Page 10 of His Forgotten Wife

Send me your fun list.

Wet hair dripping from her shower, Dolly stared at the text.

It had been two days since she had arrived at Ares’s family home in Corfu. Most of which she had spent unwinding.

Given the fake engagement, it was strange that she had been shown to a separate bedroom from Ares’s. But it was a much-needed reprieve.

She still couldn’t believe how cunningly playful this new version of Ares was. Neither could she stem the sheer giddy joy she felt from being near him again.

It had been agreed upon with Christina that Ares would work on his droid for the next couple of months. Ares working on the bot and its software meant Dolly wouldn’t have much to do except fielding his emails and scanning through weekly reports from different teams.

Dolly stared at her reflection in the mirror and fought silly tears.

Christina and she weren’t close—at some point in her adolescence, Dolly had forgotten how to get close to people. But they had grown up in the same neighborhood, so Christina knew how hard it had been for Dolly to lose her parents and move in with her aunt and uncle.

Not only had her aunt made sure Dolly knew that she was a burden on their straining finances with constant diatribes, but the one time Christina had come home with Dolly, she had taken her temper out on Dolly in front of her.

When Christina brought it up later, Dolly begged her to never mention it again.

She hadn’t wanted her crappy home life to taint anything else. And definitely not her exciting college life with Christina and Ares.

Dolly pumped moisturizer into her hands and began rubbing it into her skin, thinking of what Christina had said last night on the phone. That it was time to think of herself—not her grandfather, not her aunt and not Ares.

Time to think of where her life was headed when this last assignment with Ares was over. Because that’s what this was—another assignment, and nothing more.

Yes, she had gone on those two dates but there was no point in deluding herself. The point of the dates had been to prove to herself that Ares didn’t mean anything to her rather than to actually explore what she wanted in a partner.

With her grandfather now permanently taken care of, it was time to live her life for herself. And not just romance and dating, but her career too.

Years ago, she had taken on tremendous loans to go to Columbia when she could have easily gone to a community college to pursue a career in business.

With Ares taking over her life like a blazing hot sun, she had let her degree fall to the side.

It had served her then to follow his rising star.

He had compensated her more than the industry ever paid an executive assistant.

Now it was high time she finished her own degree.

Although, she couldn’t think of any tech company business role giving her as much freedom and as many learning opportunities as Ares had given her, even as his assistant.

It struck her then how she had been the one who had limited herself to that role, not Ares. All he had asked of her was that she be his connection to the outer world. Who was to say he wouldn’t have given her bigger projects if that’s what she wanted?

And when she thought of it that way, it didn’t seem wrong or foolish to have stayed with him for that long. Her faith in him felt very right, in fact.

Send me the fun list.

Send me the Dahlia Needs to Let Loose list.

Send me the Poor Executive Assistant Who Got Stuck with Her Uptight Boss and Didn’t Live Life for Six Years list.

Her phone kept pinging with texts from Ares in the same vein.

Despite her resolve to harden her heart, a smile curved her mouth. The man’s hyperfocus was the stuff of legends.

An unwise thrill coursed down her spine as she read the texts again.

She had been too tired to take him seriously before, but now, wide-awake and rested, she braced herself.

To suddenly find herself to be the locus of Ares Demetrius’s attention, in a very personal way, was both exciting and scary.

For it had always been a project or an app or an algorithm that triggered that hyperfocus.

And if she was honest with herself, it was what she had craved for a long time. That he see her as a woman with her own desires and fears. That it had come about because of his accident was out of her control.

Scrolling to the notes app on her phone, she typed a list of all the things a younger, less cynical Dolly would have wanted to explore in life. She pasted it on the text chain with him and hit Send before she could censor herself.

He would employ whatever means were at his disposal—which was a whole lot of means—to persuade her to stay. This newly discovered teasing charm being one of them.

But as irresistible as this new version of him was, she couldn’t forget that the only way to save her sanity, and her dented heart, was in exiting his life as soon as possible.

When Dolly emerged into the white-and-blue bedroom half an hour later, clad in a silk robe that she was definitely stealing from the Demetrius household, she found Ares’s very English mother, Juliana, waiting for her.

Standing inside the bedroom with a host of attendants running around her, the older woman looked like a queen visiting a peasant.

Surprise halted Dolly in her tracks. Ares’s younger sister, Arabella, stood separately from her mother, looking nervous.

Folding her hands over her midriff, Dolly faked a sweet smile. This woman was a stranger who was trying to protect her son. From Dolly’s gold-digging clutches, no less.

“Mrs. Demetrius, how nice to see you,” she said icily polite. “I wasn’t expecting to have a bonding session with you and Arabella quite so soon. Ares and I have hardly caught up with each other.”

If that sounded like issuing marching orders to the matriarch, then so be it.

She was here because she felt obligated to Ares. Even when he turned her upside down, she trusted him implicitly.

In short, she could deal with whatever he threw at her. But his family was another matter. Dolly wasn’t going to let anyone treat her as if she was rubbish. She had had enough of that from her aunt.

Juliana flicked her head, which sent the attendants scurrying out of the suite. Arabella lingered near the threshold, seemingly unsure of whether to stay or flee.

“I let you rest for two days, my dear,” Juliana began with a saccharine sweetness that made Dolly’s teeth ache.

“But there is a certain…standard, shall I say—” she paused, as if she had to search for the word “—to maintain when you enter the Demetrius family. Even from the margins. I have come to make sure that you and your wardrobe…” her steely gray gaze, so much like her son’s, touched Dolly from head to toe, somehow managing to dismiss her in the same glance “…meet those standards. Our family, friends, even the media will focus on you. I’m sure you do not want to embarrass yourself or Ares in any way. ”

Flames of anger licked at Dolly, but she held her temper in check. Where had her protectiveness been when her stepsons were tormenting Ares as a confused boy? And what did she think to achieve by alienating her son’s fiancée?

“I’ve been by Ares’s side for nine years without embarrassing him or myself,” she said, meeting the woman’s eyes.

“And since you’re clearly here to insult me, I’ll make this easy.

Please don’t waste your energy and effort on alienating me.

Ares will not like it. I dare say I know him better than any of you. ”

Without waiting for her response, Dolly marched to the walk-in closet.

Which was twice the size of her bedroom under the stairs at her aunt’s house before she had found her own place. Her mind whirred at Juliana’s comments as she studied her meager wardrobe.

Granted, her choice of clothes was limited. But if Ares, or his damned family, was ashamed of how she dressed, that was not her problem.

Biting her lip, she rifled through her clothes and picked white linen shorts, and a yellow crop top she’d bought on an impulse.

Grinning, she pulled them on. When she cast a look at herself in the full-length mirror, it was to discover that a large strip of her belly was left bare and the stretchy material clung to her small breasts.

Her first instinct was to cover herself up.

Dolly reached for the usual loose T-shirts that she bought in bulk and wore at home. But remembering who was standing outside the closet stopped her. As did the gray gaze of another who took her for granted, and had once erupted quite cruelly at her foolish admission that she was attracted to him.

The knot of hurt from his outburst still pulled at her chest painfully.

Why had Ares been so angry at her confession? Had he also assumed that she was after his wealth, that she truly coveted the status and power that came from being his wife?

Or was it because she had forced him to see her as a woman? Had he assumed that she was like the bot he was designing, that she didn’t feel or crave affection?

The reminder bolstered her flagging courage. She quickly braided her still damp hair, swiped on sunscreen and lip gloss and thrust her feet into sandals.

When she returned to the living room, Juliana and her attendants were gone. Arabella, however, lingered.

Dolly’s skin prickled as the teenager looked at her with unabashed curiosity. “Please forgive my mother’s behavior. She worries about Ares.”

“Not your fault,” Dolly said, straightening all the things she’d thrown around the room. “I’m a bit surprised that you’re being friendly toward me. Was this an order from your pushy brother?”

Arabella’s eyes widened. “You’re not at all intimidated by him, are you?”

“There’s no need to be,” Dolly said, half lying.

She was intimidated by Ares, but not for the same reasons as his younger sister.

There’s no perfect man for you out there, Dahlia, but me…

His teasing comment had been haunting her.