Something beyond the mundane had touched the mountain air when she’d walked toward him on the path carpeted with rose petals. When she had smiled at Angelina who’d been her flower girl with such love shining in her eyes.
He’d had an event management firm do all the preparations for the ceremony, had ordered them to give his fiancée everything she wanted for the wedding, no matter how expensive or outrageous. Only to be told that his fiancée had a very decided opinion of how she wanted her wedding.
Her love for detail shone through in the smallest of touches.
And still, his commitment to this felt like nothing in the face of hers. Like he was cheapening it with his constant reminders that it was only an arrangement between them, with his continued belief that he was only doing this for Angelina, whereas Eleni, once she had decided on the course, seemed to accept it for what it was.
It felt like a weight he hadn’t asked for around his chest, a transaction for which her rewards were vague.
A member of his staff joined Gabriel just as Eleni walked onto the dance floor with Nikandros. He barely heard what the man said. Couldn’t shake his gaze from the voluptuous beauty of his wife.
His wife—his to cherish and protect and love. He couldn’t do the last, but he could surely do the first two.
The ivory lace of her dress dipped in a graceful curve, only barely hinting at those full breasts that his hands tingled to cup and hold.
The delicate diamond tiara sat atop brown curls that fell around her face in teasing waves. It was a gift from her brother Nikandros, Gabriel knew, for she’d refused any jewelry from him. Had smilingly refused every trinket he’d had the jeweler bring up to her.
Only the rings he had put on her finger and the promise of a child.
Even the settlement that Nikandros had insisted she receive in case they separated, had been arranged in their children’s names, if they had any.
She didn’t want anything Gabriel could give, or wanted to give her, and it made disquiet bloom in his gut that maybe there wasn’t anything he could give this woman to balance what she was giving him.
For a man who had measured the world and the people in it in terms of their worth and the value he could provide them, Eleni left him feeling empty-handed.
So Gabriel had smiled and posed for pictures with her and Angelina, even as his skin prickled.
With repeated instructions—almost step-by-step advice on how to approach Angelina and how to overcome her resistance—he and Angelina had even muddled their way through a dance, something he would have called an impossibility even a month ago.
How the media would laugh if they knew how much his own wedding had moved a hardened cynic like him.
He was about to ask Eleni to dance with him again when he saw a tall, tuxedoed man make a bow in front of her. That wide smile slipped from her mouth. Color fled her cheeks, leaving her eyes glittering with tears in a pale mask.
Gabriel frowned, every muscle urging him into action.
She didn’t refuse when the man took her hand in his. In fact, a ghost of a smile dawned slowly, a bit hesitant, a bit nervous. Her gaze searched the man’s face furiously, as if she couldn’t drink him up fast enough. Her hands went to his shoulders, his face, as if she couldn’t believe he was there.
A burst of possessiveness filled Gabriel as the man pulled her onto the dance floor, his hands far too bold and familiar over Eleni’s figure. Her slender fingers locked against the man’s nape, she tilted her head down to his mouth, as if to hear every word.
That look of distress, of disbelief, never left her eyes, all the while she danced with him. Curiosity ate through him, like flames licking at oil. With a curse, Gabriel walked away.
He wasn’t going to hang on to his wife’s every movement like a jealous husband. Damn it, she wasn’t even going to be his wife in the true sense of the word.
CHAPTER SIX
HER NERVES STRETCHED so taut that she felt she might shatter like a piece of glass, Eleni walked the long corridor to her own apartments rather than return to the Rose room. More than two hours had passed since she had disappeared from her own wedding reception with Spiros.
Surely her absence must have been noted by now. She had spent the past half hour trying to make sense of it all, wandering the palace aimlessly, and she didn’t have any more clarity.
Spiros—her friend and confidant from her childhood, the only boy she had kissed until Gabriel, the man who had promised to love her for the rest of their lives—was back. After being gone for ten years with no word, message or a single phone call.
Back in her life, apparently, whatever the hell that meant. Finally free to be with her, he’d said. There was no rhyme or reason to the nonsense he had blurted out at her.
A sob fought through her chest and Eleni swallowed hard to lock it. She didn’t know what it was that sat like a lump in her throat.
Was it grief? Anger? Or anxiety at what she had left behind in the reception room?
The palace walls seemed to close in on her as she turned one corner after the other. She should have been furious with him. She had imagined for so many years how she would react if she saw him again.
How she would slap his beautiful face and tell him to go to hell. How she would tell him that he had forever crushed her trust in men, her trust in her own judgment and feelings.
She had done none of those things. Her heart seemed to have lodged in her throat, cutting off any chance of words.
It had been such a beautiful day. Almost as if the universe had conspired to make it grand for her. Perfect for her. She’d begun it with a purpose, with a sense of direction for the first time in so many years. And it had ended with a ghost from her past.
Standing in front of the tilted-edge mirror, clad in her ivory lace gown, every inch polished and poised, with a bouquet of rare orchids that Gabriel had sent over, she had felt like a woman reaching for what she wanted out of life.
With the backdrop of the mountain, the chapel had looked like a magical kingdom. Nikandros had told her she’d looked stunning, a reluctant grin on his lips. Had embraced her in a bear hug when she’d mentioned Andreas.
The air had been crisp and pure and the man waiting for her at the end of the aisle had been the highlight.
Clad in a black tuxedo, his blue-black hair slicked back, he had looked powerful and gorgeous, a most outrageous dream come true. His fingers had been firm on hers, his vows resonating against the very mountain itself.
To protect and honor and cherish he promised in his deep, gravelly voice. She’d wanted to believe every word.
When his lips had touched hers, Eleni had jerked, singed to her very core. Dark brows had drawn down with the same shock she was sure vibrated through her own body.
It was as if their bodies sang to each other, their lips felt that same connection blaze into life even with the barest of contacts.
Her fingers had lingered over his, her face upturned, his for the taking. His mouth had twitched in that satisfied, arrogant way of his and she had blushed to the roots of her hair. But he hadn’t deepened the kiss beyond the perfunctory cool slide of his lips over hers.
The ride back to the palace had been filled with chitchat by Angelina. She was a mother in their arrangement, Eleni had reminded herself when Angelina had asked if she could ride with them. Not a proper wife. But even that hadn’t dimmed her joy in the day.
Today had been a perfect day she wouldn’t soon forget.
Until a suave, smiling Spiros had stood in front of her at the reception, greeting her like a long-lost friend.
Her gut had folded to her feet. She had been so shocked to see him that she had thought him a specter first, a ghost from the past. To remind her of what and who she was, of how naive she could be, how powerful her self-induced delusions if she weren’t careful.
When he had taken her arm and pulled her out of the Rose room, she had gone willingly, still grappling with it. When he had held her tight against him, when he had whispered frantic endearments and kissed her hair, she’d frozen into stillness.
Memories she hadn’t allowed herself to think of came rushing back, drenching her in pain and sorrow. Spiros had shuddered around her, his greetings shifting to apologies.
And then he’d disappeared as quickly as he had appeared.
Wondering if she was hallucinating, she had roamed the old armory like a wraith, her dress snagging and tearing on a rusted suit.
Her feet hurt like the very devil in her five-inch stilettos.
Leaning against the wall in front of her apartments, she bent and pulled the offending sandals off her feet. All she wanted was to tear her dress off, sink into a bath, and then go to sleep. The sooner morning came, the sooner she could have a bit of her practicality back.
Feet bare, she was pulling at the complicated knot her hair had been twisted into when she saw the shadow of a broad figure saunter into the light of her sitting room.
With the skylights at his back drawing a line around his broad shoulders, Gabriel looked like a devilish creature of the night. A darkly commanding figure. His suit jacket was gone. His white dress shirt unbuttoned and pulled out of his trousers. The edges separated to display a rock-hard chest with olive skin stretched tight.
A glass of scotch, his preferred drink, shone amber in his hands as he filled the doorway, lazily leaning a hip against it. His gaze started at her bare feet that she scrunched against the cold marble, traveled up the tulle skirt, lingered far too long on her hips and breasts and then up her bare neck, toward the hair she had partially pulled free of the knot.