Page 30 of His Forgotten Wife
He’d always seen Dahlia’s efficiency, her competence, but not the vulnerable heart she hid beneath. And now, he would never make the mistake of taking her for granted in any way.
They walked the beach, with warm water gently lapping at their feet for a long while. The silence that surrounded them spoke of that familiar contentment that had been missing without her, but there was also a tiny, constant crackle under his skin. As if this new awareness between them was building up with every breath.
“Does your hip hurt less the more you walk?” she asked, breaking the silence after they had nearly walked for fifteen minutes. The pain in his hip, as she’d apparently guessed, felt bearable. When he didn’t answer immediately, she said, “I also noticed that you favor your left side sometimes?”
“Yes to both.”
Out of his periphery, he could see her chewing on her lower lip. “Does it come and go, or is it always there? The pain, I mean.”
“The second,” he said, without looking at her.
“I’m sorry you’re in so much pain, Ares.” Something almost like guilt punctured her words.
“It’s not your fault, Dahlia.”
The silence that followed was fraught with something he couldn’t recognize. It was almost as if she held herself responsible for his accident. Which was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard.
“Ready to tell me what we argued about before I left?”
She stumbled so badly that she nearly hit the sand before Ares could catch her. With a grunt—because she was on his injured side—he pulled her up. Her breaths were harsh pants as she clung to him, her face buried in his shoulder. So his suspicion was right.
Theyhadargued and he had left New York either angry or upset with her. And it had to be something personal or it wouldn’t have lingered in his head, messing him up, distracting him on that drive when he’d crashed.
But racking his brain about the reason or thinking of those few days before the accident only made his headaches worse. Which then made him wonder what horror was waiting for him when those memories did come back to him.
Had she threatened to leave then too? Had she betrayed him in some way? Or had he done something so unforgivable that she’d washed her hands of him when he met with the accident?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ares had nevergotten over his half brothers tormenting him as a teen, over his parents not protecting him. The very idea of Dahlia somehow betraying him too brought the sensation of his chest caving in with a vengeance.
When she opened those big brown eyes and he was caught in them, he told himself to see the truth cemented deep in his bones. That Dahlia would never do anything to harm him in any way.
Her long lashes fluttered, as if she needed to hide away her expression. “I’m sorry. I nearly dragged you down.”
“Enough apologizing, Dahlia,” he said sharply, frustrated by her wariness.
She straightened herself, her eyes taking him in greedily. “Is there anything I can do to help with your workload? I feel like I’m really doing nothing.”
There was that thread of guilt again. He decided to ignore it for now. “You’re kidding, right? I couldn’t have gotten through this morning without you. And that’s not counting all the paperwork and documentation of months that you’re sorting for me.”
She nodded but didn’t look convinced. Her fingers lingered around his mouth, her finger once again tracing some imaginary lines. “I don’t like seeing you like this. You’re limping, andArabella said you look deathly pale after a physiotherapy session. And clearly, you aren’t sleeping well either.”
“Recovery will take as long as it will. It’s frustrating, yes. But my body has its own rhythms and needs that I must respect.”
A soft, tremulous smile curved her lips. “I thought I would find you flipping out that you aren’t healing faster or that things are not getting resolved quicker.”
He shrugged. “I think nearly dying and then being out of it for almost two months has given me a different perspective on life. Isn’t that what you’re always moaning at me to develop? Asking me to stop and smell the damned roses wherever they are?”
She scowled. “You make me sound like a nagging wife.”
He grinned, finding the idea of Dahlia nagging at him day and night quite delightful. She had been like that once, he realized with a frown.
Their early years at GenTech, she had been more playful and snarkier and just more…open with him. In the last couple of years, all of that had disappeared.
Why? Had he discouraged it? Or had he done something else to make her close herself off to him?
Another thing to figure out and return to how it used to be. He added it to the endless mental to-do list with her name on it.
