His Chosen Wife: Antonides' Forbidden Wife / The Ruthless Italian's Inexperienced Wife / The Millionaire's Chosen Bride. Susanne James
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for that matter. That had never been the plan. Not for her, and certainly not for PJ.
“We don’t know each other,” she pointed out.
“We were friends once.”
“You were a beach bum and I was the counter girl where you bought plate lunches and hamburgers.”
“We met there,” he agreed. “And we became friends. You’re not trying to say we weren’t friends.”
“No.” She couldn’t say that. They had been friends. “But that’s the point. We were friends, PJ. Buddies. We never even went out! You certainly didn’t love me then! And you can’t possibly love me now.”
“So? I like what I see. And a lot of marriages start with less.”
He made it sound eminently sensible and reasonable—as if it were perfectly logical for two people to go their separate ways for ten years and then suddenly, without warning, pick up where they left off.
Maybe to him it was. After all, he’d married her with no real forethought at all. It had been useful to her, so he had done it.
She shook her head. “That’s ridiculous.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Of course it is. We don’t live anywhere near each other. We have entirely different lives.”
“I’m adaptable.”
“Well, I’m not! I’ve got a life in Hawaii now. I’ve come home, settled down. I like it there. I’ve worked hard to get where I am, to do what I’m doing. It’s time to take the next step.”
“Which is?”
“Get a divorce!”
“No.”
“Yes! I’ve got to,” she said. “I … I’m getting a life!”
“Finally?” His tone was mocking.
She wrapped her arms across her chest. “I had other things to do first. You know that.”
“And now you’ve done them, so you want a divorce.” A brow lifted. “Why now?”
“Because I’ve found you, for one thing,” she said with a touch of annoyance. “And why wait? It’s not as if we’ve got a relationship. On the contrary, we have nothing.”
“We have memories.”
“Ten-year-old memories,” she scoffed.
“And one five-year-old one,” PJ reminded her.
Ally’s face burned. “I’ve apologized for that!”
“So you have. Thank you,” he said formally. “Anyway, it’s not my fault we didn’t keep in touch,” he pointed out. “You’re the one who didn’t leave a forwarding address.”
“Mea culpa,” Ally muttered. But then she added, “Maybe I should have kept in touch, but—”
But doing so would have been a temptation she didn’t want to have to deal with. Marrying PJ had been one thing—it had been a few words recited, a couple of signatures scrawled. It had been a legal document, but it hadn’t been personal. Not really.
That night, though—that one night with PJ—had destroyed all her notions of their marriage being no more than an impersonal business proposition. It had made her want things she knew she had no business wanting, things she was sure PJ definitely didn’t want. She knew he’d married her to help her out.
To change the rules after the fact wouldn’t have been fair.
She shook her head. “I just thought it was better if I didn’t.”
“No distractions,” PJ translated flatly.
“Yes,” Ally lied. “But times change. People change as you said.” She gave him the brightest smile she could manage under the circumstances, but she couldn’t quite meet his eyes.
“So what’s the real reason, Al?”
The question cut across the jumble of her thoughts exactly the way his suggestion that he marry her had cut across the morass of worries she’d wallowed in all those years ago.
She hadn’t counted on that, any more than she’d counted on this.
She’d assured herself that seeing PJ again would be a good thing. That it was the right thing to do—the polite thing to do—come and ask him face-to-face to sign the divorce papers rather than simply mail the papers to him.
She’d been convinced that seeing him again would bring closure.
She’d convinced herself that she would walk into PJ’s office and have changed enough to feel nothing more than gratitude to the man she had married ten years before.
And even if she’d still felt a twinge of regret, she’d been sure he would be delighted to comply with her request. After all, being married to her was holding up his life, too. With the papers signed, they would go their own ways and that would be that.
Now she watched as PJ took a sip of tea and cocked his head, waiting for her answer.
“I’m getting married,” she said at last.
PJ choked. “What?”
“I said, I’m getting married. Not everyone considers me a charity case,” she said sharply. His eyes narrowed, but she plunged on. “I’m … engaged. Sort of.”
“Isn’t that a little … precipitous? You already have one husband.”
“It’s not official,” she said. “It’s just … going to happen. After. Which is why I brought the divorce papers. So you could sign them. It’s a formality really. I could have sent them by mail. I just thought it was more polite to bring them in person.”
“Polite,” he echoed. His tone disputed her assertion.
“I am polite,” she defended herself. “I didn’t imagine you’d have any interest in … keeping things going. It’s not as if we’ve ever had a real marriage.”
“We did for one night.”
Her teeth came together with a snap. “That wasn’t … real.”
“Felt pretty real to me.”
“Stop it! You know what I mean!”
He sighed. “Tell me what you mean, Al.”
“I mean it’s time to move on. I should have done something sooner. Contacted you sooner. But I thought you would … and then five years ago, I was sure you would … and then I just … got busy. And after I came back to Honolulu, I wasn’t sure where you were and I didn’t think it mattered and then things got … serious. Jon … proposed and …”
“He didn’t know you were married?”
“He knew I was. I guess he thought it was in the past,” she added awkwardly. How did you tell someone you were seeing that you still had a husband, you just didn’t know where?
“And you didn’t bother to set him straight?”
“It never came up.”
PJ’s eyes widened. “Really?” Patent disbelief.
“We didn’t spend a lot of time talking about it!” she snapped. “What was there to say? He said he’d heard about my marriage from his brother and I said yes. There was nothing else. He, well, he assumed it was over. And I … said it was.”
PJ raised an eyebrow.
“Well, it has been—in everything but the formalities. It never even really got started!”
“Oh, I think you could say it got started, Al.” The look he gave her reminded her