Page 46 of His Forgotten Wife
He laughed and the sound rippled out to her, full of sarcasm. “Forgive me if I’m not in the mood to put too much stock into your words right now, Dahlia. I’m tired.”
He seemed to barely get out the words. “Ares, please let me explain.”
“It’s a little late for explanations, no?”
“Will you please look at me?”
He turned, and there was none of the wicked laughter or the teasing glint in his eyes. No asymmetrical tilt of his lips or the flash of his smile. Not even the basic recognition she’d always seen in him at the sight of her.
“It was foolish to hide the truth from you. I understand how strange it must have felt to you—”
“Strange to have Isiah call me and tell me the marriage contract I sent him by mail has followed him around the world as he traveled?”
Dolly sighed. Of course, Ares would have trusted only their old friend with the contract once it was signed. No wonder even his lawyers had only assumed that Dolly and he were engaged, but not married.
“And that I’m already married to the woman posing as my fiancée, the woman I trusted more than anyone else? And that I made a ten-million payout to you for being my wife for twelve months? No wonder you left the company the moment you heard of the accident. You’d had everything you could get out of me and didn’t need my overbearing, rigid, arrogant self in your life.”
“That’s unfair!” Dolly shouted, outrage taking the space of guilt. “Ten more minutes and you will say I caused your accident to retire as a filthy rich widow. Please, Ares… I understand that—”
“Feeling like I can’t trust you hurts me more than you could even imagine, Dahlia.”
That one guttural admission wiped all her anger, filling her with regrets. “You know, deep inside the place that you’ve been trusting more and more, that I didn’t do it for the money. I was devastated by your accident. I felt as if I’d lost my own—”
“Enough, Dahlia! I don’t want more lies about how much you missed me.”
“No, you have to listen to me today,” she demanded, going toe to toe with him. “You can’t seriously think, after everything we’ve been through together, that I married you for money?”
Cutting eye contact, he rubbed a hand over his temple. Even when he spoke, he sounded so rational, so calm that Dolly’s temper spiraled in contrast. “Maybe you didn’t.”
“Maybe? You railroaded me into the payment! You told me it was better to term it like a service done.”
“Fine. But I still don’t see why you wouldn’t tell me that we were actually married. Why didn’t you tell me that you’re my bloody wife for real?” A rough groan escaped his lips. “You know how I tormented myself that I must have done something awful to you? That I had to be the reason you abandoned a relationship that we built for nearly a decade?”
Dolly shook her head, considering and discarding where to start, what to say. God, she’d made such a mess out of it, and a very real panic was beginning to brew in her stomach.
What if she lost him over this? Just when she was gaining the courage to believe they had another chance? To reach for what she had always felt for him, deep in her heart, from the moment he had sat by the chair near her bed in her dorm room, making sure she wasn’t alone with her nightmares?
“I have a reason for why I didn’t tell you. And like you, I hoped that your brothers would come to their senses and drop the whole lawsuit. Which is the only reason we married, Ares. To protect the company from their grasping hands. If they dropped it, the twelve months would pass, and our marriage would be dissolved legally. Nothing to give a second thought to.”
“That was before we decided to have sex with each other, Dahlia,” he said, sounding extremely tired. “Now it will have to be a divorce after twelve months because the marriage was consummated. And don’t worry. My lawyer said there’s a nice payout for you however it ends too.”
“Stop! Stop saying that,” she said, grabbing his shoulders.
He stared at her, finally making eye contact, confusion and something else painted across his features. His lips twisted with bitterness. “What I can’t stop wondering is why you did it.” The more emotional he got, the lower his voice fell, until it was a soft rumble that pulled at her. “Was it out of pity? Did you feel sorry for me?”
“What was out of pity?”
“Sleeping with me.”
She pushed at his chest, beyond anger or rage now. “You know that’s not true. I did it because I wanted to. So much. I’ve always wanted you like that, Ares.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s the truth, late as it might be. Do you want to know what it is you forgot? Why you were so angry with me when you left for Greece? Why I had to walk away from you and the company even though an hour didn’t go by when I didn’t think of you?”
“Yes, I want to know.”
“That weekend, the weekend after we signed the marriage contract, we got caught up in a snowstorm upstate. There was a citywide power outage and I was chilled to the bone. You poured me cognac, I believe, to get me warmed up. I had never drunk anything more than maybe one beer in my life. It went straight to my head, cut through every rule and boundary I lived by. I…” she licked her lips, feeling her heart bottom out of her “…I told you that I had feelings for you. That I had never felt like that before. That being your wife on paper made me want the real thing. That you had always made me feel safe and needed.”
