Page 1 of His Forgotten Wife

Ares Demetrius calling…

The incessant ring and the name on the video call flashing on her tablet made Dolly Singh drop the hot cup of coffee in the tiny kitchen of her uncle’s home.

Even the shatter of the cup as it hit the floor and the brown liquid pooling into cracks on the already worn-out tiles couldn’t unfreeze her from her shock.

Ares Demetrius—the Greek tech entrepreneur who had sold his first app at twenty for a hundred million out of Columbia University, her boss of six years and university mate for three before that—was calling.

Ares calling her at four in the morning wasn’t usually extraordinary because her boss was a genius who worked hundred-hour weeks and insisted she be at his beck and call the entire time.

But he’d been in a car accident seven weeks ago while returning to his family’s estate in Corfu for the first time in nine years. He slipped into a coma after his traumatic head injury, upending her entire world in one horrible moment.

And the events of the weekend before his fateful trip had already left Dolly feeling as if their entire relationship had burned down.

Six years of working nonstop beside him, without a life of her own, standing by his side as he revolutionized the tech world, meant her life had suddenly been empty while he lay in a coma.

Seven weeks of not seeing his hard, handsome face, of not hearing his deep timbre, of not meeting that gray gaze that she knew better than anyone else’s in the world…

it was as if she had been induced into a coma too.

But her grandfather falling and injuring his hip within hours after Ares’s own accident had made it impossible for her to travel.

“Dolly, beta ,” her grandpa’s sleep-muffled voice came from the bedroom. “Your phone is screaming.”

“Yes, Grandpa. Getting it now,” she shouted back, reaching for the tablet.

Her uncle and aunt were on a summer trip financed by Dolly, happy to get them out of the way while her grandfather recovered from hip surgery.

The last thing she’d needed was her aunt needling at how morose and depressed Dolly had been for weeks now.

Her hands trembled as she set up the tablet against a pickle jar on the tiny island, her heart speeding up in her chest so fast that she had to rub the area with her fingers.

Outside the jammed-up sliding doors of the living room, she could see dawn paint the sky in splashy pinks and oranges.

Soon, the tiny community her aunt and uncle lived in in Brooklyn would come to life in Technicolor: noise bleating from the bridge overhead; smells from the bakery and left-out garbage cans mingling; the tall maple trees painting the streets in deep golds and blazing reds announcing early fall.

It was exactly how she felt at the prospect of Ares coming out of the coma—as if she too were emerging from a deep, restless slumber.

Her finger slipped twice on the screen before she swiped to accept the call.

“ Christos , Dahlia! How long do you need to pick up a damned call?”

Her heart climbing into her throat, it took Dolly several long minutes to register that he was expecting a response.

How could she when all her other senses shut down so she could focus on the vision before her? When relief that he was better flooded her system in waves?

His rugged face filled the screen and Dolly traced each feature with her hungry eyes as if she were seeing him for the first time, charting every angle and plane.

His high forehead, the long, patrician nose, the thin slash of his lips that denoted his impatience, the divot in his chin that made a god out of him, the square jaw…all as familiar to her as her own strong-angled face and yet now, so achingly different…even new.

Then there were his eyes—a frosty gray that she’d seen warm only once in nine years of their acquaintance.

In spite of her practical, no-nonsense nature, Dolly knew she could drown in those eyes. And had done on that night before the accident, at a very high cost to both of them. Guilt choked any words her brain managed to even make.

“Dahlia? Is it me that has been in a coma or you?”

His gruff question made her snap out of the bubble of longing. “I… You…” A long sigh tumbled through her lips. “I didn’t know you came out of the coma,” she finally said, sounding utterly stupid.

“How would you, given you cut off all communications with me and the company?”

The uncharacteristically personal tone of that complaint took the wind out of her sails. Until she reminded herself that Ares thrived on routine and efficiency and familiarity and she represented all those things to him.

To wake up in an unfamiliar hospital would have notched up his confusion and his need for control. He wasn’t a man who did well with the unexpected and being in a car crash and the subsequent coma had to be devastating.

Despite everything that had passed between them that night, her heart ached for the weakness he tried to hide from the world.

“They couldn’t find anything suitable for me at GenTech,” she said, mentioning the company he had founded straight out of Columbia with her by his side.

“I stayed on doing the minimal for a few days, after the crash. When I wasn’t at the hospital with my grandfather.

” She added the last to fight her own vague sense of guilt for abandoning him.

Clearly, he thought the same. “That’s not what Christina said,” he retorted, mentioning the third of their college mates—and her childhood friend—who had become CEO of GenTech.

Dolly blanched. And even with her grainy Wi-Fi, which she was mostly stealing off of her neighbor, she knew Ares didn’t miss her reaction. Apparently, the man had risen out of his coma with all his superior faculties rearing and ready to go.

Only he hadn’t mentioned…their little contract, the big payout he had given her, and the humiliating weekend that had followed.

“I…”

It didn’t feel the same without you , the words played on her lips. But she stashed them away, deep in the place where she should have stashed the other words too.

“I needed a chance to recover from the anxiety and heartburn six years working with you gave me.” In her bid to hide the fact that she had been half-dead herself with him gone, she ended up sounding callous and even irreverent.

“How delightfully practical of you, Dahlia,” he said with dry censure that she let hang between them. Maybe it was better to let him think she was cold-blooded. “I see the reason I kept you around all these years.”

He sounded like…he used to when they had met during her freshman year at university, he a junior.

Cold and calculating to the last word, brutally honest and painfully reserved, until she had realized that it was a reaction to how he saw the world.

With transparent detachment, he compulsively reduced it to a simple equation that his mind could grasp.

Emotional complexities made his experience of the world extra messy for him, taking away his sense of control.

It had taken her months to see through to the kindness and generosity of spirit beneath what had seemed like an extremely uncaring exterior.

“How are you, Ares?” she said, wanting to start over.

“I hate everything about this,” he responded, without mincing his words.

“Is everything back to…normal?” The word tasted like garbage on her lips because she knew how much he loathed the reductive term. “Christina said you sustained a very severe head wound. When do the doctors think you might be ready to resume usual activities?”

He shrugged. The movement caused the cotton fabric to slide off a muscled shoulder.

Dolly pressed a hand to her mouth. She’d been so caught up in her own tumultuous feelings and shuddering relief at the sight of him that she had noticed nothing else.

Only now could she see past him, from the new scar on his right cheek , to the sterile white wall behind him, and the hospital gown sliding off his shoulder to reveal gleaming olive skin and taut muscle.

Then there were the multiple machines he was hooked up to, and the people running around him in a flurry of activity.

Her heart made a long, slow dive down into her belly. “Ares…” She wet her suddenly dry lips. “How long has it been since you woke up?”

His gray gaze flicked upward, toward the clock on the wall she assumed. One brow rose, as if he was displeased with his discovery. “Five hours. It took them forever to give me my phone.”

Longing flooded her in dizzying bursts, making her tremble on the hard seat. How could she feel this confusing tumble of emotions when he’d made his thoughts on the matter clear? He’d been disgusted by her heated admission that night.

You’re like an extra limb to him , she chanted like a mantra now. Or maybe an administrative robot that’s been programmed to do his bidding. Nothing more, nothing less.

“In about fifteen minutes, I’ll be surrounded by my family.

” Resentment threaded his tone, pulling her back to reality.

Obviously, he had told her about some of his family dynamics—given what he’d asked of her—but he’d never let her see his frustration so clearly.

“The consulting specialist called my older brother without my permission.”

“They had to inform someone, Ares,” she said, falling into the habit of pacifying him.

“Especially since you’ve been MIA,” he retorted instantly.

She sighed. “I couldn’t abandon my grandpa to strangers’ care, Ares.”

“So you chose him over me.”

“He’s the only true family I have and I would do anything for him. Not my fault if you don’t get that.” She regretted the sharp words immediately.

In the nine years that she’d known him, Ares had rarely, if ever, talked about his family.

Given that the Demetrius family was one of the wealthiest, most powerful families in all of Greece, she had simply assumed that it was the ultrarich protecting their privacy.

Even though Ares himself had never shown off his wealth.