Shedidwant love. But the love she wanted was his.
She felt as if she was falling into pieces inside, but she decided she wasn’t going to beg. She wouldn’t plead or weep either. She would stand tall and strong and tell him that she loved him, because regardless of what he could give her, she wanted to give this to him.
She was a warrior and there was a strength inside her, a steel, and now she knew where that steel came from. It came from love. Her love for him.
‘I love you,’ she said, swallowing her tears and reaching for the fierce part of her. ‘Doesn’t that make any difference at all?’
He went very still, his gaze focusing on her, something bright glittering there. Then abruptly he looked down at the vodka bottle on the bar instead. ‘No. It only makes me more certain that dissolving this marriage is the right thing to do. I will not be your jailer, Rose. I want you to be free.’
She blinked hard against the prickling tears. ‘But how can I be free when you aren’t? And you’re not, Ares. You’re letting your grief trap you, can’t you see that?’
‘I chose my cage. You did not choose yours.’
‘But what if I want to? Don’t I have a right to choose my own?’
The line of his powerful shoulders radiated tension, his ruined profile harder than stone. He didn’t look at her. ‘You can. But I’m not going to be the one to close the cage door.’ The muscle in his jaw twitched again, his expression hardening. ‘I’m going send for the helicopter. There is no need for me to stay here any longer. You, however, may stay as long as you wish.’
Then abruptly he turned away and strode from the room before she could speak.
CHAPTER TEN
Spring
ARESNORMALLYLOVEDspring in the mountains of his Greek homeland. He would often allow himself a week in his house there, close to the village where he’d grown up. Where the air was clean and fresh, the sky was deep blue and the cold of winter was fading, yet the baking heat of summer hadn’t yet had a chance to settle in.
His house was more of a castle, perched on the side of one of the mountains near his old village. It had been built in medieval times, and he’d had it refurbished at huge expense, the only exceptions he made for modernity being a fast satellite internet connection, power and running water.
Mainly, though, he liked it because it was isolated and there was no one to bother him. Plus, being in the mountains, near the place where he’d been born, was a good reminder of his own failures.
Four weeks after he’d left Rose in Iceland, he’d sent her through divorce papers. She might have chosen to stay married to him, but he couldn’t hold her to it. Because regardless of what she’d said about choosing her own cage, about being in love with him, well... What did she know about love? She might know what a cage was, he’d let her have that, but love? No, she had no idea.
He did, though. Love blinded you. It betrayed you. It gouged out your heart and burned it to ashes and left you with nothing. He couldn’t trust it, never again. Rose hadn’t learned those lessons yet, and with any luck, she never would.
What she deserved was all the love, all the happiness. She deserved everything she wanted, but that wasn’t him.
Telling her that in the living room of the lodge in Iceland had hurt her, he knew. And the look on her face, the pain he’d seen in her big golden eyes, had hurt something inside him too. But he was used to pain so he ignored it. Besides, he couldn’t see another way.
She loved him and he didn’t love her, and he never would. He couldn’t allow himself to. The only love he’d ever trusted was Naya’s. He couldn’t trust his own.
Rose would heal in time—she was nothing if not resilient—and then she’d be free to find someone else who would love her the way he couldn’t.
That thought made him want to roar in denial, but he ignored that too, shoving it to one side as he walked in the castle olive grove the morning after he’d arrived. His gardener had some queries about some of the trees and talking about that was an excellent distraction from the subject of Rose.
He had to stop thinking about her. He had to.
Ares had paused beneath a particular tree, his gardener pointing at something on the branches, when one of Ares’s assistants came hurrying over the green lawn with news.
Apparently, so his assistant said, his wife was not onlynotgoing to sign the divorce papers, but she was also never going to sign them, and if Ares didn’t like that, he could stick them in an anatomically incorrect and very painful place.
Ares stood beneath the olive tree as his assistant relayed Rose’s response, aware of an intense fury gathering inside him. A fury in defiance of his own self-control and out of all proportion to her refusal. Fury that she was making this harder than it needed to be, and how she appeared not to have listened to a word he’d said. He’d told her he would never give her what she needed. Didn’t she want to be free?
Obviously, she hadn’t been listening, which meant they were going to need to have another little chat. A phone call wasn’t enough, and he definitely wasn’t going to email her. No, he needed to see her in person.
He didn’t ask himself why it was so important she understand, not when he’d been telling himself all this time that he wasn’t supposed to care. And he didn’t question the need to leave Greece immediately when he’d only just arrived.
He left the grove, took the helicopter back to Athens where he kept the jet, had it fuelled and ready to leave for Paris within the hour. And as the jet powered its way across Europe, he went over in his head again and again what he was going to say to her.
She had to sign those divorce papers. He couldn’t keep her. He wouldn’t.