Marriage Without Love & More Than a Convenient Marriage(73)

“It was three weeks ago, Gideon. If it was going to kill me, it would have by now.”

“It could have,” he retorted, helplessness making him brutal. “You could have bled to death.”

She shrugged that off with false bravado, eyes glossy and red. “At the time that looked like a—what’s the expression you used? A viable option?”

It was a vicious slap that he deserved. While he’d been contemplating an affair, she’d been losing the battle to keep their baby. Again. And she’d been filled with such dejection she’d refused medical care and courted death.

The fact she’d let herself brush elbows with the Grim Reaper made him so agitated, he clipped out a string of foul Greek curses. “Don’t talk like that. Damn it, you should have told me.”

“Why?” she lashed out in uncharacteristic confrontation. “Do you think I enjoy telling you what a failure I am? It’s not like you care. You just go back to work while I sit there screaming inside.” She struck a fist onto the surface of the water. “I hate it. I can’t go on like this. I won’t. I want a divorce.”

She splashed clumsily from the surf, her wet underpants see-through, her staggered steps so uncoordinated and indicative of her distress it made him want to reach out for her, but he was rooted in the water, aghast.

He cared. Maybe he’d never told her, but each lost baby had scored his heart. This one, knowing he could have walked into the penthouse and found both of them dead, lanced him with such deep horror he could barely acknowledge it.

She was the one who had appeared not to care. The fact she’d been so distraught she hadn’t sought medical attention told him how far past the end of her rope she had been, but she’d never let him see any of that.

He followed her on heavy feet, pausing where they’d left their clothes.

She gave him a stark look, her gaze filling with apprehension as she took in that he was completely naked. Her fingers hurried to button her blouse.

Hell. He wasn’t trying to come on to her.

“Adara.” A throb of tender empathy caught in him like a barbed hook. He reached out to cup her neck, her hair a weight on his wrist.

She stiffened, but he didn’t let her pull away. He carefully took her shoulder in his opposite hand and made her face him, for once driven by a need deeper than sexual to touch her.

“I’m sorry,” he said with deep sincerity. “Sorry we lost another baby, sorry you felt you couldn’t tell me. I do care. You’ve always been stoic about it and I’ve followed your lead. How could I know it was devastating you like this if you didn’t say?”

She shivered despite the heat. Her blink released a single tear from the corner of her eye. Her plump mouth trembled with vulnerability, and a need to comfort overwhelmed him.

Gideon gathered her in. She seemed so delicate and breakable. He touched his mouth to hers, wanting to reassure, to console.

It wasn’t meant to be a pass, but she felt so good. The kiss was a soft press of a juicy fruit to the mouth of a starved man. He couldn’t help opening his lips on hers, sliding his tongue along the seam then pressing in for a deep lick of her personal flavor. Involuntarily, his arms tightened while greed swelled in him. Everything in him expanded in one hard kick. His erection pulled to attention in a rush of heat, fed by the erotically familiar scent of his wife.

The feathery touch of her hands whispered from his ribs to his shoulder blades. A needy sob emanated from her throat, encouraging him.

Here. Now. His brain shorted into the most basic thoughts as his carnal instincts took over. He skimmed his hand to the wet underpants covering her backside, starting to slide them down even as he deepened the kiss and began to ease them both to the sand.

Adara’s knees softened for one heartbeat, almost succumbing, then she broke away from their kiss with a ragged moan, stumbling backward a few steps as she shoved from him with near violence. Her flush of arousal dissolved into a bewildered glare of accusation and betrayal.

That wounded look bludgeoned him like a club.

Without speaking, face white, she gathered her things and moved to the bottom of the rope where she tried to force her wet legs into her denim shorts.

Gideon pinched the bridge of his nose, ears rushing with the blood still pumping hotly through his system, deeply aware that the distance had been closed until he’d forgotten that he was trying to comfort, not seduce. But the sexual attraction between them was something he couldn’t help. He wished he could. The fact that he couldn’t entirely control his hunger for her bothered him no end.

His thoughts were dark as they returned to the hotel, a fresh sweat on his salted skin as they came through the front doors, with not a word exchanged since the beach. The life he’d created with Adara, so easy on the surface, had grown choppy, teaming with undercurrents. She’d stirred up more emotion in him with this bolt to Greece than he’d suffered in years and he didn’t like it.