye.
“We’ll keep it simple.” Leander made every statement sound as though it was an agreed decision that would go into a contract they were negotiating. “No affairs. Yes, I’m confident I can survive three years without sex. Why? What’s your record?”
Twenty-four years and four months, not that it was any of his business.
“I honestly don’t understand how you see this marriage benefiting you,” she said with fraying patience. “What would you gain beyond the ability to make my life difficult? I am not Midas, Leander. If you want to punish him, please highjack him into lunch and invite him to partake in your honeymoon of celibacy.”
“What I will get, glykiá mou, is your shares in Pagonis,” he explained with exaggerated patience and a self-satisfied smile. “They will be your wedding gift to me.”
“So you can dismantle and destroy the company my father’s grandfather started? I already told you I think that’s awful. I won’t facilitate it.”
“I’m not asking you to.” He sobered. “You made your point. Harming the workforce is poor justice and it won’t cause Midas to lose any sleep. No. I’ll use my influence to oust him instead.”
“As president? I admire your optimism, but if my portion in Pagonis afforded that sort of influence, I would have done it myself by now.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You said you pick your battles and you clearly don’t want one with him. I have more of a taste for blood. If someone picks a battle with me, I stay in it until I win.”
She didn’t doubt that for a second. If she wasn’t very careful, she would wind up married to him despite her best effort to avoid it.
“Be honest,” he cajoled. “Who would you rather see running Pagonis? Midas or me?”
“That’s not a fair question. I don’t know you.” She rolled the stem of her wineglass between her fingers, considering what she had read about him, once she had realized he was buying up shares in her company. Leander had seemed to innovate his way to the top of his field. He had taken big risks and leapt on opportunities—like shares in her company—but there weren’t any whiffs of bribery or other heinous tactics.
Unlike Midas, who was capable of anything.
“Is your recipe for low-carbon cement really yours?” she asked.
“There you go lumping me in with your brother again.” Leander curled his lip. “I don’t steal my innovations. I develop them myself. Answer my question.”
“I’m thinking.” She was thinking about having complete control over Callas without Midas interfering. She was thinking about Midas facing a comeuppance that was long overdue. Dear heaven, that was such a tempting vision.
However.
“You’re right. I don’t want a fight with Midas. He makes a ferocious enemy, as you must know. I’m not actually an object, Leander. Do you realize that? You want me to be your blade or bullet or pawn. That’s not how Midas will see it. He will see it as a betrayal. All this anger you have toward him will be gathered up by Midas and turned onto me. There is no win for me in what you’re proposing. At least while Callas is under the Pagonis umbrella, I have some protection.”
“I’m not going to let anyone, least of all that bastard, come after my wi—” Leander sat back, mouth setting into a grim line as his laser-sharp gaze fixed on something over her shoulder. “Speak of the devil. Did you tell him where we were?”
“Who? Midas?” Her heart came into her mouth and a wash of ice water went through her, stilling all the what-ifs and maybes that she had allowed to swirl inside her. She didn’t turn to look, saying woodenly, “My assistant likely did.”
“Why?”Leander’s infuriated gaze stayed on his enemy, but she felt his anger flaring out to encompass her, eroding the small degree of respect she’d earned from him.
It was startlingly painful to feel his regard yanked away so abruptly.
“Hey,” an American man called from one of the other tables. “My wife is using that. She’s coming right back.”
Ilona turned her head to see Midas was ignoring the American and coming at them with a stolen chair. He set it backward at their table and straddled it as he sat, arms folded across the back. His glare of bitter accusation fell over Ilona like a jar over a spider.
He looked so much like their father from his square face to his barrel chest, it was always disconcerting to see stark hatred thrown at her from features that had usually worn an expression of patronizing fondness.
She forced herself to meet Midas’s filthy look with an impassive one, but her pulse was galloping and a fizz of alarm shot through her when Leander abruptly stood. Was he leaving? Well, that was just great, wasn’t it?
Leander handed his chair to the man who’d chased Midas. Then Leander folded his arms and looked down his nose at both of them.