The Sarantos Baby Bargain. Olivia Gates
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hated him for being the only one who’d ever been able to toy with her so effortlessly, hated herself more for allowing him to, for being so susceptible to him still.
She forced out a thick whisper. “I don’t think you’re here to discuss our defunct liaison....”
His slanting eyebrow arched at the word.
“You’re right,” she continued. “If I could find a word that’s more trivial and impersonal than liaison, I would have used it. Anyway, I’m not interested in dredging up a past I’ve left behind, with a person I should have never gotten mixed up with, as you so kindly pointed out to me at the beginning.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets, drawing her gaze to his daunting and unabated arousal. It had just been pressed against her flesh, reminding her of all the times it had invaded her, driven her beyond all sense of self and self-preservation with urgency and ecstasy.
She snatched her gaze up, found him watching her with that cool assessment that made her want to scream.
No doubt satisfied that he’d again provoked her, in every way, he half turned. “I am going to sit down. Coming?”
Without waiting, he continued to her family room, as if those explosive minutes that had thrown the precarious stability of her world back into chaos hadn’t occurred.
This time she managed not to pursue and attack him. Not because her anger had lessened, but because she knew he’d respond the same way. She couldn’t withstand another assault on her senses. Knowing him, he might even take it further, press on until he made her beg him not to stop. Even now she feared he’d make her do whatever he wanted her to.
Feeling as if her legs had turned to soggy sandbags, she followed him into her family room.
She’d not only childproofed recently, but also redecorated the space, to make it cheery for Dora and to counter the melancholy that permeated her and the place since Nadine’s and Petros’s deaths. Now Andreas walked into it and his presence made the room darken and shrink, as he’d always done to her whole world.
He headed to the high-backed red armchair beside the gleefully floral L-shaped couch, which he must have occupied as he’d waited for her. The tea tray on the coffee table and the briefcase on the floor affirmed her deduction.
After he’d resumed sitting, he swept back the hair that had fallen over his forehead during their tussle, drawing her aching gaze again to its luxuriousness. If anything, the longer tresses made him appear even more masculine, made every slash and hollow of his face more rugged. Each change in him did. His every line and feature had been honed to a fiercer virility. And she’d thought he’d already been the epitome of manhood.
Damn him.
But that was only a facade. He was as monstrous on the inside as he was divine on the outside.
He cocked his head at her when she remained standing several feet away. “Your reaction to seeing me wasn’t spur-of-the-moment. Seems your animosity has been brewing for a long time.”
Those statements made her scoff incredulously. “If I didn’t know you have a family somewhere, I’d have thought you were grown in a lab, an experiment in producing a frighteningly efficient humanoid devoid of feelings or scruples.”
His expression showed no offense, no amusement, no challenge. Nothing at all, as usual. “If this is how you see me, it’s your prerogative. But don’t you think the impervious entity you describe wouldn’t have tried to keep you from leaving him?”
“I think you would do nothing else, to assert your dominance. You were being a dog in the manger when you refused to finalize the divorce. You never really married me, just signed a bunch of papers to stop me from ending our ill-advised affair, only to continue it under the false label of marriage, on the same barren grounds.”
“And I tried to stop you from leaving me, twice, just to ‘assert my dominance’? Don’t you think it was too much trouble for just that?”
“Not at all. I believe you’d go to any lengths to maintain your record.”
That eyebrow arched again. “What record is that?”
“Your perfect one of having everyone at your disposal and everything done according to your rules and at your command.”
“Interesting.” He scratched the stubble she still felt burning her cheeks, looking as if he was considering a new perspective, before leveling his gaze on her. “That is me to a tee, but none of that was among my motives at the time. I was only trying to wait out your tantrum until you came back to me.”
“Tantrum? Is this how you saw it? And if so, what made you decide to let go of the tug-of-war? Did you wake up one day and say to yourself, ‘To hell with it, who needs a brat?’ It wasn’t as if you could have gotten fed up, after all. You weren’t even involved in plaguing and pestering me. You just sicced your lawyer on me and went about your business, not once appearing in the picture.”
“You must have a theory why I finally let go.”
“Probably because even such hassle-free vindictiveness eventually got old.”
He made no corroboration of her explanation, nor did he provide his own of why after six months he’d suddenly decided to sign the divorce papers.
Not that she would have accepted any reason he gave. Her analysis made the most sense. He’d gotten bored. Or he’d found a satisfactory replacement. Or many.
“You were right.” That made her blink. He was admitting it? But he went on, “I’m not here to recycle past conflicts. But though you claim to have no desire to do that, it seems you’re pretty hung up on them.”
“My disgust with you has nothing to do with our past.”
“What then?”
“You really have no clue, huh?”
“None. Enlighten me.”
“Petros called you on his deathbed.” The words seethed through gritted teeth. “You didn’t bother coming back. You let him die without making the effort to see him one last time. You didn’t even attend his funeral.”
All the response she got was a slow blink. Then those lasers he had for eyes resumed regarding her with the same steady appraisal, waiting for her to continue.
The emotional bile backed up in her system poured out, swerving from outrage on Petros’s behalf to hers. “Everyone came. Even business rivals, even enemies. Everyone knew Nadine was my world. And that Petros had become the brother I never had. Everyone put everything aside and came or at least called to console me. You didn’t.”
Another slow blink allowed her bitterness to gain momentum, as she finally understood why his absence had hurt so much. “Somehow your disregard made everything that happened between us even worse. I was always ashamed I threw myself at you, blamed myself for everything that happened afterward, but that day I despised myself for it, for pursuing, then staying with someone so...warped. When you didn’t answer your only friend’s dying plea, and didn’t grant me even a few empty words of sympathy, I finally realized the magnitude of the crime I’d committed against myself. I never hated anyone in my life. I never hated you even after all you put me through. But when you proved you were worse than a stranger, worse than an enemy...I finally hated you that day.”
His lashes lowered again, giving the momentary impression of him being moved, disturbed.
Then he raised his eyes, and they were their usual unfathomable chips of steel. “I didn’t realize you’d appreciate seeing or hearing from me at the time.”
Her jaw dropped. “Are you pretending you didn’t come or call, in deference to my feelings? Play another one.”
“I’m stating what I believed. But that wasn’t why I didn’t come or call.”
She waited for him to tell her the reason. A heartbeat later she realized she’d