His Chosen Wife: Antonides' Forbidden Wife / The Ruthless Italian's Inexperienced Wife / The Millionaire's Chosen Bride. Susanne James
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had about Martha’s reaction to her relationship with PJ evaporated right then. Martha’s face lit up. “You were there?” And when Ally explained, her eyes widened. “Gaby’s showing your work, too?”
She was clearly delighted and peppered Ally with a thousand questions—about her art, about her shops, about her focus. And she was absolutely thrilled to meet PJ’s wife.
“Dad didn’t think you really existed,” she confided. “It’s so cool to discover you do. And even cooler that I like you!”
If Cristina had been suspicious, Martha was just the opposite. She was eager to welcome Ally into the family. She practically danced along the beach as they followed Eddie from one pile of flotsam and jetsam to another.
“We’ll have to get together. Maybe in Santorini—or we could come to Hawaii sometime, Theo and Eddie and I,” she said, eyes alight with possibilities. “Theo would love that. He sails. He and PJ bonded over PJ’s windsurfer. They have a lot in common. And apparently we do, too.”
And what was Ally supposed to say? No, they didn’t?
“That would be fun,” she managed. And she was telling the truth when she said it. It would be absolutely wonderful, if only …
Something of her hesitation must have shown through, because Martha immediately said, “Don’t let me bully you into it. Theo is always telling me I shouldn’t just assume.”
“No,” Ally said quickly. “I really would love it. I just … We don’t know what we’re doing yet, PJ and I. We have to … discuss things.”
“Of course,” Martha said quickly. “It must be so weird, getting back together after all these years.”
Ally nodded. “We don’t really know each other …”
“Why did you stay away so long?”
And how, Ally wondered, could she even begin to answer that?
“There always seemed to be things to do,” she said, “and PJ married me so I could do them.” She knew that all the Antonides clan had heard the story of her grandmother’s legacy by now. But she didn’t know how much else any of them knew. She shrugged and turned to stare out to sea. It was easier that way than when she had to look into Martha’s face. “And once I finally got going, I was a success. I ended up on a fast track. Doing what he’d expected me to do. And—” she shrugged “—as that was what we’d married for, I just … kept doing it. I guess I thought he would have moved on. Got a divorce.”
“Could he?”
Ally nodded. “If he had filed and I didn’t respond, yes. He could have got a divorce without my ever having to sign anything.”
“Bet you’re glad he didn’t. Bet he is, too.” Martha shook her head. “Wow. What if you’d come back and found out you were already divorced? What if he’d married somebody else?” She looked appalled at the thought.
And Ally had to admit to a certain jolt when she thought about it, too. Of course it would have been easier. She could have married Jon without any of this ever happening.
“You wouldn’t be here now,” Martha said, making almost exactly the same mental leaps. Then she laughed. “And PJ would be facing a weekend with Connie Cristopolous.”
“She’s beautiful,” Ally protested.
“But not PJ’s type.”
Ally wasn’t sure what PJ’s type was. But before she could ask Martha’s opinion, the other woman went on, “So how did you find him?”
And Ally told her about going back to Honolulu, about her dad’s heart attack, about looking for PJ. “I thought he’d be there still,” she admitted. “But he wasn’t.”
“And so you had to track him down! How romantic is that?” Martha was clearly pleased.
Cristina thought PJ was the romantic. Martha thought she was.
“Eddie! Ack, no. Don’t put that in your mouth!” Martha swooped down and scooped her son up, taking whatever he’d been about to eat and tossing it into the water. “Kids! What will I ever do when I have two of them?” she moaned.
“Are you …?”Ally looked at Martha’s flat stomach doubtfully.
But Martha nodded happily. “Not till January, though. What about you guys? Have you talked about kids?”
“Not … much.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie. They had talked about children—the ones she hoped to have with Jon, the grandchild she wanted to give her father.
But now in her mind’s eye she didn’t see a child she might have with Jon. She saw PJ as he had been with Alex that evening at his house in Park Slope or, for that matter, PJ now. He had one of Elias’s twins on his hip while he tossed a football with his brothers.
Martha’s gaze followed her own. “Well, it’s early days yet. You will.”
Ally didn’t reply. Her throat felt tight. The glare of the sun made her eyes water. She swallowed and looked away.
As a child, Ally had been a reader.
From the time she had first made sense of words on a page, she’d haunted the library or spent her allowance at the bookstore, buying new worlds in which to live. And invariably the worlds she sought were the boisterous chaotic worlds of laughing, loving, noisy families who were so different from her own.
Oh, she was loved. She had no doubt about that.
But the everyday life of her childhood had been perpetually calm, perennially quiet, perfectly ordered. When her mother had been alive, there had, of course, been smiles and quiet laughter. And even her normally dignified taciturn father had been known to join in. But after her mother’s death, after the number of chairs at the table had gone from three to two, mealtimes had become sober silent affairs. After her mother was gone, there had been no more light conversations, no more gentle teasing. There had actually been very few smiles.
Never a demonstrative man, after his wife’s death Hiroshi Maruyama became even more remote.
“He is sad,” her grandmother had excused him.
“So am I,” Ally had retorted fiercely. “Does he think I don’t miss her, too?”
“He doesn’t think,” Ama had said. “He only hurts.”
Well, Ally had hurt, too. And they had gone right on hurting in their own private little shells, never reaching out for each other, for years. Hiroshi’s way of dealing with his daughter was to give her directions, orders, commands.
“They will make your life better,” he told her stiffly, if she balked.
But they hadn’t.
Marrying PJ and running away from her father’s edicts was what had made her life better. Doing that had freed her, given her scope for her talents, new challenges that she could meet and, eventually, a life she loved and determinedly filled with her art and her work.
In the fullness of that life, she’d forgotten about the warm, boisterous families she’d read about and envied, the closeness she had yearned for all those years ago. She hadn’t really realized anything was missing until she’d come home after her father’s heart attack.
Then, forced to take a break, to slow down and look around during those long days in his hospital room, she had seen cracks in her well-developed life begin to appear. A chasm of emptiness opened up before her.
She was back with her father—in subdued silence. And longing for something more. That was why she’d been so glad to find Jon.
He was as addicted to work as she was. For his entire adult life he had been filling the empty spaces in his life with patients and professional demands on his time. Now he was thirty-five. It was time to marry, to have a family.