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“I think it was one of her clique actually, although I can’t be one hundred percent sure. But Ekaterina adopted it as her own with the enthusiasm only the truly wasted can have.”
He could laugh about it now, but it had taken a whole week to come to terms with what he’d done. That was around how long it had taken for him to sober up and figure out that joke ceremony he only half remembered on deck hadn’t been a drunken hallucination.
“Surprisingly, Ekaterina stuck to her guns afterward. She started introducing me as her husband to everyone and I… I just sort of went with it.”
Emma’s brows drew together. “Why?”
He hated discussing his marriage, for so many reasons, but Emma deserved an honest answer. “I guess I wasn’t bothered by it.”
“That’s it? You decided to stay marriedbecause you didn’t mind?”
He wrinkled his nose. “I wasn’t in a real good place back then. Sardonic amusement seemed a fitting response. Of course, her father found it less than amusing when he found out.”
She raised her brows. “He disapproved?”
“On the contrary. He wanted the marriage to stand.”
Emma blinked. “What?”
He couldn’t blame her for being startled. “Ekaterina’s father Andreas was a Greek shipping magnate. He was tired of his spoiled daughter’s antics. She shopped, drank, and partied with no thought of the future.”
“He was disappointed in her?”
It was so much more complicated than that. “He didn’t expect anything from her. He was too busy running his empire to parent, leaving everything child-related to his wife. But Ekaterina’s mother was an older version of her. Pretty, shallow, with no aspirations but to do as they pleased.”
“Why did her father want you tostay married?”
“I wasn’t the Greek millionaire he’d hoped she’d land. My father was small potatoes compared to him, but he had made a name for himself in certain circles. I had gone to business school and done well there. Andreas came to see me as clay to mold. After thinking it over, I decided I was willing to get shaped.”
“That’s surprising.” She poked his pec with her index finger. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not exactly what I would call malleable.”
He chuckled. “I’m not, but I was ambitious enough to recognize that Andreas was a damn fine businessman, and I could do worse than learn at his feet.”
“And what about your wife?”
He jerked reflexively. “You are my one true wife. Ekaterina was a drunken mistake and then an obligation.”
Damn, he hadn’t even thought about his ex in over a year and now he had to sum up his entire relationship with her.
“Ekaterina didn’t love me and I didn’t love her. But she was fun, bubbly, and she didn’t ask difficult questions. I wasn’t intentionally seeking that out, but it ended up working for me.”
Emma’s lips parted. “How long was it after my accident?”
“Almost eleven months,” he said. “Most of which I spent drinking my way across Europe, under the guise of studying different business enterprises so I could broaden my horizons.”
“No looking back, right?” she asked evenly.
“No,” he whispered. And there was nothing he regretted more.
“Did you enjoy being married?”
“For a little while. A very little while.”
She leaned toward him. “What went wrong?”
Chapter Forty-Five
GARRETT